David Baldacci - Stone Cold

He skirted the edge of Gray’s property, his gait steady but unhurried. He knew Gray’s men would be coming soon, but in many ways he’d waited his entire adult life for this moment. He did not intend to rush it.

He reached the edge of the cliff and looked down at the dark water far below. Racing through his mind was the image of a young man very much in love, holding his wife in one arm, his baby girl in the other. The world seemed to be theirs. Their potential seemed unlimited. And yet how very limited it had all become. Because the next mental image was one of John Carr killing as he ran from one brutal murder to the next over a span of a decade.

He had built his life on lies, deception and swift, violent death with “government authorization” as his sole justification. In the end it had cost him everything.

He had lied to Harry Finn that day in the nursing home. He’d told Finn that he, John Carr, was different from the likes of Bingham, Cincetti and Cole. Yet he really wasn’t. In many ways, he was just like them.

He turned and walked away from the edge. Then John Carr whipped around and ran straight toward the edge and over it. He sailed out into space with his arms spread wide, his legs splayed. It was thirty years ago and he had just killed another man. It was a successful hit, only there were dozens of men intent on killing him. He had run like the wind; no one could catch him. Faster than a deer he was. He had run straight to the edge of a cliff three times as high as this one and without a second thought had jumped into nothing but air. He had plummeted down, bullets raining all around him. He’d hit the water cleanly, come up and lived to kill another day.

As the water rushed toward him, Carr’s arms and legs came together in perfect form. Some things you just never forgot. Your brain didn’t need to send a message; your body just knew what to do. And for most of his life, John Carr had known just what needed to be done.

An instant before he hit the water, Oliver Stone smiled, and then John Carr disappeared beneath the waves.

DON’T READ THIS UNTIL YOU’VE FINISHED THE BOOK

HOPE YOU ENJOYED Stone Cold . One note so people won’t e-mail telling me I made a glaring mistake: I’ve played with the time-line, putting Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko in office as heads of the Soviet Union so it would match Oliver Stone’s career as a government assassin. As a fiction writer, I have full latitude to do so. It’s an entitlement actually granted to me by the Novelist’s Bill of Rights, under the subsection “Why Bother with the Truth When You Can Just Make It Up?” It was duly enacted by Congress, an august body that has enviable experience in same.

TO MICHELLE, the ride continues, and there’s no one else I could ever do it with.

To Mitch Hoffman, here’s to the first of many.

To Aaron Priest, Lucy Childs, Lisa Erbach Vance and Nicole Kenealy, who let me focus on writing. And for always giving it to me straight.

To David Young, Jamie Raab, Emi Battaglia, Jennifer Romanello, Martha Otis and all the wonderful folks at Grand Central Publishing, for being with me every step of the way. New name, same great people.

To David North, Maria Rejt and Katie James at Pan Macmillan, for leading me to the top across “the Pond.”

To Grace McQuade and Lynn Goldberg, on a great new partnership. Thanks for all your hard work. It really paid off.

To Shane Drennan, for all your expert advice. I hope I did it justice.

I owe the craps table scene to Alli and Anshu Guleria and Bob and Marilyn Schule. Thanks, guys. See you in Vegas.

To Deborah and Lynette, the stellar Starship Enterprise crew.

And to the millions of Camel Club fans for seeing light when others only saw the darkness.