Washington, D.C.

Ben Garrison dropped his duffel bag inside the door of his apartment. Something smelled. Had he forgotten to take out the damn garbage again?

He stretched and groaned. His back ached, and his head throbbed. He rubbed the knot at his right temple, surprised to find it still there. Shit! It still hurt like a bitch. At least his hair covered it. Not like he cared. He just hated people asking a lot of goddamn questions that weren’t any of their business to begin with. Like that yappy old broad on the Metro, sitting next to him. She smelled like death. It was enough to make him get off early and take a cab the rest of the way home—a luxury he rarely allowed himself. Cabs were for wusses.

Now all he wanted was to crawl into bed, close his eyes and sleep. But he’d never be able to until he knew whether or not he had gotten any decent shots. Oh, hell, sleep was for wusses, too.

He grabbed the duffel bag and spilled its contents onto the kitchen counter, his large hands catching three canisters before they rolled off the edge. Then he began sorting the black film canisters according to the dates and times marked on their lids.

Out of the seven rolls, five were from today. He hadn’t realized he had shot so many, though lack of lighting remained his biggest problem. And the lighting around the monuments was often too harsh in places while too dark in certain corners. He usually found himself in the dark corners and shadows where he hated to risk using a flash, but did, anyway. At least the cloud covering from earlier in the day was gone. Maybe his luck was changing.

There was so much left to chance in this business. He constantly tried to eliminate as many obstacles as possible. Unfortunately, dark was dark and sometimes even high-speed film or that new infrared crap couldn’t cut through the black.

He gathered the film canisters and headed for the closet he had converted into a darkroom. Suddenly the phone startled him. He hesitated but had no intention of picking it up. He had stopped answering his phone months ago when the crank calls began. Still, he waited and listened while the answering machine clicked on and the machine voice instructed the caller to leave a message after the beep.

Ben braced himself, wondering what absurdity it would be this time. Instead, a familiar man’s voice said, “Garrison, it’s Ted Curtis. I got your photos. They’re good but not much different from my own guys’. I need something different, something nobody else is running. Call when you’ve got something, okay?”

Ben wanted to throw the canisters across the room. Everybody wanted something different, some fucking exclusive. It had been almost two years since his photos of dead cows outside Manhattan, Kansas, broke the story about a possible anthrax epidemic. Before that, he had been on a roll, as if luck was his middle name. Or at least, that was how he explained being outside that tunnel when Princess Diana’s car crashed. Wasn’t it also luck that put him in Tulsa the day of the Oklahoma City bombing? Within hours he was there, shooting exclusives and sending photos over the wires to the top bidders.

For several years afterward, everything he shot seemed to be gold, with newspapers and magazines calling him nonstop. Sometimes they were just checking to see what he had available that week. He went anywhere he wanted and shot anything that interested him from warring African tribes to frogs with legs sprouting out of their fucking heads. And everything got snatched up almost as quickly as he could develop the prints. All because they were his photographs.

Lately, things were different. Maybe his luck had simply run dry. He was fucking tired of trying to be in the right place at the right time. He was tired of waiting for news to happen. Maybe it was time to make some of his own. He squeezed the canisters in his hands. These had better be good.

Just as he turned for the darkroom again, he noticed the answering machine flashing twice, indicating a message other than Curtis’s. Okay, so maybe Parentino or Rubins liked the photos that Curtis didn’t want.

Without emptying his hands, he punched the message-play button with his knuckle.

“You have two messages,” the mechanical voice recited, grating on his nerves. “First message recorded at 11:45 p.m., today.”

Ben glanced at the wall clock. He must have just missed the first call before he came in.

There was a click and a pause, maybe a wrong number. Then a young woman’s polite voice said, “Mr. Garrison, this is the customer service office at Yellow Cab. I hope you enjoyed your ride with us this evening.”

The film canisters slipped to the floor and scattered in different directions while Ben grabbed the countertop. He stared at the answering machine. No cab company on this planet called its passengers to see if they enjoyed their ride. No, it had to be them. Which meant they had moved from crank calls to watching him. And now they wanted him to know they were watching.