Free The Burning Man by Christa Faust

the guy kept screwing around, forgetting things and double-checking things and making Tony crazy. The longer he waited, the lighter the sky would get. There was already a delicate flush of pink along the violet bellies of the clouds crowding the eastern sky. But finally, after the third trip back into his first-floor apartment, Jimmy came back out again with a bag from the toy store and an insulated thermos cup, and locked his front door. He put the toy bag on the passenger seat, took a swig from the cup, checked his watch, and then got in behind the wheel.
    Tony let him get a block-and-a-half head start before keying the big sedan he’d stolen and following the smaller white Datsun. He’d been tailing his target for weeks, learning his routine and watching his every move, so he already knew what route Jimmy usually took to pick up his kids at his ex’s house just outside of Haines City. There was a perfect spot along Old Polk City Road where he and his target would meet for the first and last time. It was a ballsy move, taking the target out in the morning, early though it may be. But the circumstances were just too ideal.
    He’d known from the beginning that he had divine forces on his side, and finally getting a lucky break like this just proved him right.
    He hummed softly to himself along the way, feeling the subdued heat of Olivia’s power throbbing gently in the remaining bones of his right arm. It was almost a weird kind of comfort, that heat. A reminder of his destiny. Ahead of him, the white car turned onto Old Polk, and he was close behind.
    He was ready.
    Pulling a rumpled map out of the glove box, he held it against the wheel and pretended to be trying to read it while driving. A lost, absent-minded tourist, trying to find his way to the ocean. When they reached the long, empty stretch of road that Tony had selected, he sped up until he was beside his quarry. He pushed the button to roll down the passenger window and gripped the wheel with his hook, using his good hand to make a window rolling motion at Jimmy and flashing his most disarming smile.
    He could feel Olivia inside him, flowing sinuously like smoke through the convolutions of his brain.
    Jimmy rolled his own window down and returned the smile.
    “You lost?” he called out across the purr of the wind.
    “Nope,” Tony said, raising his gun and pulling the trigger.
    * * *
    Olivia pulled the car over to the side of a deserted stretch of road and got out. She could taste the swampy humid air of her home state, and hear the familiar soporific buzz of cicadas in the low, scrubby trees. It was dawn, and still cool, the lazy red sun just raising its head to peer through the eastern clouds.
    She walked purposefully back along the empty road, toward a crumpled break in the tree line about a hundred yards away. When she got closer, she noticed the tail end of a white automobile sticking out of the brush. The smell of crushed leaves, sweet bay, and strangler fig mingling uneasily with the harsh odor of burnt brakes and leaking gasoline.
    She pushed her way through the broken branches to reach the driver’s side door. The window was open and the man behind the wheel was almost unrecognizable behind a mask of blood.
    But he wasn’t dead.
    He was slumped against his seatbelt and barely breathing, but when he saw Olivia, his eyes went wide. He held out a shaking hand in desperate, wordless supplication.
    She felt nothing for the dying man. No pity. No remorse. He was merely an obstacle to be overcome in the pursuit of a sacred mission.
    There was a gun in Olivia’s hand. Her left hand.
    She raised the gun and pressed it to the man’s forehead, right between his pleading eyes.
    She pulled the trigger.
    Blood and brains showered the car’s neat, well-maintained interior, pooling in the concave top of a thermos sitting in the cup holder. The man’s head rocked back on his neck and bounced off the headrest, and then he slid down sideways and over the gear