Shiver

At least, not by going through the paperwork.”
    Sam suddenly had trouble catching her breath. “A mole?”
    Groves looked at her. “Somebody found out the address of the house where we had Marco stashed in St. Louis. How? We got to consider a mole. People are looking into it, but in the meantime we did what we could to keep this location off the grid.”
    Sam could feel her stomach twisting itself into a knot. “If they found him in St. Louis . . .” Her voice trailed off. It occurred to her that Groves had been checking the rear- and side-view mirrors a little too often. Now she knew why: he was keeping an eye out to make sure they weren’t being followed.
    “Like I said, we’re off the grid.” Sam was sure his tone was meant to be reassuring.
    Because they were pulling into the Walmart parking lot, Sam let the subject drop. But the fear stayed with her, making her tense and jumpy in a way that she hadn’t been before.
    Persuading Groves to wait for her by the entrance wasn’t hard. All she had to do was mention that her first stop was going to be in the ladies’ underwear section and the deed was done. Instead, as soon as she was out of Groves’s sight she made a beeline for the hunting gear department. What she wanted, what she needed, her most important objective, was to acquire a weapon. Totally relying on the marshals—or Marco—to defend her and Tyler in a pinch was something that she was not prepared to do. After a quick consultation with the clerk behind the counter, she armed herself with a slender can of bear mace(the clerk described it as pepper spray on steroids, able to stop a charging grizzly at a distance of a couple of yards). Supplementing that with a folding knife small enough to fit in her pocket but lethal enough to do some damage if she had to use it, she cast a regretful glance at the gun case as she passed it—the background check, which usually required a minimum of three days to complete, plus the attention that said background check might attract, plus the price of the guns, ruled out trying to buy one—and hurried to make the rest of her purchases.
    The Walmart wasn’t particularly busy on that Sunday afternoon, but that just made each individual patron stand out more. Sam found herself casting surreptitious looks at her fellow shoppers, just in case one of them might not be a shopper at all, but a Zeta assassin on a mission to kill her. Finding herself worrying about being murdered in the middle of a Walmart was mind-boggling, but it was also a sure symptom of the hideous, horrible turn her life had taken. What made it so hideous and horrible was that her worry wasn’t even particularly far-fetched. The only thing improbable about it was that the assassin would attack in the store. He (or they) was far more likely to follow her home and try to kill the whole party there.
    By the time she rejoined Groves by the front entrance, she was so on edge that she jumped when a shopping cart clattered. Spotting the security cameras trained on the checkout lanes had made her heart thump: what if the people hunting them somehow gained access to the footage? Or what if there was an informant in the store, or . . .
    Stop it, she ordered herself. All you’re doing is making yourselfcrazy. Still, she was relieved to get out of the store. Neither she nor Groves said much on the way back to the town house, but they both did their fair share of checking the mirrors for tails.
    “You buy out the store?” Sanders asked when she walked into the kitchen carrying two big plastic bags loaded with the clothing she and Tyler needed, along with a chapter book ( Silver Wings, a story about a bat) and a ten-pack assortment of Matchbox cars for Tyler (he loved Matchbox cars), a hair dryer (if she had to live with her unrestrained curls for much longer she would be feeling murderous herself), and a few essential cosmetics. Plus her weapons. “What’d you do with Groves?”
    Having pulled into the attached garage, the interior door of which opened into the kitchen, Groves had been busy making sure the overhead door was secured when Sam had last seen him, which had been when she had walked into the house.
    “Dumped him.”
    “Be glad I don’t believe you.” He was seated at the table eating what looked like a bologna sandwich and his eyes—they were small and blue in his blunt-featured face—squinched up suspiciously as they met hers. Like he was wondering if she really had somehow