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was clear that the fire had surrounded the door; the flames were meant to be a diversion. But where had he gone?
    “These cars all accounted for?” she asked a fireman.
    “Yeah. They’re all employees’.”
    “Hey, Kathryn, we have the device,” a man in a uniform said to her. He was the county’s chief fire marshal.
    She nodded a greeting. “What was it?”
    “Wheelie suitcase, big one, filled with plastic milk containers of gasoline. The doer planted it under that Saab there. Slow-burning fuse.”
    “A pro?”
    “Probably not. We found the fuse residue. You can make ’em out of clothesline and chemicals. Got instructions from the Internet, I’d say. The sort of things kids make to blow stuff up with. Including themselves a lot of times.”
    “Can you trace anything?”
    “Maybe. We’ll have it sent to the MCSO lab and then we’ll see.”
    “You know when it was left?”
    He nodded toward the car the bomb had been planted under. “The driver got here about nine fifteen, so it’d be after that.”
    “Any hope for prints?”
    “Doubt it.”
    Dance stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the battleground. Something felt wrong.
    The dim corridor, blood on the concrete.
    The open door.
    Turning slowly, studying the area, Dance noticed behind the building something in a nearby pine and cypress grove: a tree from which dangled an orange ribbon—the sort used to mark shrubs and trees scheduled for cutting. Walking closer, she noticed that the mound of pine needles at the base was larger than those beneath the others. Dance dropped to her knees and dug into it. She unearthed a large scorched bag made of metallic cloth.
    “Rey, need some gloves.” She coughed from the smoke.
    The young agent got a pair from an MCSO crime scene deputy and brought them to her. Inside the bag were Pell’s orange prison uniform and a set of gray hooded overalls, which turned out to be some kind of fire suit. A label said the garment was made of PBI fibers and Kevlar and had an SFI rating of 3.2A/5. Dance had no idea what this meant—except that it was obviously protective enough to get Daniel Pell safely through the conflagration behind the courthouse.
    Her shoulders slumped in disgust.
    A fire suit? What’re we up against here?
    “I don’t get it,” Rey Carraneo said.
    She explained that Pell’s partner had probably set the bomb and left the fireproof bag outside the door; it had contained the fire suit and a knife. Maybe a universal cuff or shackle key too. After he’d disarmed Juan Millar, Pell had donned the garment and run through the flames to the tree marked with the orange tag, where the partner had hidden some civilian clothes. He’d changed and sprinted off.
    She lifted the Motorola and reported what she’d found, then gestured an MCSO crime scene officer over and gave him the evidence.
    Carraneo called her to a patch of earth not far away. “Footprints.” Several impressions, about four feet apart—left by someone running. They were clearly Pell’s; he’d left distinctive prints outside the fire door of the courthouse. The two CBI agents started jogging in the direction they led.
    Pell’s footsteps ended at a nearby street, San Benito Way, along which were vacant lots, a liquor store, a dingy taqueria, a quick-copy and shipping franchise, a pawnshop and a bar.
    “So here’s where the partner picked him up,” Carraneo said, looking up and down San Benito.
    “But there’s another street on the other side of the courthouse. It’s two hundred feet closer. Why here?”
    “More traffic there?”
    “Could be.” Dance squinted as she scanned the area, coughing again. Finally she caught her breath and her eyes focused across the street. “Come on, let’s move!”
    •    •    •
    The man, in his late twenties, wearing shorts and a Worldwide Express uniform shirt, drove his green panel truck through the streets of downtownSalinas. He was intensely aware of the gun barrel resting on his