1
AUGUST 2007

McKinley Lawrence Stone was the name he had given himself in the court papers he’d filed three years ago. When the change had been certified he held a party for himself with a few cronies using the last of the money he had left from his time as Steven Wallace. He called it his Launch Party. He had played with variations on the new name, and the one he felt most comfortable with was Mack Stone. The name Mack Stone would mark him as an unpretentious man, and the McKinley had a subtle scent of historical priority and maybe even inherited wealth, with the possibility of some education that he would be far too modest to mention. The party guests included several of his favorite people—Dickie O’Connell, who ran a card game and could deal any hand he wanted each player to have, a pair of women friends named Tracy and Faith, who operated an escort service offering housewives supplementing their incomes, and Ike Potter, a thriving dealer in mail-order pharmaceuticals who had often filled orders for him. It was a memorable party for sure. He was remembering it three years later.

He was thinking about it because at the moment he was at about the same point in the cycle where he’d been at that time, only better. He was driving a beautiful new black BMW 7 series sedan with a load of optional features. Inside the trunk was a leather carrying case that held new socks, underwear, casual shirts, and pants, and a portfolio of stock and bond accounts bought with money that had recently been the property of Linda Warren, but were now in his own permanent name, the one he’d been given at birth. He had never divulged this name to anyone since his family had moved to a new town when he was eight and they’d all made up new names.

He was already far north of Los Angeles, heading east across Nevada. Professionals like him knew enough not to head for Las Vegas. It was the first place the hunters looked. It was exactly the tempting distance from Los Angeles or Santa Barbara or San Diego to make a stupid person think he had left the police and his victims far behind and could relax. Vegas was nowhere near far enough. It was a bright, sunny, sparkling trap.

He had spent the day settled back in the scientifically designed, ergonomically perfect, expertly crafted leather seat while he looked out the window at the jagged, rocky, skillet-hot hellscape of the southern part of Nevada. Now he was enjoying the smooth, silent ride watching the mirages pool ahead on the highway, then dissolve as he approached. The afternoon sun seemed to be throwing its light ahead of him on the future. He had swung north, taken Route 50, and was in northeastern Nevada and moving fast but still barely above the speed limit on the two-lane highway.

A vehicle was coming up fast behind him. He stared at the mirror. He saw it was a g