High Treason by John Gilstrap Page A

you? Jesus, I was just—”
    David knew that he must sound like a lunatic, but what did he care? In the worst case, the stranger really was a Good Samaritan who’d gotten his feelings hurt. In the best case, he was a potential killer who’d been startled out of his mission.
    David used the momentary confusion to take off again. With his leg still sore, he looked more like he was skipping than running, but he was putting additional space between himself and the people who would do him harm.
    Behind him, Trench Coat yelled, “Ungrateful piece of shit!”
    David hobbled on, stepping into the paltry traffic that straggled up Constitution Avenue. In the first bit of good luck for the evening, he found a taxi within hailing range. It pulled to the curb and David climbed into the backseat. “The Riverside,” he said, pointing the cabbie to his apartment building. “Quickly.”
    Taking his orders a little too literally, the cabbie swung a U-turn in the middle of the street. David had to hold on to keep from getting thrown across the bench seat. “Whoa. Easy.”
    What the hell had he gotten himself into? Goddamn you, Deeshy. Whatever his buddy had found, it had gotten the attention of some very bad people. What had he said? Something about the Secret Service, right? And he couldn’t talk to his own commanders about it.
    They knew my name.
    “Stop the car!” he commanded.
    The cabbie pivoted in his seat to look through the security barrier, but he didn’t slow down.
    “I said, stop.”
    “Before, you said to hurry.”
    “Well, I want you to stop now.”
    This triggered a string of angry Urdu. But the driver stopped the cab.
    David felt sick. If the attackers knew his name, then they would know where he lived. There was no way he could go home, not without knowing what was going on and making sure that it was safe. So, what was the alternative? All his stuff was in his home—everything. He didn’t even have a computer, unless you counted his iPhone, and as smart as the phone was, it was nobody’s computer.
    “Oh, shit,” he muttered aloud. His phone! He’d used it to call Deeshy. If they had his phone, they had his number, and if they had his number, they could trace him. Like physically trace him. Wasn’t that how it worked?
    “Hey,” the cabbie said. “You want to go someplace or not?”
    “Your meter’s running,” David snapped.
    “Waiting is not driving, my friend. You want to think, think outside. I make money driving.”
    “Then drive,” David said. “Just not to the Riverside.”
    “Where?”
    “You want to wait for directions, wait. You want to drive, drive.”
    The cabbie’s eyes flashed humor in the rearview mirror. David winked and the driver pulled the transmission into drive.
    What the hell was he going to do? The first step, he supposed, was to turn off his phone, but would that be enough? Did turning it off make it invisible, or did he have to pull out that card, whatever the hell it was called. The SIM card, that was it. Did he have to pull that out to make it invisible? And how do you do that on an iPhone? The thing was one solid piece. As a first step, he turned the phone off.
    And where was he going to stay? Having grown up in mansions, wilderness survival skills were nowhere near his wheelhouse. In David’s family, camping meant staying at the Four Seasons instead of the Ritz-Carlton.
    I am so screwed.
    He recognized that he might be panicking, blowing this out of proportion, but his gut told him that things were desperately wrong. Deeshy was as paranoid as they came, and he saw conspiracy in the sunrise, but this time, he was scared . He’d almost cried on the phone. He was very scared. Of the Secret Service and the police.
    “Think,” he told himself. “Prioritize.” Oh, God, it had to be bad if he was channeling his father.
    David needed to get off the streets. He needed to hole up somewhere in a place that would give him a measure of safety and buy him enough time to think