The Burning Wire

people like me, their reaction more often than not is as much bewilderment as fear. Mortality is tough to process.
    But keeping people safe, keeping people alive, is a business like any other.
    I frequently told this to my protégé and the others in the office, probably irritating them to no end with both the repetition and the stodgy tone. But I kept on saying it because you can’t forget, ever. It’s a business, with rigid procedures that we study the way surgeons learn to slice flesh precisely and pilots learn to keep tons of metal safely aloft. These techniques have been honed over the years and they worked.
    Business . . .
    Of course, it was also true that the hitter who was behind us at the moment, intent on killing the woman next to me, treated his job as a business too. I knew this sure as steel. He was just as serious as I was, had studied procedures as diligently as I had, was smart, IQ-wise and streetwise, and he had advantages over me: His rules were unencumbered by my constraints—the Constitution and the laws promulgated thereunder.
    Still, I believe there is an advantage in being in the right. In all my years of doing this work I’d never lost a principal. And I wasn’t going to lose Alissa.
    A business . . . which meant remaining calm as a surgeon, calm as a pilot.
    Alissa was not calm, of course. She was breathinghard, worrying her cuff as she stared at a sprawling magnolia tree we were passing, an outrider of a hickory or chestnut forest, bordering a huge cotton field, the tufts bursting. She was uneasily spinning a thin diamond bracelet—a treat to herself on a recent birthday. She now glanced at the jewelry and then her palms, which were sweating, and placed her hands on her navy blue skirt. Under my care, Alissa had worn dark clothing exclusively. It was camouflage but not because she was the target of a professional killer; it was about her weight, which she’d wrestled with since adolescence. I knew this because we’d shared meals and I’d seen the battle up close. She’d also talked quite a bit about the battle with food. Some principals don’t need or want camaraderie. Others, like Alissa, need us to be friends. I don’t do well in that role—the stiff part, again—but I try and can generally pull it off.
    We passed a sign. The exit was a mile and a half away.
    A business requires simple, smart planning. You can’t be reactive in this line of work and though I hate the word “proactive” (as opposed to what, antiactive?), the concept is vital to what we do. In this instance, to deliver Alissa safe and sound to the prosecutor for her depositions, I needed to keep the hitter in play. Since my protégé had been following him for hours, we knew where he was and could have taken him at any moment. But if we’d done that, whoever had hired him would simply call somebody else to finish the job. I wanted to keep him on the road for the better part of the day—long enough for Alissa to get into the U.S. Attorney’s office and give him sufficient information via deposition so that she would no longer be at risk. Once the testimony’sdown, the hitter has no incentive to eliminate a witness.
    The plan I’d devised, with my protégé’s help, was for me to pass the Carolina Poultry truck and pull in front of it. The hitter would speed up to keep us in sight but before he got close the truck and I would exit simultaneously. Because of the curve in the road and the ramp I’d picked, the hitter wouldn’t be able to see my car but would spot the decoy. Alissa and I would then take a complicated route to a hotel in Raleigh, where the prosecutor awaited, while the decoy would eventually end up at the courthouse in Charlotte, three hours away. By the time the hitter realized that he’d been following a bogus target, it would be too late. He’d call his primary—his employer—and most likely the hit would be called off. We’d move in, arrest the hitter and try to trace him back to the primary.
    About a mile ahead was the turnoff, and the chicken truck was about thirty feet ahead.
    I regarded Alissa, now playing with a gold and amethyst necklace. Her mother had given it to her on her seventeenth birthday, more expensive than the family could afford but an unspoken consolation prize for the absence of an invitation to the prom. People tend to share quite a lot with those who are saving their lives.
    My phone buzzed. “Yes?” I asked my protégé.
    “The subject’s moved up