The white light burst to life without warning, causing the lowly assassin to flinch in the pitch-blackness of the empty room. At the other end of the space, partially illuminated by the sudden light, the Board of Directors of HIT sat and watched.

“Well, well. Xiuhcoatl. Do you know why you’ve been summoned here today?” asked a voice in the darkness.

“No, Ms. Chairman,” replied the assassin.

“You’ve failed your contract,” another Board member rumbled.

The assassin frowned, brushing a strand of long black hair from her face. “Failed? I don’t understand. I haven’t even---”

“MacGyver is dead!” Sonia Chapel spat. “And you didn’t kill him!”

Stunned, the assassin shook her head. “That’s impossible. I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“Murdoc, that’s what! He took out your target before you did. Do you have any idea what that does to our reputation? Letting independent mercenaries take over our professional contracts? Your failure is unacceptable!”

The Board collective murmured their agreement until Sonia lifted a hand to silence them.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Xia,” she said. “I trained you personally, mentored you for years. I expected better from you.”

“Murdoc is the best in the business, and every killer in HIT knows it,” Xia replied coldly. “If he was able to defeat even you, then I think I deserve a shot at redemption.”

“What do you mean?” the Chairman of the Board asked, voice tinged with suspicion.

Xia lifted her chin, eyes glinting. “I mean that I’m the best in the business now, and if I can’t prove it by taking out the only person that Murdoc ever failed to eliminate, then I’ll prove it by taking out the man himself. Let me take a contract on Murdoc, and I won’t fail again.”

Sonia Chapel smiled to herself. Murdoc had been a thorn in her side for far too long. And with MacGyver out of the picture, he was the only threat she had left… Soon, there would be no one left to stand in HIT’s way.

“The Board of Directors accepts your proposal. Find Murdoc…and kill him by any means necessary.”

“Are you sure about this dead drop, MacGyver?” Murdoc asked as he drove west down the two-lane highway, the Crown Vic’s tires stirring up the dust on the remnant of Route 66.

“No,” Mac replied, “but if Agent Robinson is going to make contact with me, it’ll be there. That’s why we set up the emergency drop in the first place, so that if anything went wrong, we’d at least have some kind of rendezvous point. There’s no way to be sure, but if we want to get a clue about where he is and what kind of evidence he has, this is our only chance.”

Murdoc glanced at the troubleshooter in the passenger seat and forced back yet another eyeroll. “I really don’t understand why you insisted on ruining my perfect work on your false beard with that awful cowboy hat. I could have disguised you as anything in the world, and you decided to dress up like John Wayne. You’re ridiculous.”

“C’mon, Murdoc, gimme a break. My hair’s pretty distinctive, so the more of it that I cover up, the better off we are. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You could’ve pretended to be a woman.”

“That’s more your style, isn’t it? Besides, I can’t walk in heels and I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy.”

“Well, so have I, but we don’t always get what we want. If we did, you’d be dead and I wouldn’t be on this wild goose chase.”

MacGyver sighed and leaned his head against his hand. “Turn left up here.”

Murdoc grunted his acknowledgement and made the turn onto Frontier Road, grimacing as something in the rearview mirror caught his eye. “Hm.”

Mac’s head lifted. “Huh?”

“What?”

“You said ‘hm.’”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

MacGyver scowled. “Spit it out already, would ya?”

“Nothing much to say, MacGyver.” Murdoc turned right and glanced in the mirror again. “Hm.”

MacGyver glared. “You’re doing it again.”

Murdoc made another right turn. “Am I?”

“Yes. And where are you even going? You were supposed to be going straight two turns ago!”

“You’re not very good at thinking like a killer, are you, MacGyver?” Murdoc made one more right turn and glanced behind yet again. “I’ve just driven in a complete circle, and that car is still behind us. We’re being followed.”

The hair stood up on the back of Mac’s neck. “Someone from HIT?”

“I doubt that DXS agents drive red sports cars, so yes, I’d say it’s someone from HIT. …Actually, I think I know who it is. And I’m not about to lead her to our dead drop.” With a predatory grin, Murdoc cut a sharp left turn that made MacGyver grateful for his seat belt.

“Are you crazy?” Mac shouted. “You’re gonna get us killed!”

“Apparently I’m not crazy enough, because she’s still following us.”

“What?!” MacGyver twisted in the seat to see a bright red Trans Am through the back window, matching Murdoc’s speed. “We’ve got to lose her!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Murdoc snapped. “We can’t outrun her. This car’s top speed is at least forty miles under hers, and she’s directly behind us. I’m doing the best I can.”

MacGyver ran a hand through his hair and glanced back at the red car again. “Oh, man…”

“Any clever ideas, MacGyver?”

Behind them, Xiuhcoatl lazily rolled down her window, one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a gun. She squeezed the trigger and the Ford’s back window shattered.

MacGyver pressed himself against the door as the bullet lodged in the dashboard. His cowboy hat flew out the window, snatched by the wind and forgotten. When MacGyver was able to tear his gaze away from the bullet hole, he could see the Pontiac gaining on them, thundering ever closer on the abandoned stretch of unlined road.

He looked to the road ahead, then back again.

The rocks and scrub streaked by in a reddish blur. With the back window gone, the roaring of two overpowered engines was deafening. Spinning wheels churned up grime from the dirt-caked blacktop until a layer of fine brown particles coated the inside of the Crown Victoria. The taste of grit and the stench of burning gasoline scraped at Mac’s senses like sandpaper.

He barely had time to breathe, let alone think. Their pursuer would shoot again, and soon. Her car was edging up to the Ford’s rear bumper, too close.

MacGyver’s old racing instincts kicked in. Flashbacks to long days on the track, pushing himself and the car to the absolute limits.

He knew exactly how fast a Trans Am could go without losing control, even a specialty street-legal racer like the one he was looking at. Even for a straight stretch like this, that hot rod was going much too fast.

“Murdoc!” Mac shouted. “Turn hard right as soon as you get to that side road up ahead!”

“That’ll slow us down! Are you sure?”

“Trust me!”

Murdoc slammed on the brakes and spun into a hard right turn, hugging the patchy blacktop. Two wheels dropped off the pavement and he slowed to a crawl, fighting to regain the car’s grip on the road. Then he slammed on the gas pedal and sped off, taking the Ford straight down the middle of the backroad.

Thank God this car was built for police chases, MacGyver thought as he held his breath and stared out through the broken back window.

The assassin’s car barreled down behind them, Firehawk tires screeching and assaulting Mac with the acrid fumes of scorching rubber. The turn was too sharp and the velocity was too great. The red car flew off the road and smashed headfirst into the skeleton of a metal gate, wheels spinning helplessly in the thick red dirt.

Murdoc never slowed down. The old police car propelled further from the crash until MacGyver could only barely glimpse the outline of the assassin as she emerged from the wreckage.

“Murdoc, we have to go back! What if she’s hurt?”

“She isn’t,” Murdoc insisted, “and even if she is, there are houses nearby. She can get help. We, on the other hand, need to find your drop and get out of here. HIT’s obviously still on our trail, and they won’t give up.”

MacGyver blew a sigh and nodded, glancing around for street signs and trying to force himself to relax. “Look for a road marked ‘Yucca Trail.’ It’s not far…”

“A tree? The special rendezvous drop point in case of emergencies is a tree? In the middle of nowhere?” Murdoc said incredulously.

“It’s a Joshua tree!” MacGyver replied as he scraped some reddish dirt away from the base of the roots with his hands. “It’s special.”

“So? It’s still just a plant in the middle of this godforsaken desert. We’re still at least an hour and a half away from civilization! Why would your agent come here, of all places?”

Mac shrugged. “Because it’s out of the way. Nobody else can find it, and nobody else would want to. ” He felt something unusual beneath the dirt and tugged the object free, brushing the soil away. It was a large envelope sealed inside a waterproof bag. “This is it, Murdoc. I think this is what he left for me to find.”

“Well, open it in the car, will you? We need to keep moving.”

MacGyver nodded. “Better hop on I-15 and get us back to Los Angeles. If this envelope has evidence inside, then the sooner we can get it to the authorities, the better.”

“I don’t think so, MacGyver,” Murdoc replied as he slid into the driver’s seat. “HIT will find our trail before long, and we’ll be leading them right to your agent unless we find a way to slow down that assassin. We can’t let her report back, and we can’t let her catch us.”

“Unless we want her to catch us,” MacGyver said slowly. “I don’t guess you have any of that spider silk left, do ya?”

Murdoc grinned and chuckled darkly as he turned onto the interstate highway, bound for Barstow.