Bloodline

***

32

July 3, 1:04 P.M. EST

Washington, DC

Painter waited for the storm.

He stood in the central hall that cut through the lowermost level of their command bunker. Here Sigma hid its deepest secrets. He stood outside a room that only a handful of people had entered in the past five hours. His muscles knotted as he kept his post.

He wanted to pace away his anxiety-needed to pace.

It had been almost a day since he heard any word concerning Kat and Lisa, and even then, it had only been some grainy footage caught on a bank ATM camera.

Not a word or sighting since.

It ate a hole through his gut, through his spirit.

But he had a duty that could not be forsaken.

At the end of the hall, the elevator chimed and opened. The first two people to exit were members of the Secret Service. They both eyeballed Painter. One came down the hallway; the other remained behind and waved President James Gant out of the elevator.

Two more agents followed behind.

General Metcalf accompanied the president. “This way, sir.”

Gant’s gaze locked onto Painter. A black cloud darkened his aspect: the fury in his eyes, the flush on his face, the hardness to his every move. Even his stride was angry. Painter hoped he could get a word out before getting punched. And he wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t still be slugged afterward. But the risk had to be taken.

The fate of the country depended on the next few minutes.

The press corps believed the president was attending a private meeting with the director of the Smithsonian. Even Gant thought he was here on Metcalf’s behalf to listen to Painter give an impassioned plea to save Sigma from the ax. The president had only agreed to come here after intense backroom negotiations by Metcalf. The general had to call in many political chits to get these five minutes of the commander in chief’s time.

Gant checked his watch as he crossed those final steps.

Apparently, time was already ticking down.

“This is a courtesy,” Gant said, his Carolina drawl thick with disdain. “Because of General Metcalf’s long, distinguished career. That’s the only reason I’m here. And this is the last courtesy I will extend to you.”

“Understood, Mr. President.”

Gant balled a fist. “So speak your piece and let’s be done with it.”

Painter instead turned to Metcalf. “What about the Secret Service agents?”

“Thoroughly vetted,” Metcalf answered. “All four. You’ll need them for what’s to come.”

Gant looked between the two of them. “Need them for what?”

Painter stepped back. “Before I speak, Mr. President, I need you to see something.”

Turning, Painter crossed to the door behind him. One of the Secret Service agents followed him. Painter opened the way and let the man go inside first to inspect the room. When he came out, his face was paler.

“Clear,” the agent stated, then stepped aside.

Painter held the door and nodded to Gant.

Glowering and straightening his tie, the president strode into the room.

Painter followed, shadowed by another agent, while the others took posts in the hall.

Gant stepped woodenly to the hospital bed. He stopped at the edge, his posture ramrod-stiff-then he collapsed to his knees, half-falling across the mattress. His shoulders shook. Then sobs wracked out of him.

If Painter had any lingering doubts about the man’s authenticity, they vanished in that moment.

“My baby…” he cried. “She’s alive.”

Amanda Gant-Bennett lay quietly on the bed, still under a light sedation. She wore a blue, flowered hospital gown. Intravenous fluids, along with two antibiotics, ran into a central line. Equipment monitored oxygenation, heart rhythm, and blood pressure. She wore a cap over her head. Beneath that, a bandage covered the surgery site where the cranial drill had been expertly removed by a neurosurgeon. A drain remained in place due to the length of time the burr hole had been left open. CT scans had showed the drill had penetrated the superior sagittal sinus through the frontal bone, but the cerebral cortex remained untouched. Secondary trauma had resulted in a tiny subdural hematoma, but that appeared to be resolving on its own.

With rest and time, she should fully recover.

Two other people occupied the room: Amanda’s neurosurgeon and Tucker Wayne. Neither man had left the young woman’s side since she arrived five hours ago. Her path back to the States had been a circuitous one. Jack Kirkland had transported her to the Deep Fathom, where medical personnel on board his ship had stabilized her en route to Abu Dhabi. There, Painter had called on the assistance of someone he trusted, someone who had powerful influences in the area: the oil baroness Lady Kara Kensington. She had arranged a private corporate jet while Painter prepared false papers.

No one outside Painter’s circle knew Amanda still lived.

Until now.

Gant turned, staying on his knees. “How?”

That one word encompassed so much.

“I’ll need more than five minutes,” Painter said.

Once granted, Painter told him everything. He left nothing out, drawing Gant back to his feet with the story. They stepped into a neighboring medical office just off of the ward-the father refused to be more than a few steps away from his daughter.

When he got to the story of Amanda’s rescue, Gant shook Tucker’s hand. “Thank you, son.”

Tucker nodded. “My honor, sir.”

“I’d like to meet that dog of yours sometime.”

“I’m sure that could be arranged.”

Painter had highlighted the key parts of Amanda’s story. All that was left were questions he could not fully answer.

“But I still don’t understand,” Gant said. “Why did they want my grandson?”

“We’re still trying to piece that together. Amanda had some moments of lucidity. I was able to ask her a few questions, glean some answers.”

“Tell me,” Gant said. He was seated at a small desk in the medical office, too shaken to keep his feet.

Painter remained standing. “Your daughter received a couriered package from an unknown source. Inside were fake passports and a note warning Amanda to flee, that her child was in danger. There were also papers included. Medical documents, faxes, lab reports. Enough to convince your daughter to vanish in order to protect her baby. The note also warned her not to tell anyone in her family, not to trust anyone.”

“But why?” Gant’s expression was a mix of incredulity and fear. Anger lurked there, too, smoldering up toward a fierce fire.

“Someone wanted that child. I believe your grandson was the product of a genetic experiment. A global research project that spanned decades if not longer, one involving human trafficking and experimentation.”

The disbelief shone brighter. “What sort of experiment are you talking about?”

“I can’t say for sure. Something to do with his DNA-that’s what Amanda overheard. But based on other intelligence sources, I believe the experiment inserted an engineered protein into his genetic structure. He may be the first child where this was successfully carried out.”

Gant shook his head. “But what’s their ultimate goal? What do they want with my grandson?”

Painter saved the worst for last. “Amanda believes they plan to experiment on your grandson, to keep him alive… or at least his tissues… to study him in more detail.”

Gant shoved to his feet. Horror ignited that smoldering fury. “What? How… who the hell are these bastards?”

As Painter prepared to answer that, a more pressing question weighed on his mind.

Where are they?

1:42 P.M.

Blue Ridge Mountains

The stethoscope lifted gently from the newborn’s frail chest. The child’s heart could be seen beating against that cage, thumping weakly. His skin shone with a slight cyanotic cast, indicating poor oxygenation.

Dr. Edward Blake announced his verdict to Petra. “He’s shutting down. Already underweight and premature; it could be a failure to thrive.” He shrugged. “Or the stress of the transportation here may have overwhelmed his systems.”

Petra’s disappointment showed in the heavy cast to her eyes, the sternness to her lips. She wasn’t concerned for the child’s welfare-they’d lost many others. But after all of the troubles in Somalia and Dubai, they both needed a win here.

And any hope of that faded with every passing breath of the child.

The newborn rested inside a heated incubator, nestled in blankets. A nasal cannula supplied a steady stream of oxygen. A nasogastric tube allowed the administration of formula. Cuffs and pads monitored oxygenation, heart and respiratory rate, blood pressure, and temperature.

Edward shook his head. “We may need to insert a PICC line and switch to CPAP for his shallow breathing. Or tube and ventilate him.”

He must find a way to stabilize this child. The last DNA sequencing showed significant PNA loss in the child. The triple-helix complexes in his vital tissues were breaking down.

But most troublesome of all, Edward still didn’t know why.

One possible explanation was that the child’s body was simply rejecting the foreign protein making up that third helix. And as a consequence, the child grew sick, slowly shutting down.

The other possibility was that the child was failing to thrive for ordinary reasons-he was too thin, too poorly developed-and that stress triggered a secondary metabolic breakdown of the triple helices.

“Chicken or the egg?” he asked the baby.

Did the breakdown of the helix cause your body to weaken?

Or did your weakened body cause the helix to break down?

More likely, it was a combination of the two, creating some sort of cascade effect.

No matter which scenario was true, he and Petra were in trouble. Failure was not rewarded in this organization, and seldom tolerated.

Edward stared around the small, windowless ward assigned to them in this guarded complex. Currently, these new facilities were ill-suited for their purposes. The work done at the Lodge was primarily militaristic in nature-not like the wonders promised by the research at Utopia’s labs.

He looked around the square ward, his temporary refuge and workspace. Their evacuation and exodus from Utopia had been rushed and unexpected, leaving little time for any real preparations. Crates remained unboxed. An entire wing waited for the installation of a new genomics lab.

No doubt, Edward could rebuild here, but it would take time.

Time the child did not have.

He stared back at the incubator.

En route from Dubai, it was evident the baby was destabilizing. Edward had ordered what he needed for emergency neonatal care and had it airlifted and delivered here. But as the child declined, he faced a sad reality. Getting equipment here was one matter, but finding skilled medical personnel who could be vetted and arrive in time was a challenge at this highly guarded facility. Especially following the swath of ruin left behind, both out in the Middle East and here in South Carolina. They’d lost several significant colleagues in both places.

The wheels were already turning to bring staffing on-site.

But, again, timing was critical.

Performing even the simplest of the proposed procedures required a minimum number of skilled staff working around the clock.

“We need extra hands,” he concluded. “Capable, skilled hands. At this point, I’ll take one additional person-if talented enough.”

Petra nodded, fully aware. “I’ll make a call. We may have what we need already here.”

1:45 P.M.

Dr. Lisa Cummings paced the length of her cell. She left her lunch untouched on the small tray. A turkey club and a small bag of Doritos. There was something obscene about the ordinariness of the fare. She stared around her cell as she made another pass from front to back.

The dull ache from her sprained ankle kept her focused.

The walls were a seamless white plastic. The door was made of a hard glass polymer, framed in steel. She had pressed her cheek against that glass, trying to see as much as she could past her threshold. All she saw was a hall of similar cells, all appearing empty.

Where is Kat?

The worry ate at her and fueled her pacing.

The cell had only a few amenities: a cot with a foam mattress and a stainless-steel commode with sink. The only luxury was a flat-screen television molded into the wall. But Lisa could not escape the feeling that someone was watching her through it.

Or maybe it was just a paranoia born of the aftereffects of the drugs.

After they were caught last night by the helicopter, four uniformed men had skimmed down on lines from the cabin of the aircraft. They had tied Kat and Lisa up, then injected them intramuscularly with a sedative. She guessed from the stabbing ache in her eyes and the stiffness of her leg muscles that they’d given her some form of ketamine.

She had regained a groggy consciousness at one point during the trip, enough to tell she was in the back of the Ford explorer. Kat lay sprawled next to her, eyes rolled back, snoring slightly. Lisa was too weak to move, but through the back window, she watched dark woods and tall cliffs roll past, suggesting they were in the mountains.

She guessed the Blue Ridge Mountains, but she couldn’t be certain.

She had faded away again and suspected she had been given a second injection at some point. Two needle marks itched on her upper arm.

She scratched absently at them through the thin gown she wore. Someone had stripped her and dressed her in a featureless cotton dress, like a hospital gown but closed in the back. It was pulled over the head and cinched in place. She also wore slippers and an ill-fitting bra and a pair of panties. The garments were clean but not new. From the slight fraying, someone had worn these clothes before-and that added to her nervousness.

What had happened to those others?

A sharp buzz sounded from the television. It drew her attention around. On the screen, the view of a small hospital ward appeared. Two figures in scrubs moved across the screen, working in what appeared to be a NICU, a neonatal intensive care unit.

A computer-altered voice spoke, eerily flat and disjointed. “DR. LISA CUMMINGS, IT HAS COME TO OUR ATTENTION THAT YOU HAVE BOTH A MEDICAL BACKGROUND AND A PH.D. IN PHYSIOLOGY. IS THAT CORRECT?”

“Yes,” she said tentatively, unable to think of a good reason to lie. They clearly knew who she was, likely pulling her records based on her fingerprints.

“USEFULNESS IS A VIRTUE HERE,” she was coldly instructed. “EVERYONE MUST HAVE A PURPOSE. TO THAT END, WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO ASSIST US IN DIAGNOSING AND TREATING A NEWBORN HERE AT THE FACILITY. WE’RE CURRENTLY UNDERSTAFFED FOR THE WORK NECESSARY, ESPECIALLY IN REGARDS TO SKILLED MEDICAL PERSONNEL.”

Lisa processed this and came to one conclusion. “Why should I help you?”

“IF SAVING THE LIFE OF A CHILD IS NOT ENOUGH, PERHAPS THE LIFE OF A FRIEND.”

The view swiped away, and a room similar to hers materialized on the monitor-only its walls were a dark red. It was like looking through a window into a neighboring cell. But that room could be anywhere in the complex. The woman seated on the bed burst to her feet, rushed forward to fill the screen, placing a hand against it.

Lisa laid hers there, too, matching finger for finger. She imagined the warmth of the electronics came from the palm of her best friend.

“Kat…”

“Lisa, are you okay?”

The connection cut, and the screen went black. The voice returned. “EVERY FAILURE OR DISOBEDIENCE ON YOUR PART WILL BE EXACTED UPON THE FLESH OF YOUR FRIEND. PROVE YOUR USEFULNESS, AND YOU BOTH CONTINUE TO LIVE.”

She swallowed hard, suddenly finding it too chilly in her thin gown. “What do you want me to do?”

The electronic door lock clicked loudly.

“GO OUT TO YOUR RIGHT. END OF THE HALL.”

The screen went dark.

Lisa hesitated a few breaths, but she knew she had no choice. Cooperation would buy extra time-time to find a way to escape, time for Painter to find them. She pictured her boyfriend’s face, the lock of snowy hair tucked behind one ear, the sharp intelligence in his eyes-and, most of all, the love shining in the night across a pillow.

That last, more than anything, gave her the strength to keep moving.

She stepped over to the door, pushed it open, and headed to the right. The hall held a dozen cells. She searched for Kat among them, but they all appeared empty, at least as far as she could tell.

“Kat,” she called out softly, walking slowly, swiveling her head.

No response, no face appeared pressed against a glass door.

Several of the rooms had their mattresses rolled up, giving the entire wing a feeling of disuse, but also a sense of expectation, like an empty boarding school waiting to be occupied for a new semester.

Maybe that came from the low murmur of voices ahead.

Reaching the end of the hall, she pushed through the far door into a small medical ward, the same one from the television. Crates and boxes filled one half of the space, some open, others spilling packing material and showing plastic-wrapped medical equipment inside.

The other half held the neonatal unit. A woman in scrubs spotted her and motioned her forward to join them, like one colleague greeting another.

Before she could step closer, a door on the other side of the ward opened, and a broad-shouldered older man entered, dressed in a somber gray suit, his white hair neatly combed, his manner genteel as he strode over to Lisa.

She had become rooted in place, recognizing him.

The man held out his hand, his Carolina drawl warm. “Thank you, Dr. Cummings, for agreeing to help my grandnephew.”

Lisa shook his hand, dumbfounded.

He was the former ambassador to Southeast Asia, now secretary of state-and brother to the president.

Robert L. Gant.

1:55 P.M.

Washington, DC

“Tell me,” James Gant demanded, staring off to the next room, where his daughter rested on the hospital bed. “Who’s behind all of this?”

Painter knew the next part of this discussion would take some delicacy. What transpired here was for the president’s ears and eyes only.

Him, and one other.

Jason Carter worked at the desk computer in the medical office, where Painter and the president had been holed up. His Secret Service agents continued to watch the hall, with one posted next to Amanda.

Jason finally nodded, ready to proceed. He had the necessary footage transferred and keyed up.

Painter faced Gant. “As you know, Mr. President, we already suspected the Guild had a hand in the kidnapping of your daughter.”

Gant’s eyes darkened. “I’ve read the intelligence briefings.”

“Exactly, but the Guild is not their true name. It’s more of an umbrella designation encompassing the group’s many cells around the world, a network of agents and operatives ensconced in various militaries, governments, research institutions, and financial circles. There are many levels within this organization, some go by other names, but recently I’ve uncovered a clue to the true leaders, the puppet masters of the Guild.”

Gant focused harder on him. “Go on.”

“This inner circle has also hidden under many names, burying themselves in countless secret societies to cover their footprints, going back centuries.”

“Centuries?” a skeptical note rang in the man’s voice.

“At least to the Middle Ages,” Painter confirmed. “Maybe even farther back into the past.”

He flicked a glance toward Jason. The young analyst was tracing the lineage of the Gant family deeper into history, but it was slow going, and that track grew fainter, worn away by time into mere rumor and suspicion.

“What about now?” Gant said, keeping his eye on the target. “What do you know about their operations today?”

“We know two things. First, we know they’re tied to your family.”

Gant choked slightly. “What?”

Painter forged on before he lost the man completely. “Second, we know the name most commonly associated with them is the Bloodline.”

Gant stirred at the mention of that word, plainly recognizing it. Painter was not surprised by his reaction. Amanda had known the name, too, but he wanted to hear what the president had to say.

“Director, I respect you. I owe you a great debt of gratitude, but you’re chasing ghosts. You’ve taken rumor and hearsay and added flesh and bone to it.”

Painter remained silent, letting Gant have his say.

The president continued, “Suspicions plague most rich families. Rumors wrapped in conspiracies entwined in maniacal plots. Take your pick. The Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Rothschilds. In the past, each one of them has been tied to secret societies and global machinations. And we’re no exception. Go ahead and pluck any card out of that conspiracy deck-Freemasonry, the Trilateral Commission, skull and Bones, the Bilderberg Group-and you’ll find some story connecting them to our family.”

Gant shook his head, plainly disappointed. “That name-Bloodline-that’s our family’s personal boogeyman. Made to scare children into obeying. Stories about a family within our family. It’s not supposed to be mentioned beyond our doors. Growing up, I heard all sorts of tales, mostly spoken under bedcovers at night. Of people who mentioned that name too loudly-only to suddenly disappear.”

I’m sure they did, Painter thought. Likely killed or recruited into the fold.

“You’ve been hoodwinked, director. Sold a bill of goods if you’ve fallen into that conspiratorial trap.”

Painter felt the wind dying in the man’s sails, knowing now was the time. He nodded to Jason. “Bring up the footage I asked you to prepare.” He returned his attention to Gant. “Amanda described a symbol painted on that tent-cabin in Somalia. We found that same mark again closer to home. At the fertility clinic where she had her in vitro fertilization performed.”

Jason stepped back. On the monitor, Kat’s footage began to play. It showed her again rushing up to a set of large steel doors.

“Pause it there,” Painter said, fighting down a pang of worry for Kat and Lisa.

The video stopped and focused squarely on the center of the door. A large embossing stood out plainly: a crimson cross with genetic code wrapped within it. Earlier, Amanda had recognized it, claiming it was a symbol tied to the Bloodline.

From Gant’s flinch, he knew it, too. He leaned closer, his voice hushed. “Impossible.”

Painter motioned for Jason to continue the footage. “This is what that symbol hid.”

Painter didn’t watch the video. He didn’t need to see that again. Instead, he studied the president’s profile. The blood visibly drained from the man’s face. His lips parted in a silent gasp of horror.

Knowing he’d seen enough, Painter made a cutting motion across his own neck.

Jason ended the playback, leaving the president stunned.

It took a long minute for Gant to look away from the screen, to turn haunted eyes toward Painter. Behind that glassy numbness, Painter knew Gant pictured his own daughter.

To his credit, the man nodded, accepting the truth. As he stood, his voice hardened to a vengeful edge. “If you’re right, if members of my own family perpetrated such atrocities, committed such cruelties upon my daughter, I want them hunted down.” His anger focused on one question now. “Where do we start?”

Before Painter could answer, another person must have heard Gant’s rising anger and recognized it.

“Daddy…?”

Everyone turned back to the hospital bed in the next room. The patient’s eyes were open. She searched blearily.

“Amanda…!” Gant rushed to her bedside, crashing to one knee to take her hand. “Baby girl, I’m here.”

Amanda found her father’s face. But rather than relief, a faint reflection of Gant’s fury shone there. Her fingers tightened on her father’s hand. She fought through the dregs of her sedation.

He consoled his daughter. “You’re going to be fine.”

Amanda wanted no such reassurances-only results.

“Daddy, they took William. They took my baby boy. You-” Her fingers clutched until her knuckles paled. “You get him back.”

The demand took the last of her strength. She stared into her father’s face, exacting a promise from him. With her duty passed on, her eyes rolled back. Her fingers slipped free.

The neurosurgeon stepped forward. “She still needs more rest.”

Gant ignored him and turned to Painter, still on one knee. His face was forlorn, but his eyes were determined.

“What must I do to get my grandson back?”

Painter pictured the video footage shot by Kane’s vest camera: showing a mouse’s-eye view from the bottom of a boat. He had watched it several times over the past half-day-the boat chase, the capture, the drugging of Gray Pierce-each time grateful for the man’s ingenuity and sacrifice in securing this secret footage. It offered them a slim chance to turn the tide against the enemy.

Painter intended to take it.

“What do you need me to do?” Gant pressed.

Painter stared him in the eye and told him the blunt truth.

“You need to die, Mr. President.”

33

July 4, 11:34 A.M. EST

Washington, DC

Gray rode back into the world on a bolt of lightning.

The electric shock burned through his skull, as if someone had shoved the right side of his face against a red-hot stovetop. He gasped, tried to roll away from the pain, but could not escape it. The only relief came as the burn faded on its own.

Then something bit into the back of his hand. Warmth shot up his arm, into his chest, and ignited his heart. His heart tripped a frantic beat. Blood pressure pounded at his ears. His breathing grew labored for several seconds until the effect wore off.

The jolt left him tingling, hyperalert. The world snapped into sudden, sharp focus, still tinged red at the edges. He lay on his back, his pulse throbbing in his throat. As he collected himself, he reached above to touch a concrete roof, so low he could brush his fingertips over its rough surface.

He noted a device strapped to his wrist: a syringe locked into a mechanical delivery system. He ripped it off, rolling to the side and holding off the punctured vein.

He must have been given a counteragent to his sedative, returning him to full alertness in seconds.

But where am I?

Concrete walls surrounded him on all sides, creating a box five feet wide and three feet tall. The illumination was sharp, painfully bright, coming from a battery-powered lamp in the corner. A long metal case rested on the floor near his feet, and one of the walls had a thin aperture, sealed by a steel shutter. Even if open, the hole was too narrow to climb through. The only exit appeared to be the hatch in the floor, sealed from the outside.

What is going on?

The answer came from inside his head, from deep within his right ear. “GOOD MORNING, COMMANDER PIERCE,” a mechanized voice greeted him. It sounded like one of those soulless computerized answering services-though he suspected he was hearing a real voice, digitally masked.

“THE RUDE AWAKENING WAS A NECESSITY.” There was no apologetic tone to that statement, merely matter-of-factness. “THE SHOCK AND THE INJECTION OF METHYLPHENIDATE SHOULD HAVE YOU ALERT AND READY FOR THE TASK AT HAND. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES UNTIL YOU MUST ACT.”

“To do what?” he asked loudly to the bare walls of his concrete crypt. He suspected the answer, glancing at what looked to be a rifle case.

The voice continued to speak, either ignoring him or perhaps this conversation was a one-way transmission.

“THE RADIO DEEP IN YOUR EAR IS BOLTED IN PLACE AND WIRED VIA A BLASTING CAP. YOU’LL FIND THAT SAME EAR PACKED FULL OF C-4.”

Disturbed, Gray probed with a finger and discovered a wad of hard material jammed into the canal. He pictured what would happen if that exploded, and quickly pushed that thought away.

The speaker continued, “THE DEVICE CAN ALSO BE USED AS PUNISHMENT, AS YOU EXPERIENCED UPON WAKING. ADDITIONALLY, IT’S WIRED TO A TRANSMITTER HELD BY A GUARD OUTSIDE. IF YOU STRAY BEYOND TEN YARDS FROM THAT TRANSMITTER, YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO GET BACK IN RANGE, OR THE DEVICE WILL AUTOMATICALLY EXPLODE.”

They’ve got me connected to an electric leash.

A tingle of foreboding worked through his drug-induced hypervigilance.

“AS TO YOUR DUTY,” the voice said, “AT EXACTLY NOON TODAY, YOU WILL ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT JAMES T. GANT. YOU WILL FIND A SNIPER RIFLE AND A MAGAZINE WITH TWO ROUNDS, IN CASE YOU MISS ON YOUR FIRST SHOT. YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN A THIRD CHANCE. PREPARE YOURSELF NOW.”

The lamp blinked off inside the bunker. A small motorized hum sounded, and the shuttered window opened. Sunlight streamed into the space through the slats. He wasn’t blinded. He realized the brightness of the lamp had been to assist him with maintaining his day vision.

Gray searched around for a camera, while he rolled and crawled to the gun case and snapped it open. Nestled inside was a Marine Corps M40A3 sniper rifle, along with a stabilizing bipod. He slipped the weapon free, checking its heft and balance. He knew this rifle. It had an effective range of a thousand yards.

But what fell within that range?

Gray moved into the sunlight’s blaze. Staring between the slats, he distantly made out the tip of the Washington Monument poking above a line of towering oaks.

I’m back in DC.

He oriented himself. Through the trees, sunlight glinted off water. That had to be the Potomac. Shifting to the left and peering sideways, he caught a peek, far to the right, of a rolling expanse of green lawns, dogwoods, and rows of small white gravestones. He knew that place too well: he had many friends buried there. Arlington Cemetery. He was north of the park, likely not far from the USMC War Memorial.

Closer at hand, viewed down a short street that ended at an oak-studded park, people milled about a large gathering of tents and booths. Most were wearing various shades of armed forces uniforms, from dress blues to camouflage khakis.

He raised the rifle and peered through the telescopic sight, adjusting the Unertl 10x lens to focus on that gathering. The view zoomed to reveal barbecues, children running and laughing, a military band playing on a shaded stage. The distant beat of drum and sharper notes of brass reached him.

In the center of the picnic grounds, a tall platform had been erected, framed by an arch of red, white, and blue balloons.

He shifted the sight to maximum, concentrating on the group clustered by the podium. They appeared to be top military brass from every branch of service.

Among them, he spotted his supposed target.

With his back to Gray, President James T. Gant kissed his wife, who was decked out in a dark blue pantsuit, with a muted pink-and-white-striped top, and silver flats. It was a festive look for this Fourth of July barbecue, a USO celebration. Gray also knew the First Couple were hosting a fireworks-viewing party on the South Lawn of the White House later tonight.

But the day’s strain already showed on the First Lady’s face.

The detail through the scope-even at seven hundred yards-revealed the grief etched in the lines around her eyes, hidden as best she could under thick makeup. Her fingers clung to her husband’s hand, trying to hold him as he stepped to the podium, but the president had to show a strong face to the world.

The pair both thought their daughter dead-and maybe Amanda was. The last memory Gray had of her was floating in dark waters, supported by his two teammates. The administration must not have announced the kidnapping and death of Amanda, likely waiting for confirmation from the charred remains. Probably the White House chief speechwriter already struggled on the wording for that tragic announcement.

In the meantime, the parents had to put on a show of normalcy.

President Gant stepped to the podium, lifting a hand and waving.

A distant cheer rose.

Gray turned away, crouching lower in his sniper’s nest, resting the rifle across his knees. He picked up the magazine, eyed the cartridges-the newer M118LR rounds, for heightened accuracy.

Two of them.

They had better be accurate.

He remembered the warning: You will not be given a third chance.

But why did his kidnappers believe he would agree to assassinate the president? They had Seichan, but that wasn’t enough leverage, as much as it pained him to admit it. He knew they would likely carry out horrible atrocities against her in an attempt to ensure his cooperation-or to punish his failure.

That fear sat like a cold stone in his gut.

He knew that, even to save her, he could not sacrifice the leader of the free world. Frustrated, he tightened his fingers on the fiberglass stock of the rifle and on the cold length of deadly muzzle.

I’m sorry, Seichan. I can’t do it.

“FOUR MINUTES,” the voice finally announced, and, as if reading his mind, the speaker gave him the incentive to act. “TO ENSURE YOUR COOPERATION, WE HAVE BURIED FIFTEEN PLASTIC CARTRIDGES OF SARIN GAS WITH INDETECTABLE TRIGGERS THROUGHOUT THE PARK. THE DISPERSAL PATTERN WILL SWEEP THE FIELDS, KILLING EVERYONE THERE, INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT. THOSE CHARGES WILL GO OFF TWENTY SECONDS AFTER NOON. UNLESS THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED FIRST.”

Gray imagined that wafting nerve gas, so lethal even the briefest skin contact caused an agonizing end.

“ONE DEATH VERSUS HUNDREDS OF INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN. THE CHOICE IS YOURS, COMMANDER PIERCE. EITHER END WILL SERVE OUR NEEDS. BUT IT SERVES OUR PURPOSE BETTER IF YOU PULL THAT TRIGGER. A LONE DEATH BY ASSASSINATION WILL BE FAR MORE POIGNANT AND POWERFUL THAN ONE DEATH AMONG MANY.”

The coldness of that calculation reached Gray, chilling him.

“ALSO, WITH YOUR RIFLE DISCOVERED HERE, AS WELL AS YOUR DNA, THE ASSASSINATION WILL BE BLAMED ON THE ROGUE ACTIONS OF A DISGRUNTLED COVERT OPERATIVE, ONE WHO WAS RETALIATING AGAINST THE MOTHBALLING OF HIS GROUP BY THE ADMINISTRATION.”

In effect, putting the final nail in Sigma’s coffin.

But the Guild’s schemes were even grander than that.

“SUCH AN ACT WILL REQUIRE AN ENTIRE REVAMPING OF THE UNITED STATES’ COVERT AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES. ONE OVERSEEN BY US, AS WE TAKE OVER THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE NEXT ELECTION. THAT POIGNANT SYMPATHY FOR THE DEATH OF JAMES GANT WILL EXTEND TO HIS FAMILY MEMBERS, TO SOMEONE ALREADY STANDING AT HIS SIDE IN A POSITION OF POWER.”

… extend to his family members…

Gray felt sick to his stomach. As he listened, armed with his new knowledge, he could now hear the slight Southern cadence, the word choice that couldn’t be wiped away digitally. His mind raced, picturing the man who stood so steadfastly at his brother’s shoulder, whom the world already loved and respected and would surely hand the reins of power to. The man only had to ask for the White House after such a tragedy, and it would be given to him-in a landslide.

The secretary of state.

Robert Lee Gant.

Gray squeezed his eyes closed. He suddenly remembered sensing that Painter had been keeping something hidden from him, something about the Guild, about the organization behind his mother’s fiery death.

Was this that secret?

Had Painter suspected the man all along?

No wonder the director hadn’t wanted anyone in the Gant family to know about Amanda surviving Somalia. He feared word would reach the president’s brother.

Anger burned at the edges of his dismay. He logically knew why the director had kept such a secret from him. Gray might have taken the man out immediately, jeopardizing everyone around him. And, ultimately, the foreknowledge of that traitor in the White House would not have changed Gray’s mission objectives.

Apparently, such knowledge was “need to know” only.

And Gray wasn’t on that list.

Still…

You should have told me.

“ONE MINUTE,” the voice warned. “YOU WILL WAIT FOR OUR SIGNAL-THEN FIRE.”

Gray secured the magazine in place and returned to his post at the aperture. Shame and anger burned through him. He didn’t know if the voice had been lying about those gas canisters-or if they’d be blown up anyway. Either way, Gray knew he couldn’t take that chance.

James T. Gant had to die.

He stared through the rifle’s telescopic scope and lowered the crosshairs to the profile of the president as the man turned to the side. He double-checked his range-seven hundred yards-and fixed the main targeting chevron of the rifle’s sights upon the occipital bone behind the man’s left ear, knowing a shot there would do the most damage. Festive music and bright laughter from the holiday picnic filtered to him. He let it all fade into the background as he concentrated on his target, on his mission.

In U.S. history, three presidents had died on the exact same day, on July 4, on the birthday of this country. It seemed beyond mere chance.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe.

Today would mark the fourth.

Then the president leaned down, forcing Gray to follow him. The man ruffled the fur of a dog sharing the platform with him. Gray tensed, recognizing that shepherd.

Kane.

Gray zoomed out to watch James Gant straighten and shake the hand of Captain Tucker Wayne. The man must have recovered his uniform. His dress blues were decorated with the medals and awards from his tours in Afghanistan. It was appropriate that Tucker should be standing there on the dais, a war hero and his dog being thanked by a grateful commander in chief.

But Gray knew why Tucker and Kane were really there.

All the earlier anger at Painter’s secrecy dried up, leaving behind only relief and respect. The director must have received the recorded video from Dubai and understood-but what did he want Gray to do?

Gray searched the stage. Painter must have put Tucker up there for a reason. The former army ranger was not a regular member of sigma, only a hired hand, so no one was likely to recognize him. But what was the message Painter was trying to send to Gray?

Then he knew.

It wasn’t just Tucker on that stage-but also Kane.

Gray shifted his concentration to the dog. The shepherd stood quietly, tail out, nose pointed up. Gray had seen that particular pose a few times before, when the dog had found the source of a scent.

Kane was pointing, like any good hunting dog.

Gray followed his gaze to a red balloon behind the podium, not far from the president’s head. Gray fingered the telescopic sight to zero in on that balloon.

It twisted in a slight breeze, revealing a small Greek letter in a darker shade of red, barely discernible unless you were looking for it.

Σ

He smiled and made some final adjustments to his weapon.

In his ear, he got the order he needed: “FIRE.”

Steadying his breath, Commander Gray Pierce pulled the trigger.

34

July 4, 12:00 P.M. EST

Washington, DC

No shot was heard-only the popping of a balloon.

Even that noise startled everyone on the podium.

Not Tucker.

He had been waiting for that signal. He used the distraction to press the button on the transmitter in his pocket. Small squibs, hidden under the president’s white polo shirt, exploded. Packets of the president’s own blood erupted out his back in a violent blast and seeped heavily over his heart in front.

The First Lady screamed, catching some of the spray on her face.

The Secret Service enveloped the president immediately, gathering him up and whisking him off the platform. Tucker got knocked to the side; Kane danced out of the way.

Another cordon of agents formed a living shield to protect the fleeing president. More crowded around the First Lady and rushed her in another direction.

Tucker tapped his leg, gathered Kane to his side, and rushed after the president’s group. Chaos exploded across the picnic grounds, the sudden violence catching everyone off guard. People yelled, kids were hidden under the bodies of protective parents, a barbecue got knocked over, setting fire to a tent. But a majority of those in attendance were military or former service members. Most had probably been under fire.

They made room for the flight of their wounded commander in chief; some even added to the body shield to protect the fallen president.

The president’s entourage reached the parking lot and the motorcade. As planned, the USSS Electronic Countermeasures Suburban, used by the Secret Service to stop any airborne attacks, ejected its arsenal of infrared smoke grenades, creating a thick pall to protect the president in his final flight to the waiting ambulances.

In that momentary confusion, a pair of Secret Service agents who were in on the ruse hauled the president into one of the emergency vehicles. Tucker climbed into the back. Kane jumped in after him.

The neighboring ambulance erupted with flashing lights and sirens and took off. The WHCA Roadrunner, the mobile command and control vehicle, sent out the false instruction, drawing the rest of the secure-package motorcade to follow the decoy. Armored vehicles gave chase, while local law enforcement blocked streets.

Staring out a window, Tucker watched an armored presidential limo race through the smoke with additional escorts, bearing to safety the First Lady, who must be beyond distraught, watching her husband shot right in front of her. They needed her to be the grieving wife for the cameras during the next few hours.

It was cruel, but no one could know of the subterfuge today.

Especially the enemy.

Amazingly, Painter had orchestrated a deception of this caliber after a single day of planning. He recruited only those he fully trusted, reaching out to a handful of people in various intelligence branches, but mostly he kept this entire operation in-house.

One of the Secret Service agents helped the president take off his buttoned polo. Gant wore a pained expression. The reason became clear as his bloody undershirt was stripped off and the exploded remains of the squibs removed. A blistered blast burn decorated the spot under his shoulder blade.

“Sir,” one of the Secret Service agents started, worried.

He was waved away. “I’m fine. Better than a bullet through the head.”

Another agent started the ambulance and set off, running dark, no flashing lights, no sirens. They headed in the opposite direction from the motorcade. The decoys were racing to George Washington University Hospital, where another team waited to continue the deception. In the story to come, it would be reported that the president was undergoing an extensive emergency surgery to repair his lung, that his chances were poor. They didn’t want to risk a second attempt on his life, so they would make it sound bad. But such a ruse could not be maintained for long without the threat of exposure.

So they set a six-hour time limit.

Six hours to bring down a shadowy cabal that had survived centuries.

Painter’s voice filled one ear. “Report.”

“The package is secure,” Tucker sent back, knowing their voice channel was kept secret by a modified version of the CCEP type-1 encryption algorithm developed by the NSA to keep presidential communications secret. “What about Commander Pierce?”

“We’re working on that right now.”

With advance knowledge of the sniper attack, Painter had set up a ring of tiny high-frame-rate, slow-motion cameras around the stage, all fixed on that balloon. Those cameras should have recorded the bullet’s passage and allowed immediate processing of the trajectory. A three-dimensional laser modeling of the park permitted the analysts at Sigma command to quickly trace the path of that bullet back to its source.

They needed Commander Pierce secured as soon as possible-not only for his safety but also to obtain whatever knowledge he had regarding the moves of the enemy, including the whereabouts of the president’s grandson.

Tucker felt a pang of regret, unable to escape the guilt of leaving Amanda’s child behind. He intended to do whatever he could to correct that mistake.

The first step toward that goal: find and secure Gray.

Without that man’s information, all of this subterfuge would accomplish nothing. In six hours, it would be announced to the world that the president had miraculously survived his surgery, and the thin advantage of the moment would evaporate.

He knew Painter didn’t expect to uproot the Bloodline completely by these actions, but he had one clear goal, the same one as Tucker: to find and recover Amanda’s child and expose everyone involved in this current bloody affair.

Even with such a defined objective, the odds were exceedingly long.

And without Gray, there were no odds.

Painter came back on the line. “We have his location. A utility bunker of an office tower. Seven hundred yards away.”

Tucker sighed in relief.

He locked eyes with the president. “We found him, sir.”

James Gant nodded, wincing. “We’d better not lose him.”

12:01 P.M.

Gray watched the hatch fall open.

He still held the sniper rifle in his hands. He had witnessed the explosive chaos following his single shot. As he watched, he held his breath, concerned the sarin gas would still be released, killing everyone in the park. When nothing happened, he suspected that threat had been a lie, after all. He saw Tucker race off with the president, rushing him to a secure location.

He understood the situation immediately.

They were faking the president’s death.

A risky move on the director’s part, but Gray understood why that risk had been taken. It spoke volumes about their desperation. They were likely backtracking a trajectory already, looking to find him, hoping he could supply additional information.

That was a problem.

I don’t know anything more than they do.

That is, unless Painter was ignorant of Robert Gant’s involvement with the Guild. Maybe the director suspected the president’s family or inner circle was involved-but he didn’t necessarily know who in the administration was the mole.

Gray stared down at his hand. He still had one more round. Was it enough to stall, to buy Painter time to find him?

A shout rose from the dark hatch. “Leave the rifle! Show your hands!”

“Where are you taking me?” he called back, both stalling and trying to get more information.

The answer came as a shock-literally. An electrical jolt burst from his ear, blinding him, triggering his jaw to seize, his knees to buckle, sprawling him flat.

“Leave the rifle,” the guard repeated. “Show your hands.”

Gray belly-crawled and thrust his arms over the open hatch. He breathed heavily, gasping.

“Now climb down the service ladder.”

Gray dawdled-not because it hurt to move but to slow things down. He swung his legs into the opening, fumbling with a toe to find the first rung.

“You were warned,” the guard said.

Gray braced for another shock, but instead a mechanical countdown whispered from his implanted earpiece, arising from the unit itself.

Ten… nine… eight…

It was the timer for the implanted C-4 bomb in his right ear. Whoever held the transmitter must have stepped beyond his ten-yard limit. They were forcing him to follow, tugging at his electric leash.

He had no choice but to obey. He picked at that packed ear, knowing it wouldn’t do Sigma any good to have half his skull blown away. He had to stay alive, to do his best to learn more-which meant he had to work fast.

… seven… six… five…

Once done, he ignored the ladder’s rungs and slid down the frame instead. His feet hit the floor of a concrete corridor as the countdown reached three.

Then, thankfully, stopped.

A circle of soldiers, all in black, surrounded him, weapons in hand. One dashed back up the ladder, wearing latex gloves, and searched the concrete roost.

“Rifle’s there and some blood for a DNA trace,” the man reported and clambered back down. He held the syringe-injection system in one hand and bagged it away, cleaning up any evidence. “All clear.”

The team leader stepped up, a head taller than the others, with a crucifix-shaped tattoo on his neck. He pocketed a device the size of a packet of gum.

The transmitter.

“Move out,” he ordered.

Pistols encouraged Gray forward, down a set of stairs to a subbasement, then through a hidden door into a tunnel system.

Gray stared behind him as the door sealed, hoping his plan worked.

As his feet dragged, the countdown began again in his ear.

Ten… nine… eight…

Like a dog on a leash, Gray hurried forward obediently.

For now.

12:32 P.M .

“Report,” Painter said, standing in the communications nest at Sigma headquarters.

“We arrived on-site,” his unit commander reported from the field. “Found the bunker empty. No sign of Commander Pierce. Only a sniper rifle and several drops of blood.”

Painter closed his eyes and fought against the tide of despair at losing Gray’s trail. He turned his mind instead to what was left behind.

A rifle and blood.

Painter understood.

They were planning on pinning the assassination on Gray and, in turn, destroying sigma’s reputation. But as in any chess match, it was now Painter’s turn.

“Grab the rifle and bring it here,” he ordered. “Destroy the blood evidence and scour the place clean. But you’ll need to be quick.”

In the aftermath of the attack, chaos still reigned, but it wouldn’t be long before forensic teams discovered the sniper’s hiding place. His team needed to be finished by then. But he refused to let panic distract his focus.

He knew Gray wouldn’t have lost focus, either.

“Before you start cleaning,” Painter warned over the radio, “thoroughly search every square inch of that space. If I know Gray, he would try to leave us some clue.”

“Understood.”

Painter ended the conversation and spoke to Jason Carter, who stood in the doorway to Kat’s office. “Hold down the fort here. Let me know if anything goes wrong.”

Like it hadn’t already.

“I’ve got things covered,” Jason assured him.

Painter hurried out the door and down the stairs, headed for the lowermost floor.

President James Gant was already down there with his daughter.

The man had arrived in secret a few minutes ago. The Smithsonian Castle had been closed all day, specifically for this purpose. No one paid attention to the shuffle of the janitorial staff into the building; no one saw them enter the special elevator that led down to the command bunkers of sigma. For now, everyone believed the president was undergoing emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital, that the likelihood of his survival was extremely poor.

Painter had his communications nest monitoring events, making sure the deception remained in place, massaging the press where needed. But such a level of fraud could not last forever without risking exposure. In less than six hours, it would have to end.

Knowing time was ticking down, Painter returned to the hospital ward. Two Secret Service agents protected the hall; another manned a post by the elevator. The fourth stood guard inside the small ward.

Painter found Gant sitting on the edge of Amanda’s bed, holding her hand. He had stripped out of the janitorial coveralls and wore wrinkled navy-blue slacks and a borrowed gray shirt. Amanda still balanced between moments of lucidity and sedation, monitored by her neurologist, who remained concerned about the subdural hematoma.

At the moment, she slept.

Gant looked up as he entered. “She spoke a few words when I came in. She’s still worried about her baby.”

“We all are.”

He nodded. “What’s the word from your field team? Did they find your man?”

Painter hated to dash the gleam of hope in a father’s eyes, but he’d had enough deception for one day. “Already gone. But I’m hoping he left some clue behind. We should know in a few minutes.”

Gant sighed, turning to his daughter. He spoke slowly, full of regret. “I pulled her into the limelight and made her childhood a spectacle, a target for the press. And I still had no time for her. No wonder she rebelled, lashed out. No wonder she fled without saying a word. What trust have I earned in her life?” He glanced up, wiping a tear, but never let go of her hand. “I promised her I’d find William. Don’t make me let her down again.”

Painter stepped over and placed a hand on his shoulder, silently making an oath to do everything he could to help.

“What they did to her, to my family…” Gant said. “If I ever find out who orchestrated this, who tortured my baby girl, I will make them regret it for the rest of their days. There will be no quick death. I will make them suffer like no other. I’ll turn their world into a personal hell on earth.”

Painter knew that if anyone had the power to do that, it was President James Gant.

A commotion drew both their attentions around.

Jason came flying into the room, winded. “Director.” The young man never stopped moving, continuing past the end of the bed and toward the neighboring medical office. “Linus just got a hit.”

Painter got drawn into the wake of his excitement. It took him an extra moment to remember that Linus was Jason’s partner in that vehicle-identification program. Hope flared inside him.

Had they found something?

He rushed after Jason into the medical office. The kid was already at the computer, typing fast.

“What is it?” Painter asked.

The president stood in the doorway, too, listening in.

“I’ll show you,” Jason said, typing as he spoke. “That’s why I came running down here. Linus had been checking all the major thoroughfares leaving Charleston, searching for any further hits on that Ford. The problem is that the farther you get out from the city, the more variables come into play, so many different roads that could be taken, spreading wider and wider like the branches on a tree.”

“What did you find?” Painter pressed.

“This.” Jason pointed at the screen. A clear photo of the front of a Ford explorer appeared. “Picked this up from a security camera at a drawbridge outside of Orangeburg, South Carolina.”

Through the windshield, Painter spotted Lisa behind the wheel. His breathing grew heavier, both relieved and terrified. A man sat next to her, his arms awkwardly raised behind him, like he was stretching. Or maybe his hands were bound behind him.

“You found her,” Painter mumbled. “How long ago was this taken?”

Jason looked both apologetic and worried. “Two days ago… the same day Dr. Cummings was kidnapped in Charleston.”

The president spoke at the doorway. “Who is Dr. Cummings?”

She’s everything to me.

Aloud, Painter replied, “She was one of the operatives sent to investigate the North Charleston Fertility Clinic.”

Gant’s face grew grim, likely remembering the footage he’d been shown, of women floating in gel-filled tanks.

Jason drew their attention back to the original still shot and pointed. “This was what got me so excited.”

Painter leaned closer. “A license plate.”

“Clear as day. I have Linus running a trace on the car’s GPS, to find out where it might be. We should-”

A dialog box popped onto the screen.

“I think this is it.” Jason tapped on the hyperlink in the box.

The image of the Ford vanished, replaced by a map view. A blinking blue circle narrowed and zoomed, shrinking down toward the border, where a corner of South Carolina pushed between Georgia and North Carolina. The circle finally changed into a small triangle, positioned deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The president was drawn by the activity.

“Can you zoom in and get a street address?” Painter asked Jason.

It was Gant that answered. “No need. I know where that is. That’s within my family’s estate. Fleury-la-Montagne.”

Before Painter could react, his cell phone vibrated. He answered it and was patched through to the unit commander in Arlington.

“Director, we found something here.”

Painter’s heart-already beating hard-sped faster. “What?”

“I took a photo. I’ve already dispatched it to you.”

Painter ordered Jason to retrieve it.

The commander explained while they waited. “We found it scrawled on the floor near the entrance hatch. Mostly invisible to the naked eye, but it glowed under an ultraviolet scan of the chamber. I think it was written with a smear of C-4.”

“Plastic explosive?”

“Yes, sir. I scraped up a tiny dab with a toothpick. From the feel, from the chemical taste, I believe so.”

Jason interrupted. “I’ve got the photo.”

It appeared in the top corner of the monitor.

Three letters glowed with a soft phosphorescence against the dark concrete.

“RLG,” Painter mumbled aloud. “What does that mean?”

Again it was the president who answered, his voice pale with shock. “Those are my brother’s initials. Robert Lee Gant.”

Painter twisted to face him. They both knew some of Gant’s family members had to be involved with this mess, but neither of them suspected anyone this close to the First Family.

Gant stared over at his daughter, likely thinking the same-only for him, this dagger dug much deeper and straight into his heart.

“We can’t be sure about your brother,” Painter offered.

“I can,” Gant said faintly.

“How?”

Gant pointed to the lower part of the computer screen. It still displayed the GPS map. “Bobby was headed to the family estate for the holiday, to avoid the Fourth of July crowds in DC. He left two days ago to do some hunting.”

“To Fleury-la-Montagne?”

Gant looked drawn and pale, his voice grim. “No one really uses that French name any longer. Everyone just calls it the Lodge.”

35

July 4, 1:04 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

“His color is good,” Lisa pronounced.

She stood before the neonatal incubator. Her gloved hands gently rolled the newborn onto his side, and she listened to the back of his thin chest with her stethoscope. His heartbeat was as rapid as a bird’s, but strong, his pulse-ox readings normal.

She let him roll back on his own. Huge blue eyes, framed by a hint of eyelashes, ogled up at her, his lips pursed hungrily.

Edward Blake stood at her shoulder, watching her examination.

Petra was off in another lab, running the latest DNA analyses, using samples of the boy’s blood and skin, along with cells gathered from a mucosal swab.

“We should get another bottle.” Lisa snapped off her gloves. “He’s been suckling well on his own since we took out his NG tube and PICC line. Let’s keep him moving in that right direction. But all in all, he’s rallying beautifully.”

“That’s all because of you, Dr. Cummings,” Edward said.

It wasn’t false praise. Yesterday, she had found the child circling the drain. She had spent a full hour studying his labs, his radiographs, even his genetic analyses. She had stared with amazement at the triple helix formations on an electron micrograph: two natural DNA strands wrapped around an engineered foreign protein, PNA.

Peptide nucleic acid.

That little microscopic strand of PNA was the source of so much misery, horror, and abuse.

And it wasn’t doing the boy any good, either.

Edward had explained about the unraveling going on in the boy’s body, how these triple-helix compounds were breaking down. But the question still in the air was why. Did the boy get sick and that started to unravel the helices? Or did the unraveling make the boy sick?

The only way to know for sure was to stabilize the child and see if the unraveling stopped on its own.

Lisa had come up with a suggestion, after noting the slight spike in eosinophil levels in the boy’s lab work. Eosinophils were the white blood cells that modulated allergic inflammatory processes. They also reacted to parasitic infections, but stool tests had already ruled out that possibility.

The more likely source for this allergic response was the PNA strands. Peptide nucleic acid was a protein like any other, capable of being an allergen as surely as dust or dander. With the breakdown of the triple helices, the freed PNA was being washed out into the cytoplasm, then shed free of the cells.

Petra had shown her a picture of a worm-like PNA molecule squiggling out of an intestinal cell. This rush of engineered protein into the bloodstream and interstitial tissues triggered the mobilization of eosinophils, the body’s defense against such foreign invaders. This allergic anaphylaxis tipped the child into shock.

Recognizing this threat, Lisa had recommended a low-dose therapy of antihistamines and intravenous steroids to knock down that allergic response, to give the child’s body a chance to flush out the foreign allergen and stabilize again.

It worked out beautifully. She had kept a vigil beside the neonatal incubator all night, assisted by Edward as needed, and, hour by hour, the child improved. They were able to slowly unhook him from fluids, oxygen supplementation, and even the feeding tube.

Only one question remained: did it do any good?

Did the boy’s rallying health succeed in returning stability to the triple helices? She knew that was Edward’s hope. They both awaited Petra’s answer.

As Lisa fed the child with a bottle, Edward retired to a computer workstation in a neighboring cubicle. Both were lost to their own worries. Concern for the child’s well-being had staved off her terror for the past day, gave her something to focus on. She knew Kat was somewhere in this lab complex, but where was her friend holed up? For that matter, where was this lab?

So far, both Petra and Edward had treated her with a modicum of respect, appreciating and needing her help. She remembered those digitized words, a cold warning: Prove your usefulness, and you both continue to live.

With the child doing better, Lisa’s usefulness was about to come to an end.

Then what?

She remembered who had assigned her to this job in the first place, picturing his kind face, his soft words.

Thank you, Dr. Cummings, for agreeing to help my grandnephew.

Anger raged inside her against that cool, calm demeanor of Robert Gant. She knew how much pain and suffering and loss it cost to bring this special child into existence, to this place and time. Still, she could not blame the child for such atrocities. The boy might have been born out of blood and heartbreak-but he was still an innocent.

The child finished suckling, the bottle was empty. Those big eyes drooped, heavy with milk-sodden drowsiness. Lisa let him drift into slumber, oblivious to the horrors beyond the clear plastic walls of his incubator.

She turned to Edward and limped over to him, favoring her aching ankle. Up on the wall, a camera tracked her path, swiveling to follow her. She wondered if Robert Gant watched her or merely some bored guard.

Exhausted, Lisa was beyond subtlety or subterfuge. “Edward, what are you trying to accomplish with these triple helices?”

He swung around on his desk chair. “Ah, I can’t speak to the goal of my financial benefactors. All I know is my purpose in the grand scheme of things.”

“And that’s what?”

He raised an eyebrow, belying the hubris that followed. “To forge the key to life itself.”

He gave her a tired smile, and, surprisingly, she echoed it.

“As lofty as that might sound, PNA is that key,” Edward explained. “It unlocks the full power of DNA and places the blueprints of life into our hands. With PNA, genomics experts can engineer strands that can turn specific genes on or off, unfettering mankind from its biological limitations. But it also allows new genes to be introduced, new code written onto the PNA and inserted into a fertilized egg. In the end, God will no longer evolve man-we will.”

Edward stared toward the child in the incubator. “But all that will come later. For the moment, we have only one goal engineered into this first strain of PNA, a simple thing really.”

Lisa felt a sick turn to her stomach. “What goal?”

Edward’s eyes never left the sleeping boy, the doctor’s expression a mask of wonder and also sadness.

“Immortality.”

Lisa couldn’t hide her shock.

“Do not be so surprised, Dr. Cummings. This child is not the first immortal born into this world.” Edward finally turned to her, letting her see his sincerity. “They walk among us already.”

1:07 P.M.

Washington, DC

Five hours left.

Painter had returned to his own office, leaving the president with his daughter below, guarded by his Secret Service contingent. They were under the five-hour mark until James Gant would come out of hiding and pretend to be recovering from major surgery. Everything to maintain that ruse was already in place.

He found Kowalski sitting inside, his feet propped up on Painter’s desk, his arms folded over his belly, snoring.

Painter shoved his legs off.

The man snorted awake. “We ready?” he asked.

“As we’re ever going to be.”

Painter grabbed a holstered SIG Sauer from a cabinet. The rest of the strike team’s gear was waiting at the airstrip, a jet warming up. As he secured the shoulder harness and holster in place, his eyes caught on the picture of Lisa on his desk, smiling softly, hair glowing in the summer sun, lips parted slightly. His love for her was a tangible thing, not a thought or a feeling, but a weight in his heart, a pressure in his chest, a stirring of heat in his veins.

At that moment, he knew the truth.

I need to buy a ring.

Motion at the door drew his attention. Tucker stood there, shadowed by Kane.

Painter gave his holster harness a final tug, cinching it snugly, and faced the man. “Captain Wayne?”

Tucker stepped inside. “Sir, I’d like to join you on this mission.”

“I appreciate that, captain, but we hired you to find Amanda. Your obligation to us has been fulfilled.”

“Understood, sir.” Tucker’s countenance remained hard, rocky. “But not my obligation to Amanda. I left her baby back in Dubai, and I want a chance to correct that mistake.”

“We can certainly use the additional manpower… not to mention your dog’s nose. But we’ll be parachuting onto the Gant estate.”

Airspace above the presidential estate was restricted. The no-fly zone had been established before James Gant was president, going back decades, a courtesy of the state of South Carolina for the largesse of the clan.

Painter’s plan was to sweep in close, parachute out, and glide low onto the grounds. And those grounds were huge, over 300,000 acres, almost 500 square miles of misty mountains, towering waterfalls, dark forests, and grassy meadows. The estate had ill-defined borders, as the family bought neighboring farms, ranches, and orchards, extending their property in fits and starts.

That remote, rough terrain would serve to hide them, allowing them to hoof it overland from their drop point.

Tucker seemed to have no problem with parachuting onto the estate. “Kane and I have had plenty of jump time,” the man assured him. “I have my dog’s harness system with me.”

“Then welcome aboard.”

Kowalski stood, stretched, and headed out the door with the others. “This place is really going to the dogs.”

Painter set off down the hall. He had been expecting another teammate to arrive by now, but the latecomer would have to meet them at the airstrip. Time was ticking down. Jason Carter would take command at the communications nest in his absence and coordinate efforts from here. It was a lot to place on his young shoulders, but Painter knew he could handle it. Jason had already gathered his own intelligence team in preparation, ruling the nest of older agents with an enthusiasm reserved for the young.

Painter reached the elevators as the doors opened.

Inside the cage stood the last member of their strike team. Kat’s husband adjusted his new prosthetic hand, securing the cuff with a twist and wiggling his fingers. Monk must have already stopped by R &D to get the upgrade Painter had ordered for him, a prosthetic specifically designed for this mission, to help with the infiltration of the Lodge.

“About time,” Painter said.

Monk glanced up, meeting his gaze, his face fierce. “You try to find a babysitter on the Fourth of July… now let’s go get our women.”

1:25 P.M.

Blue Ridge Mountains

“And you’re claiming this child can live forever?” Lisa asked. “That he’s immortal?”

Edward continued to sit in his cubicle in the medical ward. “Barring accidents or disease, yes, he could live a very long time. I imagine it will take further tinkering to achieve true immortality. But in the end, like I said, he’s not the first immortal born to this world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Since we have time until Petra finishes her evaluation of the boy’s genetics, I’ll do my best to explain. It’s the least I can offer you for saving the child.”

Lisa was prepared to listen.

“Many scientists, across a scope of professions, believe immortality will be achieved in our lifetime. The dates bandied about all seem to center around the middle of this century, 2045 or so. That means children born today will live to see those accomplishments come to fruition. They will take advantage of them during their lifetimes, becoming immortal. So in that regard, they are immortal already. Or at least something quite close to it. Their lifetimes could be easily doubled or tripled.”

She imagined what he envisioned, how some children born today will live forever. They were the immortals walking among us already.

Still, such a claim seemed impossible. She voiced it aloud. “You truly expect we can attain immortality in such a short time frame?”

“Or something very close to it. And it’s not just me making that claim. It comes from hundreds of scientists, researchers, and visionaries across a gamut of professions-from medicine, genomics, and gerontology to pharmaceuticals, nanotech, and robotics. What we’re doing in our labs here, financed by our benefactor, is taking the first tentative steps into eternity.”

Lisa pictured the man orchestrating this work.

Our benefactor…

Robert Gant.

It was beyond comprehension. All this horror perpetrated in an attempt to live forever. Still, Lisa sensed something more was going on, another agenda still being kept secret-but what?

She knew any true answers lay in keeping Edward talking.

He obliged, waxing proudly on where the world was heading. “There are two general schools of thought in regards to expanding man’s lifetimes. The first is moving machines into man. The other is moving man into machines.”

She shook her head, not appreciating the distinction.

“A thousand years ago the average life expectancy of mankind was only twenty-five years. It took another nine hundred years to extend that to thirty-seven. Today the average is seventy-eight. So, in the past hundred years, we more than doubled life expectancy. That amazing spurt of growth happened because of science and technology. And it will only grow faster from here. Estimates say we will soon be adding a year to our lives with every passing year. Just think about that. For every year you grow older, life expectancy will extend a year in front of you.”

“But what will drive that growth?”

“What has always driven it: the furnace of technology. In that forge, machine and man will melt together into one.”

He must have read her skepticism and smiled, ready to deflect it.

“Already people have artificial pancreases inside them,” he continued. “Currently thirty thousand Parkinson patients have neural implants. And as technology grows smaller, it will invade us even more. Advancements in nanotechnology-which is manufacturing at the atomic level-hold the promise of replacing vital organs in fifteen years, our blood cells in twenty years, and in twenty-five years, nanotechnology will reprogram our biological software to reverse aging.”

Lisa understood. “Moving machines into man… into our bodies.”

“That’s one path to immortality. But the reverse holds even greater promise. As computing power explodes exponentially, a term was coined-singularity-marking that moment when artificial intelligence will surpass mankind. Various futurists expect this to occur somewhere in the middle of this century.”

“So soon?” Lisa asked.

Edward nodded with a small smile of satisfaction. “By 2030, estimates say computing power will be a million times what it is today. Anything is possible with that much power. In the meantime, scientists from around the globe are searching for methods to merge that growing computing power to our own. In Switzerland, researchers are reverse-engineering the human brain, creating a neuron-by-neuron simulation, with the intent to have a complete virtual brain in ten years. Here in the States, a group of MIT researchers are building a map of all the brain’s synapses, those trillions of connections between neurons, all in a search for the seat of human consciousness.”

Lisa sighed. “And I assume that the ultimate goal is to fill that empty seat, to scan our consciousness into computers.”

“Exactly. Moving man into machines. The second path to immortality.” Edward glanced over to the incubator. “But I’m searching for a third path.”

“Which is what?”

“A new science. Cybergenetics. The merging of technology into our genetic code.”

“The PNA strand,” Lisa said, understanding, growing both awed and horrified, picturing that piece of engineered protein snaking into human DNA and regulating it.

“DNA is really just a set of information processes for building our bodies. But that software is old, millions of years old. PNA holds the potential for overhauling that system. Rebooting mankind forever.”

Lisa tried to draw him down from the lofty heights of theory to the reality of his lab. “But back to your own research. What does your PNA do, the one inside the boy?”

“It basically addresses the deleterious effects that come with growing old. The field of gerontology-the study of aging-has discovered that there are only seven basic ways a body damages itself as it ages. Reverse those seven deadly ways and immortality is within reach.”

Edward looked significantly toward her, lifting an eyebrow.

“You did it,” she said in a hushed voice. “Your PNA manipulates and regulates the DNA to offset those damages.”

“It does, but not perfectly. We concentrated most of our efforts on one of them. The death of cells. Are you familiar with the Hayflick limit?”

She shook her head, finding it harder and harder to speak.

“Back in 1961, Dr. Leonard Hayflick estimated that the maximum natural age for a human being is about 120 years. He based that on the number of times a cell will divide before it stops. The number of these divisions is determined by the length of some repeated DNA at the end of each cell’s chromosomes. These repeated sequences are called telomeres. They basically act like the aglets at the end of shoelaces, keeping the laces from fraying. But after a certain number of divisions, the telomeres wear off, and the chromosome frays itself to death.”

“What does this have to do with your PNA?”

“We engineered the PNA to function as permanent telomeres, in order to create undying cells, and thus allow us to shatter through the Hayflick limit.”

“Creating a path to immortality.”

He nodded. “We are at the very threshold to eternity.”

“But why do this? There are so many negative effects if man could live forever. Overpopulation, starvation, stagnation. There’s a reason we are meant to die, to step aside for the next generation.”

“True, but those dangers only exist if the technology is available to all. In the hands of an elite-a chosen people-there would be no such risks.”

Shocked, she pictured Robert Gant’s face. Was that his plan? To keep his bloodline alive forever, to create an undying dynasty?

“Why are you helping them?” she finally eked out.

“Because I must. Mankind has always chafed against restraints and limitations. We left our homelands to cross uncharted seas. We broke the bounds of gravity to fly. We even left our planet. Here is merely the next step toward freedom, the ultimate freedom, to break the chains of mortality and free us from our very graves.”

Lisa found herself aghast. She had warmed to the man over the past day, working alongside him, but now she saw the chinks in his armor, allowing the madness inside to shine forth.

“The visionary Raymond Kurzweil once posed the question, Does God exist?” Edward turned to stare at the boy in the incubator. “His answer was only two words: Not yet.”

She stared at the man, seeing the glaze of megalomania. She knew from her years in the medical profession that this affliction seldom presented itself as a raving lunacy. Instead, most of those afflicted were charming in demeanor, confident in their convictions, and all too often described as simply nice. They were monsters wearing sweet faces.

She was saved from responding by the return of Petra. The woman had a sheaf of reports in her hands as she strode stiffly toward them. Her expression remained unreadable as she reached Edward’s cubicle.

He faced her, looking up, hopeful. “And the verdict on the boy?”

“Not good. The child may appear healthy, but his triple helices continue to denature and shed their PNA strands. Worse yet, the process appears to be accelerating.”

Edward lifted his hands, rubbed his eyes, and sighed out his defeat. “So the breakdown wasn’t because the boy was sick. As I feared, he’s simply rejecting the PNA.”

“He’s no good to us,” Petra said.

“But we were so close.” Edward sagged.

“We will keep working,” Petra said. “Success cannot be far away. And besides, you know they only want females. The boy was doomed either way.”

Doomed?

Lisa stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

Edward, lost in his disappointment, seemed surprised she was still there. “Surely you understand that males with triple helices are basically mules. They might live forever, but they’re genetic dead ends. Only females can pass this PNA trait to future offspring.”

“No, I don’t understand,” she said, intending to keep them talking, shifting slowly toward the key card on Edward’s desk.

You’re not going to harm this child…

He huffed, swung to a computer, and tapped up a file. On the screen, a time-lapsed video of cellular division appeared. The two DNA strands were colored in red, the single PNA in blue. A couple of additional PNA strands hung loosely in the cytoplasm. As the cells divided, the PNA slipped out of the way, joined its brothers in the cytoplasm. Cellular division then proceeded as normal. Once the cell had pinched into two, one of the PNA strands from each of the new cells snaked out of the cytoplasm and back into the heart of the DNA strand, re-forming the triple helix in both cells.

“Do you understand?” Edward asked.

She did. She now understood why a male couldn’t pass on the triple-helix trait. A man’s sperm cell contains half of his DNA. A woman’s egg contains half of her DNA plus all of her cytoplasm and everything inside the jelly-like cellular fluid: mitochondria, organelles, proteins-and, in this case, PNA. Because of that, a father couldn’t pass on the triple-helix trait-the trait of immortality-because he couldn’t pass on any cytoplasmic PNA. Only a female could.

“It’s like mitochondria in women,” Lisa said. “All mitochondria get passed along the female genetic line, from egg to egg to egg.”

“Correct. So you understand?”

She nodded.

“Then you also understand why we have to kill this boy.”

She jerked straighter. “No… of course not!”

Edward sighed. “He’s a dead end, only useful for research fodder. If we’d been able to return stability to his triple helix by treating his shock, then he would have made the perfect test subject for Petra’s vivisection table, his organs divided into artificial suspension systems, perfect for challenging and testing the immortality trait. Better that than waiting decades to study this child’s growth. Science can’t move that slowly, especially in the face of something as inconsequential as morality.”

Lisa sat back on Edward’s desk, numb with shock. She had labored throughout the night and slowly pulled the child back from death’s door-only to meet this end?

She had also grown attached to the boy. How could she not, with those big, trusting blue eyes?

Petra stared sullenly at the child in the incubator, as if he were a dog who had chewed her favorite pumps. “Now he’s useless. Another failure.”

“A promising failure.” Edward patted Petra on the back of her hand. “You can still perform the necropsy, collect all the histological tissue samples you want. We can still learn much, even from this failure.”

Enough.

Lisa would not let them kill this child.

As they focused on the baby, with their backs to her, she made her move.

Already leaning on Edward’s desk, she grabbed his key card-and his desk lamp. She yanked the cord free and swung the lamp broad-armed at the back of Petra’s head. The weighted steel base hit her skull, felling her like a chopped tree. The woman hit the corner of the cubicle and tumbled hard to the floor.

Edward had started to rise, but Lisa kicked the chair out from under him. Off balance, he fell forward. She used that moment to ram her knee into his nose, smashing it and sending him sprawling. He wasn’t out, but he was down, dazed.

She dropped the lamp, ran to the incubator, and, as gently as she could, removed the cuffs and tapes of the NICU’s monitoring leads. Once he was free, she swaddled the child in a thin blanket and carried him close to her chest.

She knew the prison ward was a blind alley, as was this suite of labs. The only other true exit was the door through which Robert Gant had entered yesterday. She ran toward it, ignoring the flaring complaint from her swollen ankle. At the door, she swiped the stolen key card, unlocked the way, and dashed out of the ward.

A dimly lit maze of halls and rooms spread outward, looking deserted, waiting to be occupied by Edward’s new facility. She’d overheard that much.

She picked a direction and ran off blindly with the child, moving as fast as she could with her compromised ankle, thankful the child remained quiet after being fed.

She hadn’t bothered to dispatch or tie up Petra and Edward.

For a very simple reason.

She remembered the eye of the security camera following her as she fled. Someone already knew she had escaped.

36

July 4, 1:48 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

“Where did she go?” Robert Gant pressed.

He stood in front of a computer in Dr. Emmet Fielding’s office, located in the red zone of the underground complex. He had gotten word a few minutes ago from central security that Lisa Cummings had attacked two of the scientists and fled with his brother’s grandchild.

A fist formed. Not out of anger at the woman, but at the thought of his brother. He held his grief in his fist and leaned his weight on it, crushing his knuckles against the desktop, trying to contain that well of sorrow. Flashes of moments with Jimmy sparked in his head: two brothers riding horseback, drinking beer behind the barn, playing cards while smoking cigars. It had been Jimmy who held him together after his wife died. He tried to squeeze an entire lifetime into his fist, to hold those memories in check.

It was why he had come down here, tinkering with Dr. Fielding on some projects, studying some of the latest neuro-pod designs, including several truly horrendous war beasts in early stages of development.

Anything to keep himself distracted.

Robert understood the inevitability of his brother’s assassination, could fathom the logic of it when it was presented to him as a fait accompli. The greater body of the Lineage demanded it. So he had to obey-as he’d always done in the past. But he could not escape the pain of it.

“She’s still missing, sir,” the guard said. The man’s image hovered in the upper corner of the screen. “There are only a few active cameras in that disused section of the facility.”

“Then check the cameras in the neighboring zones. Blue and orange.”

“Yes, sir.”

As he waited, Robert brought up a schematic of the estate. The main mansion, the Lodge, lay ten miles away, surrounded by its high walls. Only a tiny fraction of the family knew the facility existed. Even Jimmy didn’t know, though he’d gone fishing a few times at a river within a half-mile of its outskirts.

The sprawling research facility covered twenty acres, occupying an old mine on a remote piece of Gant property, set amid the high cliffs and waterfalls of the Eastern Continental Divide. The divide-which ran through the Blue Ridge Mountains and across the Gant estate-split the watershed of the region: on one side, rivers all flowed toward the Gulf of Mexico; on the other, toward the Atlantic.

A century ago, a member of the Bloodline discovered the old, flooded mine. Slowly, over time, it had been engineered and converted into a secret facility, carved out underground and burrowed even farther over the years, spreading under the old-growth forest and meadows.

He stared at the map of the facility. It looked like a madman’s Rorschach inkblot, much of it shaded out in gray, indicating unoccupied sections of the lab. Robert remembered better times. During the heyday of the Cold War years, the place had once hosted hundreds of researchers from both sides of the iron Curtain, all working for the Guild, for the Bloodline. The halls thrummed with excitement, the verve of men and women working at the edge of scientific exploration-and often moving beyond.

Robert stared at the grayed-out areas now, eating through the facility like a cancer. Since then, like many American companies, the research projects that had once flourished within these walls had been shifted abroad, outsourced to Third World countries where no questions were asked, labor was cheaper, and government interference or oversight was nonexistent.

So, this older facility was hollowed out, becoming a deserted cathedral to science, most of it shuttered and shut down. Only Robert’s pet project remained, though isolated and adrift. His robotics research was no longer considered by the Bloodline a viable path to extending life, deemed to be too macro in its scope. Instead, everything shifted into the fashionable micro world of stem cells, nanotechnology, and now DNA manipulation. Only lately was that trend reversing, the pendulum swinging back with the advancements in robotics, creating the new field of neuro-robotics, the merging of man and machine.

Still, the Bloodline relegated his work to weapons research, which was not inappropriate. In Afghanistan alone, there were more than two thousand robots fighting alongside American troops-and that force was rapidly expanding in number and intelligence.

So, Robert continued his weapons research here. The facility was perfectly suited for that: isolated, under a no-fly restriction, and, best of all, surrounded by varied terrain. Rivers, forests, meadows, and cliffs-the perfect landscape to field-test the various iterations of his neuro-pods.

Now, with the loss of that major facility in Dubai, life was again returning to these empty halls. New priests were returning to the cathedral, ready to bring the chorus and the chant of the scientific method back to these hallowed halls.

Robert should have been happier, but all he felt was dead inside. The loss of his brother coming so soon on the heels of Amanda’s death. And now the threat to his grandnephew. It finally broke something inside him-or maybe he had always been broken, and it took Jimmy’s blood on his hands for him to finally recognize it.

The Bloodline had not been kind to his family.

He planned on ending that today.

The guard came back online. “Sir, Orange and Blue are negative on the target.”

“Then spread the search on foot, scour every room, closet, and cabinet.”

“Yes, sir.”

Robert knew that could be a challenge. With the Fourth of July holiday, only a skeleton staff remained on-site-not that the regular staff was all that much more fleshed out.

But he needed his grandnephew returned to him.

He’d lost too much today-and placed a thin hope that he could save the child and the straggling remnants of his immediate family. But with the outside world closing down upon his private world, he had no chance until he first secured the child.

He knew what he needed.

Leverage.

He tapped a key and brought up a view of a cell in the red zone. A woman with a shaved head sat on a bed, her face in her hands. He was glad she was turned away.

Robert pressed an intercom button.

“Yes,” Dr. Fielding answered from his laboratory in that same zone.

“Emmet, you said you wanted to test the newest pods, a more vigorous challenge of their abilities.”

Excitement frosted his voice. “Of course, sir.”

“Then let’s get started.”

Robert finished with the man and made the necessary calls. Once done, he tapped another switch, accessing a camera that required a code known only to him.

None must know about this prisoner.

The view of another room bloomed onto the screen, only this one was lavishly appointed with a four-poster bed, deep-cushioned chairs, a stone fireplace, and walls decorated with tapestries. The roof was wood-beamed, framed into Gothic arches, and supported a centuries-old crystal chandelier.

But the room was still a cell.

The window, streaming with sunlight, was heavily barred. The stout wood door, banded in iron, was locked electronically.

The prisoner must have heard the stir of the camera as Robert turned it toward the window. She stood limned against the sunlight, a dark shadow, a slender twist against the brightness.

Noting the camera’s motion, she came forward, looking up.

She still wore the same leathers as when she arrived, though it looked like she’d used the neighboring bathroom to shower.

She glared up at the camera.

Those green eyes, pinched slightly at the corner, marked her mixed Eurasian blood. Just the sight of those eyes made his heart clutch.

He touched the screen with his finger, rubbing an edge of his thumb along the side of her face, knowing he could never get closer. She had escaped the Guild years ago, turned enemy to the Bloodline, but now she was returned to the fold.

“Where you belong,” he whispered throatily. “I should never have let you escape.”

Another face blinked into existence in the corner of the screen, irritating him with the interruption.

“Mr. Gant,” the man said, “I wanted to inform you that the helicopter is inbound with the package from DC.”

“Acknowledged. I’ll be back at the Lodge momentarily.”

An underground tunnel ran from the lab complex to a secure entrance at the mansion. He could take the tram and be back there in minutes.

He lingered a moment more, staring at his handsome prisoner.

As if sensing his eyes, she lifted an arm and raised an offending finger toward the camera.

He smiled as he clicked off the camera. He turned around and headed for the tunnel back to the Lodge, ready to face the man who had killed his brother.

2:03 P.M.

As the helicopter swept in a wide curve, Gray gaped at the view of the Gant family mansion below.

He had seen pictures of the massive structure in books, never in person, few people had. It competed with such great American castles as those built by the Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Hearst families. But the Gant clan went old-school, patterning their design on a famous Crusader castle in Syria, the Krak des Chevaliers, the Fortress of the Knights.

Its outer wall, studded with small square towers and peppered with arrow slits, was three meters thick. The only passage through that wall was a massive archway, fronted by a drawbridge over a real moat.

Beyond the wall, a sunlit courtyard was half-parking lot, half-gardens, holding centuries-old oaks and flowering rose beds. The keep itself held seventy rooms, all done in Gothic style of pointed arches, high windows, and a multitude of doors and balconies. It all led up to two square towers crowned by toothed parapets.

The chopper lowered toward a helipad in the courtyard. As it dropped within the outer walls, Gray felt the world close in, trapping him. The skids touched the pavement, and he was led out at gunpoint, his wrists cuffed behind him. The team leader marched him across the courtyard toward the giant arched doors to the main mansion.

Gray had nowhere to run. Even if he could escape, he remained tethered electronically to the transmitter in the leader’s pocket. If he fled farther than ten yards, the countdown to detonation would begin again.

Right now he needed to keep his head.

In more ways than one.

A few steps away, the team leader held his radio earpiece, listening to someone. His other hand nervously scratched at the crucifix tattoo on his neck. All Gray heard was a final “Yes, sir.”

The man turned to Gray. “Come with me.”

They headed up the steps of native fieldstone and through an open wooden door carved with panels depicting knightly pursuits, from jousting to battles.

Beyond the door opened a massive hall. It was like stepping into a cathedral, from the vaulted ceilings to the massive stone pillars. Sunlight flowed through stained-glass windows, again depicting knights, but in a more courtly setting, many wearing the Templar cross on their surcoats.

Despite all of the grandness, there remained an indescribable warmth to the hall. Thick rugs softened the stone floors. Two fireplaces at either end, tall enough to trot horses through, promised merry winter fires. Even now they were filled with massive bouquets, scenting the room with summer’s endless promise.

And Gray could tell where the nickname for the estate, the Lodge, came from. The mansion’s reputation as a hunting lodge was plain. Several of the rugs on the floor were bearskins. Mounted on the walls were the heads of beasts from every continent.

Hemingway would have been very happy here.

“Keep up,” the team leader barked.

Gray hurried forward, led across the hall to a door beside one of the fireplaces. The leader knocked.

“Come in.”

Gray was ushered into a small library, done up as a sitting room, with French antique furniture, a small fireplace, and tiny windows, no bigger than arrow slits, offering peeks at the gardens beyond.

The lone occupant sat in a chair to one side of the cold fireplace. He wore a conservative gray suit, though he’d shed his jacket and had it folded over the edge of a chair. The white shirt was unbuttoned at the top, sleeves rolled up.

Robert Gant held out his hand.

The team leader rushed forward, passed the transmitter into his palm, along with the keys to Gray’s cuffs-then hurried out, clearly under specific orders, as not a word was exchanged between them.

The door closed.

The president’s brother stared at Gray’s face and spoke his first words. “Did he suffer?”

Gray didn’t need to be told the subject of that question. Still, he didn’t know his footing here. This was made worse by the fire in his chest, flaming the edges of his eyes, burning at the bonds of his self-control. But cuffed and at the mercy of the transmitter, he could do nothing but stand, his legs trembling with the desire to send him charging regardless of the consequences. His fists tightened so hard that the bulge of his wrists cut into the tight cuffs.

Robert waved him to the other chair opposite the fireplace.

Gray took it, not trusting his control. He sat on the edge, ready to lunge, to exact whatever revenge he could upon the man responsible for his mother’s death.

Robert asked again, his voice cracking this time. “Please… I know Jimmy’s surgery is futile. I heard the grim prognosis. But in those final moments, did my brother suffer?”

Gray heard the pain more than the words. That keen of grief let him see past the red haze to the man’s barely contained agony. Robert’s eyes were stitched with red veins, shadowed darkly by pain, his skin as ashen as his gray jacket.

For some reason, as much as he hated the man, Gray answered as truthfully as he could. “No. Your brother didn’t suffer.”

Robert nodded, turning to stare at his lap. “Thank you for that.”

The man sat quietly in that stricken pose for a long time. When he lifted his face again, tears ran down his face. He wiped them away and stared at the cold fireplace, as if needing its warmth.

He spoke his next words softly. “I’m sorry for your mother.”

Gray stiffened, coming close to leaping out of his chair.

But the face the man showed Gray, so honestly distraught, quelled his anger. “Loss is an affliction that never lets go of your heart. I know that too well. It is too high a price, even for life everlasting, which now seems a horrible thing.”

Gray remembered Seichan saying something similar. What was going on with this man? He had expected torture and interrogations upon landing here. His only hope was that Painter had gotten his secret message and understood enough to figure out where he’d been taken.

“The accumulation of grief over one lifetime is more than a heart can bear,” Robert explained. “Only the heartless could withstand more. Or the very young, those too naïve to truly understand loss. Like I was when they came for me.”

“When who came for you?” Gray asked, trying to understand.

Robert remained silent, seeming to be working through something, clearly teetering on the edge. “I’ll show you. You may be useful to my plans.”

He stood and drew Gray after him. He crossed to a bookcase and pulled a handle tucked into the frame to unlatch a secret door. A section of the case swung open, revealing a spiral stone stair going down.

Robert led the way, lit by wall sconces. Gray had expected cobwebs and wall torches, but the passage merely wound down to basement levels. Through the open doors to other landings, he saw laundry facilities, kitchens, and they ended up in a wine cellar. Arched tunnels, carved out of the natural stone, spread outward in multiple directions, dimly lit by bare bulbs strung above. Massive oak barrels lined both sides. Neighboring rooms, like small chapels dedicated to Bacchus, held towering racks of dusty bottles, an accumulation of unimaginable wealth.

Robert moved swiftly forward, as if fearing he might change his mind, or someone might stop him. Gray got dragged behind, as much by the pull of his invisible leash as by curiosity.

Their journey ended deep within the vintner’s maze, in a side room holding four massive French oak barrels, as large as elephants.

Robert stepped to one and released a latch to open the face of the barrel. The wooden barrel was lined by steel. Robert hopped inside, followed by Gray. The back of the barrel looked like the doors to a bank vault. Robert typed in a code on the front and placed his hand on a palm reader.

Green lights flashed, and a low hum of hydraulics rotated a two-foot-thick plate-steel door.

It opened to a small room-an elevator, he realized as Robert entered more codes and the cage began to drop.

During this entire trip, Robert hadn’t said anything. He looked beyond words at the moment, lost in his own grief.

Finally, the elevator stopped, the doors opened into an anteroom to a massive, hermetically sealed clean room, half the length of a football field. But this was no sterile industrial white-and-stainless-steel place. Beyond the air-locked sealed door was something out of the British museum. Mahogany display cases held dusty tomes, yellowed scrolls, and worn artifacts from every age of man. Domes of glass sat atop marble plinths, protecting delicate statues and golden treasures.

Robert turned to him. “Within lies the true heart of the Bloodline.”

37

July 4, 2:07 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

Lisa crouched in a dark bathroom stall, perched on a toilet with the baby cradled on her lap. She clutched a Langenbeck amputation knife in one fist.

She had found the weapon, which looked like a scalpel with a four-inch blade, in a necropsy lab. The morgue, like much of this labyrinthine facility, looked long-deserted. A layer of fine dust had covered everything. She knew she could not stow herself in one of the body cabinets. Her footprints were plain on the dusty floor.

To hide her tracks, she had kept her flight along the edge of the occupied sections of the laboratory, a dangerous path. She’d come close to being discovered twice, but the facility was a huge warren of hiding places. She had passed one corridor that must have run the length of the facility. Its end dwindled down to a dark point, lit only in a few sections.

Within the first few minutes, she knew she must be underground.

No windows anywhere.

I need to find a way back to the surface.

If she could escape, go for help-then she could offer Kat real support. By herself, any rescue attempt was futile. Her ankle continued to throb, shooting pain up her leg with every step.

And it wasn’t just Kat’s life in danger.

The baby slept in the crook of her arm, quiet as a lamb, belly full of milk, likely still bodily exhausted from the near-death collapse of his systems. She prayed the child remained quiet.

She had come to this bathroom only as a temporary reprieve, to collect her thoughts. Her initial flight had been that of a panicked rabbit, just trying to stay ahead of the hunting pack. For the moment, she had lost her pursuers, arriving at a region of the facility with yellow walls. The whole facility seemed to be color-mapped. She’d fled from white through orange to yellow.

She pictured Kat’s cell.

It had red walls.

She had discovered an evacuation map outside the bathroom. It was that discovery that changed her course from a maddened flight to the beginnings of a plan. She ducked inside here to think, to consider the best route to take.

From the evacuation plan, she recognized that she was on the middle level of three, somewhere in the northwest quadrant. The map laid out the shortest route up to the surface-but she dared not take that path. They would be expecting that; likely guards were already posted.

When she reached the next stairwell, they would expect her to go up. So, instead, she would go down. She noted that the red zone on the map did not extend to the third level. She saw a corridor that transected the facility, passing under the red zone. She could use that passageway to cross to the far side of the facility, where fewer eyes, if any, would be watching. There was a remote exit in a sliver of the lab that poked out from the bulk.

That was her goal.

She shifted a cramping leg toward the floor, wanting to check that map one more time, then begin her painful run for the exit. As her toe lowered toward the linoleum, the door to the bathroom creaked open. The light flicked on, blinding after her flight through the dim corridors and dark rooms.

A casual whistling accompanied the intruder.

Not likely a guard.

From the timbre of the whistling and heavy-footed gait, it was a man. She prayed he crossed to the urinal, but his whistling approached the bay of stalls. She clutched her knife more tightly, willing him away.

Not this one. Pick another.

Her prayer was answered as he entered the neighboring stall, the one closest to the door. She had purposefully avoided that one for that very reason. She would wait until he finished, give it another minute, then continue.

It was at that moment, perhaps stirred by his whistling, that the boy in her arms began to rouse, stretching a pudgy, wrinkled fist, yawning silently. But she knew that wouldn’t last.

She had to get out of here before he made a noise and alerted her neighbor. She didn’t know how long the man would be here. Her ears picked out the clatter of an unbuckling belt, the rip of a zipper, and the soft whisper of pants falling-followed by a long sigh of relief.

It sounded like he would be here awhile.

The whistling began again.

Lisa couldn’t take the risk of being trapped inside here if the baby began to cry. She carefully lowered her good foot to the ground, pivoted to her bad leg, careful of her ankle. She mouthed the blade between her lips and balanced the baby under the crook of one arm. Luckily, she had spent many nights babysitting Kat’s children.

She had never locked her stall. What would be the use? So she used the coat hook on the inside of the door to slowly swing it open, allowing her to slip outside.

I can do this.

Then the baby let out a small wail of complaint.

Lisa froze as the whistling stopped. The stall lock snapped open.

Her mind immediately flashed to her new mantra.

WWKD?

What would Kat do?

Lisa kicked the door as it started to swing open, catching the man in the face as he reached forward. He fell back-Lisa followed, her knife already in hand. As he looked up, she slashed hard at his exposed throat. The razor-sharp amputation blade, made to cut through hard cartilage and stiff tendons, performed as designed. The deep cut severed skin, muscle, and trachea, drowning any scream. The severed carotid spurted high, splashing. The man gurgled and slid off of the commode. His hands clutched at his neck, his eyes shining with shock, already dead but not knowing it.

That’s what Kat would do.

Lisa swung away, careful of the blood pooling, so as not to leave tracks. She pulled the stall shut, crossed to the bathroom door, and turned off the lights. His absence would likely be missed. She had to be far away before that happened.

She peeked out and found the hall clear. But as she stepped out, her name was called, loudly, echoing throughout the facility.

She cringed.

But it was only the loudspeaker system. The voice was male, not the digitally masked speaker from earlier. It didn’t sound like Robert Gant’s Southern slant or Edward Blake’s British accent.

Someone new.

“DR. LISA CUMMINGS! THIS IS YOUR ONE AND ONLY WARNING! YOU WILL TURN YOURSELF AND THE CHILD OVER TO THE NEAREST PERSONNEL, OR YOU WILL SEND YOUR FRIEND INTO DEADLY PERIL.”

A monitor bloomed to light down the hall, others blinked elsewhere. Clearly he was making a general broadcast to the entire compound.

She shifted down the hall enough to see a stranger on the screen. He wore white laboratory coveralls with a hood pulled back and a surgical mask on top of his head. In the background, she spotted Dr. Blake. The view suddenly switched, revealing Kat standing at gunpoint beside a sealed metal door. It looked like she carried a length of pipe and a small shield of some sort.

“AS PUNISHMENT AND TO RECOGNIZE THE THREAT SHE FACES, WE WILL PERFORM A SMALL DEMONSTRATION SO YOU FULLY UNDERSTAND.”

The door swung open, sunlight blazed, blinding the camera. The view switched to the outside, looking down upon a grassy meadow, a line of oaks in the distant background. Kat was shoved outside, stumbling into view, shading her eyes with her small shield against the summer glare.

“TURN YOURSELF IN NOW, OR HER FATE WILL WORSEN OVER TIME. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.”

Lisa needed no time to decide.

WWKD?

She knew what Kat would want her to do.

She hurried down the hall-not to turn herself in but to make her escape while most eyes here were fixed on those screens, prepared to enjoy whatever blood sport was about to ensue. And Lisa knew from the shield and the club that some gladiatorial battle was about to start.

She caught fractured glimpses as she ran with the child, gone quiet again for now, likely jostled back to sleep by her running. In stuttered snatches, she saw Kat head out into that field, wading through the grasses.

Be careful, she wished her friend.

2:18 P.M .

Kat stalked across the thigh-high grass. She carried a hard steel shield, two feet square, strapped to her forearm. In her other hand, she wielded a three-foot length of hollow pipe. She breathed deeply, readying her body, flushing oxygen into her muscles. Her senses stretched out.

The tall grass was mostly green, redolent of summer, the scent growing stronger as she crushed through blades with her slippers. The edges of her gown snagged on bristled weeds. Her ears caught the twitter of birdsong, registering it but filtering it into the background, along with the distant sound of tumbling water to the northwest and the sweep of gentle wind through leaves.

She knew the hunters would be coming.

She’d overheard the two scientists talking-Fielding and Blake-preparing her, deciding which weapons to test.

The battlefield is the ultimate crucible of Darwinian natural selection, Fielding had explained to the other researcher. Survival is the main drive of evolution. And it’s no different for our pods. For our weapons to learn, they must be field-tested, battle-hardened. With each new challenge, new synapses of the cybernetic brains will grow and expand. But we must test the pods with ever-harder challenges.

She had seen those hexapods, as she heard them called: crab-like titanium killing machines, equipped with razor-sharp legs, slashing daggers, and drilling burrs. Other variants lined the workbench. The worst looked like a large, bloated tick, its legs as skinny as ice picks.

Beyond the workbench, deeper in the lab, larger creatures, the size of small black bears, had lurked, in various stages of assembly.

Kat strode across the meadow, hefting the shield to test its weight and swinging the pipe to judge its balance.

We’ve pitted the hexapods against unarmed opponents in the past, Fielding had finished. Today we’ll test them against the next level of weaponry: blunt weapons and shields. We will send wave after wave, escalating the numbers each time, until they learn, adapt, and defeat their opponent.

A rustle to her left alerted her. She swung around, dropping her shield low. The grasses stirred as something raced low through them, cutting across the meadow like the fin of a shark through water. She saw four other trails swinging wider, intending to outflank and circle her.

Clearly, they were capable of coordination.

Good to know.

Fast as greyhounds, the hexapods churned through the fields. She’d never make the tree line, so she didn’t bother trying. She would make her stand here, using this first wave-if she survived it-to learn and adapt.

Nothing said she couldn’t evolve as readily as her opponents.

First, she didn’t want to be in deep grass. She wanted a better field of view. With seconds to spare, she used her shield as a press and stamped a swath of grass around her, pushing the stalks outward, creating a thicker natural palisade. She left one section open, a gate into her little nest.

The first hexapod hit that palisade broadside, got wedged in the wall of compacted grasses. She identified the gleam of its titanium carapace and speared her pipe down at it, using all of her weight. Metal crunched under the battering ram. It didn’t kill the beast, but it incapacitated its sensory system, sending the pod zipping away in a spiraling blind curve.

The other four, perhaps wirelessly sharing the experience of the first, veered away from a direct attack. They swarmed in a circle. Then one cut away, shooting toward the opening, sensing the chink in her shield-not knowing it was a trap.

It cut into her nest, but she was ready. She used her pipe like a golf club and batted it square in the front sensors, crushing the electronics and sending it flying. It landed on its back and didn’t move.

A weak spot.

The other three circled, clearly plotting something, then, once decided, the trio arrowed toward the opening together, plainly trying to overwhelm her.

Sorry, we’re closed for the day.

She slammed her shield’s edge into the soft loam, sealing the opening to her nest. The lead pod hit the shield with a loud clank. She stabbed downward, again and again, like a piston. She shattered most of its legs, leaving it crippled.

The other two veered away, plotting their next move.

Kat wasn’t waiting. She found a fist-size rock and underhanded it into the grasses. The movement drew one of the creatures. It shot in that direction, but it was only fooled for a few seconds. Once the rock stopped moving, it stopped hunting.

It knew the rock wasn’t alive.

The test confirmed the hexapods had motion sensors, but they must be backed by infrared, reading body heat, a mark of living creatures. Since the pod chased the rock, she doubted its visual acuity was very sharp. They could be fooled.

What about sound and smell?

The two pods didn’t give her another chance to find out. They zoomed in from opposite directions. One headed toward the shield; the other, the natural grassy palisade.

Kat snatched her shield back up, opening her nest again, allowing the first one to shoot inside. The second got delayed trying to push itself through the grass, employing some buzzing blade to chop into her space.

The first spun on a dime and came at her. She shoulder-dropped, putting all her weight on the edge of her shield, turning it into a guillotine. She crushed the front end, driving it into the soft soil.

The second burst through the palisade, leading its charge with a spinning horizontal saw blade.

She leaped to the side as the second rammed the first, finishing the job for her with its diamond blade ripping open the underside of the other pod. The first retaliated in a defensive death reflex. Razor-sharp legs drilled into crevices, peeled open the carapace, and ripped out the glass-enclosed brain.

In seconds, they’d killed each other.

Kat crouched, examining their weaponry, peeking at the arsenal under their carapaces. She noted a small, dart-like apparatus, the side marked with the designation M99.

Etorphine hydrochloride.

A powerful game-animal tranquilizer.

Strong enough that one drop could immobilize a man.

Knowing her opponents better, she stood and stared over at the small bunker through which she’d exited the facility. She knew they were watching. She just glared.

Let’s see what else you’ve got.

She turned and sprinted for the tree line.

2:28 P.M.

“She’ll do well,” Emmet Fielding said, forming a temple of his fingers before his lips, studying the bank of monitors. “Very fit.”

Edward sat beside him at the curved bank of computer screens. He gently fingered his broken nose, taped up after Lisa’s surprise attack. He watched the woman flee out of the view of one camera and into another. She fled through a dark forest of oaks, pine, and spruce.

“Aren’t you upset that she dispatched your weapons so quickly?” Edward asked.

A flap of fingers waved away his concern. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Porsche destroys fleets of their sports cars in their testing lab and field trials. That’s how you build the best. And I won’t settle for anything less.”

Edward had noted how the man’s pulse beat faster in his throat during the attack. He suspected this testing was as much a blood sport to him as it was science. But that wasn’t his concern.

After seeing that, surely Lisa would return with the boy.

“Any word?” Edward asked.

Fielding made a noncommittal noise, plainly not interested. Whether Lisa showed up or not, he intended to continue this test until the woman on the screen was a macerated ruin.

He glanced to the clock. Petra had also gone off on her own to search for Lisa. After being caught off guard and struck in the head, his research associate was out for blood, hunting as diligently and as coldly as those steel creatures.

Fielding sat back from his workstation, stretching. “I think we’re ready for round two.”

“How many will you send this time?”

“A full score, I believe. Twenty. But she’s shown so much promise-truly remarkable-I think we’ll skip straight to the next level of challenge. Introducing a new element.”

Fielding glanced behind him to the back of his lab. Larger pods hulked back there, on four limbs, each leg ending in curved claws patterned after a sloth’s, perfect for gutting prey. Edward had seen how fast the quadrupods could move, bone-chillingly frightening to witness.

“I think I’ll send up two,” Fielding said and tapped buttons with a bit of bravado.

Blake stared at the running woman.

She had better hope Lisa changed her mind and returned with the child-though, in the end, it would not make any difference.

Not for either of the women.

2:29 P.M .

Lisa fled down a long, dim corridor, the baby under one arm, the knife ready in the other. She had watched in fleeting glimpses Kat’s successful battle with the metal creatures-but more to come had been promised, and she had no doubt it would be delivered.

She glanced above her head.

I should be under the red zone by now.

By her best estimate from the live feed, she was, unfortunately, fleeing in the opposite direction from Kat. She could not offer her friend any help-other than to survive herself.

She continued down the corridor that transected the huge complex, passing through a zone designated as black. This area appeared empty but not deserted. The air had a feeling of expectation to it, like before a lightning storm. The source appeared a few yards ahead. To the right opened a vast, cathedral-size warehouse. A full flight of steps led down to the lower floor.

From up on top, Lisa had an expansive view of the space, a hangar large enough to park a commercial jet inside. The warehouse was full of more of those metal creatures, stacked in racks or, for the larger ones, resting on the floor. Cables ran to charging racks or directly into the backs of the four-legged ones. In the center, clearly still under construction, was a monster the size of a Pershing tank, a slumbering giant waiting to be awakened.

A steady hum and the electrical smell of ozone radiated from the space, creating that sense of a pending storm.

The charge in the air stirred the hairs on the back of her neck.

She hurried past with a sense of dread.

The corridor finally ended. She took the stairs, picturing the map in her head. These steps led up to an exit off a spur of the main lab, hopefully leading to some forgotten backwater where she could slip away on foot. She crept up slowly, landing by landing, expecting a shout at any moment. She crossed past the middle level to the top floor.

As she continued to the next step leading up toward freedom, a loud voice echoed to her.

“DR. CUMMINGS! WE ARE READY FOR ROUND TWO.”

Frightened, Lisa fled up the stairs.

I don’t want to see.

But she could still hear. Echoing up from below came the faint shift of machinery, the groan of hydraulics, accompanied by the sudden spike in electricity in the air.

Forces were being mobilized against Kat.

Lisa reached the top of the stairs. A door appeared ahead with an emergency evacuation bar. She feared passing through it might set off some internal alarm, get eyes looking her way in this remote corner of the complex, but she had no other choice. If she remained below, it was only a matter of time until she and the child were discovered.

I’d rather take my chances above than be trapped below.

She shoved the bar, momentarily scared it wouldn’t open-but it did. Bright sunlight flowed over her, stirring the child with its brightness; a chubby arm flailed against it.

Along with the sunshine came a deafening roar.

She stepped out of the bunker and faced a waterfall spilling over a thirty-foot-high cliff. It crashed down to a river below her perch. She did a slow turn, realizing she’d come out on a narrow plateau framed by a frothing river on one side and towering cliffs on the other.

There was no way up or down.

A dead end.

The baby started to cry, soft wails becoming loud ones, echoing off the cliff wall.

She didn’t blame him.

We’re trapped.

38

July 4, 2:25 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

Within lies the true heart of the Bloodline.

Gray pondered those words as he stood at the threshold of the sealed museum space.

“I was first brought here when I was a boy,” Robert explained. “I was too naïve to understand the true cost of the knowledge inside, of the blood pact that it would require of me, of the losses I would have to endure.”

Two symbols, etched on the glass, flanked either side of the air-lock door. To the right was a cross, emblazoned with spirals of DNA. Gray had seen that symbol before, enough to know Robert was not lying about the importance of this space. To the left was the same cross, only it was decorated with entwining snakes.

Robert noted his attention. He touched the cross with the snakes. “This was our past. The other is our future.”

Without further explanation, Robert unsealed the air lock and brought Gray into the room. Lights flickered on, revealing a neighboring clean room branching off from this chamber. Gray spotted towering banks of black mainframes back there, but Robert drew him onward.

Still, Gray’s eyes drifted hungrily to the computer room.

What do those massive servers hold?

Apparently, such questions would have to wait.

Their destination stood at the very back of the museum space. A tall glass case held a single nondescript object: an upright wooden staff.

Curious, sensing the palpable age of the artifact, Gray leaned closer, his arms still cuffed behind him. Upon the surface of the staff, three serpents had been faintly carved, winding around and around the shaft in a complicated tangle.

“What is it?” Gray asked, straightening back up.

“An artifact discovered by an ancestor of mine during the Crusades, found in a citadel atop a mountain in Galilee. It is called the Bachal Isu. It was the staff carried by St. Patrick.”

Gray turned to him. “The saint who chased the snakes out of Ireland?”

“Exactly, but do you know the staff’s history, how St. Patrick came to possess it?”

Gray shook his head.

Robert explained, “The legend goes that when Patrick was returning from Rome on his way back to Ireland, he stopped at the island near Genoa. There he met a young man who claimed to have received the staff from ‘a pilgrim of sweet and majestic countenance’ and was told to hold it until ‘my servant Patrick rests here on his way to Erinn for the conversion of its people, and give it into his hands when he quits you.’ This caretaker also claimed that, while the staff was in his possession, he had stopped aging, living over a century as he waited for Patrick.”

Gray eyed the historical artifact skeptically. “A staff that grants immortality?”

“According to the lore of St. Patrick, that pilgrim was Jesus Christ.”

Gray stared at the simple staff with both awe and not a small amount of disbelief. “Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know. But there are other stories that claim this staff is much older, said to have been possessed by King David and, before that, by Moses.”

Quite the pedigree, Gray thought to himself, not wanting to offend or stop this recitation. The longer the story took, the more time Painter had to solve the riddle Gray had left behind in DC.

Plus, the man’s prior words kept him attentive.

You may be useful to my plans.

The words hadn’t sounded like a threat, more like an offer.

He let the man talk.

“Who knows if any of that is true?” Robert admitted. “The one who found this was a Templar knight, hence the cross that decorates our symbol. According to that story, the staff was in the possession of a guardian claiming to be over five hundred years old. She stole that staff, slaying that man-”

“Wait? She?”

“Yes, she was a Templar, one of the original nine, though her name was stricken from the historical record after her discovery. That moment was our ancestors’ greatest triumph and our most bitter failure. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.”

“Then go on.”

“Upon her return to France with the stolen staff, it became apparent-though it took years-that the staff bore no miraculous properties.”

“So it didn’t hold the secret to immortality.”

Robert eyed him. “No, it did-but it would take centuries for us to discover the truth. For it wasn’t the staff that was the miracle. It was the knowledge written on it.”

Gray squinted at the staff. “The three snakes?”

Robert shifted him to an old, illuminated Bible resting open on a stand, the pigments brilliant under the lights.

“Snakes are a common religious theme,” he said. “Patrick cast out the serpents of Ireland. Moses turned his staff into a snake. But it’s the earliest story of the serpent, from the book of Genesis, that revealed the truth. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life, which bore the fruit of immortality. And the tree of knowledge. God cast out Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree of knowledge because He feared with that knowledge they would ‘take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.’”

“But the tree of life is just symbolic.”

“That’s not true. It existed-or, at least, it did in the past.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There are plenty of stories in the Bible of people living to incredible ages, the most famous being Methuselah, who lived 969 years. But there are many others. And not just in the Bible. The clay tablets of Babylon and Sumer claim their kings lived centuries upon centuries.”

“But those ages are just allegorical, not the literal truth.”

“Perhaps. Except the story of a plant that sustains life is not limited to the Bible. In the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, the hero of that story hunts for the plant of life, a plant that grants immortality.”

Robert pointed to another case, this one holding old books. “In the ancient Hindu Vedic scriptures, they describe a plant called soma, with the same properties. ‘We’ve quaffed the Soma bright, and are immortal grown.’”

He moved next to a plate of Egyptian art, showing a falcon-headed god plucking leaves from a tall plant. “Here is an actual depiction of the tree of life from Egyptian mythology.”

Robert turned to look across the breadth of artifacts. “There are many other examples, but what’s unusual about all of these stories is one detail. In the Bible, Noah is the last person to live to such an extreme age. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the adventuring king discovers the plant he seeks had been drowned away. In both those stories and many others, this life-sustaining plant is destroyed by a great flood.”

Robert turned back to Gray. “Maybe this is just a coincidence, but maybe there was a seed of truth to these stories. And from that seed, a new Tree of life could be grown. That’s what the Bloodline came to believe. For centuries, they’ve searched for the meaning of those three snakes, sensing there was some significance to it that was tied to immortality. They were confident enough to incorporate those snakes into their own symbol.”

Robert pointed back to the glass doors.

“And it wasn’t just our mark. We left that fingerprint everywhere, hoping to draw out those with hidden knowledge. My ancestors believed so firmly in that connection that they incorporated that symbol into the various secret organizations that hid us.”

He led Gray over to an open page of a book of Masonic rites. It showed three men clasping hands, entwined very much like the snakes on the staff. And if there was any doubt, the snakes were depicted there, too-with three heads.

“So you see how steadfastly we believed,” Robert said. “And in the end, we were proven right.”

“Right? How?”

“The drawing on the staff was knowledge encoded for future generations. Genetic knowledge.” Robert pointed to the other symbol on the door. “That’s when the symbol got changed, transforming the snakes into what they really represented: strands of DNA.”

“You’re saying that ancients in the past knew enough about DNA to encode it as snakes on a staff.”

“Possibly. Back in the sixties, a scientist named Hayflick determined that man’s natural age could not exceed 120 years. He based that on the number of times a cell could divide.”

“I’m familiar with the Hayflick limit,” Gray said, having studied biophysics.

“Then is it mere coincidence that the book of Genesis came to the same conclusion about the limits to a man’s lifetime? To quote from that book of the Bible: His days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The same conclusion as Hayflick’s. Where did that knowledge come from?”

“Okay, that’s strange, I admit. But that’s a far cry from saying that the snakes on the staff represent strands of DNA. There are three snakes drawn there. DNA is a double helix.”

“Ah, but there’s the rub. The secret of immortality doesn’t lie within two strands, but three, a triple helix. That’s what is written on the staff. It took until the modern age, with the aid of DNA analysis, for us to unravel that mystery.”

“How did you do that?”

“When our errant knight left with the staff, she killed the previous immortal who possessed it-likely the last of his kind. She spilled his blood, which was preserved on the staff. In his blood, we discovered his white cells possessed triple-helical DNA.”

This sharpened Gray’s attention. “Triple-helical DNA?”

He was beginning to appreciate the enormity of the revelation here.

Robert nodded. “Once genetic science advanced enough to let us decode that third strand, we determined it was actually a viral protein-from a plant virus. The protein was a natural form of peptide nucleic acid, PNA. It infected human cells after someone ate that plant. A side effect of this virus leaping from plant to animal was that it stabilized cells, staved off cellular degeneration, and extended the life spans of the infected dramatically.”

Gray pictured the Garden of Eden. “The mythical tree of life.”

“Maybe not so mythical after all.”

“But I thought you said the plant’s fields were drowned during the Great Flood. How did this guardian come to possess it?”

“Apparently, someone had the foresight to stockpile some of the plants, drying them out like tea leaves. From the chronicles of the knight who stole the staff, written on her deathbed, she described a row of Egyptian sarcophagi full of brittle leaves and stems in the crypt. Focused on her goal, she didn’t think anything about it and left it all to burn.”

Gray appreciated the irony. “So, like the Eve of old, your knight stole the tree of knowledge, bringing you this cryptic clue about immortality-but she left behind the tree of life.”

“So it seems. In the end, we tried to reverse-engineer that viral PNA protein, but it proved no good. Too much degradation. So we had to start from scratch, engineering our own PNA and testing it.”

Gray imagined the horrors and abuses involved with that research.

Even Robert didn’t sound proud, his voice growing hushed. “But over time, we improved enough to produce the first stable child.”

“Amanda’s son.”

He nodded. “But that stability ended up to be only temporary. And yet the cost of it was still so high. First, Amanda’s life. Now, my brother’s.” He pointed toward the door. “And soon my grandnephew. It’s too much. I must do what I can to preserve the rest of my family.”

They headed across the hall.

Robert’s melancholia settled back on his shoulders. “I was a boy when I made my pact with that inner circle of the family, with the Bloodline. I thought what we were doing here was so much larger than any individual life.”

Until it hit closer to home.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

And that weight and guilt would only grow when he assumed his brother’s place at the White House, bringing the Bloodline fully into power versus pulling the strings behind James Gant’s back.

“Why have you told me all of this?” Gray asked. “Why did you bring me down here?”

“So you might understand why a naïve boy might succumb to such a cruelty, but an old man cannot suffer more loss.” Robert turned to him. “I brought you down here so that you could tell the world.”

Gray gaped, shocked. The loss of his brother must have been the proverbial straw that broke this camel’s back.

But didn’t Robert order that assassination? Or was he as much a puppet on a string as President Gant?

For now, Gray had a more important question if the man was folding up his tent. “Why don’t you come forward yourself?”

“I’ve suffered enough. I will take those closest to me and vanish, to go where the Lineage cannot find us.” Robert headed away. “I leave the rest on your shoulders.”

Gray followed behind him, passing the neighboring bank of mainframes in the other room. If Robert wanted to spill all, then he wanted to know everything.

“What’s with the computer servers?” he asked, sensing something important hidden there.

Robert glanced disinterestedly in that direction. “If this room is our heart-that’s our brain, our memory. It holds our entire lineage, not just under the Gant name but the others who were lost to the past. All the way back to our rumored beginning.”

Gray wanted to hear this. “What beginning?”

“The crescent and the star. Our first symbol. Some of our earliest records connect those two symbols to the Canaanite god of human sacrifice.”

That’s certainly fitting.

“That god was named Moloch, represented by the horns of a cow or the horns of a crescent moon. A closely related god was Rephan, represented by the star. Some of our historians believe our roots go back to the time of Moses, that we were cast out by him for worshipping the crescent and the star.” He glanced back to the staff. “There is a verse from the biblical acts. ‘You have lifted up the shrine of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’”

“So you’re saying you’re the descendants of those exiled idol-worshippers?”

“I don’t know. But the Bloodline is ancient, and they still carry on some old Jewish traditions, like-”

Beyond the glass wall, the elevator doors opened with a buzz, drawing their attention forward. A familiar figure stepped out. The tall blond woman strode purposefully forward. Those glacial eyes took in the situation with a single cold sweep.

Stiff with surprise, Robert strode forward. “Petra? Why… how are you down here?”

On the far side of the glass barrier, she stepped to the air lock, typed in a code on the outer door. Thick steel rods locked the room down.

Robert rushed forward and tugged on the door handle.

Apparently, someone had grown wise to his coming betrayal.

Robert stopped tugging, realizing the truth. He called through the glass wall to her. “You’re of the Lineage. Why was I never told?”

“We are legion,” she said. “And not all are happy with your stewardship. When we lost the child-a useless thing, really-I contacted those whom I serve, reported what I found here. How you place grief over necessity. Immediate family over the Lineage. You tug and rip against the fabric that has lasted millennia. No more. You are of no further use to the Lineage.”

“But I’ve led for so many years.”

She smiled, a wicked look, as if scoffing at such a claim. “When the body is strong, the head can be cut off. We will grow a new one and be stronger for it. You are to be set aside. This branch of the Gant clan is to be pruned away, including all the fruit born from it. We will purge the old to make way for the new. With no tears, only purpose.”

Robert’s palm, which had been resting against the door, fell away.

“The purge will start here. In ten minutes. At three o’clock, an appropriately powerful number. I’ve engaged the fail-safe for both your labs and this vault of ages. This day, the Lineage will shed its past and set its eyes only on the future. Immortality is within grasp. Ultimate power at our doorstep.”

Petra bowed, oddly respectful. “Those you love will not suffer,” she said, her eyes fixing at Robert. “Even those you do not believe we know about.”

Robert lunged forward and pounded his fist against the glass, his voice breaking. “Stop!”

She retreated to the elevator, facing them-though her gaze was directed elsewhere. They were already forgotten.

Gray waited for the doors to close, then turned to Robert. “Looks like you’re out of a job.” He tilted his cuffed wrists toward the man. “How about we get these off?”

Robert looked both angry and grief-stricken.

Been there, Gray thought.

As the man undid his cuffs, Gray asked the question he was afraid to know the answer to. “What’s this fail-safe?”

Robert’s face went grave. “A thermobaric bomb. One will incinerate the vaults down here. But over at the lab…” He shook his head, looking sick.

“What’s going to happen at the lab?”

2:51 P.M.

The evacuation alarms echoed across the facility as red warning lights flashed, turning the world shades of crimson.

“Sinkhole,” Fielding explained as he shoved papers into a briefcase.

“What?” Edward asked, sticking close to the man. Others fled in various directions, grabbing what they could.

“A majority of the complex sits above a dry underground lake. Miners at the turn of the century discovered the lake below, fed by an underground river. Later, engineers capped that river during construction, built scaffolding to support the lab over the pit. We’re not in an underground lab.” He snapped his briefcase closed with a note of finality. “We’re on a massive suspension bridge over a yawning pit. And they’re about to blow out that suspension.”

He moved to his workstation.

“It will create a twenty-acre-wide sinkhole that will flood as that main river is unplugged. And a new lake will be born over our graves if we don’t get clear of here.”

Edward urged the man. “Then let’s bloody well go.”

“I’m not going to lose my research-or my work.” Fielding tapped at a screen. “This will be their ultimate test.”

“What are you doing?”

“Giving them a fighting chance.” Fielding leaned to a microphone as green lights flashed down row after row of pod designations. He spoke the final command order, transmitted to all of his army. “SURVIVE.”

Beneath Edward’s feet, a low rumble rose. He backed toward the door. What was Fielding thinking, unleashing that horde now?

“Just the generators powering up,” Fielding assured him, picking up his briefcase. “The activation sequence and warm-up mode takes eight minutes. We’ll be far away by then.”

Still, Edward hurried to the door. He turned to see something leap from the worktable and latch onto Fielding’s back, landing square between his shoulder blades. It was one of his new hexapods. In the excitement, the researcher had forgotten he’d activated this one earlier, left it on standby mode while he tinkered.

Fielding screamed and struggled to reach the beast, but its ice-pick-thin legs, sharpened to surgical points, punctured deep, latching on firmly.

Edward backed toward the door. Fielding had explained about this newest pod, a nester. Its bulbous body housed a swarm of smaller robots.

Fielding backed toward him. “Get it off! Get it off!”

Edward retreated, unable to tear his gaze away. Now, latched against his back, the pregnant creature vomited a stream of smaller bots from its swollen abdomen. They spread like fire ants-racing down his back, up his neck, over his shoulders, along his chest and limbs.

“No, no, no…” Fielding cried, spinning in a circle, knowing what was coming.

Then, as if on cue, the march of the bots all stopped at once-and began drilling into his flesh.

The animal howl of pain finally broke through Edward’s shocked paralysis. He twisted away. He knew what they were drilling for. The other, larger pods were attuned to body heat. These smaller ones were attracted to the sound of beating hearts.

They would drill and drill until that beat was finally silenced.

But from the endless howling that chased Edward toward the surface, it took a long time.

2:52 P.M .

As minutes ticked down, Gray lay on his side, rubbing his chafed wrists. The secretary of state of the United States knelt over his head, picking a plug of C-4 out of his ear canal, using a three-thousand-year-old sliver of Egyptian bone, a funerary object stolen from one of the cabinets.

“That looks like most of it,” Robert said.

Good.

Gray didn’t want to be down here when the thermobaric weapon exploded. Fuel-air bombs created blast waves that rivaled nuclear bombs and ignited oxygen to five thousand degrees.

Gray rolled to his rear end and set to work digging out the earpiece and blasting cap. He used a pair of tweezers to poke, prod, and pull the device free. It felt like yanking a walnut out, leaving his ear ringing.

“Got it.”

He hurried and gathered everything together. The barrier was layered tempered glass, too thick to break through with anything in the room. He stuck the reassembled explosive charge to the glass wall to the left of the air-lock door. He centered it in the middle of the etched symbol of the genetic cross.

“Get back,” he warned.

Gray carried the transmitter that Robert had given him. They found shelter behind a case, and Gray pressed the button. In the enclosed space, the blast felt like two anvils striking the sides of his head. He coughed against the smoke, reeking of burned tar, and hurried Robert to his feet. He waved a hand in front of his face and saw the tempered glass barrier had shattered to a bluish-white crumble.

With his ears deafened, he had to yell to hear his own voice.

“Out!”

Gray cast one last regretful glance behind him, at the vast wealth of history about to be destroyed. His eyes settled on that staff-the Bachal Isu, the staff of Christ-but it was sealed behind bulletproof glass. He did not have the time or force of strength to rescue it.

With a heavy heart, he had to abandon it.

Robert stood on shaky feet, dazed by the blast, but he allowed himself to be dragged along. It took his palm print and code to call the elevator back down. As they waited, Robert stared toward the smoky museum.

“Maybe it’s better I should die,” Robert said. “After what I did…”

Gray had to keep the man motivated and moving. “Robert, I need to share something with you. Your brother, Jimmy, and his daughter, Amanda.”

“What about them?” Robert asked, with a catch in his voice.

“They’re both still alive.”

Robert flinched, turning sharply to him. “What?”

As the elevator arrived and the doors opened, Gray gave him a thumbnail sketch of the story.

“And then there’s Amanda’s son to think about,” Gray said. “You mentioned he was here.”

Robert stared sullenly as the cage rose. “He was, but he was kidnapped again.”

This time, Gray jerked his head in the man’s direction.

Robert explained, “By another captive. A medical doctor. A woman investigating our fertility clinic.”

Gray pushed his shoulder and stared him hard in the face. “Lisa Cummings?”

“You know her?”

“Was there another woman with her?”

“Yes. They were both at the lab complex, with my grandnephew. But it’s ten miles away. We can’t even get word there in time.”

Gray swore, his heart clutching. He pushed Robert against the wall, harder than he had meant to. “What about the woman I was captured with? Seichan. Was she taken to that damn lab, too?”

Robert’s brows pinched at Gray’s reaction. “No,” he said slowly. “I… we kept her here.”

As the elevator stopped at the top, the heavy vault door took forever to swing open. Gray had to restrain himself from pounding his fists against it, both in his anxiety to get to Seichan and in frustration that he could do nothing to help Lisa and Kat.

Finally, the thick door opened enough for Gray and Robert to exit and climb out of the massive wine barrel and back into the main cellar. He hurried, not knowing if the thermobaric weapon was of sufficient size to burn through the cellars, too-or would it take down the whole castle?

Robert was equally clueless.

Gray didn’t want to be here to find out.

“Where’s Seichan?” he asked, ready to run ahead.

“You’ll get lost.” Robert rushed alongside him, keeping up. “I’ll show you. But…”

“But what?”

“After Petra left us trapped”-Robert looked both scared and apologetic-“I think she was headed to kill her.”

39

July 4, 2:52 P.M.

Airborne over the Blue Ridge Mountains

“Seven minutes out,” the pilot reported from the cockpit.

Painter shared the cargo hold of USAF C-41A, a turboprop-powered medium transport plane. They had screamed down from DC in a military jet, then transferred to this smaller craft, which was better suited for infiltration and extraction of troops, meaning it was basically a cockpit and cargo space.

His team was the cargo.

Tucker readied Kane in his tandem harness for the drop. Kowalski and Monk checked each other’s gear. Painter was already suited up and sat with his laptop open and hooked to a satellite uplink, getting a live feed of the Gant estate and targeting movement on the ground to aid in their daytime penetration of the Lodge.

He had Jason Carter in his ear. “Director, I’m patching new feed. We picked up movement a little over ten miles from the mansion. We didn’t get this sooner with all eyes on the Lodge. But you’d better see this.”

The image on his screen swung away from the Lodge toward the Continental Divide, a rugged chunk of territory.

Who was way out there?

A small figure could be seen standing next to a waterfall, holding a package-no, a child. The view toggled closer and closer until there could be no doubt.

“Lisa…” Painter said.

“And I believe the other is Kat, sir. About a quarter-mile southeast.”

As the image swooped in that direction, Painter waved Monk over. “You should see this.”

By the time the man arrived, Jason showed a blurry video of a woman running through the woods. Details were hard to pick out between the trees. What was evident was that she was headed straight for a sheer cliff drop.

“That’s my wife,” Monk said, scared but tightly in control. “Never looking where she’s going.”

Jason spoke again. “I’ve got movement on the ground behind her, but I can’t pick up any details.”

The pilot called from up front. “We’re two minutes out from the no-fly demarcation. I’m going to start angling around to get us skirting along its edge.”

Painter passed his laptop to Monk and crossed to the cockpit. “New plans,” he instructed. “We’re going straight in.”

“Sir, we don’t have the proper clearance.”

“Take it up with the president when we get back,” Painter said. “You take us in low and straight. Follow the Continental Divide. Once we cross into the no-fly zone, you open the rear ramp for us to bail out.”

Painter swung back around.

Monk raised an eyebrow. “How come my wife doesn’t have any hair?”

Jason spoke in Painter’s ear, a scary urgency to his tone. “How long until you’re on the ground?”

“We bail out in six. On the ground seven or eight.”

“That’ll be too late.”

2:53 P.M.

Blue Ridge Mountains

Kat sprinted for the goal line.

She had lost her slippers. Her toes dug for purchase in the soft loam and loose spruce needles. Rocks, pinecones, and acorns tore at her soles, but she ignored the pain. She flew over obstacles with long-legged leaps, happy for the obstruction of a log or jagged outcropping, as it slowed her pursuers.

The front edge of the hunters was only yards behind. She had dispatched three, but over a dozen still remained, working in tandem. The shield and pipe were futile against their numbers, especially as this group was not uniform. She identified at least four variants among them, each with specialized functions: crawlers she’d dealt with during the first wave; leapers could spring like frogs when close enough and slash out, or worse yet, latch on; spinners could accelerate at blistering paces for short bursts, becoming flying saw-blades; the last group was still unknown, trundling more at the rear, slower than the others, looking like steel helmets with legs.

She had not come through unscathed. The first spinner caught her by surprise, whizzing past, slicing a gash in her calf. Blood poured down her ankle. She was ready for the second, striking out with her pipe, swinging for the bleachers. The spinner ended up embedding its whirring self into the trunk of an oak, becoming stuck.

Ahead, the tree line broke apart, and sunlight beckoned.

The forest ended at a cliff.

She searched and spotted what she needed, angling to the left.

A telltale explosive squeak warned her. She lashed out with her shield, swiping low, as a leaper sprang at her. With a satisfying clang, she struck it and sent it cartwheeling away.

She sped faster, making her pursuers do the same, but also gaining a little space. As she ran, she plucked at the drawstring of her gown, loosening it. Once done, she flung her pipe and shield at the base of a maple tree ahead. They clattered close enough.

As she ran the final steps toward the cliff’s edge, she ripped the gown over her head, which blinded her for a frightening moment. She balled up the sweaty, hot garment. Reaching the cliff, still sprinting, she leaped up and threw the ball of clothes over the edge. She caught a low branch. Below her legs, the front guards of the horde went racing over the edge to their doom three stories below: leapers, crawlers, and one lonely spinner, who, in a last-ditch effort, whizzed in a spectacular arc off the cliff and chased after the hot bundle of clothes.

Not everyone went over, but confusion reigned in the remaining half.

She dropped back to the ground long enough to shove her shield on her forearm and tuck the pipe through her panties, like a sword in a scabbard. She leaped again to the same branch and hauled herself atop it with a heave of her legs.

The hunters stirred below, contemplating their next move.

A shout drew her attention, barely discernible above the roar of a waterfall a couple of hundred yards to her right. She searched-following the curve of the cliff, to where a small river tumbled over its edge to crash below. It was in those misty lower levels that she spotted a thin shape, waving her whole arm.

Lisa stood on a plateau on the far side of the waterfall. Her friend was trapped by the sheer cliffs behind her and the surging river below.

And she wasn’t trapped alone.

Lisa held a baby in her arms.

Kat waved back-then froze.

Lisa’s shout had drawn more than her attention. Behind her friend, at the top of the cliff, sunlight glinted off a creature the size of a small lion. It leaned over the edge, like a steel gargoyle.

“Kat!” Lisa shouted, still waving, further drawing its attention with all of her noise and motion.

“Lisa! Stop moving!” Kat yelled back.

Lisa shook her head and cupped her ear. The roar of the neighboring falls must have deafened her.

Kat struggled with how to communicate to Lisa, how to pantomime what needed to be done.

I was never good at charades.

Before Kat could even begin, the creature started climbing down the cliff face.

2:55 P.M.

Lisa floated on her toes, so happy to see Kat safe. Her friend’s dramatic appearance, leaping half-naked into a tree, accompanied by a shower of silvery hunters, brought such joy and hope.

The thunder of the falls stripped whatever words Kat had tried to share, but her friend must have understood and began motioning dramatically. An arm pointed to the waterfall, then mimicked taking a shower.

Lisa didn’t understand and shook her head. Cradled in her arms, the baby was growing restless, likely from the constant roaring of the falls.

A rock pinged off the ledge that was her prison.

Kat repeated the gesture, adjusting it slightly. After pointing to the waterfall, she waved her fingers in front of her face.

Lisa stared and saw that a part of the plateau tucked behind the waterfall, but that shelf still roiled with mist, spray, and sudden dousings as the currents above shifted.

Finally, Kat pointed straight up, using her whole arm.

Another chunk of rock fell off of the cliff face and struck her landing.

A trickle of terror ran up her back, as she suddenly sensed something staring at her.

She turned and looked at the cliff.

Halfway up hung a monstrosity of steel plate, razor claws, and titanium fangs.

She screamed, backing several steps, coming close to throwing herself off the cliff and into the river below.

The noise and motion drew a swivel of its sleek head, revealing faceted black eyes-sensors-staring back at her.

She froze and cut off her scream, knowing noise must attract it.

Then the baby began to wail.

2:56 P.M .

Kat watched helplessly as the steel gargoyle climbed down from its perch, digging hooked claws into crevices, lowering itself limb by limb, crack by crack, with the inevitability of a well-wound watch.

C’mon, Lisa. Remember what I showed you.

A clack and whirring at the foot of the maple reminded her of her own predicament. The five helmeted pods now circled the tree, sitting stationary. Simultaneously, their domed backs split into halves and folded back, revealing four smaller robots inside. They were flat and square in shape, with tiny propellers at each corner.

In unison, the entire aerial fleet rose from their ground-based carriers, lifting in eerie formation, perfectly tuned to one another. Then, upon some silent cue, the pack rose, whipping and winding up the tree in a blurring pattern, stripping leaves and small twigs with their scalpel-sharp whirring blades. They climbed the tree like a deadly tornado of daggers.

She lifted shield and pipe.

A loud clank drew her attention momentarily back across the waterfall to Lisa’s perch. The monster must have lost its footing and fell. It righted itself, flipping back to its sharp claws on the plateau.

Kat searched, but Lisa was gone.

2:57 P.M .

The sudden shock of the icy water stole Lisa’s breath.

She shielded the squalling child as best she could, hunching over him, drawing him close to her bosom for the warmth of her body heat.

She edged as far back along that ledge of rock behind the waterfall as she could manage without being pummeled off her perch.

After the first initial shock, she figured out Kat’s message. In fact, it was those black eyes of the steel bear-cold, alien sensors taking in the world-that allowed her to interpret her friend’s pantomime. The beast had to use some method to hunt, to understand its surroundings.

The shelter of the waterfall offered a way to blind those sensors.

The rippling cascade would challenge any motion detectors.

The cold would mask her body heat.

The roar would deafen and confound its sense of hearing.

So, she risked hypothermia-unfortunately, more of a threat to the child than to her-to keep them hidden.

But would it work?

Three-quarters of the way down the wall, the creature fell or leaped. It landed hard, its large bulk at the mercy of gravity, but afterward, there remained an undeniable grace to its movement as it stalked toward her hiding place. It must have watched her come this way, but could it tell she was still here?

It knuckled forward on daggers curled back like the claws of a three-toed sloth. It stalked with a thoughtful and determined placement of each leg, like a housecat hunting a mouse.

Lisa shifted even deeper under the falls, letting the water fully envelop her. The baby cried against her soaked chest, but the roar of the falls drowned any wails away.

The sloth-like automaton pushed under the falls, pivoting its massive head, opening its huge steel jaws, revealing a maw of titanium death, a bear trap with legs.

Through the heavy chute of water, black eyes stared back at her, seeming to see her, but who knew what it truly saw?

And still it came, pushing forward.

2:58 P.M.

Airborne over Blue Ridge Mountains

In the cargo hold of the C-41A transport plane, Painter kept glued to the satellite feed on his laptop. He pressed shoulder to shoulder with Monk, who watched as fervently. Both their women were in danger-and, for the moment, there was nothing either man could do but watch.

The rear ramp was already open, awaiting their bail-out.

But they were not in position yet.

“How much longer?” Painter hollered.

“Two minutes out,” the pilot answered, screaming to be heard above the roar of the wind through the open bay doors.

Painter stared at the screen, knowing it would be the longest two minutes of his life.

40

July 4, 2:58 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

Seichan stood in the middle of her richly appointed prison cell. A soft scuffling alerted her a minute ago that someone was outside in the hall, struggling with the door. Apparently, they didn’t have the code for the electronic deadbolt.

The oddness drew her out of the chair by the window.

The difficulty with the lock-was that good, bad, or inconsequential?

She stepped closer, passing the room’s small fireplace, when half the door and a chunk of the wall exploded before her, throwing her back.

She rolled across the ancient Turkish rug and struck the foot of her bed. Through the smoke and the ruin, the upper torso of the guard could be seen out in the hallway, on the floor, neck twisted impossibly-not from the bomb. Someone had quietly dispatched him.

With her ears ringing, Seichan watched the silent entry of the source of all that death and destruction. The long-legged woman stepped through the wreckage of the door. She carried a pistol in her hand and a look of stern purposefulness on her face.

Seichan was more worried about the gun.

She needed that gun.

She shifted smoothly into a crouch.

Seichan knew this woman. It was the doctor’s research partner back in Dubai-Petra-the one who had drugged Gray back on the boat.

Still shell-shocked, Seichan missed the woman’s first few words before her hearing returned.

“… Such promise,” Petra said. “You were of the Lineage, of our blood. You were being groomed for so much more.”

Seichan had difficulty making sense of her statements. Back on the boat in Dubai, she had suspected this woman had been raised as she had: the muscular surety of her movements, the hard glint of perpetual vigilance, the cold calculation to her countenance.

It took a monster to recognize a monster.

The woman’s words echoed in her head.

… groomed for so much more…

Was this what she would have become?

A worse fear rose from the marrow of her bones.

Am I that already?

Seichan remained crouched, but she moved her left leg an inch forward, for better balance, for better power.

The woman noted this. She repositioned her weapon and shifted to the side, ruining Seichan’s preparation, reaching the perfect spot where it would be awkward for Seichan to attack.

They stared each other down.

“When you turned traitor against us,” Petra said, “you became a corrupted thing, a broken vessel, leaving the purity of the Lineage. For what? For the love of a man?”

Seichan stiffened, the words poking a raw nerve.

Petra must have sensed her reaction, her words hard with disdain. “Such a piteous waste. Better you die like a dog than live like one.”

Petra fired-but Seichan was already moving as the muscles in her opponent’s forearm tightened in anticipation of the recoil.

The bullet still burned a hot line across her flank as she twisted to the side, offering less of a target. She hit Petra in the shins with her shoulder, flipping the woman high.

Seichan rolled, ready to go for the woman’s weapon.

But Petra never lost it. She landed on a knee, one leg back, still facing Seichan, her gun still pointed at her face.

At that moment, Seichan knew two things.

She’s better than me.

And the worse for it.

She closed her eyes-and pictured one face, one regret-as the pistol fired again and again at her.

And a ghostly wind rushed past her.

The rounds burned into Robert’s chest as he threw himself between the woman and the weapon, blocking her fully with his broad body, a wall before a flower. The pain was a small thing against the enormity of what might be lost if he failed.

Then Gray was there, sliding into the room with the automatic rifle from the dead guard in the hallway. He fired on full auto, blasting Petra back-and he never stopped shooting until the clip emptied.

Only then did he whip around.

“Seichan…” Gray said, sliding to her side.

Robert knew the man loved her, saw it in his eyes.

He had loved a woman as much as that once, too. He met her while he was a young ambassador to Southeast Asia. He pictured her sweet face aglow under the moonlight in the garden, lost in the drift of cherry blossoms, her lips as soft as the whispery song of thrushes in the branches and the tinkle of a fountain.

But it was always the emerald of her eyes he returned to, the intensity reflecting all inside her, never dimming. Her love, a reflection of his own, was forever frozen in jade.

He ran the edge of his thumb along her cheekbone, letting his adoration shine-and at that moment, time shifted, but not those eyes.

Never those eyes…

He didn’t know he had fallen into Seichan’s arms. His hand was raised, touching gently, something forever forbidden him.

Knowing then it was right he die here.

In his daughter’s arms.

Seichan held the man, not understanding, baffled by the sudden tears in her eyes. The barrage of bullets had knocked him back into her arms. She caught him, the man who had cast his life aside for her, the same man who had imprisoned her.

Why?

He stared up silently at her as if drinking her in, raising a hand to touch her cheek. And strangely still, she let him, seeing something in his eyes that she could not deny.

Gray returned to her side, dropping next to her.

The assassin was dead.

The woman had a name, but those five letters held no meaning.

In the end, she was nameless, just purpose in human form.

Seichan stared at the bloody ruin, then turned away again, suddenly freer.

I will not be you.

And I’m stronger for it.

Gray slipped an arm around her. “Seichan…”

And there was the simple answer. She had a name, spoken by someone who gave it weight, depth, meaning, and substance.

But in that moment, she learned she had another name, one forever unknown. The man dying in her arms told her. His arm dropped, too weak now, his breath a whisper.

“You have your mother’s eyes…”

Trembling fingers found hers, perhaps sensing her shock.

“I tried to protect you, to hide you… to keep you from them.” His eyes never left her face. “But after your mother was taken… it took so long to find you. When I did, I couldn’t let you go… selfish… but to acknowledge you would have been your death. So I hid you in plain sight within the Guild, close but forever apart. I was blind, naïve to the cruelties that would be inflicted on you, would be asked of you later… I’m sorry…”

Seichan did not know how to respond, drawn into the past, remembering that night, hiding under the bed, terror-stricken, as her mother was dragged away.

Fingers squeezed one last time, trying to hold on.

Seichan stared down at him, at the impossibility of her father.

“Your mother…” he said, his eyes wide with the urgency of those last words, the last gasp of meaning all sought during that final breath. “Escaped… still alive after… don’t know where…”

With his message sent, he sagged, hollowed out by his escaping life, relaxing into death. His eyes drifted closed. His last words were oddly clear and sad.

“No father should lose a daughter…”

With that, he was gone.

Gray pulled Seichan to him, holding her as she held her father.

Then the world quaked, booming with the thunder of gods.

41

July 4, 3:00 P.M. EST

Blue Ridge Mountains

Painter hovered high as the world exploded below.

Seconds earlier, his parachute canopy had burst wide, becoming a wing of fabric overhead, jolting him in his harness-then the entire plateau bulged upward, reaching toward him with the heavy bass note of buried warheads.

His teammates hung in the air to either side. Monk and Kowalski headed toward Kat’s position at the cliff’s edge. Tucker was several yards lower, skimming toward Lisa’s ledge beside the waterfall. He carried Kane strapped to his chest in a tandem harness.

Between Painter’s legs, the entire landscape fell away, shattering apart, vanishing down into a growling pit of churning rock, fire, and steam. Entire sections of forest dropped into the hellish gorge. Smoke and rock dust blasted upward, swallowing his group. Twisting thermals wreaked havoc. Painter’s chute swung wildly and sailed higher on a column of superheated air.

Choking, Painter held his breath and covered his face with an arm, protecting his eyes.

He fought his chute’s toggles to stabilize his spin, losing sight of the others. He had experienced this level of destruction once before. He recognized the superheated signature of thermobaric weapons-only never on a scale strong enough to raise a significant chunk of the earth’s crust.

The initial plume whirled higher, dragging the worst of the smoke and superheated air away, clearing a glimpse to the ongoing destruction. Below, a gateway to hell opened: a gaping, steaming hole, breathing fire and stinking of brimstone.

At its edges, more of the landscape succumbed. Hillsides slid, dragging trees and boulders. Rivers and creeks poured down that black throat, only to belch back out as clouds of steam. Down deeper, a heavy flow flooded the giant pit, boiling and stirring everything into a toxic soup.

Painter stabilized his chute, sweeping out, catching a glimpse of twisted steel beams and honeycombed sections of concrete, fossilized hallmarks of man-made construction.

The remains of a massive subterranean base.

Even these structures slowly vanished into the roiling mire at the bottom. Painter tore his gaze away, searching around him. The three other parachutes floated lower, managing the thermals better than he did. The curve of the cliff that was their destination remained intact, taller now, looming over that steaming sinkhole.

“Going for Kat,” Monk reported.

“Crapping my pants.” That was Kowalski.

The pair dropped fast toward Kat’s position, angling into as much of a glide as possible, still fighting the unpredictable thermals. If they missed the cliff’s edge, they would go plummeting into the churning maw below.

Painter twisted in his harness, spotted Tucker and Kane soaring toward Lisa.

Her ledge remained intact-little else.

The waterfall still fell alongside it, but there was no river below to catch it. The thirty-foot falls had become a three-hundred-foot plunge into smoky darkness. Farther away, a massive section of the cliff face broke away and slid, like a calving glacier, into the depths of the sinkhole.

Lisa’s ridge looked like it might fall at any time. Pieces were already chipping and cracking under it.

But at the moment, that wasn’t her biggest danger.

The shifting waterfall had driven her out of hiding-and into the view of the monster sharing her perch. The two crouched on opposite ends of the plateau.

“Heading down to her!” Tucker radioed.

“Captain Wayne, go topside. Set a rope.”

“Negative. I’m past the point of no return. Too low, not enough lift to carry me to that edge. The only drop zone for me is that ledge of rock.”

He might be lying, playing hero, but Painter was indeed higher. He had a better chance of reaching the top of the cliff, and someone had to secure the lines to reach the ledge below.

“Understood,” Painter radioed back, though it killed him to head away from Lisa. “Going topside.”

He pulled his toggle with a sweaty hand and swept to the right-angling for the edge, knowing time was running short. As he turned, he caught a glimpse of the Lodge, cloaked in smoke, its heart glowing with hellfire.

The crack of a pistol drew his attention down.

Tucker dove toward the ledge, going in fast, firing his pistol at the beast-then Painter was over the cliff’s edge and he lost sight of the battle, pitting man against machine.

3:03 P.M.

Tucker needed room.

The ledge was the size of a basketball court, with Lisa on one end and the bear-size beast on the other. Drawn by his approach, the creature dashed into his path, knuckling on its curved claws. It skidded sideways, its large, obsidian-glass eyes staring up at him.

He fired, but the round pinged harmlessly off of its hardened armor.

Still, the shots drove the beast back to its side, long enough for Tucker to haul on both of his toggles, flare his chute, and brake his plummet to a smooth but heavy landing. His heels hit first, then toes, and he rolled to his knees. He pulled two releases at the same time.

The first unhooked his chute, which went wafting against the cliff, then skimming away, dragging lines and harness.

The second freed Kane. His partner dropped to his paws, a ridge of hackles raised like a Mohawk down his back.

Tucker pulled out a second pistol. He held it flat toward Lisa, warning her to stay back. The beast crouched low, perfectly motionless, studying and assessing its new prey-but that wouldn’t last long.

Lisa whispered to him, her eyes wide with fear, but not for her safety. “Baby’s going into shock.”

He crept back to her, signaling Kane to stand guard.

Dog and machine faced each other, mirroring each other’s wary stance.

Lisa was soaked from the waterfall, the baby hung in wet swaddling, not making a sound, tinged bluish.

Tucker swore to himself.

I’m not losing this baby again.

A scrabble of steel on rock sounded as the monster charged. Sparks lit each step as steel clashed with rock. It barreled straight at them. Tucker raised his pistol, recognizing how useless it had been before, knowing that nothing could stop it, but he was ready to defend with his life.

He wasn’t the only one.

Kane watches it come, not moving. It smells of oil, grease, and lightning, but he recognizes a hunter. Because he is one, too. It sees the world as he does.

It shifts to the wind, scenting…

It turns to the rasp of voice and step…

Its black eyes twitch to the flutter of fabric and tangled line…

It also thinks, only moving when ready, judging the weakest.

Like now.

It comes for him-because it is still young, new to the world, a pup.

Kane meets its charge with a bark and a feint, dodging to the side of its steel flank. He makes it spin and come after him. It is fast, powerful, but in the end, it is young.

He is not.

He races on pads that have run across hot sands, hard tarmac, powdery snow, gravel roads-and slippery ice.

He had studied the hunter, watched it skid on bright sparks.

“Kane!” his partner shouts.

He hears the timbre of fear, not command.

So Kane runs straight for the edge, for the long fall to sharp rock. The enemy thunders after him, hulking, legs crashing steel into stone. He reaches the edge and stops fast, pads grinding to pain on the coarse path-then twists. Because he knows he can.

He is not young.

This is stone.

He whips to the side with a surge of his legs.

The other is young. Stone is its ice.

Something it has not learned.

Kane spins on his hind legs and watches the creature skid past him, leaving a trail of sparks-and goes over the edge.

Because it had not learned.

And now never will.

Tucker dropped to a knee as Kane came running back. He hugged the dog proudly, knowing he had saved their lives. Bullets would not have stopped that charge of purposeful steel. Not in time to keep it from reaching them, slaughtering them. And neither Tucker nor Lisa was wily enough to use the creature’s rudimentary instincts against it, nor agile enough to lure it to its death.

Still, Kane shoved his head between Tucker’s legs, a familiar request for reassurance.

“It’s okay, boy. You did good.”

But his tail stayed down.

Tucker knew dogs lived emotional lives as rich as most people’s, different, alien in many ways, but still they experienced their world deeply.

Tucker sensed what Kane was feeling. They knew each other beyond hand signals and commands.

Remorse and regret.

Kane was not happy to send that creature to its death.

“You had to do it,” Tucker said.

Kane knew that, too.

But his tail stayed down.

3:06 P.M.

Edward Blake hated the train service here.

Buried in a dark tunnel, lit only by the stray battery-powered emergency lamp, he sat on a bench seat in the enclosed, single-car tram with a dozen other members of the lab complex staff and guards. The distant boom of the explosion had long faded away.

But not the damage.

The electricity had gone out at the same time, and the train had slowed to a stop. One of the passengers wearing a guard uniform checked the odometer. They had traveled nine miles, a mile short of the depot at the Lodge.

Edward closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

“We should just walk,” someone suggested.

“What if the electricity comes back on?”

“Then don’t step on the rails.”

“We’re safer here.”

Oh, shut the bloody hell up!

“Quiet!” another shouted from the back of the car, echoing his sentiment.

Finally, someone with sense.

“Listen!” the same man said.

Then Edward heard it, too. A low rumble, getting steadily louder, like another train was hurtling down the tunnel intended to rear-end them. But as it got louder, he heard a telltale gurgle.

Water.

He stood, along with everyone in the tram, and moved to the back of the car. The tunnel stretched out into darkness, measured by the small red emergency lamps every fifty yards.

Then they all saw the monster eating one light after the other, far down the passage. A flood surged toward them. Most started screaming. One man dashed out of the door, intending to outrun the flood.

Fool.

Edward held a hand to his throat and sank back to his seat. He didn’t want to watch. After years of working at an underwater lab in Dubai, he would drown here in the middle of the bloody mountains, thousands of feet above sea level.

Though he didn’t watch the surge swallowing light after light, counting down the last seconds of his life, he still heard Death coming for him. A couple of people were on the floor, praying.

Even bloodier fools.

After all that went on at that lab, God was surely deaf to their pleas for salvation.

The rumble grew to a thunderous crescendo-then the wall of water struck the back of the tram. The impact threw them all to the rear of the car-and sent the tram rolling down the track, bobbling hard but moving!

People gained their feet, clutching for handholds.

Water sprayed through cracks and seams at the back, but the sealed car was like a bullet in a gun barrel, being shot down the tunnel.

No one spoke, all fearing to express hope.

Even the prayers had stopped, the supplicants already forsaking their God.

Someone at the front called back, yelling to be heard above the roaring beast that propelled them forward. “Cellar’s ahead! I see lights!”

The secret depot.

They were going too fast.

“Is there a manual brake?” Edward called out.

The guard rushed forward. “Yes!”

Edward joined him as the end of the tunnel hurtled toward them. He saw there were indeed lights ahead: a fiery, blazing conflagration.

The guard abandoned the brake and sat down.

Edward did, too.

Moments later, the car shot into the heart of the inferno. Water spread outward through the labyrinthine cellar complex, blasting into steam. Fires blazed all around. Their little pocket of air was only useful to fill their lungs for screaming-which they did as they slowly burned.

3:08 P.M .

Kat clutched her husband’s neck, carried in his arms.

Blood flowed from scores of tiny lacerations, shallow and deep, wounds from her battle with the helmeted pod’s flying horde.

She had beaten them back as Monk and Kowalski swept in, shedding their chutes and rolling to her aid. She half-fell out of the tree into Monk’s arms. He had grabbed the last few flyers out of the air with his prosthetic hand. The tough synthetic skin and crushing grip made short work of them.

She could have used one of those, and told him so.

His answer: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Now they fled together through the woods, chased by scores of the pods, creatures of every ilk. The loss of blood, along with the exhaustion of her battle, turned the world into a hazy, fluttering view, shadowed at the corners.

Kowalski fired behind them, keeping the worst at bay, but there were too many. Like ants boiling out of a flooded nest, the legion came crawling, leaping, spinning, burrowing, flying away from the destruction behind them.

“There!” Monk called to Kowalski as they broke into a wide meadow.

A steep-sided outcropping of granite offered a vantage from which to make a stand. They fled toward it.

From her perch in her husband’s arms, she watched the hunters break out of the woods on all sides, converging and sweeping toward them across the grasses, hundreds of them.

Monk sped faster, Kowalski at his side.

They reached the outcropping and manhandled her to the top, then joined her.

As they huddled, the hunters came surging up to the rocky island, scrambling over one another to reach them, climbing higher, using their living brethren to form a growing bridge.

The attack also came from the air. Clouds of flyers burst high out of the grasses, like a startled flock of crows. They swept in an organized, beautiful spiral, gathering others to them, swelling their ranks before the final assault.

They’re learning fast.

A spinner buzzed from below, hitting the rock at Kowalski’s toe. He danced back, coming close to toppling over the far side into that churning mass of deadly steel.

“Now would be a good time,” Kowalski said.

Time for what?

“Can you stand?” Monk asked her.

“Yes,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

He swung her to her feet.

“Keep holding on to me,” he ordered.

Always.

Monk worked at the wrist of his prosthetic and popped the hand free. One finger still wiggled.

Kat frowned. “What’re you-?”

He threw the hand high into the air. She followed its trajectory, but Monk pulled her chin down, wagged his finger-and drew her into a kiss. His lips melted into hers.

Overhead, a loud bang clapped the air, sharp enough to sting.

Monk drifted back, smiling at her. “Hand of God, babe.”

She stared out at the fields.

Nothing moved below.

The flyers fell heavily out of the sky, like steel rain.

“Mini-EMP,” her husband explained. “One-hundred-yard-effective radius.”

Electromagnetic pulse… used for incapacitating electronics.

“Painter had me equip it after the countermeasures described in Dubai. Figured there might be some defense like that at the Lodge and wanted to be prepared.”

Kowalski scowled, patting his pockets for a cigar, pulling one out. “Don’t think he was counting on a robot apocalypse, though.”

She slipped her hand around her husband’s neck, partly because she needed to, but mostly because she wanted to. “What now?”

Monk checked his watch. “Well, I do have the babysitter for the whole night. What did you have in mind?”

“Sutures.”

He raised an eyebrow lasciviously. “So you want to play doctor, do you?”

Kowalski dropped heavily to the rock. “Go get a room.”

Monk held up a hand, then cupped his ear, apparently getting a radio call; clearly, the earpiece must have been insulated against the EMP device he carried. His smile widened. “Company’s coming.”

3:25 P.M.

Gray lifted the helicopter from the meadow with a roar of the rotors. The blades stirred the grasses, revealing the glint of dead steel below.

He had already helped Painter’s group off the ledge. Lisa was tending to Kat’s wounds, while Amanda’s child, dried and tucked into a warm blanket, was crying for his next meal.

Painter was on the phone with the National Guard, ordering a series of EMP devices to be set off to destroy any stragglers. But his first call was to the president, to report the safe recovery of his grandson, William. So, mountains were already being moved to reconcile what had happened.

But some matters were harder to resolve.

Seichan sat in the copilot’s seat, quiet, still processing all she’d learned. The body blow of discovering her father’s identity still showed in her face, in the haunted look in her eyes.

He reached over to her, palm up.

She took it.

They had fled from the castle following the thermobaric explosion in the vaults under the Lodge. In the confusion, they’d commandeered the helicopter, the same chopper that had delivered him here. Gray had contacted Sigma command and got patched through to Painter, only to learn that the director was here-and safe.

Glad to escape, Gray swung the helicopter over the steaming sinkhole. It was rapidly filling with water, quickly growing into a new lake. As he swept across it, he saw something climb out of a tunnel halfway down the sinkhole wall. It was the size of a large tank. It pushed free, like a spider creeping out of a nest, scrabbling at the walls, trailing wires, sections of its carapace missing, some half-completed monstrosity driven by the will to live, to survive.

It emerged into the sunlight, basking in its momentary life.

Then it lost its footing and tumbled into the roiling morass below.

42

July 4, 4:10 P.M. EST

Airborne

The jet screamed through the skies on the way back to DC.

Gray sat apart from the others. Each had finished telling sketchy versions of their story, of what they learned, piecing together a tale of immortality, ancient lineages, and modern weapons research. But the more the story unfolded, the less Gray felt at ease.

Seichan slid into the neighboring seat, already more herself, ever resilient, though he could still see the shadowed cast to her eyes, even if no one else could. He noted, during the debriefing, that she never mentioned the one significant revelation tied to the discovery of her long-lost father: that her mother might still be alive.

For now, she wanted to hold that detail close to her heart, and he let her.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, leaning against him.

“I think we’re still missing something.” He shook his head, not knowing how to put this into words. “Something feels… incomplete.”

“Then figure it out. That’s your job, isn’t it? To put pieces together that don’t fit-but actually do.”

Easier said than done.

And maybe this time the pieces didn’t fit.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sighing deeply. Her head touched his shoulder. Somehow his hand was back in hers, his thumb gently brushing the tenderness of her inner wrist. They’d never said the words to bring them to this place, but both knew it to be right.

These pieces fit.

He was relaxed, content for the first time in months, more at peace-and things fell perfectly into place in his head, fully formed as if they’d always been there.

He jolted upright in his seat.

Seichan stared up at him. “What?”

“The Jewish tradition. Robert told me about it. We’ve been wrong all along. It’s not the Gants… it never was the Gants.”

He stood up, drawing Seichan with him. He hurried over to Painter, who was working on his laptop.

Gray slid next to him. “Can you bring up that Gant family tree that you showed us earlier? And I’ll need Jason Carter’s help to check something.”

Painter nodded, not asking why, knowing this was Gray’s wheelhouse.

The others gathered closer.

In a few seconds, the schematic bloomed again on the screen, detailing the rich lineage of the Gant family. The map was done up as data points, detailing every branch, twig, stem, stalk, root, and tendril of that family tree. The central mass, the densest cluster of data, represented those that carried the actual Gant name.

But Gray wasn’t interested in them.

Painter spoke: “Here’s Jason.”

The analyst’s voice rose from the laptop’s internal speakers. “How can I help, Commander Pierce?”

“I need you to zoom down and show me the outer edges of the family tree.”

“Got it.”

The schematic swelled and swept into the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, to that hazy fog of genetic trails at its edges, made up of lines that spun out and then back in again. Over and over. Threading a weave at the edge of the Gant clan. Those arcing curves delineated where stray members of the family abandoned the main clan, carried other names for a few generations, until some future offspring ended up remarrying back into the family.

Painter had called these extraneous lines outliers, the outlying part of the family tree, those living at a distance.

“What are you looking for?” Painter asked.

“You mentioned you suspected a pattern out here, something you could sense but not grasp.”

“Yes, but why does it matter now? Robert is dead. We can clean things up from here.”

“Robert’s not the problem-he never was. He thought he was a king, or at least a high-ranked lieutenant, but in the end, he was a puppet as surely as anyone else. Used by the Bloodline until they cut his strings.”

Gray realized something else in that moment, his mind filling in those final pieces. “I think Robert was already chafing against those unknown puppet masters. I believe he was the one who sent that note to Amanda to run.”

He remembered Robert’s last words.

No father should lose a daughter…

He was talking about the president as much as himself. Robert knew what a personal hell it was to lose a daughter. He could not let his brother suffer the same fate, so he tried to protect Amanda.

“Then what are you thinking?” Painter asked.

He pointed to the screen. “You were right, there is a pattern here. But we were all looking for a pattern with biased eyes, from a patriarchal viewpoint, where lineage is determined by the male offspring, where boys carry on their fathers’ names. That’s what is mapped here.”

“Okay.”

“But there’s a mirror to this, another way of looking at a family’s genetic roots. Robert mentioned how the Bloodline traced its roots to the clans that were cast out by Moses. True or not, he said they still kept certain Jewish traditions alive.”

Gray twisted and pointed to Lisa. “You mentioned how the triple helices could only pass down a female lineage. From egg to egg to egg, due to the cytoplasmic nature of the PNA strand.”

She nodded.

“That’s why they cast aside all other paths to immortality and concentrated solely on this one. It had a direct correlation to the images on the staff of Christ, but also because it fit what they wanted. A trait that matched their traditions and goals.”

“Which was what?” Painter asked.

Gray pointed to the screen. “The mirror image to a patriarchal view of heredity is a matriarchal one. According to the Mishnah, the oldest codification of Jewish tradition, you must be the child of a Jewish mother to be considered Jewish. The father doesn’t matter. The Jewish heritage is passed only through a woman’s bloodlines.”

But Gray needed proof. “Jason, can you separate out the two genders on this map? Tagging which are males, which are females.”

“Easy. The data is already in place… let me plot in the algorithm.” Then a few seconds later, he returned. “Here are the male lines of the family.”

As they all watched, blue lines sprang to life and illuminated that genetic galaxy-but a clear pattern appeared. Most of the blue threads remained tangled and clustered down the center, only a few coursed into the outlier sections, that hazy edge of the family.

“Now the female bloodline,” Gray said.

The blue fire vanished, and crimson lines blossomed. The outer fog around the central clan lit up with a rosy glow, a crimson cloud of heritage wrapped around the Gant clan.

A small gasp rose from Painter. “Almost all of these outlier lines are women.”

Gray stared closer and traced one of those crimson lines. “A woman leaves the Gant clan-and, in a handful of generations, it’s a woman who returns to marry back into the fold. Seldom a man.” He had another idea. “Jason, can you tag only the outlier lines, see how deeply they mesh with the main Gant clan?”

“Give me a few… done. Here you go.”

On the screen, everything fell away, except for the crimson haze at the edges. Another pattern became clear. Only a few of the red lines ever delved deeply into the main genealogical center. They only stayed for a generation or two-then darted back out again.

Painter saw it, too. “It’s like they’re sticking their toe in the gene pool, then pulling it back out again.” He turned to Gray, realization dawning in his eyes. “They’re like parasites on the Gant family. Bloodsucking flies. They hover near the well of the Gant wealth and power, tap into it regularly, feeding off it to sustain themselves, but mostly they live apart.”

The very definition of outlier.

Painter pointed to the screen. “This is not chance. This was done purposefully. A breeding plan to sustain a female lineage.”

“But why?” Lisa asked behind them.

Gray answered, “It’s likely the only way they can sustain such a lineage, to keep it from fraying away in a world where wealth is passed down to the first son, where most power has been wielded by men. To survive in that world, they adapted. They became parasites on specific families. Remember, the Bloodline once involved more than just the Gants. They performed this same dance with five or six wealthy European clans. Likely these parasitic flies traveled between these various families to better hide themselves.”

“They didn’t want to keep all their eggs in one basket,” Monk said.

Gray agreed. “But over time, those other families died away, ground under the march of time, until only the Gant family was left. We know in the past the Bloodline has tried to recruit new families, but in this modern age, where it’s not easy to hide and where family wealth often comes and goes in a couple of generations, they’ve only met with failure.”

Painter leaned back in his seat, looking paler. “Leaving them with the Gants.”

“Where they’re circling the drain, likely knowing it’s become unsustainable. I believe that’s the purpose of those experiments. They were seeking ways to keep their lineage alive, to extend it and give it permanence.”

Lisa spoke, her voice hushed with shock. “That’s why they went with the triple-helix plan. A triple helix can only pass down a matriarchal line. And they came so close to succeeding.”

“I think that success-along with the pressure Sigma was putting on them-gave them the push to strike out with a masterful endgame, one final move to ensure their power for generations on end.”

“The assassination plot,” Painter said.

“And the murder of Robert. The Lineage was done nibbling at the edges. They wanted to consume the Gants whole, to take over the family completely, to fully access their wealth and power.”

“But they failed.”

“And because of that we need to be scared,” Gray warned. “This Lineage has survived centuries, living in the empty spaces between other families, doing what they must to survive, shedding their humanity.”

“And they’re skilled at it,” Seichan added, likely picturing Petra. “They won’t succumb quietly. They will leave a wake of destruction behind them. Not out of vengeance-they’re too cold and calculating for that. They’ll do it because it will serve them in the long run. To cover their escape.”

“But how do we find them?” Painter asked.

Gray nodded to those crimson lines. “We start there. They don’t know we are aware of this.” He waved a hand to the trail of red lines. “We start plucking threads-and hopefully the rest will unravel.”

“There might be a way to find which threads are the best to pull.” Painter leaned toward the laptop’s microphone. “Jason, is there a way to examine those outlier lines and determine which ones lead the farthest back? In other words, which have the richest genetic heritage?”

“That’ll take a little more time.”

Painter turned to Gray. “From those massive databases you saw at the Lodge, heredity was important to them. What if the Bloodline links power to genetic heritage? The richer your heritage, the more authority you wield. If we can trace those lines of power-”

“Done,” Jason said. “You should see certain lines growing fatter on the screen, indicating stronger hereditary weight.”

On the screen, the uniformity of the crimson threads slowly altered-some growing fainter, others more prominent.

Once the process finished, Painter asked Jason to pick the thickest line and trail it down to modern times. It should point to the power brokers of this generation.

On the screen, a small cursor ran down that fat pipe and stopped at a single name at the end. It glowed brightly on the screen for all to see.

“Fuck me,” Kowalski swore, voicing all of their sentiments.

Gray remembered the digitally masked voice on the radio, ordering the assassination. Here was the person who had been manipulating events all along. The Bloodline wasn’t planning for Robert to take the grief of a wounded nation and turn it into a presidential bid.

Another would.

Her name shone on that screen.

Teresa Melody Gant

It would be the grieving widow who would tug at the heartstrings of the country and assume her dead husband’s mantle.

But that wasn’t the worst news.

“Director,” Jason said, “she’s here. The First Lady arrived five minutes ago with her Secret Service detachment.”

“What?”

“The president called her. He’s due in an hour to come out of hiding. He wanted his wife to hear about his survival first, to hear it from him, but also to share the good news about Amanda and the baby.”

“Where is she?”

“Down with them now, sir. And her Secret Service detachment-they’re all women. I should-”

Faint pops of gunfire cut him off.

4:55 P.M.

Washington, DC

At the foot of their daughter’s hospital bed, President James T. Gant hugged his wife, balanced between grief and joy, mourning the loss of his brother but relieved to hear his grandson was alive and safe.

The loud blasts of pistols out in the hallway jerked him out of Teresa’s arms.

What the hell?

He was alone in the room with his wife and sleeping child. He had pushed his own Secret Service agent outside to give the family this private moment together.

He realized his mistake-from the black SIG Sauer in his wife’s hand pointed at his chest.

“Teresa…?”

He searched her face and knew at that moment that the woman standing before him was not his wife. She wore the same face, but she was not the same woman. A mask had fallen away, hardening her eyes to a cold polish. Even her facial features seemed subtly different, becoming a wax version of the warm girl who’d won his heart.

She stood at the foot of Amanda’s bed in a protective pose. “Jimmy,” she said, her voice equally changed, flat and affectless, indicating how much of a consummate actress she had been. “You’ve ruined everything.”

He realized the truth at that moment. “You’re a part of the Bloodline. Like my brother.”

“Robert was nothing. He was ignorant of my involvement. Only a useful tool to hide behind. Nothing more. The Lineage will survive. We always do. It is our birthright. Born from exiles cast out into the desert wilderness-we still survive.”

He stood, stunned.

“And we have not lost everything. You’ve given us Amanda. Willful and unpredictable, she is unfit for the Lineage, but she is still clearly blessed. We failed with her first child, but she will give us more until we find that special female child, the one who will lead us out of the wilderness once again, more powerful than ever.”

He took a step forward, realizing they were planning on taking Amanda. He pictured the women floating in the tanks.

Teresa backed to the edge of the bed, never letting down her guard. “But first, to open a path back into the wilderness where we can hide”-she pointed her pistol at his face-“we need chaos.”

Like a dead president.

“Good-bye, Jimmy.”

“Good-bye, Teresa.”

He flinched back as Amanda-seated in her bed behind Teresa-swung the IV pole and clubbed the weighted bottom into the side of his wife’s head.

Bone cracked and blood burst out of her nose.

She fell with a momentary look of bewilderment.

Her first real emotion since she pulled the gun.

Jimmy went for the weapon, realizing that the gunfire had ended out in the hallway. He started to bend-when the door crashed open.

Turning, he prayed it was his own Secret Service detail, that they had survived the ambush.

This was not his day.

Two women in uniform burst inside, weapons pointed.

Teresa’s detail.

They froze, seeing Teresa on the floor, unmoving.

Out in the hallway behind them, a small figure slid past the door on his knees along the blood-slicked floor. He had a pistol pointed.

Two pops.

Two clean shots to the back of the women’s heads.

Then he slid out of view.

Amanda still sat on her bed, holding the IV pole. “Who was that?”

Jimmy pictured the face of the young man, the analyst from before. He couldn’t remember his name, but he knew one thing about the boy.

“That was my new best friend.”

43

July 12, 10:10 A.M. EST

Washington, DC

Painter stood at the foot of Amanda’s bed at George Washington University Hospital. He had his arm around Lisa’s waist as she reviewed the young woman’s chart. Mother and child had been here for a week, transferred shortly after the revelation of the president’s miraculous recovery following the assassination attempt.

James Gant was at the same hospital, two floors up, in his own secure wing, all the better to hide his feigned post-op recovery. Only those who knew the truth were allowed access. The shooter remained a mystery, more fodder to add to the myriad conspiracies surrounding presidential assassinations.

Off in South Carolina, the destruction at the Gant family estate was kept hushed and restricted from view by the no-fly zone. The official story was that a natural sinkhole had opened in the mountains on their property, accompanied by a quake strong enough to cause a gas leak and explosion at the Lodge. The report of the heroic death of Robert Gant-who died in the fire, while trying to rescue people-helped divert attention from the truth. A handpicked detachment of the National Guard, sworn to secrecy, still continued the cleanup of the dead pods that littered the surrounding landscape.

Lisa finally lowered the charts of Amanda and William.

“Happy?” Painter asked.

“Everything seems to be in order.”

Lisa was having a hard time letting go, feeling a personal responsibility for the child. The child had his own team of geneticists, allergists, and neonatologists who were overseeing the boy’s care. He continued to shed away the rest of the PNA, becoming a normal little boy. Any further allergic responses were watched closely and ameliorated.

But she wasn’t the only one concerned for his well-being.

“When do you leave?” Amanda asked, cradling the sleeping child in her arms.

Tucker sat next to her bed, a large stuffed dog at his elbow, a gift for the baby. “Tomorrow morning. Kane and I are headed to Russia.”

One of Kane’s ears swiveled toward his handler, but he never lifted his head from the bed’s blanket, his eyes watching every small facial tic of the dreaming baby, sniffing occasionally at the footy pajamas.

“Make sure you visit if you’re ever in Charleston.”

“I’ll do that.” Tucker stood up, kissed his own fingertips, and gently touched the crown of the child’s head.

Amanda tilted the baby out of the way and raised an arm, wanting to hug Tucker. He obliged, keeping it brief-or at least, he tried to. She held him tightly with all the stubbornness of the Gants. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

He straightened, a blush rising to his face.

Painter and Lisa also said their good-byes. Out in the hall, Lisa crossed to talk to the doctors at the nursing station.

Alone with Tucker, Painter tried one more time. “Sigma could use your help. And Kane’s. We have a lot of work ahead to root out the rest of the Bloodline.”

That statement was true, but they were already making significant strides to that end. Armed with Jason’s database, they had many names to pursue. Threads were being pulled, and the tapestry woven over millennia was starting to shred. Gray was right when he said that in the modern age it was harder to hide. The wildernesses of yesteryear had shrunken, offering less shelter.

Painter knew with certainty.

The Guild was dead.

“But we always have new crises to attend, too,” Painter pressed. “We could use someone with your unique talents.”

Tucker gave him a crooked smile. “I’ll pass. I’ve never been much of a team player. But if you ever need me, you have my number.”

Tucker turned and headed down the corridor, Kane at his knee.

Painter called out, “Wait! I don’t have your number.”

Tucker twisted around, walking backward a few steps, his crooked smile straightening. “Something tells me, director, if you ever need me, you’ll find me.”

He was right.

Painter lifted his arm in a good-bye.

Tucker merely swung around and vanished around a corner. The last sight was Kane’s tail wagging, ready for their next adventure.

Painter watched a breath longer, knowing that wouldn’t be the last he would see of Tucker and Kane.

Lisa finally rejoined him. “Ready?”

Oh, yeah.

They headed out of the hospital, hand in hand, into the brightness of a new day. A horse-drawn carriage waited at the curb, covered in her favorite chrysanthemums, each petal a deep burgundy trimmed in gold.

Jason had hunted down that rare specimen, getting a large shipment in time. Kowalski was assigned to arrange the livery service. He spent the entire week exiting rooms with the same joke: Sorry, gotta see a man about a horse.

In a few more steps, Lisa recognized the flower and immediately suspected something was up.

“Painter…?” she warned.

He walked her to the carriage, helped her up, then dropped to a knee on the carriage step, revealing the small velvet-lined box in his palm.

She covered her cheeks. “No!”

“I haven’t even asked the question yet.”

She lowered her hands, her face radiant, blushing as darkly as the petals of the chrysanthemums. “Then yes, yes, yes…”

She pulled him to his feet, practically yanking him to her mouth. They kissed, laughing between their lips, then moving to something deeper and more meaningful. For the longest moment, they remained embraced, pledging silently never to be parted.

But, apparently, there was a catch, a clause in the contract to be addressed first.

Lisa moved into the carriage, drawing him up. She faced him. “I want kids… just to be clear.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have done this after seeing the baby.”

“I’m serious.” She held up her fingers. “I want two.”

Painter stared at her hand. “You know you’re holding up four fingers, right?”

12:20 P.M.

Kat dropped heavily onto the living room sofa, sprawling out, taking off her sunglasses and the light scarf that hid her bald head. Her sutures itched like mad, all over her body, setting her nerves on fire.

Monk followed a few minutes later through the apartment door, carrying Penelope, who hung limply in his arms with the slumber of innocence.

“The baby?” he asked.

“Already in her crib. Did you get the stroller?”

“It can stay in the minivan. Someone wants to smash a window and steal it, then let ’em. They can have the case of Pampers, too.”

Monk headed down the hallway to the baby’s room, settled the child into the bed, and came back and joined her on the couch. He collapsed next to her, sighing loudly.

Kat ran her palm over her head. Tears suddenly burst out.

Monk pulled her to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at me. Covered in sutures, scabs, no hair. Did you see the looks I was getting in the park?”

He tugged her face toward his, leaning in close, making sure she could see the sincerity in his eyes. “You’re beautiful. And if it bothers you, hair grows back and the plastic surgeon promised there would be very little scarring.”

He gently kissed her lips, sealing the deal.

“Besides,” he said, rubbing his own shaved head, “bald is beautiful.”

“It works for you,” she said, wiping her tears.

They lay in each other’s arms for a few long, perfect minutes.

“I heard you talking to Painter,” Monk said. “You sure he’s okay with the decision?”

Kat nodded against his chest, making a soft, sleepy sound. “Mm-hmm.”

“Are you okay with it?”

She pulled back, sensing his seriousness. “I know I was just crying about my injuries. But…”

She stared away, slightly ashamed.

“You still loved it,” he said. “Being out in the field.”

“I did. Especially with you. It was better together.”

He smiled. “Looks like I’m back in Sigma, then. I mean, someone’s got to keep you out of trouble.”

Her grin widened.

“And speaking of things that are better together.” He lifted her and pulled her atop his lap. Her legs straddled his waist. “And in case you wanted solid proof about how beautiful you are…”

He shifted.

Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

3:30 P.M .

President James T. Gant sat in his wheelchair as the nurse pushed him, trailed by two Secret Service agents.

“Your wife is resting comfortably,” the nurse assured him as they reached the private room, guarded by another agent.

“Thank you, Patti,” he said. “I’d like to go in alone, if that’s okay.”

“Certainly, Mr. President. If you need anything, you can buzz the nursing station.”

The guard opened the door, and James wheeled in by himself, leaving the agents outside. After the door closed, he climbed out of the wheelchair and crossed to the hospital bed on his own.

Teresa had two operations already to repair the damage from the “car accident,” which was the official story. They’d plated her shattered cheekbone and cracked her skull open to cauterize internal bleeding. The doctors warned him each time that the brain damage was too severe, that his wife would remain in a vegetative state, likely forever.

Still, James played the stricken husband who would do anything to keep his wife alive, demanding the painful surgeries.

He stared down at her shaved head, the tubes going into every orifice, the droop of her eyelids.

“You look a mess, Teresa,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “The doctors explained the difference between a coma and a vegetative state. Coma is characterized by a lack of awareness. You have what’s known as partial awareness. They say there’s a good chance you can hear me in there. I hope so.”

He patted her hand.

“Permanent vegetative state is defined as when you’ve been in this state for longer than a year. We’ll be reaching that milestone, my dear, I assure you of that. I’ve got a private hospital picked out in Charleston. Gant family-owned, of course. They’ll make sure you stay in this state forever, even if more surgery is necessary to make sure you never wake up.”

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “And all of those life-extension research projects that you’ve been running? It seems a distraught husband is going to employ every one of them to make sure you stay like this year after year after year.”

He stood back up, remembering the oath he swore to Painter Crowe if he ever found out who hurt his family: There will be no quick death. I will make them suffer like no other. I’ll turn their world into a personal hell on earth.

If nothing else, James T. Gant was a man of his word.

He bent down, kissed his wife’s forehead, noting a fat tear rolling from her eye. “Welcome to hell, Teresa.”

9:30 P.M.

Takoma Park, Maryland

Gray finished washing the dinner dishes, staring out the window to the backyard. A dark gazebo stood in a remote corner, nestled amid overgrown rosebushes and shadowed by the bower of a cherry tree.

Movement drew his gaze: a shift of darkness, a glint of steel zipper on a jacket, a pale hint of skin.

Seichan stalked back there, as restless as she was thoughtful.

He knew what plagued her.

A dead man’s words.

Steps sounded behind him. He turned as Mary Benning, the night nurse, returned from upstairs.

“Got your father settled,” she said. “Already snoring by the time I was out the door.”

“Thanks.” He slipped the last dinner plate into the drying rack. “He seemed good tonight.”

“More at peace,” she agreed and smiled softly. “He missed you. But he’s too hardheaded to ever admit it.”

No argument about that.

Still, Gray remembered a strange moment when he first got back from the mission. He had come here, expecting the worst after being gone for nearly a week. Instead, he found his father in the kitchen with the sports page. When Gray stepped inside, his father looked him up and down, as if searching for something, then asked a blunt question that was oddly canny.

Did you get ’em?

Gray had answered truthfully. I got ’em, Dad. All of ’em.

His father could have been talking about many things, his inquiry interpreted many different ways, especially with the state of his dementia.

No matter the cause, his father had risen from the table and hugged Gray-as if thanking him for getting the revenge he could not.

And then, this morning, they’d gone as a family to their mother’s grave. Usually such visits brought tears and storm clouds, followed by a sullen, silent ride home. This morning, there had been tears, but also soft laughter. On the way home, his father told a couple of anecdotes about their mother. Even Kenny had shed his corporate bluster for an easier camaraderie. And more surprising still, his brother had agreed to extend his stay for another two months, mentioning something about telecommuting.

Some of that decision might be because Kenny had met a girl.

He was out with her tonight.

I’ll take what I can get.

Mary pointed to the screen door. “You kids enjoy the night. There’s supposed to be a meteor shower. If he gets restless, I’m taping the Nationals game against the marlins. A little baseball quiets him right down. Unless it’s against the Yankees, then the gloves come off.”

Gray smiled. “Thanks, Mary.”

9:45 P.M.

Seichan stood in the dark gazebo, waiting, lost in her own thoughts. It was a balmy night, with crickets chirping in a continuous chorus, and a few fireflies blinking in the bushes and tree limbs.

She stared back at the house, wondering who she would be if she grew up there, picturing a happy childhood of report cards, scraped knees, and first kisses.

Would I even be me?

She fingered the silver dragon pendant resting in the hollow of her throat, remembering Robert Gant’s last words.

Your mother… escaped… still alive…

Over the past week, she’d slowly allowed herself to believe it.

It scared her.

Even her father’s death was no more than a dull ache, with no sharp edges to it. She didn’t know him and never really wanted to. Her mother had raised her. The word father had no meaning in her childhood. And a part of her still burned with anger and resentment, for the abuse and horrors she had to endure to become a killer. What father would allow that to happen to his daughter?

Still, in the end, Robert Gant had granted her a truer gift than his fatherhood: hope.

She didn’t know what to do with that gift.

Not yet.

But she would… with help.

Gray appeared at the back door, limned against the warmth of the kitchen lights. She liked spying on him when he didn’t know she was watching. She caught glimpses of the boy behind the man, the son of two parents who had loved Gray in very different ways.

Still, he was a killer-but not like her.

She was a machine; he was human.

She pictured the girl in the lobby of the Burj Abaadi, a girl broken into a monster. She pictured Petra, a woman molded into one.

Seichan was both of them.

What does he see in me worth holding on to?

Gray crossed the yard, stirring fireflies. Overhead, a falling star flashed across the dark night. He reached her, a shadow now.

She trembled.

He saw something in her-and she had to trust him.

He held out a hand.

Offering everything.

She took it.