John Gilstrap

No Mercy

(с) 2009

April 20

Chapter One

The fullness of the moon made it all more complicated. The intense silver glow cast shadows as defined as midday despite the thin veil of cloud cover. Dressed entirely in black, with only his eyes showing beneath his hood, Jonathan Grave moved like a shadow in the stillness. Crickets and tree frogs, nocturnal noisemakers by the thousands, gave him some cover, but not enough. There was never enough cover. He reminded himself that he was in Indiana soybean country facing a clueless adversary, but then he remembered the penalty for failing to respect one’s adversary.

The Patrone brothers had been arguing for every one of the twenty minutes that Jonathan had been monitoring them. The bud in his left ear picked up every word, beamed to him from the tiny wireless transmitter he’d stuck to the lowest pane of the front window. From what he’d been able to determine from his hasty research in the past few hours, the Patrones were nobodies-just a pair of losers from West Virginia whose motives for this kidnapping adventure were unclear, and from Jonathan’s perspective, irrelevant.

The stress of the kidnappers’ ordeal had clearly begun to take its toll. They’d counted on Thomas Hughes’s parents coughing up the ransom quickly, and now they couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.

“I’m tired of being jerked off by that asshole,” Lionel said. The older of the two, he was the hothead. “Old Stevie Hughes needs more proof, maybe we should just cut off a piece of Tommy and send it to his old man in an envelope.”

Jonathan picked up his pace, kneeling in the dew-wet grass to un-sling his black rucksack and open the flap. With his night vision gear in place, the darkness burned like green daylight.

“You’re not serious,” said Little Brother Barry. His tone carried an unstated plea. He was the pacifist. Jonathan liked pacifists. They lived longer.

“Watch me.”

Lionel continued to rant as Jonathan produced a coil of detonating cord from his pack and slid a K-Bar knife from its scabbard on his left shoulder. He measured out about an inch of cord, sliced it off the roll, and slid the knife back home. With a loop of black electrician’s tape, he attached the det cord to the cable that brought electrical service to the house, then slid the initiator into place. Det cord was the best stuff in the world. A woeful bit of overkill in this case, but unquestionably effective.

“Chris said of his Kevlar vest and whispered, “Boss’s name is Chris.” It was the missing bit of data from three days of gathering intel.

A familiar voice crackled in his ear, “Copy that. Any sign of him yet?”

“I was going to ask you,” Jonathan whispered. “I’ve only got two friends here.” They knew from an eyewitness to Thomas Hughes’s kidnapping that three hooded figures had carried the naked Ball State student out of his apartment in the middle of the night. Jonathan didn’t like the fact that one member of the team remained unaccounted for.

The tone and pace of the kidnappers’ argument told him that their frustration level had passed the tipping point into desperation. He moved faster.

“This whole thing is hopelessly messed up,” Lionel said. “Maybe Chris got picked up by the cops.”

“Maybe you’re just paranoid,” Barry soothed.

“This was supposed to be easy money. My ass.”

Jonathan was at the back of the house now-the black side, as he thought of it-and it was time to prepare the doors for entry. The Patrones had stashed Thomas Hughes in the basement. In this part of the country, it was probably called a storm cellar. Or maybe a root cellar. Constructed entirely of stone, from the outside it could be accessed through two heavy wooden doors that sloped at a shallow angle from ground level. When the time came, those doors would be Jonathan’s point of entry.

Pulling his cell phone from its pouch on his vest, Jonathan flipped open the cover and viewed the image transmitted by the spaghetti-size fiber optic camera he’d inserted between the doors. In the light cast by the single dim lightbulb inside, he had difficulty making out any real detail, but he saw what he needed. Their precious cargo hadn’t moved in the last half hour. The fourth-year music major lay naked on the basement floor, his arms, legs, and mouth bound with duct tape.

“Hang on a little longer,” Jonathan whispered. The kid had no idea that he was moments away from rescue. For all he knew, this was all he’d ever see again. Even after he was safe, there’d be no way to erase the trauma of these past four days. Whoever Thomas Hughes had been before the kidnapping would be forever changed. It would be years before he’d feel real joy again, and chances were, he’d never rediscover the trust he once felt toward others.

The speaker bud in his right ear-the one not occupied by the Patrones-crackled again. “Sit rep, please.” Apparently two minutes had passed since they’d last spoken, and Jonathan’s airborne partner, Brian Van de Meulebroeke-“Boxers”-wanted a situation report, per their standard operating procedure. They spoke on encrypted radio channels without worry of casual eavesdroppers.

“I’m preparing for breach now,” Jonathan said.

Still using night vision, he removed three GPCs-general purpose charges-from his rucksack, one for each of the door hinges on the right-hand side, and a third for the heavy-duty padlock in the middle. Constructed of C4 explosive with a tail of det cord to ensure proper activation, GPCs were as malleable as modeling clay, infinitely reliable, and effective as hell. The phrase “shock and awe” would take on a whole new meaning when the blast waves were focused on a room as small as the cellar.

Lionel said, “Let’s cut off the kid’s balls.”

Jonathan felt his stomach drop.

“What?” At least Barry was horrified. on the floor, hugging his knees, making a keening sound. “You killed him. You killed him…” He said it over and over again.

Three feet away, Thomas tried to rise to his knees.

“Stay put, Thomas!” Jonathan commanded. The last thing he needed was to have his aim spoiled. “Just stay on the floor out of the way. You’re not going to get hurt.”

When Barry Patrone looked up, Jonathan saw that he’d made up his mind to be stupid. Uncannily, he looked straight at Jonathan when he said for the dozenth time, “You killed him.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Barry. You’ve got no cards here…”

Barry dropped to the floor and rolled to his left, on the concrete, drawing a snub-nose revolver from his pants pocket. The shoulder roll ended with Barry on one knee, aiming at the night. Jonathan took two baby steps to the side, knowing that right-handed shooters tended to pull to their left when they fired.

Barry fired, his bullet ricocheting off the concrete wall to Jonathan’s right.

“Drop it now!” Jonathan roared. Barry didn’t need to die, goddammit. Lionel had been the nut job, not him.

This time, Barry zoned in on Jonathan’s voice and aimed dangerously close. It was done.

Jonathan’s finger flinched by sheer instinct and his pistol bucked twice.

Barry made a barking sound as two.45 caliber slugs drilled his chest through a single hole, shredding his heart. He was dead before the second bullet hit.

“Damn it,” Jonathan spat. How could a ransom be worth this? He dropped the magazine out of the grip of his pistol and replaced it with a fresh one from his belt, slipping the used one into the vacated pouch. He holstered his weapon with its hammer cocked, as always, and pressed the transmit button on his chest. “Room secure, two friends sleeping. Exfil in five.”

Boxers replied, “I copy room secure. See you in five.”

Thomas Hughes was screaming, but with the duct tape gag in place, nothing made sense. From the emphasis on the hard consonants, however, the smart money said that it was mostly obscenities. Jonathan approached the young man carefully, not wanting to get kicked, and even more, not wanting to leave any unnecessary footprints in the spreading pool of gore.

“Thomas, be quiet,” he said. “You’re safe. I’m here to take you home. They’re both dead, and you’re going to be just fine. Do you understand that? Nod if you do.”

Thomas hesitated, and then he nodded. It was clearly a calculated move. The fear remained in his eyes, but how could he go wrong allowing the new attacker to think otherwise?

“I’m going to get us some light now,” Jonathan explained. As he snapped his goggles out of the way, he reached behind his head into a side pocket of his rucksack and produced a glow stick. He cracked it and shook it to life. The room glowed green again, only now they could both see.

The fear in Thomas’s eyes peaked when he saw Jonathan’s masked face. The rescuer tried hard to make his eyes look friendly. “I’m going to cut you loose,” Jonathan explained. “That means I have to use a knife. Don’t freak out when you see it.”

The eight-inch tempered steel blade of the K-Bar was honed to a razor’s edge, and looked scarylet that happen. The last thing he needed was a bad guy on the loose. Operating by instinct, Jonathan brought the slung M4 rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired six quick rounds at the van’s front left fender. The muzzle blast ripped like thunder through the humid night. He’d loaded every third round in this clip as armor-piercing, and he wanted to make sure to blast two holes in the engine block. He was rewarded with the infrared flash of two heat plumes as the vehicle stopped dead on the pavement.

With his rifle still up and ready, Jonathan moved toward the crippled vehicle.

His earpiece crackled, “I’m on infrared, and I’ve got visual on you and the vehicle. There’s movement on the far side. He’s out of the car, moving north toward the woods. He’s using the vehicle to cover his retreat.”

Jonathan didn’t take time to acknowledge, but he liked knowing that Boxers was watching from the air. In his gut, he wanted to ignore the vehicle and chase the bad guy, but doctrine wouldn’t allow it. There might be a second guy in the van, and he couldn’t afford having someone sneak up behind him while he was trying to sneak up behind someone else.

The passenger side window-the one closest to him-was up and unbroken. Keeping the rifle tucked against his shoulder with his right hand, he used his left to pull his collapsible baton from its pouch on his web gear. He approached in a wide arc to come in from the rear. The back cargo doors of the van were closed, and their windows were intact.

“Careful there, cowboy,” Boxers said in his ear. “There’s only one of you.”

Jonathan stooped low to the ground near the back doors, let his rifle fall against its sling, and lifted a tear gas grenade from the right side of his web gear. He pulled the pin, and with the safety handle squeezed, he rose, shattered the glass in the back door with one enormous punch from the baton, and tossed the grenade into the van. As the cloud of noxious gas bloomed, he moved forward and shattered the glass on the passenger door. He confirmed in a single glance that it was empty. The fleeing driver had come alone.

“Vehicle’s clear. Where’s my target?”

After a pause, the voice in his ear said, “Sorry boss, I was watching you. I lost him. Can’t have gone far.”

Terrific. “No exfil till we find him.”

“Understood. Gauges say lots of time.” Translation: he had enough fuel to hover for as long as it took.

Something popped inside the van, and Jonathan whirled on it, rifle at the ready. Heavy black smoke was pouring from the broken window in the back. He must have lobbed his CS grenade onto something combustible.

“Your van is burning, boss.”

Jonathan started moving away from it, closer to the farmhouse, giving the vehicle a wide berth. You never knew what people carried in vehicles with them. He’d seen portable drug labs in Colombia-perfectly harmless looking trucks or vans-go high order because of the bizarre mixture of chemicals they needed to make the shit they sold. He snapped his NVGs out of the way again, turning the night from iridescent green back to shades of black, silver, and gray.

His earpiece popped again. “You got company coming in from behind you. Blind side. From the house.”

Shit. Jonathan dropped to his knee and tried to become small as the fire grew behind him, creating an ever more perfect silhouette for a shooter. The NVGs came back down, and there was his target: Thomas Hughes. Goddamn kid. These were the times when he hated working alone with Boxers. If this had been a Unit operation, somebody from being stupid. “Get down!” Jonathan called.

Thomas froze in his tracks. “Don’t shoot! It’s me!”

“Get down!”

“It’s me!” The kid was terrified.

Jonathan rushed him, closing the thirty yards that separated them in five seconds. He slung his arm across Thomas’s chest, pivoted his hip, and flipped the precious cargo onto the wet grass. When he was down, he covered the kid with his own body. “I didn’t ask who you were,” Jonathan hissed. “I told you to get down. I swear to God, if you don’t start listening, I’m gonna shoot you myself.”

“I heard shooting,” Thomas said, grunting against the weight on his back. “Then I saw the fire and I got scared.”

“So you wandered toward the guns and the fire?”

Thomas wriggled to get rid of the weight. “Get off of me.”

Jonathan unpinned him, and scanned the horizon again for Chris.

“I came out because I thought you might be hurt.”

The comment drew a look. “Thanks, then,” Jonathan said. “I need you to stay down because the driver of that van is no friend, and he’s still out there.”

They had to move away from the van. The light made them too good a target, and it rendered his night vision gear useless. Into his radio: “Do you see anything?”

“A big-ass hot fire, but not much…wait. I’ve got movement-”

Jonathan saw it, too, at exactly the same instant he heard the crack of a bullet passing disturbingly close to his head. A second bullet tore into the ground near his elbow.

Thomas yelled something that Jonathan didn’t care to hear. He was busy. “Stay flat!” He nestled the M4 back into his shoulder.

The gunman kept shooting, his muzzle flashes providing all the visual input Jonathan needed. Twenty yards past the burning van, the posture said pistol shooter; the range and accuracy said good one. Jonathan squeezed his trigger, three quick rounds. He went for center-of-mass. He knew that his first shot found its mark because he saw the target stumble backward. He was pretty sure about the second shot, but the third was anybody’s guess. When he thought he saw additional movement, he fired two more.

Then the silence returned, except for the sound of Thomas screaming. He had his hands over his ears, shouting for it to stop. It was the sound of raw terror.

“Hey!” Jonathan barked.

Thomas jumped, his arms up to ward off an attack.

“Are you hurt?”

“What’s happening?” Thomas yelled.

“Are you hurt?”

The kid shook his head and stammered, “N-no. I d-don’t think so.”

“Then shut up. Stay down.”

A kill wasn’t a kill until it was confirmed. He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the tree line. Keeping low, he skirted the light-wash from the van and charged the spot where he’d seen the shooter fall. “Talk to me,” he said to Boxers.

“Not much to tell. I saw the muzzle flashes, and I think I saw him fall, but nothing confirmable. I don’t see any movement.”

The movement part was all he needed. Jonathan knew that the target was hit hard. Speed now trumped surprise. Jonathan sprinted through the und. “Don’t move,” Jonathan said, and he stepped closer.

What he saw next surprised the hell out of him.

Chapter Three

The shooter was a woman. She lay on her back among the weeds, her blood black in the moonlight, pumping from a wound somewhere beneath the hand she clutched to her abdomen. The other arm had been rendered useless by a second bullet, which had caught her high in the chest and transformed her shoulder into a blooming rose of gore. The copious flow from the belly wound and its location relative to other body landmarks told Jonathan that he’d pierced her liver. She’d be dead in minutes. The odd angle of her legs, and the stillness of them, told him that his bullet had clipped her spinal cord as well.

He told Boxers, “One more friend sleeping.”

“Copy. Ready when you are.”

“Begin your final. We’ll be ready for exfil in five.”

An expensive 9 mm Beretta lay on the ground next to her. He kicked the pistol beyond her reach. She wore low-rise, high-cut denim shorts that no father would approve of, and an Abercrombie T-shirt that probably cost a hundred dollars.

Carefully avoiding the rivulets of blood, he let his weapon fall against its sling and again lifted his night vision gear out of the way. He knelt near her shoulder, brushing luxurious auburn hair off her face. With no real thought, he folded her hand into his glove. She appeared no older than Thomas. With high cheekbones and thick lips, she could have been a model. The thought of killing someone so beautiful cramped his stomach. “Who are you?” Jonathan asked.

Her eyes showed only terror. “Help me,” she said. “It hurts. I can’t feel my legs.”

“I know,” Jonathan replied. “You’ve been shot. Are you Chris?” Until this moment, he hadn’t considered the possibility that “Chris” might have been a Christina.

“I think I’m dying.”

Jonathan nodded. Very softly, he said, “You are. It won’t be long. Are you the last, or are there more of you out here?”

For a moment, it appeared as if she wanted to answer, but then her eyes grew hard.

“Answer me,” Jonathan pressed. “I’ll stay here with you till it’s over.”

Her pupils seemed unnaturally bright as they reflected the moon. “Fuck you,” she said.

Jonathan smiled, squeezed her hand gently. He’d seen a lot of people die in his time, and he always admired the ones who accepted their fate with guts. Good guy or bad, heaven reserved places for those who showed courage to the end.

He continued to hold her hand as he fished his flashlight from his web gear and thumbed the switch. The white light hurt. He held the light in his teeth, and with his free hand he started patting her down. “Let me know if any of this hurts,” he said.

“Who are you?” the girl moaned.

Blood soaked into the waistband of her jeans as Jonathan reached into the front pocket and found an Indiana driver’s license. “You’re Christine Baker,” Jonathan read aloud. In this light, it was finally get naked and make love, it was supposed to be a wonderful thing. Tiffany would have been his first. But then it turned to blood and violence.

They flew in complete darkness. The silver glow of the moon on the meaningless landmarks below was Thomas’s only evidence that they were flying at all. It wasn’t till his eyes adjusted fully that he noticed the pilot was wearing night vision goggles.

Their flight lasted less than half an hour. From what Thomas could tell, they landed in a dark field in the middle of nowhere. The rotors were still turning at nearly full speed when the commando at his side unclasped his seat belt and rose to an awkward, half-standing position. He took a half-step forward and said something in the pilot’s ear, soliciting a nod and a thumbs-up, and then he turned to face Thomas.

“Okay, Tom, here’s the deal. I want you to stay put with your belt fastened until I come back for you. We have a car waiting.”

“Why can’t I just come with you?”

“Because I want to make sure that this last step is truly secure. If anything is wrong, I’ll tell the pilot, and he’ll take off outta here like a rocket. That’s why you stay in your seat with the belt on. You’re almost home.” With that, he opened the side door, inviting in all the racket of the rotors, and stepped out into the night with his weapons. When the door closed again, the quiet-which wasn’t really all that quiet-seemed oppressive.

Thomas couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me,” he said loudly, nearly a shout. “Mr. Pilot?”

The pilot turned, still only an ink stain against the night.

“What’s happening?” Thomas asked.

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” the pilot asked, his tone light with amusement.

“No. I haven’t figured out anything. I’m totally lost.”

The pilot laughed. “Like hell. You’re as found as anybody could hope to be.”

Jonathan had stashed the rental Explorer in the back forty of someone’s rolling farmland nearly six hours ago. They’d chosen this location by studying aerial maps and determining that it offered privacy while still being reasonably accessible. It also offered a good chance to fly in and out unnoticed.

He approached the vehicle by the book-slowly and methodically, with night vision in place as if anticipating an ambush. Nobody ever died of caution. With the scene secure, he went about the business of transforming himself from Night Stalker to Regular Guy. He moved to the back of the vehicle and opened up the tailgate. No dome light came on because he had disabled it first thing. Two zippered duffel bags waited for him just where he’d left them, looking like two deflated balloons. His rifle and rucksack went in one, his vest, web gear, and night vision equipment in the other, along with his black coveralls, mask, and boots. The transformation was complete within three minutes.

Just like that, Jonathan could have been anyone-a rancher, maybe, on his way to town. A rancher with a.45 still strapped in a high-hip holster that was concealed by a denim jacket. When the duffels were full, he zipped them up, closed the gate, and headed back to the chopper. He opened the side door and announced, “Okay, we’re all set.

“But if they do.”

“They won’t.”

“But if they do.”

The Explorer bounced in a deep rut. “You think that the police are these efficient do-gooders that you see on television. You think that they can chase bad guys with impunity, crash doors, and save the good guys. Well, that’s not always true, because ridiculous rules get in the way. If I had to jump through all the hoops that police and prosecutors do to assemble intelligence and put together a plan, you’d be dead now. And if they knew who I was, they’d put me in jail for saving you. Not because of the outcome, but because of the process. And this is ten times more about my business than you ever needed to know.”

“What about trace evidence?”

Jonathan laughed. Everybody on the planet watched CSI these days. “Look, I know what I’m doing. There is no trace evidence. I am entirely untraceable.”

“But I’m not. I’m way traceable.”

Jonathan agreed. “To a certain extent, yes. That’s why I didn’t want you touching the girl. I didn’t want you transferring fibers or fingerprints onto Chris…Tiffany.” Hard to know which name the kid would find more comforting.

Even in the darkness, Jonathan could see Tom’s displeasure. “We have to report this!”

“Not gonna happen. Not by me, anyway.”

Thomas turned sideways in his seat, beginning a serious negotiation. “If we call the police right now, then they’ll know it was all self-defense. If we don’t call, then they’re going to draw all these wrong conclusions, and I can end up in jail.”

“Nobody’s going to put you in jail, Tom. Don’t be so melodramatic. We’re not calling the police. Period.”

Thomas wasn’t done yet. “I don’t think you understand, Scorpion. I don’t think I can keep a secret like this. I’m going to have to tell somebody. Not even to call for help, necessarily, but just because it happened, and when I get together with my friends over a couple of beers, it’s going to slip out.”

Jonathan shrugged again. “Then it slips out. You can tell anyone anything you’d like. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re a victim here, for God’s sake. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Rejoice in your freedom and quit worrying.”

Thomas started to speak, but then swallowed the words to reconsider. “So you’re saying it’s okay if I report this all to the police, but that you’re not going to. If I do it’s fine.”

“As far as I’m concerned it’s fine,” Jonathan said, directing this conversation down the same path he’d steered it so many times in the past. “Once I drop you off, your life is yours to do with as you please. I don’t care who you call or what you tell them.”

Thomas grunted and turned back around in his seat to face forward. He seemed satisfied.

“Just understand that what you say may hurt the people who hired me. What I do, because of the nature of its outcome from time to time, might not reflect so well on them.”

“H from here. Time to get on with the rest of your life.”

Still, the kid didn’t move. “I still don’t know that I can keep all of this a secret,” he said. His eyes looked sad.

Jonathan gave a half-shrug. “You can only do what you can do.”

“What about you?” Thomas asked.

“I already told you. I’m untraceable.”

That wasn’t what he meant. “If I say something, are you going to come back and…Well, you know.”

Jonathan allowed himself a tired sigh. “I’m not an assassin. Don’t make life unnecessarily difficult, and you’ll never see me again.”

Thomas smiled nervously. “So I only worry if I see you knocking on my door?”

Jonathan chuckled. “Well put. Now get out.”

Thomas still was not comfortable leaving the truck. He looked to his lap, searching for something to say.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan assured.

The kid nodded. He held out his hand for Jonathan to shake. “Thanks.”

Jonathan smiled and shook. “You’re welcome. Here’s to never seeing each other again.”

Thomas opened the door, and Jonathan watched as he walked toward the pharmacy’s double glass doors. This was what he loved about his job. This was why he kept putting himself in harm’s way: the look on the PCs’ faces when they realized-really realized for the first time-that their nightmare was over. It was like being the Lone Freaking Ranger.

He watched until Thomas reached the door, then slipped the transmission back into Drive.

As he pulled away from the curb, Jonathan pressed a number on his speed dial.

Chapter Five

Venice Alexander never slept well on the nights when her boss was on a mission. (It’s pronounced Ven-EE-chay, by the way. Everybody got it wrong the first time, but second mistakes were not suffered kindly.) She always tried, but until the phone rang with the all-clear, she never really rested. In a perverse way, she preferred the larger, more dangerous operations where she was needed to man the computer and the phones in the office over these so-call “milk-run” 0300 ops. Add to that the stress of managing the details of a dozen or so investigation cases by other associates in her charge, and even fake sleep was impossible tonight.

Pulling on a Karen Neuburger robe-Roman, her eleven-year-old son, called it “teddy bear material”-Venice rolled out of bed and pushed her feet into a pair of luxurious slippers. She knew for a fact that Mama had fried more chicken than she’d served at dinner, and a cold drumstick seemed exactly the right prescription to settle her down. That and a cup of hot water with lemon. Snagging her cell phone from the nightstand and dropping it into a big patch pocket, she headed for the hallway and the stairs beyond.

“You’re up late,” Mama said as Venice opened the kitchen door.

She jumped. “Jesus!”

“Watch your mouth,” Mama scolded. The rotund black woman sat at the long oval table, in front of a plate that was nearly as loaded with chicken and green beans as the one she’d consumed at dinner.

Venice padded to the cabinet over the flatware drawer and pulled out a wh

Venice had no memories of her father, a policeman killed in the line of duty before she was born, and it was a source of pain that she’d never truly overcome. For as long as she could remember, she’d always dreamed about what her father might have sounded like and smelled like. The picture on Mama’s dresser gave her a face, but she’d never know the voice that went with it. She regretted that she’d passed the fatherless legacy on to her own son, albeit with a huge difference. If Roman ever wanted to do the research to track his daddy down, he was welcome to. Last time Venice heard, Leroy was somewhere in Afghanistan.

Mama mourned every day for her beloved Charles. As she closed in on her sixty-eighth birthday, she talked a lot about her fear of dying lonely. Not likely, Venice told her. Not with Resurrection House in her life. Seated on two acres in the middle of Fisherman’s Cove’s business district and next door to St. Katherine’s Catholic Church, the gleaming new boarding school was the most stunning building in town, having wrested the honor from Mama’s sprawling Victorian mansion that shared the same property. Except for the courthouse and the hospital, which was not technically a part of Fisherman’s Cove but rather of the unincorporated environs of Westmoreland County, Resurrection House had more square footage than any other structure.

Until five years ago, the mansion and the land that housed the school had been the boyhood home of Jonathan Grave. Upon inheriting the property from his still-living father as part of a court proceeding that no one fully understood, Jonathan decided that he didn’t need any of it, and he signed the property over to St. Katherine’s parish for a dollar. A change to the deed dictated that the property be used in perpetuity as a school for children of incarcerated parents. Mama Alexander would live in the mansion for the rest of her life, and she would hold the position of house counselor for as long as she wanted it. Jonathan covered all costs out of his own pocket.

A third condition was more a matter of paperwork than substance: Jonathan’s involvement in the modification of the building and the endowment of seven teaching positions, plus his high-six-figure annual contribution to the care and maintenance of the place were never to be publicly disclosed. As far as anyone outside St. Kate’s immediate family was to know, those expenses were covered only by the Family Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that Jonathan had formed through one of the many cutout identities he had established over the years.

“No word from Jonathan yet?” Mama intuited.

Venice avoided eye contact. “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”

“I suppose he’s on one of his missions?” Mama leaned on the last word in a way that made clear her disapproval.

“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it, and you shouldn’t either. Digger’s safety depends on secrecy.”

Mama didn’t like it, but she didn’t fight. “I hate it when you call him that. I don’t need to know the details to know that you’re worried. I see it in your face.”

Venice sighed. “He’s late reporting in.”

“How late?”

Venice’s veneer started to crack. “A couple of hours.”

Nobody looked too old to be working this late. “What can I do for you?”

“You scared the shit out of me.” Thomas meant it as a simple statement, but it came out angry.

Al’s face darkened. “I don’t much like that language.”

Thomas blushed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m here to wait for the bus to Chicago. Comes in about an hour, right?”

Just like that, all was forgiven. Al checked his watch. “An hour and ten if it’s running on time. I think I’d count on something closer to an hour and a half. Want something to eat while you wait? Some ice cream?”

The mention of food brought Thomas’s stomach back to life. “That would be great. Are you still serving food?”

Al smiled and started for the soda fountain, beckoning Thomas to follow him. “All night means all night, young man. I’d prefer not to fire up the grill, but if it can be microwaved or taken from the freezer, it’s available.” He stopped halfway there and turned to extend his hand. “Al Elvins,” he said. “I’m the late-night manager. My brother owns the place.”

“Thomas Hughes.” He returned the handshake, and wondered if it had been a mistake to use his real name.

“You as hungry as you look?” Al asked, walking again.

“More tired than hungry, I think.”

When they arrived at the soda fountain, Al lifted a section of the bar to step behind, and Thomas mounted one of the stools.

“That’s it,” Al said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

The light was better up here, and in it, Thomas caught something odd in the clerk’s expression. It was the way he looked at him and quickly looked away.

“You want a hot dog?”

“Can I have two, please? And a large Sprite.”

“You can have as many as you like,” Al said, again with a quick glance. He seemed to prefer concentrating on the task of opening the package of frankfurters. “You know,” he said without eye contact, “there’s a bathroom in the back of the store if you want to clean up a bit.”

That sounded like a good idea. While his meal cooked in the microwave, Thomas walked to the men’s room. One look in the mirror explained everything. He was filthy. The face in the mirror was years older than the one that he’d last seen. His hair was a matted, mottled mess, and the bags under his eyes reminded him of one of his sixty-year-old uncles. Stripping off his T-shirt so that he could really wash, he could actually count the bones in his chest through his skin.

He let the water run hot as he stuffed paper towels into the sink’s drain to fill the basin, and added six pumps of liquid soap from the bulbous dispenser on the wall. With the water off again, he cupped his hands into the cloudy, bubbly mixture, leaned low to the sink, and buried his face in his hands.

That’s when it hit him. Contact with something as civilized as hot soapy water made him realize how fortunate he was to be alive. He understood that strangers had risked their lives to deliver him from an agonized death.

As his face pressed into his palms, and the water drained through his fingers, Thomas began to cry.

“Thought maybe you fell in,” Al said cheerily when Thomas returned to the lunch counter. Then his face darkened again. “You okay, son?”

Thomas nodded, knowing that he looked like holy hell. “I’m fine.”

Al looked like he wanted to press further, but heOver an hour. You were out cold.”

Jesus. Fastest hour in history. He spun himself off the stool and found his feet again. “Thanks for waking me.” He paused. “You didn’t, you know…what we were talking about?”

“Call the police?” Al shook his head. “Naw. I’m still not convinced that I shouldn’t have, but you’re old enough to know when you’re in trouble. I don’t want to pry.” As he finished that last sentence, the phone rang, prompting Al to look at his watch. “At this hour, it’s got to be somebody’s baby is sick.” He stepped behind the counter again to answer it. “Travel safely.”

“Thanks,” Thomas said. “And thanks.”

Al acknowledged with a friendly wave, but aimed his voice at the telephone. “Simms Pharmacy.”

Thomas could see the silver and blue bus waiting at the curb on the other side of the store’s front window. He felt naked as he walked to the door, as if he should be carrying something; if not luggage, then at least his school book bag.

“Hey, Tom!” Al called. He hadn’t yet taken five steps.

Thomas turned.

“There’s a Julie Hughes on the line. Says she’s your mother. Don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.”

Thomas couldn’t think of a voice he’d love to hear more. “I’ll definitely take it!” he said and he spun on his heel to head for the phone. Outside, the bus blatted his horn. “Can you ask him to wait for a minute?”

As the druggist handed over the phone, they changed places. “I can ask, but I don’t know if he’ll do it. They’re pretty jealous of their schedules.”

Thomas snatched the receiver to his ear. “Mom?”

“Thomas!” she exclaimed. “I was terrified I’d miss you.”

“You nearly did. The bus is right outside.”

“Don’t get on it,” she commanded. “No matter what you do, don’t get on that bus. I’m coming to get you.”

“How did you know I was here?” He lowered his voice. “Did Scorpion call you?”

“Did who call me?”

“Scor…Never mind.”

“I knew you were going to be on a bus, and that the bus’s destination was Chicago. I’ve been calling every single stop looking for you. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” It’s the answer he would have given even if he was missing a foot.

“Are you hurt?”

“A little bruised, but I’ll be okay.”

“Well, don’t you go anywhere, you understand? I’m coming to get you.”

That didn’t make sense. “Why don’t I just take the bus?”

“There’s big trouble, Thomas. We’re all in danger.”

From across the store, Al yelled, “Tom, they’re about to leave without you.”

Thomas begged for time with a raised forefinger. He turned away from Al and lowered his voice. “What do you mean we’re in danger? I’m free now. I’ve been rescued.”

“I know,” she said. He could hear her moving even faster now. to sniff around the case, looking for a jurisdictional back door.

The good news was that the Patrone house, in contrast to the yard and the area around the burned-out van, was a pristine crime scene. With the exception of Jesse Collier, last night’s shift supervisor, and the deputy who’d first stumbled onto the place, no one had been in or out. Even Gail was hanging back a ways until the state police crime scene guys could do their thing.

In such a small space, the violence and misery of a murder took on a physical presence. Spooky was probably the wrong word, but it was the only one that came to mind as Gail took in the results of what clearly had been a shoot-out.

“Any ideas, Sheriff?” Jesse asked. He flashed the gap-tooth grin that Gail never quite knew how to interpret.

“I’ve got a couple,” she said.

“Let’s start with why one of them is in his skivvies.” Jesse had been an early competitor in the race for sheriff last November, but had taken a dive at the request of the Indiana Democratic Party, which was in a lather to install a female sheriff in this rural community. Gail Bonneville had an FBI pedigree and a doctorate in criminal justice to go along with her law degree. The party didn’t want to run the risk of someone like Jesse walking away with the election simply because his was the more familiar face. Gail had always felt guilty about her engineered victory, and had never fully trusted Jesse as a result of it. He had plenty of motivation to torpedo her career.

Paranoia aside, however, she had no concrete reason to suspect him of anything but total loyalty. “I have no idea,” she said, addressing the fact that one of the boys had clearly been stripped of his clothes. It was the way his underpants were skewed, and his socks were half-pulled from his feet. “But I think we’ve got ourselves a couple of dead kidnappers.”

Jesse’s eyebrows scaled his forehead. “Whoa, that’s quite a leap out of the gate. How did you get there?”

Gail shrugged. It really wasn’t all that much of a stretch, when you thought about it. She knelt closer to the floor. “Look at the duct tape,” she said, pointing with her pen at the gray and white shreds on the concrete. “Doesn’t that look like it was wrapped around somebody’s wrists? And that one around the ankles?”

Jesse nodded. The tape was wrapped repeatedly around itself, yet cut cleanly through all layers. Looking carefully, she could see short, curly hairs still attached to the sticky side of the remnants. “Somebody rescued him. With all that hair, the victim certainly wasn’t a girl.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Jesse made a sweeping gesture toward the corpses on the floor. “So one of these is the good guy and one is the bad guy? They shot it out between them, and neither made it out alive?”

Gail shook her head. “I don’t think so. The angles are wrong. Look here.” She shifted and pointed to the bodies. “They’ve both got weapons, but all the bullet strikes are over there.” She pointed to the star-shaped divots in the stone near the shattered door. “I don’t think they were shooting at each other. I think they were defending themselves from somebody else.”

“Somebody else?”

She waited for him to connect the dots.

Jesse’s eyes grew wide. “You think it was a third party?”

Gail smiled and nodded. “You, she supposed, but it had been her experience that killers-like everyone else in life-followed the simplest path, not the most difficult one. “But I don’t think so. I think this is the work of someone hired to do a job, and maybe the job went the wrong way and got messy. By leaving the tape and the bodies and the casings, I think maybe he’s trying to show us that at least he killed for the right reasons.”

“Hoping that we’ll back off, maybe.”

“Or at least not press as hard.”

Jesse regarded Gail. “He bet wrong, didn’t he?”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah. This isn’t the Old West. You want justice done, you call the police. Or, if you pull something like this, with these results, then you still call the police and own up to it. Let a jury decide who’s the good guy and who’s the bad.”

Chapter Eight

Jonathan dropped the Explorer off at a self-storage place on the outskirts of Muncie and locked the door. Within a few hours, the owner of a body shop that specialized in under-the-table repairs would enter the storage bay and examine the vehicle for any bullet holes or other damage that might need repairing. Finding none, he would return it to the rental car lot at the Indianapolis Airport. No one would know anything of the events in which the vehicle had participated.

Leaving the storage yard, Jonathan walked down the street to a no-tell motel and took a cab to Indianapolis Airport. Of the day’s long ordeal, Jonathan’s fifteen minutes on airport property were his most nerve-racking. The pundits on the news who complained that American airports remained soft targets for terrorists needed to get their heads out of their asses. The place swarmed with police and dogs and electronic surveillance gimmickry, and there he was, walking around like a living training toy. Step a little too close to the wrong dog and he’d have some major explaining to do. Even though he never entered the main terminal, the proximity of this much security made him nervous as hell.

He headed straight for the cabstand. The hack who picked him up was an Arab, Jonathan’s first lucky break of the day. Ever since 9-11, most Middle Eastern ex-pats went out of their way to avoid contact with anybody, and many of them were particularly uninterested in cooperating with police. If some lucky flatfoot was able to connect the dots as far as the airport, the trail would likely stop dead, because no one would step forward to tell anybody anything.

God granted good fortune to those who were perpetually careful.

He paid cash for his ride to a Sheraton in Indianapolis, and cash again for a second cab ride to the bus station. From there, it was a long bus trip to Evanston, where he caught yet another cab to O’Hare International Airport. He told that driver to drop him at the long-term parking area on Bessie Coleman Drive. When the cab was out of sight, it was then time to walk across the street to begin the final leg of the journey.

The executive air terminal at O’Hare was a lot like executive air terminals everywhere, much more sparsely appointed than the uninitiated would expect. There were no concessions to speak of, unless you counted the self-service coffee station, which at present was serving a product more suitable to a fountain pen than a coffee cup. People with their own planes don’t need a concession stand.

Besides, Boxers was already wait’s kid gets picked up, the family’s gonna dig deep to come up with money they didn’t even know they had.”

Jonathan conceded the point with a nod. “And what do you make of the girl in the woods with the gun?”

“I think she should’ve dropped it instead of shooting it.”

Jonathan smiled. Leave it to Boxers to get straight to the heart of an issue. After a minute or two of silence, Jonathan lifted himself out of the copilot’s seat and headed for the back of the plane. “It’s time for me to catch a little shut-eye, if that’s okay with you.”

Boxers smiled. “Computer says you got an hour and forty-two minutes.”

Chapter Nine

It was nearly five in the afternoon when Jonathan finally stepped through the double doors into the Signature Aviation Terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport. Boxers had work to do to close out the Gulfstream, and would drive himself home in his Nissan pickup. Jonathan had a ride waiting for him.

Venice stood in the lobby, arms folded and wound up tighter than a watch spring. When they finally made eye contact, it looked as if she’d just taken her first breath of the day. He saw tears in her eyes. Venice was a famous crier.

“Welcome home,” she said. “I was worried.”

Jonathan allowed himself to be hugged. “Like I always say, do what you do best.”

Venice understood that he’d just said thank you. “Want me to help with a bag?”

“Nah, I got them. Did you bring the monstrosity?”

“Her name is Glow Bird,” Venice said, fishing through her purse for her keys, “And I got a terrific parking place.”

By any man’s yardstick, Venice Alexander was hot. Her skin was the color of milk chocolate, and there were days when her smile could put the sun out of business. Jonathan could tell from her clothing that she was proud of her recent weight loss. They both knew that the pounds would come back-the same twenty came and went on a three-year cycle-but for now, it was nice to see her strutting a little.

“Tell me what you found out about Christine Baker,” Jonathan prodded as they approached the door that would take them to the parking lot.

“Who is she?”

He hated it when people answered questions with questions. “She’s my big surprise for the night. We knew about the Patrone brothers and a third party. She was the third party.”

The door opened onto a beautiful spring day. The perfect blue sky made even the parking lot look vibrant. “Well, it’s not exactly a unique name,” Venice cautioned, “and the picture you sent was not of the best quality.”

“You’re hedging.”

“I’m explaining that there aren’t definitive data. But from what I could pull together, she was a committed cause-worker. Lots of symbolic arrests at various protests-mostly antiwar and antibusiness. Always anti, by the way.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Protesting others’ decisions is always easier than making one of your own.” Up ahead, the Monstrosity awaited them: the world’s only blaze-orange Mazda Miata.

tfit. Lots of tree-hugging, but no confirmed violence.”

The curious phrasing caught Jonathan’s attention. “Confirmed violence?”

“Wherever zealots gather, there’s always the potential for violence. That’s what’s got the FBI sitting up and taking notice. There’s some suspicion that they burned down a ski lodge under construction a few years ago, but no solid proof.” She opened the trunk of her ugly-ass car and invited Jonathan to load his bags into it.

“You couldn’t have brought the Hummer?”

“I hate that big thing. Talk about monstrosities. You’re free to take a cab if you’d like.” She walked toward the driver’s side.

Jonathan had to laugh. He always said he liked independent thinkers, and in Venice, he got that with plenty to spare. He filled the trunk with one duffel, and had to thread the other one into the space the Mazda people had the guts to call a backseat. He’d worn shirts that were bigger than the front seat.

He’d just stuffed the second bag in when a familiar voice called from across the parking lot, “Jon!”

A quick look across the lines of cars confirmed that he recognized the voice. He shot an annoyed glare at Venice.

“Oh yeah,” she said in a tone more suitable to seeing a pustule than a person. “Ellen called. She needs help from you. But I swear to God, Digger, is you fall for another of her-”

Jonathan shut her down and turned to meet his ex-wife halfway as she navigated the last three rows of cars. He extended his arms for a hug. She allowed herself to be enfolded. “What a wonderful surprise,” he said, his voice dripping irony. “You’re finally coming back to me.”

“Oh, Jon, I’m so frightened.”

He broke the embrace and eased her away to arm’s length. “Of what?”

She scowled and glared past his shoulder at Venice. “She didn’t tell you?”

He followed her gaze. “Who? Venice? Tell me what?”

“I’ve been trying nonstop to reach you since yesterday.”

Taking the mention of her name as an invitation to join, Venice stepped up.

“Is that true?” Jonathan asked. “Has Ellen been trying to reach me?”

Venice planted her fists on her hips. “Don’t take that tone. You’ve been on the ground for all of five minutes.”

He turned back to Ellen. “What is it, then?”

From the corner of his eye he saw Venice assume body language that said, “Wait till you hear this.”

“Tibor’s missing,” Ellen said.

Jonathan smiled. “And you wanted to deliver the wonderful news in person. How thoughtful.”

Venice sniggered, earning a withering glare from the ex.

“Must she stay?” Ellen snapped.

“I already told her,” Venice explained, “that we don’t drop everything to search for someone who’s been missing for only a day.”

Jonathan looked to Ellen for confirmation.

Her shoulders sagged and her eyes pleaded. “Please, Jon. There are extenuating circumstances.”

Tibor Rothman was a certified prick, dedicated to making Jonathan’s life as difficult as possible. It was’m just really, really scared.”

“About Tibor?”

“I should have heard from him by now,” she said. She sniffed to regain control of her voice. “He always calls when he goes away.”

“Has it really been less than twenty-four hours?”

She looked at the clock on the dash. “Not anymore. Almost thirty.”

Jonathan knew he needed to be careful here. His hatred of Tibor was stratospheric, but he didn’t want that to cloud the sensibility of what he was about to say. “Isn’t it a little silly to push the panic button when he’s only been out of your sight for a day?”

“He’s been out of my sight for three days,” she corrected. “Almost four.” She turned her head to address Jonathan directly. “He’s religious about calling in. He does it every single day. Except yesterday. And today.”

Jonathan shifted his gaze to watch the road for her. “Is there reason to suspect foul play?”

“You know what he does for a living. He reports stories that anger people.”

“What he does is hardly reporting,” Jonathan scoffed. “Ruining people’s lives isn’t the stuff of Pulitzers.”

“I know you don’t like him-”

“Imagine that.”

“But he’s a good man.”

“He’s a thief and a liar.”

Ellen started to argue, then settled herself. “Is that what you need me to say to get you to help me?” she begged. “Okay, he’s a thief and a liar and a very bad man. And I love him.”

The words cut deeper than he’d expected.

“I know that’s not what you want to hear, Jon. And I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m desperate.”

“Still, we’re talking about so little time. Where has he been?”

“Covering a story. I don’t know what kind, or what the topic is. I never do. Apparently I’m only attracted to men who insist on shielding their lives from me.”

Jonathan smiled at the irony. “Here’s the thing, Ellen,” he began, silently praying that he sounded earnest and reasonable. “Adults have the right to take time off for themselves. As long as they pay their bills and they don’t abandon their children, they’re free to take protracted vacations without telling anyone. Seventy-two hours is thought to be the minimum time that an adult be gone before anyone even begins to take an interest.”

“But this isn’t a vacation.”

“It’s a job. A story.”

She shook her head vehemently. “Not this time. It’s more than that. He’s been…stressed.”

He pointed up ahead. “You see those brake lights, right?”

Rather than slowing, she chose to swerve around the backup in the right-hand turn lane, and maybe even sped up a little to make the light.

“Are you worried that he had a heart attack or wrecked his car or something?”

She gave him a fearful look.

“If that’s the case, then he’s sure to turn up. He’ll check into a hospital, or somebody will find him.” That last part slipped out before he could stop it. Ellen never had been one for bluntness. “Look, I don’t mean to sound cr that’s not really your concern, is it?”

Her posture straightened. “What are you implying?”

“I’m implying the obvious,” Jonathan said. “Fidelity isn’t exactly his long suit. Your relationship is living testament to his willingness to break up a marriage.”

She made that puffing sound that always used to spin him up. “He did not break up our marriage, Jon. You broke up our marriage by never being married.”

“Hey, at least I was always faithful.”

She coughed out a laugh. “To the Unit, not to me.”

He felt color rising in his cheeks. “I never screwed around on the side. I never would do that.”

Ellen glared at him again. “Fidelity isn’t just about sex. It’s about emotional commitment.”

Jonathan let it go. He’d taken full responsibility for their breakup a long time ago, and it had long been a source of great shame. There was no sense in scraping the scab off the barely healed wound. “My point remains,” he said. “Ninety percent of the time these adult missing persons turn out to be Exhibit One in a divorce.”

Ellen softened, too. “Tibor’s not like that. Not anymore. He wouldn’t just walk out on me like that.”

Saint Tibor. “So what’s left?” Jonathan asked. “If he’s not cheating on you and you’re not worried about him lying dead in a ditch, what are you worried about?”

Her race to make the next light failed, and she stood on the brakes to get the Mercedes stopped at the line. “He’s been different lately. Just in the last week or so. Anxious, I guess.”

“Good anxious or scared anxious?”

“A little of both. He’s been consumed by this story. When I asked him what it was about, all he’d say was that it was big, and that I’d be proud of him when he was done. Then, when he left, he just disappeared. He called me from the office to chat as he walked to the post office to mail something, and another call came in. I got tired of sitting on hold so I hung up. Next time I heard from him he said he was out of town, but he didn’t want to tell me where. He called a second night just to tell me that everything was fine, but I sort of knew from his voice that it wasn’t. And then I didn’t hear from him again.”

Jonathan agreed that the circumstances were strange. “But there’s just been so little time. Even if he’s in imminent danger, we don’t even know where to look.”

“But you could find that out, couldn’t you?”

“You’re talking a lot of resources, Ellen. If it turns out to be a dead end-”

“If I was the one missing, would you be able to do something?” Ellen used the question with the skill of a surgeon using a laser, cutting straight to his soul.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

Chapter Ten

The basement murders and the yard murder were officially two crime scenes, at least for the time being, and now that the State Police technicians had arrived, Gail Bonneville tried her best to stay out of everyone’s way. Preferring fresh air, she decided to hang out near the spot where the girl had fallen.

Staying quiet and passive was not her long suit, hoyelled to him just as he was tipping the pitcher to take a mold of what appeared to be a wheel print out in the grass, about fifty feet from the burned van.

The technician, a youngster who had a certain computer-geekiness about him, responded angrily. “What!”

“Have you photographed that print yet?”

“Of course.”

“From a high angle or a low angle?”

“Both,” he said.

Gail gave him a hard look, judging his sincerity, and then nodded. “Go ahead then.” It had been a trick question, and he’d given the right answer. Gail couldn’t count the number of latent fingerprints, footprints, and tire prints she’d seen ruined over the years when the transfer process went awry. Without the backup of good photographs, they’d be left with nothing.

Besides, the Indiana State Police loved to snatch command of major incidents away from local authorities, and Gail knew that if she didn’t continually piss on the fire hydrants, the territorial lines could easily become blurred. Her thirteen years with the Bureau had taught her volumes about snatching command.

The charred van, they’d found, was registered to Lionel Patrone, whose DMV record had confirmed that he was one of the corpses in the basement. Another DMV search had found brother Barry. The inside of the van reeked of chemical lachrymator-tear gas-and one of the techs easily found the source, a CS canister that had apparently been tossed in through a broken window in the back door.

Beyond that, the charred vehicle produced little else but rolls of duct tape, singed junk food wrappers, and the twisted, melted remains of a five-gallon gas can. The crime scene techs would continue to search, but the fire damage was so complete that Gail doubted they’d find much of substance. Their best bet for usable clues, she thought, lay with the van’s engine block, which had mostly escaped damage from the fire. She wouldn’t know for sure until the ballistic analyses were completed, but it looked as if the shooter had thought to load armor-piercing ammo. At least two of those bullets had done their work to kill the van.

Unlike the bodies in the house, Christine Baker appeared to have been killed with a rifle. Her belly wound was through-and-through. They were still scouring the woods looking for the source-indicating something high-velocity, which was entirely consistent with the 5.56 millimeter shell casings they’d found in the yard. The second wound-probably non-fatal in and of itself if it had received prompt medical attention-had made a hell of a mess of the girl’s shoulder. All of it was consistent with Gail’s theory that the shooter was a professional. Young Christine Baker, however, was not.

Gail sat on a deadfall out of the way and opened the newest of the black-and-white speckled composition notebooks for which she was famous among her colleagues. Identical in every way to the notebooks she’d carried with her through elementary school, they were her favorite means by which to document cases. If you shopped carefully, you could buy them for less than a buck at Staples or Office Depot, and they were nearly indestructible. She liked the way the pages were securely stitched into the cardboard binding. Even more, she liked the way the wide-ruled paper accommodated her loopy and admittedly girlish handwriting.

Every case, no matter how small, got its own notebook, into which went every name, phone number, thought, and intuition. Some cases filled four, five, six volumes-he on, and if we turn out to be wrong, that would be a hard one to cover.”

Jesse nodded. “Yeah, okay, but it’s the theory that makes the most sense to me, and it’s been bothering me all day. Why would he wait till the worst possible moment to make his entry?”

A scenario started to form in Gail’s mind. “That’s where the shears come in. They forced his hand by threatening the victim.”

“No, before that. I think shearing the victim is why he didn’t wait any longer. The question I’m asking is why did he wait as long as he did?”

Gail’s eyes traveled to the spot where the girl’s corpse had lain. “He was waiting for her.”

Jesse clapped his hands together. “Bingo. Which meant that she was part of the plot in the first place.”

Gail let that simmer.

Jesse nearly vibrated with excitement. “Clearly he did his homework, and clearly he had good intel. He watched and waited so long because he was waiting for Christine. When the shears came out, the wait had to end. Bang-bang, time to go. I’m figuring that just happened to be when Miss Christine Baker pulled up in her van. Really, really bad timing on her part.”

Gail weighed his words and nodded. She liked the theory.

Jesse continued, “Judging from the tire tracks in the driveway, I’m guessing that she pulled up on all of this and got spooked. She panicked and spun her wheels trying to drive away, and our shooter had to stop her. That explains the bullets in the engine. Then she tried to shoot back.”

“Problem was, she wasn’t very good.”

“Not as good as our guy, anyway.” Jesse let a beat pass. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m finding it harder and harder to think bad things about this guy.”

Gail scowled. “Don’t go there, Jesse, please. This isn’t Tombstone, Arizona, and it isn’t 1870. People are dead, and it all looks premeditated. That makes it homicide, and last time I checked, juries are the ones who get to determine guilt or innocence. Our job is to find this guy, and to give him a chance to tell his story.”

Jesse looked uncomfortable. “You think he should have called us-called the police-before taking on a job like this.” His eyes narrowed and he dropped his voice. “If he had, do you really think we could have done this good?”

Gail’s eyes grew hot as she tried to determine her deputy’s intentions. Her memory still ached with the images from Waco, where she’d been an HRT shooter, and it had been an issue in the early days of their campaign against each other.

“What we need to do,” she said, changing the subject completely, “is find out more about these victims. If our theory is right, our best shot is to find out who he was trying to rescue. To get there, we need to find out what links Christine Baker and the Patrone brothers to whoever they tied up in the basement with duct tape. Once we find a link, we’ve got a case.”

Chapter Eleven

Jonathan was thankful that Ellen didn’t want to stick around after she dropped him off at home. Every moment he spent with her was an exercise in agony; not because of the divorce, per se, but for the loss of the life he believed they could have had together.

After he’d agreed to help, he’d spent a solid half hour on the t was awkward talking in front of Ellen-a fact that Venice understood and capitalized on by making comments to which he couldn’t respond-but in the end she gave in. The remainder of the drive was spent convincing Ellen that the information would likely take hours to obtain and that she probably would not hear back from them until tomorrow morning. Like it or not, it was the best they could do.

And now, finally, he was home.

Fisherman’s Cove was a peaceful place, a town where people probably could-but rarely did, he would imagine-keep their doors unlocked. The main industry in town was still commercial fishing, along with the businesses that supported fishermen and their suppliers. Because the main business district still thrived, people had money to spend, and that kept shops and restaurants profitable. The nearest big box stores were ten miles away, too far for everyday shopping needs.

With over two miles of waterfront on a wide part of the Potomac, and with four major commercial marinas, Fisherman’s Cove had only recently become a weekend tourist attraction for families wanting to ditch the hassles of Washington and Richmond without incurring the hassles of the major beaches. It’s funny, Jonathan thought, how you never think of your hometown being the subject of postcards until people come from somewhere else to take the pictures.

Having rid himself of the childhood estate that was now Resurrection House, Jonathan moved to a place in the business district, just one block up from the river. The house, located on First Street, had been Fisherman’s Cove’s first firehouse, back in the days when horses pulled the pumpers and hose wagons. As a child, when the building was still an active four-bay fire station, Jonathan had fallen in love with the structure’s brick design and fifteen-foot ceilings.

Some of Jonathan’s fondest memories were tied to his years as unofficial firehouse mascot. As a skinny ten-year-old, Jonathan learned to tie a rescue knot that would allow him to be safely lifted out of a burning basement. When the guys got their hands on a scrap car, young Jonathan would sometimes play the role of the trapped kid who had to be lashed to a backboard. By the time he’d turned twelve, he’d been secured to every conceivable rescue device at least a dozen times. In return for being the mascot, he got to shine (and use) the brass fire pole and wash the apparatus.

Those firemen from his youth-Hack Dean, Big Dave Millan, Fi-Fi Pfeiffer, and the rest-kept him from following too closely in the footsteps of his father. They treated him like a valued member of the team, even as they wouldn’t put up with any of his shit. They taught him to play poker, but they expected him to play with his own money and they never threw the game to let him win. Every pot he pulled off the kitchen table was earned fair and square.

In a weird twist of fate, at the very time when he was signing the papers to transfer ownership of his childhood home to Resurrection House, the Cove town commissioners had decided to relocate the firehouse to more modern digs closer to the interstate. Jonathan bought the old station without negotiation. The third floor served as the offices for Security Solutions, and the rest of the 12,000-square-foot building was his home. It cost a fortune to air-condition and heat, but he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

As Ellen drove off, Jonathan heard running feet closing in on him. You’d think he’d have learned by now. The seventy-five-pound Labrador retriever took him out nced around him as if on springs, yelping and whining as she pummeled his face and neck with her cold nose and enormous tongue.

“Hello, Joe,” he said, doing a rope-a-dope until she settled down a bit.

At the sound of Jonathan’s voice, the five-year-old puppy took off on her victory lap, tearing off at a dead run to the end of the block, then turning on a dime to sprint back at him, breaking off from another collision at the last instant to bolt past him to the other end of the block, where she turned again and repeated the maneuver. It was a dog thing, he figured-like licking your own ass or turning in circles before lying down.

He’d never sought the company of a dog, and he’d never officially adopted her, but she’d appeared in his life one night, whining outside his door on one of those rainy nights that Disney producers love-the kind where you can’t turn an animal away. She was maybe eight weeks old, and after she fell asleep on his sofa that first night, she’d claimed it as her own. She spent time at Doug Kramer’s place, too. As police chief, Doug called her his K-9 Unit.

As the beast ran her circuit, Jonathan unlocked the personnel door he’d installed in the middle of one of the old overhead doors. Stepping inside, he nearly tripped over the bags Venice had dumped in the foyer. One duffel carried firearms and explosives, the other clothing, body armor, and initiators. The wall of cool air embraced him as he stepped inside. With it came the smell of fresh paint. He’d been remodeling this old place for years, and he wasn’t sure it would ever be done. He wasn’t sure that he wanted it to be done. Hammers, spackle, and power tools were among his favorite toys.

He hefted the bags and humped them through the expansive living room, then through the hallway that led past his dark-paneled library on the right and the dining room on the left. In the very back, he walked through the utility room, and on through the steel door that led to the thirty-foot tower that had once been used to hang folded fifty-foot sections of fire hose to allow them to dry. A door in the far corner of the hose tower led down to the cellar. Years ago, it had been the only part of the place that young Jonathan Gravenow had found too scary to enter.

Now, of course, he had Joe to protect him. She was right there as he opened the door, and pounded down ahead of him the instant it was open. Joe liked doors, and she liked going first. Again he figured it was a dog thing.

Made of stone and sporting only a six-foot ceiling, the cellar spanned an area that was fifteen by twenty feet. Without looking, Jonathan found the light switch with his shoulder and brought life to the overly bright fluorescent ceiling fixture. Despite his frequent toils in the shadows, he didn’t relish living with them in his own home.

He U-turned to the left at the base of the stairs and carried the bags to the far wall, where he dropped them near a long-unused 300-gallon heating-oil tank. He pushed the tank out of the way to expose a heavy wooden door that was painted to look like the surrounding bricks. Behind the tank, the random patchwork of stones wasn’t quite as random as it might appear. Without a thought, he found the stone he needed and he dislodged it to reveal an electronic keypad. Jonathan carefully punched in a memorized fifteen-character random cipher. He took his time. He’d designed the system to allow only three consecutive tries, after which it would lock down forever. It was outrageous overkill-more suitable to a Surring twice was statistically implausible.

With the code entered, he pressed the red button at the bottom of the keypad and heard the hydraulic locks pull away from their housings on the other side. The heavy door floated in silently, revealing his tunnel. It was the one place where Joe wouldn’t go. As soon as she heard him moving the stones, she headed back upstairs to shed on the sofa.

The tunnel ran exactly fifty-six yards from this point in his basement, under his parking lot to its termination at the near wall of the basement of St. Katherine’s Catholic Church. Jonathan had commissioned the construction years ago from a contractor who owed him the kind of favor that only people in Jonathan’s line of work seemed to amass. To protect against mold and critters, he’d finished the interior walls with tiles, the shape and color of which were reminiscent of New York subway stations. About halfway down the hall on the right, a 25-by-25-foot vault served as his weapons locker; its door was built of reinforced steel and resembled the door of a bank vault-the purpose for which it was designed. For this, there was a six-number combination. As he pulled the door open, it nearly blocked the passageway.

Steel cabinets designed for fire protection lined the inside of the vault. With all the concrete and steel, it was difficult to imagine a scenario in which a fire might start in the tunnel, but if it did, he didn’t want his stock of high explosives cooking off. Not only would that require an explanation that he didn’t relish, but it could also open up a crater big enough to swallow a neighbor or two.

Jonathan liked it down here. He enjoyed the solitude. Much as a gifted artist enjoys the aroma of his paint or clay, he relished the unique aroma of gun oil and pyrotechnics. The first order of business was to clean his weapons. Both had been fired, and that meant both had to be stripped and oiled. Since the weapons had killed people, he would also have to retool the receivers and the rifling before he used them again.

He had just pulled himself up onto the stool in front of the waist-high worktable that dominated the center of the vault when he heard footsteps and whistling in the tunnel. He knew it was Dom. Father Dominic D’Angelo frequently visited Jonathan when he returned from missions, and when he did, he always whistled as he strolled down the tunnel from its secondary access in St. Kate’s. Jonathan figured it had something to do with never wanting to startle a man surrounded by firearms.

“I hear you, Dom. I won’t shoot you.”

“How reassuring,” said the voice from nearby. Dom appeared in the doorway smiling and carrying a six-pack of Coors. Tall and trim and sporting a helmet of black hair, Dom had no doubt triggered more than his share of very unCatholic fantasies among his female parishioners. “I bring hydration. Today I offer up brain cells as a sacrifice for my flock.” He dangled the six-pack like a bunch of grapes, offering the cans to be plucked.

Jonathan laughed. “God must be very proud.” He reached across the table and pulled one of the beers from the plastic ring. “Where were these sacrifices when I was a teenager? I’d have grown up way more devout.”

“We try not to divulge the inner secrets until the flock is old enough to appreciate them.” Dom helped himself to the stool opposite Jonathan’s and his tone turned serious. “Venice called me. Lots of shooting, I hear. You had us worried, Dig.”

“I had me a little worriorever lost their children at his hand. It was the curse of the warrior that good works brought misery.

Dom downed the rest of his beer and stood abruptly. “Consider it done.”

It was time for the final act to every one of Jonathan’s missions. Standing to gain better access to the front pocket of his trousers, Dom withdrew the tiny leather pouch that contained a square patch of purple satin. He shook it and the fabric fell away to form a stole. Dom kissed it and draped it over his neck. Then he carried his stool to Jonathan’s side of the worktable and bowed his head while Digger crossed himself.

Jonathan said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Chapter Twelve

In this part of southern Indiana, the scenery never changed. On either side of the interstate, rolling farmlands extended to the horizon. Rather than heading back to the office, where she would have to deal with the press, curious staffers, and the endless administrivia that defined the job of a sheriff in a small community, Gail Bonneville chose instead to go home.

In Samson, “home” meant the house of her dreams, complete with seven gables and a deep porch that wrapped the front and two sides. The backyard featured the overgrown remains of what had once been a magnificent garden. With a little imagination, she could still see within the out-of-control boxwoods the shadowy remains of a sculptured pig, turtle, and donkey. Or maybe a goat. A farm animal of some sort.

Fixing up the gardens and restoring them to their previous grandeur was high on the list of things that Gail was going to take care of once she got a little extra cash. Fixing the gardens, in fact, was trumped only by her goal of buying furniture for the living room, dining room, library, parlor, and three spare bedrooms.

Gail lived in the Petrie house, named for the family who’d built it in 1915. In the early 1990s, Natalie Petrie, the ancient family scion, had started listening more intently to television evangelists than she did to the pleas of her own children. By the time the children could convince a court to intervene, they had seen their inheritance plummet from something close to $10 million to something more along the lines of a dollar ninety-five.

It was literally the house of Gail’s dreams, à la Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street. She offered the family’s asking price, and within days, the deed was done. Now, eight months later, workers still labored on to bring the plumbing and electrical services into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first.

Gail’s purchase of the Petrie house was a source of great scuttlebutt. How could a single woman on a public servant’s salary afford to pay $550,000 for a house, and then go on to fund extensive repairs and renovations? Her political enemies had their theories, of course, fueled by ugly rumors, but few people actually believed that she was selling drugs out of the basement, or had accepted hush money to protect those who did.

She protected the reality as nobody’s business. Her father had spun an independent accounting firm into a fairly successful investment practice, and when he passed away, he’d left her with enough of a nest egg that she could afford her love of law enforcement without suffering the financial hardship that most cops endured. She could afford to tell the Bureau where they could stick their good-old-boy network. She’d never been a boy, never would be, and ne, and she was doubly done with the small-minded resentment that accompanied the recognition when it finally came.

After her father succumbed to the cancer that had been eating him for over a decade, she’d left the Bureau with extreme prejudice, not caring if she ever saw a badge again. After a while, though, when you’re good at it, busting bad guys becomes a part of your DNA. She’d heard about the desire of the local Democratic Party to find themselves a good female candidate for sheriff in Samson, and the rest, as they say, was…well, you know.

The ten-block-square section that defined downtown Samson looked like something off a movie set for Depression-era urban living. Its main streets sported storefronts and taxpayer construction that looked at first glimpse to be the American dream-all the infrastructure for a midsize city combined with the feel of a small town. She liked the people here more than she didn’t like them, but a reality of law enforcement in a small community is that you could never allow yourself to get but so close. Every citizen was her boss, and one day, any one of them could end up on the business end of her nightstick. When the borders were as close as they were in Samson, and the line between accepting help and accepting graft was so fine, it helped to keep people at arms’ length.

Gail was just entering her driveway when her cell phone rang. “Sheriff Bonneville.”

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” said a very cheerful and very southern voice. “This is Max Mentor with the state crime lab. How you doin’?”

Gail smiled. She’d worked with Max a couple of times since her election and always found the experience to be pleasant. “I’ll be better when you guys can give me some hard data.”

Max laughed. “Then I’m about to make your day. You ready to copy?”

Gail opened her notebook to a new page, balanced it on the center console, and clicked her pen. “Couldn’t be readier.”

“Okay, I got info on ground impressions you sent in. Footprints first, because they’re going to be the least help to you. The boot prints are a standard Vibram sole that you can find on any one of dozens of different brands of shoes. Boots, most likely, the sort that you could find in a recreational equipment outfitter.”

“Or at a tactical supply store?”

The pause told her that Max hadn’t considered that. “You mean, gun nut stores? Where you can buy bulletproof vests for hunting? Yeah, I suppose you could buy them there. So, now you’re thinking this guy is a cop?”

“Nah, I’m just thinking out loud. What else do you have?”

“Okay, let’s talk about the tire prints. Somethin’ weird about those, you know? We only got prints. No tracks. It’s like it just appeared there. The tread’s unusual, too-not typical of any car or truck in the database.”

Gail felt an excited flutter in her chest. “Are you thinking helicopter?”

“Bingo. Given the wheelbase and the depth of the depressions relative to the weather conditions, we’re looking at something pretty big.”

“Help me with ‘big,’ Max. We talking Vietnam-era Huey?”

“Oh, God, no. Not that big. Probaby something more like the slick Aerospatial units they’ve got out there now. Besides, Hueys had skids, not tires. I’ve got a buddy of m theory on the dreams, as Dom had his own theory on every aspect of Jonathan’s life: normal people woke up to escape their nightmares; for Jonathan it was the other way around-he sought sleep to avoid the reality of his days.

Tonight, the telephone sounded ultra-amplified, and he knew before he moved that bad news was on the way. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember a time when a phone call had brought good news. Add the fact that it was the middle of the night, and the sense of dread trebled. As he swung his head to look at the clock, the ghosts of last night’s eighth and ninth beers haunted him with bed-spins. The LED readout burned 9:10 into his retinas. Okay, forget the part about being the middle of the night.

He snatched the phone off its cradle. “This had better be one hell of an emergency,” he grumbled.

It was Venice. “Digger, I’m sorry. I know how hard repentance is on your liver, but I had to call you. The police are looking for you.”

Wrong about the middle of the night, but dead-nuts right about the bad news. “What did I do?” He forced himself to sound even grumpier to cover for the knot that just formed in his gut. As much as he talked bravely to Thomas Hughes about being invisible, he did harbor a special fear of crossing swords with the law.

“You didn’t do anything,” Venice said. “It’s Ellen. They’re at her house, and something bad has happened there.”

As if someone had thrown a switch, Jonathan came completely awake and his head was clear. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me. They called the office looking for you and I told them that I’d be in touch the instant I hung up with them. I have a number for you to call.”

Jonathan swung his feet to the floor and stood. “You do it,” he said. “Call them and tell them that I’m on my way. Without traffic I can be at Ellen’s house in an hour.” He didn’t wait for her to confirm before he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

The Rothman home-Ellen’s home-sat on five acres atop a hill in Vienna, Virginia, a tribute to Tibor Rothman’s ego. Serviced by a 300-foot driveway, the 5,000-square-foot colonial was so perfectly proportioned that from the road it looked a fraction of its actual size. It wasn’t until you approached up that long driveway that you saw the grandeur of the place. Every time he saw it, Jonathan couldn’t help but admire the three acres of front lawn-the very lawn that was now packed with all manner of police vehicles, most of them parked in the grass. Closest to the garage, parked on the pavement, was a large van labeled CRIME SCENE UNIT in the distinctive red, white, and blue lettering of the Fairfax County Police Department.

Of the half dozen or so officers milling about, all of them reacted defensively as Jonathan piloted his BMW M6 up the lawn to park near their vehicles. Watching their hands twitch near their sidearms, Jonathan realized that during his days in IraqI’ll bring the detective out to you.”

“She was my wife, Officer. I have a right.”

The cop pointed emphatically at the ground. “Here,” he said.

For the first time, it occurred to Jonathan that he might need a lawyer, that he was very possibly being considered as a suspect in whatever had happened.

A barrel of a man with a huge head and a fleshy face appeared at the front door. He scowled as he listened to the uniformed officer, and he followed the man’s pointing finger to make eye contact with Jonathan. The detective nodded curtly, and walked down the stairs to the front yard. As he closed to within a few feet, he extended his hand. “I’m Detective Weatherby,” he said. There was a humorless intensity about the man that reminded Jonathan of a thousand other pricks he’d met over the years who confused professional intimidation with the need to be an asshole.

Jonathan shook the cop’s hand and wasn’t the least surprised to find that he was of the bone-crushing school of hospitality. “Jonathan Grave. What’s going on here?”

“Are you the husband?”

“Ex. Is Ellen all right?”

“When did you see her last?”

Jonathan felt his blood pressure rising. “Look, Detective, I swear to God I’ll answer any and all questions you may have, but I want to know if she’s hurt.”

Weatherby stewed, and then nodded. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid she is. It appears that someone broke into the house and hurt her very badly.”

Jonathan’s anger transformed to fear. “How badly?”

“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how to answer that.”

“She’s alive.”

“Yes.”

“And expected to remain that way?”

Weatherby averted his eyes.

Jonathan’s world spun. “Jesus, what happened to her?”

The detective answered carefully. “She was beaten up pretty bad. The house has been torn apart.”

“What, like she stumbled in on a burglar and he panicked?”

“Actually, no, sir, it was nothing like that at all. To my eye, it appears as though she was targeted specifically, and that the people who did so were looking for something they thought she had.”

Jonathan let the pieces drop. “You’re saying she was tortured?”

Weatherby studied Jonathan’s face. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Now, I don’t have any more details, okay? That’s all I know. You’ll have to get the rest from the hospital.”

Jonathan turned back toward his car. “Which hospital?”

“Whoa!” Weatherby commanded. “Not yet. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“Of course you are. You’re the ex-husband. Next to the current husband, you’re number one on the list. By the way, where is Mr. Rothman?”

At one level, Jonathan admired the cop’s candor. Mostly, though, it annoyed him. “It’s not my turn to watch him.”

“I gather from your tone that you don’t like him much?”

Jonathan snorted. “Understatement of the decade. I can’t stand the son of a bitch. A quick hike to the courthouse will right to own.”

Weatherby scowled. “So there really is bad blood between you all.”

“Run into a lot of friendly divorces, Detective? Of course there’s bad blood. But I assure you there’s no homicidal blood.”

Weatherby regarded his prey with slit eyes, then gestured toward the front door with a toss of his head. “Come on inside.”

On a different day, the first thing a visitor to the Rothman home would have noticed was the splendor of the hardwood floors and the intricacy of the moldings and wainscoting. It was a home designed to dazzle visitors, and it rarely failed in its mission.

Today, though, the intricate architectural details were invisible against the savage dismemberment of the place. Inside the front door to the left, every book had been pulled from the shelves of Tibor’s library, his pride-and-joy collection of first editions of French and English literature. Pages were torn from the bindings and the cushions of the dark leather furniture had been slashed, with feathers and stuffing erupting from massive wounds. The same level of damage pervaded everywhere. It was as if someone had turned the house upside down and shaken it.

Weatherby led the way as if he owned the place, marching Jonathan down the main hall into the kitchen and then a hard right into the dining room, where the police had established a makeshift command post. The detective pointed to an upholstered hardback chair. “Take a load off,” he said.

Jonathan continued to stand, not so much on principle as a need to keep examining the house. “Where did you find Ellen?”

“Upstairs. In the bedroom.”

“I want to see.”

“I don’t think you do.”

The gravity of Weatherby’s tone made a connection. “Jesus, Detective, what did they do to her?”

The cop took a long, loud breath through his nose. “Start with the worst you can imagine, and that would be only the beginning. Twenty-three years on the force, Mr. Grave, and this is the worst I’ve seen. Sorry to put it to you that way, but I’m shocked that she survived.”

Jonathan’s mind whirled out of control. The worst he could imagine was pretty goddamn awful. His brain conjured images of Rwandan women with their breasts sliced off, and of Croatian women raped by bayonets. Surely, Weatherby assessed “the worst” on a different scale than that. “Was she raped?”

Weatherby answered with his eyes the instant he looked away. “Savagely. Repeatedly, I would guess. And there was some torture, though I’d rather not go into the details. She was also stabbed.”

Now it was time to sit. Jonathan helped himself to the offered chair. “Who would do something like that?”

“That’s why we called for you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Detective, you couldn’t possibly think I had something to do with that.”

Weatherby let his guard drop an inch. “As I mentioned outside, I sort of have to, but in my gut, no, I don’t believe you did. Can you account for your whereabouts last night?”

“I was downing beers with a buddy. A priest, in fact. Father Dominic D’Angelo, pastor of the St. Katherine’s parish in Fisherman’s Cove.” Responding to the cop’s confusion, he added, “It’s a community down in the NortheActually, she didn’t call me, she called my office and spoke with one of my managers. At the time of the call, he hadn’t been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and, frankly, I didn’t much care if he was missing or not. I told Venice, the manager, to do a quick credit card trace to see what she could turn up.”

“And?”

Jonathan shrugged. “I don’t know. I woke up to the call to come here, so we haven’t discussed any of it this morning.” Jonathan was in the business of parsing information, and he determined that this much was easily traceable and therefore safe to relay. If he was less than forthcoming, Weatherby would know it within hours if not minutes. The rest of it-his ride home with Ellen-was nobody’s business.

“Does Mr. Rothman have any enemies that you know of?”

Jonathan scowled. “You know what he does for a living.”

“I know he’s a writer.”

“But you don’t know what he writes?”

Weatherby shook his head. “I’m pretty much a sports page guy.”

“Well, you won’t find Tibor Rothman articles there. He’s a syndicated columnist. A muckraker. A career killer. He’d call himself an ‘investigative reporter,’ but that’s just code for legitimized gossipmonger. He says whatever he wants, then hides behind the First Amendment when he gets the details wrong. If you could line up every person with a reason to harm Tibor, I imagine it would take you three weeks to get through the interviews.”

“Is he political?”

“Aren’t they all? They wake up every morning and proclaim themselves to be the smartest guys in the room. If you disagree, you get hammered in their column.”

Weatherby’s eyes narrowed, and Jonathan caught the subtext.

“Oh, relax, Detective. I freely admit to motive and means. And probably opportunity, too, if you stretch far enough. What I don’t have is the desire. If you want me to speak frankly to you, then you need to suspend your suspicion for a while. Otherwise, I’ll call for a lawyer, and give you nothing. Which will it be?”

Weatherby took his time answering. “You can speak freely,” he said.

Jonathan studied the man’s face. Weatherby could be lying through his ass, and none of it would matter. The cops were going to check out everything he said anyway. As long as he stayed as near the truth as he could afford, he’d be okay. And the more cooperative he was, the sooner he’d get the hell out of here and on to the hospital to be with Ellen. “Thank you,” he said.

“Let me ask you one other thing, Mr. Grave. Is it at all likely that the person who ransacked the house was in fact looking for you?”

The question shocked him. “I don’t see how.”

Weatherby recrossed his legs. “Well, you’re in the window-peeping business, right? Private detective? Isn’t that what ‘security’ really means in Security Solutions?”

That was a gratuitous shot. “My clients include insurance companies and Fortune 500 firms who need to gather intelligence data for one reason or another. I’ve never thought of it as window-peeping. Do you think of yourself as a child-shooter?” His own gratuitous jab recalled a recent incident in which an off-duty county cop shot an that it was all going to hell, and that he was going to prison, he transferred most of his holdin’t want to know.

“Broken bones in her fingers and toes. Broken tibias in both legs. Bruised liver and kidneys. Broken ribs. There’s really quite a lot wrong, sir.”

“Any head trauma?”

Malstrom broke eye contact as he nodded. “Yes, sir. One really solid strike to the head.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jonathan breathed, and then he shot a quick apologetic glance to Dom. “This is inconceivable to me.”

Malstrom said nothing. What was there to say?

“So, what’s next?”

The doctor launched a soliloquy about treatment strategies and possible surgeries. He talked about Ellen being “in the woods” for a long time, by way of explaining that it could easily be weeks before she would be “out of the woods.” Throughout the speech, Jonathan’s head was in a different place entirely. What the hell had Tibor Rothman done to bring this kind of evil into his home?

Finding Tibor was the key to everything. Suddenly he wanted the doctor to be done so that Jonathan could call Venice and discover what she’d found in her search. As if on cue, Jonathan’s cell phone rang. It was Venice. Malstrom seemed offended that Jonathan took the call.

“Hey, Digger, how is she?”

“Bad,” he said. “We’re just now finding out the extent of it.”

“Well, as soon as you can get out of there, I need you in the office.”

“What’s going on?” He didn’t like the panicky edge to her voice.

“Not on the phone.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what it’s about?”

Venice made that growling sound. She told him what she’d learned. Not all of it, just enough to whet his appetite.

Jonathan clapped the phone closed and stood. “Doctor, I have to go.”

Malstrom looked as if he’d been slapped. “Excuse me?”

Dom stood with Digger, but he looked confused. “Yeah, excuse me?”

“I have to get to my office. An emergency situation has arisen and I have to attend to it.”

“Now?” Dom asked, stunned at the rudeness.

“Right this second.” He offered his hand to the doctor. “Doctor Malstrom, I’m sorry for being so abrupt, but I really have no choice. Thank you for taking care of Ellen. I owe you.” He nodded to Dom. “You, too, Dom. I’ll talk to you soon.”

But Dom hurried after him. “Digger,” he hissed at a stage whisper, “where the hell are you going?” It was a struggle keeping up with Jonathan’s rapid pace.

“I told you.”

“You said there was an emergency. Since when do you have emergencies in the office?”

Jonathan still didn’t slow. “Since Venice found Tibor. He’s dead.”

Chapter Fifteen

Security Solutions occupied the entire third floor of the old firehouse. At first glance, the inside of the place looked like any other modern office, with its rabbit warren of cubicles where the seventeen investigators in Jonathan’s employ-“associates,” according to their business cards-toiled for eight to ten hours a day, supported by their assistants, who, to Jonathan’s eye, were the hardest working grou

At first, neither of them moved. Then, with a resigned nod from Scarface, they both produced pistols from under their sport coats and laid them on the table. Scarface made a show of using only two fingers.

“Now step away,” Stephenson said. They did, their hands back up in the air.

The picture moved again as Tibor approached the table and stepped back. The frame didn’t show any weapons at all now-not on the table, and not anywhere else. If Tibor had them in his hands, then he was holding them out of the frame.

“Don’t move,” Stephenson repeated. “We’re going to leave now, and if I even see your shadow, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”

“We understand,” said Scarface.

Jonathan scowled. The banter was all wrong. Scarface-the muscle-was being way too accommodating. “Oh, Christ,” Jonathan said aloud. “They’ve got backup pieces.”

The picture whipped as Tibor turned his head. They got their first peek at Stephenson Hughes, who held a revolver at arm’s length in a two-handed grip that made Jonathan think that he’d had firearms training. The picture continued to move. They watched a door open, and the light got really bad. They were outside now, in the middle of the night, and the camera saw nothing.

“I’ll see if I can’t fiddle with the image later,” Venice said without prompting.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tibor said, his voice heavy with fear.

The speakers on Venice’s monitor projected the sound of movement and heavy breathing as the screen continued to reveal nothing but differing shades of darkness. Then they heard a door open, and the screen was overwhelmed with more light than the automatic iris could handle, only to go black again when the door closed. The engine started.

“This is where it gets ugly,” Jonathan predicted. The others didn’t seem to understand, and he didn’t bother to explain.

Another blast of light as the passenger side door opened. In the frame of the video, they could just see Stephenson Hughes’s hand as he pulled himself in by leveraging against the dashboard. “Go, go, go!” Stephenson yelled.

The engine roared, and then things started breaking inside the cockpit of the car. The crashes and flashes were accompanied by the distinctive staccato pops of gunfire.

“They’re shooting at us!”

“Fuck! Close the-”

The screen went blank, and the speakers fell silent. There was nothing.

“What did you do?” Jonathan snapped at Venice.

“I didn’t do anything,” she snapped back, matching his tone.

“Where did the movie go?”

“That’s it,” she said. “That’s the end of the file.”

“Just like that? Just poof?”

“Looks like. That’s everything on the chip.”

Dom turned to Jonathan. “You think he got shot?”

Jonathan punted to Venice. “Any gunshot wounds on the corpse in Ohio?”

She shook her head. “Well, only one, but it was the kill shot at short range. They still had to torture him first.”

The thought gave Jonathan a chill. “He probably didn’t turer,” Jonathan replied. “Maybe he knew this Hughes guy.”

“Or maybe he was covering the story,” Venice offered.

“Any or all of the above.”

“Clearly, he wanted a record of it all,” Dom said.

Jonathan agreed. “But why?”

“To write a story,” Venice said again. “It makes sense to me that he wedged himself into whatever was happening so that he could write a story. Don’t reporters always record their meetings?”

Jonathan shrugged. He had no idea what reporters did.

Venice said, “The way to find out for sure is to call his editor at the Post. Under the circumstances, they could sift through his notes and such and come up with what happened.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Let the cops do that. We’ve got our own evidence to work on.”

Venice’s eyes widened. “So you’re not sharing this with the police either?”

“Of course not. If Tibor had wanted them involved, he would have sent the chip to them. I can’t disrespect his final wishes like that.”

Dom winced. “The man is dead, Dig. Don’t desecrate that.”

Jonathan conceded. “I apologize. But we’re still not sharing with the police.” A new thought stirred in his head. “How did the chip come to us, Ven?”

She shrugged. “In an envelope.”

“Just like a regular letter?”

“Yep. In fact, there was a letter with it. It was just another salvo in y’all’s lawsuit.”

“Do you still have it?”

Venice pulled the envelope out a larger evidence envelope and handed it over.

Jonathan saw that his address was laser-printed on the front. “How about that? Running for his life, he took time to type an envelope.”

Dom scowled. “I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I.”

“He must have had it filled out already,” Venice said. “Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he was expecting things to go wrong,” Dom offered.

Jonathan didn’t think they had it. “Let me see the letter that was with it.” Venice handed it to him. She was right; it was just another letter like all the others in the ongoing lawsuit, clarifying one of the finer points of discovery. These things were supposed to go through the lawyers, but Tibor was always on the lookout for ways to keep his fees low.

“You know what?” Jonathan thought aloud. “Ellen told me on the ride home that Tibor had been on his way to the post office when he got sidetracked onto his mystery trip. I think he didn’t intend to mail this chip to me at all. I think he wanted to get rid of it, didn’t have any time, and just happened to have this letter in his pocket, probably already stamped. If he’d lived, maybe he would have tried to get it back unopened or something.”

Venice’s eyes got big. “That’s it. The killers knew there was a tape-‘Steve’ told them as much. If the killers couldn’t find it when they found him, and if Tibor didn’t give it up to them, they might have assumed he’d maen without the lie.”

“Thank you, Deputy,” Venice said. “That’s good to-”

The click of the dead line clipped her last words. She killed the speakerphone and glared at Jonathan. “You didn’t have to be such a jerk,” she said.

It took twenty minutes for the e-mail to arrive from Deputy Semen, no doubt a bit of petulance from a pissed-off cop. Jonathan was surprised that the guy hadn’t fought back a little harder. He was, after all, the one who had the information they wanted, and any impropriety they laid on his doorstep would implicate them, too. Had the positions been reversed, Jonathan would have recognized the bluff.

The photos of the body came as attachments to an e-mail, a total of five of them. Venice hung close to Jonathan’s shoulder as he clicked on the first image, but as soon as it materialized, she looked away and busied herself with straightening a stack of papers on her desk. Even Jonathan had trouble looking at it for more than a few seconds.

Jonathan had seen far more horrifying sights than this on battlefields, and while he’d never gotten used to it, dismemberment was oddly natural to the environment of warfare. The same images, though, in the context of home soil, triggered revulsion and anger. When soldiers killed soldiers, the underlying nobility of the conflict dulled the edges of the horror. That such defilement could be an end unto itself, as it clearly was in these awful photographs from Kentucky, left him feeling empty and sick.

Jonathan thought about poor Thomas Hughes, and the additional emotional damage that his father’s fate would heap upon him. He didn’t like feeling such empathy for a case that was supposed to have been locked away in his cerebral filing cabinet by now. It made viewing Stephenson Hughes’s vivisected corpse even more difficult.

It wasn’t clear from the photographs whether they had been taken before or after the corpse was moved from where it was found. Two crushed Budweiser cans were clearly visible, plus a sprinkling of broken glass, the shape and the colors of the shards suggesting yet more retired beer containers. Beneath the body, bottles and cans and twisted tufts of grass grew like leafy cancers from a flat gray bed of gravel. It was one hell of a way to treat a human being.

Deputy Semen’s description of the corpse didn’t touch the reality of what the photographs showed. It was true enough that the hands had been removed, but so had the elbows and a good portion of the upper arms. Dried blood in wild spray patterns decorated the naked chest, which showed the lack of muscle tone that was typical of forty-something desk dwellers. The head was likewise missing, severed by a hacking cut just below the jawline. If Jonathan’s estimates were correct, the larynx had been left behind. Stephenson Hughes had been transformed into a slab of pale flesh that gleamed like a beached fish.

“Jesus, Digger, do you have to put those on my computer? I feel like I need to wash it now.”

“They tortured him, too,” Jonathan said.

Venice reapproached the screen cautiously, as if afraid that the power of the images might hurt her. “How do you know?”

He pointed with a crooked forefinger-testament to the limitations of field-splinting broken bones in the middle of a Latin American firefight. “Look at all the blood spray here around the amputations,” he explainedwsed through the rest of the photos. Each of the five displayed a different angle on the horror, and with each click of the mouse, the grisliness of it grew.

As Venice acclimated to the gore, she leaned in closer to the screen. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

Jonathan had been wondering the same thing. A patch of flesh, roughly the shape of a triangle and the size of a hand, had been excised from the victim’s chest above the left nipple. The wound was an ugly purple thing with none of the telltale signs that it had been inflicted during life. In fact, had the wound been viewed out of context, it might have looked like an example of modern art-the kind that Jonathan never understood, but seemed to be all the rage among the MOMA set. Swarming flies capped it all off with a disturbingly surreal quality.

“Are we looking at a serial killer?” Venice asked. “A collector?”

“Don’t think so. This looks like the work of a professional to me. Collectors take body parts as trophies. Professionals take them to prevent identification.”

Venice didn’t press for more details, probably because she didn’t want to know the source of Digger’s knowledge.

He continued, “I think that missing skin used to be a tattoo. The killer didn’t want the tat pointing the way to the corpse’s identity.”

“Did Stephenson Hughes have a tattoo?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know. Apparently.” Looking at these photographs, at the brutal violence that they represented, he couldn’t help but think of the unspeakable agony that Ellen must have suffered as these animals came at her and bludgeoned her for information that she never knew. He heard her screams in his head.

He said, “Rattle Boxers’ cage and bring him back to work. We’ve got stuff to do.”

Chapter Sixteen

Of the four civil aviation companies at the Indianapolis Airport that rented helicopters, it turned out that all four had choppers out during the critical period from April 19 to 21. Of those four, three sported a lateral wheelbase in the range of seven feet, the nominal separation between the tire prints in the grass, and the fourth was a Bell Jet Ranger that didn’t have tires at all, but rather took off and landed on skids.

After seven hours of drive time and investigation, Gail Bonneville’s case hadn’t progressed at all. The number of suppositions and intuitive guesses were compounding, and without something definitive, some bit of hard evidence that they were even on the right track, she would soon have to regroup and start over from scratch.

“I think you’re right,” Gail said to Jesse as they walked from the civil aviation terminal toward Gail’s official unmarked vehicle. “They borrowed instead of renting.”

“Or they could own their own,” Jesse offered. “But, I know, we’re stipulating that they’re from too far out of town for that. I want to show you something.” They reached the vehicle and he used the hood as an impromptu desk. From his briefcase, he produced a black imitation-leather portfolio from which papers sprouted in all directions. As he searched for the flight plan the aircraft was invisible. They inquired via the telephone whether the radar record could be resurrected to show where they traveled, but the answer, much to Gail’s and Jesse’s surprise, was negative. A helicopter without a flight plan could literally fly under the radar and disappear into the vast American airspace.

The Gulfstream jet, however, was traceable. It was registered to Perseus Foods Corporation, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. Gail started making phone calls. Thus far, she’d had no luck whatsoever getting through to anyone at the corporate headquarters who could answer any questions.

Back at the office, after an hour in the car on the way back to Samson, Gail completed her third call into the bowels of Perseus Foods, and found herself not a single step closer to an answer. After someone named Lakisha had promised to “ask around” to see who might know something, Gail could feel her blood pressure rising. She hung up the phone aggressively enough to bring Jesse’s head up from the pile of reports that had flooded into the office while they were at the airport. With the blinds closed to protect them from the eyes of the media outside, the atmosphere inside the office was positively funereal.

“I hate people sometimes,” she said in reply to Jesse’s quizzical expression. “No one knows anything, and the Maryland State Police isn’t anxious to push people’s buttons for us. They don’t think we have enough to justify the dedication of manpower.”

Jesse didn’t seem surprised. “Want me to grab a flight out there and talk to someone? It’s easy to stonewall when all you have to do is press a hold button. It gets a little more complicated when you have to look people in the eye.”

Gail stood and stretched. “It might come to that.”

Jesse turned to a page in his pile of reports. “I have an interesting lead here,” he said. “Day before yesterday, outside of Muncie, a pharmacist called the local cops to report what he thought might be a runaway. The report here says he was a kid, a teenager or maybe very early twenties, and he was filthy and clearly distraught. He waited there a long time for the bus to Chicago.”

Gail cocked her head. “How is that a lead for us?”

Jesse sensed disapproval and his shoulders slumped a little. “The timing works. As far as I’m concerned, wherever the stars align, there’s a potential lead. On the morning of the attack, there’s a kid waiting for a bus to the same place where our Gulf Stream headed. All things considered, it’s a pretty close match.”

The sheriff didn’t get it. “If they were going to Chicago, why not just fly him to Chicago? What’s the bus thing all about?”

Jesse gave that some thought. “I can’t say for sure, but a bus doesn’t go right to a location, does it? Maybe he intended to get off somewhere in between.”

Gail looked at her deputy. For the first time since she’d taken office, she saw why this man was so popular among the troops. His mind was suited perfectly for this line of work. “Do we have a name?” she asked.

Jesse nodded, and quickly scanned the page. “We’ve got two, actually. We’ve got a name for the pharmacist, and we’ve got a name for the kid.”

Gail’s jaw dropped.

Jesse chuckled. “Yeah, that sort of surprised me, too. Apparently the kid gave his name as Hughes, either Thomas or

“And anybody that rich can certainly afford the services of an independent hostage rescue contractor,” Jesse agreed. “We can’t prove anything, of course.”

Gail shrugged it off. “We’re too early in the process to worry about proof. Right now, let’s just celebrate our first real break. Now we have to find out what Thomas or Tony Hughes has in common with Richard Lydell of Perseus Foods.”

Chapter Seventeen

Richard Lydell was apoplectic, his voice betraying a level of rage that Jonathan hadn’t heard since his days in the Unit, and that diatribe had involved a mud bog and a colonel’s Corvette. “Scorpion, do you understand the peril you’ve put me in? Do you understand how I am not cut out for this kind of pressure?”

Jonathan adjusted the earpiece of his Bluetooth telephone receiver and strolled a circle around the interior of his office. Sometimes, people just needed to vent, and by staying out of their way, you made it easier on everyone. “I’ll say it again, Mr. Lydell, you don’t have anything to worry about. Frankly, I wish you hadn’t decided to stonewall them. Sometimes, protection of one’s constitutional rights is a very small step away from an admission of guilt.” He winced as soon as he heard the G-word pass his lips.

“What the hell have I got to feel guilty for?” Lydell boomed. Then, before Jonathan could answer, the CEO of Perseus Foods took care of it himself. “The answer is nothing! Under any reasonable circumstance, the answer should be that I’m guilty of nothing. But now that you took my airplane to do whatever terrible thing you did-and I figure it had to have something to do with the triple murder in Indiana that’s all over the news-you’ve made me an accessory. My God, man, do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put me in?”

Jonathan stood with his back to his Italian mahogany desk, staring out the window at the swarm of boats clogging the river. “Mr. Lydell, whatever danger you are or are not in is now a permanent part of your life. I do everything I can to mask my movements, and you were well aware of the nature of my business when we negotiated my fee.”

“I didn’t know that you’d be killing people in the United States. I had assumed that your…business took you mainly abroad.”

Outside of his office, in the reception area of the executive suite, Jonathan heard a door slam open, and a voice bellow, “This had better be goddamn good!” Boxers had responded to Venice’s summons. It was going to be a long day.

“Look,” Jonathan said into the phone. “I don’t know what you want from me. I never made any promises to you regarding the nature of my business, and I don’t remember a lot of caveats from you when that business involved bringing your daughter home. You do what you think you have to do, but I assure you that your blood pressure should be a far greater concern right now than being linked to my activities.”

His office door erupted open, and Boxers’ frame filled it. He looked like hammered shit. Clearly, he hadn’t bothered to glance in a mirror before he’d driven in from his house in DC. The quaintness of Fisherman’s Cove was wasted on Boxers, whose primaryound the twenty-four-year-old Lagavulin, and poured himself thirty dollars’ worth.

Jonathan continued, “I won’t share the details of my precautions, but I can tell you this-the nature of our agreement has not changed. Please try to have a nice day.”

Lydell was just about to open a new round of negotiation when Jonathan pushed the disconnect button.

“The hell was that about?” Boxers rumbled as he fell into the leather sofa near the fireplace.

Jonathan wandered his way and helped himself to the wooden William and Mary rocking chair. The slatted back was somehow easier on his twice-broken vertebrae than the really soft stuff. “Richard Lydell is whining again. The cops in Indiana are better than we gave them credit for.”

Boxers scowled. “We in trouble?”

Jonathan shook his head. “Nah. The locals in Samson put the right pieces together and figured out that we flew in from out of town. They traced some records at the airport to Perseus, and when they called, Lydell refused to talk with them.”

Boxers looked concerned. “That’s like wearing an ‘I’m guilty’ sweatshirt.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Lydell’s connected. He got the politcos involved. That investigation won’t go anywhere.”

Boxers took a hit of the scotch and winced. “I wish you wouldn’t talk directly to people like that. It’s a security breach. You’re gonna get yourself in trouble one day.”

“What, the phone call? Christ, the Scorpion calls are routed through so many switches, nobody could ever know where it’s coming from.”

It had been a bone of contention between the two of them for some time. Boxers had long believed that Jonathan took too many security shortcuts, arguing that the little things add up over time. Jonathan’s side of the argument was all about personal contact. Without it, he felt, a mission was never whole. You had to make some kind of contact with every client, or else you risked getting set up. Jonathan respected his own ability to judge people by their voices.

Boxers let the point drop. “Sorry to hear about the ex, Dig. How’s she doing?”

“Not well, but so far, no change. They’re just hoping that they’ll be able to pull her through it.” He modulated his voice to filter out all emotion.

“Been to see her?”

“I’ve tried, but they won’t let me into ICU. I’m not family.”

“Ven told me that Fuckface is dead, too. Real shame about that.” Like Venice, Boxers had witnessed the Divorce Wars.

Jonathan wasn’t in the mood for that kind of bantering. He stood. “Come with me to the War Room,” he said. “I’ve got something you need to see.”

Boxers stood, shifting his drink to his left hand so he could use his right to push himself up from the seat. “I saw the Angry One in there cuing something up for the screen. Is that it?”

Jonathan never did understand why Boxers and Venice hadn’t found a way to get along, but he’d decided years ago to stay out of it. He led the way to the War Room-a paneled conference area with every conceivable electronic gadget lining the walls and ceiling, plus more embedded in the teak conference table. When they entered and Jonathan pushed the door closed, Boxers helped himself to a seat close to the LCD video panel at the head of the room and placed his scotch on the table.

“Use a coaster,” Venice commanded, and she slid one across to him.

He glared and placed the leather disk between the sweaty “I can’t tell. Tibor was famous enough to turn up over a million hits when I searched for him. I can say, though, that a search for Tibor’s name and Conger’s name turned up nothing.”

Boxers asked, “But because he’s so famous, isn’t it fair to assume that they knew each other? Or at least corresponded?”

Jonathan shook his head. “They might have corresponded, but they certainly had never met. We see that in the video. Conger didn’t know who he was.”

Venice turned to a transcript she’d made. “As for the weapons,” she said, “what was that line from the video?” She riffled through the sheets. “Here. When they were talking about whether Hughes brought the ‘items’ and he holds off, wanting to see his son-Thomas, is it?”

Jonathan nodded.

“Right, he wanted to see his son Thomas. Hughes says, ‘Your side of the bargain is an inanimate object, my side is a human life. My son. They don’t equate.’ To which Conger replies, ‘Your side of the bargain, as you say, is actually thousands of lives, Mr. Hughes.’” She looked up to see if they had drawn the same conclusions. “It makes sense,” she said.

Jonathan leaned forward and pulled at his lower lip. “If Conger had a bug up his ass about his assumption that Carlyle Industries was manufacturing chemical weapons, the thing he’d want most in life would be to have a sample to show people.”

“But nobody would ever step forward to do that,” Boxers said, taking up the line of logic.

“Could anyone step forward?” Venice asked. “Does Carlyle actually make chemical weapons?”

Jonathan stepped in. “If it was true, Ven, it wouldn’t be something we’d be free to discuss. All that matters is Conger thinks it’s true. What better way to get the proof he’s looking for than to kidnap the child of one of the workers? What was Stephenson Hughes’s job there, anyway?”

Again, Venice answered from memory. “His job title is senior contract administrator. A paper-pusher. He earns just over a hundred thousand a year, and his wife doesn’t work.”

Jonathan scowled. “Why would they kidnap his kid? Why wouldn’t they go after some senior executive? Or at least someone with direct access to the project?”

Boxers scoffed, “As if your job title ever reflected what you do for a living. Or mine, for that matter. For all we know, he could have been the grand imperial poobah of special weapons.”

“And he certainly implied that he had what Conger was looking for,” Venice said. “Even if he never handed it over.”

“That was probably his contingency plan,” Jonathan agreed. “Like we said before, handing the stuff over was the only hedge he had to keep Thomas alive.”

“They’d have killed him anyway,” Boxers grumbled.

Jonathan shrugged. “Of course they would. But what choice did his dad have? It’s why kidnapping works so well as a bargaining tool.”

“Let’s get back to Fabian Conger,” Venice said, returning to her notes. “He’s a member of a group called the Green Brigade. Sound familiar?”

Jonathan cocked his head. “It does. Why?”

She so loved having the upper hand in these things. “Remember the name you had me research? Christine Baker?”

Jonathan poundand side of the deep rectangular room, easily stretched twenty feet into the darkness. Along the back wall, a raised platform, a couple of music stands, and some dormant amplifiers were evidence of a recent live band performance. Four-legged wooden tables crowded the the place in the front and along the right-hand side.

“We’re not open yet!” a male voice called from the kitchen behind the bar.

Jonathan put a finger over his lips to signal Boxers to remain quiet. “Stay near the door here,” he whispered, and then walked farther into the bar. He intentionally moved a chair just to make some noise.

“I said we’re closed!” This time the voice shimmered with annoyance, and a few seconds later, its owner appeared in the kitchen doorway. “We don’t open for another half hour.”

Andrew Hawkins looked exactly like the picture that Venice had been able to pull down from the Internet. Although shorter than Jonathan had expected, at say five-eight, Hawkins wore his long hair in a ponytail, and sported a mountain-man beard. Jonathan pegged him as midforties, and figured the gnarly nose evidenced a close familiarity with the product he served. Whatever friendly demeanor existed for his customers was nowhere to be found for his early morning gate-crashers.

“Good morning, Mr. Hawkins,” Jonathan said in a tone that was equal parts cheer and menace.

Hawkins’s tired, pale blue eyes narrowed as he tried to make a connection. “Do we know each other?” He tensed as he caught sight of Boxers’ towering hulk blocking his exit out the front door.

“In a manner of speaking,” Jonathan said. “We’ve got the Green Brigade in common.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawkins replied a little too quickly. “Now I’ll be happy to serve you in a half hour.” He turned on his heel and disappeared back into the kitchen.

“He’s bolting,” Jonathan said, but Boxers was already out the front door, on the way around back. Jonathan took the more direct route. He planted his hands on the polished mahogany of the bar and vaulted his feet over, scattering glassware and a sealed plastic container of olives, cherries, and lemon wedges onto the webbed rubber matting on the floor. Ahead, from the other side of the wall, he heard the sound of running feet and clattering pans. That meant Hawkins was not lying in wait just on the other side of the door, which in turn meant that Jonathan could crash through the door with abandon.

Half as wide as the bar and grille, the kitchen was a place that no customer should ever see. Jonathan recorded it as a blur of greasy walls and food-spattered floors as he watched the back door to the alley close. Three seconds later, he hit the door at full speed, slamming the crash bar and launching the door open with enough force to rip it free of the automatic-closer hardware. A glance to his left showed Boxers turning the corner doing his best to run, and a glance to the right showed Andrew Hawkins sprinting for all he was worth, but already slowing.

Jonathan tore after him. After ten strides, he’d cut Hawkins’s lead in half. “If you make me catch you, I’ll make it hurt!” he yelled to the little man. “I just want to talk!” Behind him, he could hear Boxers lumbering to catch up.

Hawkins at first sped up his stride, and then gave up, drawing to a trot and then a walk as he raised his hands in surrender.

Jonathan fought the urge to tackle him anyway, and instead opted to keep his distance. Without looking at Boxers, he made a sideward waving motion to indicate that he should likewise show restraint.

Stopped now, with his hands still raised, Hawkins turned to face them both. He looked both frightened and embarrassed. “Running’s not as easy as it used to be,” he said, sheepishly.

Jonathan kept his voice calm. “Put your hands down. We’re not cops, and we’re not your enemies. We only want to talk.”

Hawkins lowered his hands. His expression was pure suspicion. “You mentioned that. What are we going to talk about?”

“The Green Bees.”

“I don’t-”

“And please skip the denials. We’re in an alley, for God’s sake, because you made like a track star last time I mentioned the Green Brigade.”

Hawkins shifted his eyes between Jonathan and Boxers, and as he did, he seemed to find resolve. “Maybe I don’t run so good, but I’ll tell you right now that I don’t scare easy. If you’ve got blackmail on your mind, I got nothin’ worth extorting.”

“We’re not here to extort anything, Mr. Hawkins. Can I call you Andy?”

Hawkins scowled. “Not even my mother calls me Andy. Andrew’s fine. And what’s your name again?”

“Leon,” Jonathan lied.

“That’s no more your name than mine is Mona,” Hawkins said.

Jonathan neither confirmed nor denied. “You’re the leader of the Green Brigade. Yes?”

Hawkins watched as Boxers worked his way around to block his only escape route. He sighed. “Look, the true answer is no, but I know if I tell you that, you’re gonna beat the shit outta me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“If you didn’t want me to think that, you wouldn’t have brought Lurch here to block the sun.”

Jonathan smiled in spite of himself. Back in the Unit, a few people had tried to make the name Lurch stick for Boxers, but the big man didn’t like it. Really didn’t like it. “He’s back there because you looked twitchy as hell inside, and because you ran. Think of him more as a roadblock than a menace. All we want is the truth.”

Hawkins shrugged. “I used to be the commander of what used to be the Green Brigade. But it doesn’t exist anymore. At least not as I knew it.”

Jonathan cocked his head.

Hawkins patted his shirt and then his pants pockets before he stopped himself. “You gonna shoot me if I get a cigarette?”

“If the cigarette doesn’t have a trigger, you’ll be fine.” As Jonathan spoke, a gentle press with his right elbow reconfirmed the presence of the.45 on his hip.

Hawkins told his story as he slid a Marlboro between his lips and lit it with a flourish from his Zippo. “When I joined the Green Bees, it stood for something. We were an environmentalist group. We talked trash, smoked a little weed, organized protests, and circulated petitions.”

“What were your causes?”

“A lot of animal rights stuff. Habitat preservation, clean air legislation, that sort of thing. You know it’s shameful how we treat the defenseless creatures of this planet.” He caught Jonathan’s telltale glance toward his clothing. “Yeah, okay, I know. The leather belt and shoes argument. I eat meat, too, but it’s different. You don’t want the whole stump speech, but let me tell you, the day will come when s even on the tattoo.” Jonathan’s shocked expression made Hawkins laugh. “That’s some shit, ain’t it?” He patted his left breast, over his heart. “Right here. To be a full member of the tribe, you had to get this ugly-ass coat of arms lookin’ thing tattooed on your chest. Red, white, and blue, with ‘brigadier for life’ across the bottom. I mean, the thing is fuckin’ huge.”

Jonathan and Boxers shared a look. Unless Stephenson Hughes had a matching tattoo, it looked like Jonathan was wrong about him being the mutilated corpse from Sergeant Semen’s jurisdiction. “Let’s talk more about Fabian Conger,” Jonathan said. “I get the impression that you two were friends.”

“There were no friends in the Brigade. Only fellow brigadiers. But given that, I guess Fabe and I were about as close to friends as you can get. I haven’t heard from him since the last time I was at the retreat.”

“How did he and Ivan-Palmer-get along?”

Hawkins shook his head. “You’re not getting it. You’re assuming some kind of social motivation, and I’m telling you there was none of that. There used to be, back when I was in the leadership, but not after. There was the mission, and there was nothing else. No one ‘got along’ as you think of it. People followed orders and they drilled and they listened. Every now and then, they’d actually launch a mission, but more often than not, it was all about preparing for some unnamed apocalypse. If you haven’t been there, I know it sounds stupid. Hell, it was stupid, but I’m telling you that’s the way it was. As for Fabe and Palmer, I think the best way to put it is Fabe was an acolyte. A disciple. Palmer thought about saying ‘jump’ and Fabe was already out of his chair.”

Jonathan turned what he’d learned over in his head, weighing what they knew coming in against what Hawkins was feeding them. It was time to go from the general to the specific. “Does the name Carlyle Industries mean anything to you?”

Hawkins jumped like he’d been zapped with electricity. He whipped his head around to see if anyone was listening. “Holy shit,” he hissed. “Who told you about Carlyle Industries?”

Jonathan said nothing, made no move. His face remained pleasantly impassive.

Hawkins raised is hands in surrender and turned to walk back inside. “You guys are hell-bent on getting me killed. I’m outta here.”

Boxers blocked his way, and Hawkins looked as if he might cry. “Come on, guys,” he whined. “Please don’t do this to me. People are gonna know where you got this shit, and they’re gonna come after me. As it is, the Brigade is paranoid that I don’t come around anymore. All I’ve got going for me is their trust that I won’t screw them.”

“Quit panicking, Andrew,” Jonathan said.

“You don’t know these assholes. Panic is all I got.”

“Think about what you’re saying,” Jonathan coached, his voice the essence of calm. “They can’t know that you told us about Carlyle because you didn’t tell us about Carlyle. The first time the name came up is when we mentioned it to you.”

Hawkins’s expression turned to an odd miVehicles. Their Government Services Division made computer programs for project management tracking and fire protection systems for military installations throughout the world. Meanwhile, their Defense Systems Division was in charge of unnamed specialized munitions for delivery by “multiple interservice weapons platforms.” Clear as paint. Nowhere in the annual report was there a mention of chemical or biological warfare agents.

She turned to the page that displayed the salaries of the key employees-$8 million a year for Bunting and Rooney, down to $320,000 for Charlie Warren, in all cases before benefits and bonuses. Further down the page, she found the list of key suppliers and contractors, and on that list she saw the name that made her heart jump.

Last year, Carlyle Industries paid $527,468.27 to Ivan Patrick Enterprises for “unspecified security services” performed for the Special Projects Division.

“Good Lord,” she whispered aloud. Her heart racing and her brain screaming at her to shut down the search and contact Jonathan right away, she paused.

What is the Special Projects Division? she asked herself. She navigated backward on the file to reread the entire description of the company, but there was not a word to be found.

“Hmm,” she mumbled. Research became a thousand times more interesting when you had specific questions to answer.

She dug deeper and hit bedrock. The Carlyle files were all heavily encrypted. Venice smiled. This was going to be fun.

Walking into the lobby of the Frederick Palace Hotel was like passing through a portal to the past. Small by the standards of modern hotels, the Frederick Palace’s soaring lobby and dark hardwoods gave a sense of charming warmth that even further endeared this little burg to Jonathan. At Andrew Hawkins’s request, they chose a conversation group in a corner of the lobby farthest from the front doors, across from the empty lobby bar.

Back in the alley, he’d confessed that the reason he’d told so much so far, and the reason why he would answer the rest of Jonathan’s questions was, as he put it, disgustingly mundane: by cooperating, there was a good chance that lives could be saved. Besides, he was sick of carrying these secrets around. He had no idea who the man calling himself Leon really was, but Hawkins sensed that he was on the opposite side of Palmer, and for the time being, that was enough.

Once seated, they dropped their voices to barely a whisper. “You know that Carlyle Industries is a weapons manufacturer,” Hawkins said, easing back into the topic. When he got nods, he pressed on. “And you know that these are not just everyday weapons, right?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” Jonathan said.

Hawkins seemed to understand the hedging and he acknowledged it with a nod. “Yeah, well I’ve heard rumors, too, and I happen to know that they’re true. They’re manufacturing biological weapons over there. We’re talking the kinds of weapons that kill people thousands at a time-millions and millions over time. They’ve got some germ shit called GVX that is engineered to be incurable, because it constantly mutates as it passes from one person to another. Nobody can develop a vaccine, because by the time the vaccine is made, the germ is a whole new disease.”

Jonathan kept a poker face. He’d heard of such weapons being researched, but he had no way of knowing if one had ever been produced. Privately, he’d always dismissed them as useless-a foolish venture that would be strategically counterproductive. “What’s the point of a weaponized virus?” launching something on the bad guys that is ultimately going to kill the good guys, too?”

Hawkins scowled and made a huffing noise. “Hey, I’m just telling you what I know. I’m not sayin’ I understand the strategy.”

“You know this because Fabian Conger told you?” Jonathan asked.

Bingo. Hawkins settled himself. “Fabian’s not a nutcase, okay? He’s overly exuberant, and he’s easily swayed, but he’s a smart, smart man. He did the research. It’s all out there. He looked at the revenues of the company, and he looked at their production, and he looked into the backgrounds of the corporate officers, and he worked with contacts he has in the government, and all this adds up. And I’ll tell you something else that should make you shit your pants.”

They waited for it.

“Carlyle’s selling stuff to the enemy.”

Jonathan cocked his head. “Which enemy?”

“Our enemies. The Arabs. The terrorists. I’m not talking about legitimate contracts. I’m talking about illegal shit that’s under the table.”

“Why would they do that?” Jonathan asked.

“Why do you think? If the enemy ever stopped shooting at us, Carlyle would start losing money. The longer the shooting keeps going, the fatter they get.”

Jonathan wasn’t buying. Neither was Boxers.

Hawkins caught their silent exchange. “Look, you don’t have to believe none of this that I’m telling you, but you’re fools if you don’t. Nobody wants to believe any of this, but on September 10, 2001, nobody wanted to believe that there were thousands of terrorists out there who wanted us all dead. Wanting and not wanting don’t mean dick.”

Jonathan decided to try his diplomatic hat. He didn’t want to push Hawkins away, but Jesus. “That’s a huge accusation against a big company with a lot to lose if word leaked out. A little evidence would make this easier to swallow.”

Hawkins’s expression said, duh. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? That was Fabe’s obsession when I last saw him. He was pulling every string he could find to get somebody to pay attention to him, but it always ended up right where you said: ‘Where’s the evidence?’ It’s one thing to find evidence on paper, but it’s something else when you try to get your hands on some of this stuff. Apparently, it’s locked up tighter than a nun’s…well, it’s locked up tight.”

You could always kidnap an executive’s kid, Jonathan thought. But that was a card he didn’t want to show. “How was he going to show that they were selling weapons to the enemy?” he asked.

Hawkins shrugged. “I don’t know how he was going to do any of this stuff. But if you prove that these weapons exist illegally and make it public, how difficult can it be to prove the rest? Once the news media get a hold of one really bad thing, they’ll be happy to keep going till they find every bad thing they can. The hard part is that first step-getting people to pay any attention at all.”

Boxers asked, “Do you think he was capable of violence to get what he wanted?”

Something clicked in Hawkins. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Fabe went and hurt somebody, and you’re trying to find out why.”

Jonathan jumped in to control the spin. “We don’t know that Fabian Conger did anything wrong. There’s been some violence, yes, and his name floated onto our radar screen

Charles S. Warren

Director of Corporate Security

Carlyle Industries, Inc.

15000 Carlyle Boulevard

Muncie, IN 47302

765-555-8515

765-555-0915 (Fax)

From: Ivan Patrick

Sent: April 5 11:17 AM

To: Charles S. Warren

Subject: RE: RE: Your Problem

Don’t be an idiot. I would not be making this contact if I did not have solid information. His plan is a good one and it will take you down. Trust me. It’s already in motion, and he’s already causing leaks that you don’t even know about yet. WE NEED TO TALK! I have a plan that will make all of your problems go away PERMANENTLY and seal those leaks. Rock star trusts me. Not trusting me will be your biggest mistake. Call the ball.

Ivan

But Charlie Warren didn’t call anything for two days. When he did, there was a certain air of panic in the subtext:

From: Charles S. Warren

Sent: April 7 5:17 PM

To: Ivan Patrick

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Your Problem

Ivan,

I’m convinced. Meet me at usual location @ 2200 tonight. Do I need to visit the bank first?

Charles S. Warren

Director of Corporate Security

Carlyle Industries, Inc.

15000 Carlyle Boulevard

Muncie, IN 47302

765-555-8515

765-555-0915 (Fax)

From: Ivan Patrick

Sent: April 7 8:18 PM

To: Charles S. Warren

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Your Problem

Negative. New fee structure. See you tonight.

Ivan

Venice stared at her screen, toggling between the different entries. She knew just from the tone and the logical links that she’d landed on a pivotal exchange between the two men. But what did it mean?

She highlighted the entire string and pasted it into an e-mail to herself; and none too soon. Five seconds later, the screen went blank as all data disappeared.›

A thousand miles away, deep in the bowels of Carlyle Industries’ corporate headquarters, computer technician Felix Harrison returned from an extended bathroom break to find an alert flashing on his terminal. Someone had hacked into secure corporate files. This was the second time in as many weeks. Unlike the first attempt, which was a clumsy one from inside the building, this one was both sophisticated and successful.

“Shit!” he spat. Heart racing, Felix slapped the panic button to take the entire system offline and stanch the flow of data. Christ Almighty, this was exactly the kind of stuff that pushed Mr. Warren over the edge-the kind of thing that ended careers in a heartbeat. Hands trembling, he started right into his forensic work.

It would only be a few minutes before Mr. Warren responded to the identical alert he would have received on his pager. When he called, Felix’s only chance of continued employment would lie in his ability to trace down the origin of the attempt.

It took him two minutes to trace the hit back to the National Archives in Washington, DC. His heart sank. Using public facilities like that made it living would need to keep the fact of a kidnapping secret.”

The phone rang for a third time, and she picked it up. “Sheriff Bonneville, hold on a second, please.” She put the call on hold. To Jesse, she continued, “If word leaked out that someone had been nabbed, somebody would call the police, and then the contractor would lose control of his operation.”

Jesse’s defenses started to fall as he saw it, too. “And the real reason to use an independent contractor in the first place would be because the kidnappers warned not to involve the police.”

Gail smiled and winked. “Bingo.” She pushed the hold button again and brought the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. This is Sheriff Bonneville.”

“Medina.” The special agent in charge of the Chicago Field Office announced his name as if it were an accusation, but the sound of his voice brought pleasant memories to Gail’s mind. “You ready to have your world rocked?”

“I’m going to put you on speaker,” Gail said as she pressed the button. “I’m here with Jesse Collier.”

“Hey, Jess,” Medina said. “This kid you’re looking for, Thomas Hughes? Son of Stephenson and Julie Hughes?”

Gail glanced, and Jesse nodded. “That’s him,” she said.

“Well, when you find him, hold him, will you? His folks are murderers.”

Gail startled visibly. “What?”

“Yep, how’s that for a kick in the head? Looks like they murdered a woman, her two children, and their nanny in Muncie. Ugly scene, too. Early reports say torture.”

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “What the hell is going on, Vince?”

“Soon as I know, you’ll know. Just thought I’d share. It came up on ICIS if you want to track it. Gotta go.”

With the line silent, she felt pale.

“Love to hear a hypothesis on this one, Boss,” Jesse said.

Chapter Twenty-two

The security breach while surfing through the Carlyle site had shaken Venice. She’d wasted no time getting out of the Archives and back to the safety of Fisherman’s Cove. Safely back in her office now, she held her breath as she logged into the Interstate Crime Information System for an update on the Indiana investigation. Her stomach fell. By far the most critical investigation in the country-the one that was garnering the most bulletins and alerts-was Jonathan’s triple shooting in Samson, Indiana. Since the last time she’d signed in, authorities had figured out that the incident had involved a kidnapping, but it wasn’t obvious whether they thought the shooter was a rescuer or a kidnapper.

Even more startling was the fact that Indiana investigators had tied the name Thomas Hughes to the location of the shootings. They had him identified as a twenty-two-year-old college student from Ball State University, and he was currently being sought as a “person of interest,” which Venice knew from past experience was a label that spanned everything from potential witness to primary suspect. Whatever it meant in this case, it was not good news.

Thomas Hughes’s name on the screen was highlighted as a hyperlink, which usually foretold involvement in a second or related criminal investigation. When Venice clicked it, she gasped and brought her hand to her mouth after reading only the first two sentencepossible.

With her hands trembling from the sudden shot of adrenaline, she logged out of ICIS and pulled up the link for a super-encrypted telephone site. She donned her headset as her fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up Jonathan’s secure satellite phone.

The Hummer was a ridiculous waste of natural resources, Jonathan knew, but given the specific demands of his business and his addiction to high-tech toys, it was the only vehicle that would suffice. In addition to the armored doors and windows, he’d also equipped it with the latest in communication technology. He’d even thought to include a cipher-activated vault below the center console, in which he kept a supply of cash in case of emergencies. Right now, the vault held $25,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Boxers called it the Batmobile.

The hard-lined telephone mounted on the dash was an encrypted satellite phone that allowed him to freely discuss anything with anyone who had similar technology on the other end. Predictably, Boxers called it the Batphone.

And it was ringing.

A wrong number was impossible, but Jonathan nonetheless answered it on speakerphone with a noncommittal, “Yes.”

“Digger, it’s Venice. We’ve got a problem.”

He waited for it.

“The Hugheses are a family of murderers.”

As she drove toward Muncie, Gail Bonneville wasn’t sure what she expected to glean from the scene of the quadruple murder there, but when so many people were dead, and the single name of Hughes was tied to their murders, it was a lead that needed following.

This latest twist was a stunner. What had seemed so clearly to be an altruistic act of bravery on the part of her shooter in Samson suddenly looked like something else entirely. Three people murdered in the rescue of the son of murderers. What could that possibly mean? Every one of the conclusions she’d prematurely drawn to this point was now in question.

The trill of her cell phone annoyed her. One of the good things about long drives was the time it afforded for quiet thought. The caller ID showed her it was her office, but that somehow only heightened her sense of annoyance.

“Bonneville.”

“Collier.” Jesse matched her tone exactly, making her smile. “You in the mood for entertaining news?”

“I’d prefer ‘good’ to ‘entertaining,’” she said, “but I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

“When were tracking down all that flight information a while ago, I made some good contacts,” Jesse explained. “One of them just called to tell me that the Perseus Foods jet has filed a flight plan for a return trip to Indianapolis.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The murder scene on Detweiler Avenue in Muncie was as gruesome as faux FBI Agent Jonathan Grave had ever seen. The bodies were gone-shipped off to the morgue hours ago to be split open and rummaged through-leaving behind the dried pools, smears, and spatters of gore that were somehow more awful by themselves than they would have been with the corpses still presenters’ affections. At about 2,300 square feet on two levels, it was exactly the kind of house that middle-class Americans think of when they think suburbia. Outside, the place was likewise well kept, even if the grass was a little long-the fact that prompted a neighbor to realize that something might be wrong in the first place. In the eighteen hours since that poor Samaritan had peeked in the window and called the police, thousands of footsteps by dozens of police officers and emergency workers had destroyed the lawn, and the dozens of feet of crime scene tape had ruined the innocence.

Stan Hastings of the Muncie Police Department was lead detective on the case. Five-eleven and trim, with signs of gray in what was left of his elaborate comb-over, he looked to be about forty-five, and seemed none too pleased to be walking through the scene yet again. He’d asked the usual jurisdictional questions when Jonathan arrived with his FBI credentials, but was easily convinced that he was investigating a link between the Caldwells and the theft of classified information.

As he conducted the tour, Hastings clearly avoided looking at the gore. “Angela Caldwell and her two children, one six and the other three, and their nanny, Felicia Bourdain, a French citizen, all murdered,” Hastings explained. “The nanny was killed right here in the foyer,” he said, indicating the lake of dried blood on the tiled floor and the spray that reached all the way to the ceiling in spots. “We figure she was killed answering the door. One slash across her throat, and she just dropped.”

They moved through the living room into the tiny dining room with its hideously stained blue-and pink-flowered wall paper. “We found Angela, the mom, tied to that chair there at the head of the table. She was the worst one, by far. From what we can tell, she was tortured pretty brutally. Lots of deep cuts, and signs of beating, but only one fatal wound-another slashed throat.”

Jonathan saw the picture in his mind, and wished that he could make it go away. “What about the children?” he asked. Even as he spoke, he regretted asking. That he needed to know didn’t mean he wanted to.

Hastings’s eyes reddened, and he cleared his throat. “It looks like the baby was killed right away, too. But the little boy, well, we think the killer was hurting him to get information out of the mother.” He fell silent after that, and Jonathan could see his jaw muscles working hard. “Jesus, let’s get out of here, okay?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before he made a beeline for the back door and the rear deck. Jonathan followed closely behind. By the time he caught up, Hastings had his hands shoved deeply into his pants pockets and he was looking very sheepish.

“You okay, Detective?” Jonathan asked.

He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been bit by a case.”

Jonathan smiled and shrugged. “It happens.”

He snorted. “Yeah, well, people see you being soft, and they’ll expect you to start being human and shit. God only knows what would happen then.”

Jonathan gave the cop a few seconds. A barking dog next door filled the silence. “So, how do you tie Stephenson Hughes to this murder? Just the fingerprints?”

“Him and his wife both,” Hastings corrected. “Neighbors saw their car parof business.”

Bunting’s eyes hardened. He had famously low tolerance for empty words.

“He’s at his headquarters-”

“His cult commune?” Bunting interrupted.

“Exactly.” Again Charlie opted not to sniff the bait. “He’s assembled a team, on his own dime, I might add. As soon as he knows where Hughes is, he’s going to move. Stephenson got the drop on him by surprise the first time. There’s no way Ivan will let that happen again.”

Bunting was shaking his head. Clearly, he had less confidence in their contractor’s abilities.

Charlie went on, “At least the police have connected the Hugheses to Angela’s murder. That’ll keep them from seeking help from the law. That’ll buy us some time. We just have to hope they don’t act against their own best interests and call them anyway.”

Bunting scowled and shook off the possibility. “That won’t happen,” he said. “Or if it does, he’ll wish he didn’t.”

Charlie waited for the elaboration.

“Turns out we’re not alone in this,” Bunting said. “I spoke with a friend of mine on the Senate Armed Services Committee. I explained in general terms what we were facing, and he understood the political fallout if details of PATRIOT were to leak out. He spent the day making calls of his own, and it turns out that the Justice Department is on our side, too. If Hughes surfaces, he’ll be disappeared before he can say a word.”

Charlie realized that his mouth was open, and he hurried to close it. When the word disappeared is used that way in a sentence, it only means one thing. The image of Guantanamo materialized in his head. “My,” he said. “How…fortunate.”

“What’s the plan if Hughes never gets stupid?” Bunting asked. “What’s Ivan’s plan then?”

Again, Charlie knew the answer. “Depends on how long it takes,” he said. “If it goes on for more than a week or two, I’m guessing he goes on the run himself.”

Bunting raised an eyebrow, confused.

“Seems he already accepted payment from someone who wants to buy his”-Charlie used finger quotes-“GVX. All I know is it’s a North African”-more finger quotes-“client who is quick to think he’s been double-crossed. If Ivan doesn’t deliver what he’s already been paid for, it’s likely to get ugly.”

Bunting smiled. He clearly liked the idea of Ivan Patrick getting a taste of his own medicine. Then the smile went away. “So, what’s this meeting about? What’s this new complication?”

Charlie steeled himself with a deep breath. “The sphere of knowledgeable people has expanded.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

A beat. “It means that a private investigator from a place called Fisherman’s Cove, Virginia, hacked into our e-mail server this afternoon and downloaded the precise e-mails that detail our initial conversations with Ivan. The security office was able to shut them out before they got everything, but they got enough to worry me.”

The redness in Bunting’s ears deepened, but his demeanor remained calm. “Do you have a name and an address about Digger,” she said.

“Don’t we all.”

“No, I mean I really worry about him. I think he’s gotten himself in over his head.” She relayed the results of her search at the Archives. “That’s seven murders, all related,” she finished. She went on to explain Jonathan’s confrontation with the sheriff who most wanted to see her boss put in jail. “He just scares me to death.”

Dom considered the details. “He’s always been a daredevil, Ven. Ever since college. In his mind, if he’s not pushing the envelope, he’s standing still.”

She gave him a look. “You sound like you admire him.”

He shrugged. “Of course I admire him. He’s the closest friend I’ve ever had.”

“Then you should talk some sense into him.”

Dom laughed. “Yeah, right after I cure world hunger, and figure out how to keep the tide from coming in, I’ll get right to talking sense into Digger Grave.” A beat. “So, when does he get in?”

“His flight arrives at ten-something at Dulles.”

Dom laughed again. “Digger flying commercial. I wonder if he even knows how it works.”

Venice allowed herself a laugh as well. “What about Box? How’d you like to be in the center seat next to him?” As if Boxers would dream of traveling in coach.

They walked for the better part of a block in silence, ascending the gentle slope away from the river before finally turning onto Pine Avenue, the world becoming a dark tree-formed tunnel where the only illumination came from porch lights receded in the blackness on either side.

“How comfortable are you with this notion that the Hugheses are a family of killers?” Dom asked.

“Not even a little,” Venice answered. “Intuitively, I can’t make it work in my mind. People who care that much about their child aren’t going to murder two children. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Maybe it didn’t happen that way,” Dom offered.

“You know what Digger says about coincidences,” Venice said. “They don’t exist. All events are linked all the time.”

Dom nodded. He could hear Jonathan’s voice saying it. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s accept that as gospel. There are no coincidences. Let’s also agree that the Hugheses would never kill two children. That means that the coincidence is linked, but we just don’t know how.”

Venice stopped. Her eyes had grown huge as Dom’s logic hit home.

The wideness of her eyes made him laugh. “Would you mind terribly if I helped?” he asked.

Fifteen minutes later, they were in the third floor of the firehouse, Dom perched in a chair behind Venice, watching over her shoulder. They worked without a break for three hours, uncovering exactly the kind of details they were hoping for. When Jonathan arrived from the airport, they’d blow him clear out of his shoes with the tidbits they’d been able to find. Dom had never seen Venice so animated.

Then Mama Alexander called from the mansion, and everything changed.

All things considered, the flight to Dulles passed quickly. For good or ill, Jonathan and Boxers both ended up on the same flight out of Chicago, direct into Washington Dulles International Airport. They both sat in coach, hesitated. It wasn’t until he saw Dom there with her that his blood turned to ice. Never in all the years that he’d been running missions-whether for Uncle or for himself-had Dom D’Angelo shown up to greet him at the airport. There was no waving, no smiles. Venice looked as if she might have been crying. Dom looked as if he were about to. The priest stepped ahead to get to Jonathan first.

“What is it?” Jonathan asked, knowing the answer already.

Behind Dom, Venice started to cry in earnest. “Let’s sit down,” Dom said quietly.

“Nope, right here,” Jonathan said.

Dom reached out for Jonathan’s elbow, urging him toward the chairs. “Sitting is better,” he said.

“Is it Ellen?” Jonathan asked. It was written all over their faces, but he had to hear it. Even better, he had to hear that he was wrong.

Dom cast a look to Venice, and then locked his gaze with Jonathan. “She died at 9:30 this evening, Dig. She never regained consciousness. I’m so sorry.”

Jonathan stared, unblinking, as the words moved in slow motion. It was exactly as he had feared, but expecting and realizing were nowhere near the same shade on the emotional color chart. One did not prepare you for the other. As the frigid fist clutched more tightly at his guts, he locked his jaw and forced his emotions back into the depths where they belonged.

Dom cocked his head. “Dig?”

Venice moved closer, her arms outstretched to offer a hug. “Digger, I’m so, so sorry.”

Jonathan stopped her with a raised palm. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s not exactly a surprise.” Something caught in his voice, but he was able to speak past it. He turned and started walking toward the exit. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

“Dig?” Dom called.

He kept walking. He didn’t want to talk to people right now. He didn’t want to be anywhere near people right now. Well, maybe one person. Come to think of it, he couldn’t wait to be very close to Ivan Patrick.

“Jon!” When Jonathan didn’t slow, the priest trotted to catch up. “Look, Dig, I really think we need to talk.”

Jonathan forced a smile. “Is that your priest hat or your shrink hat talking?”

“It’s my friend hat. And I’m tired of you walking away from me when I’m trying to help.”

Jonathan turned on the priest. “Gonna analyze me, Father? Gonna take my confession? Gonna hold my hand, kiss my boo-boo, and make it all better?”

Dom’s eyes reflected the anger projected toward them. “Yeah,” he said. “A little of all of the above.”

“Well don’t bother. I’ve seen death before. Hell, I’ve wallowed in it.”

“A superhero,” Dom mocked.

“A realist. Ellen’s dead. I got it. And she’ll still be dead tomorrow and a year from now. If I need a psychiatric couch along the way, I’ll look you up.” In his peripheral vision, he could see Boxers arriving and pulling up short next to Venice.

“Jon, for God’s sake-” All around them, other passengers swerved to avoid them, a human current flexing to avoid rocks in the stream. Those who were observant enough responded to the obvious tension with a concerned second look.

“Do you want me to walk you through all the stages of grief, Dom? I know about the anger and the guilt and the denial. I’ve lived ’em all before, and I’m sure I’ll live them all again. would just be stuck with the awkwardness of it all.

“You okay, Boss?” the big man asked.

Jonathan pivoted his head to look at him, but he said nothing.

Boxers sighed. “I’m sorry you’re hurting like this.”

“You didn’t even like her,” Jonathan said. He could hear the whininess in his own voice and it embarrassed him.

“No, I never did,” Boxers confessed. “I never came close to liking her. And the way she treated you when she left, well, that didn’t help. But that don’t mean I don’t hurt when you hurt.”

This time, when Jonathan turned to face the big man, he allowed himself a gentle smile.

“You’re my friend, Dig. That makes you a rare friggin’ breed. I hate seein’ you in pain.”

A feeling of warmth washed over Jonathan. He didn’t think he’d ever heard a more heartfelt expression of empathy.

“There’s somethin’ else you should know,” Boxers continued. “Time comes you want to get revenge on the asshole who killed her, you know I’m there.”

Glow Bird beat them home, and when Jonathan and his chauffeur entered the firehouse, Venice, Dom, and JoeDog were already in the living room, waiting for them. Jonathan paused in the entryway and sighed as the dog scrabbled off the sofa and charged to meet him. He knew they were there to see him through his emotional crisis, but he was not in the mood.

“Not tonight, guys. I really want to be alone.”

“I don’t think you do,” Venice said.

Jonathan scowled.

Dom elaborated, “Before we got the news about Ellen, we did some brainstorming.”

“We?”

“Dom and I,” Venice said. “We were trying to make the pieces fit. And I think we did.”

Jonathan waited for it.

“We know that Stephenson Hughes needed the GVX as ransom,” Dom began.

Venice quickly interrupted, “And that Ivan Patrick worked for Carlyle in a special capacity for something called Special Projects.”

Dom leaned back in his seat, and let her have the floor.

“So, working from the assumption that there are no coincidences in the world, since Angela Caldwell worked for Carlyle, too-”

“She was the one who knew how to get their hands on it,” Jonathan said, connecting the dots for himself.

“So, the Hugheses did kill her,” Boxers said. “They tortured her to get the information.”

Venice shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. She had a family. She was a mother. I think all they had to do was tell her what they were up against, and she gave them the information. Somehow, Ivan Patrick must have found out about it, and then he was the one who tortured and killed them to find out what she’d told the Hugheses.” Her eyes bored into Jonathan, seeking assurance that her logic was sound.

“It certainly explains the brutality-Ivan’s MO,” Jonathan agreed. “If that’s the way it went down.”

“Tell him about the other shootings,” Dom prompted.

Venice leaned forward, her eyes wide. “No coincidences, right? Well, using this hunch, I did a little more poking around the ICIS network and I found even more activity around the“No, but a shooting-sort of. A half of a shooting.” Jonathan’s face showed his waning patience, so Venice picked up the pace. “A 9-1-1 call reported a shooting at a place called Apocalypse Boulevard in a town I don’t remember. Then, while units were still responding, the call got canceled. The caller called back and said that they were mistaken, and that everything was okay. The dispatcher turned the ambulance around, but the cop car went on in anyway just to check things out. According to their report, the people they met there at the gate-employees of a security firm-seemed agitated, but they swore that everything was fine, and the cops had no grounds to press their suspicions any further.”

“But you don’t believe that things were fine,” Jonathan concluded for her.

Venice nodded. “Exactly. Because there are no coincidences. I did a Zillow search on the address.” Jonathan recognized the name of the real estate search engine. “Care to guess what that address used to be?”

“An Indian burial ground,” Jonathan grumped.

“A Nike missile launch facility. It’s all in the public record. Back in the eighties and nineties, we got rid of all our Nike missiles, and the sites went up for sale. This one, on Apocalypse Boulevard, was bought by Secured Storage Company out of Wilmington, Delaware.”

“Interesting company name,” Boxers poked. “I wonder what they do.”

“Delaware,” Venice stressed. Clearly, she was frustrated that they hadn’t already leaped to where she was going. “Carlyle is a Delaware company.”

Jonathan coughed out a laugh. “Jesus, Ven, half the companies in the world are Delaware corporations.”

“Which makes it that much easier to do the search,” she countered. “Secured Storage Company is a subsidiary-several steps removed, of course-of Carlyle Industries. They’re the same company!”

Finally, Jonathan got it. “Missiles mean underground storage magazines,” he said. “That’s where Carlyle was storing the GVX.”

“When the Hugheses went there to get it, there must have been an exchange of gunfire,” Dom said.

“So what’s with the phone call to 9-1-1?” Boxers asked. “And if there someone was shot, why un-call?”

“Because they didn’t want the publicity,” Jonathan explained. “Every state requires gunshot wounds to be reported to the police, mandating some kind of investigation. That’s the last thing a company like Carlyle would want.”

The room grew silent except for JoeDog’s snoring as they each put the puzzle together for themselves.

Finally, Jonathan test-drove his own theory aloud. “Desperate to get their kid back, the Hugheses reach out to Angela Caldwell. She points them in the right direction, and pays for the decision with her life. Obviously, they visited her at her house, or else their fingerprints wouldn’t be all over the place. Then they went to this Apocalypse Boulevard place and took what they needed for ransom.”

“Shooting the place up while doing it,” Boxers said.

“Right,” Jonathan agreed. “So now the Hugheses are hiding somewhere. They can’t call the police without walking into a murder charge, and they’ve either stashed their GVX somewhere, or they’refolder. “Facial recognition software turned up bupkis on your pal Leon Harris. Absolutely nothing. So, I decided to run the other faces. This is what I got.”

Gail waited for him to open his file and select a facedown piece of paper. She turned it over and saw a mug she vaguely recognized. She scowled and waited for her answer without asking the question.

“The priest,” Jesse said. “From the video. You are looking at one Father Dominc D’Angelo, pastor of St. Katherine’s Catholic Church in a place called Fisherman’s Cove, Virginia. Don’t ask where it is, because I don’t have a clue. The picture you’re looking at is from a fund-raiser for something called Resurrection House. It’s an orphanage, sort of, for kids whose parents are serving time in jail.”

“How sweet,” Gail said.

“Hey, it’s a start,” Jesse said. Then he smiled. “But it’s only the beginning. Clearly Leon and Father D’Angelo know each other, right? So I thought I’d search the Internet for the cross section of Dominic D’Angelo and Fisherman’s Cove. Actually, there were more hits than I would have thought. For a priest, he really gets around on the rubber chicken circuit. He’s like a fund-raising machine. He’s also a psychologist, for what that’s worth.”

“Is it worth anything?”

Jesse shrugged. “I suppose if you’re crazy, but not so much for us right now.”

“Then why-”

“Stay with me. I’m getting there. I wasn’t finding anything to link him to Leon, and I traced him back as far as I knew how to trace. Finally, I found an alumni newspaper from the College of William and Mary from sometime in the mid-eighties. They were running some kind of a retrospective of the Good Old Days, you know?” His smile broadened, and he slid another sheet face down to Gail. “And look what I found.”

With a sense of real anticipation in her gut, Gail turned the sheet over and found a picture of two clearly intoxicated college students. The clothing styles spoke of the last days of disco. These two boys were laughing heartily, hanging off each other in that way that you never see in guys who are much beyond their teens.

“Don’t you see it?” Jesse prompted.

Then she did. The caption identified them by name. The dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty on the left was a younger version of Father D’Angelo. And the shirtless blond Adonis on the right was a very young Leon Harris-only his name on the page was Jonathan Gravenow.

“Oh, my,” Gail beamed. “Look what you found. Nice work, Jess. Wonderful work. Now we have a name for the face.”

Jesse shook his head. “Actually, we don’t,” he said. “Jonathan Gravenow doesn’t exist. Nowhere in the world.”

“But I just saw him.”

Jesse’s smile got even broader. “No,” he said as he slid a third sheet of paper across the desk, “you just saw Jonathan Grave.”

This new sheet of paper looked to be articles of incorporation for a company called Security Solutions, a Virginia corporation headquartered in none other than Fisherman’s Cove.

“This one was a little tricky,” Jesse said, exuding pride. “Jonathan Gravenow was the only child of Simon Gravenow. Does that name ring a bell, Miss FBI?”

It didn’t ring a bell, name to Jonathan Grave, and he joined the Army. Twenty years later, he owns a private investigation company. Now, what kind of investigation firm do you suppose a former Army guy might run?”

This time, Gail saw it immediately. People like that were exactly the folks who would get into the paramilitary business. The kind of business that might specialize in rescuing wayward hostages. It was time to find Fisherman’s Cove on the map and make a plane reservation.

She was about to say something to that effect when her phone rang. Even as she reached for the receiver, she had the sense that she should have ignored it.

Thirty seconds later, she cursed herself for not listening to her instincts.

Venice didn’t try to conceal her pride for what she’d accomplished. “I knew you’d want to track the Hugheses,” she said, “so I worked the problem. I was hoping that they’d done something really stupid like using their credit cards, but obviously they haven’t, or the police would have been all over them. They’ve been pretty smart. The only record of unusual behavior is their withdrawal of twelve thousand dollars and change from their savings account. Pretty much wiped out their cash supply.”

“That’s their traveling money,” Boxers said.

She continued, “I tried tracking the cell phones owned by each of them, but they’ve either turned them off or thrown them away. Either way, there’s no signal to triangulate on.”

Jonathan asked, “What about the number I called at the end of the 0300 mission?”

“That’s one of those prepaid disposable jobs-thank God you called it, or we’d have nothing even to look for-but it’s turned off, too. Even so, it got me thinking. If they know enough to keep their cell phones off and to use prepaids, then they’d probably buy more than one of them, right? One for Stephenson Hughes and one for his wife, Julie.” She waited for the nods. “So, with a little help from a friend of mine in the telephone company, I did a search on the telephone numbers that were called by Stephenson’s prepaid, and guess what I found?”

Jonathan feigned patience because it was easiest. “What?”

“That he called another prepaid disposable phone.”

“The wife?”

“That would be my guess. Anyway, those calls-there were three of them altogether, beginning shortly after your call to Stephenson, with the last one about thirty hours ago-gave us a routing to look at.”

“Where the signals began and ended,” Dom explained.

Venice nodded. “Exactly. And it got interesting. The other end of the call-the receiving end in every case-was from different locations, starting in Indiana, and moving in a rough line north and east. The originating end of the calls all came from the same tower combinations in southwestern Pennsylvania.”

“Pittsburgh?” Jonathan asked.

“Not Pittsburgh per se,” Venice said, “but from that general area. In the mountains.” She reached under the coffee table and found the atlas that Jonathan always kept there, and sear became even more animated. “That part of the state is in pretty tough shape economically. You don’t have neighborhoods like we know them. Up in the mining country there are lots and lots of old homesteads, but they tend to be on big tracts of land. Dozens of acres, if not hundreds.”

Jonathan found his patience waning, but he hung in there.

“I know, I know,” Venice said, reading his body language. “Get to the point. Well, I am, believe it or not. Because the land tracts are so large, there are only a few that could possibly be the source of Stephenson’s signal.”

“Unless he’s decided to bivouac,” Boxers said.

Venice waved a dismissive hand. “Trust me,” she said. “He didn’t. He decided instead to use an old family home up there in the woods.”

“His family?” Boxers asked.

“Why haven’t the police found him?” Jonathan added.

She beamed. “Because it’s deeded to Alistair DuBois,” she said. “Not to Stephenson Hughes.”

Jonathan recoiled. “Who the hell is Alistair Dubois?”

“Stephenson Hughes’s mother’s father.”

“Holy shit,” Boxers barked.

Dom laughed. “Isn’t she amazing? Honest to goodness, it only took her about forty-five minutes to piece all of this together. I watched her do it.”

Jonathan’s mouth gaped. “What kind of twisted logic gets you to places like that?”

She shrugged. “I cheated. I started with the assumption that he had a plan that made sense.” She shot a look to Boxers. “One that made more sense than bivouacking, anyway, which meant that there was probably some property that they had access to. If that were the case, then I figured that it would be family property, else how would they know about it? Based on that assumption, I started with the tax records for the most likely tracts, and then I worked backward through a genealogy search. The answer came pretty fast.”

Jonathan gaped. “You never cease to amaze me.”

She beamed.

“You up for doing some more magic?”

Her face fell. “Like what?”

“Like finding me everything you can about a place in West Virginia known as Brigadeville.” It took less than a minute to share the spotty information he’d learned from Andrew Hawkins.

Venice scowled. “That’s not much to go on.”

“You saying you can’t?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m insulted,” she said.

“I thought you might be.” Jonathan looked at his watch. “It’s seven-fifteen now. Let’s meet again in three hours and see where we are.”

Now she looked shocked. “You know it’s seven fifteen in the evening, right?”

Jonathan stood. “Three hours and fifteen minutes, then. You, Box, and I will meet up in the office at ten thirty.” He looked to Boxers. “That work for you, big guy?”

He stood, too. “Doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of choice.”

“Then I’m communicating,” Jonathan said. “Now, if y’all don’t mind, I’d like some time alone.”

The mood in the room. Her eyes should have been closed-or nearly closed, with perhaps a half-moon of iris showing above or below her eyelid. The flaccid flesh of her face should have brought her thin nose and high cheekbones into sharp relief. In Jonathan’s mind the dead never looked at rest so he didn’t expect that, but he did expect a look of peace. With the frowning muscles as lifeless as their smiling counterparts, he expected a deathly smoothness to her face.

Yet he found none of that.

Ellen’s face was barely a face at all; it was a bloated purple eruption of battered tissue. On her left side, the one closest to Jonathan, the cheekbone, eye socket, and brow had merged into a blood-filled globe. In the middle of the mass, the slit that was once the opening between her lids appeared to be glued shut. The angle of her jaw told him that it had been badly broken and wired back, and the odd cast of her lips was a clear indication that her teeth had been broken.

Looking at her like this, Jonathan understood why no one wanted him to be here. No one should ever have to see a loved one in a condition like this. Emotion blossomed behind his eyes, but it wasn’t driven by sadness. There was some of that, sure, but the redness of his eyes was all anger, as was the tightly locked jaw and the fists that he didn’t realize he’d clenched. He inhaled deeply and noisily, suddenly aware that for a long while he hadn’t been breathing at all.

“Sir, are you all right?” Jimmy asked. He looked terrified that he might have to care for the living instead of the dead.

Jonathan glared at him, at the long thin neck. Inexplicably, he thought how easy it would be snap it. One blow was all it would take. Or one violent twist. In his mind he could see himself doing it.

He shook the thought away. This wasn’t a time for violence. Certainly not against this clean-cut kid who’d tried every way he’d known to keep Jonathan away from this very moment. No, the time for violence would come later.

“I’m fine,” Jonathan said, returning his gaze to Ellen.

“You don’t look fine,” Jimmy said.

Jonathan didn’t answer. Instead, he turned on his heel and left the only woman he’d ever loved behind him on the gurney. He didn’t want to watch as Jimmy pulled the zipper shut again.

On the other side of the heavy door, in the paper-and equipment-strewn office, he nearly collided with Detective Weatherby of the Fairfax County Police Department.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Gail had never met the woman who stepped out of the shadows on her porch, but she recognized her on sight. “My goodness,” Gail stammered. “Director Rivers.” She extended her hand to the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the country. “What an honor.”

FBI Director Irene Rivers returned the handshake warmly and smiled. “The honor is mine, Sheriff Bonneville.”

Gail flushed. She found herself oddly speechless in the presence of the woman whom she admired perhaps more than any other. “Madame Director. Why are you here?” she asked, and then winced at the seeming rudeness.

“Please dispense with the ‘Madam Directorre the other day. That must be very unsettling in a community this small.”

“I’d think it’s unsettling in any community,” Gail said.

Irene gestured up the steps toward the front door. “May I invite myself inside for a chat?”

Gail gave a little start and headed for the steps. “Where are my manners? Yes, please come inside.”

They settled at the kitchen table because that was the only room that was furnished. Irene Rivers told her that she loved the place. Gail smiled and offered a soft drink, which the director refused, and they settled in to the business at hand.

“I know how difficult your last few days have been,” Irene started. “I’ve run high-profile cases myself over the years, and the pressure to produce results can be overwhelming.”

Gail crossed her arms and leaned them on the table. As her head cleared from celebrity shock, she decided to resist small talk. This was not a social call, after all. “Does this meeting have something to do with the shootings?” she asked.

Irene ignored the question. “Can I trust that what we discuss here in the next few minutes will remain in this room?”

“Absolutely not,” Gail said, surprised to hear her own words. “Not until I know what you’re about to say. My first allegiance is no longer to the Bureau.”

Irene arched her eyebrows and smirked. It was a look of admiration, not derision. “Why am I not surprised?” she said. She regrouped her thoughts. “Okay, then, tell me who you think the killer is.”

Gail hesitated, but she wasn’t sure why. “By name?”

Irene cocked her head. “Could you answer by name?”

The sheriff nodded. “I think so.”

“Then no,” Irene said. She looked a little embarrassed. “You’ll see when we’re done that I’ll need plausible deniability. Tell me instead where your deductive path has led you.”

Deductive path, Gail thought. How very Bureau-speak. Her eyes narrowed as she weighed her options. “I must confess, Madam Dir-” She cut herself off. “I’m not entirely comfortable sharing those details. Not at this stage of the investigation.”

“Because the Bureau has a history of, what, screwing people over?” Irene ventured. “Because we have a history of hogging credit when things go well and of passing the buck when they go sour?”

The director’s bluntness startled Gail. “Well, yes,” she said.

“I don’t blame you. As you might imagine, when you sit in my chair in the Emerald City you learn to trust your instincts on whom you trust and whom you don’t. In this case, I’m asking for the benefit of reasonable doubt.”

Gail liked this woman. She had always respected Irene Rivers, and after the shoot-out that involved the death of her predecessor in the job, the whole world had come to admire the woman’s courage under fire. “Okay,” Gail said at length. “I think that our shooter is a professional of a very high order. I think that he has advanced tactical training, perhaps Special Forces, perhaps HRT or SWAT. He knows how to make a big entry, and he knows how to shoot extremely well. He also did not work alone. He appears to have arrived by helicopter.”

Irene nodded and pinched her lower lip as she listened. “So you this.”

This is what Alice must have felt like as she stepped through the looking glass. “And the perpetrators? I still have my constituents to answer to.”

“Of course. They’ve left the country. You should be furious about that, by the way. You should be over-the-moon pissed that the FBI didn’t clue you in on the operation they were performing, and I’m willing to go on the record telling the world what a pain in the ass you’ve been dragging information out of us. That should play well here, don’t you think?”

“You’ll make me look like Superman.”

Irene shook her head. “Not at all. I’ll use a little fiction to reinforce what we both know is the truth. You’re the best law enforcement professional that this community has ever seen.”

Gail laughed. “Oh, now you sweet-talk me. You’ll help to lock in my career, and all I have to do is sell my soul.”

Irene folded her face into a concerned frown. “A career is a poker game, Gail. You can’t expect to win every hand. Sometimes you have to fold to preserve resources for the future.”

Gail studied Irene. “How do I know you’re not bluffing?”

“You don’t,” Irene said. “But I’m not. I’ve got it all-the cards, the cash, and the table. You really, truly want to sit out this hand.”

“And what about the other murders?” Gail asked. “The Caldwells? I can link Jonathan Grave to those deaths via the Hughes family.”

The news clearly startled Irene, and Gail was sorry that she’d said anything. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “How are they linked?”

Sensing the upper hand and loving it, Gail smiled. “I don’t believe I’ll share that with you,” she said.

Irene shook it off. “I don’t know who this Jonathan person is,” she lied, “but whatever you think you know, I guarantee you’re wrong.”

“Yet you’ll stipulate, I assume, that Stephenson and Julie Hughes are connected to the Caldwell murders.”

Irene hesitated. Gail could almost see the gears whirring in her head as she tried to work for position.

“I’ve already spoken to the investigating officer in Muncie, Irene,” Gail said, sealing the deal. “He wants to nail the Hugheses. His Hugheses are the parents of Thomas Hughes. Jonathan Grave rescued Thomas Hughes and killed the Patrones in the process. That links them all.”

Irene stood. Her features iced over. “Sheriff Bonneville,” she said as she walked toward the front door, “I’m going to offer one last bit of advice, and I’m going to beg you to listen to it carefully.” She turned.

Gail suppressed a shiver.

“Know when it’s time to stop pushing,” she said. “There are some answers to which you simply are not entitled.”

She let herself out.

Chapter Thirty

Detective Weatherby sat on the front corner of the ancient metal desk, one foot on the floor and the other swinging in an exaggerated display of pated his hand.

Jonathan accepted it, and the detective’s grip closed like a talon. “But about that killing thing,” Weatherby said, trying to pull Jonathan in closer but damn near getting pulled off the desk himself. “I meant what I said before. Vengeance is mine, saith the Fairfax County Police Department. You start hurting people, and I guarantee I will become your very worst enemy.”

Doug put a hand on each of their chests and pushed them apart. “Enough!” he commanded. “Jesus, Weatherby, what’s with you?”

“I just want your friend to know that we don’t need his help.”

“I have no intention of helping you,” Jonathan said. “You have my word.”

The detective’s grip relaxed and he scowled again at the double meaning buried in Jonathan’s words.

Doug Kramer said, “I don’t know who you think this man is, Weatherby, but he’s not your enemy. Hell, as far as I know, there’s no one alive who thinks of him as an enemy.”

A double entendre of his own, Jonathan thought. Just how much did Doug Kramer know about his business?

“You need somebody to vouch for his character,” Doug went on, “you just ask me. I’ve known him since we were kids. He’s not someone for you to worry about.”

Jonathan pulled his hand away. “It’s time for me to go,” he said. “Thank you for your kind words, Weatherby.”

The detective stayed behind while Jonathan led the way back to Doug’s cruiser. When they were inside and on their way, the chief asked, “As bad as you feared? Ellen, I mean?”

Jonathan looked at him across the console and sighed. “Worse.”

Doug kept his eyes on the road. “I’m really sorry, Dig.”

Jonathan nodded and joined him in watching the lane stripes on the Beltway zoom past. They remained silent all the way to the I-95 turnoff before Doug started talking again. “You know, Jon, there’s not a soul in the Cove who’s not hurting for you over what happened to Ellen. It’s just not right.” His voice was at once serious and soft. Jonathan wasn’t sure he’d ever heard that tone before.

He felt his throat thicken. “Thank you.”

The cop’s eyes shifted from the road to bore right through his passenger. “I’m not done yet. If there’s anything I can do to help you-I mean, anything, you just let me know, and it’s yours.” He started looking at traffic again. “I’ve never known much officially about the work you do, but most people in town know about the work you used to do. There’s been talk about why you quit early, but the Cove is proud of you, Dig. Proud and pleased to call you their friend. You know what I’m trying to tell you?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I’m not sure I do.”

Doug sighed. “And I’m not sure how to tell you, because it’s not something I can tell you, if you catch my drift. I just wanted you to know that under circumstances like this, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and whatever that means, you’ve got friends who’ll back you up.”

Jesus, Jonathan thought, Doug just offered to cover up a murder.

Gail opened her front door and found Jesse Collier standing there, slightly out of breath. “Thanks for coming,” she said, and ushered him inside.

“Thanclarified.

“Fine,” she said. She tapped her keyboard and the screen filled with an aerial photograph. “This comes from the SkysEye network,” she said, “and it’s only about an hour old. I think this is Ivan Patrick’s playground. Brigadeville, right? It’s the only patch of real estate that came close to fitting what your friend in the alley told you.”

“Andrew Hawkins,” Jonathan reminded her. SkysEye was a commercial mapping company that anyone with the financial means could access for the going rate of twenty grand a year for an open license, plus a usurious tasking fee every time they wanted a picture. The private satellite network was a recent startup headed by Lee Burns, one of the original Unit members who hadn’t seen action in two decades. At various high and low orbits, SkysEye satellites could count the dimples on a golf ball anywhere on the planet. Lee’s largest customers came from the petroleum industry, which used the network to locate the kinds of geological formations that looked like money. Given the founder’s background in Special Forces, Jonathan worried that Lee might have sold his services to a few bad guys over the years-after all, finding geological formations wasn’t a lot different than precision targeting-but he’d have never stated his concerns aloud. He owed that much to a brother in arms.

What was most remarkable about the SkysEye imaging-what set it apart from other commercial sites-was its ability to provide real-time imaging that refreshed every four minutes. Through extrapolation and a little guesswork, you could determine whether a particular piece of real estate was currently occupied, how many vehicles were there, whether or not there was an active power plant, and a host of other details that were of value to an invader. It was nowhere near as helpful as the SatCom images he’d used back in the day, but it was a close second.

Accessing the pictures was only the beginning. The real trick lay in manipulating the images to deliver the highest resolution. The raw images were little more than a tableau of treetops, the thick foliage making ground details difficult to discern. To learn useful details, Venice superimposed a thermal imaging view that showed the presence of three dozen individual buildings of varying size and shape. Using that data, a smart CAD system was able to make an accurate sketch of the entire area. The overall layout reminded him of old Army posts from the days of the Indian wars. An open space anchored the middle of the complex, with most buildings arranged in concentric ovals. In the back corner, far from the other structures, two buildings stood alone.

“They look like munitions storage,” Jonathan observed, pointing to the screen.

“They’ve got themselves a damn city,” Boxers said. “We can’t take that. Not the two of us.”

Truer words were never spoken.

The next step in building the computer image was to superimpose data from the public record onto the satellite image. That way, they could locate the known roads, as well as-if they were so inclined-the location of the septic fields, the aquifers, and even family burial plots. If it was in an accessible database, they could put it on the map.

Finally, with the entire infrastructure in place on the screen, the program used data from the U.S. Geological Survey to add elevation data. When Venice was done, they had a three-dimensional rendering of the area that could be rotated in any direction, for either a plan view or a more useful elevation view.

“No fuckin’ way,” Boxers said.

And it wasn’t just a matter of real estate. The map showed the heat signatures of several dozen people sleeping in the various walking along the street. The two of them together would undoubtedly spook his prey.

He didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, he heard the sound of a door opening and closing, followed a few seconds later by the sound of a substantial lock being turned. A moment later, he saw the woman he’d been waiting for. She turned the corner to walk up the hill where he was stationed, but on the opposite side of the street. She walked hurriedly, with her head down. She looked preoccupied to Charlie, oblivious to him or his car or the night air or anything else that was not going on inside her head. He waited for her to get fifty yards ahead, and then he followed. He stayed on his side of the street; he never tried to close the gap between them.

He thought about how easy it would be to wreak havoc in a town like this. Watching her navigate the night as if there were no danger lurking, he thought about how easy it would be to take her. To have her. No doubt about it, she was hot in her own right. All he’d have to do, he wagered, would be to walk up to her and ask her for the time. She’d stop to help and then he could make her pay for the mistake. He imagined it was that way for everyone in this little burg. People who’ve never known violence never stop to think about it. It was the kind of naïveté that conquerors dreamed of.

But tonight, his mission was not conquest; it was intelligence gathering. This was the night when he would come to know his enemy.

His earbud buzzed, “How’s it going?”

“Keep the channel clear,” he hissed, hoping that his annoyance came through. If he needed help from Frick and Frack, he’d ask for it. Meanwhile, he just wanted them to quietly do their jobs.

He was across the street from a church now, St. Katherine’s Catholic. It was a big place with spires and the kind of traditional architecture that you just don’t see much anymore. As the Alexander chick walked past, she slowed and looked across the vast lawn, as if hoping to see someone.

Her pace slowed even more as she approached the walkway that led across an even bigger lawn and then to the wraparound porch of a mansion that made Tara from Gone with the Wind look like a guest cottage. The place had to be 12,000 square feet, and it seemed to stretch forever. It was difficult to make out details in the darkness, but the house painted a hell of a stain against the sky.

Charlie found himself staring in disbelief as he watched his prey climb those stairs, navigate the walk, and then disappear through the front door. “Just how successful can the private investigating business be?” he mumbled aloud.

Gail Bonneville had to admit that she loved the town. Fisherman’s Cove was the kind of place she thought of when she thought of a quaint riverside refuge. She loved the fact that New World efficiency had not yet run off Old World charm. She could see why a man like Jonathan Grave would be drawn to a place like this, even if she couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around why a town like this would want a man like Jonathan Grave as a resident.

“I wish I knew what those guys were up to,” Jesse Collier said yet again. When they’d arrived in Fisherman’s Cove forty-five minutes ago, they’d noticed the Mercury parked across the street from the firehouse that served as the offices of Security Solutions and according to the public record also doubled as Jonathan Grave’s residence. From that very first moment, they’d assumed that someone else was surveilling the place, but they couldn’t be certain if they were working for Grave or against him.

Rather than litter the street with a second susations through the very kind of diplomacy that he pretended to hate. He’d also seen him wreak a special kind of havoc after the other side failed to realize that the “negotiation” was in fact the terms of their surrender. Boxers was the wrong guy to point a gun at.

Glancing at his GPS locator, Jonathan pointed up the hill and they started walking.

“Suppose they don’t want to fight?” Boxers asked.

“Then we’re carrying way too much firepower.”

“No, I don’t mean now. I mean at all. Suppose they’re not up for this battle you’re planning?”

Jonathan had thought about that. “Everybody’ll fight if the stakes are high enough,” he said.

“But not everybody’s good at it.”

Jonathan shrugged. “If it falls that way, we’ll all share a righteously shitty day.” He could speak this bluntly because it was Boxers. Both of them had stopped worrying about death a long time ago. “We’ll have to train them, and hope they can shoot straight.”

Thomas Hughes was living a nightmare.

Over the course of a single week-no, less than a week, six days-he’d gone from getting his knob polished by Tiffany or Christine or whatever the hell her real name was, to getting kidnapped, shot at, and now living out here in the middle of nowhere. Just the three of them-like the happy family they’d never be.

And if that wasn’t a thick enough shit sandwich, the police thought they were murderers. Oh, yeah, and his dad was some kind of WMD trafficker.

They called this special corner of hell “the lodge,” but it was really a cabin. Built of hewn heavy timbers, and designed to look a hundred years older than it actually was, the place had a certain Abe Lincoln look to it. The lodge itself sat on a footprint of 20 by 30 feet, and was more or less an unadorned rectangle. A second floor had been raised somewhere along the way on the back half of the house, providing additional sleeping space. When Thomas was little, Mom and Dad took the upstairs for themselves while he was consigned to the sofa in the “living room,” which was separated only by an imaginary wall from the “dining room,” which in turn sat adjacent to the way-out-of-date kitchen in the back of the house. Without gas or electricity, cooking power came from the logs that they piled into the wood stove.

It was stiflingly hot in the summer, and freezing cold in the winter (kerosene heaters and fireplaces couldn’t touch the February chill). Thomas hated this place. Once he’d gotten his driver’s license and access to his own car, he’d stopped coming. Keep your primitive and your rustic; give him new and shiny any day of the week. At least give him running water. And a toilet that was more than a hole in the ground.

Presently, Mom and Dad were at it again, blaming each other for all the crap that was going wrong. They kept screaming at each other about a plan. They needed to have a plan.

Well, Thomas had mapped out a pretty nifty plan for himself: he was getting the hell out of here. He was done with Chef Boyardee and boredom. He was done with hiding. He didn’t have a dog in this fight. Even if he did, wasn’t it way harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one?

The barn full of synthetic smallpox complicated things for his parents, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he didn’t care about what happened to everybody else-not even to the poor bastards that got spr’d been able to read a musical score the way most people read books. The dots and spaces on the page converted directly to music in his head. His parents and friends called it a blessing, but to him it was equal parts curse. By reading the music, he was blessed to hear a perfect performance every time. When he performed, however, there were always flaws, most never heard by the audience, but they resounded like errant cymbal crashes in Thomas’s mind.

The peace of the music couldn’t dislodge his anger, though. Not today. And the anger was the thing that could break him. Intuitively, he knew who the real evildoers were in all of this. He knew that the focus for his anger should be Christine Baker and Fabian What’s-his-name-the people who started it all-but he found himself reserving his ugliest thoughts for his own father. He was the conduit through which all of this awfulness had flowed. But for him, Thomas would still be blissfully stressed over academics. But for his involvement in this weapons bullshit, things would be normal. If those guys had just managed to kill his dad at the time of the ransom transfer-

He hated himself.

Movement.

He didn’t know if he’d heard it or seen it, but something happened in the tall grass over to his right. The music went away, and he was one hundred percent tuned into reality. Could it have been a snake? A cougar, maybe? They’d found evidence of a big cat up here, and-

The man launched himself with the speed of a lightning bolt, rising out of the grass-out of the ground itself, it seemed-and hitting Thomas hard in the middle, knocking him backward and driving the wind out of his lungs. He tried to yell, but before words could form, a gloved hand attached itself to his mouth, killing the words and threatening to extend the favor to the rest of him.

He arched his back and tried to defend himself when his attacker said, “Thomas, stop.”

The familiarity startled him. He stopped squirming as he tried to place it. No, it couldn’t be.

“It’s Scorpion,” the voice said. Right away, Thomas’s gaze shifted to the man’s eyes-the feature he remembered most from that night. Holy shit, it really was.

A new panic bloomed.

“I’m here to help,” Scorpion said, as if reading his thoughts. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. Well, not you, anyway. Not your family.”

Thomas stopped moving.

“I’m going to take my hand away now, okay?”

He nodded.

True to his promise, the hand lifted. Scorpion smiled. “So, how’ve you been?” he asked, his tone filled with irony.

Thomas’s head whirled. “What the hell,” he said. It was the best he could do.

“Turns out we’ve got more work to do,” Scorpion said. “I had-”

“GUN!” The voice boomed from nowhere-from everywhere. Scorpion prostrated himself on the ground and covered Thomas with his body.

In a horrible flash of realization, Thomas knew exactly what was happening. “No!” he yelled.

But his voice was drowned out by the gunshot.

Chapter Thirty-three

A rifle discharged from the area of the cabin, launching a bullet that skimmed the grass within inches of Jonathan’s back. A millide to the wounded man. He let his M4 fall against its sling and he ripped open a large pocket on his combat vest. He pulled out two large white paper packets and put them on the step.

“Leave him alone!” Julie commanded.

Boxers ignored her.

“He’s going to dress the wound,” Jonathan explained. He recognized the packets as HemCon, a chemical-coated gauze that Jonathan believed was responsible for saving more lives in modern combat than any other technical advancement. You stuff the HemCon into a wound, and the bleeding stops. Just like that.

When Boxers unsheathed his K-Bar knife, Thomas jumped as if to intervene, but then he seemed to remember the last time he saw one of those blades. “They’re okay,” he reassured his mom. “They know what they’re doing.”

Julie shot a withering look to Jonathan. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Call me Scorpion,” Jonathan said. “My friend is Big Guy.”

“Those aren’t names,” she growled.

Jonathan shrugged. What could he say?

Boxers slipped the blade of his K-Bar into the bloused leg of Stephenson’s trousers and sliced upward, ankle to crotch. The fabric fell away, exposing a perfectly round puncture in the flesh on the inner side of the man’s left leg.

“You could have killed him!” Julie accused.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Boxers growled. “But didn’t. He’ll be fine.” With the wound exposed, he poked around the rest of the leg and gave a satisfied nod. “Damn, I’m good,” he said. “Bone’s fine. No arterial bleeding.” He winked at Jonathan. “Bullet went just where I put it.”

Thomas’s jaw dropped. “Nobody’s that good a shot.”

Jonathan smirked.

Julie slapped the back of Thomas’s head. “Don’t admire them,” she snapped. “They tried to kill us.”

Boxers laughed.

Julie’s eyes grew hotter.

“All respect, ma’am,” Jonathan said. “When we try to kill, people die. You’re not dead.”

Boxers ripped open a HemCon package. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you,” he said to Stephenson. “This is gonna hurt like hell.” He didn’t wait for a response, moving with skill and purpose to stuff the gauze into the hole made by the bullet.

Stephenson howled in agony. He squirmed and kicked, but there was no refusing Boxers, who held his patient down with his hips and his left arm while he used his right pinkie to cram the HemCon into the wound.

“Stop!” Julie commanded. “You’re hurting him!” She took a step to intervene, but again Thomas was able to stop her.

“Let them do their thing, Mom,” he urged. “They’re the good guys. Really.”

“They’re hurting him!”

“We’re helping him, ma’am,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

“There,” Boxers said, sitting upright. “We’re done. Only took one pack. Still with us, Steve?”

“It hurts,” Stephenson said.

“Of course it hurts,” Boxers said. “You’ve been shot, for God’s sake. It’s supposed to hurt.” Mister Bedside Manner. “Now try not to move. I need to s other hand. “You can. You should. And take Thomas with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Thomas objected.

Stephenson faced his son. “This isn’t your fight, Tommy.”

“The hell it’s not.”

Julie’s voice took on a pitiful, pleading tone. “We’ve had enough of this nightmare, Steve. I can’t take anymore.”

Stephenson eyed Jonathan. “We can off-load the truck and the two of them can drive away together.”

Jonathan shrugged.

“I can’t go without you,” Julie whined.

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

Jonathan interjected, “Where will you go?”

Julie shot him a glare. “This is none of your concern,” she snapped.

“Yet the question remains. Where will you go? You’re a murderer, remember? Sooner or later, you’re going to be recognized. Then what? With your bank accounts frozen, you won’t be able to hire a lawyer. That is, if you even get the chance. You have exactly zero friends and fewer resources past the threshold of that door.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but seemed to have lost the words. “Steve?”

He shrugged. “Think of the evil these people represent. I have to stay.”

Julie’s face showed raw betrayal. “Do you hear yourself? You’re buying into this insanity. You’re going to get yourself killed. I’m going to be a widow. For what?”

“For everything,” Stephenson said.

“We’ll go to the police,” Julie begged. Her voice rose, and her words came faster. “We’ll tell the whole story. Every detail. They’ll have to believe us.”

Jonathan stepped in. “They won’t. They can’t. They’ve got to keep you quiet. There’s plenty of evidence against you for the Caldwell murders, and what they don’t have already, they can manufacture. I’m telling you, Mr. Hughes-”

“Steve.”

“You have no option.”

“What about the video?” Stephenson reasoned. “Won’t that exonerate us?”

Jonathan shrugged. “If I were the prosecutor, I might just use it as evidence of your desperation to get Thomas back. I’d argue that a desperate man wouldn’t hesitate to kill the Caldwells and their nanny as a means to learn the whereabouts of your son.”

“You see?” Julie said, her voice full of hope. “At worst, they’d see a case of justifiable homicide.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Thomas said. His face and his tone showed anger. “They’d see premeditation.” He glanced to Jonathan. “Right?” You don’t watch as much Law & Order as he did without learning something.

“That’s the way they designed this thing,” Boxers chimed in. “These guys we’re after, they’re very damn good at what they do. We either stop them, or they keep going. They keep going, your family never gets to rest.”

“You don’t know that,” Julie objected. “You just want your vigilante justice. You want to avenge your wife.”

“That doesn’t make me wrong about the re“These are bad people. There’s going to be shooting, and the bullets are going to be real. There’s no video game do-overs.”

“I don’t want those bastards chasing me for the rest of my life.”

Julie shouted, “Stop it! All of you stop it! This is crazy!” She started to cry, but Jonathan sensed more anger than sadness. After a few seconds, the tears dissolved to sobs. She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved with the force of her emotions.

Stephenson moved to her, kneeling at her side as he tried to comfort her. “Honey, there’s no choice,” he cooed, but she shook him off.

“Don’t talk to me!” she shrieked.

Jonathan and Boxers stood together. “Let’s unload the equipment,” Jonathan said, striding toward the front door. Boxers fell in step three feet behind him.

“Wait!” Thomas said, also rising. “I’ll give you a hand.”

Boxers started to object, but this time backed away from Jonathan’s admonishing glare. Clearly, the kid wanted to get out of there. Probably needed to. What was the harm?

“Don’t you think you should be staying with your folks?” Jonathan asked as they walked. “They probably don’t need any more worry than they’ve already had.”

“Shit,” Thomas scoffed. “Worry is all they’ve got. And they’ve earned every bit of it.”

“Watch the attitude, kid,” Boxers scolded. “Those people went through a lot for you.”

Thomas glared. “They didn’t do anything for me. They didn’t even think of hiring you.”

Jonathan gave a disapproving scowl. “They tried their best.”

“And that worked well, didn’t it?”

“It’s not their fault.”

“Their way would have gotten me killed.”

“They were trying, Tom. Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.”

Thomas stopped short in the middle of the tall grass. “Are you really that blind?”

Jonathan and Boxers exchanged looks. “I guess I am.”

“Dad knew what his company was making. He knew about this germ crap. He had to.”

“He says he didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he knew about the GV whatever. They were making bombs or missiles or some such bullshit murder machine, and he never once stopped to ask himself what the fuck was going to happen with what they rolled out. It’s all about killing. Good guys, bad guys, Arabs, Americans, what difference does it make? It’s still about killing people.”

Boxers seemed to grow taller as his defenses kicked in. “Makes a hell of a lot of difference when you’re the one being shot at.”

“As I’m going to find out, apparently,” Thomas conceded. “I got kidnapped because my dad worked for a company that manufactures shit that kills people. If he was working at a drug company, or at a lawn chair manufacturer-”

“Then there might have been some nutcase who objected to animal testing, or an idiot with a jones for lawn chairs. These people are crazy. opped and turned on Jonathan. For the first time in all their hours together, the kid seemed on the edge of losing control. “You don’t get it!” he shouted, punctuating each word by driving his forefinger into Jonathan’s chest. “I’m a musician! I’m a poet! I write songs! I don’t want any of this shit! I never did! When I left my house to head off for school last summer, I told myself I was never going back. I told the world that I was never going back.”

He made a wide, sweeping gesture back toward the lodge. “Don’t you see them in there? Don’t you see how they are? They don’t give a shit about me. They never did.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Boxers said.

“They fool everybody! Hell, they fool themselves. How twisted is that? Now I’m stuck in their fucking nightmare, and I’ve got no choices left.”

They finally reached the wood line. The Hummer was still at least three hundred yards deeper into the woods. Jonathan said, “You do have choices, Tom. Nobody expects you to stay here. You don’t have to be a part of what’s coming.”

“Bullshit.”

“You don’t!”

“I do!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

Thomas held Jonathan’s gaze. “Because you saved my life.”

Chapter Thirty-four

“Scorpion, Scorpion, this is Mother Hen.”

As often was the case when radio traffic had died but the bud remained in his ear, the sound of a voice in his head startled him. Boxers, too. Thomas sensed the urgency, but had no way of knowing what it might be.

Jonathan pressed the transmit button on his vest. “Go ahead, Mother.” He suppressed a smile as he spoke to Venice. He was the one who assigned radio designations, and she hated hers.

“Scorpion, you are not alone. I repeat, you are not alone.”

Jonathan motioned for the others to get off the road, such as it was, and they all dove for the foliage on the left side of the overgrown path. Jonathan took a knee and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

“There’s another vehicle near yours at the bridge. Looks like a light truck. Maybe an SUV, but a small one. Details are hard to see through the trees.”

“Just the one?” Jonathan whispered.

“I think so. It’s definitely not the Green Brigade. They’re still hours out.”

Then who the hell was it? He looked to Boxers and got a shrug. “How long ago did they arrive?” he asked.

“I can’t say exactly,” Venice advised. He could hear the embarrassment in her voice. “Once you got to the cabin safely, I stepped away for a while. No more than ten minutes.”

Jonathan did the math in his head. Whoever the visitors were, if they’d only had ten minutes, they couldn’t have accomplished very much. “Any sign of people?” he asked.

“Negative. Again, the trees are pretty thick, and it’s too warm for the infrared imaging to do much good.”

Jonathan sighed. Translation: she had no friggin’ clue. “Okay, Mother, thanks for the info. Advise if you see any more detail.” Jonathan motioned for Thomas not to

He rocketed to his full height, his rifle leveled at Sheriff Gail Bonneville and the guy he assumed must be her deputy. “Freeze, Sheriff!” he commanded.

The guy to her right reacted by swinging his shotgun around, and Jonathan stitched the dirt in front of his feet with a three-round burst that made them both jump back.

“Freeze means freeze, goddammit!” he yelled.

And they froze.

“Weapons down!” he commanded.

Gail lowered her Mossberg shotgun by its barrel to rest its butt plate on the ground and let it fall like a tree. The deputy didn’t move.

“I do not want to shoot you,” Jonathan said. He saw in the deputy’s eyes that daring should-I-or-shouldn’t-I look that had gotten so many people killed over the years.

“I don’t want to shoot you either,” Boxers said, emerging from the woods behind them.

The daring look went away. The deputy knew that he’d been beaten. He let his Mossberg fall.

“Sidearms next,” Jonathan said. “Two fingers and slowly, please.”

Using exaggerated movements, they unfastened the straps that secured their weapons in their holsters, and then stooped to ease them onto the overgrown path. Handguns cost too much these days to go throwing them around the way they did in the movies.

“Well done,” Jonathan said. “Now put your hands behind your backs, please, while my big friend zips you guys up.”

It all went as if they’d rehearsed it. Boxers approached from behind and produced two set of zip ties from his vest. They were much more convenient than handcuffs, and more secure. Given the right conditions, ballpoint pen fillers could be used to pick handcuff locks. Without a knife or a good pair of snips, zip tied prisoners stayed zip tied until someone decided to let them go free. Besides, there were no keys to lose.

When they were both secure, Jonathan let his weapon fall against its sling and stepped closer. He gave his most charming smile. “Well, hello, Sheriff Bonneville. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Taking you down,” said the deputy.

Jonathan allowed his smile to fade as he shifted his gaze. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

The man just glared.

“This is Jesse Collier,” Gail said. “My right hand.”

Jonathan took his time evaluating what he saw. Middle aged and a little thick of middle, the guy had a life-hardened look about him. Jonathan assessed him as zero bullshit and dangerous. “He looks like a loyal deputy,” he said. “A smart one, who knows when he’s no longer in control and needs to do what he’s told.”

Jesse spat a wad of phlegm that nailed the shoulder of Jonathan’s vest. Boxers dropped him with a savage punch to the kidney. The entire transaction went down with such speed that they all jumped.

“Enough!” Jonathan commanded.

“The fuck do you think you are?” Boxers yelled at the contorting deputy. “That’s my friend you just spit on.”

“Big Guy!” Jonathan said, more soothingly this time. “It’s okay.”

“No

“Gail Bonneville and Jesse Collier,” Jonathan said, “allow me to present the rest of the Hughes family-Steve and Julie.”

“What’s going on?” Julie demanded.

Jonathan explained the confrontation on the road as he helped the newcomers into dining table chairs.

“Why are they here?” Stephenson asked.

“If you want the short version,” Jonathan began, “Sheriff Bonneville is better at her job than I had anticipated. When I rescued Thomas, it was from a farmhouse in her jurisdiction.”

“So you admit it now,” Jesse said.

“Not much sense denying at this point,” Jonathan conceded. “Anyway, she’s been hunting for me ever since.” He turned one of the remaining dining chairs around and sat with his chest resting on the cane back, facing Gail. “I do hope, however, that you’ll tell how you connected the final dots. I know it didn’t come from fingerprints-we’ve already established that.”

Gail smiled as she shook her head. “When you unstrap my hands, I’ll fill you in.”

Jonathan smiled. He liked this woman. He even liked her deputy, although of the two of them, he was the one to be feared.

“What was your plan?” Jonathan asked. “Were you going to arrest us single-handedly?”

She shrugged. “If the opportunity arose, I suppose we might have. But really, it was more about recon. Once I got the lay of the land, maybe I would have taken my pictures to the state police and put together a plan to take you out.”

“In spite of your directive from the FBI.”

“Because of my directive from the FBI.”

She had guts, he had to give her that.

Stephenson looked confused. “So, your only interest here is to arrest Scorpion for shooting up your town?”

“And to arrest you for killing the Caldwell family,” Gail replied evenly.

“So you don’t know about the rest?” Julie asked.

Gail and Jesse exchanged looks. “What rest?”

Stephenson laughed heartily and paid for it with a muscle spasm. “Boy, do we have a story for you,” he grunted through the pain.

It took every bit of a half hour to tell the story again-thirty minutes that they could ill afford. By the time they were done, the Hummer and Gail’s Kia Sorrento had both arrived in the front yard, and Thomas and Boxers had joined the confab in the main room.

“So, Sheriff and Deputy, you’ve stepped into the middle of a war that’s about to happen,” Jonathan concluded. “And to tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. You’ve proved yourself to be just crazy enough not to be trusted if I let you go, but it doesn’t seem right to keep you trussed up like a couple of sculptures once the shooting starts. The third option-giving you a gun and asking you to help-doesn’t do much for me, either.”

“Well you sure as hell can’t give Deputy Dawg there a weapon,” Boxers said, pointing at Jesse.

Jonathan stood. “Enough chatting,” he said. “Let’s get to work. Once it gets dark, we’ll be on borrowed time. We’ve got to get that grass cut down out front, and we’ve got to get an ambush set.” He looked at Stephenson. “How about we start with a tour? Are you up for a little hobbling?” He held out his hand and helped the

“What about them?” Boxers asked, indicating the captives. “We gotta do something.”

He had a point. “Zip them to the chairs.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Gail said.

Boxers froze. He shot a panicked look to Jonathan. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. For Boxers, the Achilles’ heel was excretory functions. He could wallow to his elbows in blood and brains and not even wince. Pee and poop were entirely different matters.

Trying not to laugh at the look of horror from the big guy, Jonathan’s eyes narrowed as he assessed Gail’s angle. “Okay,” he said at length. “Tom, escort the sheriff to the outhouse.”

“No way!”

“You just have to walk with her,” Jonathan said. “You don’t have to wipe her.”

Gail was blushing. “You know I’m right here, right? And, not to get too graphic, there is the matter of my pants.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Who’s gonna do that?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Julie?”

She stood. “Sure,” she said, and she helped lift Gail to her feet with a hand on her biceps. “Come on, Sheriff, I’ll help you.”

Before they’d had a chance to move, Jonathan said, “Tom, you go, too, to help your mom.”

Thomas made a slashing motion with his hand-a definitive denial. “No. I am not-”

“Tom, I want you to stay with your mom.” This time, his tone conveyed his real message, and everyone in the room caught the subtext. Jonathan didn’t trust either woman.

Thomas conceded, even as Julie’s back stiffened.

“Let’s not argue, okay?” Thomas said, getting ahead of his mother’s inevitable complaint. “Let’s just do this and get it over with.”

Jonathan’s tour of the DuBois property started by heading up the stairs. The steps led directly to the master bedroom, where the ceiling was barely high enough to allow him to stand upright in the parallel troughs between the rough-hewn oak beams. A sagging double bed and a small table filled the space.

“Cozy,” Jonathan said.

Stephenson chuckled. “As a kid, I used to think this place was huge.”

“I guess it helps to be four feet tall.” He knocked on the nearest beam with his fist. “Solid.”

“Family lore has it that my grandfather built the place with his own hands. Not sure how he got the three-hundred-pound beams up.”

“Not a man to be trifled with,” Jonathan said. “I need to know if your wife is going to be a liability.” He launched that last part like a torpedo.

“Excuse me?”

“Do I need to watch my back when she’s around?”

Stephenson waved off the notion as foolish. “She’s not a violent woman. That’s part of why she’s being so…difficult. You have nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m better than sure. She’s just terrified. Hell, so am I.”

Fair enough, Jonathan thought. “Next I need see the GVX.”

Boxers came along. As barns go, the one on the DuBois property was small, but built to the same standards as the house. The heavy timber pillars looked brand new even if the fifteen-foot of they supported needed considerable repair. An ancient John Deere tractor stood in the far corner, still hooked up to the enormous cutting deck that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. “There you go, Big Guy,” Jonathan said, pointing. “Fill that baby with fuel from the spares on the Hummer and mow down all that free cover out front.”

“On it,” Boxers said, and he headed out the door to get things moving.

The barn in general smelled of mud and old gasoline, and light leaking through spaces in the walls cut pinstripes through the dust that stirred as they entered. Stephenson explained, “It’s a place to store stuff we never use. As a kid, it was my retreat. My fort. I used to hide out in the loft.”

Next to the tractor sat a relatively new three-quarter-ton truck. “Is that the vehicle you helped yourself to?” Jonathan asked, pointing.

“That’s the one.”

“And how much germ juice is in there?” Jonathan slipped a mini-Maglite out of a loop on his belt and twisted it on, launching a piercing white beam across the floor. “Show me,” he said.

Stephenson hobbled to the back of the truck and pulled open the back door. All they could see were five wooden crates, each of them three feet square. The one closest to the rear of the vehicle had clearly been opened, and its lid hastily replaced. “That’s the one I took the cylinders out of on the night we were trying to free Thomas,” he explained, pointing.

Jonathan hoisted himself into the truck for a closer look.

Stephenson continued, “Tibor met me at a truck stop outside of Shepherdstown that night. I left the truck there and took the three canisters that Conger wanted and we went the rest of the way by car.”

The canisters themselves were about the size and shape of a salami, and constructed of what appeared to be stainless steel. Jonathan hefted one and guessed the weight to be maybe six pounds.

“Not much to them, is there?’ Stephenson said.

“A couple of pounds is a lot of germs. Why do you think Tibor Rothman agreed to come along with you?”

Stephenson pursed his lips and shrugged. “I really don’t know. My begging helped, I think.” He meant it as a joke, but it fell flat. “I talked myself into believing that the only way to have a chance long-term, if everything went right, was to have an eyewitness from the press to report what had happened.”

Jonathan put the canister back in the crate and closed the top. “That wouldn’t make them all the more anxious to kill you?”

“Maybe, but for a different reason. In that case, they’d be killing me because they were pissed. Everybody would know who did it, and for what reason, and because of that, I figured they’d be less inclined to go to the trouble.”

Jonathan smiled. “Good old-fashioned reverse logic. Why did you and Tibor split up after you bolted from the drop-off site?”

“Harder to catch two moving targets than one. I ended up taking a bus back to the truck stop where I left this beast.” He patted the side of the truck. “By the time I got back to it, I figured the story would have broken and it would have been over. But the story never broke. I guessed that meant Tibor was missing and I decided to go into hiding.”

“Let me get down outta this,” Jonathan said. “Shit gives braced himself, his left leg ahead of his right. He settled himself with a deep breath and tightened his whole hand around the pistol-grip stock as he tucked his shoulder in. When the weapon barked, the kid seemed ready for it. Even without binoculars, Jonathan could see the white gouge that the bullet carved into the bark of the tree.

“Very nice,” he said, meaning it. “Give me another.”

Thomas set himself and fired again. More wood flew.

Jonathan grinned. “Excellent. Where’d you learn to shoot?”

“A buddy of mine at school has a farm. I’ve killed hundreds of bottles in the last four years.”

“Bottles don’t shoot back at you,” Boxers growled. “Ever shot anything that was alive?”

Thomas had had it with Boxers’ grousing. “What the hell is your problem with me? I’m on your side.”

“I don’t need you on my side,” Boxers said.

“But he’s here, isn’t he?” Jonathan said. “He’s volunteered to put himself in harm’s way, and we’re going to need the extra manpower.”

“Against these yahoos that are on their way? Bullshit.”

“That’s enough!” Jonathan snapped.

“It’s crazy!” the big man snapped back. “Can we talk privately?”

“We don’t have time,” Jonathan said. What was the point? He knew where the conversation was going to go. “Just say what’s on your mind.”

Boxers shook his head. “Not in front of the kid.”

“Hey!” Thomas barked. “What is with-”

“You don’t know shit, kid. You don’t even know what you’re getting into.”

“I know enough,” Thomas said.

“No you don’t! And the fact that you think you do is even scarier.” He turned to Jonathan. “You don’t have the right to expose them like this. It’s wrong, and you know it.”

Jonathan stared, stunned.

“I’m good for this, Scorpion,” Thomas said.

Piss and vinegar, Jonathan thought.

“What are you gonna do, Scorpion?” Boxers pressed. “You want me to speak freely, I’ll speak freely. You got the only two people who actually know how to shoot tied up on the porch, you got one who’s ready to surrender to anybody who’ll listen, you got an old guy with a bad leg, and a kid who thinks we’re gonna be attacked by bottles. What in that picture looks anything but crazy to you? If these Brigade yahoos are good enough to make us need what we’ve got, then we’re completely screwed. You’re gonna get them killed.”

Jonathan didn’t know what to say. Andrew Hawkins’s description of Ivan Patrick’s demagoguery echoed in his head. If Boxers was right-if he was asking too much from people who had no chance to deliver-then Jonathan and Ivan had something terrible in common. He said nothing as he turned and started walking toward the tree line.

“Where you goin’?” Boxers wanted to know.

Jonathan kept walking. He needed to think. A knot had formed in his stomach. Say what you like, package it as you wish, this was a revenge mission-a murder mission-and he realized now that it was a poisonous one. Dom and Ven were both right. Boxers had even seen it, for God’s sake enough for me. Now let’s get ready to kill some bad guys.”

This time as Boxers led, Jonathan followed. As he walked, he thought about Boxers’ question. The coming fight would go as it would go. Far more difficult was the next step. Irene Rivers could not have been more direct in her warning: the weapons they had in their possession were a Homeland Security issue now, meaning presumption of guilt and suspension of all civil rights. It meant disappearing. Poof. It meant never having existed at all.

Jonathan had learned years ago that it was a mistake to second-guess the past, but under the circumstances of the last week, he found it impossible not to. The ripple effect of Thomas’s rescue was staggering in its scope, the number of ruined lives and people killed-with more to come tonight.

All because of…what? Greed, he supposed. That was the common denominator. The Patrones and Carlyle Industries had been greedy for money, Fabian Conger had been greedy for attention, and the agencies that had funded the project in the first place were greedy for power. All the rest were soldiers, pawns, or merely collateral damage.

There had to be a way to stop the juggernaut of destruction. There had to be an exit strategy that would allow them to win this for real. All Jonathan had to do was find the right handle to pull.

Good old-fashioned reverse logic.

A fully formed plan came to him just like that, out of nowhere. He jerked to a stop and Boxers turned.

“What’s wrong now?” Big Guy asked.

“Not a thing,” Jonathan said with a grin. “I’ve got the answer.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Jonathan gathered the crowd into the dining room for another chat. With two of the chairs taken by Gail Bonneville and her deputy, Thomas sat on the sofa topping off the magazine he’d fired from. Stephenson and Julie took the remaining chairs while Jonathan and Boxers remained standing. Jonathan had a little speech prepared in his head, but before he could say anything, Stephenson preempted him. “I think you need to share your plan,” he said. “And tell us how we can help.” As he spoke that last sentence, he shot a glare at Julie, as if daring her to start up again.

Jonathan exchanged glances with Boxers, then leaned forward with his forearms resting on the table. “I’ve looked over the latest satellite imagery of this place, and from what I can tell, access is limited to that bridge we came over yesterday. Is that right?”

Stephenson nodded.

“You’re sure?” Jonathan pressed. “No fire roads, deer trails, hiking trails, nothing like that? Nothing where a four-wheeler can gain access?”

“I’m sure,” Stephenson said. And right away he backpedaled, “Well, I guess if you want to get into a place badly enough, there’s always a way.”

Jonathan conceded the obvious. “Of course. But we want to make it as difficult for them as possible.”

“What about the fire road on the top of the ridge?” Thomas asked.

Stephenson scowled. “That’s hardly access to the property.”

Jonathan pulled a USGS map of the area from a flap pocket

Jonathan noted the closely packed contour lines. “That’s a hell of a steep slope.”

“Have you seen the backyard?” Julie said.

Jonathan forced a smile. God, he didn’t like that woman. There was indeed a fairly steep slope to the backyard, but apparently just beyond the tree line, it went nearly vertical.

“Why isn’t the road on the map?” Boxers asked. “These things are usually pretty accurate.”

“There’s really not much to it,” Thomas said. “It’s not really even a road. More like a wide trail.”

Jonathan asked, “How do you get to it? Where does it begin and end?”

Stephenson and Thomas looked to each other for answers, then both shook their heads. “I have no idea,” Thomas said for both of them. “I’ve never hiked it from beginning to end. I only know it’s there because that’s where you end up when you go out back and start climbing.”

Jonathan turned to Stephenson. “You either?”

“Nope. I’ve probably gone a mile in each direction over the years, but I’ve never found the end. It’s in pretty rough shape.”

It was inconceivable to Jonathan that anyone could grow up here and not know. He looked to Boxers. “What do you think?”

“It’s a weakness. Our Achilles’ heel. If we had a platoon, we’d cover it. As it is, I think we have to live with it.”

Jonathan agreed. “Okay, that brings us to our various roles for when the war comes.” Julie recoiled from the term, but Jonathan didn’t back down. “The key to survival once the shooting starts is for you guys to spend as much time as possible here inside the lodge. These timbers in the walls will stop just about anything they can throw at us. They’re just about bulletproof.”

“What about the windows?” Julie asked.

“Not bulletproof,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to spend the next few hours making this as sturdy a fortress as possible. We need to block access to that bridge out there to slow them down and hopefully even keep them out. Big Guy and I will set up an ambush at that spot, so if everything goes perfectly, you won’t even have to worry about firing a shot up here.”

“Are you going to take the bridge out completely?” Stephenson asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “I think we’ll rig it, but I don’t want to blow it unless we have to. When it’s all over, it’d be nice to have a way to get out again.”

“I presume you’ll want some of us out there to help you with the ambush,” Stephenson said.

This time the head shake was vigorous. “Absolutely not. Ambushes are tricky. After the first shot, they tend to go to shit, and it’s very damn easy to kill your team members. Besides, even the best-planned ambush is a dynamic event, and with that wounded leg, you won’t be dynamic for a while. If Big Guy or I get hit, then this place becomes the Alamo. You’ll need to be here to defend it.”

“Everybody died at the Alamo,” Julie said. Ever the voice of optimism.

“So what’s next?” Thomas asked.

“Big Guy and I are going to take care of business down at the bridge and out around the house. I need you guys to practice reloading your weapons in a hurry. Over and over again. Load ’em up and then jack out the rounds and load ’em up again. You’ll be doing it for real in the dark, so make sure your hands know what to do.”

“Won’t we have tofi expose ourselves to a window to shoot?” Julie asked, another inquiry from Captain Obvious.

He didn’t bother to answer. “Steve, when you get a chance I need you to rig a lightproof space upstairs where we can monitor the satellite images without the glow providing an easy target.”

“Will do,” he said.

Jonathan stood. “Let’s get to it, then.”

“What about us?” Gail asked.

Everyone stopped; everyone turned to face them. “What about you?” Jonathan asked.

“Being quiet would be a good first step,” Boxers offered.

“We can help,” she said.

Boxers laughed. “Yeah, ‘helpful’ is exactly the vibe I’ve been getting off of you all day.”

Jesse Collier gave it a try. “We talked during your target practice. This arrangement here, with us all trussed up, makes no sense at all. Y’all are in a box. You can’t call for help, and hell is coming to pay a visit. Like it or not, we’re in the box with you, and we’re going to be in the middle of all the shooting. If these Green Brigade people you’re talking about kill you, they’re sure as hell going to kill us, too. However it comes down, you’ll be wishing you had additional hands, and here we are. It only makes sense that we’d want to help.”

Boxers laughed.

Jonathan didn’t. His eyes narrowed as he considered Jesse’s words.

“You’re not thinking of saying yes, are you, Boss?”

Jesse pressed harder. “We came here to arrest you for the crimes committed in Samson. I didn’t even want to do that, to tell the truth. Seems to me, the Patrones got what was coming to them. This fight here? We got no dog in it.”

“But you’re offering to fight with us anyway?” Stephenson asked.

“It beats getting shot while tied in a chair,” Gail said.

Jonathan gave Gail a hard look. “And what about those charges in Samson? You still intend to pursue them?”

She took a long time answering. When she did, she looked a little ill. “It’s my job,” she said. “I’ll have to.”

Jonathan smiled. His question had been a test. If she’d said she would drop the charges, he would have known that they were playing an angle-telling them what they thought they wanted to hear. He nodded to Stephenson. “Cut them loose and put them to work,” he said.

Jonathan spent an hour with Boxers on the near side of the bridge, using two-foot lengths of detonating cord to drop trees across the road. Few toys were more fun than det cord. Thomas hung around as their shadow, watching the process so carefully that Jonathan let him set the detonators. Finally, with the three of them huddled a safe distance away from the current shot, Jonathan handed Thomas the wireless trigger. “You do it,” he said.

The kid looked like he’d just gotten a bike at Christmas. “Really?”

Jonathan ignored Boxers’ angry glare. “Remember what to do?”

“Just put in the battery, move the switch to Arm, and push the button, right?”

“After shouting what?”

Thomas nodded. “Oh, yeah.” He shouted, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” Then he inserted the AA battery, moved the safe to the earth, gathering momentum as it crashed through its coniferous siblings.

Thomas grinned. “That is so cool.” He handed the trigger back to Jonathan.

“The technical term is KFB,” Boxers said, rising to his feet.

“KFB?” Thomas asked, taking the bait.

“Ka-fuckin’-boom.”

They laughed, Thomas harder than the others. “Can I ask a question?”

“Do you do anything but?” Boxers grumped.

Thomas was learning Boxers’ crankiness. “We kept the bridge so we can get out, but aren’t we still cutting off our own escape with the trees?”

“We’re not here to escape,” Jonathan said without hesitation. “We’re here to prevail. If we don’t prevail, escape won’t be an option. If we win, we’ll have time to clear a path.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t really think we might get killed here, do you?”

“Might’s a pretty tough bar to clear,” Jonathan said. “They’re gonna be shooting back.”

“But we’re better than them, right?” he pressed. Anticipating Boxer’s inevitable barb, he added, “I mean you. You’re better than them.”

“It’s not about being better. Half of it’s just about being lucky. Once a bullet’s in the air, it’s on its way to where it’s going. The best you can hope for is to stay out of its way.” It wasn’t what Thomas wanted to hear.

“You still got time to skedaddle,” Boxers urged.

Thomas shook his head, but he looked peaked. “I said I’d stay. I’ll stay.”

Jonathan clapped him on the shoulder. “Big Guy and I have both seen our share of shoot-outs. We haven’t lost yet.”

Thomas tried to smile, but reality was settling in. “What’s it like?” he asked. “You know, after.”

Jonathan cocked his head. “After a battle?”

“After killing someone.”

Jonathan’s eyes narrowed as he decided not to answer. “We should head back,” he said.

“I want to know.”

“Soon enough, you will.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t have an answer for you. It affects different people different ways. It changes you, sure, but people all handle it differently.”

“How did you handle it?”

Jonathan sighed. Talk like this never came to good. “I guess it didn’t hurt me enough to make me unwilling to do it again.”

“But we’re ultimately talking more murder charges, aren’t we? Only these’ll be real.”

“Don’t worry about that, either,” Jonathan said.

“Why?”

Boxers guffawed, “Because they can’t charge you with nothin’ when you’re already dead.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Father Dom smiled at the little girl on his office sofa and tried to make her feel at home. She’d arrived only an hour ago, and she was struggling to be bra of the kids, Roman Alexander among them. Mama called me just to give me a heads-up, but if Mama is disturbed enough to call the cops, then I think it’s worth looking into.”

Dom steeled himself for news he knew he wouldn’t like. “And because Mama called, I’m going to guess that the talking was more like touching?”

“Not exactly, but she seemed to think he crossed a line. The guy asked questions about Venice. About where she worked and what she did there. I don’t know if he knew that Roman is her son, but Roman didn’t know any better, so he just answered with the truth. About the time Mama saw them together and intervened, Roman was about to go with him down the hill to show him the way.”

“Who was this guy?”

“Nobody’d ever seen him before. Well dressed, they said. Suit and tie.”

Dom’s stomach tightened. There are no coincidences. Dom pinched his lower lip and scowled. “Didn’t touch him, though?”

“Nope. Didn’t do anything I could arrest him for, even if I knew who he was or where he went.”

“Did he ever show up at Venice’s office?”

“Not that I know of. I asked Mama to check that out and call me if he did. I haven’t heard back from her, so I can only assume…” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “Frankly, Father, I’m not as concerned about Venice as I am about strange guys hanging around an orphanage talking to little boys.”

“It’s not an orphanage.” It was an important distinction in Dom’s mind.

“Still, I think you can see my point.”

“I do. What do you recommend?”

The chief shrugged. “I don’t know. I was hoping that maybe you could shed a little light on what your friends at Security Solutions are up to. Does this have something to do with that?”

Dom didn’t like the tone of the question any more than he liked being stuck in the middle. “It wouldn’t hurt to be more vigilant over the next few days,” he said.

Chapter Thirty-nine

“Claymores?” Stephenson gasped. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.” They were out in the front yard of the lodge, making the final preparations for their defense.

Jonathan couldn’t tell from the man’s tone whether he was impressed or appalled. “One of the best antipersonnel weapons ever invented,” he said. “But they’re only a last resort, understand?”

“So if we see someone in the clearing, we just blow them up?” Jesse asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “No, if you see a lot of someones, and you know they’re all OpFor-excuse me, opposition force-then you can use them, and then only if they’re close. Effective range is only about eighty yards.”

“I’ve heard of claymores,” Thomas said. “Didn’t they use them in Platoon?”

Jonathan chuckled. The modern military was looking more and more like a video game every day. “Claymores have been around forever.” He lifted the wedge-shaped plastic box and displayed it to the group. “This baby has 700 steel balls in front of about a pound and a half of plastic explosive. When they detonate, they send a wall of buckshot out in a sixty-degree pattern that makes living through violence, while others just like to fight. I imagine a good handful will disappear as soon as the first bullet passes their head. The ones who are the most frightened will become the most fearless fighters.”

Jesse cocked his head. “Do I hear admiration in your voice?”

Jonathan continued working while he talked. “Respect is a better word. I respect anyone willing to die for a cause.”

“Even terrorists?” Thomas asked.

Jonathan nodded. “Even them.”

“But they’re the enemy,” Jesse protested.

“And my goal is to help them die for their cause. But I still respect them.”

“So, what’s next?” Stephenson asked.

Shadows were getting very long now; it would be dark soon. The explosives were set, the weapons were loaded, and the satellite link was established. His troops and his camp were as prepared as they were going to get. “I guess it’s time to make your phone call,” he said.

Stephenson’s expression didn’t change as he heard the words, but color drained from his face. He turned away and hobbled up the steps into the cabin.

“What phone call?” Gail asked.

“The one that’s going to bring hell to the front porch,” he said. “We alerted Ivan and his gang to our location by using Steve’s credit card at the Wal-Mart back in town. We wanted to get them on the road in the correct general direction. When Steve turns on his cell phone and makes a call, they’ll be able to zero right in on us. We’re at the point of no return.”

Gail cocked her head. “Why are you really doing this?” she asked.

“I’d like to know that myself,” Jesse said. The facial twitch that followed from Gail announced her wish that he would wander off somewhere.

Jonathan wished that himself. “Want to take a walk?” he asked.

“To where?” Jesse protested.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Jonathan snapped. He looked to Gail for her answer.

“Sure,” she said. This time, Jesse read her glare perfectly. He was staying behind.

Jonathan led the way toward the front tree line, his hands in his pockets, his rifle hanging from its combat sling like an exclamation point down the front of his body. When he felt far enough out of earshot, he said, “You go first. Why are you really doing this?”

She chuckled. “You really have the whole story. I didn’t want to get shot tied to a chair. You wouldn’t do the sensible thing and call the authorities, so I had only one choice. I had to pick a side, and as scary and hopeless as you and your little army are, the other side seems worse.”

“I guess next time, you need to listen to Irene Rivers when she tells you to butt out.”

“Next time.”

They walked awhile in silence. “You know we have a chance of winning this thing,” Jonathan said. “A good chance.”

“Okay,” Gail said. Another silence, then, “You haven’t told me why yet.”

Jonathan looked toward the treetops as he said, “The lofty answer is duty. The tawdry one is revenge. Just like any war anywhere.”

Gail wanted more, then realized he’d said a lot. “What did Ivan do to your wife?” she asked.

“He killed her.”

“There’s got to be more than that.”

“There his head. “Nope, those details are mine. You can access the reports when we’re done.”

When they got to the tree line, they hung a left and waded together through the scrub growth on the leading edge. “When we’re done,” Gail said.

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘when we’re done.’ Are you really going to let Jesse and me go when it’s over?”

He smirked. “The phrase, ‘turn myself over to you’ seems more appropriate.”

She didn’t get it. “You’re really just going to let me take you in?”

He shrugged. “That was the deal, right? You help us fight, and I turn myself in.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Sure it does. A deal’s a deal. You caught me outright. I made mistakes and you capitalized on them. To the victor belongs the spoils.”

Gail stopped. She looked shocked.

Jonathan gestured with his head for them to keep walking. “When there’s a lesson like this to learn, someone needs to learn it. That someone’s me. Like you said, with extenuating circumstances and all, maybe I’ll be acquitted.”

She was still befuddled. “I don’t know whether to believe you.”

“Always believe me. Especially when I make a deal. I’m really not very complicated.”

“How can you speak for your big friend?” she asked.

Jonathan laughed. “I don’t speak for my big friend,” he said. “In fact, you need to leave him alone.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. First, he didn’t have anything to do with those shootings. All he did was lift me and the kid out of trouble. I did all the shooting.”

“What’s the second reason?”

Jonathan looked right at her. “He’d kill you if you tried.”

Chapter Forty

Night fell inside the lodge a good half hour before it fell outside. They’d carried the kitchen chairs upstairs into the master bedroom and draped blankets to create a lightproof nook in which they could operate their laptop without creating a beacon for the bad guys. The computer was set to continually monitor the SkysEye satellite images of their corner of the world. They’d configured the screen view in such a way that the cabin was in the middle of the frame, with outer margins calibrated to show a one-mile radius from the center point.

“We’ve got a great signal, Mother Hen,” Jonathan said into his satellite phone. “Looks like we’re all set here.”

Back in Fisherman’s Cove, Venice sat in her office scanning her three large computer panels. In the middle, she watched the same SkysEye image that Jonathan saw. On the left screen, she tracked the progress of the Brigadeville caravan as they moved ever closer to her boss’s location. True to his word, Lee Burns had not been able to provide constant video of the vehicles as they moved, but he had been able to mark them electronically by their heat signatures through the SkysEye network. As long as the engines were not stopped for more than a few minutes, and the heat signatures remained constant, their position appeared on her screen as white dots on a map. She kept the right screen available for obtaining further information.

She keyed her microphone. “Scorpion, the caravan is approaching the Wal-Mart now. Ifow that they picked up on the cell phone signal. If they do, they’ll be on you in forty minutes.”

“Roger that,” Jonathan said.

Venice watched her screen as the lead dot stopped in the parking lot of the department store, and then waited as the other seven dots converged. None of them moved.

“Okay Scorpion, they’ve stopped at the Wal-Mart.” Knowing how much Jonathan obsessed about brief radio traffic, she didn’t add her concern that they might not have picked up the clue from Stephenson’s cell phone signal. Since there was no way to tell, there was no reason to say anything.

Her true concern was that they might turn off their engines. As long as the heat signatures stayed at their nominal levels, the SkysEye passive sensors could follow their progress and transmit their map coordinates for interpretation by the computer. If the heat signature changed dramatically-particularly if it cooled-the passive sensor would lose contact, and be unable to reacquire it without re-tasking the satellites, which Lee had already told her they could not do.

Venice had long ago decided’t need the infighting. We’re to the point where you’re either on board, or you’re a liability. Just let it go.”

He sent Stephenson upstairs to monitor the computer screen and take some of the stress off his leg. Then he directed the others to gather all the furniture into a pile in the center of the room downstairs. With the walls free from obstruction, there’d be easy access to the windows, and they’d be able to maneuver quickly in the dark to secure better fields of fire. The windows themselves were all open wide to keep from having to break out glass when they came into service as gun ports. On Jonathan’s instructions, Jesse Collier had fastened all of the doors to their jambs with two-inch screws.

He gathered them all upstairs in the bedroom for one final pep talk. With the draped-blanket light lock taking up one-quarter of the tiny space, Julie and Stephenson sat together on the bed while Thomas sat on the floor at the base of the tiny window. The rest stood where they could, with Gail and Jesse tiered on the stairs. In the light of the kerosene lanterns, their faces showed variations of dread and anger. All except for Thomas, who seemed ready to avenge his days in captivity. Boxers listened from the first floor at the base of the steps.

“Okay, folks,” Jonathan began. “Our friends will be with us soon, probably within the next few hours. Listen to me. From this point on, until the shooting is over, the only way in and out of here is through the windows. It’s slower than the doors, but the inconvenience largely favors us. I’ve put the clackers for the claymores on the floor in front of the front door. They are arranged as they are arranged out in the yard. The two middle initiators are for the mines out front, and the outboard initiators power the mines on their respective sides of the building. Do not-I repeat-do not activate any of the explosives until you hear Big Guy or me say, ‘claymore, claymore, claymore.’ We’ll say it three times if we need them. Remember, these are weapons of last resort, and if you screw it up, we can be in a world of hurt. Especially me and the Big Guy.”

Stephenson scowled-a good sign that he was paying attention. “Why especially you?”

“Because we won’t be in here with you. We’ll be out there.” He tossed his head toward one of the windows.

“Oh, fine,” Julie erupted.

Thomas squirmed. “Mom.”

Jonathan looked at her patiently. “Remember the plan. If we can maneuver well and if the pieces all fall into place, this lodge will never come into play. That’s the goal. But if they send a lot of people, or if we get hit early, you need to be prepared to defend yourselves.

“Steve, I want you to stay on the second floor. The elevation improves the satellite link, and I don’t want you tearing open that leg. The rest of you will spread out downstairs. If they get past us at the ambush site, they’ll come up the main road and fan out along the tree line before making their assault across the lawn. Use the NVGs I gave you-night vision goggles. The instant you hear shooting in the distance, put them on and keep them on until this thing is over. If you see anyone approaching and you don’t recognize them, shoot, understand? Remember there are six sides to this building-you can’t forget the roof and the crawl spaceballoons?” Thomas groused.

“Hell no,” Jonathan laughed. “I don’t want anybody thinking I’m the pussy.”

Boxers called from downstairs, “Hey Scorpion, it’s time to go. I want to set up the ambush while there’s still a little light left.”

Julie’s horror deepened. “Ambush,” she repeated.

Jonathan’s radio crackled, “Scorpion, Mother Hen. They’re moving. I don’t know how many, but the one I can still see is moving, and it looks like he’s coming your way.

Boxers was right; it was time to go.

They’d stacked their tactical gear at the end of the living room farthest from the windows. Jonathan pulled Dragon Skin vests from one of the duffels and passed them out to the Hugheses. “Wear these,” he instructed. He handed a second one to Thomas and added, “Take this one to your father, and make sure he wears it. If he objects kick him in the leg.” The two that remained were originally for himself and Boxers, but that would leave Gail and Jesse without any. He picked up the remaining two and handed them to the cops from Samson.

Jesse took his, but when Gail shook her head, he hesitated. “You’re the ones who’ll be out there exposed,” she said. “You keep them.”

Jonathan shook his head. “No, thanks, I move better without it. Besides, you’re my guest.”

“I won’t do it,” Gail said. Jesse looked like he wanted to shoot her.

Jonathan wouldn’t budge. “My war, my rules,” he said. “Besides, if the time comes when you need these, you’re really going to need them.”

She hesitated.

“Please,” Jonathan insisted. He leaned in close and whispered, “I’m serious. If the bad guys break through, you two will be the only ones with your heads about you. If you go down, everybody’s got a lot worse chance of coming through alive.”

That won her over. She accepted the vest and slipped it over her head. Jesse was way ahead of her.

“Besides,” Jonathan said, “I’ve got this.” He turned his attention to his load-bearing tactical vest. Constructed of a lighter Kevlar material that provided some limited protection against small caliber handguns and shrapnel, the tactical vest would do nothing to slow down a rifle bullet. On the positive side, it was ten pounds lighter than the Dragon Skin, and made running a hell of a lot easier. Plus, it had huge storage capacity for ammo.

Boxers was delighted to see that the vests were no longer in play. He never liked the damn things anyway. If it weren’t for the standing orders from Digger, he’d never even pack one.

“Remember the night vision,” Jonathan reminded as he stuffed the pouches of his vest with as much as they would hold. “Put them on your heads now, and then turn them on when you hear the shooting. Remember what I taught you this afternoon. Julie, if you’re not going to be shooting, you’ve got to be reloading mags. Meanwhile, if things go to shit, Sheriff Bonneville here is in charge. Any questions?”

He almost laughed at the blank expressions. Yeah, there were questions. Too many to verbalize. Jonathan looked Thomas in the eye. “Beer.”

Thomas gave a nervous smile. “Balloons.”

“Don’t worry, kid, you’ve got what it takes. Just don’t give up. Whatever you do, don’t give up.”

Jonathan looked to Gail to see if she had caught that lastching, and when the sheriff responded with a nod, it was time to go. “Equipment check, Big Guy.”

This was a ritual before every engagement, no matter how large or small. They wore all black, from head to foot, including black Nomex gloves with leather palms for extra grip. Their Kevlar helmets supported their own NVGs as well as their commo gear. A transceiver ran from radios in Velcro pockets on their shoulder into their right ears. The radios could be set to voice-activated or PTT (push-to-talk) mode, and Security Solutions’ SOPs required the latter, with the microphone triggered by a button in the center of their chests. Jonathan pushed his. “Radio check, one, two, three.”

Boxers gave a thumbs-up. “I’m good.”

Jonathan looked to Gail, who realized with a start that she hadn’t yet turned her radio on. Jonathan repeated the three-count, and she nodded. “I can hear you,” she said, just to make it official.

“Mother, are you on the air?”

“I’m here, Scorpion,” she said. “Be careful.”

In sheaths mounted on their left shoulders, they each carried a K-Bar knife, and on their chests they each carried two fragmentation grenades. Around their bellies, their ammo pouches carried 400 rounds of ammunition for their M4s, 40 extra rounds for their sidearms, and 18 twelve-gauge rounds for their specially modified pistol-gripped Mossberg shotguns. They carried the M4s across their chests in combat slings, with the Mossbergs dangling by bungee slings from their armpits. The sidearms-Boxers still preferred the new Beretta standard issue over Jonathan’s Colt 1911.45-were strapped to their thighs.

Believing that it was never possible to have too many weapons in a battle, Jonathan also carried a backup snub-nose.38 in the left-hand thigh pocket of his Royal Robbins 5.11 trousers. With the checkoff lists complete, they were ready to go.

“Jesus, look at you,” Thomas said. His voice floated with admiration. “You’re ready to take on an army. Leave a couple of bad guys for us.”

Julie gasped, “Thomas Hughes!”

Jonathan smiled. This Hughes kid was not the stereotypical music major. He had fight in him. It’s a shame his mother saw that as a bad thing.

Only twenty minutes of daylight remained as they slid out the window to the porch. “One more thing,” he said, looking back inside. “Keep an eye on the computer. As soon as you see vehicles, take your places.” They nodded, but they were unfocused.

“Hey,” Jonathan said, “look at me. When this is over, we’ll have a hell of a story to tell. If you want victory, we can have it. I’ll see you all on the other side.”

Chapter Forty-one

Charlie Warren felt Garino shift uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. He knew what question was coming before the driver had a chance to ask it. “You sure you want to keep waiting?”

Charlie checked his watch. It was 9:20. “Ivan set H-Hour for 10:30. We go in at 10:10.” It was the third time he’d answered the same question. “The plan hasn’t changed. The plan isn’t going to change.”

“I just don’t want to be late,” Garino said.

Glick concurred from the backseat. “He’s got a point, Charlie. We wait too long, we run the risk of something going wrong approach of the movies was suicide in real life, as was running and ducking. In low light, a moving target was easier to detect than a stationary one. It’s why ambushers have the advantage over ambushees.

“Over here, assholes!” Boxers yelled, and he emptied half a magazine toward the spot where the enemy had last formed a line. It was a damned risky way of getting your enemies to reveal themselves, but Boxers had never been averse to risk.

The attackers opened up with everything they had, ripping the night apart with noise and light, thus sealing their fate. Jonathan knew his cue. A shooter’s face resided three feet behind a muzzle flash. He picked a flash, and squeezed off a burst. When that rifle dropped, he found another flash and repeated the process, although without a hit, he thought.

Predictably, the rifle fire turned, and Jonathan dove to the ground under a storm of bullets that shredded the foliage around him. He tried to make himself disappear into the ground behind a hardwood. He could feel the impact of bullets through the trunk.

Moments earlier, in the lodge, the Hughes family had gathered around the computer screen to watch. The heat signatures from six separate vehicles lined up along the ridge that ran behind the cabin.

“How could he have left us like this?” Julie railed. “We even talked about it. How could he do this?”

Thomas barked, “What the fuck difference does it make now?” She looked like she’d been slapped, and he enjoyed it. “They’re there and we’re here.”

They’d taken off their night vision to keep from whiting them out with the computer screen, and in the blue glow, Thomas watched his father rub his neck the way he always did when he was contemplating a problem.

In the distance, they heard three quick shots, and then a second later, three explosions that seemed to trigger the rolling fusillade that was Jonathan’s firefight.

Thomas climbed from behind the blanket-formed light lock and darted to the front window. He replaced the goggles and looked toward the shooting. “Sounds like they’re tearing ’em up,” he said. He looked back to his family. “It’s really happening.” He brought his rifle up and waited.

Behind him, Julie huddled with Stephenson, and that pissed Thomas off. He wanted his father to quit coddling her and take command. He wanted him to step up like Scorpion and issue orders for everyone.

Thomas hated the fact that they were hiding-cowering-as Scorpion did the dirty work. It was shameful. When this was over-

“Oh, God,” Stephenson said from the light lock. “They’re swarming down the hill in the rear. The picture just refreshed. My God, there are so many!”

Thomas moved back to the light lock to see for himself. He could see people now. His eyes went first to the fighters who were engaging Scorpion, frozen in time as they faced off almost nose to nose. Then he saw the swarm of images on their way down the hill.

He counted them. Jesus, could that possibly be right? Could there possibly be twenty attackers, plus the ones with Scorpion? They were still a long way off-a half mile or more, probably-but they were on their way in a wide loop that looked like a noose around the cabin. “We need to get ready,” he said. “We need to get downstairs.” He shouted, “Gail! Jesse! They’re on their way!” He started for the stairs.

Julie grabbed him to make him are you doing this?” Venice demanded.

The intruder refused to answer. At gunpoint, she’d been forced to bind her own ankles with duct tape to the legs of a guest chair in her office, and then to tape her own left wrist to the arm of the same chair. When the intruder was satisfied with her work, he then bound her right wrist and revisited the other three points of bondage with much tighter, more aggressive loops. Finally, he fastened her elbows, eliminating movement.

When that was done, the man, whom she now recognized from her Internet searches to be Carlyle Industries’ security chief and from Mama’s description as the man who’d approached Roman, slid behind her desk and squinted at her computer screen.

“For heaven’s sake!” Venice barked. “Would you please say something?”

Charlie Warren’s head didn’t move as his gaze shifted to her. “Watch the attitude, Ms. Alexander. You are two strips of tape away from suffocation.” A smile bloomed on his handsome face. “There’s also that fine son of yours to worry about. Much too young to die.”

Something inside Venice dissolved. “You wouldn’t.”

“Maybe I already have.” He transformed his voice to a mocking falsetto. “Ow! Ow, you’re hurting me! Please stop! Mommeee!”

Enraged and terrified, Venice pulled at her bonds.

Charlie Warren laughed. “You know I’ll just shoot you if you wriggle free, right? Go for it.” He squinted as he watched the images on the screen. “Ooh, looks like they’re in trouble.”

The world tilted inside Venice’s head. The image of Roman yelling out to her was so real, so vivid. Could this man really do such unspeakable things to a child?

Of course he could. Look what they did to Tibor and to Ellen. When the stakes were high enough, she realized, cruelty had no limits. This man in her chair, behind her computer screen, was a monster.

Why hadn’t he killed her already? He needed her to be alive. But why?

Her role was a tactical one, she realized. He needed her alive for a specific reason. She reran the events of the past week and she landed on her answer. “I’m your insurance policy,” she announced.

His gaze shifted again from the screen.

“You need me alive as a bargaining chip in case Ivan Patrick fails. If Digger-if Jonathan lives through the attack, you’re going to use me to get your weapons back.”

The man tried to maintain a poker face, but she could see that she’d nailed it.

In an unexpected burst of bravado, she added, “And you are Charles Warren, security director for Carlyle Industries. Your picture is on the Web site. That’s probably not very smart.”

“I’d be careful,” Charlie warned, looking back to the screen. “Start thinking too hard and I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway.” She wanted to sound bold, but angered herself with a tiny catch in her voice.

The man smiled. “Maybe I should get it over with.”

Venice smiled back. “You can’t. Not yet. Jonathan wouldn’t do anything to help you unless he had-what does he call it? Proof of life. Like the mo” Jonathan panted into his radio. When he got no reply, he tried again. “Gail, how are you holding out up there?”

Still nothing. What the hell was going on with the radios? First it was Venice and now the Hugheses. Without either of them, he was blind out here.

It sounded like they were locked in one hell of a war.

Chapter Forty-three

Dom hated being outside the loop on Digger’s escapades. Tonight in particular, he had the sense that his old friend was in over his head, and he wanted to do something. The fact that Venice was ignoring her phone made it even worse.

He stayed out of it because Digger wanted it that way, probably to save him from the burden of the violence, but Dom sensed that there was also an element of shame. Noble rationale notwithstanding, he hated being left outside the circle.

He couldn’t take it anymore. As a Seinfeld episode reran on the rectory television, he realized that he no longer cared what Digger thought. Dom’s rightful place tonight was at the firehouse helping Venice cope with the stress of being Digger’s link to the world. If that pissed her boss off, then let him be pissed.

Grabbing a gray jacket to ward against the chilly evening, he called to Father Timothy and told him he was going for a walk.

The breeze off the water made the night feel more like March than April. He shot the collar of his jacket and stuffed his hands into the front pockets as he made his way down the hill toward the firehouse, two blocks away. Scanning the dark, empty streets, it was hard to imagine the madhouse it was going to be in two short months when the tourists returned. He made a mental note to remind the Town Council to repair the streetlights. On a moonless night like this, footing was treacherous for anyone who didn’t know the lay of the land. After years of practice, Dom knew to expect the loose bricks in the sidewalk near the corner at Second Street, and he adjusted his stride accordingly.

Passing the darkened silhouette of St. Kate’s on his left, he fought the urge to double-check the sanctuary doors. He wasn’t a fan of locked churches anyway. If the fear of mortal sin still prevailed in society, he’d have left the doors open to serve the homeless. He considered it a failure of the modern church that such kindness was no longer possible in today’s world.

Just past the church and its grounds rose the six-foot colonial-style brick wall that surrounded the parking lot and back doors of the firehouse. Jonathan had erected the wall within months of purchasing the property as a means to keep people from turning into his parking lot from Church Street, and to provide some element of privacy.

Approaching First Street at the bottom of the hill and the marina that lay across, the temperature dropped another five degrees. Dom had always loved this view of the water through the forest of darkened masts, swaying in the gentle waves of the river.

He turned the corner and knew that the peace would not last. In the otherwise deserted streets, a heavily jacketed man sat across from the firehouse on a public bench in the tiny Veteran’s Park among last summer’s flower carcasses. The newspaper he held spread above his lap could not possibly be legible in the yellow glow of the single streetlight across the street.

“Hello,” Dom said with his most priestly smile.

The man looked startled at first, then grunted a quick, “Good evening, Father,” before he returned to his paper.

Dom noted the formality and ct least a Catholic.

There are no coincidences.

It all felt very wrong. Over the span of a second or two, he inventoried the status quo, beginning with the fact that Digger was in the middle of an uncontrolled shit storm. Add to that the fact that Venice didn’t answer her phone-Venice always answered her phone-and cap it with a stranger sitting in a place where no reasonable man would be, reading in light that allowed him to see virtually nothing.

Something bad was about to happen.

No coincidences.

Maybe something bad was already happening.

Dom said nothing more to the man. He just kept walking. He turned left at the corner of Gibbon Creek Road, at the far end of the firehouse, and fought the urge to quicken his pace as he turned left again and entered the alley formed by the portion of Jonathan’s brick wall that separated his parking lot from St. Kate’s. The night felt suddenly colder, and Dom found himself wishing that he’d grabbed a heavier jacket.

At the height of the workday, there would be as many as fifteen cars parked in the lot on the back side of the firehouse; at this time of night, it was usually barren. Tonight, however, the lot hosted a single vehicle, parked as far from the security light as possible. He thought he could see a silhouette behind the steering wheel, as if someone was watching the back door. He paused there in the mouth of the alley before continuing his stroll back up the hill toward the church.

Dom glanced up at the third floor as he strolled, hoping to see some sign of activity, but the blinds were all pulled, as they so often were when Venice worked alone at night.

Maybe he was overreacting. Jonathan was paranoid as hell that his friends and his staff might be victimized as a result of his work, and he’d years ago insisted that Venice and Dom both have sensors implanted under the skin near their armpits that would allow for easy tracking if the worst happened. He also insisted that they both carry panic buttons-Dom’s in the form of a crucifix, and Venice’s in the form of a gold pendant-that would kick emergency procedures into gear if needed. Venice had a panic button in her desk that would accomplish the same thing. If she were in the kind of trouble that Dom suspected, wouldn’t she have activated the system?

He decided he didn’t care. His father had once bestowed upon him some great advice: sometimes, if there is doubt, then there really is no doubt at all.

Dom took a deep breath and found a shadow where he felt most invisible. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number for the police department. He briefly thought about calling 9-1-1, but decided against bringing too much attention to what was fundamentally a gut feeling.

The smoky voice that answered the phone could have been male or female. “Fisherman’s Cove Police Department. Is this an emergency?”

“No emergency,” Dom said. “Is Chief Kramer in his office?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“This is Father D’Angelo with St. Katherine’s Parish. I’d like to speak with the chief if I could.”

“Good evening, Father. I’m sorry, sir, but the chief is not available at the moment. It’s a little late.”

Of course it was a little late. After ten-thirty, for hese the mines!”

“No!” Thomas and Stephenson answered together.

“Scorpion might be out there,” Thomas added.

He realized they were losing. Throwing Scorpion’s instructions to the wind, he’d changed the selector on his rifle from single-shot to three-round burst. The improved volume of fire slowed the attackers down, but as the breech on his weapon locked open for the third time and he inserted his fourth and final magazine, he realized that he was thirty rounds away from being in real trouble. Even as the thought passed through his mind, he fired another two bursts. Make that twenty-four rounds from a world of hurt.

He slid the empty mags across the floor to his mother. “Hurry, Mom!” he shouted. She moved in slow motion, as if in a trance.

There were no targets, per se, to shoot at. Instead, he found himself targeting the sparkles of muzzle flashes along the tree line and in the grass. His father had repositioned to the rear of the house again, where he apparently had all kinds of targets to shoot at, emptying clip after clip of automatic weapons fire through the two windows he commanded.

Out front, the man Thomas had shot would not shut up. He screamed like a wounded animal, begging for someone to help him. If it hadn’t been so unnerving, it would have been sad. Twice, as Thomas stuck his weapon through the open widow to take another shot at the tree line, he’d considered helping the poor bastard to a bullet to his head, but both times he stopped himself. What was the point of wasting a bullet on someone who was already hit?

He fired two more bursts. “Mom! Hurry on the reload! I’m almost out! You’ve got to work faster!”

But she’d either gone deaf or was ignoring him, because she just kept her head down and continued to fumble with the rifle he’d already slid to her. “Jesus, Mom! Hurry.” She was unmoved. It was as if she’d set a pace for herself, and was by God going to stick to it.

A two-man team charged forward, and he cut them down.

His breech locked again. Unarmed now, and facing a yardful of attackers, just what the hell was he supposed to do? As the wounded man continued to scream, Thomas heard his father fire another six or seven shots through the back window.

“This is fucking crazy,” he mumbled, and he scrambled on hands and knees across the wooden floor to his mother, who was crying as she struggled with the bullets.

“I’m sorry,” she snuffled. “I’m trying, I’m really trying.”

He snatched the magazine from her, along with the box of bullets, and scooted back toward the window. It felt about half-full. There had to be a better way.

Wait. There was a better way.

No, it was crazy.

No, it was the only answer.

Spinning like a propeller on the smooth pine floor, he scrambled back to his mother and grabbed her arm. “Mom, come with me,” he said.

She looked horrified. “I can’t.”

“You have to.” He tightened his grip and dragged her toward his window.

“Ow!” she hollered. “Thomas, you’re hurting me!”

He ignored her, even as he heard his father boom his name from the other room.

Once again at the window, he peeked up long enough to fire again into the night, and then he ducked down again. He was hined. “Someone has to reload. I have to reload. I promise I’ll do it faster.”

“Mom, goddammit, shut up and listen to me. All you have to do is fire out the window. Just for a few seconds.”

“I can’t.”

“And try not to hit me.”

That last part flew right by her, unnoticed. “I can’t do it, Thomas. Please don’t make me.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Then don’t,” he said.

He snapped his night vision back into place, and hefted himself up and over the sill into the night.

The rate of fire outside doubled.

Chapter Forty-four

Dom entered the sanctuary through the side door and locked it behind him. He made a beeline for the space behind the confessionals where a semiconcealed door led to the concrete stairway into the basement. As intimidating an underground space as Dom had ever seen, the cavernous basement under St. Kate’s had been blasted out of solid rock during construction back in the thirties, and as far as Dom knew, it still contained every item that had ever been deposited there. Boxes of old bulletins and stacks of broken furniture lined the walls, and in the middle, stoutly constructed metal shelves held all manner of old toys, tools, gardening equipment, and even three cases of beer that might have dated back to Prohibition. Even with the overhead lights turned on, you needed a flashlight to find anything. Over the years, Dom had considered assigning children to the task of cleaning the place up as a form of particularly aggressive penance, but always backed off in the end.

He hurried to the far side and pushed an ancient Nativity scene out of the way to gain access to the mostly blocked heavy door that would take him into Jonathan’s tunnel. A crooked picture hid the keypad, which was recessed into the concrete wall.

Dom settled himself before entering the code, knowing that he only had three shots at getting it right. He punched the 14 numbers carefully, using the ridiculous mnemonic that he’d never shared with anyone. “TRA HELEFUNT BOX” produced the numeric code, 8-7-2-4-3-5-3-3-8-6-8-2-0-9, an entirely random cipher. He pressed Enter, listened as the locks slid out of place, and then pushed the heavy panel open. Using the green glow from his cell phone, he found the light switch. Fluorescent light tubes flickered to life, revealing the passage.

Once inside, he didn’t bother to close the door on his end. Instead, he took the eight steps to the tile floor in two strides, and ran the distance to the other end, where another heavy door stood between him and the basement of the firehouse. As he entered the identical code, it occurred to him that he’d never passed through this portal without Jonathan at his side. In fact, be believed that this was the first time he’d even been in the tunnel alone. What would be the point? When the locking pin cleared, he pushed on the door to open it.

It resisted him. It felt as if something on the other side was in the way. He pushed harder, and when the door still pushed back, he gave it everything he had. The door gave way, and as it did, Dom realized what had been holding it back.

He’d forgotten about the empty oil tank that Jonathan used to ca angry look at Venice, but whatever it was had startled her, too.

He snatched his cell phone from the desk and pushed a button. “What the hell was that?” he asked. He spoke into it as if it were a walkie-talkie.

“What was what?” a voice asked.

“That bang. I heard a big bang.”

“I heard nothin’ out front,” the voice said.

“What about you, Garino?” Charlie asked.

A different voice said, “I didn’t hear anything either.”

Charlie scowled. “You seen anything unusual?”

“I’ve seen nothin’,” the first voice said. “Not even any people, for Christ sake. This is one dead town. Only thing I saw was a priest out for a night stroll.”

Venice’s heart jumped.

Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he looked straight through her. Into the radio, he said, “Garino, I want you to come in through the back and check out the downstairs.”

“What am I looking for?” Garino wasn’t being difficult; his question sounded heartfelt.

“Anything,” Charlie said. “A priest, maybe.” As he said that, he watched Venice and smiled. “And if you see one, shoot him.”

“You want me to shoot a priest?” He sounded horrified.

“A little late to worry about hell, don’t you think?” Charlie jabbed. “Let me know whatever you see.”

Thomas fell hard onto the wooden porch, and as he did, the tree line became a light show of flashing strobes. Bullets slammed all around him, pulverizing the wall and the floor and peppering him with shredded wood. Moving faster than he knew he was capable of, he rolled two times to his left and dropped from the porch onto the ground, where a long divot caused by years of rainwater erosion along the front edge of the porch provided some shelter.

“Thomas, get in here!” his mother shouted.

“Jesus, Mom, shoot!”

This was a really, really bad idea. He was in the middle of a war without a weapon, with the whole world trying to shoot him. Paralyzed by terror, he tried to figure a way to move either backward or forward without getting torn to pieces. Pressing himself into the ditch, he inchwormed backward, parallel to the porch, until he was even with where he thought the now-silent screaming man had fallen.

Suddenly the man’s gun and ammunition seemed less important. With remarkable clarity, he decided that he was fucked. The moment he raised his head, he would die.

Then he heard the rapid fire of a machine gun from behind him, and his father’s voice yelled, “Go get it, Thomas! I’ll keep their heads down.”

It was his best chance. Thomas closed his eyes, made himself as skinny as possible, and hoisted himself out of the trench onto his belly. He kept his butt low as he crawled like a frightened lizard toward the lump that was the fallen attacker.

A giant crescendo of incoming gunfire made him cringe, but the piercing impact of a bullet never came. In fact, the bad guys’ aim seemed to have worsened. His dad’s distraction was working, drawing fire away from him toward the front window.

Quickening his pace, he dug his fingers and toes into the cold hard ground, filling his sinuses with the smell of dirt and his own fear. Then there was something else, a horrific stench that brought images of rotted dog shit. The ground grew damp, and within a few feet, it became wet and slipperfinally was upon the body-and that’s clearly what it was now, with its open eyes and lolling tongue-he realized that he was lying in the man’s spilled intestines.

The horror of it hit Thomas hard. Without thought or preamble, he vomited all over both of them.

Jesus God, what had he done to this man?

Two bullets slammed into the dead man’s side, and two more whizzed past Thomas’s head, their supersonic whip crack pounding his eardrums.

Fuck this. Now was not the time for reflection or regret. It was time to load up with ammunition and make more of these bastards look like their friend here.

The dead man’s rifle-an M16, Thomas remembered from the History Channel-lay on the ground next to the body. He snagged it by its sling with his right hand, and pulled it in close. But a rifle by itself was no good without the ammunition to feed it, and this dead man carried his ammunition all over his body, the way that Scorpion did. Thomas started to remove the man’s vest, until another near hit changed his mind. Grabbing the man by his collar, he dragged him back toward the shelter of the divot. He ignored the long rope of entrails that snaked along behind them.

Jonathan tried one more time to raise someone on the radio, and cursed at the continued silence. He considered that the Hugheses might be dead, but if so, then who was everybody shooting at up there? Given the heat of the battle, he was willing to forgive Stephenson for losing track of his radio, but there was no excuse for Venice leaving her post like this.

He crossed the final rise and saw the scale of the assault being mounted against the lodge. This really was a war.

Ivan’s strategy was obvious. The attackers had formed a wide V-shaped formation, coming at the lodge from its front and right. He imagined that there were attackers in the rear, as well, but that part of the house was invisible from his angle. Jonathan cursed himself for having underestimated his opponent. There wasn’t much he could have done differently, short of reading Ivan’s mind, but that didn’t change the fact that their tactical situation sucked.

He keyed his radio. “Hey Box, are you close?”

“Right behind, you,” he said, inches away from Jonathan’s ear.

He damn near shit his pants. “Goddammit, don’t do that.”

Boxers laughed. “This doesn’t look good for the good guys,” he said.

“Yeah, well, just wait.” He explained what he wanted to do.

To Dom’s ears, the crash of the oil tank was louder than an explosion. It reverberated off the concrete walls, echoing like a gunshot in the Grand Canyon.

Running was out of the question. If Venice was in trouble, he had to help her out. And staying put was out of the question, too. The words of a long-forgotten football coach bloomed in his memory: If you’re not moving forward, then you’re going backward. Reborn in the acid bath of panic, he heard the advice as, If you don’t get out of this basement, you’re going to die.

Again using the light of his cell phone as a guide, he navigated through the assembled junk and glided up the stairs into the old hose tower, and from there, through the utility room. He held his breath as he cracked the door to the living room open an inch and looked around. Everything looked as it always did: neat, organized. In the glow of the street light that painted parallelograms of light through the old bay doors, he could make out the outlines of the furniture. There continuhovrom the end of the porch you can run around-”

A fusillade of bullets ripped at the floor of the porch just above Thomas’s head. They’d locked in on his position. He needed to move. Now. His only viable plan was to emerge from the trench as fast as he could, then dash around back and hope that there weren’t a thousand bad guys waiting for him.

“Thomas, did you-”

“I heard you!” he shouted. And so did everybody else, he thought. Where the hell was Scorpion?

He rose to his knees, with his elbows still pressed to the ground, butt up, then raised his head to take a look. The flashes in the trees had become people now, and they were moving toward him in a wide line that ran parallel to the front of the cabin. With the distorted vision, he had no idea how far they were, but it couldn’t have been more than forty or fifty yards.

On impulse, Thomas brought his new rifle to his shoulder, rested the forestock against the ground, and picked a target. He squeezed the trigger just as he’d been taught, and jumped as the muzzle spit out a long burst in full-automatic mode. The target he’d picked flopped like a rag doll onto the ground, and the four or five attackers closest to him dove for cover.

His hidey hole became the battleground’s most popular target. Bullets shredded the wood and churned the turf at the edge of the porch. Thomas heaved himself out of the trench onto the open ground, falling forward into the grass and eating a mouthful of turf. Behind him, the section of ground he’d just left was consumed by a sustained burst of incoming fire. Scrambling to get his balance, his feet found traction and he ran for the nearest corner of the house.

Three steps later, a sharp jolt slammed him hard and he yelled in horror and pain as his leg hinged up at mid-thigh and his own foot kicked him in the face.

Venice could see the fear in Charlie Warren’s eyes and hear it in his voice as he tried unsuccessfully to raise his people on the radio. He glared at her. “What’s going on?”

Completely immobile, and at the whim of this man who seemed intent on killing, Venice opted to say nothing.

“Do you know a priest?” Charlie asked.

“We live next to a church,” she said. “This is a small town.”

“What would he be doing here?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Call out to him. Tell him that you’re busy and can’t be disturbed.”

That didn’t even make sense, she thought. Why would she say such a thing?

“Say it,” Charlie repeated. This time he pressed his pistol to her head. “If I see anyone, I’m going to shoot.”

“Dom!” she shouted. “Is that you?” If nothing else, maybe she could save his life.

No one responded.

“Is that the priest’s name?” Charlie asked. “Dom?”

Venice nodded.

“Tell him to stay away.”

She took a breath. “Dom, if that’s you, I don’t have time for you. I’m busy.”

Again, no reply.

“Maybe the noise was nothing,” Venice offered. “A picture fell off the wall.”

Charlie flashed her an angry look. “Pictures don’t scream,” he said. He moved away from her, closer to the door. He adjusted his grip on the pistol. “Whoever it is, is about to be shot.” He placed his hand on the kn›

Even in the cacophony of the gunfire and above the piercing sounds of Stephenson’s shouting, Gail heard the bullet hit Thomas, a wet snapping sound. They all heard it. Julie screamed, “Oh, my God! Thomas!”

Stephenson scrambled for the window.

Gail yelled, “Steve! No! I’ll get him!”

“He’s my son,” Stephenson said. And that said everything. He heaved himself over the window and onto the porch with a clattering thump.

Julie reached for his ankle, but he was already gone.

The volume of fire outside crescendoed. But for the heavy timber walls, they’d have all been torn to pieces.

Gail started to crawl across the cabin to Stephenson’s window, then realized that a chance to hit a second target at the same spot would spell disaster for her. Acting on pure impulse, she turned and vaulted out of her own window into the tall grass that still rimmed the foundation in the backyard.

She braced herself for a brutal fusillade.

Alone now inside the cabin, Julie felt blinded by a terror she’d never known. Thomas and Stephenson both were out there being raked by bullets. She couldn’t lose both of them.

Where was Scorpion? And his obnoxious sidekick? How could they leave her like this? Even her own family had left her. She didn’t want to die.

Her gaze fell on the detonators. The clackers. Giant shotguns. Their last resort. Their Alamo position.

The only way to save her boys’ lives.

But Scorpion might be out there among the attackers.

“Don’t do anything unless you hear me say…” Whatever. Something. How was she to know if Scorpion was even alive anymore?

She didn’t care.

Dom knew from her voice alone that Venice was in distress. Her message was out of character. She needed him.

Yet here he stood, paralyzed by indecision. He knew it was a trap. If he walked through that door, God only knew what might come next. He’d get shot, probably. But to stay out here while Venice was in danger in there was…cowardly. How could he-

The turning doorknob settled it. Dom darted to the hinge side of the door and waited. When the tongue of the latch cleared the strike plate, he launched his full weight against the heavy panel.

As he’d hoped, his explosive entrance caught the intruder off-balance. He backpedaled to keep from being propelled to the floor, but unlike the man downstairs, this one was agile and light on his feet. As Dom clutched fistfuls of the man’s suit jacket and tried to drive him to the floor, the intruder effortlessly pirouetted free. His hands were empty, though.

The intruder struck a martial arts pose, and Dom knew right away that he was in trouble. Army training notwithstanding, Dom could not prevail in a hand-to-hand confrontation. He prayed for a weapon, and in that instant saw the intruder’s pistol on the floor. That was his only hope.

The intruder moved first. He seemed to have read Dom’s mind as he struck like a snake to throw a punch at the left side of the priest’s head-the side closest to the weapon on the floor. Dom dod his knees and sent him tumbling to the floor. He knew without doubt that his jaw had been broken. And he knew that the pistol was still on the floor. He could see it. If his arms were four inches longer, he could have touched it.

If only he could move. But he had to move. He had to save Venice or die trying. Rolling to his side, he stretched his arm to its full length and beyond, a lunging reach stretched his shoulder nearly to dislocation. He might even have made it but for the kick to his forehead. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and he felt himself balanced in a sickening nether-world between consciousness and coma.

When his vision cleared, he saw the pistol in the intruder’s hand.

Then he heard the gunshot.

The Green Brigade advanced on the lodge. They moved out of the tree line, shooting constantly, laying a deadly volume of fire on the cabin.

There was nothing nuanced or subtle about Jonathan’s plan. He and Boxers split left and right and came at the line fast and hard from their right flank. Jonathan circled to the left to come in from behind, while Boxers circled to the right to hit them on an oblique angle from the front. If the plan worked, they would close in on the attackers in a quickly advancing V-formation and roll them up to their left.

He advanced in a walking crouch, his weapon to his shoulder and set to fire three rounds with every trigger pull. When he saw a bad guy, he shot him, center of mass, and moved on to the next. No time to confirm the kill or worry about him hopping up again.

There are rhythms to war, ebbs and crescendos that no one plans, but that nonetheless give audible clues about what was happening. Presently, as he closed in for his third undetected kill, Jonathan heard a shift in the action, a peak in shooting that seemed less random, more focused. He looked to his right, through the trees, in time to see someone dart out from the cabin, only to be cut down.

He spat an obscenity and nearly turned back to reacquire a target, when more movement from the front of the cabin triggered an even more intense fusillade. Jesus Christ, one Hughes was trying to save the other.

Jonathan needed to support them. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on a muzzle flash, and fired a three-round burst. A weapon spiraled off into the darkness.

A brilliant flash near the lodge startled him, followed by the distinctive wham of a claymore. Whatever lay in the woods to the left side of the lodge was now torn to bits.

In his earpiece, Jonathan heard Boxers’ shout, “Who the fuck-”

The fusillade never came. Even as Gail was airborne, tumbling out of the window, she’d expected to be torn apart by incoming fire, but somehow she was still here.

She didn’t pause to wonder why, or to thank God, or to even give it much of a thought. One of her team was dead, two were wounded, and she had to bring them to safety. She didn’t think any of these things, she just knew them; sensed them as her duty.

Gail belly-crawled on elbows and knees to the back corner of the house, and then around to the left-hand side. In the near distance she saw Thomas on the ground writhing in agony, screaming curses to the night while his father covered him with his body. They were alive. Beyond them, she saw the attackers closing in. They were char’d been raining covering fire in the rear to mask the joining of the two skirmish lines.

But there was even more to it than that, she realized. They were protecting the true target of their assault. “Oh, my God,” she said aloud. “They’re-”

A blinding, white-hot flash took the world away.

The echo of the first claymore was still rolling across the yard when a second one erupted, this one on the left side of the front of the house. Ahead of him, through the green light of his NODs, Jonathan saw people and vegetation shredded by the high-velocity pellets as they shrieked through the night, destroying everyone and everything.

In his three decades as a warrior, he’d never been on this end of a claymore, and it was orders of magnitude louder than he’d expected. If you hear the explosion, you’re okay.

But not for long. Since he was just outside the arc of that claymore, he could count on being just inside the arc of the next.

He slapped the transmit button on his chest. “Box, get-”

The last word was cut off by the explosion.

Inside the lodge, Julie had nearly forgotten that it took three clicks to detonate a mine. On her first try, she’d squeezed the initiator only once. When nothing happened, she quickly squeezed it twice more, and was again disappointed. Third time, she squeezed it three times rapidly and screamed as the explosion ripped the night.

She’d thought it through as best she could. She remembered that the danger zone behind the mines didn’t allow you to be very close. If she didn’t shoot them now, she didn’t know when the attackers would be behind the kill zone or when Steve and Thomas might be in front of it.

Moving without pause to the second detonator, she did it right on the first try, and this time, the detonation flashed within her peripheral vision: a brilliant light, then a cloud that obscured everything. The punishing concussion came an instant later.

She moved to the third, wrapped both hands around the clacker and cowered behind the timbers as she squeezed and counted aloud. “One. Two. Th-”

This blast was a hundred times louder than the first two, but only for an instant before her ears shut down from the pounding. The inside of the lodge erupted in splinters and broken glass.

Then she felt nothing.

Dom thought he was dead. He had to be dead. How could the killer have missed? He felt a pair of strong hands on his shoulders, and a vaguely familiar voice saying, “Father? Father! Jesus, are you all right?”

The voice crystallized before the images did. It was Doug Kramer.

“I’m alive?” Dom asked.

“Are you shot?” the chief asked.

As much as he hurt, he might have been, but he honestly didn’t know. He was on the floor of Venice’s office, on his back, and to his left, he could see the contorted face of his attacker flush with the carpet, twisted in obvious pain. “I can’t feel my legs,” the man cried, but Kramer seemed unmoved. On the far side of the prone intruder, Dom saw that Venice was still bound tightly to her chair.

“I got your message,” KramerVenice wriggled against her bonds, making her chair jump. “Cut me loose,” she said, and then, as if catching herself, she added, “Please. Digger needs me to be at the computer.”

Kramer cocked his head, then looked around. “Digger.”

“You gotta help me,” Charlie whined.

“Ambulance is on the way,” Kramer said. “Digger’s here?”

Dom scooted across the floor to tend to Charlie’s injury. He pushed the man’s tie out of the way and ripped open the front of his shirt. He found the exit wound first, just above and to the right of his navel. The entrance wound was square in the spine. “Can you tell them to hurry?” Dom slurred through his fractured jaw. “He’ll bleed out without help.”

“I can only call ’em, Father. I can’t drive for ’em.” In the distance, sirens grew louder. A lot of them. A shooting in Fisherman’s Cove was the biggest of big deals.

Kramer pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket and slit the tape on Venice’s arms first, and then the loops on her ankles.

She leapt back to her keyboard. “Please let there be something left to do,” she prayed under her breath.

Chapter Forty-six

“Holy fuck,” Boxers exclaimed over the radio. “They turned the claymore on the cabin! They had sappers!”

Again, a more advanced, more daring move than Jonathan would have expected. “BDA?” he asked. Boxers would recognize the acronym as Battle Damage Assessment. From Jonathan’s vantage point, the view was still obscured by dust.

“Heavy to extreme,” he replied in the detached monotone of a warrior. “I’ll get you more in a minute.”

Heavy to extreme. That said it all, even as it said nothing. And it fit the tableau of destruction that stretched out in front of Jonathan. The night had gone silent again, and as Jonathan advanced on the skirmish line that no longer was, his stomach tightened. In her panic to stop their advance, Julie-and it had to have been Julie-had unwittingly exposed the one critical flaw in Ivan Patrick’s training regimen: the attackers were jammed too close together. It was instinctive among humans to seek community in the presence of mortal danger, an instinct to be overcome on the battlefield. A single claymore had killed or maimed what looked to be over a dozen Brigadiers.

As his hearing returned to normal, the silence gave way to the agonized cries of the wounded. He saw bodies and parts of bodies everywhere. Where he encountered attackers who were still alive, he disarmed them and let them be. “We’ll get help on the way as soon as we can,” he said, over and over again, even as he walked on. He wasn’t interested in prisoners, and he had neither the time nor the resources to guard them. If they lived, good for them; if they died waiting for help to arrive, such was the price of being a Bad Guy.

His earpiece crackled as a radio broke squelch, and he heard Venice’s voice. “Scorpion, this is Mother. Do you copy?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Jonathan growled.ed from wall to wall

“Julie?” he called. “Julie Hughes! Are you here?”

He kicked broken furniture and glassware to the side as he walked to the spot where he’d left the initiators. And there she was.

She lay on her right side facing him, her head oddly skewed by its angle against the timbers of the front wall. A smear of blood masked her ear and matted her hair. He approached quickly, dropped to his knee, and pulled off his Nomex glove to check for a pulse in her neck. He smiled as he felt her carotid artery strumming solidly under his fingers. He pressed his palm to his transmit button.

“All units, this is Scorpion. I found PC-Three and she seems okay. Unconscious, but a good strong, regular pulse.” Boxers would be able to fill in the blanks, and maybe Venice. Barring an unseen, serious head injury, Precious Cargo Three would be okay. He stood and walked toward the kitchen and noticed the body on the floor in there. Jesus, they’d had themselves a hell of a time. “How’s PC-One?”

Boxers answered, “He hurts like hell, but his vitals seem strong. Gonna have a leg like mine, though.”

Jonathan inhaled deeply, held it, and let it go. All things considered, it all went better than-

“Hey, Scorpion,” Boxers added. “The sheriff is down, too. Unconscious. I don’t know her status.”

Something moved in the yard out back. Jonathan was certain he’d just seen someone running, from right to left.

“Big Guy, Scorpion,” he said into his radio, getting Boxers’ attention. “PC One and Two with you?”

“Affirmative.”

“You on the black side of the lodge?”

“Negative. We’re on the green side. Problem I should know about?”

Jonathan headed for the back window and climbed through. “Thought I saw something out back. Gonna check it out.”

“Tough for me to join you, boss. I’m still workin’ on the kid.”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan said. “If you’re not there, I don’t have to worry about shooting the wrong guy.”

Jonathan dropped to the ground on the other side of the window. He rolled to his feet, in a crouch, and tucked his M4 into his shoulder. He scanned for targets.

More corpses littered the ground, but nothing moved. He pressed his transmit button and whispered, “Mother, this is Scorpion.”

“Go ahead,” Venice said.

“What does your latest satellite image show?”

A pause. “No change that I can see,” she said. “But with these four-minute updates…”

She didn’t need to complete the observation. A lot of ground can be traveled in four minutes.

He ran scenarios through his head. Maybe the guy was just running away, trying to get the hell out. He dismissed it out of hand. First of all, he was running in the wrong direction to escape. Out here, with the narrow yard and the steep, bald embankment, there was precious little cover, and it would be hard as hell to run uphill fast enough to get away from anyone.

Then he got it. “Big Guy, I think he’s going for the GVX.”

“Five minutes,” Boxers said. “Give me that and I can join you.”

“Maybe it’s Ivan,” Jonathan said.

“Four minutes, then.”

Jonathan liked the idea of a one-on-one with

On the far side of the truck, he heard rustling, the sound of feet moving across the dirt floor. He lowered himself to the ground so he could peer from under the truck. If something moved, he’d shoot it. He waited for a shadow. A noise. Anything.

Another rustle, this one farther to the left. The shooter was moving toward the pillar that Jonathan had just abandoned. Or maybe he was moving to position himself behind Jonathan. From the direction of the noise travel, either scenario was possible. Jonathan faced a choice: He could remain still or he could reposition himself to better cover on the far side of the truck. The latter would effectively corner him.

He opted to wait a little longer, hoping not to squander his advantage. He resisted the temptation to shoot at the noise because it would be a rookie mistake. The chances of hitting your target were nil if you couldn’t see what you were shooting, and in trying, you’d announce your location to the world.

The third time he heard the rustle-it was really more of a scrape this time-it was still farther to the left, well past the location of the pillar. That confirmed that the shooter was moving for position. If Jonathan could remain still enough for long enough-

A soft pop startled him, and an instant later, a blinding white light consumed the darkness. Jonathan slapped his night vision out of the way, but it was too late. The illumination flare had whited out his NVGs, and the glare dug into his eyes like spikes. Temporarily blinded, and completely vulnerable, he fired the Mossberg in the direction of the last noise, then jacked another round and fired slightly to the left, and then another slightly to the right before scrambling for cover under the truck.

With his ears and eyes all ruined for the short term, he rolled again to the far side of the vehicle and whatever cover it could provide. He was sickeningly aware that a stray bullet through one of the containers inside the truck would render a gunfight moot. Blinking rapidly, frantically, to erase the white blur on his retinas and regain some semblance of night vision, he moved toward the front of the barn. Until his senses returned, or until he knew where his opponent was, his only chance lay in his ability to keep moving.

But the same rules applied to his enemy. Sure, he no doubt looked away and shielded his vision from the erupting flare, but even now, as his eyes adjusted, Jonathan would still be invisible on the far side of the light. To get a bead, the attacker would have to cross to Jonathan’s side of the truck.

Would it be from the right or the left? He backed off from the truck to open up his peripheral vision, and to see the front door, in case the gunman pulled a fast one and tried to make a straight run for it. Two steps more and he was flat against the cowling of the tractor, directly under the overhang of the…loft!

He more sensed than heard the second attacker over his head. Maybe it was an errant shadow cast by the illumination flare, or maybe it was a creaking board, or maybe even a sixth sense, but in a flash, he realized where the next attack was coming from. He raised the shotgun to a vertical position and pulled the trigger, but the man dropped onto him in time to be inside the sawed-off barrel. The powder and flash got them both though, singeing Jonathan’s eyebrows and raising a welt on his cheek. The attacker fell over the cowling of the tractor, but he never really lost his balance, landing on his feet in a power stance with -in less time than it took to aim a pistol-and he slashed at the attacker’s weapon hand, severing tendons and nerves in his wrist and causing him to drop the Beretta onto the floor. He took a step closer to the man and slashed in a wide arc up his belly and across his throat. In the shadows cast by the flare, the erupting fan of blood appeared black. The man fell like a stone.

Jonathan whirled for a second attack, but nothing happened.

“Dig, are you okay?” It was Boxers, calling from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in.”

“Box, no-”

The big man dove through the door and to the right, just as his boss had done a few minutes before. “Did you get him already?”

“Not all of them.”

“You look like hell. Was that Ivan?”

Jonathan shook his head and pointed to a spot along Boxers’ wall, toward the back of the building. He let the Mossberg fall back against its sling, and traded out for the M4 again. Facing this direction, he didn’t have to worry about accidentally hitting the truck.

The two of them moved as one, as they had so many times in the past, in so many foreign lands, Boxers high and to the right, Digger low and to the left.

Boxers saw it first. He rose to his full height and tightened his grip on his rifle. “You in the corner! Don’t move! Not a muscle!”

Jonathan darted ahead to get a glimpse around the corner of the pillar. A man who looked remarkably like the attacker whose throat Jonathan had just cut lay on the floor in a lake of his own blood. Boxers flipped on the tactical light on the muzzle of his rifle, and in the glare, it was easy to see that Jonathan’s snapshot Mossberg blasts had pounded at least five holes in the man’s neck and left shoulder, so large and ragged that he knew they had to be lethal.

Boxers poked the man with his weapon. “Hey, you alive?”

“Feel for a pulse,” Jonathan said.

“I ain’t stickin’ my fingers in that mess.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. He stepped into the blood and squatted low to lift the wounded man’s chin. His eyes were open and focused, and neither one of them bore the awful scar that defined the man Jonathan wanted most to kill.

“Where’s Ivan?” Jonathan demanded.

The man smiled. Then his eyes lost focus as his life soaked into the filthy floor.

Chapter Forty-seven

The transfer went smoothly. Including Thomas and his parents and all of the surviving attackers, the Blackhawk took off just six minutes after it had touched down with a load of only eight civilians in the cargo bay. For enough money and the right connections, there were confidential solutions to every kind of problem. In about an hour, they’d all be off-loaded at an Army medical facility outside Cincinnati whose physicians and staff were used to providing outstanding medical care to people about whom it was their responsibility to know as little as possible. For Jonathan, access to the network of clandestine medical facilities both domestically and abroad was one of the great perks of his connection to the Unit.

Jonathan watch’m staying,” he said.

Insubordination from Boxers was more startling than sniper fire. “The hell you are,” Jonathan started to say, but he pulled the words back and opted for a softer approach. “It’s the plan,” he said.

“Plans change all the time. I’m not leaving you here to take the heat by yourself.”

Jonathan sighed. “Look, I appreciate the loyalty-”

“Then shut up and send the chopper on its way. We’re running out of time.”

Jonathan stepped around to stare him straight in the eye. Well, straight in the Adam’s apple anyway. “You’re medic trained. You can help the kid and his mom.”

“The bird is full of medics as it is. They don’t need me. I’m not letting you take the fall, Dig.”

“It was my mission, Box. And my fuck-up, and now this is my recovery plan. You’ve done-”

“I’m not going.”

Honest to God, they didn’t have time for this. Jonathan made one last try. “Tell you what. If things go wrong, and they end up taking me to jail, you can lead the mission to get me out.”

Even in the darkness, he could see the sparkle of interest. “Out of a jail here in the U.S.? No way.”

“If it goes that way, I’ll be counting on you.”

Boxers shifted his gaze back to the distance as he considered it. “You know that’s impossible.”

“I know no such thing. Not with you in charge.”

Boxers snorted, “You are so full of shit. What about her?” He nodded to Gail Bonneville, who held both hands to her head, which had obviously not yet cleared of the cobwebs caused by the blast wave of the claymores.

Jonathan smiled. “You know I’m a sucker for a pretty woman.” When he didn’t get the chuckle he was hunting for, he added, “The next call is hers. I made a deal.”

Boxers rose to his full height, gaining a couple of inches as he drew in a deep breath and then let it go as a noisy sigh. “I’m staying,” he said, but as the words came out, he stammered a little. He didn’t make a habit out of saying no to his boss.

Jonathan was stunned. He’d heard excuses before, and objections, but he couldn’t remember the last outright mutiny.

“If we need to break out of anywhere, we’ll do it from the inside,” Boxers said. He let his rifle fall against its sling. “I’ve made up my mind, so don’t bother to say nothin’ more.”

There it was. You didn’t get much less negotiable than that. As the Army chopper piloted by old friends powered up, Jonathan turned his back to the rotor wash and approached a vaguely familiar middle-aged man who looked like he’d been ripped out of bed and shoved into a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Boxers kept his distance. The newcomer’s expression showed equal parts horror and bewilderment.

“Will Joyce,” Jonathan said, extending a friendly, blood-spattered hand. “Nice to see you again.”

The man’s body didn’t move, but he cocked his head curiously. “Do we know each other?”

“Knowt at a handshake and stuffed his hands in his pockets instead. It was a gesture designed to be nonthreatening. “Only one ground rule before we begin. You either agree to it, or I call that chopper back and I send you home. You can write whatever you want about what you see, but you can’t use any of the names of people that you talk to tonight. Agreed?”

Will recoiled. “I can’t agree to that.”

Jonathan made a show of pressing the transmit button. “Rescue Flight, Scorpion.”

He’d unplugged his earphone jack, so Will could plainly hear the pilot reply, “Go ahead, Scorpion.”

Jonathan looked to Will. “It begins here or it ends here. It’s your call, and you don’t get a second chance. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

You could almost see the thoughts racing through the reporter’s head. “Just the names?”

“Scorpion, do you have traffic for Rescue Flight?”

Jonathan keyed the mike. “Stand by.” To Will: “All parties remain anonymous. We’ll be a whole nest of Deep Throats. No names, no personal descriptions, nothing to make us identifiable to the outside world. And I warn you not to make a promise that you’re not willing to keep.”

Will stood there and sort of vibrated as he thought through his options. “Who’s she?” he asked, nodding at Gail.

“I got people waiting, Will. You either want this story or you don’t.”

Clearly against his better judgment, Will let go with a giant sigh. “Fine,” he blurted. “I agree.”

Jonathan scanned for signs of insincerity, then keyed his mike again. “Rescue Flight, disregard. Have a good night.” He flashed a smile to Will. “Where were we?”

“You were about to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“First tell me what you already know.”

Gail wandered up to stand next to Jonathan. She nodded in response to his glance to tell him that she was on the road to okay.

Will pulled a penlight out of his pocket and clicked it on, casting a beam into the night. It settled on a corpse. “Jesus,” he whispered. He brought his gaze around to Jonathan. “I got a call at home a few hours ago telling me to meet a driver at the front door if I wanted to snag the story that would make me famous. I had two minutes to make my decision. They said it had something to do with Tibor, so I threw on some clothes, and a guy who didn’t say much took me to a farmhouse in Middleburg, where that big chopper was waiting for me. For a while, I thought I’d walked into my own kidnapping.

“We were airborne for a half hour or so, and then we set down in another field, and just waited for instructions. I still don’t really know much about what’s going on, but they kept telling me that if I hung in there, I was going to get a hell of a story, and that no one else was going to have any piece of it.” He paused, as if pondering whether there was anymore to tell. “Is that enough?”

Jonathan nodded. “I think that sounds about right.” He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the coming monologue. “See, we had us a bit of a war out here tonight…”

Once he got started, it didn’t really take all that long to tell the story-at least the essence of it; the details could come later, in future interviews.

Will Joyce listened, checking his recorder was Will Joyce. Gail came next, Boxers last.

“And I need my radio back, please.” He knew better than to ask for his weapons.

Irene nodded, and his radio reappeared. He reconnected himself to the earpiece.

“Leave us alone,” Irene said to the nearby agents. “Suit back up to Level A and inventory that shed.”

The agent hesitated again. “Ma’am, I don’t think-” Then he saw the glare. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s walk,” Irene said, heading down the hill toward Jonathan’s original ambush site.

“You come, too,” Jonathan said to Will. That Gail would follow was a given. To Irene, he said, “So, how does it feel being back in the thick of things again?”

She switched on a flashlight to illuminate a path. “It’s been a while. I like it, but it makes the field agents nervous as hell.”

“Nobody wants the director to get in trouble on their watch,” Jonathan said.

After thirty yards or so, Irene brought them to a stop and lowered her voice. “Okay, let’s hear it. I know you have a plan, and that it’s carefully choreographed, so let’s just get to it.”

Jonathan had always appreciated Irene’s bluntness. He turned to Will. “Remember your promise,” he reminded. Then to Irene, he said, “Step one. You make sure that the Hughes family is left alone, and that the pursuit to find them guilty of murdering anyone ends now.”

Irene shook her head. “I don’t think you-”

“I’m not done,” Jonathan said. “Step two. You prepare whoever you need to prepare for the fact that my friend Will here is going to write a blockbuster story about Carlyle Industries and their secret contract to produce bioweapons in violation of God only knows how many treaties. Once that secret is out, there’ll be no need to kill people to keep it.”

Irene glared at the reporter, who seemed newly energized as he hovered a microtape recorder in the air between them. “Anything else?” she snarled.

“Oh, come on, Irene, you know you find this to be as much a relief as a pain in the ass. The truth will set you free.”

“Anything else,” she repeated, this time more as a statement than a question.

“Two more,” Jonathan said. “First, you make known to the world what the Green Brigade was up to, and how it was transformed by Ivan Patrick from a well-meaning environmental group into the self-serving paramilitary wolf pack that it is today. If you dig a little, I guarantee that you’ll find a history of illegal weapons sales, and I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that that very kind of sale was what ultimately created this mess.”

“Which leaves one more,” Irene prompted.

“Yes, it does. I want you to treat my friend Will here as the designated historian for all that transpires from this. Let’s see about getting him a Pulitzer.”

Hands on both hips, she shook her head in disbelief. “All this havoc, all these dead bodies, and no accountability. That’s what I’m hearing.”

Jonathan chuckled, knowing he’d won. “Your glass is always half-empty, Irene.”

Irene appealed to Gail. “And what about you Sheriff Law and Order? What are you going to do?”

Ga driven earlier in the day. At this altitude, they could see several miles of road length, so it couldn’t possibly take long.

But as Jonathan watched over Boxer’s shoulder, the screen betrayed nothing.

“Wait a second,” Jonathan declared, landing a hand heavily on Boxers’ shoulder. “Go back.”

“To where?”

“To the cabin. To the trail at the top of the ridge. The Hugheses said they didn’t know where it went. Maybe Ivan does.”

“Or maybe he sees this as the perfect time to find out,” Gail added.

Boxers didn’t bother to reply. He kicked in a load of tail rotor and spun them around like a top to head in the other direction, damn near throwing them all to the deck. As the passengers yelled their protests, the pilot laughed. “God, I love my job,” he said.

They rose to 500 feet as the nose dipped and the rotors pulled them faster and faster back toward the cabin. As the house and the barn passed below them, Jonathan saw the scope of the destruction. The blood had cooled enough to become less visible, but the bodies had not. He fought the urge to count them. That seemed somehow wrong.

Soon the tableau of destruction was gone, and they were again cruising over the unending expanse of trees.

Jonathan and Boxers saw the truck at the same instant, and they pointed together. “There,” they said in unison. The truck was driving faster than was prudent, given the road conditions. Even from this altitude, with very little magnification of the image, they could see the SUV barely hanging on as roots and potholes bounced it around.

“Any ideas how to stop it?” Boxers asked. “Looks like he’s got a real road to connect to in about three miles. At his speed, that gives us about seven minutes to think of something.”

Jonathan and Gail looked at each other. Her shrug matched his absence of ideas.

He turned to survey the equipment they had available. The seat and deck of the Blackhawk were strewn with the flotsam of the raid on the cabin. He saw helmets and a few extra Kevlar vests. Like good soldiers in any outfit, of course, no one had left a weapon behind; but at least they had Captain Courageous’s Glock. It was something. Not much, but something. He slipped it into pouch pocket on his thigh.

His eyes settled on a pile of coiled rope, and then he knew what he had to do.

“You know this is crazy, right?” Boxers asked over the intercom as Jonathan made his final preparations.

“Welcome to today,” Jonathan mumbled. In the roar of the rotor noise, no one heard him. He looked to Gail. “You’ve got to be his eyes,” he said.

Gail nodded, but her expression belied her wholesale agreement with Boxers. This was crazy.

Jonathan went on, “He can’t look ahead and down at the same time.”

“I’ve fast-roped before,” Gail said. “HRT, remember?”

“Humor me,” Jonathan said. “Given the stakes, I want to say it all out loud. Watch for speed and altitude. Box should be able to keep me in the slot, but the rest will be up to you.”

“I’ll handle it,” she said. But she wished she could think of a better way.

“You can’t second-guess my hand signals,” he said. “If I signal to release the rope, you release it, understand?” He’d already set the rope to release on its own if it got snagged. Since it was his crazy idea,. “What are you doing!” Out the starboard side cargo door, she watched, horrified, as the lead vehicle skidded sideways in the road, and the one behind it T-boned it hard. Together, their momentum carried them into the side of the chopper with barely a bump.

The trussed-up FBI agent’s eyes were the size of hockey pucks, somehow befitting his skin, which was the color of ice. “He’s fucking crazy!” the agent yelled.

Gail was about to agree when she realized that she hadn’t seen the half of it. Boxers heaved himself out of the pilot’s seat and out onto the road, where he strode to the third car in the approaching line-a Nissan pickup that hadn’t hit anything, but had stopped sideways in the road nonetheless-and opened the driver’s door. She could neither see nor hear the negotiation, but the driver seemed more than happy to surrender his seat.

Gail understood what was about to happen, and she scrambled out of the chopper to join him. Until the very last second when he stopped to let her in, she wondered if Boxers might just run her over.

To keep his arms and legs from being broken, Jonathan hugged them close to his body, like a cannonball off the high dive. The very, very high dive.

Branches tore at him and buffeted him as he fell through the canopy, but even as his gut screamed at him with every impact, he reminded himself that they were keeping him alive. Without something to break his momentum, a fall from this height offered little chance of survival, and virtually none of escaping without injury.

When the ground slapped him, he howled with agony. He’d been torn by bullets before, but the mind mercifully takes the edge off memories like that. It felt as if someone had packed his appendix with hot coals. He paused at the base of his tree and tested his legs. Everything seemed to be intact. Somehow, he’d managed to hang on to the Glock all the way to the ground.

He forced himself to his feet, listing to his wounded side, and tried to get his bearings. Out here in the dark, the burning truck might just as well have been lighthouse on a calm sea. He headed that way.

He didn’t want Ivan Patrick to burn to death. That would be too easy. He wanted the man to suffer, but he wanted to be its cause.

Fewer than a hundred paces brought him to the edge of the road cut, close enough to the SUV to feel the heat from its fire. The vehicle reminded Jonathan of a dead bug on the floor, on its back with its feet in the air. He squinted against the intensity of the light as he approached the cab. As he got to within a few feet, he forced himself into a low crouch, where he could see through the shattered windows, grunting noisily at the effort. The first thing he noticed was four GVX canisters strewn across the roof, which was now the floor. The second thing was that the vehicle was empty.

He was as much the hunted as the hunter now, and the hairs on his arms and neck rose to attention. A gunshot boomed from behind him and he dove right, blowing a bellows on those coals in his gut and stirring them with an ice pick. He rolled again as a bullet slammed into the spot he’d just left, and then he rolled back to that spot just to be unpredictable and screw up the shooter’s aim. A third shot missed.

Jonathan cursed his stupidity. Anger, pain, and blood loss together offered no excuse to create a perfectly backlit target. If he died here, he deserved it. This was a rookie mistake, and it rightfully came with a death penalty.

Scrambling on the ground, he found his feet and scurried for the woods line he’d come from, only to dart left at the ’t want to burn!” he yelled. “Jesus God, I don’t want to burn!”

“You’re going to have one shitty eternity, then,” Jonathan laughed. “I’m told that hell is all about fire and a daily ass-fuck with a straight razor.” The image amused him.

As the adrenaline drained from his system, though, the white-hot icepick returned. As he dragged his prisoner into the center of the road cut, the load got progressively heavier, every step adding another fifty pounds. A hundred pounds. A thousand. When they reached the center of the road cut, the world pitched sideways, and Jonathan fell.

He caught himself with his free hand, his nose just inches away from Ivan’s.

His prey knew an opportunity when he saw it. Ivan snapped like a dog, trying to sink his teeth into Jonathan’s face.

Jonathan recoiled. The teeth missed by millimeters, so close that he could feel the man’s oniony breath and hear the click of his jaws. He tried to push away with a one-arm push-up from Ivan’s chest, but his gut muscles spasmed and the effort aborted halfway through. He fell again. This time, as he came down he remained conscious of Ivan’s mouth, and he caught himself with a forearm across the torturer’s eyes.

Ivan moved with lightning speed. His head jerked to the side and he snapped again, this time catching the meat of Jonathan’s left forearm with his incisors. With his teeth sunk in to the gum line, he started whip his head back and forth, exactly the way JoeDog would tear into the rope pull toys that lay strewn around the firehouse. The pain was exquisite, sharper, more intense even than the bullet wound. With his elbow bent, and his arm immobilized, there was no getting away. The whipping action of Ivan’s head pulled him off balance. He pounded at the man’s face with the heel of his fist, wide arcing hammer blows, but they had little behind them, and he was unable to do much more than bloody the torturer’s nose.

In the dancing yellow light of the burning truck, Jonathan saw the blood-his blood-pouring from the corners of Ivan’s mouth. The ugliness of that-the savagery of it-angered him more. Issuing a guttural yell that rallied his remaining inner resources, Jonathan rose up on the damaged arm and leaned on it, as if to stuff it down Ivan’s throat. As the jaws closed tighter, he pressed even harder.

“There you go, asshole,” Jonathan growled. “Swallow it. Choke on it, you son of a bitch.” From this higher angle, he could finally get enough leverage to throw a solid punch to the man’s nose. Blood fountained, and now his face was wet with it, slick with it. But the pressure from Ivan’s jaws never slackened. If anything, his grip closed tighter.

Through the gleaming red-black mask, Ivan’s eyes glared malignantly at Jonathan. He had this one chance at survival, and as long as he was still breathing, he wasn’t going to squander it.

The eyes. One mangled and the other evil. Were those eyes the last thing that Angela Caldwell had seen when he’d killed her after he’d made her endure her children’s suffering? Had Ellen witnessed the same defiant glare as Ivan raped her and broke her bones?

The eyes.

Jonathan stared at the mangled one as he jammed his thumb into the good one. It was a calculated move-one he’d learned and taught at the Operator Training Course at Fort Bragg. The body instinctively reacts to ting his forearm.

“No!” Ivan yelled. “No! No! No!” Biting wasn’t important to him anymore. Fighting wasn’t all that important to him either. Hell, he’d have been Jonathan’s best friend just to save the sight in one eye.

Jonathan pressed harder. He felt the eyeball deforming under the pressure. Now that he had the use of his left hand, too, he went for the mangled mess that was all the torturer had to help him navigate through hell. He straddled the bucking man’s chest and-

“Scorpion!”

The sound of Gail’s voice startled him, but he didn’t turn. He knew what they’d done. Boxers had somehow found them a vehicle, and they’d come back up the fire road to rescue him.

Only he didn’t need rescuing. He had a job to do.

“Jonathan Grave, stop it!” Gail’s tone was that of a scolding mother. She’d moved from behind him to in front where he could see her. “Stop it,” she said again.

“Fuck off,” he replied.

“Let him go, Jonathan,” she said. “This isn’t what you’re about. It’s over. We’ve got him.”

“She’s right, Dig,” Boxers said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not an assassin, remember? You’re not a murderer. You’ve said it a thousand times.”

Those were the words that got through to him. The words and the big man’s beefy hand on his shoulder.

Jonathan pulled his hands away from Ivan’s face and rolled to the side onto the ground to let the man clutch at himself.

The reality of his wounds hit him. He felt old and he felt cold. He felt sick. He’d crossed a line with Ivan tonight. As he looked at the blood streaming from his arm, and the color started to fade from his surroundings, he wondered if the legend of the vampire somehow applied to bites from ordinary mortals. As he stared up to the smoke-blackened sky, he knew that he would soon be unconscious, and the thing that he dreaded most was the possibility of waking up with Ivan’s blood in his veins, commingled with his own.

A gunshot startled him.

A lady’s voice screamed, “What did you do?”

And then Boxers said, “I got no problem bein’ an assassin.”

Jonathan smiled as he drifted away.

Late May

Chapter Forty-nine

Mount Comfort Cemetery in Alexandria had been the interment place for Tibor Rothman’s family for at least three generations. As Dom piloted his Chevy around the circle, he glanced at his passenger, assessing emotional stability, Jonathan supposed.

“Is that your priestly concern or your psychologist’s concern?” Jonathan asked, staring straight ahead.

“Let’s call it a friend’s concern,” Dom replied.

Touché. “Then thank you. But relax. I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” Dom said. Though his jaw was mostly healed, there was still a certain tightness to his words. “If you don’t mind, we’ll let your psychologist make that call.”

Fair enough, Jonathan thought. After all, the priestHe’s the one the news folks were here to pay tribute to.”

“Or just to make sure that the son of a bitch was really dead,” Jonathan quipped.

“I won’t let you get away with that, Dig. For ninety-nine percent of his life, maybe he was a complete ass, but he checked out in service to others. You above all people should-”

“I know, Dom. It’s just such a hard notion to wrap my head around.”

“You’re stalling,” Dom said.

Jonathan gave a wry chuckle. When he looked at Dom, he hoped that his eyes were nowhere near as red as they felt. “Would you believe I’m scared?”

“It’s tough to say good-bye. I’m not sure there’s any harder thing in the world.” Dom reached out and rested a hand on Jonathan’s forearm. “Want me to come with you?”

Jonathan didn’t answerenjoyed the confirmation that his assumptions about those legs were correct. “I’ve always considered myself to be a good investigator. You know, finding people who don’t want to be found.”

Jonathan’s smirk became a smile. “God knows I’m the last one to argue.”

She uncrossed her legs and leaned closer. “Do you know anyone who might be looking for someone with those skills?”

“I just might,” he said. “What do you say we discuss it over dinner tonight?”

A stunning smile bloomed. “I’ve already made the reservations,” she said.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My wife, Joy, is the constant in my life. For reasons known only to her, she continues to love me, as I have adored her, for twenty-seven years. No man could be luckier.

Anne Hawkins, my literary agent and dear friend, is a force of nature. I treasure her ongoing counsel. One of her great favors was to introduce me to Michaela Hamilton, my editor at Kensington Publishing. With people like Michaela and Kensington CEO Steve Zacharias in your corner, it’s hard to make a mistake.

The Jonathan Grave series would likely never have happened if my good friend and former collaborator Kurt Muse had not put in a good word for me. Through him, I gained access to people and places that lifelong civilians never get to meet. Kurt vouched for me, and I was in. I hope that Jonathan Grave exhibits even one-tenth of the honor and integrity of those who inspired his creation.

Life would be boring, and fictional characters horribly dull, were it not for the likes of Jeffery Deaver, John and Susan Miller, Pat Barney and Sam Shockley, Bob and Bert Garino, Cyndi and Duane Ellis, Charlie and Trisha White, Chuck Carr, David Taylor, Jack and Sharon Kennedy, Sandy and Richard Berthelsen, Dave and Judy Jackson, Anne Marie Horvath, Kent Kiser, Ed Szrom, Cap Grossman, Doug Kramer, Tom Herod, Joe Bateman, and the dozens of friends that I have made through my day job at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

Then there’s my son, Chris. When I first started writing acknowledgments in books, he was a little boy. Now he’s twenty-three years old and a head taller than his old man. He’s smart, he’s handsome, he’s funny, and he’s one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met. I’m proud to call him my son and even prouder to call him my friend.

John Gilstrap

***

Content

John Gilstrap
No Mercy

April 20 Chapter One

Chapter Three

Chapter Five

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Late May Chapter Forty-nine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

John Gilstrap