Liar's Market. Taylor Smith

in the lobby smiled shyly at the Gunny and Carrie in turn. “Well, thanks again. Bye.”

      Carrie returned her smile and the Gunny gave a brief salute. As the young corporal at the front door unlocked it to let the girl out, Carrie turned back to the window.

      “Anyway, Gunny, on the softball thing, I guess it depends how long the commitment is. We’ll be here till the end of the school year, for sure. I will, anyway. Drum says he may have to head back to Washington earlier. But if it means Jonah can be on a team with Connor, I’d try to hang in as long as possible and let him do that.”

      “That should work out okay. We’re going to set up the schedule so the games are all done by the end of June. A lot of people are in the same boat, what with transfers and summer vacations. It makes for a pretty short season, but at least the kids get to play.”

      “That would be great.” It was one last thing she could do to help Jonah through the transition they were about to make, Carrie thought—one that might turn out to be even more disruptive than a move from London back to Washington, if she followed through on her growing resolve to make some real changes in her life. “Put Jonah down then. He’ll be so happy when I tell him.”

      The Gunny grinned and started to reply, but just then, a sharp bang shattered the hollow stillness of the empty lobby. Three or four more ear-splitting cracks followed in rapid succession. To Carrie’s ears, it sounded like firecrackers exploding outside, but to the two Marines in the lobby, it obviously meant something else altogether.

      “Weapons fire!” The Gunny’s sidearm was already out of its holster. “What’s going on out there?” he hollered to the corporal at the door.

      The young Marine had his nose to the glass, but he ducked back and pasted himself against the interior marble wall, his eyes huge. “We got a shooter, Gunny! It looks like at least one civilian’s down.”

      “Oh, shit!” The Gunny grabbed the phone beside him and started yelling for backup.

      Karen Ann Hermann had just left the embassy grounds, rounding the concrete barriers at the perimeter. She was running very late, but at the zebra crossing, she hesitated, confused by the glare of lights on the wet pavement and by the honking cars whizzing by on the rain-slickened road, all of them coming from the wrong direction.

      She was getting her bearings, trying to remember the layout of the map in her guidebook in order to plan her route to Leicester Square, when she heard someone call her name. She glanced around. A black London cab slowed as it approached her from the left, its passenger side window down.

      How could a cab driver know her name? She must have misheard. Unless maybe he had Kristina and Caitlin with him? Had they decided to come and get her? She ducked low to peek into the back seat of the cab. It looked empty, but the driver was staring at her expectantly.

      Had she imagined it, hearing her name called? She must have. There was no way the other girls would have splurged on a taxi, and neither would Karen, rain or no rain. A luxury like that wasn’t in any of their budgets. Theater tickets and souvenirs for her parents were the only big-ticket items she’d bargained on, but a taxi would set her back a bundle.

      Head shaking, she waved the driver on, but instead of pulling back out into the line of traffic, the squat little car pulled up closer until it stood directly in front of her.

      She shook her head again. “No, thanks anyway! I don’t need—”

      Before she could finish the sentence, the inside of the cab exploded in a flash of light. Karen felt a stinging slap to her throat and her head kicked back. A split second later, before she even had time to reach a hand up to feel what had stung her neck, a double smack to the chest sent her flying back as if she’d been kicked by a horse.

      It was only as she hit the pavement that her ears finally registered the loud retorts. Her head bounced on the cobblestones, and then she lay on her back, the wind knocked out of her, heavy rain soaking her face and smearing the lights in her eyes. She felt an icy splash on her legs as the taxi sped away.

      It was cold on the ground. Her sprawled arms and legs were wet and chilled, but across her chest, she felt a spreading pool of warmth. When she was finally able to catch her breath a little, it came in ragged gasps.

      Faces appeared above her, a man and a couple of women, then two soldiers. No, not soldiers. Marines. She’d spoken to the cute one when she’d arrived. He’d been manning the sentry box at the front gate. At first, he’d said she’d have to come back the next day, but when she told him she just wanted to fill out a consular registration form, he’d called and gotten permission for her to go in. On her way out, when she’d stopped to thank him, he’d told her about a club near Piccadilly that he and the other Marines liked to go to. Maybe they could meet up there later?

      Karen had promised to ask her friends. Then, she’d headed for the zebra crossing. That was when the cab had pulled up and the driver had called her name.

      The Marines were standing over her now, guns drawn, looking nervously from the street and down to her, then back to the street again. She saw their mouths move, but her ears were still ringing from the crack of the thunder that had exploded in her face and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. One of the women was crying.

      “I’m okay,” Karen told her. Or tried to, except no sound came out.

      She rolled onto her side, her hand reaching for her throat. Her neck felt mushy and wet, like soggy oatmeal, and she was feeling so dizzy she thought she might fall off the earth. But she had to get moving. She was going to be so late. She was supposed to be…somewhere.

      Where was she supposed to be?

      Tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to remember, cold rain mixing with the warmth running down her cheeks and with that other warmth that covered her front now. Bright lights swam around her. She wasn’t sure where she was anymore. All she really knew was that she wanted to go home. She was tired…so tired.

      She curled herself up into a ball, nestling into the cobblestones, her lower arm tucking into her side. Her hand curled up beside her face, the movement instinctive. She had no awareness of her thumb settling instinctively on her chin, nor of her fingers waving laxly.

      Feet shuffled around her, and worried faces swam in and out of her line of sight, lips moving soundlessly. She strained to make out their fading features, but none of these was the face she wanted to see. Her thumb was still on her chin, her four fingers waggling limply as she called out in her primal language. To the confused faces, it was probably just random fluttering, but for Karen, it was her first word, rising out of the deepest recesses of her fear and sadness and intense loneliness—Mommy.

      She signed it over and over, a silent cry from long ago, a small child calling mutely in the only language her mother could recognize. But this time, there were no comforting arms to take the little girl up and hold her close to let her know she was safe.

      Then, Karen Ann Hermann’s eyes closed for the last time, and her fluttering hand fell still on the wet, hard cobblestones, silenced for all time.

      The sky wept.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      BY J. P. TOWLE

      Special to the Washington Post

      LONDON—Nearly four months after the shooting outside the U.S. Embassy in London that took the life of a young American tourist, questions remained as to the motive of the Pakistan-born taxi driver blamed in the attack.

      U.S. and British intelligence officials say there is little doubt Ibn Mussa Ibrahim attacked to protest American foreign policy.

      But if so, skeptics ask, why shoot an unarmed civilian? And why was Ibrahim himself later found shot to death and stuffed in the boot of his taxi?

      Security cameras outside the embassy captured the attack on video. The tapes show a shadowy, bearded figure behind the wheel of the black London taxi. The cab pulled up at the embassy’s outer gates just before