Bloodline

18

July 2, 11:56 A.M. EST

Charleston, South Carolina

Captain Kathryn Bryant had come to sell her body.

She stepped off the crosstown bus into the steamy swelter of a Charleston summer. Her worn sneakers crunched in the gravel at the shoulder of the road. She pulled on a pair of cheap sunglasses purchased at the airport against the glare of the sun, but they did nothing for the heat.

Ninety degrees with ninety percent humidity.

I thought Washington’s summers were bad.

In a feeble attempt to compensate, she’d gathered her long auburn hair into a ponytail and wore a ball cap to shade her face. She also wore a pair of light shorts and a nondescript loose blouse, no bra, finishing her appearance as a down-on-her-luck woman looking for a little extra money.

The bus pulled away with a choking cough of diesel fumes. She followed in its wake.

The North Charleston Fertility Clinic rose two blocks ahead, the complex covered a full city block, set amid a small park of towering oaks and palmettos. The rest of the neighborhood was a mix of commercial businesses and trailer parks. She was not unfamiliar with the area, having spent a few months while in service at the naval Weapons station, which hugged the Cooper River three miles away.

As she headed toward the clinic, she slipped out her cell phone to keep a promise. The phone was a disposable, tied to her alias. She connected her call through Sigma to ensure it couldn’t be traced. If anyone tried to pull the LUDs, the phone records would only discover a call placed to a local pawnshop.

The line clicked and a gruff voice answered, “So you’re still alive?”

Her husband, Monk, did his best to make it sound like a joke, but she heard the undercurrent of tension in his voice. He hadn’t been thrilled she’d taken this assignment, but he understood the necessity.

“For the moment,” she replied with a smile. “I’m just heading toward the clinic.”

“You give them hell.”

Her smile widened. “That’s the plan.”

She pictured Monk at their apartment, balancing one of their babies on his knee. He was not what most women would consider handsome, with his shaved head and stocky but muscular physique, but he still could make her melt with his smile and she’d never met a man with a bigger heart, a heart that only grew larger with each addition to the household.

“Did you give Harriet her second bottle?” she asked.

An exasperated sigh followed. “Yes, dear. And I went to Costco and got the Pampers. You go save the world. I’ve got things covered here.”

She had hoped her call would erase that edge of apprehension hiding behind his jovial banter, but it only seemed to make it worse.

“Monk, I’m almost at the clinic. Give Penny and Harriet a kiss for me.”

“Done. And I’ll save what I’ve got for you until you get home.”

“Ah, always my gallant knight,” she said sarcastically-but it was forced. Because he was her knight… and always would be.

His voice grew husky. “Just get back here safely.”

“I promise.”

“You’d better. I’m holding you to it.”

After she hung up, the world seemed slightly less bright. A twinge of guilt plagued her as she pocketed her phone.

What am I doing here? I should be at home.

Still, she could not discount the electric thrill that coursed through her as she reached the grounds of the clinic and turned her attention to the task at hand. It happened with every mission. She had a duty, and she was good at what she did. And knowing her family was safe-and always would be with Monk-helped steady her. He was her rock, even hundreds of miles away.

With renewed determination, she crossed along the tall stacked-stone fence of the clinic and stepped through the wrought-iron gates, entering a garden oasis set amidst the surrounding commercial parks. A path led alongside the entry road, winding through manicured hedgerows, small burbling fountains, and perfumed beds of blush-pink roses.

Someone had gone to great expense to make the clinic feel warm and inviting, a veritable Garden of Eden, where dreams of infertile couples could not help but come true. No wonder this place drew celebrity clients and people from around the globe-including the president’s daughter.

Then again, the complex was owned by a subsidiary of a Gant family enterprise, one dedicated to biotech and genetic engineering. The clinic, established in the early eighties, was the end result of much of that research, offering the latest innovations to the public. The clinic also employed its own research protocols, drawing reproductive scientists from as far away as Japan. The place continued to be at the forefront of fertility studies and stem-cell research.

Over the past eighteen hours, Kat had investigated the clinic extensively-from its staffing and clientele down to its latest tax filings. She knew everything about the clinic: where they got their bed linens, the average weight of their hazardous waste material per day. The deeper she delved, the more certain she grew that the reason for Amanda’s kidnapping lay hidden somewhere within the four buildings that made up this facility.

This conviction came not from anything she uncovered-but from what she didn’t. After a full decade gathering global intelligence, she had developed a nose for when something was being hidden from her. During her investigation, she had reached too many dead ends that made no sense, certain matters that didn’t balance in her head. Worst of all, she stumbled across an impenetrable corporate firewall at one point, employing encryption algorithms that were military-grade. Even if she could, she feared smashing through it. The act alone could set off too many alarm bells, alerting the powers that be at the clinic that someone was sniffing at their door.

So she opted for a more direct approach.

On foot.

She reached the parking lot and spotted the rental car, a silver Audi A6 sedan. Lisa Cummings had beaten her here, but her friend hadn’t had to navigate through two bus transfers from the airport to reach the clinic. They had come separately, each with her own mission.

Kat climbed the steps to a wide porch that fronted the main building. It looked nothing like a medical facility. The façade was typical for Charleston: a Georgian stone mansion with wrought-iron railings, three floors of balconies, and a gambrel roof covered by mossy-fringed slate tiles.

She stepped through the doors into an air-conditioned main lobby, refreshing after the hot bus ride and short walk. A reception desk beckoned. She approached it, noting out of the corner of her eye that Lisa sat in the waiting area, a space as sumptuously furnished as would be expected from the exterior, decked out in velvets and overstuffed cushions.

Lisa matched the décor in a handsome St. John platinum dress with a drawstring waist. Her blond hair hung loose and shone under the soft lights; her makeup was flawless. She came posing as the private doctor for a select Washingtonian clientele, coming to interview the clinic for possible referrals for her patients. She had an appointment to meet with the head of the facility in a few minutes.

Lisa was conducting this cursory investigation from the top down.

Kat was taking the other extreme.

“How may I help you?” the receptionist asked. She was a small woman with large eyes, made even more prominent by her harsh eye shadow.

Kat moved closer to the desk, pressing against it, leaning a bit too forward as if trying to keep the conversation from being overheard. “I heard… someone told me… that you all are looking for donors.”

The receptionist’s brows pinched in irritation.

Kat pushed even closer, glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder, raising an embarrassed blush to her cheeks. “You know. Looking for a woman’s eggs. I heard you pay good money.”

The receptionist sat straighter, her voice growing hushed, if not a touch condescending, made worse by the patronizing tone of her Carolina accent. “Hon, that’s handled elsewhere. This is for patient intake. If you’ll stand over there…” she waved a manicured hand away from the waiting area, toward a corner. “I’ll have one of the staff assistants come fetch you and bring you to the donor facility, if that’s all right?”

Kat nodded and slunk back. “Thank you.”

The woman made a noncommittal noise and picked up the phone.

As Kat retreated to her corner, she met Lisa’s gaze. At the moment they were divided by a cultural and financial gulf. Lisa represented the end buyer; Kat embodied the product to be sold. There continued to be much ethical and moral debate about the sale of human ova. Once a price tag was put upon such a commodity, it became tied to the power of supply and demand-and the inherent abuse.

In much of the Third World, entire villages now sold kidneys or became surrogate mothers, selling rental space in their wombs. It was called the red market-the wholesale buying and selling of body parts-and it was a booming business, both legally and illegally. She had read a report of Bolivian murderers who sought out victims to sell their fat to European beauty supply companies. In China, prisons were harvesting the organs of dead inmates, gutting them out, with whispers that some prisoners were being purposefully killed for profit. And in one case in Nepal, a dairy farmer had turned from delivering milk to supplying blood. He captured local hikers, imprisoned them in his barn, and repeatedly drained his new livestock of their blood, keeping them forever at the edge of death.

Worst of all, such a marketplace moved in only one economic direction: from the poor to the rich. It was an unfortunate side effect when a price tag was placed on organs. Inevitably, flesh moved only up the social ladder, never down.

Movement across the room drew Kat’s attention. A mahogany door opened and a rugged-looking man in his midforties stepped into the waiting room. He had jet-black hair, stood six feet tall, and was decked out in a knee-length white lab coat over expensive navy-blue trousers, a crisp white shirt, and a crimson tie. His smile was overly broad as he approached Lisa, who stood to greet him.

“Welcome to NCFC,” he said and shook her hand.

It was Dr. Paul Cranston, head of the clinic. Kat knew everything about him, even his social security number and where his passport had last been stamped: New Zealand.

He led Lisa out of the waiting room and into the inner sanctum of the facility. As that door closed, another opened. A man, likely a hospital orderly, stood at the threshold of a doorway neighboring the front desk. He looked like a pit bull in scrubs. The receptionist beckoned to Kat.

She stepped forward.

“If you’ll follow me,” the man grunted, not bothering with her name.

She hurried forward but stopped at the reception desk to grab a business card. She fumbled and purposefully knocked the holder off the counter and onto the reception desk.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching over to help collect the scattered cards.

The receptionist sighed heavily and picked a few cards off the floor by her chair. Kat used the moment to slip the ballpoint pen palmed in her hand into the receptionist’s cup. It held a tiny camera that recorded audio and video passively to a micro SD chip. A small antenna allowed burst transmissions of the saved data with the pinged call from a cell phone.

She had four more pens in her purse, with the goal of strategically placing them in key locations throughout the facility-or, at least, where she could reach without raising an alarm. If given the chance, it would be easy for a confused girl to get lost in here and wander where she didn’t belong.

But first she had a role to play.

“Just go,” the receptionist said and pointed to the side door.

Kat apologized meekly and followed the orderly waiting for her. He led her out of the world of gardens and velvets and into a sterile environment of vinyl floors and stark white walls. Here was the hospital hidden behind the façade: sparse and utilitarian.

They eventually reached and entered a short enclosed walkway that connected the main building to a more drab structure at the back of the grounds. As she marched, she noted each of the four clinic wings was connected in a similar manner. It seemed there was no need to leave the air-conditioned splendor for the summer heat. She also eyed the windowed walls to either side. The glass was thick, appeared bulletproof.

Then again, the clinic’s clientele were often celebrities or foreign dignitaries. Maybe the extra protection was necessary.

Still, a chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning swept through her. The space felt less protective than it was imprisoning.

They entered the next building, and Kat was taken to a small examination room, one of a long row of them in this wing. The orderly handed her a series of forms to fill out, secured on a clipboard.

“Fill everything out. Someone will be in to talk to you in a few minutes.”

He left, looking as bored as when he’d first collected her.

She began to fill out the forms when she heard a small click at the door. Stepping forward, she tested the handle.

Locked.

She frowned, fighting back a flicker of panic. Securing the door might be protocol, to maintain confidentiality. Either way, she was committed. She’d have to keep playing her hand-but something was definitely wrong about this place.

She hoped Lisa was faring better.

12:18 P.M.

“As you can see, we do all of our work in-house,” Dr. Paul Cranston said, stopping before a window that looked into a sealed in vitro fertilization lab.

Lisa studied the space with a critical eye. The room was state-of-the art, with enclosed workstations equipped with laser oocyte scanners and Narishige micromanipulators for egg fertilization. Nothing was substandard, from Makler counting chambers to automatic sperm-analyzers, advanced warming blocks, and cryogenic chambers.

Her guided tour had already included the surgical suite, used for both egg collection and embryo implantation. The clinic’s high-tech operating theater would put most hospitals to shame. Even the neighboring recovery rooms were private spaces that could have graced the pages of Architectural Digest, with fine linens, subdued lighting, and tasteful decorations.

Clearly this tour was meant to impress.

And it did.

“We are a one-stop shop,” Cranston finished, offering a beaming, self-effacing smile. “From sperm and egg collection, to fertilization and implantation. We do all of our own patient monitoring, but we’re certainly happy to work in collaboration with a primary care physician.”

Lisa nodded. “I’m sure some of my clients would prefer the anonymity of care outside the DC circles.”

“Understood.”

His eyes lingered a bit too long on her. Plainly, he desired to know more about whom she represented, but he knew better than to inquire directly. Lisa’s ironclad cover had been built to draw the personal interest of the clinic’s head, and obviously succeeded. She had been given the grand tour, along with the full-court sales press.

“Why don’t we return to my office? I can supply you with brochures detailing each level of service, including fact sheets containing our success rates, and, of course, I’ll be happy to answer any other questions.”

“That would be perfect.” She checked her watch in a move to urge him to hurry along. “I won’t take up much more of your time.”

His office was up a level from the workspaces. It was like walking into a mahogany library, with bookshelf-lined walls, trophies, and framed diplomas, including one from Harvard, his alma mater. Like the rest of the tour, the room was also designed to impress. Huge arched windows overlooked the parklike grounds with views to the other three buildings that made up the complex.

Cranston circled around his desk, where a prepared binder was already waiting for her atop his leather desk blotter. He handed it toward her, but she ignored it, focusing her attention out the window. She also kept a keen eye on his reactions. Besides a medical degree, she had earned a master’s in physiology. She understood bodily responses and could read them as accurately as most lie detectors-but unlike those detectors, she also knew how to manipulate those responses for a desired result.

Now to get to work.

“What happens in those other buildings?” she asked.

He lowered the binder and followed her gaze outside. “The wing directly behind this one is for donor evaluation and collection.”

Lisa eyed the three-story structure.

That must be where Kat is.

“The other two buildings are strictly for research,” he said. “We run reproductive studies for a dozen different universities, including as far away as the University of Tokyo and Oxford.”

She turned her back to the window. “I’m assuming that any biological specimens, eggs, or embryos from my patients wouldn’t be used for such purposes without their consent.”

“Of course not. We have a robust donor program that supplies such material. Let me assure you, Dr. Cummings, our research programs and patient services are completely separate. There is no crossover.”

“Very good.” Lisa returned to the chair in front of his wide desk and sank into the seat, shifting her purse into her lap. “Now let me be frank with you, Dr. Cranston.”

“Please call me Paul.”

She smiled, giving him that much. “Paul, I must be honest that I have been considering other facilities. It’s come down to here or a clinic outside of Philadelphia.”

“Of course.”

He kept an even demeanor, but she did not mistake the flicker of desire-to poach another client was even better than merely to win one. That was the bait.

“But I assure you,” he continued, “you’ll find no other facility with the level of technological advancement, the latest tools, and the professional staff to oversee each stage of the process.”

Cranston definitely wanted her imaginary high-profile client list-but how badly?

First to let some slack in the line, intended to unnerve him. “I understand and appreciate that, Paul, but Philadelphia is also much closer to DC. I must take that convenience into account. My clients’ time is very important.”

He looked crestfallen. “I can’t argue with that.”

Now to dangle hope. “But your clinic has one distinct advantage. Beyond your stellar medical reputation, you have an unmatched social reputation, an excellent pedigree, if you will.”

“How so?”

“Amanda Gant-Bennett.”

The edges of his eyelids grew more strained at the mention of Amanda.

“Several of my patients are well acquainted with the First Family,” she continued. “They know of the delicate situation regarding the president’s daughter and how matters were handled at your clinic. In many ways, Washington is a small town.”

She offered him a modest smile.

He echoed it-the desired effect.

“One patient of mine in particular is faced with a similar situation: an infertile husband. She asked me to specifically inquire into your donor program. To put it bluntly, using my patient’s words: ‘If it’s good enough for the president’s daughter, it’s good enough for me.’”

She rolled her eyes, feigning amused disdain. “In certain Washingtonian circles-whether it’s the latest purse or the season’s designer fashions-name brands are all that matter. And this even extends to the choice of medical facility and, in this case, even the preference of donor.”

He gave her an understanding nod and steepled his fingers under his chin. “There is, of course, no way to divulge who was the male donor in this situation. But I can guarantee you that each of our donors must pass the most thorough and exacting background check and evaluation. Each is ranked on several criteria: physical appearance, IQ, medical history, ethnic background, and many others.”

“And if someone wanted to pick a donor of, let us say, equal criteria as the president’s daughter…?”

His smile grew steadier, as he discovered a way to win her over. It was human nature: to almost have something in one’s grasp, then suddenly lose it, only made the desire to win it back that much stronger. It was why gambling was so addictive.

“I’m sure that could be arranged,” he said. “We’d hate to lose you.”

I’m sure you would.

“Wonderful.” She rewarded him with a genuine smile of delight. “And would it be possible to obtain a list and description of such donors, something tangible I can present to my client? As they say, the proof is in the pudding.”

Cranston swung to his computer. “Certainly. If you can give me a few minutes…”

She settled back into her chair. Painter wanted that shortened list of donors, a way to narrow down the number of potential biological fathers for Amanda’s unborn child. But he also needed a way to turn the anonymity of those donors into real names.

That meant gaining access to clinic records.

As Cranston worked, Lisa snapped open her purse and pretended to check her phone. She pressed a button on it as instructed by Painter, then slipped the thin device into the seat cushions of her chair, using her purse to hide her actions. The phone had a wireless micro-router built into it, allowing Sigma to link and hack into the clinic’s server. Painter had tried to explain it in more detail, but electronic engineering was not her specialty. All she knew was to follow his instructions: wait until Cranston had logged into the computer and used his password, then activate the wireless router and leave it running nearby.

She clicked her purse closed.

Her work here was done.

It seemed too easy, but then again, it was supposed to be.

Painter had described the mission here as a soft infiltration. Rather than a full-frontal storming of the gates, Kat and Lisa’s only goal was to leave a trail of electronic bread crumbs: listening devices, cameras, wireless taps. Most of the tools had been engineered by Painter, made for easy concealment and minimal signature.

But anything can be detected, given enough time, Painter had warned.

So the second part of this mission was not to loiter.

And she obeyed that now.

In short order, she had everything she needed from Dr. Cranston, including the binder of brochures and information. He walked her back to the lobby, left her with promises to keep in touch, and she soon found herself back under the swelter of the midday sun.

She headed over and climbed into her Audi sedan, a luxurious rental to match her cover. Though her part of the mission was complete, a knot of tension remained in her neck. The plan was for Kat to meet her back at their hotel in downtown Charleston. She would be relieved only when they were rejoined. From there, the electronic devices could do all the spying for them.

She swung her sedan out of the parking lot and onto the street, still worried about Kat, feeling guilty for abandoning her partner.

Her only reassurance: Kat was a pro.

Nothing fazed her.

1:14 P.M.

What the hell is going on here?

Pacing the small exam room, Kat checked the clock on her disposable phone. It had been over an hour since she first walked through the clinic’s front door. She should’ve been in and out by now. She had completed the sheaf of paperwork and handed it to the same orderly who marched her here and locked her in the room.

He’d told her to sit tight, that the initial approval process could take some time. And that it wasn’t all paperwork. A doctor will be in to do a pelvic exam and ultrasound in a few minutes. You will be paid a small stipend now in order to draw your blood and collect a urine sample. Within five business days, you will be informed by phone whether you’re selected as a donor.

This was all related in a bored monotone, as if he’d repeated the same speech a hundred times each day. And maybe he did. Through the walls, she heard other men and women coming and going, doors opening and closing along the long exam hallway.

She had hoped to get a cursory tour of the donation center, to plant another pen camera here, maybe even attempt to reach the other two research buildings. That didn’t seem likely unless she was bolder.

She stepped to the secured door. She had a lock pick incorporated into the sole of her right shoe, and a folded combat blade hidden in her left. But her escape out of a locked room would be hard to explain if she was caught later. There was an easier way.

She knocked loudly and raised a plaintive lilt to her call. “Hello! I need to use the bathroom! Can someone help me, please?”

It didn’t take long for the door to be unlocked.

She expected to see the same orderly as before-but instead it was a white-smocked doctor, a svelte woman with gray eyes. The orderly hovered behind her, holding a tray with a rack of vacuum tubes for blood collection and an array of syringes.

The only warning of trouble: one of the syringes was full.

Before she could react, the doctor stepped forward and jammed a black wand against her stomach. The snap of electricity was loud in the small space. Agony shot through her body, centered on her belly, contracting her abdominal muscles. Her limbs betrayed her, and she toppled to the side, a slim edge away from a full convulsion.

Anticipating this, the doctor caught her and lowered her to the floor. The orderly closed the door and came around her other side, syringe in hand. Even through the electric pain, she felt the needle jab in her neck.

Her vision began to immediately close down.

Kat fought against it, wondering how her cover could have been blown. She’d been so thorough to craft her alias as a shiftless transient with no familial or local ties, nothing that could be easily verified or tracked back to her.

Unfortunately, that proved her undoing.

“She seems in better than average shape,” the doctor said to the orderly, examining Kat as if she were a prized pig at a county fair. “Unusual. Feel this muscle tone. I don’t see any track marks on her arm or signs of chronic drug use. You’re sure she met the standard protocol?”

“Everything checked out, Dr. Marshall. She just moved here. No job. No family. Changed cities three times in the past year before coming here. Gainesville, Atlanta, now Charleston. No one to miss her.”

Kat’s world folded and closed over her.

Their conversation followed her into oblivion. “Then it’s perfect timing. I received a message from the Lodge a short time ago. They’re demanding more research subjects.”

Kat felt her body lifted by the muscular orderly.

“The Lodge?” he asked. “Do you know what they do up there?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

19

July 2, 10:20 P.M. Gulf Standard Time

Dubai City, UAE

Gray stood before the hotel windows and stared out at the jeweled nightscape of Dubai’s skyline, an emerald oasis perched between the desert and the blue sea. Towers and cloud-scraping spires blazed with lights, rising from a modern mecca of huge malls, hotels, and trendy residential complexes, all wired and connected by ribbons of flowing neon of every fathomable hue. The panorama looked less like a city and more like a glowing circuit board buzzing with the electricity of the entire region.

It seemed impossible that five hours ago he’d been in a country devastated by war, famine, and drought; a land ruled as much by pirates as any government.

Now he floated above a miracle.

Grown at a blistering pace, Dubai had risen like a mirage out of the desert, with the crown jewel being Burj Khalifa, over two hundred stories high, the tallest skyscraper in the world, appearing like a thin mountain pinnacle at the edge of the sea. Architects from around the world continued to compete to construct the most awe-inspiring designs, seemingly with one common theme: the defiance of nature and its elements. Within the city, one could lounge on a sun-baked beach, and an hour later be snowboarding down the slopes of the world’s largest indoor ski resort. And if one wanted the best of both worlds, the newly opened Palazzo Versace hotel had its own refrigerated beach to keep tourists cool while sunbathing.

But the greatest of the nature-defying projects lay beyond the beaches: Dubai’s famous man-made islands. Their hotel neighbored Palm Jumeirah, an artificial archipelago in the shape of a palm tree, so large it could be seen from space. Its trunk grew out from the mainland and burst forth with sixteen fronds, all circled by a crescent-shaped breakwater. Another two such islands were being constructed along the coastline, multiplying the amount of Dubai beachfront tenfold.

Gray had read of other projects still in the works for Dubai: a twenty-seven-acre underwater hotel called Hydropolis; a German-designed floating palace made entirely of ice, fancifully named the Blue Crystal; and, even farther out to sea, the partially completed deep-sea island of Utopia, shaped like a starfish and sheltered by a breakwater crescent, intended both as a tourist destination and a corporate enclave, due to its unique isolation.

Here in Dubai, nature held no sway against the lofty dreams of man.

“You gotta try the shower, Pierce.” Kowalski came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. “They got jets that hit you in all the right places-and a few wrong ones.”

It seemed the dreams of some men weren’t as lofty as others’.

Gray turned his back on the cityscape. With his shoulders still blistered and sore, a shower held no appeal at the moment.

Maybe a long bath.

The group shared a two-bedroom suite. Kowalski and Gray had one room; Seichan, the other. Tucker and Kane staked out the couch in the common room, equipped with a pool table, a wet bar, and a flat-screen television. Gray heard a BBC broadcast playing out there.

“I’m going to see if Tucker wants to lose a few bucks playing pool,” Kowalski said and headed toward the door, hauling on a robe and letting his wet towel fall to the floor.

Gray stepped toward the bathroom.

There wasn’t much else they could do except to continue waiting for an intelligence report from Sigma command.

Painter was gathering data on flights into and out of Somalia, comparing all routes that could bring Amanda and her kidnappers to Dubai. He was also checking passenger manifests, searching custom records, specifically looking for faces that matched Amanda’s, in case someone tried to sneak her through with a fake passport. He also had a team scouring security footage from Dubai International Airport.

Gray didn’t hold out much hope. His team had already spent an hour at the airport, tracking all the exits and baggage areas, checking to see if Kane could pick up her scent.

Nothing.

Maybe she never came here-or came and left.

But Gray didn’t think so and couldn’t exactly say why. It was more than a gut feeling-like something that beckoned at the edge of his awareness, something he was missing.

In the bathroom, he turned on the tub’s tap, tested the water, and, once satisfied, he slowly peeled off his shirt. Pieces stuck to his shoulders, pasted in place by his blistered skin. With a groan, he tugged the shirt off, stripped out of the rest of his clothes, and climbed into the tub.

It was wonderful agony to sink into the steaming heat.

He left the tap running, letting the waterline climb up his belly. He leaned forward, hugging his knees, carefully stretching the stiffened skin across his shoulders.

“Dear God, Gray… your back looks horrible.”

He twisted half-around to face the open door. Seichan stood there, her gaze not shying from his nakedness. He was too tired to be self-conscious. They’d both seen each other at their best and worst. What was a little bare skin?

He turned off the flowing tap. “I’m fine. What is it?”

“You’re not fine. Why didn’t you tell someone your burn was this bad? I’m getting the med pack. Here.” She stepped forward and passed him the satellite phone. “Call from sigma.”

He took the phone. “Director?”

“Gray, I just wanted to give you an update, while I have a spare moment.”

He sat higher in the tub. “Any leads?”

“No, I’m afraid not. We’ve searched every record and videotape from Dubai International. I can find no evidence that Amanda ever passed through there. I’ll keep monitoring the airport and inbound manifests, but I’ve also expanded the search for flights out of the city. We have to take into account that she may have already been moved.”

“If that’s the case, we’re not likely to ever find her.”

At least not alive.

“I’ll keep looking,” Painter said. “But for now, we’ll keep your team on-site. Even if she has shipped out, it might not have been far, and I want you and the others close by.”

“Understood.”

Gray signed off as Seichan returned. She took the phone, set it aside, then tapped the edge of the tub. “Up here. Back to me.”

She opened the combat med kit and pulled out a tube of burn cream and Water-Jel tactical dressing.

“I don’t need you to-”

“I could get Kowalski to do it. But I don’t think either of you would like that.”

He sighed heavily, pulled out of the bathwater, and balanced on the lip of the tub. She patted his skin dry with great care. From the corner of his eye, he caught her reflection in the mirror. She rubbed the cream between her palms and placed them against his heated skin.

The balm’s cooling agent sank deep into his flesh, outlining each of her fingers. A small moan escaped him.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No,” he said, more huskily than he intended.

Her hands spread outward, washing away the worst of his pain. He stretched his back, loosening his shoulders even further. His breathing grew heavier, deeper as she worked. His eyelids drifted closed.

She remained silent. He heard only her breath, sighing in and out. Fingers rode up to his neckline and down his spine. He found himself leaning back into her touch-and not just because of the cooling effect of the balm. In fact, warmth was returning to his skin, but not from the burn. It rose from a fire deeper inside. His body responded, but he didn’t bother to hide it, not that he could.

“Gray…”

He heard the need in her voice that matched his own.

He reached back and caught one of her hands. He held it, poised between pulling her closer or pushing her away, trapped between heaven and hell. Her fingers, soft and silky, trembled in his palm, like a bird fluttering to escape.

Not this time.

His hand tightened on hers, making a decision at last.

He chose heaven.

As he drew her arm around him, twisting to face her, their lips brushing against one another-then he suddenly knew the truth. He froze with shock.

“Gray? What is it?”

He tilted back, his eyes widening as his certainty grew.

“I know where Amanda is.”

11:32 P.M.

“You should keep walking,” Dr. Blake said, supporting her by the elbow. “It can help the baby get into a better position.”

Amanda shambled down a featureless white hallway. She had no idea where she was, nor the time of day. She’d woken in a windowless hospital room four hours ago. The medical team had performed another ultrasound on her, along with a pelvic exam, removing a sponge-like object from inside her.

Dr. Blake had explained, We inserted a synthetic osmotic dilator while you were sedated, to gently help open your cervix. It’s an old-school technique but still effective in preparation for labor.

It was only then she had learned they were inducing her, forcing her to deliver her baby early. She protested, but the protests fell on deaf ears. All she got for her trouble was a patronizing reassurance that she was well enough along and that there would be little risk to the baby or herself.

That failed to relieve her. She remembered what she’d overheard during the flight: the plans for her child to be dissected like some lab animal. She had to find a way to stop them.

As she walked, she supported her belly with one hand, as if trying to hold her baby where it was safe, willing her body not to surrender. But ten minutes ago, a prostaglandin gel had been applied vaginally, the first step toward inducing labor.

I won’t let them have my baby.

Ahead, she saw a wide window on one side of the hallway, bright with light. She hurried forward, breaking free of Blake’s grip.

Maybe there is a way out. Or some sign of where I am.

And deeper down lurked darker thoughts, of throwing herself out a high window, of plummeting to her death rather than letting them torture her baby boy.

She reached the window and fell back in horror. The light did not come from the sun but from the stark halogens of a biological clean lab. She flashed back to a similar facility in Charleston, where her in vitro fertilization had been performed. Like back home, this lab had multiple workstations and microscopes. It was all polished stainless steel or nonporous surfaces.

But what made her weak in the knees was the research project facing her-literally. A disembodied human head hung before her, bolted to a stanchion above a rack as tall as a man. A foot below that horror, a nest of plastic tubing suspended a human heart. A pacemaker-like device had been wired into the dark muscle and sat atop the tissue like a silver spider. The heart contracted every couple of seconds, jumping slightly in its webbing. And below that, a set of pink lungs hung in a glass vat, the disembodied tissue bellowing in and out, hooked to a ventilator. Other body parts loomed in murkier jars farther down, but she shied away from them, fearing what she would find.

Instead, she found her gaze transfixed on the victim’s face. His mouth had been taped shut; his eyelids drooped at half-mast. The stump of his neck was sealed in a tight bandage that trailed bloody tubes and tangles of wires, all flowing to a desk-size machine behind the rack.

It was as if someone had stripped the man down to his component parts, separating them each for some macabre study.

She could no longer look and swung away, running into Dr. Blake’s chest. He caught her in his arms.

“What is all of this?” she cried.

“We’re saving lives,” he answered calmly. “Continuing a Russian research program started back in the forties. They were using dogs back then, discovering how long they could keep body parts alive via artificial means. Even seven decades ago, using the crude tools available at the time, the researchers were able to keep the severed heads of their subjects vital for days, animated enough to respond to sound, to attempt to bark, to twitch their ears.”

Amanda shook her head, aghast at such a thing.

“Ah, but you see, Amanda, as gruesome as that may sound, those early experiments eventually led to the development of the first ventilator and the first cardiopulmonary bypass machine. A leap forward in technology that saved thousands of lives over the next decades.”

“But this…” Amanda waved a hand weakly toward the window.

“This is just as important and groundbreaking. The animal model could only take medical science so far. And with the accelerating advances in nanotechnology, microsurgery, neuroscience, cardiopulmonary medicine, and pharmaceutical sciences, there is no limit to what we’re on the threshold of accomplishing. What we’re doing here-experimenting with longevity studies of major tissues-promises not only to save lives but to extend them as well.”

She heard the exaltation in his voice. He openly worshipped at the altar of cold science, where morality had no sway. He believed as fervently in the truth of his convictions as any preacher, and, like any devoted disciple, sought to convert the nonbeliever.

But she wasn’t about to drink that particular Kool-Aid.

Movement in the lab drew her eye back to the horror show inside. A figure-gowned in a one-piece hooded clean suit-stepped from a rear chamber, carrying a tray of surgical tools. The worker noted the audience at the window and looked over.

Above the white mask, Amanda recognized those cold, watery eyes.

Petra.

At the same time, she remembered Blake’s praise for his nurse’s ghoulish skills, a talent to be applied to the child in her womb. She stared between Petra’s face and the disembodied head. Did they intend to do the same to her boy?

Petra’s earlier words rang in her ears.

I’ll relax once we have the fetus on the vivisection table at the lab.

Amanda stared at the tray of sharp stainless-steel tools.

Blood drained to her legs, making her swoon.

Why? she cried inside. How could her child be important to these grisly “longevity studies”? What were they looking to find in her baby boy?

Petra crossed and dropped the tray atop a workstation. Steel clanged on steel, as sharp as a gunshot.

The eyelids of the corpse popped open.

Dead pupils stared back at Amanda.

She screamed-letting all the day’s horrors crash out of her. She fell to her knees, felt something give way deep in her belly, hot fluid washed down her inner thighs.

Dr. Blake dropped beside her, cradling her under one arm. “Her water’s broke!” he called to Petra through the glass, then turned his attention back to Amanda. He patted her leg. “It won’t be long now.”

Amanda closed her eyes, knowing at last where she was.

I’m in hell.

11:45 P.M.

“She’s in heaven,” Gray said, speaking to the group gathered in the suite and to Painter back in Washington.

With the satellite phone on speaker, he stepped again to the large window that overlooked the city and beachfront. Far out, near the horizon, a glow shone against the midnight sea, like the reflection of the moon. But it wasn’t a reflection or the moon, but another celestial body.

Gray fogged the glass with his breath and drew on the window with his finger.

A five-pointed star.

“The new island of Utopia out there is in the shape of a starfish.” Gray faced the others, as Painter listened on the line. “The boy back in Somalia said that Amanda was being taken to heaven. Maybe he misinterpreted utopia, translating the name as best he could as a heavenly place. Or maybe he heard the destination of the kidnappers was shaped like a star, a piece of the heavens.”

“Or maybe you’re grasping at straws,” Kowalski said.

Seichan stood with her arms crossed, similarly unimpressed.

Gray remembered their brief intimate moment in the bathroom. In that fleeting instance, the worries of family and mission responsibilities faded. He existed in the simple purity of touch and possibility. With his mind cleared, the nagging puzzle stuck in his head broke through the muddle of his awareness. The answer burst forth fully formed, shining with the certainty of truth.

But maybe he was the only one convinced.

Even Painter put a noncommittal spin on his revelation. “It’s something I can look into. Maybe by morning-”

“We can’t wait until morning. Amanda could be moved again or harmed. We need to take advantage of the hours of darkness left to us.”

“You’re talking about putting a lot of resources to bear on a hunch,” Painter argued. “You could burn your cover, expose the fact that you know Amanda’s still alive, all for nothing.”

“I know I’m right,” Gray said.

“How can you be so sure?” Seichan said.

Gray returned to the window. “Because of the breakwater around Utopia, the same as can be seen out the window surrounding the palm islands.”

He fogged the glass again with a hard breath and filled in the rest of his map of Utopia, drawing in a crescent breakwater around the starfish-shaped island.

“A moon and a star,” Gray said, poking at the symbols.

A gasp rose from Seichan.

Kowalski swore.

Tucker shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

Gray glanced at him, remembering the man knew nothing about the Guild. “It’s the root symbol for a shadowy organization, one that’s committed acts of terrorism around the world. The director already suspected this group might be behind Amanda’s kidnapping.”

“Now you tell me,” Kowalski grumbled. “If I’d known that, I would’ve sat this one out.”

Tucker still shook his head. “The crescent and the moon. You can find that emblem on most Arab national flags. The Emirates is an Islamic country. The design of the islands might simply be representing that Muslim symbol.”

Painter agreed. “He’s right, Gray. But you’ve convinced me enough that the island is worth investigating. I’ve ordered a team to assemble an intelligence brief on the place. I already pulled a picture off the Web, photos showing the towers under construction on the main island. Impressive. Several are already occupied by businesses, with the remainder of the spaces nailed down by corporations from around the world. From what I’m seeing, security is tight around that island.”

“That’s why I wanted to head out there tonight. Go in dark.”

“No good.” It sounded like Painter was reading from a report. “They’ve got a radar-monitoring system that circles the entire island. They’ll know you’re approaching from a mile away.”

“Then we can get as close as we can and use scuba gear to-”

“I may have a better way,” Painter said, letting out a long sigh. “There’s someone in the area I can reach out to. His name came up during the initial intelligence sweep of Dubai. A deep-sea salvage operator. He’s got a pair of submersibles, possibly something we can use to ferry your team to Utopia. He’s been doing survey and engineering work on the seabed for an underwater hotel being constructed offshore.”

“Hydropolis,” Gray said, remembering the latest addition to the Dubai waterfront.

“That’s right.”

From the sound of the director’s voice, Painter was still not too keen on involving a third party, especially this person.

“Director, if you don’t trust this guy…”

“It’s not that. He can be trusted. He’s performed many high-security clearance projects for the government, even for the military.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

Again that heavy sigh. “He’s Lisa’s ex-boyfriend.”

Kowalski turned away, mumbling under his breath, “Oh, that’s not going to be awkward.”

20

July 2, 4:34 P.M. EST

Charleston, South Carolina

“And Jack’s agreed to help?” Lisa asked.

She stood by the open balcony door on the second floor of Harbourview inn, a historic building in the heart of downtown Charleston that overlooked the river and a waterfront park.

“He did,” Painter said. “Even agreed to keep this midnight mission a secret from the rest of the crew of the Deep Fathom. He’ll be taking the sub out personally.”

She closed the French doors, returning inside to the air-conditioned luxury. Her room was appointed with a four-poster bed and period pieces, and featured an exposed redbrick wall and working fireplace, a richness of accommodation to help bolster her cover.

She hadn’t thought about Jack Kirkland in some time. She had been fresh out of UCLA medical school, working under a National Science Foundation grant to study the physiological effects of deep-sea work on the human body. Jack had been the captain of an eighty-foot salvage ship, the Deep Fathom, manned by a team of scientists and treasure hunters. The two had a brief, fiery relationship that burned out as fast as it started. It was all physical, but not from lack of trying-lots of trying, multiple times a day. She smiled at the memory. Though almost a decade had passed, it felt like a lifetime ago.

What happened to that bikini-clad, bronze-legged girl?

A pang of melancholia swept through her.

Painter redirected her to the present, stoking the worries that had died down by the distraction of his call. “And Kat’s still not back?”

“No.” She checked her watch. It was almost five o’clock. She’d been back at the hotel for over two hours and expected Kat to join up with her shortly thereafter. They weren’t supposed to communicate with each other until reunited at the hotel, to keep their distance from each other.

“And you’ve not heard anything from her?” she asked.

“Not a word, but when you called an hour ago, I pinged her recording devices. The pen camera in the reception area is still operational, but offered no clue to her whereabouts. The other devices in her possession were never activated. And the remote hacking device you planted continues to transmit data. So far they’ve not found it, and we’ve been gathering reams of data.”

“Anything about Amanda?”

“I got the profiles you e-mailed, but we’ve hit a wall when searching for Amanda’s medical file-a firewall. I have a skilled engineer trying to sap a way under that digital barrier, but it’s delicate work to keep from raising alarm bells. Still, if Kat had been caught, I doubt our surveillance devices would still be operational. They’d sweep the place clean.”

“So then where is she?”

“I don’t know. The clinic doctors could be running tests, or maybe she got nabbed by in-house security for trespassing and it’s taking extra time to talk her way out. Or maybe it’s as simple as traffic. She does have to take the bus back to the city.”

Lisa let his words calm her. Due to construction delays, it had taken her an hour to wind her way across town to reach the hotel. And Kat would have to change buses twice to get here.

Maybe Painter’s right…

Still, she couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong.

“Wasn’t the original plan to rendezvous at the hotel at six o’clock?” Painter asked.

“That’s true. But why hasn’t she at least reported in to you if she’d left the clinic?”

Painter’s reply took too long. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “We’ll keep monitoring what we can. We’ll give Kat until six o’clock to break silence before we make a move.”

Lisa knew that would be an agonizingly long hour for her.

Painter spoke in her ear-not talking to her this time, but to somebody who must have stepped into his office. Though he lowered the receiver away from his face, she still heard his voice sharpen. “Send me everything,” he ordered, then returned to Lisa. “Kat activated a second pen camera. Technicians are downloading the camera’s SD card and sending the contents to my computer.”

A knock on the door drew her attention. “Someone’s at the door,” she said.

In her ear, Lisa heard a commotion over the phone-then Painter swore brightly. “Lisa, don’t answer it! Get out of there!”

Wood splintered as someone kicked the door.

Panic spiked. She twisted away.

Another kick sounded behind her.

The door crashed open.

4:46 P.M.

Kat let her hand drop away, accidentally dragging her purse off a metal table beside her gurney. The contents spilled across the floor, but she was too weak to stop it from happening. It had taken all her effort to lift her arm and groggily reach into her bag, fumble for one of the surveillance pens, and press its disguised clip to activate the camera inside.

No video would be recorded inside her purse, but audio would still be picked up. The same could be said for Kat in her current drugged state. Her vision remained a blurry pinpoint; her stomach churned queasily. But she could hear well enough to know someone came running into the small room, drawn by the clatter of her upended bag.

“Looks like she was going for her cell phone.”

A shadowy shape dropped next to her bed and began scooping up the contents of her purse, shoving them back inside. It sounded like the orderly from earlier.

The next voice supported that supposition. Judging by the frosty New England accent, it had to be Dr. Marshall, the woman who cattle-prodded Kat into convulsing submission. “Roy, I thought you said she’d be out for another ten to fifteen minutes.”

“From the dosage, her body weight, she should’ve been. I just stepped out to grab a fresh gown before stripping her for the intake exam.”

“Didn’t I warn you she was fit, robust. She’s not like the usual malnourished, strung-out subjects that land here. You should have anticipated that, Roy. She might have injured herself.”

“Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Judging by the gist of the conversation, they remained unaware of Kat’s true identity, blind to her connection to sigma. But where was she? Her head lolled around, trying to get some bearing as to her location. She innately sensed that not much time had passed. All she could tell was that they’d moved her to another room, likely within the same facility. The space looked sterile. Too many bright surfaces pained her eyes, and the air definitely had the antiseptic smell of a hospital.

Painter’s instinct had been correct about the fertility clinic. Something was wrong here. But what? Why had they drugged and kidnapped her?

“I’m not ready for her exam yet,” Dr. Marshall said. “So you might as well take her to her cell.”

Cell?

“Let her shake off the rest of the sedative,” the doctor finished. “She’ll be easier to work with if she’s not as limp as a rag doll. Besides, the sooner she learns to behave the better.”

Dr. Marshall still held her cattle prod, tapping it against the gurney, emphasizing who was the boss.

The orderly, Roy, hauled Kat onto the gurney and drew her out of the room and down a poorly lit corridor. Though there were no windows, she sensed she was underground, in a basement level.

Roy stepped to a locked door and used a key card hanging from a lanyard around his neck to open a set of swinging doors. Stepping to the head of the stretcher, he wheeled her through and into a large circular ward, painted a soothing light blue with tables scattered around and a television playing silently in the background. A set of double doors lay directly opposite, painted a warning shade of red. Likely it was locked as securely as the doors into the ward.

The orderly swung her gurney to the side. She noted the living space had bookshelves, a showering facility, and, all along the periphery, small rooms-cells-a dozen in all, each sealed by metal-framed glass doors.

A single woman stood framed in one of the doorways, behind glass, dressed in a blue smock, her hair shorn to a crew cut, her face expressing fear and sorrow. She placed a palm against her glass door, either as a sign of solidarity or to warn her off.

But there was nothing Kat could do.

At least not yet.

She leaned her head to the side and studied the red steel doors, only now noting the raised symbol spanning that exit. It was a cross, adorned with stylized representations of helical DNA. She sensed that whatever secrets were hidden at this clinic, the answers lay beyond that threshold.

But right now she had another door to worry about.

Roy reached a vacant cell-there seemed to be many-and used a master key to unlock the door and haul it open. Next, he shouldered Kat up into his arms. Dr. Marshall’s descriptive use of the term rag doll was appropriate. She couldn’t keep her feet under her; her arms felt cast in cement.

The orderly hauled her to the unmade cot in the room and tossed her on top of it. “Stay out of trouble this time.”

Kat had enough strength to watch him leave. As he shoved the door shut and wheeled away the stretcher, she spotted her purse atop the gurney. She pictured the surveillance device inside.

Dear God, let someone be listening.

5:02 P.M.

Washington, DC

“We’re still not picking up any audio or video,” a technician reported.

Another analyst called from across the room. “I’ve got security feed from Harbourview coming up over here.”

Painter pointed to the tech. “Keep monitoring all of Kat’s surveillance devices.” He stepped toward the analyst. “Show me that feed from Lisa’s hotel.”

Painter crossed sigma’s communications nest, moving the eye of a hurricane with him. He had other intelligence analysts and agents laboring across the banks of computers and monitors that formed a semicircle across the back of the room. To his left, an adjoining windowed office looked into the space.

It was Kat’s command center, her nest within the nest. A single monitor glowed in that dark space, illuminating the young face of her chief analyst, Jason Carter, who hunched over a keyboard working on a separate project.

Out here, chaos reigned as Painter sought answers to the fate of Kat and Lisa. He kept one ear fixed on the flow of information in the room while his left hand held a Bluetooth earpiece in place, awaiting any more audio from Kat’s surveillance device. A pair of wall monitors displayed the video from the two pens she planted. One showed the reception area of the North Charleston Fertility Clinic. The other was dark, receiving no video.

Painter had heard the initial conversation that was downloaded after the second pen was activated. It sounded like someone had drugged and kidnapped Kat and was now holding her prisoner.

But after that, nothing.

The feed had fallen unnervingly silent for the past twelve minutes.

At the moment, he didn’t know if Kat was still at the fertility clinic or taken somewhere else. They tried to track her disposable cell phone but ended up hitting a blank wall. Either reception was being blocked, or her phone’s battery had been stripped out.

He was ready to contact the Charleston law enforcement, have them storm the clinic, but to what end? Kat might not be there, and if she was, her captors would likely kill her before warrants could be issued. Such an effort would also lay bare sigma’s continuing investigation into Amanda and the Gant family.

That must not happen.

His mind raced through countless stratagems, while his heart pounded in his throat, fueled by yet another fear, another unknown.

Where are you, Lisa?

When he received Kat’s transmission, he’d been on the phone with his girlfriend. When he recognized that Kat was in trouble, his anxiety shifted immediately to encompass Lisa-especially when, seconds later, an analyst burst into his office to inform him that the hack into the clinic’s computers had suddenly got severed.

He got a brief warning out to Lisa-then heard the crash of a door in the background and the line went dead.

“I’ve got the hotel feed now.” The agent pointed to a monitor in front of him. A stuttering image flickered, silent, showing three assailants in a hallway, all wearing ski masks.

So they knew about the cameras.

One knocked on the door, shook his head, then another stepped back and kicked the door in. The three rushed inside, vanishing out of view. Without a camera inside the hotel room, there was no telling for sure what transpired after that.

As he watched, Painter found himself holding his breath. He had to force himself to breathe. Panic would not serve either Lisa or Kat.

After Lisa’s phone went dead, he had immediately called hotel security and reported the break-in. The head of security called back within five minutes. It had been the longest five minutes of his life.

When he finally heard back, he was relieved with the report but far from settled: We chased the intruders off, but the hotel room was empty. We found a purse and a cell phone and luggage. No occupant.

Painter watched the same scenario play out again on the screen. A two-man security detail came racing down the hall, but the three assailants dashed out, one shooting at the approaching guards, forcing them back. The three then took off, disappearing down a stairwell.

A neighboring analyst swung around in his chair. “Director, I have Harbourview security again.”

“Patch them through.” When he last spoke to the hotel, they were still searching the premises for Lisa.

His earpiece clicked, and a gruff voice could be heard shouting orders, before centering back to Painter. It was the head of security.

“I’m sorry to report, sir, that we’ve found no sign of your girlfriend anywhere in the hotel. I’ve interviewed staff and guests. No one saw any woman being manhandled off the property.”

Painter felt the smallest flicker of relief. If Lisa wasn’t in the room or spotted by the hall cameras or staff, then she must have escaped out the window.

The man on the line came to the same conclusion. “The police are on the scene, but it appears to me that she fled.”

“Thank you. If you hear anything or learn anything-”

“You’ll be the first I call.”

Painter pictured Lisa running scared through the streets-no money, no phone-doing her best to keep ahead of the hunters and not knowing whom to trust. She needed to reach a public area, get access to a phone. Then he could facilitate her rescue. He already had field operatives flying into the area. There’d be boots on the ground in Charleston within the hour.

Hopefully, by that time, he’d have more information on Kat’s whereabouts, too. Painter glanced at the technician assigned to monitoring Kat’s surveillance equipment. He got a shake of a head in return.

Still no new feed from Kat’s second camera.

With an extra moment to think, Painter paced the length of the communications nest. He began putting together the most likely scenarios. Somehow Lisa’s cover got blown after the discovery of the wireless router hidden in the head clinician’s office. And since Kat’s cameras were still functioning, her cover must still be intact.

No one connected them together yet.

It was the only silver lining in this black cloud-but he’d take it.

Still pacing, Painter turned to find his way blocked by Jason Carter. The young man was rail-thin, former navy like Kat, only twenty-two years old. According to Kat, the tow-headed kid was some sort of savant as an intelligence analyst. He also knew his way around computers. He’d been kicked out of the navy for breaking into DoD servers with nothing more than a BlackBerry and a jury-rigged iPad-or so the story went. Still, Kat had snatched him up, in the aftermath, for sigma.

Jason’s face was paler than usual. He blamed himself for accidentally alerting the clinic during his attempt to hack the last firewall, and for exposing Lisa. He was also deathly worried about Kat. The young man worshipped at her feet.

To keep the kid distracted and focused elsewhere, Painter had assigned him to finish the intelligence brief on Utopia.

“Director, there’s something you should see.” He lifted an arm toward Kat’s office.

Painter followed him and closed the door. He could still smell a whiff of jasmine in the air, a ghost of its former occupant.

Jason led him to a large computer monitor. Upon it spun a 3-D rendering of the star-shaped island of Utopia. The surface of the man-made superstructure bristled with towers, clustering up each leg, rising in height from the tip to the center, like the spines of a starfish. And in the middle rose the tallest of the spires, appearing like a molten pyramid whose tip had been stretched taffy-like into the sky to the height of five hundred feet.

“Where did you get this schematic?”

“Made it myself.”

“That was fast.”

Jason shrugged. “Before all hell broke loose, you had me already doing a search into the various corporations and businesses involved with Utopia. I just pulled the architectural schematics from each building, paired them with their GPS locations on the island, and had it all rendered in 3-D. The hard part was showing the levels of completion of each phase of the various towers. I shaded the completed projects in gray. The other, ghostlier sections denote floors or phases of construction either unfinished or still in the planning stages.”

“Impressive. Can you forward this schematic to Commander Pierce’s team?”

“No problem, sir, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.” He waved to the screen. “This was all busywork while I waited for my data to compile on the various businesses invested or renting space in Utopia. Let me show you.”

He tapped a screen and the grayscale schematic burst forth with tiny patches of color, in every imaginable hue, filling in office floors and apartment spaces. “Each color represents a different company with vested interest in Utopia,” Jason explained. “Two hundred and sixteen in all.”

Painter gaped at the view. Gray’s team faced a daunting task to hunt through that corporate maze for Amanda.

But, apparently, Jason was not done. “You also had me search business records and financial reports to discover the true owners involved.”

Painter nodded. He had assigned Jason to strip away the shell and dummy corporations, to expose the various front and holding companies, all to discover who was truly investing time and money in Utopia.

To reveal the real peas under all those fake shells.

“That took some work,” Jason said with a proud grin and hit a keystroke. “Now watch.”

On the screen’s schematic, the various dots and splashes of colors began to change, blinking through a cascade of shades, then settling and blending together-until most of the screen glowed one uniform color, a deep crimson.

“Once the shell game settled out,” Jason said, “I discovered seventy-four-point-four percent of the island is actually owned by a single parent company.”

Painter felt the cold creep of dread in his gut. He could guess the answer. “Gant Corporate enterprises.”

Jason glanced up at him, his eyes surprised. “How did you know? What does the president’s family-?”

Painter cut him off and leaned closer. “Rotate that schematic to get a bird’s-eye view of the island.”

Jason manipulated a toggle to swerve the view up and over the star-shaped island, to look down upon that crimson corporate tide. The kid whistled appreciatively.

“Amazing,” Jason exclaimed. “The pattern forms a perfect cross atop the island.”

“A Templar cross,” Painter mumbled, picturing the symbol he’d studied only days ago, the mark of the Guild.

Doubt evaporated inside him.

The Gants are the Guild.

And Gray’s team was sailing blindly toward their newest stronghold.

21

July 3, 1:20 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Dubai City, UAE

Gray led the others down a long dock that cut through the center of a massive marina. A full moon and the blaze of Dubai’s skyline turned night to day here, while jazz music tinkled across the water from an open-air nightclub. A soft breeze blew gently off the sea, cooling the warm night and smelling of ocean salt and diesel fuel.

The tiny harbor lay at the tip of the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah. They were to meet their escort at a berth in a remote section of the marina, where fewer eyes were likely to pry.

To Gray’s left, the giant trunk of the artificial palm-shaped island stretched two kilometers to shore, sparkling in the night with hotels and residences, divided by an eight-lane motorway. He hadn’t appreciated the sheer magnitude of this archipelago until here on its shores. Each engineered palm frond was a mile long, lined by villas and mansions. And to his right, across the water from the marina, stretched the seven-mile-long breakwater crescent, turned into a playground of hotels and water parks. And two more palm projects were in development, each bigger than the next; the largest would be seven times the size of Palm Jumeirah.

Another of Gray’s party was also fixated by the enormousness of everything in Dubai.

“I guess size does matter,” Kowalski said, gaping at the mega-yacht docked at the upcoming berth. It had its own helicopter tied down at the stern, and it wasn’t even the biggest boat here. “Somebody’s compensating for something, if you know what I mean.”

Seichan strode alongside him. “We all know what you mean, Kowalski-it’s why none of us have commented on those cigars you keep sucking on.”

He took out his stogie and frowned at her. “Whatcha talking about?”

She shrugged.

Tucker bent down and unclipped Kane from his leash. The shepherd, freed at last, trotted ahead, nose in the air, tail high. The dog had been confined to a leash while in Dubai, not the most dog-friendly city, but out here in the marina at this late hour, no one was around to complain.

His handler hung behind them, lost in his own thoughts.

Gray followed Kane down the dock. The number of empty berths grew as they neared the end, leaving the opulence and grandiosity of modern Dubai behind. Moonlight shone off the dark water ahead, no longer competing with the reflected dazzle of the city’s towers and playgrounds. A slight breeze took the edge off of the warm night. Looking out to sea, with stars twinkling and with the call to prayer echoing hauntingly from the shoreline, it was easy to get transported back to another time, to the medieval era of Ali Baba and lost desert kingdoms. Despite the excesses and extravagances of Dubai, the ancient world still glimmered through the cracks, a shimmering mirage of past glories.

“About time you all got here,” a voice called out of the shadows of the next berth. The only evidence of his presence was the smoldering tip of a cigar. The figure stepped into a pool of light cast by a pole lamp. He wore a pair of black Bermuda shorts, flip-flops, and an unbuttoned white shirt.

On edge, Gray searched to make sure the man was alone. Kane seemed to have no such qualms. The dog ran forward and greeted the newcomer warmly, bouncing a bit on his front legs.

“Stay down, Kane,” Tucker warned.

“I don’t mind him at all.” The man leaned over and gave the dog a vigorous rub. “Reminds me of my old dog Elvis. He was a shepherd, too. German, that is. What’s this boy?”

“Kane’s a Belgian shepherd,” Tucker said. “A Malinois.”

“Hmm. War dog, I’m guessing.”

“That’s right. Army. Retired.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what was Kane’s rank?”

“Major.”

Kowalski glanced at Tucker. “Wait? Major Kane? Your dog outranked you?”

Gray knew that wasn’t unusual. A military dog always ranked one level higher than its handler, so any abuse was a court-martial offense. Not that Tucker would ever harm his partner.

Straightening, the man thrust a hand toward Gray. “Jack. Jack Kirkland.”

Introductions followed all around.

Their escort stood over six feet, with salt-and-pepper hair. From the scarring down one side of his body, he’d seen some action in the past. The man also carried his rugged, ageless masculinity with a boyish grace-even Seichan was struck by it.

Gray had never seen her so enthralled. He heard her giggle at something the man said. Seichan never giggled. It slightly pissed him off. A reaction that caught him by surprise. In a matter of minutes, the man had charmed everyone on his team.

Or almost everyone.

Kowalski shook his hand. “What’re you smoking?”

Jack glanced at the cigar balanced in his fingers. “Cuban. El Presidente.”

“Oh, man…” Kowalski stared at his own stogie, disappointed.

“I’ve got a whole case aboard the Ghost.” Jack nodded his chin in the direction of the dark berth. “I’m sure I wouldn’t miss one if it happened to grow legs and walk away.”

Jack headed off in that direction.

Kowalski stayed put. “That guy really gets me.”

Gray shook his head.

Okay, now I’ve lost everyone.

Seichan sidled up to Gray, brushing his shoulder and leaning closer. “Wow.”

That one word pretty much summarized the man.

Gray sighed and followed Jack toward the berth. No wonder Painter was so hesitant to drag this guy back into his life. If I were Painter, I wouldn’t want Jack within a thousand nautical miles of Lisa.

At least, the man was wearing a wedding ring.

“Here she is,” Jack said, stopping ahead. “My new pride and joy. The Ghost.”

Gray didn’t see anything moored in the neighboring berth.

Jack leaped from the dock, as if to plunge into the water, but he landed on a firm surface. Only then did Gray appreciate the docked vessel as it rocked under the man’s weight. Even still, it was hard to discern its presence against the dark water.

The submersible’s bulk remained below the waterline. Only a conning-tower-like hatch protruded above the surface and a fraction of its upper deck. What made it so hard to discern, what made it blend so well with the water, was that it appeared to be sculpted out of glass.

Jack tapped his toe against the clear surface. “Her shell’s made out of a new borosilicate polymer, strong as steel yet with a low refractive index, perfect for underwater viewing. And the deeper you go, the harder the glass becomes. Up to a point, of course. I’m not planning on testing that limit today.”

“I see why you call it the Ghost,” Seichan said.

“She’s my new love-comes with all the bells and whistles a guy could want.” He ticked them off proudly. “The latest sonar and communications equipment, fly-by-wire joystick, electronic buoyancy controls, expanded air supply. But what really gets me purring is her sexy curves. I designed her after the old X-1 mini-submarines. Sleek, fast, and seductive.”

Kowalski snorted at the hyperbole. “Do you need a moment alone with her?”

“Do you still want that cigar?” Jack countered.

Kowalski hung his head a bit. “Sorry, I should know better than to insult another guy’s girl. She’s sexy. Very, very sexy.”

“That’s more like it,” Jack encouraged with a huge, bawdy grin. “C’mon aboard. Let’s get you all settled. We have a bit of a jaunt to reach Utopia, but then again, whoever said getting into heaven was easy?”

Ignoring the man’s joviality, Gray stared toward the horizon, unable to shed his dark mood, knowing Amanda was not having this much fun.

1:30 A.M.

The next contraction wracked her body.

Amanda sobbed, tears streaming down her heated face. Waves of nausea swept through her. Sweat soaked her gown to her skin. The worst of the pain was dulled by the miniepidural they’d given her, but not all of it.

“Dilated eight centimeters,” Petra reported from between her legs.

“Right on schedule.” Dr. Blake stood at her bedside, evaluating a labor monitor. “That was a good contraction. But I’m pushing another bolus of pit.”

Pit was slang for pitocin, a labor-inducing drug.

He injected the medicine into her IV line, then turned his attention to Amanda. He took her hand, which was strapped in place to the bed, and gave her fingers a squeeze.

“Would you like some more ice chips?”

Fury cut through her. She dug her nails into the tender flesh of his wrist. “Fuck you,” she spat at him. She never swore, but it felt good to do so now. “You goddamned monster.”

“I’ll get you some ice chips,” he said, unfazed by her outburst. He gently but firmly freed his arm, then patted her hand. “Everything’s going well. You’re doing great.”

Other medical staff worked at the periphery, monitoring vitals, trading out dirty linens that she’d soiled, dragging in equipment. A pair off to the side were preparing a radiant warming crib in anticipation of the newborn’s arrival.

Blake returned with a tiny paper cup full of crushed ice chips. He lifted it to her lips. But she turned her head away, refusing to cooperate in even this small measure.

She willed her body to resist, too.

I won’t let them have my boy.

But nature-fueled by strong drugs-could not be stopped. Minutes later, pressure again rose inside her abdomen, a storm front rising from deep inside her, as relentless as the tide. She squeezed her eyes shut, knowing what was coming.

No… please, no…

Her plea fell to ashes. The next contraction tore through her. She screamed-not so much in pain as knowing she was losing this last battle.

“Push!” Blake said, but he sounded far away.

She fought against it, but her body was no longer her own, transforming into a primitive machine, one forged in the evolutionary furnace of survival. Willing or not, all her flesh drove toward one function: to procreate, to move her genes forward into the future. She had no will but to obey.

Abdominal muscles contracted in a crushing heave.

Tissue ripped.

Blood flowed.

Pain became purpose.

“The baby’s crowning!” Petra called out, her voice ringing in triumph.

Lost deep in the violence of birth, Amanda cried out to the world, surrendering to the inevitable, driven now by the most basic of all maternal needs.

Someone save my baby.

1:44 A.M .

Seated inside the Ghost, Gray swiveled his chair to face the curved glass wall of the submersible. A pool of light cast by the sub’s headlamps illuminated the dark waters around the vessel as it coasted away from Palm Jumeirah. The sandy seabed flowed a few feet below his toes.

The effect was unnerving. The clear borosilicate shell allowed a full spherical view of the surrounding waters. Like floating in an air bubble, he thought, which wasn’t far from the truth.

The Ghost was little more than a tapered glass cylinder strapped into a hydrogen-cell-battery propulsion drive. Ancillary electrical, mechanical, and engineering systems acted as an exoskeleton around the living quarters.

Curious denizens, drawn by their light, would dart up, stare googly-eyed at the strange sight, then flash back into the blackness.

He could imagine what they saw.

The vessel reminded him of the neon tetras he once raised as a kid. He’d lie on his bed for hours, staring as the tiny fishes darted back and forth inside his aquarium. Tetras were best known for their iridescent blue and red racing stripes, but Gray had always been fascinated by their translucent skin. Their spine, ribs, even their quivering tiny hearts were exposed for the world to see. At the moment, he felt similarly naked, like he’d been swallowed up by a giant version of a glassy tetra.

Still, he had to admit the panorama was stunning.

One passenger was not as impressed.

“This is so wrong,” Kowalski said. He was seated across from Gray; the big man had one palm against the glass window, another on the ceiling. He stared between his legs. “How long is this going to take? What if we run out of air?”

Gray recognized the space was cramped, especially for someone of Kowalski’s bulk. Jack piloted the craft from a single seat up in the nose. The four chairs in back left little room to maneuver. Even Kane had to balance on Tucker’s lap, panting at the view, ears high, trembling all over.

Seichan sat behind Kowalski and reached a reassuring hand to touch his shoulder. “Calm down. We’ve got plenty of air.” She patted his back. “I’d be more worried about us springing a leak.”

Kowalski swiveled in his seat, searching around the cabin with wide eyes.

Gray gave her a scolding look. All they needed was a panicked bull in their midst.

“How much farther?” Kowalski moaned.

The answer came from up front. “We have to cross the entire World to reach your destination.”

Jack tapped a button on a touch-screen interface. A heads-up display appeared above his controls, glowing against the window. It depicted a map of the surface, showing hundreds of tiny islands forming silhouettes of the seven continents.

Gray recognized it as another of Dubai’s projects. The World was one of the city’s latest endeavors: three hundred mini-islands off the coast, each offered for sale to private buyers. But financial concerns and problems with sand erosion threatened the development. The islands remained mostly deserted, with the sea reclaiming some.

On the display, a red blip marked their progress as they navigated through this man-made archipelago.

Beyond the window, a dark hummock of one of the tiny islands loomed. As they circled past it, a large ray, disturbed by their passage, shook out of the sand and sailed away from the light and back into the gloom. Other sea life appeared, growing more abundant as they glided through the shallows and wound past the small isles: hermit crabs scuttled along the sandy floor, pink anemone and green sea grass waved, a lone barracuda torpedoed past them, and schools of fish flashed and swirled in shimmering silvers and dazzling colors.

Tucker suddenly swore. Kane barked.

Gray turned to see a shoal of hammerhead sharks come lancing out of the darkness and shoot past overhead. They all inadvertently ducked. There was no real threat, but it was a sobering reminder of the dangers ahead.

After a few more silent minutes, they left the World behind.

The deeper seas beckoned.

The Ghost sailed out into the blackness, slowly sinking into the depths as the coastal shelf fell away. As they dove, the watery glow of the moon died overhead. The only lights now were their own.

And even that had to end.

“Going dark,” Jack warned. “You’ll find your goggles under your chairs.”

Before Gray could find his, all the exterior lamps clicked off. Blackness crushed around them. Kowalski gasped. The small lights from the control console were the only illumination inside the submersible, and even those went dim.

Gray’s fingers discovered the strap for his night-vision headgear and tugged them free. He pulled the goggles over his head and settled them in place. The world beyond the sub reappeared again, lit now by the infrared LED emitters along the nose of the vessel. The goggles were able to perceive this spectrum of light, turning the world into a grayscale shadow of its former brightness.

“Don’t want to ride up to Utopia with our lights blazing,” Jack said. “Even with the sub submerged, someone might see us coming. Luckily, we don’t need lights. I incorporated this naval IR system to accommodate for night dives. Makes for less of a rude intrusion into the dark world of our deep-sea denizens.”

Or when you need stealth, like now.

The plan was to sneak under the island’s security net. The surface radar defense system was meant to discourage pirate ships, like those in Somalia, from reaching the island’s coast undetected. Additionally, armed security guards watched the docks and shorelines, and a small fleet of jet boats patrolled the waters around the island.

Painter and Jack had already worked out an alternate entry point-but first they had to reach it.

The Ghost traveled another twenty minutes, soaring swiftly with the quiet burble of its engines. Jack worked his pedals and joystick to glide them along the seabed, riding over teeming reefs and across stretches of open sand.

Positioned ten miles from shore, Utopia had been built in waters eighty meters deep. It was an engineering marvel, the first deep-sea artificial island. The heads-up display continued to track their path away from the coast, mapping a bird’s-eye view of their passage. At the top of the screen, the tip of one leg of the star-shaped island poked into view and slowly stretched downward as the Ghost closed in on its destination. More of the island appeared, revealing its unique shape.

But its shape was the least unique feature of the island.

As they neared the tip of one corner of the star, a massive concrete pylon appeared out of the darkness, twenty yards wide. A forest of such towers lay farther ahead. This was the secret behind the engineering of Utopia.

It wasn’t so much an island as a massive fixed platform with a landmass sitting on top of it.

Gray had read the history of Utopia. Its engineering was not new or groundbreaking, but based on technologies developed many years ago, patterned after the Hibernia oil platform constructed off the coast of Newfoundland in 1997. The same engineers and construction company had been hired as consultants for this Dubai development.

In many ways, Utopia was an easier project. The Hibernia platform had been built in deeper waters and constructed in seas prone to rogue waves, Atlantic winter storms, and floating icebergs. The waters here were calmer, and the environmental threats less severe. On top of that, this location had been chosen for Utopia because of a natural coastal ridge. The outcropping had been reinforced and built up with boulders and compacted sand to form a protective crescent, stretching four miles wide.

Within those sheltering arms, Utopia was slowly constructed. Like Hibernia and other oil platforms, the island was basically a gravity-based structure, meaning the more weight on top, the more stable and secure it became. So, while Hibernia was taller, Utopia was wider, the equivalent of twenty such platforms connected in a honeycomb cluster to form a star-shaped base. Atop this massive foundation, whose upper surface lay submerged to the depth of five meters, the same engineering techniques that built Palm Jumeirah were employed here: laying down a thick base of massive boulders on top of the platform, then flooding and covering it with dredged sand and compacting it all to the hardness of concrete.

And within five years, a new island had risen out of the sea.

“Now comes the tricky part,” Jack said.

He guided the Ghost into that Brobdingnagian forest of massive steel-reinforced concrete pylons that supported the island. The columns rose from the seabed, set amid piles of boulders and mountains of ballast. He slowed their pace to a crawl.

Gray craned his neck, staring up through the clear roof. In the distance, he could make out the bottom of the foundation platform. He imagined the crushing weight overhead, pictured the stack of corporate towers topside.

Kowalski groaned.

This time, Seichan didn’t tease him.

The sub suddenly rolled, heaving to one side.

Jack swore, fought his controls, and righted them. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Currents are tricky under here. In fact, one of the auxiliary power sources for the island is a series of tidal turbines, driven by the daily ebb and flow of the ocean. That same flow makes maneuvering through here a thorny bitch.”

They continued on for five more excruciatingly long minutes. The star-shaped island was two miles wide, but they only had to delve a quarter of that distance under its bulk. Still, that journey was nerve-wracking enough.

“Sonar says we’re here.” Jack pointed up.

Everyone searched in that direction. Far overhead, a tiny star shone in the darkness. Jack aimed for it, spiraling around one of the columns as he headed up.

As they rose, the star grew larger and brighter, revealing itself at last to be a crack in the foundation platform. A handful of such breaks had been engineered into the project, serving as pressure-relieving points. In turn, the city planners had taken advantage of those construction necessities and turned them into various urban design features.

“I’m turning off the IR emitters,” Jack said. “You can take off your goggles. You should have plenty of ambient light to see.”

Gray pulled his night-vision headgear off. The black-and-white world brightened into shades of aquamarine. The pool of light overhead bathed them in its glow.

Jack set the sub to hovering in one spot. He dumped ballast to adjust their buoyancy, and the Ghost floated smoothly upward, rising through the crack in the foundation platform, a six-meter-thick wafer of concrete and steel. Once through, those industrial walls tilted back, sloping into sandy beaches.

The sub slowed its ascent and glided forward until sand once again swirled a few feet under Gray’s boots. Jack studied a small monitor on his control console. Spying over his shoulder, Gray caught a glimpse of the world topside as Jack employed a digital periscope.

“Looks clear,” the pilot concluded.

The burble of the engines faded to nothing-then a few seconds later, the sub’s nose gently ground into the beach.

“That’s as far as I go,” Jack said, twisting around. “The top hatch is poking a couple of inches out of the water. You should be able to reach the shore without getting more than your boots wet.”

That proved not to be the case. By the time Gray reached solid ground, he was soaked from the knees down. Seichan fared no better. Tucker disembarked last, assisted by Kowalski. The pair worked together to get Kane out of the sub.

Gray had his team assemble beneath a grove of palms planted at the edge of the dark pond. It was hard to believe what lay hidden beneath that placid surface: an industrial hell of pylons, boulders, and ballast. It stood in stark contrast to the world above.

Kowalski joined them. His gaze swept the landscape surrounding the pond, his face shining with awe.

Gently rolling hills spread outward, covered in manicured lawns and dotted by other stands of palm trees. Beyond the parklands, towers and spires rose, forming a palisade of glass and steel. Some of the buildings were dark, girdled by cranes, under various phases of construction. Others thrust brilliantly into the sky, windows aglow, their exteriors flooded by lamps, amply demonstrating signs of life and occupation.

Closer at hand, the rolling park was broken by patches of close-cropped greens, feathered with numbered flags. Elsewhere, silvery patches marked moonlit sand traps.

“We beached in a friggin’ golf course,” Kowalski said with a shake of his head. “You gotta hand it to the Arabs for working with what they got.”

True enough.

Gray returned to the pond, which served the island in multiple ways: as a landscape element, as a water hazard, and as a structural-design feature.

Jack remained aboard the Ghost, leaning half out of the hatch. He pointed a thumb toward the middle of the pond. “I’ll be hovering just under the surface, but I’ll keep a watch for you with my scope. If you can’t make it back here, you’ve got my signaling device. Set it off and I’ll find you.”

“Thanks.” Gray patted his shirt pocket, indicating he had it.

Jack hesitated before ducking away. His expression turned a touch embarrassed, like he wanted to ask something but held back.

“What is it?” Gray asked.

Jack sighed. “Maybe it’s not my place… but how’s Lisa doing?”

Gray had already spoken with Painter back in Dubai, so he knew the dire situation with Lisa and Kat. Worry for his friends remained a knot in his gut. But that wasn’t what Jack was inquiring about. Gray read the real question in his eyes.

Is she happy with her life?

Gray answered that question as honestly as he could, but in regards to what Jack had asked directly-how’s Lisa doing?-he thought it best to lie.

“She’s doing great.”

22

July 2, 5:46 P.M. EST

Charleston, South Carolina

Get somewhere safe… off the street, but stay in public.

The instructions rang in Lisa’s head. Agony lanced up her leg with every step down East Bay Street. She tried her best to hide her limp, baking under the late-afternoon sun.

When Painter had shouted his warning over the phone to get out of her hotel room, she’d not hesitated. She ran four miles every morning, did yoga most nights, and her brother, who climbed mountains for a living, had taught her a few mad skills.

Panicked, and needing her hands free, she had dropped her cell phone, twisted away from the door, and dashed to the balcony. She heard the splintering crash as the door burst open behind her-but she was already moving through the French doors and vaulting over the wrought iron. She caught one hand on the railing and swung around. With her legs dangling free, she lowered herself hand-over-hand down the second-story balcony ironwork. Once at the bottom, she let go and dropped the rest of the way to the sidewalk.

Even wearing sensible shoes, she landed hard enough to jam her left ankle. A glance up showed a masked assailant staring down at her. He raised a pistol, but she dashed forward under the balcony, out of the line of fire. Shouting erupted above-then gun blasts.

She ran.

There had been no plan, except to put distance between her and the hotel. She had a choice of fleeing out into the neighboring waterfront park or into the narrow maze of historic homes with their quaint porches, filigree woodwork, and colorful gardens. She chose the latter, not trusting the open spaces of the park. Plus, tourists and locals crowded the streets, shops, and coffeehouses of the area. She instinctively knew to keep to public spaces.

It took her another twenty minutes to calm her heart, to let the adrenaline seep from her brain enough for her to think. Still, she kept peering behind her-not that she knew whose faces to be watching for or how many were searching for her. Anyone could be a threat. With no money, no phone, she didn’t know anyone in the strange city to trust. So she reached out to the one person who could help.

She borrowed a phone from a patron seated in a patio coffeehouse and called Painter. She couldn’t say who was more relieved to hear the other’s voice, but Painter stayed stern, authoritative. He ordered her to get off the street, out of direct sight, fearing her attackers might be closing a net around the district and looking for her.

But stay in public…

That meant she needed an indoor space: a bar, a restaurant, a hotel lobby.

A commotion drew her attention down a cobbled-brick alleyway off the main thoroughfare. A clutch of women in handsome gowns and men in tuxedos gathered a short distance away, laughing and hugging their hellos. It appeared a wedding reception or engagement party was under way at a restaurant back there, and from the richness of the attire, from the haughty edge to their genteel Carolina accents, the event had the air of old money.

Perfect.

She hid her limp, touched her hair to assure herself she was presentable for a restaurant of this caliber. She hoped the affair was in a private room and that she could still get a seat in the main dining room or bar.

A small gas lantern flickered above the sign.

MCCRADY’S.

Reaching the restaurant, she excused herself as she slipped through the partygoers-as she hoped, they were all filing upstairs to a private room. She stepped up to the host’s station.

“Excuse me. I’m afraid I don’t have a reservation. But I was hoping I could still get a table.”

The host, a slender man with a soft manner, smiled. “That shouldn’t be a problem this early in the evening. If you’ll give me a moment.”

Lisa stepped away, but she remained standing. She was afraid if she sat down, she’d never get back up again. Her leg throbbed all the way to her knee. To distract herself, she read a small sign about the restaurant, how the building dated back to 1788. Over the centuries, it had served as a warehouse, a tavern, and even a brothel. It stated that George Washington had once attended a grand dinner party here-hopefully not when it was a brothel.

Still, with such a pedigree, it was no wonder the upper crust of Charleston chose this place for special events. Laughter and music echoed down from above.

Another few stragglers of the party pushed into the lobby. From the amount of lace and piles of coiffed white hair, they were clearly a few of the grandes dames of Charleston high society.

“If you’ll follow me,” the host said to Lisa, drawing her attention away, “your table is ready.”

One of the older women glanced in her direction, eyeing her from the lofty height of her class position-then leaned to another and whispered. Other eyes stared toward her, judging her.

Suddenly self-conscious, Lisa smoothed a hand down her St. John dress and stepped away from them, joining the host.

He leaned conspiratorially toward her. “It’s cotillion season. They’re having a small debutante ball upstairs.”

Lisa glanced up, picturing a party of chiffon and diamonds, the official debut of a young woman to her high-society peers. Balls like this functioned in the past as an antiquated dating service, to present an eligible daughter to available bachelors within a select upper circle.

Basically, a high-society livestock show.

“It’s a very exclusive affair,” the host said as he led her to the table. He raised one eyebrow toward her. “Some grandniece or second cousin of the president.”

Lisa felt better. Surely, no one would dare intrude here. Crossing into the main dining room, she did her best not to hobble. Still, something must have shone in her face, maybe the sheen of her skin, something in her eye.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” the host asked as they reached the table, pulling a chair for her.

“I’m fine.” She offered him a smile, but it felt stiff on her face. “Just a long day of shopping.”

“Of course,” he said graciously, but his gaze flicked around her a bit, likely noticing her lack of a purse. “Were you expecting someone else?”

She checked her watch. Hopefully so. Painter had told her to find a spot and call him. He had a security detail already headed downtown to extract her. She picked up the menu-hopefully they’d also square her bill. She needed something stiff in a tall glass, no ice.

“I believe my party is running late,” Lisa said. “And I’m afraid I’ve forgotten my cell. Is there a house phone I might use?”

“I’d be happy to bring you one.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

She sat back, soaking in the quiet chatter of the early dinner crowd. The restaurant had a colonial charm with its wood-beamed ceiling, oiled plank flooring, exposed brick walls, and a fireplace tall enough to climb into without ducking.

The host returned with a cell phone. She passed on a drink order to her waiter-a single malt whiskey. “The Macallan, please. The sixty-year-old.”

Expensive, but as a doctor, she prescribed it for herself anyway.

And this is definitely going on Sigma’s tab.

She dialed Painter’s secure line-not only to inform him about where she had holed up; she was also anxious to hear any news about Kat.

The connection clicked through. “Where are you?” he immediately asked.

She told him, including the address.

Painter sighed in relief. “The team is fifteen minutes out. Stay put.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The waiter arrived with her drink. The whiskey trembled in the crystal as she held it. She took a sip to steady herself, letting the aged liquor evaporate along her tongue, heating all the way down.

“I’m safe here,” she said, attempting to reassure both Painter and herself. “I’ve got a drink, and I’m surrounded by people. The elite of Charleston.” She heard the tinkle of music flowing from the cotillion upstairs. “In fact, there’s a party going on here. Some distant relatives of President Gant. Then again, you probably can’t turn a stone over here in Charleston without finding someone related to that family.”

Painter’s next words came too fast, choking a bit. “Did any of them recognize you?”

An amused snort of disbelief escaped her. “Of course not. Why would anyone in the president’s family-?”

“Are you sure?”

The panic frosting his voice passed to her. She stared up toward the wood beams, hearing the thump of music, the trickle of laughter. She remembered the grande dame’s eyes glancing her way, the sudden whispers.

“Painter, what’s this about?”

“I want you to get out of there-right now.”

Lisa stared at the expensive drink in her hand. “I don’t have any way to pay. If I bolt now, I’ll cause a commotion, draw more attention to myself.”

And she wasn’t sure she could bolt, not with her ankle. Now that she’d been sitting a few minutes, even shifting her left leg sent shooting stabs of pain all the way to her hip.

She lowered her voice. “What aren’t you telling me? I can barely walk… I need to know what I’m facing.”

A short silence stretched. She imagined Painter rubbing a finger along that line between his brows, debating how much to say or calculating his next step. Over the years, that crease had gotten deeper as he sat in the director’s office-and all that rubbing wasn’t going to make it go away.

“Tell me,” she said, tired of all the half-truths and secrets.

He finally spoke, talking fast. “I haven’t told anyone this. Not Kat, not Gray, not anyone at sigma. Not even you. It was just a dangerous suspicion before, but a few minutes ago, I got what I believe to be substantial verification.”

“About what?”

“About the Guild.”

Lisa went cold. She knew Painter had been concerned that Amanda’s plight could be tied to that deadly cartel. Did he have proof now?

Painter spoke his next words carefully, as if testing them aloud for the first time. “I know who is running the Guild.”

“Who?”

“It’s the president’s family.”

The shock took an extra moment to break through her. Surely Painter was joking. Her mind struggled to put all of the pieces together in her head, trying to comprehend how that could be true. She came to only one conclusion.

“That’s impossible,” Lisa said, her voice faint.

“That’s why I didn’t tell anyone-not until I knew the truth. I’ll explain more once you’re back in DC.” His next words hardened with warning. “But, Lisa, now you understand. I need you out of there, as silently as you can.”

Despite her fear, she fought against a stab of anger at him for keeping this secret from her-and not just from her. “What about Kat?”

“Don’t worry about her… just get out of that restaurant.”

Promising to do just that, she snapped the cell phone closed. She looked up toward the ceiling, still struggling to believe. She had to trust Painter was right. Readying herself, she downed the rest of the whiskey in a single gulp-a waste of such a fine single malt, but she needed the fortification.

She pushed gingerly back to her feet. One hand clasped to the back of her chair. There was no hiding her limp any longer. She hobbled back to the host’s station.

“Ma’am, are you sure you’re okay?”

No. Not in the slightest.

“I’m fine,” she lied and lifted the house phone. “Reception’s bad in there. Is it okay if I step outside to finish my call?”

“Of course. Let me help you.”

“No need.” She hurried toward the door and back out onto the street. She took a few steps, but the uneven cobbles proved too challenging. Her hobble became a fall.

A man lunged to her aid, his arms caught her.

“Thank you…” she began to mumble-then stared up into the face of Dr. Paul Cranston, the head of North Charleston Fertility Clinic.

A gun pressed into her side.

Another two men came up behind her.

The doctor smiled. “Ah, Dr. Cummings, it’s high time we finished our previous conversation.”

He motioned to the others. Strong fingers clamped on to her upper arms, hard enough to cause bruising-but a little manhandling was the least of her worries.

She glanced back up to the bright lights of the second-story window, heard a piano playing.

Cranston made a scolding noise. “I can guess what you’re thinking, but fear not, you’re not that unlucky. That side of the family knows nothing important, except how to spend money and sniff their noses at common folk. No, we’ve been following you since the hotel. I had men positioned outside when you made such a bold escape.”

Lisa stared back at him.

“We hoped you’d lead us to whomever you’re working with,” Cranston said and pulled a pen from his pocket.

It was Kat’s surveillance device. They must have found it in the lobby, but clearly they still didn’t know who left it.

“A shame,” he said and led her away. “Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way. But difficult or not, we’ll find your partner.”

6:16 P.M.

The buzzing shears rode past Kat’s left ear. Long locks of auburn hair tumbled down, falling past her shoulder and sliding to the floor to join the mound of hair already piled around the chair.

Still cotton-mouthed from the sedative, Kat sat on the seat in the center of the circular ward, with only a sheer hospital gown between her and the cold metal. With her wrists cuffed behind her back, she had to tolerate the humiliation-and that was surely the goal here, to break her down.

The other prisoner-a doe-eyed young woman in her midtwenties-watched from behind the glass door of her cell, offering her silent support. She and Kat were the only ones here. The rest of the cells appeared empty. The facility was clearly running low on raw material.

Kat remembered Dr. Marshall mentioning something about a lodge.

They’re demanding more research subjects.

Clearly, that was one of the purposes of this place, to supply human guinea pigs for various projects, collecting women who had no past, no families, who could easily vanish. And likely this was not the only such facility in the world. She imagined there were many other collection sites hidden around the globe.

But to what end? What was going on here?

From the corner of her eye, Kat studied the red steel doors and the embossed genetic cross.

Something important was happening at this particular clinic.

And she knew any answers lay hidden behind those doors.

Earlier, Kat had been forced to strip naked in her cell while Dr. Marshall performed a thorough physical, assisted by the orderly, Roy. Afterward, Marshall had vanished with a tray of vacuum tubes full of Kat’s blood.

Kat’s fingers curled into tight fists as Roy sheared the last of her hair away. They might have taken her clothes and most of her dignity, but she bided her time to win it back.

“All done,” Roy said, running a palm along the stubble of her scalp, raising a slimy chill over her entire body. “Always like it when you’re freshly shaved.”

Kat whipped her head away. “Go to hell.”

“Feisty,” he said with a laugh, glancing toward the locked door, likely looking for Dr. Marshall.

Clearly, the man spent most of his day being browbeaten and ordered around by the female clinician. He seemed to take pleasure in taking out his frustration on those left to his tender care.

His hand reached to the weapon attached to his belt. It wasn’t an electric cattle prod like Dr. Marshall’s means of punishment, simply an extendable baton. He’d used it on Kat once already, smacking her across her calves when she was too slow in getting undressed.

Her skin still stung.

Kat had noticed welts on the other inmate’s arms and legs.

Bastard.

Roy snapped his baton off his belt and, with an expert flip of his wrist, extended the weapon to its full length, likely compensating for shortcomings elsewhere.

“There’s not going to be any trouble, is there?” Roy sneered in her ear.

She gritted her teeth and hung her head.

“That’s more like it.” He rested the baton on her shoulder as he leaned down and undid her cuffs. “Stand up. Keep your hands behind you.”

She obeyed, her head spinning slightly from the aftereffects of the drugs. Cold air blew through the slitted back of her hospital gown as she turned to face Roy. She kept her hands behind her.

Roy reached the tip of his baton under her chin, forcing her head up. “That’s more-”

Kat whipped her arm around and grabbed the baton, yanking it toward her. Roy, caught off guard, got pulled closer. She swung her other arm wide, silver flashing in her fist. She drove the knife into his throat, below the larynx, severing the trachea.

Roy’s eyes stared at her, stunned, gurgling, unable to scream-but she understood his silent question.

How?

She answered him in a hiss. “Because this cat has claws.”

Kat twisted the combat dagger hard. Blood sprayed a full yard across the spotless vinyl floor. In seconds, he bled out, and she let his body tumble to the floor.

She wiped the blade on his clothes and folded it closed. When Roy had first tossed her into the cell, waiting for the sedatives to wear off before stripping her and taking away her clothes, she had fought through the fog, freed her left shoe, and removed the folded combat dagger concealed in the sole. She left the lock pick hidden in her right shoe; unfortunately, her cell door did not offer access to the keyhole outside. As she put her shoe back on, she hid the blade under a fold of the blanket.

Later, when they had stripped her, examined her, and poked her full of needles, she waited until she had a moment alone, while putting on her hospital gown. Through the opening in the back, she slipped the folded dagger between her buttocks and held it clamped there-not the most seemly way to conceal a weapon, but sometimes a lady has to do what a lady has to do.

Then she had to wait for a time to get Roy alone.

She knew she would have only the one chance.

Taking advantage of the moment, Kat worked fast and stripped Roy of his keys, electronic pass card, and baton. She rushed to the other cell and unlocked it.

The young woman came staggering out, staring at the ruin of Roy’s body. “Thank you… my name’s Amy.”

“C’mon,” Kat said, encouraging her.

She hurried across the ward toward the pile of her clothes and quickly pulled on her shorts, blouse, and shoes. She pocketed her dagger and handed the baton to Amy.

Amy squeezed the weapon in her fingers and glanced toward the exit. “There are armed guards down the hall. I don’t know how we’ll get past them.” She noticed Kat staring at the red steel doors on the other side of the ward. “They… they took my sister through there two weeks ago.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Kat said.

She wasn’t leaving without finding out what was going on here.

Amy remained at Kat’s side, looking ready to follow her lead.

“Grab the key card,” Kat ordered. “We’re going to find out what happened to your sister.”

Amy gave a sharp nod of acknowledgment.

Kat used the moment to grab her purse, which had been set aside with the rest of her clothes. She snapped it open and pulled out the surveillance pen she’d activated earlier. She tucked it into her blouse pocket with the camera end poking out.

If I don’t make it, I want some record of all of this.

Together, they sprinted to the other side of the ward. As they reached the doors, Kat took the keycard from Amy and passed it over the electronic reader. A heavy shift of gears rumbled. A red light blinked brightly overhead, likely wired to an alarm at that guard station outside. As secure as this place was, someone knew this vault was opening.

How long until they came to investigate?

Before her, the heavy doors parted wider, accompanied by a soft sigh of pressurized air.

Kat stared inside-as Amy began screaming.

6:18 P.M.

Washington, DC

“Interview everyone at that damned restaurant.”

Painter paced the communications nest at Sigma headquarters, holding his earpiece in place as he directed the security detail in Charleston in the search for Lisa. The team had finally arrived on-site.

He turned next to one of the analysts seated at a console. “How long on getting that feed from the local street cameras?”

“Five or ten minutes.”

He turned his back in frustration.

Lisa, where did you go?

After ordering her to leave the restaurant, he had expected a return call within minutes, alerting him to her location so his security team could sweep her up. But as time stretched with no word, panic had set in.

“Director,” another technician said, pointing to a dark monitor. “I still can’t get anything more from Captain Bryant’s pen camera. The one planted in the clinic’s reception area. Either it’s been discovered or the battery has drained.”

Painter nodded, acknowledging the information. He spoke to the head of the security team. “Split off two men. Send them to the fertility clinic. I want a full report on the status there.”

“Yes, sir. Also, we finished questioning the restaurant staff. They confirmed a woman matching Dr. Cummings’s description had arrived. She ordered a drink-then suddenly, with no provocation, fled the building. The host saw her talking to three men outside, said she left with them. According to his statement, she informed him that she had been expecting guests.”

Painter closed his eyes. Lisa had been expecting his team.

It made no sense.

“Widen the search grid,” Painter said. “See if anyone saw where they went.”

“Yes, sir.”

Blood pressure pounded in his ears-but he still heard the deep bass of the voice at the door.

“Director Crowe… a word.”

He turned to find his boss, the head of DARPA, General Metcalf, standing at the threshold. The man wore the same suit as this morning, still looking fresh and expertly creased. The same could not be said of the general’s face. He looked worn, his eyes red, his jowls sagging.

“Sir?”

“We need to talk.”

That statement never ended well. Underscoring the seriousness, Metcalf rarely stepped into Sigma headquarters. He preferred e-mail, faxes, and conference calls. His presence here did not bode well.

Painter clenched and unclenched a fist. He didn’t have time for interruptions, but he had no choice. “We can use Captain Bryant’s office.”

He led Metcalf to the windowed space off the communications nest and chased Jason Carter out of Kat’s chair. The young analyst was continuing to work on a private project for Painter.

“Give us a few minutes,” Painter told the kid. Once alone, he faced Metcalf. “What’s this about?”

“I’ve been in meetings with the secretary of defense and the joint chiefs. The president made a brief appearance.”

Painter heard the drums of war beating in time with his heart. “And?” he asked, sensing what was coming.

“We’re shutting Sigma down.”

Painter shook his head, not in insubordination, just disbelief. He expected a strong negative reaction from the commander in chief, but not this, and certainly not this soon.

“When?” he asked.

Metcalf wore an expression of regret, but his voice never wavered. “You’re to cease all operations immediately.”

Painter felt sucker-punched. “Sir, I’ve got agents in the field, many in dangerous situations.”

“Call them back. Turn any of those situations over to local authorities or up the military chain of command.”

“And if I refuse… if any agents resist…?”

“Any further actions will be considered unsanctioned, disavowed, and criminal charges may be pressed, depending on a case-by-case inquiry.”

Painter took a deep breath and stared at the men and women working furiously in the nest beyond the window. From the corner of his eye, he noted the project Jason had been working on-the genealogical map of the Gant family spun slowly there, a spiraling galaxy of power, as cold and relentless as any celestial movement.

Painter knew the truth in that moment.

The Guild had won.

“Shut it down,” Metcalf ordered. “Pull everyone out of the field.”

23

July 3, 2:18 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the coast of Dubai

Gray crouched with his team at the edge of the dark golf course, hidden in the shadow of its clubhouse. The moon had set while they crossed the greens, hurrying from one patch of palms to another. Despite the dark night, the lighted floors of several of the neighboring towers acted as shining beacons, casting a stark illumination across the rolling lawns.

According to the pre-mission briefing, most of the island’s security patrolled the shorelines and docks, but they could not discount a stray guard spotting them.

But now they had another problem to address as he lowered the satellite phone. Moments ago, he had checked in with Painter, confirming they’d reached Utopia. And in hindsight, maybe he should never have made that call.

“What’s wrong now?” Seichan asked, reading his face.

“We’ve been ordered to cease all mission objectives and return to the States,” Gray told the others. “Apparently, the powers-that-be in DC need a scapegoat for the death of the president’s daughter.”

“And that would be us,” Kowalski mumbled sourly.

“Painter is working on an appeal, but he has to officially instruct us to pull up stakes here.”

“But Amanda isn’t even dead,” Tucker said. “Why doesn’t the director tell the president that?”

Gray had already explained Painter’s reasoning back in Somalia-how Amanda’s best chance for recovery lay in a surgical strike, to hit the enemy while they believed no one was looking for her.

Still, this decision sat wrong with him. Gray believed the president’s family had a right to know, and now they were all suffering the fallout. Gray also sensed that Painter wasn’t telling them everything; that he was holding something close to the vest.

But whatever it was, it would have to wait.

They had a decision to make.

“Maybe Painter will inform the president as a part of his appeal process. But what is he going to tell him? We don’t know for sure that Amanda is still alive. All we know is that the charred body at the camp was not his daughter. So we have to make a choice: to retreat back to the Ghost or to move forward. If we defy these direct orders and aren’t successful, we may face criminal charges. And even moving forward, we’ll have limited support.”

Gray stared around the small group.

Seichan shrugged. “I’m already a wanted fugitive. What’s one more crime?”

“And I was never an official member of Sigma anyway,” Tucker said. “Nothing says Kane and I have to follow those orders.”

Gray turned to his last teammate.

Kowalski sighed. “My pants are already soaking wet, so what the hell…”

“Then let’s figure out where to start our search.” Gray gripped his phone and brought up a detailed 3-D rendering of the island. He rotated it to show the outline of a cross. “These are the businesses and properties with possible ties to the Guild organization.”

“Wait,” Seichan said. “How does Painter know that?”

Gray glanced up at her, crinkling his brow. In the rush of information, he never thought to ask that question.

Seichan must have read that realization in his eyes. She shook her head, silently scolding him for yet another oversight. Gray tightened his fingers on the phone, irritated as much at the mistake as at Seichan catching him.

Pull it together…

“Go on,” Seichan said.

“If Amanda is on the island, she’s likely to be found somewhere within the properties highlighted.”

“That’s a lot of territory to cover,” Tucker said.

“That’s why we’ll start here, the most likely target, and spiral out from it.” Gray pointed to the center of the cross.

“X marks the spot,” Kowalski mumbled. “What the hell, we are looking for a pirate’s buried treasure.”

Gray straightened. “And let’s hope it’s still there.”

He lowered his phone and started toward the center of the island, toward the shining central axis upon which this star turned. And it was turning-the tower, not the island. The floors of the spire, each rhomboid in shape and slightly offset from the next, formed a massive corkscrew-but the most amazing aspect of the engineering was that each story rotated independently of the others, creating a dynamic structure, powered by wind turbines and solar panels. It was mesmerizing to look at, shifting slowly, melting into new shapes, meant to mimic a shimmering mirage.

“Burj Abaadi,” Tucker said, naming this central hub of Utopia. “The Eternal Tower.”

The fifty-floor skyscraper had been built in only eighteen months, constructed in conjunction with the island’s creation, the two projects rising together out of the sea.

Gray sensed that if anything were hidden on this island it would be there, at the heart of Utopia. There was only one way to find out for sure.

He turned to Tucker and Kane.

“Time to go to work.”

2:22 A.M.

Tucker led the way-or rather Kane did.

The shepherd ran a full block ahead along a deserted avenue that cut down one leg of the star. He heard his partner’s panting breath in his left ear and kept one eye on the video feed, watching for any signs of armed guards or the rare resident of Utopia.

He and the others stuck as much as possible to the shadows as they headed the quarter-mile to their destination. Palms lined both sides of the road and along a center median. Several stretches of trees were still in massive boxes, waiting to be craned into place and planted.

The entire island had that same surreal feeling-like a child’s model of a city, where pieces sat to the side, waiting to be fitted and glued into their proper spot.

But as they traveled closer to the star’s center, the cityscape became less fragmentary. Buildings grew taller, more polished, shining with lights. Evidence of life began to appear: an occasional golf cart or car in an empty parking lot; a tiny grocery store with stocked shelves; a neon sign glowed in the window of a Korean restaurant.

Still, Tucker suspected only a skeleton number of people actually populated the island, and most of those were likely connected in some manner to the Guild.

To Tucker, that terrorist outfit still sounded like something out of a dime-store novel. But then again, he had dealings in the past with many different mercenary-for-hire groups, private military companies with equally colorful names: saber, Titan, GlobalEnforce. And while he didn’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, he knew that the military-industrial complex was rife with corruption and collusion, generating scores of shadowy organizations that merged armed forces, intelligence services, political ambitions, and even scientific ventures.

So what was one more?

Earlier, Kowalski had pulled him aside and told him what had happened to Pierce’s mother and hinted at previous altercations with this organization. So, no matter what this new enemy was named, Tucker and the others were trespassing on their home turf-and he intended to watch his step.

And that applied to his partner, too.

“SLOW,” he radioed to Kane.

The jumbling view on his phone steadied as the shepherd’s lope became a deliberate pace. Turning, Tucker motioned the others behind a parked yellow Hummer. A tow rig behind the truck held a sleek watercraft and offered additional shelter. In another block, the avenue dumped-like the other four spokes of the star-into a central park that surrounded the twisting spire of Burj Abaadi.

The Eternal Tower rose like a glowing sculpture into the night sky, each floor slowly turning, making it appear as if the entire structure were gently swaying in the wind off the sea. Only the bottom five stories were stationary, encompassing the building’s lobby and maintenance levels, including its power station that collected energy generated by the horizontal wind turbines positioned between each floor.

“Shouldn’t we be closer?” Gray asked.

“No need,” Tucker said. “That park ahead is full of shadows, with lots of trees and hiding places. Don’t want to stumble upon a guard by mistake. Leave this to Kane.”

Seichan agreed. “He’s right.”

“Works for me,” Kowalski said, running his fingertips longingly along the sleek side of the yellow jet boat.

Outvoted, Gray nodded for Tucker to continue. The man sent Kane forward with a single command.

“GO SCOUT!”

Kane stalks slowly forward, remaining in shadows. He moves against the breeze flowing from ahead, letting the scents wash over him, catching what he can with his upturned nose.

He smells salt and wet weed from the distant waves and sand.

Closer… he is hit by the crisp bite of cut grass… the trickle of sweetness from petals opening to the night.

But through it all, a rank undercurrent flows… reeking of sweat and oil and ripeness of body.

Men.

In hiding.

He hunts each scent, drawing in its heady, foul richness. He stays in shadows, behind bushes, along the edges of benches. He tracks each one down until he hears the satisfying whisper in his ear.

SPOTTED .

Then moves on.

He creeps deeper, tail low, haunches tense, ears pricked to every tick, tap, and creak. The smell of man fades behind him, carried away by the wind, leaving spaces for new scents.

Then he stops.

A trickle of thrill stirs his hackles. He tests again, nose higher, taking that odor deep inside, tasting it, recognizing it. He moves again, tracking its trail through the air.

It rises from a truck-he knows trucks and rides and hanging his head into hard winds. But now is not that time. He dashes across an open stretch and into the shadows beneath the truck, a darkness reeking of oil and grease.

He slips out the other side, twisting, stretching his neck. He circles and paces, making certain.

Then whines his triumph and points.

“Good dog,” Tucker radioed back.

Pride spiked through him-and a raw affection that ached.

They had all watched Kane’s hunt, huddled around his phone’s tiny screen. His shepherd had spotted four guards stationed out in the grounds-then he snuck up to a pickup truck parked crookedly in the circular drive fronting the entrance to Burj Abaadi.

“He’s found Amanda’s scent there,” Tucker said. “She’s on the island!”

“Can you get Kane up into the bed of that truck?” Gray asked.

“No problem.” It was never hard to get Kane to take a ride. He sent the command. “UP IN THE TRUCK!”

The dog immediately backed a yard-then, with a burst of speed, he launched from his haunches and flew over the side and landed in the rear bed, skittering slightly to avoid hitting what lay there.

Kane danced around it, sniffing intently.

Seichan leaned closer. “Is that an open casket?”

Gray pointed out the bits of tape along the edges. “That’s how they moved Amanda. No wonder she was never spotted at the airport. They crated her here, likely under diplomatic seals.”

Kowalski looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, but where is she now?”

They all stared up at the fifty-story tower, spinning slowly in the night. They all recognized the truth.

The hunt was just beginning.

But were they already too late?

2:32 A.M .

The tiny boy rested on Amanda’s bare belly, quiet now.

The furnace of her body, stoked to a fiery dampness by the delivery, kept him warm. A small blanket covered him, but a tiny fist protruded, no bigger than a walnut.

Amanda stared, consuming him with her eyes. With her arms bound to the sides, she could not hold him. That was the worst cruelty. Even giving her this moment with her child was necessity, not compassion. She had read all the baby books. The newborn was placed facedown to encourage the draining of any fluid; the skin-to-skin contact encouraged her body to release its own natural oxytocin, to help with the final contractions to push the placenta free.

Her body had performed its ageless duty.

Spent, exhausted, she tried to stretch this moment for an eternity.

“My baby boy,” she whispered, tears streaking through the sweat of her heated face; she wanted him to hear his mother’s voice at least once. She willed all her love, christening him with the name murmured in the night with her husband, Mack, his broad hand resting on the bump of her stomach.

“My little William.”

But, sadly, the child was not her husband’s, at least not genetically. She knew some of the truth, saw the medical records in the terrifying note that sent her fleeing in terror out to the Seychelles. Still, Mack had loved the baby as much as she did. It shone in his face, even after the truth was known.

He loved you so much, William.

New tears flowed, for the family that was never to be.

Voices intruded, but she never took her eyes off her child.

“Petra, make sure you collect at least five milliliters of blood from the umbilical cord. We’ll need the sample serum-typed, in addition to the standard tests. I’ll also want to harvest some umbilical stem cells.”

Amanda listened, realizing the truth. They were already parsing her child into parts.

“Dr. Blake, the radiant bed is ready,” Petra called from the side. “I’ve prepared the vitamin K and the eyedrops. Did you want to perform the APGAR assessment?”

“No. You can do it. I should pass on word about the delivery as soon as possible.”

Blake shifted from the foot of the delivery bed to Amanda’s side. He reached to scoop up the child.

“No, please,” Amanda begged. “Another minute.”

“I’m sorry. It’s better this way. You did beautifully.”

She strained forward, a sob breaking out of her hoarse throat. “Nooo…!”

Ignoring her plea, he lifted William from her belly, taking away his warmth, leaving a hollowness that she knew would never go away.

Blake walked her boy toward a tiny bed under harsh lights-and the nurse with cold eyes. Amanda pictured the shining tray of silver dissection tools.

Her sobs turned into wracking cries. She rocked within the limits of her restraints. Still, she never took her eyes off her boy.

My little William…

2:38 A.M.

Dr. Edward Blake stood by his desk, bone-tired and bleary-eyed. A deep-cushioned chair beckoned, but he remained standing. He didn’t want to be relaxed, not during this call.

“Yes, everything went smoothly,” he reported. “The genetics continue to remain stable. After we run the baselines, we’ll be testing the stability of the helix assembly under various environmental rigors and stresses.”

That was the purpose behind Petra’s macabre work in her lab: to separate out various vital organs-brain, heart, lungs, and others-to keep those tissues alive indefinitely, so that rigorous tests could be performed upon them. Amanda’s child was destined for that lab.

“I believe we have reason to be optimistic about this boy,” he finished.

“OPTIMISM IS IRRELEVANT,” the speaker countered, the voice digitally flattened and tweaked to an arctic severity-though Edward suspected that iciness wasn’t all computer-generated. “ONLY HARD FACTS MATTER.”

He swallowed. “Of course. We’ll start generating actionable data within the day.”

“TISSUE SAMPLES SHOULD BE HARVESTED AND COURIERED STATESIDE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.”

“Understood. I received the list. My assistant is already prepping stem and skin cells. We’ll have intestinal and alveolar biopsies within the hour, and cortical and spinal sections by day’s end. But I do have another question.”

Silence encouraged him to continue.

“The mother… was there a final consensus on what to do with her?” Edward could guess the answer. A massive graveyard had been dug into the jungles outside of his Somalia camp.

“SHE MAY STILL PROVE TO BE BIOLOGICALLY USEFUL. AS OF NOW, WE DON’T KNOW IF THESE RESULTS ARE BROADLY REPLICABLE OR IF THERE IS SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT HER GENETICS.”

Edward was surprised at the depth of his relief. He pictured Amanda’s tender love shining through the sweat and tears, the strength in her eyes when he took her baby away. That blend of toughness and maternal protection must have touched him more than he imagined.

Or maybe I’m simply tired, getting too emotional.

“Should we confine her here?” he asked hoarsely. “On Utopia?”

“NO. OUR PLANS REQUIRE HER TO BE SHIPPED BACK TO THE STATES.”

Surprised, Edward absorbed this and ran various scenarios through his head. He had lightly sedated Amanda for the short hop from Somalia, to facilitate her passage through customs. But a trip to the States was a longer journey, with a much higher risk of exposure.

“How do you plan on moving-?”

He was cut off. “SHE’S INTENDED FOR THE FERT/INC LAB.”

Edward had to rest a hand on his desk. He’d visited the Fertilization and Incubation Lab only once-and once was enough. He immediately understood what was demanded of him.

“WE’LL EXPECT HER PREPPED AND AT THE DUBAI AIRPORT BY EIGHT IN THE MORNING,” the speaker finished.

“Consider it done.”

The line went dead before he got out his last word. They didn’t need to hear his acquiescence. It was taken for granted.

He remained standing for two long breaths. The relief he felt at Amanda’s reprieve drained away.

Better she had gotten a death sentence.

He tapped an intercom. “Petra, we’ll need the surgical suite readied.”

Her tinny response followed. “For what procedure?”

He told her, picturing again what he’d witnessed at the Fertilization and Incubation Clinic, that flawless representation of scientific purity, where morality held no sway, a world where only methodology and outcome mattered.

He felt bile churn in his gut.

Poor Amanda.

24

July 2, 6:39 P.M. EST

Charleston, South Carolina

Kat stepped across the threshold.

Amy followed, shadowing behind her, quiet now after her initial cry of shock and dismay. The large steel doors shut behind them, closing on their own with a pop of pressure.

Kat knew they didn’t have much time until their escape was discovered.

With the doors sealed, the ambient light remained low, tinged slightly red, reminding Kat of working in a control room of a submarine during her years in navy intelligence, where the unique lighting preserved night vision. Or maybe the subdued illumination was meant to blunt the horrors residing in here.

A long hall stretched ahead, splitting two rows of tanks full of a pinkish gelatinous fluid. Thin translucent drapes that lined the front of the rows failed to hide what rested in those tub-size steel vessels. Kat stepped to the side and parted one of the curtains.

“Don’t,” Amy moaned, clutching her stolen baton in both hands, but she still followed, clearly needing to stay near Kat-not for protection, merely to remain near a flicker of humanity in such an inhuman lab.

Kat had noted the sign hanging above the hallway.

Fertilization/Incubation Lab

Here lay that purpose given flesh.

A naked woman floated shallowly in semi-viscous fluid, a gelatinous bed to prevent bedsores and to keep tissues moist. Her abdomen swelled with gravid promise, navel protruding, close to parturition. Her breasts hung loosely, never to suckle the life growing within. The patient’s head hung over the edge of the tub, eyes taped shut, neck arched back, as if waiting for her hair to be shampooed. But there was no hair. The bald scalp shone in the weak light, revealing sutured scars and wired electrodes snaking into the skull. Other tubes violated mouth and nose, all running to a rack of monitoring, ventilating, and liquid-feeding equipment.

“What have they done?” Amy asked in a horrified whisper.

Kat stared down the long row, at the other women resting in identical tanks, posed in the same frozen posture of torture, all in various states of fetal gestation. She understood what she was seeing. The women here had been reduced to no more than living brainstems-with only one clear function.

“They’ve turned them into mindless human incubators,” Kat said, trembling between impotent rage and bone-deep sorrow.

She gaped, unblinking, bearing silent witness.

This is where I would’ve ended up.

Amy wore the same mask of revulsion.

Kat shied from imagining herself here, unable to balance this monstrous act with the simple wonders and mysteries of her own pregnancies, of carrying those tiny lives inside of her. She staved off the paralysis of horror by remembering her babies’ first cries, the suckle of a tiny mouth on a tender nipple, the grip of little fingers, so demanding, so needy.

She pictured the other four buildings of the clinic complex, of the levels of research and development performed here: the cutting-edge retrieval and cryopreservation techniques for ova and sperm, the advancements in in vitro fertilization procedures, and the latest innovation in embryo culture and transfer. Many of the greatest reproductive and genetic scientists from around the globe worked here or had in the past. How many, if any, knew what trickled down from their groundbreaking research, seeping like toxic waste to pool here with poisonous purpose?

Kat swung away, knowing she had only half the answers to the mysteries here. She knew where to find the others.

“C’mon,” Kat said, sensing time running short.

She returned to the central alleyway between the rows. She had noted glass-enclosed offices at the back and headed there, striding quickly, with Amy in tow. As her mind raced, she considered various exit strategies. There was not likely to be a back door out of this lab, not with what this facility was hiding down here. The only escape was back the way they’d come, through those red steel doors and past that gauntlet of armed guards.

She searched as she strode to the end of the room-for a weapon, for some other means of escape.

She wasn’t the only one searching.

Amy gasped behind her. “Denise…!”

Without turning, Kat reached an arm back and grabbed Amy’s wrist before the young woman could dart to the side, toward one of the shrouded tanks. Amy had come along with Kat to discover the fate of her sister.

“That’s not her,” Kat said, drawing Amy closer. “That’s just a husk, a shell. Your sister died when she was taken through those doors.”

Amy resisted for a couple of steps, then surrendered-knowing Kat was right. They hurried together, each needing the warmth of the other.

The hallway ended at a line of three glass-walled offices, all facing the horror show. Other hallways branched to the left and the right, likely leading to smaller labs, storerooms, and mechanical spaces.

Kat noted the names etched on the three doors. She memorized them, intending to hold the persons accountable if she ever got out of here. But she moved to the centermost and largest of the three. The name on the door read NANCY MARSHALL, M.D., D.Sc., PH.D., A.B.O.G. It seemed the more abbreviated letters followed a name, the less humanity remained.

Through the glass door, Kat spotted a computer glowing with a screensaver depicting a slowly spiraling helix of DNA. She found the lock unfastened and hurried inside, crossing to the computer.

She reached to wake the monitor up, then paused, noting something odd about the screensaver. The glowing, high-definition image detailed a thick double helix of DNA, slowly spinning, all color-coded, mapping out nucleotides, codons, and chemical bonds. She leaned closer, studying a strange abnormality: a third strand of protein wound within the double helix, entwined into the genetic matrix like a snake in the grass.

Biology and genetics were not her specialty-but she knew someone at Sigma who could better analyze this data. Reaching to the mouse, she woke up the computer. A standard desktop appeared. She needed to secure as much of the data stored on that hard drive as possible and transmit it back to DC, but she also knew she didn’t have time to crack whatever passwords locked this system from the outside world. There was no way to e-mail or send files electronically. The firewalls around this complex were fierce and military-grade.

She would have to improvise and hope for the best.

Reaching to her breast pocket, she removed her surveillance pen. The camera’s video and audio were recorded to a secure digital SD card linked to a cellular transceiver-but the data could also be manually ported over if necessary via a built-in USB connection. She twisted the pen, shedding the camera features, leaving behind the two-terabyte storage card linked to a USB adapter.

Working fast, she found the USB port in the desktop’s tower and shoved the drive in place. Her intent was not to download the card’s content, but to upload files to it, hoping they’d eventually reach sigma. With the guts of her pen exposed, Kat noted the cellular transceiver glowing a pinpoint green. It remained active, but was anyone picking up the signal?

She straightened as a new icon blinked onto the screen’s desktop, representing her flash drive.

A rumble drew her attention around. Amy stood at the open office door, staring back to the far end of the lab. The steel doors had begun to slowly open, unsealing and cracking with a sliver of light.

Dr. Marshall’s sharp bark carried through: “Find them!”

Kat returned to the computer.

No time to be picky about which files to grab.

Using the mouse, she dragged the image of the computer’s hard drive and dumped it all onto the thumbnail for the SD flash drive.

Files immediately began transferring.

That’s all she could do for now.

Except survive.

6:41 P.M.

“What the hell was that?”

Painter stared over at General Metcalf. He’d never heard the man swear, seldom saw him lose composure. The pair stood before the bank of monitors in the communications nest. Minutes ago, the technician monitoring Kat’s surveillance pen reported new feed coming from her second device. This was the first video transmission since the pen had been activated. They’d picked up some initial audio, snatches of conversation, but nothing afterward.

Then suddenly the screen had bloomed to life.

The first few minutes were a jumbled confusion until the camera settled on a set of red metal doors with a cross symbol emblazoned on them.

Metcalf had just been leaving when the monitor sprang to life, exciting the technician. The general accompanied Painter to observe what was picked up. Together, they viewed in growing dismay as Kat surveyed a dark lab, revealing rows of women in tanks. Then she continued to some offices at the back of the room.

“Did you get those names?” Painter asked the technician. “The ones on the office doors?”

“Yes, sir.”

After that, the monitor went dark once again.

“Is that everything?” Metcalf asked. “Where was this footage taken?”

Painter knew he had to come clean-about everything. He drew the general back into the side office. Once inside, with the door closed, he explained, “Captain Bryant was investigating a fertility clinic in South Carolina, the same facility where Amanda had her in vitro fertilization performed.”

But it hadn’t been just Kat conducting that investigation. Lisa had gone down there, too. Fear for her stoked brighter, but he had to stay focused.

Metcalf turned toward him. “What fertility clinic are you talking about? Who authorized-?”

Painter cut him off before he worked up a full head of steam. He needed to shock the man into listening-for all of their sakes. “Amanda may still be alive.”

As he expected, those few words knocked the man back a step.

Painter continued, not letting the general recover. He needed to present the entire picture before Metcalf started to put up mental roadblocks. Only the complete story could win this stubborn man to their cause.

Painter started at the beginning, with Amanda’s kidnapping and his belief that it was tied to the unborn child she carried. They ended in front of Kat’s office computer. Painter showed him the cross atop the island of Utopia, realizing just then that it matched the symbol on the red steel doors.

What did that mean?

Metcalf sank into the desk chair, his eyes fixed to the screen. The general was a tough man, a skilled player in the ways of power and politics-some would say even an opportunist-but that was a requirement to function in the Beltway politics of DC. Painter also knew the general to be a shrewd strategist, capable of putting logic before emotion.

He hoped that proved to be the case now.

“And all of these properties are owned by the Gant family, the president’s family?” Metcalf asked, staring at the island. “And you’ve already received confirmation that Amanda was taken there.”

“Yes.”

Behind that glaze of shock, Painter saw the gears churning through all the evidence.

Finally, Metcalf shook his head, not in disbelief, more like defeat. “Dear God… if you’re right…” He placed a palm on his forehead and stared Painter square in the eye. “Even if the Gants are the puppet masters behind the Guild, how could the president involve his own daughter with something like this?”

The general glanced to that dark monitor in the other room, obviously picturing the horror show from a moment ago.

“James Gant may not know,” Painter explained. “We don’t know which of the Gants are in that inner circle, the True Bloodline. That’s why I’ve been playing this game so cagily. I have a gut feeling that inner circle is not without internal friction or dissent.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Something sent Amanda running to the Seychelles, almost like she was tipped off. Like someone was trying to protect her.”

“Or maybe they purposefully tricked her into fleeing in secret so she could be nabbed out of the public eye.”

It was a more cynical hypothesis, one Painter hadn’t even considered, proving yet again that Metcalf was an expert chess player.

“You’ve built a case against the Gants,” Metcalf conceded, “but it’s far from solid. None of this is strong enough to confront them, especially the administration. If we tried, we’d end up tipping our hand too soon, exposing that we’re onto them. The backlash would burn us down. And that Bloodline would bury itself even deeper. There’s only one solution.”

Painter understood. “We need Amanda.”

Metcalf met his eyes, confirming this. Any hope for Sigma to rise from these ashes depended on recovering and securing the president’s daughter-and surely the Bloodline knew that, too.

A knock at the door drew both their attentions. It was Kat’s chief analyst, Jason Carter. Painter motioned him forward, but the kid only stuck his head through the door.

“Director, we’re receiving new data from Captain Bryant’s device.”

Painter stared past the young man’s head. The monitor was still black. “Is it new video… or just audio again?”

“Neither. They’re digital files.”

Painter’s eyes pinched with momentary confusion-then realized what Kat was doing: downloading information off one of the lab’s computers.

Clever, Kat… very smart.

“Start forwarding those files to me,” Painter said.

Jason nodded and ducked back out.

Metcalf waited with Painter. “I wish you hadn’t told me any of this,” he said. “I’d certainly sleep better not knowing. For that matter, why did you tell me? Why trust me? Who’s to say I’m not on the Guild’s payroll?”

It was a good question-and Painter had only one answer.

“Because you’ve been a thorn in sigma’s side from the beginning.”

“You mean I’ve been an ass.”

Painter didn’t argue with his wording. “But you’ve also had our back, sir, when we’ve truly needed it. And besides, I can’t do this on my own. Not any longer. I need an ally, someone to hold the wolves at bay if we’re to have any chance of recovering Amanda.”

“You’ll get it-but there’s only so much I can do. After what happened in Somalia, Sigma has a big target on its back. And you know Washington… once they smell blood in the water…”

The feeding frenzy begins.

The intercom buzzed. “Director, the initial files are up on your desktop.”

“I’ll leave you to this,” Metcalf said, standing and letting Painter take his seat. “This castle’s about to be stormed, and I’m better off manning the gates and fortifying the ramparts.”

Painter knew his statement was more than a metaphor. Sigma headquarters lay in the bunkers beneath the Smithsonian Castle, within the shadow of the White House-even now, the battle lines were being drawn between them.

As Metcalf left, Painter turned his attention to the computer, to the files gained at such risk. He worried about Kat… and even more about Lisa. Still, he sensed that all the mysteries, the true pulse of the Bloodline, lay in the life or death of another woman.

Gray, you must find Amanda.

25

July 3, 2:44 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the Coast of Dubai

Gray held the man’s neck in the crook of his arm, the flat of his hand against the side of his head. A twist and a sharp crank on the chin shattered the guard’s cervical vertebrae. The strangled body fell limp.

He lowered the guard to the lawn and began stripping off the man’s helmet, vest, and shirt. The gear was identical to that worn by the commandos back in Somalia, offering further proof that Amanda had been moved here.

In his earpiece: “Done.”

That was Seichan. She had taken down her man.

As Gray strapped on the dead soldier’s helmet, he glanced at the phone in his hand. On the screen, a dog’s-eye view revealed a lone guard posted beside a park bench. Kane moved nearer, drawing the man’s attention, while Tucker closed in from behind with a blade. As silently as the others, he dispatched the last guard that stood between Gray’s team and the twisted spire of the Burj Abaadi, the Eternal Tower.

“Move in,” Gray radioed.

He ran low through the remainder of the nighttime park, still wary in case Kane had missed any hidden guards. But no alarm was raised as he reached the edge of the grounds.

As he waited for the others, he looked up at the sheer majesty of the slowly turning tower, each floor revolving independently of the others. He imagined the view must be breathtaking from up top, the scene eternally changing, spanning from the panoramic brilliance of Dubai’s skyline to the dark mystery of the starlit sea.

Still, something bothered Gray as he stared upward.

Something about its ever-changing shape…

A rustle drew his attention back to the ground. The others converged from different directions. Seichan and Tucker came similarly outfitted in stolen gear. Kane kept out of sight, slinking wide upon a signal from his handler.

As they gathered to him, Gray studied the front entrance to the Burj Abaadi. He expected there would be cameras watching the steps and lobby, possibly other guards inside. The disguise was a feeble one, but the ruse could buy them an extra few seconds of surprise if needed.

Kowalski finally pushed past a grove of palms, struggling to pull a small vest over his wide shoulders. The helmet sat on top of his head like a crown. “My guy was pint-size,” he explained.

Gray pointed his rifle at the big man. “Drop all of that and put your hands on your head.”

Kowalski frowned. “What the hell, Pierce?”

Seichan sighed. “Just act like a prisoner.” She waved toward the lobby stairs. “For the cameras.”

Understanding slowly sank through Kowalski’s thick skull, widening his eyes. He shed his stolen gear and laced his fingers atop his head.

With a final few instructions, Gray marched Kowalski forward, flanked by the other two. From the corner of his eye, he caught a blur of shadow, easy to miss unless watching for it. Kane vanished into the bushes at the base of the building and crept from there toward the same stairs.

Bright lights lit the steps, but the lobby was dark, with only a few pools of subdued illumination inside. It looked deserted. Maybe their disguises weren’t necessary. The guards in the park had certainly been easy to take down. Gray had even caught his target sleeping.

The enemy plainly must have thought themselves safe out on this island-especially since they suspected no one was looking for Amanda.

Gray marched with the others up the stairs. They kept their faces lowered from the cameras. Gray motioned for Tucker to run ahead and check the tall glass doors that led into the lobby. The man ran forward and tugged. The door swung open, unlocked. Tucker looked relieved. It saved them the trouble and exposure of using the minipellets of C-4 to blast the deadbolts, or larger pyrotechnics if necessary.

The only one disappointed by the ease of entry was the team’s explosives and demolitions expert. “Aw, man,” Kowalski groused. “I was all set to blow some crap up.”

Gray poked him in the back with his rifle. “Keep moving.”

Kowalski stumbled across the threshold. Gray and the others crowded in behind him.

The lobby soared five stories high, drawing the eye up. In the center rose a grand spiral staircase, made entirely of glass and sparkling in the wan light with Swarovski crystals and figurines depicting sea creatures. It wound up from the grand entry hall, spiraling around the central axis of the tower and continuing ever upward.

The only illumination came from a ring of huge pillars, also made of glass. They formed massive vertical aquariums, glowing with an inner soft radiance that slowly shifted along a spectrum of hues.

Initially, Gray thought the aquariums were empty, merely bubbling on the inside, catching and multiplying the glow. Then his eyes adjusted, and the bubbles became palm-size jellyfish, swarming and drifting within the giant pillars.

The wonder of the moment was interrupted by a harsh call.

A towering, beefy figure rose out of hiding from behind a security desk and stalked forward, rubbing a knuckle in one eye. Somebody else had been caught napping. The man shoved a black beret on his head, clearly the leader of this African contingent.

A second figure crawled from behind the desk and stood. A dark-skinned girl of thirteen or fourteen, slim, frail-limbed, wearing a soldier’s uniform. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The leader’s pants were unbuttoned.

So the man hadn’t been caught sleeping.

Fury roiled up inside Gray. He knew many of the village children nabbed by the warlords of Somalia weren’t all turned into soldiers, like Baashi, but instead were brutalized as sex slaves.

Or both.

The monster’s gaze remained fixed on Kowalski as he stalked across the wide lobby, clearly mystified by the sudden appearance of this prisoner. The ruse would only last another couple of sec-

The leader froze, half-skidding on one foot, his hand lunging for his holstered pistol.

Seichan whipped her SIG Sauer out.

“Don’t shoot!” Gray snapped-the noise of a firefight, even a single shot in this crystal echo chamber, would surely draw any other guards and alert the enemy hidden within.

The leader freed his sidearm, under no such restraint.

But Gray had seen the flicker of movement from Tucker’s wrist, heard a whispered command over the radio.

Kane burst out of the shadows behind the man and barreled forward. The girl squealed, dancing to the side. The dog hit the man in the ankle, hamstringing him and flinging him into the air. He flew high-then landed hard, his head striking the marble floor.

His pistol slid away into the shadows.

Tucker was already moving, charging forward, blade in his fist. He slid on his knees, passing Kane, whose momentum carried him in the opposite direction. Tucker reached the downed man, raised his dagger, then simply lowered it.

“Neck’s broken,” Tucker said.

“So we each got a soldier,” Kowalski said, lowering his arms, rubbing his shoulders. “I gotta get me one of those dogs.”

From the shadows to the side, the young girl reappeared. She held the lost pistol in both hands, pointed at Tucker. Her face was a mask of terror.

Tucker dropped his dagger and raised his palms. “It’s okay…” the man intoned softly.

The girl spat something in Somali. They didn’t have a translator, but it sounded more angry than scared. She steadied her pistol, her finger finding the trigger.

Then the girl suddenly jerked back a step-coughed blood. She dropped the pistol, her fingers scrabbling for the silver blade sticking out of her neck.

Gray turned to the source.

Seichan had a second throwing dagger in her fingers, ready if needed.

It wasn’t.

The girl slumped to her knees, then toppled forward.

Tucker gave out a soft cry of dismay. He lunged forward, going to the child’s aid, but it was no use. “What did you do?”

“What needed to be done,” Seichan said, her eyes glassy and cold.

Tucker stared across at her. “She was just a child.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Seichan whispered under her breath. “Not any longer.”

Logically, Gray knew she was right. The girl would likely have shot and killed Tucker, and the noise would have jeopardized everything. And a sad truth of the matter: some brutalized war orphans never recovered, never healed, becoming no more than animals in children’s bodies.

Still, his heart ached at the death, echoing Tucker’s anguish.

Seichan merely headed across the lobby. “Let’s find Amanda. That’s what we came here for.”

Still, he noted her fingers trembled as she tried to return the unused blade to its wrist sheath.

“Seichan’s right,” Gray said and pointed to Tucker. “Get your dog. We need to pick up Amanda’s trail.”

Tucker glowered at Seichan, but he obeyed.

As dog and handler worked in tandem, sweeping through the lobby, Gray moved to the security desk. There he found a bank of monitors. It appeared the desk was wired to the lobbies on each floor. He began hitting each button, bringing up one view after the other, looking for any evidence of habitation. Reaching the penthouse lobby on the fiftieth floor, he came up empty. Every lobby was dark, offering a dim view of marble elegance, fine rugs, and the continuation of the spiral stair.

Everything looked deserted, untouched.

“Over here,” Tucker called quietly. “I think we found something.”

Kane sniffed furiously at one of the doors along a curved bay of elevators.

Gray crossed toward him, collecting Seichan along the way.

She stood off by herself, staring into one of the aquarium pillars, her face unreadable. As he reached her, she nodded to the glowing and swirling pillar of jellyfish in front of her, reading the sign.

“It’s a giant hybrid of Turritopsis nutricula.”

He shook his head, not understanding.

“At the end of this species’ life, the adult jellyfish reverts back to a juvenile state. This cycle repeats over and over again, starting fresh each time.”

She stared over at the bloodied girl. Her eyes were damp with tears, possibly seeing herself lying there. Did she wish for such a chance-for both of them-to be reborn, to start again pure and untainted, to have their childhoods back?

“The process makes the jellyfish immortal,” she whispered.

He nodded, understanding this unusual marvel of nature.

No wonder it’s the mascot for the Eternal Tower.

But Seichan had a different viewpoint about life everlasting and mumbled it aloud. “It’s so horrible.”

Gray didn’t comment as she turned away. He followed silently with her and allowed her to work through her grief, to process it. He did keep close to her side, letting fingers brush along the back of her hand, the one that had thrown the dagger.

He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t.

They joined Tucker and Kane.

Kowalski stood nearby, neck craned, staring up, following the coil of the crystal staircase through the heart of the eternally spiraling tower.

Gray followed his gaze.

Again nagged by something.

Something about the shape…

6:47 P.M. EST

Washington, DC

The DNA molecule slowly spiraled on the computer screen, a dance of code that mapped out the human body in all its glory-but this fragment of genetic material was unlike anything Painter had ever seen diagramed. A third strand snaked within the heart of the typical double helix.

“What do you make of it?” Painter asked, using the mystery here to keep him distracted from his worries about Kat and Lisa.

“It’s a triple helix,” Renny Quinn said, his voice flush with awe. “The Holy Grail of genetics.”

Renny leaned his large fists on Kat’s desk to stare closer. Sigma’s resident biogeneticist had been summoned to help Painter sift through the huge volume of data coming from that lab’s servers. The man was of Irish descent, with a ruddy complexion and dark auburn stubble over his scalp and cheeks. He was also a former college boxer-which included a fair amount of bare-knuckle brawling, a habit that got him discharged from the army rangers.

Afterward, Sigma grabbed him. Renny proved the stories true of men with big hands-but in his case, it meant he had a huge brain. And Renny was going to need it to slog through this mountain of data.

The files from Charleston arrived disordered and unclassified, much of it in raw code. Kat must not have had time to pare the data down to the most essential files. Instead, what arrived was the definition of a data dump-a load far more than the SD card in her pen could handle. A lot of the files came corrupted, others not fully decrypted. As a consequence, it could take days, if not weeks, to decipher, decode, and repair the damaged files.

Still, it didn’t take a computer engineer to ascertain that most of the files dealt with advanced genetics and reproductive studies, all tracing directly or indirectly back to this one image.

“A triple helix of DNA,” Painter said, staring at the monitor, as perplexed as he was intrigued.

“Actually…” Renny leaned over and dragged a finger down two of the spiraling backbones. “These strands are deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. The third-this snake wrapped around the tree of life-is peptide nucleic acid, or PNA.”

Renny tapped the new helix. “This strand is artificial. Man engineered this, not God. What we’re looking at is the result of cybergenetics, the merging of biology and technology.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Not only possible. It’s been done. A team over at the University of Copenhagen have already managed to insert a PNA strand between two DNA strands. In a test tube, of course. But the only obstacle to moving their research to the next stage is a simple hurdle.” Renny nodded to the screen. “That triple helical assembly isn’t stable in water. Build a raincoat around that strand and the whole world changes.”

Painter frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”

Renny explained. “Our entire genetic code is built on four chemical bases: guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine. G, A, T, C. From that four-letter vocabulary, all life is formed.” He cocked an eye at the spiraling molecule. “But PNA is not restricted to those four letters. Can you imagine what could be created with more letters of the alphabet? We could rewrite mankind.”

Despite Renny’s obvious excitement, Painter imagined only horrors.

“But far more importantly,” Renny pressed, “this cyberstrand of PNA can be designed to specifically turn on and off certain genes. PNA has already been used to cure a form of muscular dystrophy in lab mice. But that’s just the beginning. The potential is limitless. We’re talking about blocking cancer, treating hundreds of genetic diseases, even extending life.”

Renny stared longingly at the computer. “If DNA holds the key to life… then PNA is its lock pick. For whoever holds that tool in hand, nothing would be impossible.”

Painter’s dismay grew darker, picturing the lab in Charleston, the women floating in tanks.

Jason tapped at the open office door and saved him from having to ponder worse. “Director, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we just finished receiving an extremely large file from Charleston. I thought you might like to see it. The folder’s name is HISTORY AND ORIGINS.”

Painter sat straighter, happy to forgo any more biological discussions for now. He wanted to get to the root of everything and that file name sounded promising: history and origins.

Jason dashed some of that hope. “But, sir, the folder is badly corrupted. We’re working on it, but I can forward what we have so far, a couple odd pictures and documents.”

“Do it,” Painter said.

Jason pointed to the computer. “Already done.”

No wonder Kat loves this kid.

Painter swung to the keyboard and clicked open the first few uncorrupted documents. A drawing filled the screen.

It showed a trio of men, in colonial attire, with their arms clasped together: gripping right hands above their heads and left hands below. In both of the upper corners of the sketch, a three-headed snake coiled.

“What is this?” Painter mumbled, not expecting an answer-but he got one.

“That’s the Holy Royal Arch,” Renny said, sounding equally surprised to know the answer.

Painter turned to him. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a member of the guild.” Renny must have read Painter’s stunned look. “Not that Guild. I’m talking about the masons. My family has been members going back to our time in Ireland.”

Painter pointed to the screen. “And this?”

“Don’t know a whole lot about it. What’s drawn there is the ritual of three-times-three, a sacred number in freemasonry. It’s a part of the initiation into the Royal Arch Degree, but plenty of mystery surrounds that exclusive degree, like its exact origin. It’s said to be tied back to the Knights Templar. The three-times-three ritual… in other words, nine… represents the original nine founding members of the Knights Templar.”

Painter stared at the screen. What is this drawing doing on the servers of a genetics lab?

Despite the oddity, he had a suspicion of the answer-but only because of the previous discussion with Renny. Painter studied the three men entwined together, the three-headed snakes. It was eerily similar to the three-stranded helix, three wound together as one. Even Renny had used the term a snake wrapped around the tree of life to describe the triple helix.

Painter read the annotation at the bottom of the drawing, stating the source: a book titled Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor, printed back in 1866.

How could a book dated almost a century and a half ago be referencing-at least symbolically-a triple helix?

Painter was reminded of the file folder’s name.

History and Origins

Sensing the importance here, he wanted the rest of this folder decrypted as soon as possible-if it was possible.

Jason suddenly dashed back to the door with grim news. “Director! We just lost connection to Charleston. The feed from Captain Bryant’s device suddenly ceased in midtransmission.”

Painter sat straighter. “The pen’s battery? Did it die?”

“No, sir. This time we were monitoring the charge levels. It was still good.”

Painter’s heart sank, knowing there was only one explanation left.

Jason stated it aloud. “Someone must have discovered her bug and disabled it.”

But what did that mean for Kat?

26

July 2, 6:48 P.M. EST

Charleston, South Carolina

“Find them!”

Kat slipped silently into a side room off the dark lab hallway. Before disappearing inside, she caught a peek of Dr. Marshall at the far end, storming out of her office, surrounded by a cadre of security guards.

“Split up! search every closet, storage space, and lab on both sides!”

Kat closed the door quietly, struggling with the handle due to her greasy palm. The room was lit only by the glowing screensaver of a computer monitor. Again it depicted that strange triple helix. Kat hoped the files she’d been downloading had reached somebody at sigma.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noted the neighboring wall contained shelves of five-liter glass jars, reflecting the meager light. Dark things lurked and floated inside. Kat caught the barest glimpse of curled tiny fingers. She turned her back, not wanting to see more, not after witnessing the horrors out in the main room, the women in the tanks. These jars likely held the end product of that research.

Kat still held her folding combat blade, dulled now from all the hacking and sawing. She’d had only two minutes to ready herself for the siege ahead, barely enough time to get Amy hidden and out of harm’s way. In her head, calculations continued to run as a mental timer ticked down.

Seven tanks… 300 psia/tank… estimated volume of laboratory space…

She heard doors opening and slamming, men shouting orders, working swiftly down the hall toward her position. She had left a door open farther back-but the guards would reach her first.

As planned.

She closed her eyes, taking several deep breaths. She used the extra seconds to smear more of the gelatinous fluid over her face and shaved scalp, leaving a thick film. Her clothes and the rest of her body were equally slathered and dripping with the hydrophilic gel-the same pinkish material that was filling the monstrous tanks in the main room.

Footsteps pounded up to her hiding place. She faced the door as it was ripped open. A guard-then another-came charging inside, with pistols pointed at Kat.

“Drop the knife!” one of them screamed.

She obeyed, lifting her hands to the top of her head.

The other yelled out the door. “Found one of them!”

“Bring her to me,” Marshall ordered.

The guards manhandled her out the door and into the hallway. She did not resist and allowed herself to be led at gunpoint toward the pool of light radiating from Marshall’s office.

The woman stood with her hands on her hips. She ground a boot heel against the vinyl floor. Kat heard a crack and saw a bit of black plastic go flying across the floor.

They’d found her surveillance pen plugged into their network.

Marshall faced her, her cheeks livid, her eyes fiery. She already had her palm resting on her cattle prod. Kat expected to be punished, needed to be punished.

“Where is the other girl?” Marshall demanded.

Kat made sure never to break eye contact, not to betray Amy’s hiding place with the flicker of a glance.

“I’ll make you talk…” Marshall stalked up to her and jammed the prod at her belly.

Kat twisted at the last second as blue sparks spat from the black wand’s end. Pinned by the guards behind her, she still caught a glancing shock on her hip. Electric fire lanced along her side, crippling her left leg into an agonized spasm, forcing her into a painful crouch.

Kat ground her teeth against the pain-and in frustration.

Too low.

Pushing up with her good leg, Kat lunged and caught Marshall’s wrist. One of the guards tried to pistol-whip her, but Kat dodged enough to take the blow to her shoulder.

Kat struggled with her quivering leg, grabbing a handful of plastic curtain that hid the tanks to keep her upright. She still had a grip on Marshall’s wrist and shoved her cattle prod high. The metal tip struck the curtain rod overhead.

Sparks danced.

Then the world became fire.

The detonation blew Kat backward, sent her flying through the air. Overhead, blue flames chased across the ceiling after her-and spread outward. She covered her eyes with her arm, picturing that fire racing down the hallway toward the farthest room, a storage and mechanical space holding all manner of pressurized gas tanks that serviced the many labs of the complex, including seven large tanks marked with the symbol H₂.

Hydrogen gas.

Odorless, fourteen times lighter than air, highly explosive.

She had hacked through the lines earlier, bleeding the massive tanks into this enclosed space, knowing the gas would stay high, and be undetectable to the nose.

Kat landed on her back on the floor and slid, the heat blistering overhead, broiling all beneath. The only thing that kept the skin on her body was the thick hydrophilic gel that covered her. The same watery properties that kept the patients in the tanks moist and free of bedsores offered her some meager insulation.

The same couldn’t be said for the others.

Screams cut through her blast-muffled ears.

Bodies flailed, clothes on fire, faces burned away.

In that split second during the explosion, Kat had watched Marshall’s hair ignite, turning into a swirling nimbus of flames.

A fitting end for a woman who played God.

Kat struggled up, choking from the smoke, from the heat, from the lack of air. Her tearing eyes turned the view into a watery hell. All around, fires danced, plastic draping melted in blackened flows, and charred equipment sparked and sizzled.

She gained her feet and took a stumbling step backward.

Another figure rose from the floor two yards away, climbing from behind the shelter of a tank. Her scalp was burned and cracked, pouring blood.

Marshall lifted her arm, holding one of the guards’ pistols in her hand, and stumbled around the tank.

Kat tried to get to shelter, but her legs betrayed her. She fell on her side, supported by one arm.

Marshall came another step forward, the pistol pointed at Kat’s face. Her gaze showed no glee at the kill to come, only a pained necessity, a last act of revenge.

But it wasn’t she who got that revenge.

From the tank next to her, the naked body rose, sitting up like a corpse from a grave.

Marshall turned toward the movement-her deadened eyes suddenly going bright with terror.

An arm pulled out of the gelatinous muck, drawing out a long black baton. The weapon swung with the heavy grief of a sister in mourning. The hard metal cracked Marshall across the bridge of the nose, shattering through bone.

The doctor dropped.

Kat realized then: This is a more fitting death for a woman who played God.

Amy climbed out of the tank and hurried to Kat and helped her back to her feet. “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought I was, too.”

Earlier, Kat had dragged Denise-Amy’s sister-out of her viscous crib, replacing her sibling there instead. Kat had stripped Amy of her hospital gown and made sure the girl was sunk deeply into the tub, well coated with the insulating gel. Afterward, Kat had scooped handfuls of the same and covered herself, too-then carried Denise’s thin body to the storage room.

Kat had wanted Amy hidden in plain sight, knowing no one would look too closely at the occupants of those tanks. She also wanted the girl close to the exit-not trapped down the fiery hall.

Confirming that wisdom, a massive explosion ripped from that direction, spraying shrapnel and shattering glass.

Kat pictured all the other pressurized tanks back there, overheating, leaking gas, catching fire. She also envisioned flames chasing through the gas tubing and conduits, spreading to other floors, other buildings.

“Let’s go,” Kat gasped out hoarsely.

She retrieved the pistol from Marshall’s limp fingers, and together they fled through the smoke and fire and back through the red steel doors. In the ward, alarms blared, and sprinklers overhead sprayed fiercely. Kat stopped long enough to grab another gown for Amy and hurried out the doors. Down the hall, they discovered the guard station empty.

No one tried to stop them as they fled up out of the fiery bowels of the building and onto the ground floor of one of the rear buildings of the campus. The view outside showed the rest of the facility succumbing to the spreading flames. The summer sun was still up, but it looked like dusk outside as smoke obscured the gardens. Across the way, fire danced behind other windows. An explosion blew out an upper section of the main building, showering bricks and broken roof tiles.

It was all coming down.

Kat grabbed Amy’s arm and hurried her through the exit and out into the parklike grounds. Other researchers fled for the gates to the street, looking shell-shocked.

Kat followed them, doing her best to keep her pistol hidden.

In the distance, sirens echoed.

Kat and Amy ran down the entry road and out the gates, chased by more blasts and deep-throated explosions. Debris rained down around them; smoke rolled thickly now, making it hard to see.

They fled farther down the street, trying to break clear, to get some distance away from the conflagration. At last, they reached a clear section of road. They both panted, hands on knees.

Sirens grew louder, converging all around as emergency crews responded from throughout Charleston.

Kat straightened and pointed toward the blue lights flashing through the smoke. “You should-”

The crack of a pistol echoed.

Amy fell back, sitting down on the road. She reached a palm to her chest as blood bloomed through her gown.

Kat twisted and dropped to a knee, swinging up her weapon.

An SUV sat on the side of the road, a back window open.

Movement inside.

She fired wildly at the dark car.

6:55 P.M.

Lisa dropped low in the backseat as the windshield cracked and shattered. She was pinned between two burly guards. In the front, the driver and Dr. Paul Cranston crouched.

“Christ!” the shooter next to her said. “She’s got a gun.”

Lisa covered her head.

What’s happening?

After nabbing her off the streets of downtown Charleston, Cranston and his men had returned to the fertility center, confident after their hunt-only to be greeted by a loud explosion as they turned into view. The concussion rattled the SUV’s windows. Smoke curled up from one of the back buildings. Flames began to spread-then more blasts as the place ripped apart.

Cranston had them retreat a block, to observe the incineration and destruction of his hard work, unable to look away.

He hissed from up front. “Take her out, goddamn it. Before she escapes. If she gets loose…”

While surveying the aftermath from a safe distance, Cranston had spotted a pair of women running out of the smoke, both shaven-headed, one in a hospital gown. He recognized them immediately. They’re from the lower lab! He’d ordered them shot, gunned down like rabid dogs. But it seemed one of the women had teeth.

The gunman next to Lisa returned to the open window, shoving out one arm, his weapon pointed. Another spat of gunfire peppered the side of the truck. The man swore but held his post.

Lisa risked a peek. She saw the woman with the pistol drag the wounded girl toward the shelter of the thicker smoke. Sirens screamed now, and the flash of emergency lights grew brighter through the haze.

Then the woman glanced over her shoulder, back toward the SUV.

It was the first time Lisa got a good look at her face. Recognition rocked through her-even with all her friend’s hair shorn away.

Kat.

“Got her,” the shooter said with deadly satisfaction.

No!

Lisa lunged and hit the man with her shoulder. His pistol fired, his aim thrown. Lisa got her head out, saw Kat unharmed-and she intended her friend to stay that way.

“Kat! Run!”

Her other guard yanked her roughly back.

Cranston raised enough to peer into the backseat. He fixed Lisa with a knowing gaze. She immediately read the understanding there.

“So that’s who you were working with,” Cranston said and ordered his men to secure Kat.

The gunman balled a fist in Lisa’s hair and dragged her out, using her body as a human shield.

Kat had found thin shelter behind a recycling bin.

Cranston called from up front. “Drop your weapon! Come out! or we’ll put a bullet through the back of your friend’s head.”

“Don’t!” Lisa screamed at her friend.

The fist in her hair shook hard, ripping follicles.

She watched in despair as Kat threw her pistol out-then stepped into view.

“Go get her,” Cranston ordered the other guard. “I want some answers. But don’t hesitate to shoot her if she gives you any trouble.”

Kat must have sensed the same and came along willingly, her fingers laced on top of her head.

“What about the other one?” Cranston asked when the guard returned with Kat.

“Dead.”

Kat and Lisa made their reunion in the middle of the backseat, trapped between the pair of armed men.

“I’m so sorry,” Lisa whispered.

Kat’s face was a hard mask of rage-but not directed at her. Kat’s hand found hers and squeezed, holding so much promise in that small gesture.

Reassurance, forgiveness, and a guarantee of revenge.

Emergency vehicles began to appear, whipping past their parked vehicle, sirens ablaze and lights blinding.

“Where now?” the driver asked, as he started the engine.

Cranston stared toward the burning wreckage of his clinic. “Out of the city… it’s a little too hot here now.” He turned from the fire and smoke. “We’ll take them for a ride in the country. To the Lodge.”

7:12 P.M.

Washington, DC

From his post in the communications nest, Painter watched the fiery footage from South Carolina. It was a live feed, shot by one of the two men he’d sent out to investigate the North Charleston Fertility Clinic.

His team had arrived on-site fifteen minutes ago. A chaos of fire crews fought the blaze. Towering arcs of water sprayed from trucks and ladders. Paramedics, along with other first-response teams, serviced burn injuries and smoke inhalation. Other victims had lacerations and bruises from flying debris and glass.

Four bodies had tarps over them.

Painter expected there would be more.

Would Kat or Lisa be among them?

When the security detail first reported in, Painter had hoped the destruction was Kat’s handiwork, but it could just as easily have been a fail-safe measure. Someone had found Kat’s bug, and the Guild was notorious for its scorched-earth policy. He’d seen it himself multiple times in the past. If anyone got too close, the Guild would burn all bridges that might lead to them-to their secrets. It didn’t matter the cost, consequences, or lives.

“Director.”

He turned to find Jason Carter at his shoulder-again.

“I want you to see something,” the kid said and drew him to a monitor where another analyst worked. Though the seated man was a decade older, Jason rested a hand on his shoulder like an encouraging father. “Linus and I were working on a research project for Kat before she left.”

“We’ve been working on it for about three months,” Linus added.

What’s this about?

Painter’s patience was thread-thin, but he waved for them to continue.

“I asked Linus to test our new protocols in the search for Captain Bryant and Dr. Cummings,” Jason said. “I hope that was all right.”

“Of course.” At this point, he’d take any help. “What were you testing?”

“A new surveillance-and-tracking system similar to current facial-recognition programs-but instead of faces, we applied it to motor vehicles. Once on the road, the wear and tear on an automobile creates a unique pattern, as individual as any person’s fingerprints or facial features.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Painter asked.

Jason rushed ahead. “I took the liberty of gathering the database from your security team in Charleston. You asked them to collect video from the traffic and security cams around that restaurant.”

“And nothing came up.”

“Right. So I had Linus collect similar data from the cameras in North Charleston-gathering video footage from all the vehicles passing through that neighborhood. We took all that information and ran it through our new vehicle-recognition program.”

“And?”

Jason squeezed Linus’s shoulder. He brought up side-by-side images on his monitor. It showed two partial views of a nondescript Ford SUV.

Jason continued, “I think our targets were purposefully avoiding traffic cams. It’s not hard to do if you know which intersections are monitored.”

And they would know that, Painter thought. It’s their home turf.

“We got these images off a couple of bank ATM cameras. The picture on the left was taken three blocks from the restaurant where Dr. Cummings vanished. The second crossed a bridge about four blocks from the clinic.” Jason faced him. “They’re the same vehicle.”

Painter countered skeptically, “There are a lot of Ford SUVs on the road.”

“Not that match the exact same pattern of wear and tear. But I wanted to be sure. That’s why I called you over.” Jason patted Linus again. His partner zoomed into the second image and set the footage in motion. “Like I said, the image is grainy, but we enhanced it the best we could.”

Painter leaned closer.

The expanded view peered through a back window. The shadowy figure of a man could be seen-and beside him a woman. Though the features were far from clear, she was definitely light-haired, similar profile-but it was more the way she carried herself, the way she moved, that made Painter’s breath quicken.

Hope surged in him.

“It’s Lisa.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Jason said.

I am.

“What about Kat?” Painter asked.

Other figures were in the car, but they were just indistinct blurs.

“I can’t say for sure,” Jason admitted. “And unfortunately we never did get a clear take on the license plate. If they’d gone through a traffic cam…”

It was unfortunate, but it was also a start.

And, more important.

Lisa’s alive.

He took a deep breath, not letting his relief overwhelm him, knowing matters could change at any moment. Painter only had to look at the neighboring monitor, at the fiery ruins of the clinic, to remind himself again of the Guild’s scorched-earth policy.

The bastards would not leave loose ends.

And right now that was the definition of Lisa and Kat.

The same could be said of Gray’s team. They were penetrating the latest Guild stronghold, on the trail of the president’s daughter.

Painter watched the last of the clinic buildings crumble into flame and smoke. It was a fiery warning for Gray, too.

Tread lightly.

27

July 3, 3:13 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the coast of Dubai

“They took Amanda into this elevator,” Tucker said.

Gray stood with his hands on his hips. He watched Kane sniff along the floor, the shepherd’s tail wagging vigorously. He didn’t doubt the dog’s nose, but he still hesitated.

The lobby bay had a dozen elevators banked in a semicircle. He stared up, following the spiraling curve of the translucent staircase. Both the elevators and the stairs ascended the central shaft of the Burj Abaadi. Each floor revolved around this stable core.

“Fifty floors,” Kowalski said. “At least we don’t have to climb each one.”

“But we’ll need to stop at each one,” Seichan said. “Have Kane see if Amanda’s trail continues out onto any of those levels.”

Gray’s three teammates looked to him for their next step. Even Kane stopped his sniffing to glance in his direction. Gray ignored them for a moment longer.

Something doesn’t make sense.

Gray had studied each of the floors on the security cameras. He saw no evidence of life up there. But he had to trust Kane. The dog had gotten them this far. Settled, he reached and hit the call button for the elevator.

The doors opened immediately. They all stepped inside the posh lift, appointed in rich exotic woods and crystal lighting.

“So should we start at the top and work our way down?” Tucker asked. “Or the other way around?”

“Neither,” Gray said, an edge of certainty hardening inside him as he bent down toward the elevator’s controls.

He pointed to the rows of buttons lined along a flat touch-screen display. Illuminated numbers designated each floor. As he watched, each numeral slowly transformed and rotated through various characters in other languages: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic.

Definitely trying to appeal to the global traveler here.

“I don’t get it,” Kowalski said. “If we’re not going up, then where are we going?”

Gray watched the lowest button glow in Arabic.

Then it shifted to the English equivalent.

“There’s a lower level,” Seichan said.

Kowalski looked to his toes. “Wait. How could there be a basement on a floating island?”

Gray knew this tower had been built in conjunction with the island’s construction. The bedrock upon which the foundation of this tower had been placed was the immense platform holding up Utopia. That concrete-and-steel stage lay approximately ten meters under them, leaving plenty of space for a basement here.

“Must be a service level for the tower,” Seichan said.

“And maybe more,” Gray added, pressing the button.

The letter flashed green, and the cage dropped silently, so smoothly it was hard to tell they were moving at all.

“Be ready,” Gray warned.

Weapons appeared in hands. Tucker signaled his dog, who lowered his haunches, readying to spring.

It felt like the elevator dropped much farther than just one floor, but at last, the doors opened. Gray took a shooter’s stance and quickly inspected a small, utilitarian lobby, dimly lit and drab. He searched for any guards, but it appeared empty.

He stepped out cautiously, leading the way. Hallways branched off, with color-designated lines painted on the floor, likely to direct the hotel staff toward kitchens, laundry facilities, maintenance closets, and storage spaces.

It looked like a maze down here.

Gray waved everyone forward. “Tucker, have Kane hunt for Amanda’s trail. She could be anywhere.”

Tucker set to work with his partner.

Gray noted that two other elevators flanked this one. It seemed only three of the twelve elevators came down to this level. He had Kowalski hold their door open, in case they needed a fast exit.

A tall set of windows along one wall drew Gray’s attention. He moved closer and stared into a cavernous neighboring space. The room was encased in concrete and climbed two stories high. Inside sat a row of massive turbine generators, looking like oversize metal elephants. Control panels covered another wall.

“The building’s power plant,” Seichan said, joining him.

Gray remembered Jack Kirkland’s description of the tidal turbines that powered this building. This must be them.

Tucker came back after only a minute. “Nothing,” he said.

Gray turned around, surprised. “What?”

Tucker shrugged. “Kane checked all of the hallways leading out from here. Found no sign of Amanda.”

Impossible. She has to be down here.

“Have him check again,” he ordered.

“I’ll do it, but it’s a waste of time. I’ll vouch for Kane’s nose.”

“He’s right,” Seichan argued. “Coming down here made sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only path. There are fifty other floors. The longer we wait…”

The more danger Amanda faces.

He sighed heavily, conceding to the logic, but not happy about it. “Back upstairs, then.”

The others piled inside the elevator.

Gray paused at the threshold, staring at the two doors that flanked this one.

“Hold on.” He stepped over, pressed the call button, and summoned the other two elevators.

“What are you doing?” Seichan asked from inside the cage, as Kowalski continued to hold the door open.

The other two elevators arrived. Gray inspected both cages. He returned to the others and studied the touch-screen display in their lift.

“What?” Seichan pressed.

“All three of these cages reach the service levels, so why did Amanda’s captors use the middle elevator? Human nature says they would have just gone to the one closest to the lobby.” Gray pointed to the first set of doors. “I checked those other two. This control panel is two inches longer than the others.”

“So?” Kowalski asked.

Seichan bent down and studied the lower section of the touch screen. “You think there are other buttons here, hidden ones.”

He nodded. “Leading to restricted levels that only this elevator can reach.”

Seichan searched the edges of the screen. “But I don’t see any keyholes or slots for pass cards to activate those levels.”

Gray hit the lobby button, sending the cage back up, demonstrating. “The screen is touch-sensitive.”

Seichan got it, her eyes smiling. “It could be keyed to a fingerprint.”

Gray stepped back into the lobby as the doors opened. “The soldier who Kane took out. He looked like he was the head of the security escort from Africa. He might have been granted access below.”

Gray turned to Kowalski.

The big man rolled his eyes and sulked out, mumbling under his breath, “Why do I get all the dirty work?”

He returned a minute later, wiping a blade on his pants. He held out his hand. “I brought both. Just in case.”

Resting on his palm were a thumb and a forefinger.

Kowalski also carried the dead man’s beret and tugged it on his head. “That guy was more my size,” he said and pointed toward the ceiling of the cage. “In case of any more cameras. I’m not playing prisoner again.”

Gray took the severed thumb, pressed it against the empty space below the LL button, and kept it there. He held his breath-then a new button bloomed to life under the thumb.

If he had any doubt before, it ended as that odd symbol appeared. Gray flashed to Somalia, to running across the abandoned camp toward the tent cabin. He remembered the same marking had been painted on the outside of the jungle hospital.

A crimson cross with tiny finial decorations along its crosspieces.

The cage fell again, dropping much deeper now.

Kowalski’s face had a sick tint to it. “How far down did these pirates bury their treasure?”

Gray pictured the giant concrete pylons that supported the island. The outer ones were twenty meters across, but the centermost pylon, the one directly under Burj Abaadi, was far larger. He knew that it was not uncommon for the support pillars of oil platforms to have caissons engineered in them, hollow pockets used for storing oil.

So why not here, too? But instead of oil, an entire base could be hidden inside a pillar this huge.

Gray knew Amanda was down there. His doubt centered on a larger concern. It weighed heavily as they dropped like a rock toward the heart of the island.

Is she still alive?

3:25 A.M.

Dr. Edward Blake watched the sheen of hatred fade from Amanda’s eyes as he injected the last of the propofol into her IV line. Her lids slid to half-mast, her breathing deepened.

Her last words had been a curse, a promise of revenge.

I will see you both in hell.

But it was an impotent threat.

Amanda, the person, the loving mother, would be gone in a few more minutes. All sentience would be wiped away, leaving behind nothing but the most basic of functions.

“You should scrub up,” Petra said.

His nurse was already gowned and adjusting a monitor that showed Amanda’s CT scan. The young woman lay on a surgical table, draped from the neck down, her bald head gleaming under the surgical halogens overhead. Small blue markings decorated her scalp, like so much scientific nomenclature tattooed in place. The markings delineated the multiple drill sites and electrode insertion points.

Petra prepared the stereotactic system for the pending surgery. It integrated his surgical workstation with an intra-operative MRI and microscopy setup for visualization. She secured Amanda’s head inside a fluid-filled alignment cuff, a vast improvement from the older head frames that had to be screwed into a patient’s skull.

After working in the mountains of Somalia and having to deal with tools that seemed antiquated in comparison, Edward felt a surge of childish joy at having such fine equipment to play with. The station in Somalia had served its purpose for the past few years, allowing him to harvest eggs, embryos, and collect viable or promising subjects for the various other reproductive labs around the world. But he had always had larger ambitions. It was pure happenstance that Amanda Gant-Bennett had landed on his doorstep versus one of the many other reproductive facilities and egg-collection centers in India, Malaysia, Australia, or countless other points around the globe. It allowed him the opportunity to shine in the eyes of his superiors, to climb higher up that ladder.

So far, besides a few hiccups, matters had been proceeding smashingly. Amanda’s death had been framed as an unfortunate encounter with Somali pirates; the child had been delivered and secured in the new high-tech research lab here; and after this last bloody bit of work, Amanda would be shipped off, no longer his problem, leaving him in peace to dissect and test the new research material.

The newborn slept in a small crib down the hall, waiting his turn.

But first, to attend to his mother.

An array of surgical instruments shone brightly: drills, bone curettes, cranial rongeurs, scalpels, suction and irrigation tubing.

He couldn’t help but be excited. Though the technique had been developed here, he had only performed this procedure once. A few of the region’s reproductive scientists had been rotated through here to learn it. But it had been fairly easy. The right and left sides of the cerebral cortex were connected with a layer of neural tissue. Using the surgical imaging as guidance, he would first perform a procedure known as a corpus callosotomy, which cuts the brain into two halves. It was a radical technique originally developed to treat severe epileptics, to sever that wild flow of electricity through the brain, which caused seizures.

The second stage of the procedure was one developed by another of his superiors’ agencies. It was called α-ECT, or alpha-alternating electroconvulsive therapy. Electrodes would be permanently inserted into the two severed hemispheres. Small electric shocks of alternate polarity would be administered to those two halves. The resultant whirlwind of mini-seizures trapped within either cranial hemisphere, swirling in opposite polarities, caused total shutdown of the cerebral cortex, leaving only the brainstem functional, which continued to control such vital tasks as heart rate and rhythm, respiration, even gastrointestinal activities.

In the end, the body was left intact, but the mind was gone.

A perfect tool for reproductive studies.

Edward glanced one last time toward Amanda’s prone form.

After this, there would be no more Amanda.

As he exited the surgical suite for the scrub room, a chime sounded from a wall monitor overhead. It was a security feature of the station, announcing the arrival of the elevator. Every room had such a screen. A name scrolled across the bottom of the monitor.

Buggas Abdiwalli

It was the captain of Edward’s personal security force. The screen showed a black-and-white view of the tops of helmets and a black beret.

What does that bloody Bug-Arse want now? he wondered, irritated, using the slang for the man’s name.

He knew the captain was in a foul mood after losing so many men back in Somalia, but Edward didn’t have time for this. He would let security deal with Buggas. If the captain became obstinate, the new automated systems would discourage him from putting up a fuss.

Nothing could get through that layer of defense.

Petra’s voice came over the intercom as he began scrubbing.

“Doctor, we’re ready for you.”

28

July 3, 3:30 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the Coast of Dubai

Now comes the hard part…

Gray prepared his team in the seconds before the elevator doors opened. He expected another layer of security beyond a fingerprint-coded elevator key. The Guild was much too paranoid. Anyone could hold a member of their staff at gunpoint and force their way down here.

Or cut off a finger.

No, there had to be a second level of defense. But Gray’s team didn’t have the luxury of planning, which meant only one thing.

No time for subtlety.

Only one man fit that job description.

And Kowalski wasn’t happy about it. “Why the hell did I grab that bastard’s beret?”

“You’ll do fine,” Gray said.

Besides the beret, Kowalski also matched the height and bulk of the Somali leader. It wasn’t much, but they only needed the ruse to continue for a few seconds. He had to trust that the guards down here were as confident in their safety on the island as the Somalis had been earlier. He didn’t expect to catch the enemy napping or with their pants down, but he could hope for some momentary carelessness.

Gray pointed to Tucker. “You and Kane take point as soon as we’re through. You don’t wait. You track Amanda. We’ll be on your heels as soon as possible.”

Tucker rose from preparing his partner and nodded.

Seichan had her SIG Sauer in her hand.

A chime sounded as the elevator settled to a stop with a small shudder of its cage. Gray waved everyone to the side as the doors rolled open, keeping their faces shadowed by their stolen helmets.

Except for Kowalski.

The big guy was out of the elevator before it finished opening. With the beret pulled low over his eyes, he stalked ahead as if he owned the place.

In a single sweep, Gray took in the view beyond the doors. A small security lobby sealed access to the rest of the facility. The floor and walls were bare concrete; gone was the opulence of above. The ceiling was raw steel in a honeycomb pattern. A single metal door opened off the space. Next to it rose a bulletproof window, like those found at a bank, only the teller here wore a black uniform and carried a rifle over his shoulder.

The guard didn’t look up. He leaned to a microphone. “Present identification and place your palm on the reader.”

A panel glowed atop a narrow counter. A small drawer was shoved through the window and popped open, awaiting papers.

Kowalski reached and dropped a fistful of marble-size pellets into the tray. Curious, the guard finally looked up. With the heel of his hand, Kowalski slammed the drawer back to the other side.

He pressed a transceiver in his other fist.

The C-4 pellets-normally used for blowing deadbolts and locks-exploded in the guard’s face and chest. His body went flying back, a smoking ruin.

Kowalski was already in motion, spinning to the side and slapping a square of C-4 against the steel door.

“Fire in the hole!” he bellowed.

Kowalski dove back into the elevator, ducking with the others to the side. The explosion rocked the cage, deafened their covered ears.

Gray rolled out into the smoke, inspecting the damage. The remains of the door glowed a fiery red through the pall. Spatters of molten steel splashed the walls and floor. The air stung with a chemical signature.

That wasn’t just C-4.

He glanced at Kowalski, who shrugged.

“My own recipe. Added polymer-coated thermate-TH4 to the C-4.”

Gray inwardly cringed. Thermate was the primary ingredient in incendiary grenades, used for cutting through tank armor. But overkill or not, Kowalski had gotten the job done-and Gray hadn’t asked for subtlety.

Nothing moved beyond the doorway. He spotted bodies back there, but to be certain the way was clear, Gray tossed two flash-bang grenades into the outer hall. Everyone looked away and covered their ears. The flash-bangs erupted-then Gray gave Tucker his signal.

Dog and handler burst across the room, avoiding the molten pools of steel on the floor. Gray and the others followed, weapons ready.

Then the sky began to fall.

Hexagonal pieces of the roof rained down from above, clattering to the floor. Gray thought they were just ceiling tiles shaken loose by the blast.

Then those tiles sprouted legs-steel, articulated, razor-sharp appendages-and came swarming at them like a horde of metal spiders.

3:34 A.M.

“Doctor…?” Petra stood frozen by the tray of instruments. She had been prepping the neuro-endoscope when the first thunderous blast sounded.

Then an even louder detonation rocked through the facility, rattling everything in the room, including Edward’s nerves. His first thought was that the concrete walls of the pillar had given way. That worry always lurked in the back of his mind.

Immobilized by terror, Edward remained at his workstation, fully gowned and masked. He had been manipulating and aligning the micro-robotic arm and its fine cranial drill, getting ready to start.

Additional smaller explosions continued.

“We’re under attack,” Petra said, looking to him for guidance.

Her words finally shattered through his shock. They had to get out of here-but not empty-handed, not without their hard-earned prize. If they survived without the newborn in their possession, the backlash would be deadly.

“The child,” he said, locking eyes with Petra. “We still need him alive for now. Grab him. We’ll make for an evacuation station.”

She dropped the endoscope, turned toward the door, then back again. “What about the patient?” Her eyes flicked in the direction of Amanda.

“Not important.” The voice on the phone had all but admitted it. The young woman could be replaced-but not the child. “We have all of her tissue and blood samples. That should be enough. I’ll grab those. You see to the child.”

Still, Edward hated to leave matters unsettled. He picked up a scalpel, stared at his hand, then placed the instrument gently back down. He couldn’t muster the strength to do it himself, not by his own hand.

He turned back to the workstation and activated the laser-aligned trajectory preset into the machine. The robotic arm began its slow descent, the drill whining into a fierce whirr. The burr’s path into the cerebral cortex was already plotted-only now no one would be here to stop it as it penetrated deeper and deeper.

Like a slow bullet through the skull.

This is better, he consoled himself. She won’t feel a thing.

With everything in order, Edward abandoned his workstation and rushed for the door. A final glance behind him showed the tip of the drill burr piercing the small blue X marked on Amanda’s skull. A drop of blood welled and rolled down her scalp, like a crimson tear.

Good-bye, Amanda.

3:40 A.M .

Gray fled through a hellish landscape of black smoke and fiery molten metal, made even worse by the horde of metallic hunters, scrabbling toward him, racing atop legs as sharp as daggers.

Kowalski crushed one of the hunters under his boot. The legs splayed out like a squashed spider-then reversed themselves, swinging up and latching onto Kowalski’s boot. The legs began sawing through the leather.

Seichan went to his aid, cutting free his bootlaces in a single thrust of her throwing dagger. She pointed to the wall.

Kowalski kicked his leg, sending his footwear and the clinging spider flying.

Gray held others off with his pistol, knocking them back with each shot. Together, they retreated through the molten remains of the door, creating a fiery choke point against the hunters.

Kowalski tried to bring his rifle to bear, hopping on one bloody foot, but Gray pointed down the hall. “Go after Tucker. We’ll hold them off here.”

Kowalski didn’t have to be told twice, mumbling, “Hate friggin’ spiders…”

Seichan popped off a couple of shots with her SIG Sauer. “Must be some sort of automated defense system.”

He agreed. He had expected the base to have built-in countermeasures-but never this. He knew DARPA was working on research projects along these lines, an experimental program to develop robotic swarms, for coordinated attack, surveillance, and defensive systems. He’d seen footage from a university in England where they’d successfully developed such a swarm. And it wasn’t just small robots. He’d witnessed the completion of a cheetah-size robot in a DARPA lab that could run faster than a human.

Likely the countermeasures here at the base were meant to hunt, distract, and stall the enemy until a security team could mobilize. Still, the automatons by themselves were deadly enough, and bullets hardly slowed them down.

“Here they come,” Seichan warned.

A wave of razor-edged steel came crashing toward them.

3:44 A.M.

Tucker tore down the hallway, chasing after Kane’s tail. He strained for the sound of any threat, eyes unblinking, breath shallow. But he didn’t have to rely on his senses alone.

A growl reached his ears, a warning.

A man in a white lab coat stepped into the hallway ahead, raising an arm.

Tucker shot him in the face.

As he rushed past the man, he saw his hands were empty. A twinge of guilt flickered-but it quickly died. The two other people he’d already shot had been holding weapons. He couldn’t take the chance.

Besides, after all he’d seen in the past minute, no one down here deserved to take another breath. He’d passed lab after lab, saw things he wished he could un-see. A chill remained at the base of his spine, picturing the disembodied head hanging from a rack above a beating heart.

Who the hell does something like that?

And why?

Kane continued his headlong rush, his nose sniffing at corners or in the air. He had found Amanda’s scent.

Finally, Kane skidded to a stop, sliding a couple of feet, then returning to a closed door. Tucker met his partner there. A tiny window revealed a long washbasin, a wall of sterilized green packs, and packets of cellophane-sealed scrub brushes.

A surgical prep room.

Amanda’s trail led here.

That earlier chill spread up his spine.

Holding his pistol at the ready, he shouldered through the door and scanned the space for any hostiles. Empty. But a wide window looked into a neighboring surgical suite. A woman lay sprawled and draped atop a stainless-steel table, her upper body locked into some device. A robotic arm vibrated above her shaved head.

Amanda…

He had studied the photo of the president’s daughter well enough to recognize her from her features alone. Kane pawed at the door into the operating theater. He knew the truth, too.

Tucker hurried into the surgical room, finding the place otherwise deserted. A whirring buzz drew his attention back to Amanda. He stepped to her side, aghast as he recognized the source of the noise.

Blood flowed in a thick rivulet from a drill bit burrowing into her skull. He dashed around the table, unsure what to do. Kane danced at his side, reading his anxiety but not knowing how to help.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he assured his friend.

But it was far from okay.

Tucker followed the electrical cord from the robotic arm to a workstation. Not knowing what else to do, he yanked out the wall plug. The whining drone died away.

Tucker studied Amanda, watching her chest rise and fall.

At least she’s still alive.

He studied the length of steel still embedded in her head. He had to free her, but how? He dared not yank that drill free or risk more damage to her skull.

He searched around and saw what looked like a miniature set of bolt cutters-surgical pin cutters. He grabbed them up, positioned them along the shaft of the burr, about an inch from Amanda’s skull, and pinched the cutters closed. A loud snap, and she was free of the robotic arm.

Next, Tucker set about detaching her from the cushioned head clamp and unhooking her from the anesthetic machine.

Focused on the task, he was startled to hear a voice ask, “What’s that sticking out of her head?”

He swung around. Kowalski limped toward him on a bloody foot.

“How did you find me?” Tucker asked.

“Followed the trail of dead bodies. Then saw him in the hall.”

Kane panted at the doorway, guarding Tucker’s back, as usual, making sure no hostiles crept up on him.

Kowalski again pointed to Amanda’s skull. “What is that?”

“A drill bit.”

“What? Why-?”

“How the hell do I know? Just help me.”

“I got her.” Kowalski stepped over and scooped Amanda into his arms as if she weighed no more than a scarecrow.

And maybe that’s all she is-a scarecrow with no brain.

Either way, she needed help.

“Where are Gray and Seichan?” Tucker asked, collecting his dog.

Kowalski headed toward the door with Amanda. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.”

3:46 A.M.

Seichan and Gray retreated farther down the hall, away from the silvery horde as it crashed against the fiery, melted doorway. A brush against the molten metal incinerated several of the automatons. Those that made it past then did a strange thing: they circled and returned to the doorway, ignoring Gray and Seichan.

For the moment, the horde remained clustered at the doorway, scrabbling over the red-hot metal, attacking it, burning themselves, even melting into the molten remains of the door.

“It’s the heat,” Seichan said. “That’s what draws them. They must be programmed to hunt body heat.”

And, it seemed, any hot source would do. Beyond the doorway, Gray watched several of them rushing to the molten patches of steel on the floor, destroying themselves.

But as the steel began to cool, the occasional automaton tried to skitter their way. A few well-placed rounds discouraged such trespassing.

Seichan glanced back. “Should we start looking-”

The entire world shook with a sonic boom, strong enough to knock Gray to one knee. After that thunderous eruption, a strong vibration persisted, humming strongly enough to make his back molars ache. A change in air pressure made his ears pop.

Seichan shared a glance with Gray.

The fear in her eyes matched his own.

A few inches of water suddenly flowed into the hallway, as if from a burst pipe. Gray pictured the pylon that hid this base.

It was really just one monstrous pipe.

More icy water began surging, swirling.

Kowalski appeared around a corner of the hall, splashing toward them, holding an unconscious woman in his arms. Her head lolled toward Gray as Kowalski shifted her higher in his arms. Despite the lack of hair, he immediately recognized her.

Amanda… she’s alive!

But they didn’t have time to celebrate.

“What’s happening?” Kowalski hollered.

Tucker and Kane followed him, both looking equally concerned.

Seichan bent down, dipped a finger, and tasted it. “Salty.”

That left no doubt.

“They’ve busted their own pipe,” Gray said and pointed to the elevator. “Place is flooding. Out! Now!”

3:55 A.M .

We often give our enemies the means to our own destruction.

Edward remembered that quote from Aesop, learned back in his Eton College days when he was a young boy. Though taken out of context now, it still felt apt as he watched the annihilation from the window of the small evacuation boat.

The air-lock-sealed boats were positioned like blisters along the circumference of the center pylon. Tracks ran up the outside of the column and across the underside of the support platform, traveling out along the five arms of the star-until they were jettisoned free of the island.

Patrols already awaited the evacuees’ arrival.

Especially the precious cargo Edward held in his lap.

The newborn, swaddled warmly and mewling softly, held so much promise: both for those Edward served and himself. The child was insurance that he would be saved from a watery grave. He had placed a frantic call upon securing the child, reporting the attack.

But word had already reached the source of that cold, computerized voice. MATTERS ARE BEING TAKEN CARE OF. ENSURE THE CHILD IS SAFE.

He intended to do just that.

He stared out the window. The boat could hold ten people, but he and Petra had the vessel to themselves.

Beyond the boat, the world was as dark as the deepest cavern. He had watched the flashes of blue lightning along the length of the central pylon as they made their escape, the explosive charges shattering the steel inside the concrete walls, weakening the entire structure. The immense mass of the tower above would continue that destruction, pulverizing and crushing all beneath it.

And it wasn’t just this one pylon.

Out in the darkness, blue lightning bloomed and burst across the forest of stone out there, corrupting the entire understory of the island. Thunder echoed and shook their boat. For a moment, the world beyond appeared like an electric forest in the night, wondrous to behold, breathtaking in its devastation.

He remembered another proverb as he stared, pining for the simpler times of his youth.

All good things must come to an end.

3:56 A.M.

“Run!” Gray yelled and pointed to the elevator.

Together, the team slogged through calf-deep icy water.

Kowalski hauled Amanda, high-stepping his way, wary of any straggling steel spiders in the lobby. But the last of the automatons had succumbed to the icy flood.

They made it to the elevators, which still had power-but for how long? Gray hit the call button to open the doors.

Another violent quake shook the facility, accompanied by a muffled boom as something gave way. A surge of water rolled down the hallway, funneling toward them, building power.

The doors opened, too slowly.

The wave of water hit them, driving them into the cage. They were waist-deep in seconds. The cold cut to the bone. Already shivering, Seichan hurried and pressed the lobby button. Gray held his breath. They all stared up, silently praying the motors still had power.

He pictured the turbines he’d seen above-the key word being above. The main power generators should still be high and dry.

This proved to be the case, as the elevator began to rise. The water level steadily drained as the cage lifted out of the rising flood. They all let out a loud sigh of relief.

A soft groan rose from Amanda as the effects of the anesthetic began to wear off. A promising sign, despite the piece of surgical drill still lodged in her skull. Once safe, they could attempt-

A mighty shake threw them all to one side of the cage.

Again, Gray’s ears popped.

A low rumble rose beneath them, growing louder, sounding like a freight train hurling straight at them. He pictured a column of water chasing up the elevator shaft as the pylon’s caisson finally imploded beneath them.

“We’re passing the service levels,” Seichan said, reaching a hand to his forearm, squeezing all her hope into that rock-hard grip.

Almost there.

They should be safe once the elevator climbed above sea level and reached the dry lobby above.

Then the lights went out.

Their ascent came to a shaky stop.

Kowalski swore brightly in the darkness.

“The generators,” Seichan whispered.

The floodwaters must have swamped that level-and continued to rise. The roar of the freight train grew to a howl beneath them.

“Hold on!” Gray shouted.

A force struck the underside of the carriage, driving the cage up the shaft in a bone-jarring, rattling ascent.

At least they were headed in the right direction-but for how long?

“Tucker, help me get the doors open!”

Gray knew they would have only one chance. Once the powerful surge receded, the cage would go crashing back down with it.

With urgency firing their efforts, the two forced the elevator open. The walls of the shaft blurred past them-then the outer-lobby doors sprang into view. The cage settled to a bobbling, shaking stop there, balanced on the tip of a powerful fountain.

But only for a moment.

Water flooded into the open cage, swamping the space and causing it to slowly sink.

“Hurry!”

Gray and Tucker hauled on the outer-lobby doors, cracking them wide enough for the others to evacuate. Seichan helped Kowalski with Amanda’s limp form. All the while, the cage continued to flood and submerge deeper.

Tucker used a free arm to push Kane through the shrinking doorway-then nodded to Gray. They were both chest-deep in water. Only half the cage was still at the lobby level.

“Go!” Tucker said.

“Together,” Gray argued.

They didn’t have the luxury of counting to three-both simply dove through the opening, their feet pulling free of the cage just as it sank away down the shaft behind them.

Gray helped Tucker stand.

They sloshed a few steps, relieved to be alive.

Seichan crouched by Kowalski, examining Amanda, checking her condition. When she stood, she wore a worried look.

“What?” Gray asked.

“She’s had her baby.”

Tucker splashed closer. “But her belly’s still big.”

“Was bigger, I guess.” Kowalski carried her to the steps to get her out of the water.

“She’s early,” Seichan said. “Either stress caused her to deliver prematurely or they induced her to get the baby.”

Tucker stared toward the flooded elevator, his face crushed with guilt. “I didn’t know. If I had, I could’ve searched longer. Tried to find the baby.”

Gray placed a hand on his shoulder. “We barely made it out as it was. If you’d delayed even another minute, Amanda could have died. We all could have died. And there’s no saying the baby was born alive. Or maybe he was already evacuated out.”

Tucker looked little comforted by this logic, and stared at the door. His dog came up and nudged his hand with his nose. Tucker rubbed the side of Kane’s face, finding solace there instead of words.

Gray turned away, splashing across-splashing?

He stared down at his feet, still ankle-deep in water. “Why is it still flooded up here?”

“It’s not just here,” Seichan said from a few yards away. She pointed across the lobby to the glass entrance of the Burj Abaadi.

Gray stared out, shocked.

The starlit park beyond the tower was flooded. Black waves washed through the trees and crashed against the steps of the tower.

He understood immediately. The Guild never took half-measures when it came to covering their tracks. They hadn’t just shattered the one support pylon as a fail-safe.

They had shattered all of them.

He knew what that meant, a dreadful and frightening truth.

The whole island is sinking.

29

July 2, 8:01 P.M. EST

Orangeburg, South Carolina

They’d been on the road for an hour, heading west out of Charleston. Kat noted a sign that read ORANGEBURG. Her captors-the head of the fertility clinic, Dr. Paul Cranston, and his three men-kept mostly to the back roads, racing at speeds too fast for the rural areas.

Cranston spent most of the trip on his cell phone. Kat eavesdropped, but she learned little from his end of the conversations. Plainly he and the others still didn’t know what had happened at the clinic, didn’t know the true source of that fiery destruction sat in the backseat of their Ford explorer.

Kat wasn’t about to fill him in, but from the glance over his shoulder, Cranston clearly suspected the cause. But apparently any questions would wait until they reached their destination.

She gleaned that last bit of intelligence from a phone conversation moments later. Cranston sat straighter for that call, the perpetual edge of disdain in his voice gone, his tone turned subservient, frightened.

We’ll bring them both straightaway.

Whoever lurked at the other end of the line left the man shaking and ashen. Cranston sat for several long minutes, cell phone on his lap, not moving, staring dully out the window at the passing cotton and tobacco fields.

Eventually, he snapped out of it and made one last call.

To his wife.

I’m fine, sweetheart. I wasn’t even at the clinic when the fire broke out. Maybe a gas leak. I know, I know… but I have a slew of other fires still to put out. Give Michael a kiss for me. Tell him I’ll be back in a couple of days for the parade and fireworks on the Fourth. What’s that? Yeah, sorry, I’m… losing signal. I didn’t hear what you… oh never mind.

He finally surrendered, as reception died out in the backcountry.

As Kat listened, she found it hard to couple this devoted family man to the horrors hidden beneath that research facility.

Still, the conversation awakened pangs of longing for her own family. Monk should be getting the babies ready for bed about now, tucking Penny into her footy pajamas, Harriet into her crib with a mobile of bears hanging above it. She thought of Monk sliding his arm around her waist after they both settled down, pulling her close, content to be surrounded by his girls.

As if sensing her thoughts, Lisa squeezed her hand.

Kat appreciated the gesture, but she intended to return to Monk’s arms-which meant getting free first.

The opportunity to accomplish that grew shorter with every passing mile. Once they reached their destination-the Lodge-she suspected escape would be impossible. Still, she had to be patient. She needed the right moment, the right opportunity.

At last, she got it.

The SUV turned onto a long, lonely stretch of rural road, not a car in sight. The summer sun sat low on the horizon, creating deep pools of shadows under the heavy-limbed oaks that lined the road.

She gave Lisa’s hand an extra-hard squeeze, preparing her. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Kat declared loudly.

Cranston dismissed her. “You’ll wait.”

“I won’t. I’m going now-either outside or back here.”

Cranston twisted in his seat, eyeing her, judging her determination. She didn’t break eye contact. His gaze flicked to the lonely road around them, then he sighed.

“Fine. Stop the car.” His next words were for one of the guards. “She runs… you shoot her.”

The Ford pulled to the shoulder of the road.

Kat gave Lisa’s hand a small tug, trying to get her to understand.

Lisa tightened her fingers. “I should go, too… if we’re stopping anyway.”

Good girl.

“You’ll take turns,” Cranston said. “I’m not taking any chances.”

They piled out of the backseat on the driver’s side, leaving the two men up front. One gunman kept a grip on Lisa’s upper arm, resting a palm on his holstered pistol.

Kat hiked off to the shadows beneath an oak.

“That’s far enough!” Cranston yelled out the open window.

Her guard had his pistol out, emphasizing the order.

She squatted in the weeds and slipped her shorts down. After all of the drugs in her system, her bladder had been begging for relief. The guard watched. She stared right back at him, challenging him. Once finished, she stood back up and headed toward the roadside.

The guard kept his pistol pointed, maintaining his distance.

The other gunman pushed Lisa toward the field. “Your turn. Be quick about it.”

That was all Kat needed.

She swung her arm, sharply flicking out her wrist. The hidden baton extended to its full length. She might be out of range of the guard-but the baton wasn’t.

Back on the streets of Charleston, Kat had taken the weapon from Amy after hiding her body behind the recycling bin. She had concealed the collapsed length of the baton in the small of her back, tucked into the waistband of her shorts-then tossed her pistol out, appearing unarmed.

She had wanted Lisa a safe distance away from her captors before acting, to wait for their guard to lower.

Like now.

Kat cracked the baton’s hard length across the guard’s wrist, breaking bone. The pistol tumbled from his fingertips.

Already diving forward, Kat caught the weapon before it hit the pavement. She landed on her shoulder and rolled, already firing. She blasted the guard in the knee, twisted to shoot the other gunman in the head, then back to her guard, finishing him off with a round through his throat.

Kat lunged to the car. Her attack had been so sudden, so savage, the driver barely had time to react. She shoved her gun through the open window and fired point-blank into the side of his head. Skull fragments and blood splattered across the front seat, striking Cranston across chest and face.

The doctor sat stunned, one hand held up, palm open. The other clutched an open cell phone.

Sorry, bastard, no signal.

Kat wasn’t taking any chances with him. The good doctor had answers Sigma needed. She intended to deliver him to Painter, all trussed up and tied with a bow.

“It’s our turn to drive.”

8:12 P.M.

Lisa guided the Ford explorer down the country road, trying her best to ignore the gore still staining the seat. As a medical doctor, she seldom found herself squeamish, but the raw brutality of Kat’s attack still shook her. Prior to today, she had known Kat mainly as a mother or a strategist working alongside Painter. She’d never witnessed Kat’s skill in the field, her pure animal cunning and savagery.

Though that trait had won them their freedom, it still unnerved her.

That, and the cold blood seeping through the seat of her dress.

After the roadside attack, Kat had forced Cranston to haul the bodies into a ditch, to hide them from direct sight of the road, though it looked rarely traveled.

Which was turning out to be a problem.

“Any signal yet?” Lisa asked.

“No,” Kat answered from the backseat.

Her friend crouched behind Cranston, a pistol in one hand, the doctor’s cell phone in the other. Cranston still sat in the front passenger seat, his wrists zip-tied to the headrest behind him. An awkward stress position, but Kat ignored his protests.

Beyond that cold professionalism, Lisa recognized a glimmer of hatred in Kat’s eyes. While not getting the full story concerning what had happened at the North Charleston Fertility Clinic, Lisa understood enough to know whom to blame.

Cranston was a monster hiding behind a handsome face.

And one with great ambitions.

“There should be a signal by now,” Kat said. “But I’m still not getting any reception.”

After commandeering the vehicle, Kat had ordered Lisa to turn the SUV around and backtrack along their path. She wanted to reach a phone or get close enough to a cell tower to regain reception.

“Some farmhouses off to the right,” Lisa offered. “We can turn in and ask for help.”

“They might alert the local authorities. I don’t know who to trust out here.”

Lisa remembered Painter expressing the same concern. The Gants owned much of South Carolina. Who knew how far that reach extended into local law enforcement?

“Look.” Lisa pointed ahead. “There’s a sign for a turnoff to Orangeburg. Surely that town must get cell signal.”

“Head that way,” Kat agreed, but she kept searching around the vehicle, with a suspicious look.

Lisa made that turn and traveled a half-mile. Off in the distance, the steeple of a church poked above the tree line. That had to be the town of Orangeburg.

Too focused on the horizon, Lisa glided through an intersection with a flashing red light. A small drawbridge crossed a hidden river. A warning gate began to drop across its entrance.

She pulled to a stop in front of it.

As she waited for the drawbridge to open, Lisa asked, “Anything now?”

“Nothing.”

In the rearview mirror, Kat’s eyes fixed at the back of Cranston’s head. He’d been unusually quiet for the past five minutes, no further complaints about his wrists.

A low rumble announced the raising of the bridge-but then got louder and louder-becoming more like a thumping.

Lisa frowned, concerned about the worn mechanics of the old bridge.

Kat’s reaction was rougher. She jerked upright and threw her cell phone out the window. She clutched Lisa’s shoulder at the same time.

“Get us out of here! now!”

The warning came too late.

A sleek military-gray helicopter burst out of hiding from the riverbed to the left. It lofted high over the bridge.

Lisa yanked the car into reverse and jammed the gas. She raced backward to the intersection, fishtailed the car a full 180, and was ready to speed off-but the helicopter was faster. The chopper cut them off, plunging out of the sky to block the road.

Lisa braked, avoiding a collision with the whirling blades.

Rotor wash beat at the Ford’s windshield.

A bullhorn roared. “Throw your weapons clear of the vehicle! Exit with your hands up!”

To make sure the order was understood, a small gun mounted on the chopper’s underside chattered, and a spate of rounds blasted into the pavement in front of the SUV.

Lisa turned to Kat.

She shook her head. “Do what they say.”

Into that stunned silence, Cranston smiled. “Ladies, you’re not the only ones allowed surprises.” He awkwardly swiveled around. “Back there, I disabled my phone’s cellular receiver and activated an emergency satellite beacon built into the phone.”

Turning it into a tracking device, Lisa realized. No wonder Kat jettisoned the phone.

Cranston frowned. “Though I have to say the emergency response was faster than I expected. Apparently, my employers truly don’t want you to escape. But why? Who the hell are you?”

Kat raised the pistol to his ear. “You’ll never know.” His eyes got huge as the pistol exploded, shattering away half his face.

Lisa cringed from the sudden brutality, her ears ringing as Kat tossed the weapon through the window. Still, Lisa heard the fierce whisper that followed.

“That was for Amy.”

8:15 P.M.

Washington, DC

Painter sat in Kat’s chair, rubbing his eyes. The faint smell of jasmine that hung in the air was no longer evident. Maybe it had faded away with everyone bustling in and out of the office, or maybe he’d just become desensitized to the scent. Either way, he felt a nagging sense of loss, a foreboding.

You’re just exhausted, he tried to convince himself.

Jason and Linus continued their work, searching for any other sightings of the Ford. Painter had played that grainy footage over and over again, watching the shadowy shape shift frame by frame, knowing it was Lisa.

He was relieved to find her still alive, but the longer that silence stretched, with no further word on Kat and Lisa’s true fate, the deeper that icy knife twisted in his gut.

He forced his eyes to stare once more at the map on the monitor. It displayed South Carolina, along with parts of North Carolina and Georgia. Large swaths of red stood out from the green background. The crimson areas were landholdings of the Gant family.

Painter suspected Lisa and Kat were hidden somewhere in that crimson field.

Which presented a major challenge.

The Gant family had arrived on the shores of the Carolinas a century before the founding of this country, settling in the city of Charles Town, which later became simply Charleston. Wealth and power grew rapidly, channeled through the financial support of the family’s old World connections in both France and England. As that family grew, so did its reach and influence, branching into universities, governments, military institutions, and banking circles.

And much of that wealth turned into land.

It was said, back at the turn of the century, that the Gants could ride horseback from one side of the state to the other-from the beaches of Charleston across the low-country counties and up to the Blue Ridge Mountains-all without ever stepping foot off their own property.

Today, the Gants could drive a herd of cattle across the state and make that same claim.

Painter rubbed his temples, overwhelmed by the wealth and power that opposed his small group. How could they hope to succeed against a force so entrenched? And if the enemy ever did learn Sigma was still investigating them in secret, what would their next response be?

He could guess the answer. In 146 B.C., Rome destroyed Carthage by sacking the place, burning the city, enslaving the survivors, and salting the very earth to make sure nothing ever grew there again.

Painter expected something worse than that.

Jason Carter appeared at his door, ever his shadow. “Director, you asked me to let you know when I finished that special project.”

“You’re done? Already?”

“On our computer. But I might have to demonstrate.”

Painter stood from the chair and relinquished it to Kat’s chief analyst. The kid hurried over and dropped into the seat. He tapped rapidly and brought up the genealogical map of the Gant clan. Painter had asked for his expert assistance at building a more detailed version, one set to his specific parameters.

From the very beginning, something had been troubling him about the Gant family tree, a nagging sense that he was missing a vital detail. He began to suspect the problem, but he didn’t know what it signified, or if it meant anything at all. The only way to make sure was to construct a genealogical representation where no detail was left out.

He wanted the complete picture-and asked Jason to prepare it.

“Here’s the lineage you originally assembled,” Jason said.

With a click of the mouse, the three-dimensional schematic of the Gant family tree appeared. Progeny and familial connections formed a monumental tapestry, a weaving and warping of heredity and genealogy that spanned two centuries, back to the founding of the country.

It was hard to get reliable records much earlier than that.

But apparently not for Jason.

“Okay, director, I know what you asked for, but I took the liberty of also searching back another century-just to be thorough.”

I want to clone this kid.

Painter leaned closer. “And you were still able to expand the search to the sides.”

Jason nodded.

Painter had spent hours studying that chart, finally gleaning what nagged him. Certain tendrils of the chart showed familial lines that wove in and out of the main genealogical matrix, marking distant cousins marrying back into the family. For such a rich family, it wasn’t unusual, a typical inbreeding of power and blood among aristocrats.

But those loose threads in the Gant family’s tapestry troubled him, because there seemed to be too many of them, even for such a rich dynasty, a suspicious fraying of the cloth. Painter couldn’t help but pick at those threads to see what they might reveal.

He asked Jason to stretch the genealogical search to the sides of the main family tree, to follow all of those loose threads. He also instructed him to look for new ones, specifically lines of the family that strayed even farther from the fold, farther than merely distant cousins, before diving and returning to the Gant bosom.

“Show me,” Painter ordered.

“Be prepared. The chart is vast. No individual names will show up, just data points.”

“Do it.”

Jason tapped a few keys, and that original matrix Painter constructed shrunk to a size of a fist. Names dwindled away to become nodes of a network, stars in a galaxy. Around that galactic core, a hazy corona of new data points and fine lines appeared, scintillating into existence on the screen, surrounding yet incorporated into the whole.

Painter brushed his fingertips across the new spiral arms of this galaxy. “And all of these extensions mark where a strand of the family tree shot away from the others-”

“Only to eventually return again,” Jason confirmed. “The average deviation was two generations, but a few of those lines broke away for five or six generations. A couple of the prodigal relatives returning to the family were seventeenth or eighteenth cousins. But return they did.”

“Like moths around a lamp,” Painter said. “Fluttering out, then diving back in again. Over and over again.”

Jason shrugged. “I can probably confirm this is excessive, even for a prominent family like the Gants, but it’ll take time to work up a comparable dynasty. Still, I’m not sure what the significance is.”

Painter wasn’t either-but his breathing deepened, adrenaline flowing as he balanced on the edge of a precipice.

Something…

His eyes remained glued to the screen as the matrix slowly spun in place. He sensed there was a pattern hidden inside that hazy cloud at the edges of the genealogical map. He just needed a key to unlock it.

What am I missing?

30

July 3, 4:16 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the coast of Dubai

Gray slogged through the chest-deep water toward the entrance to the Burj Abaadi. The others waited by the stairs, ready to flee up to escape the rising waters.

Beyond the glass wall, the city of Utopia slowly drowned. A few buildings still shone with emergency lights, run on batteries. Otherwise, the island was dark. Black waves swept across the park, crashing against the tower steps. Dangerous debris floated everywhere: spare lumber, plastic trash buckets, even a toppled palm, still potted in its crate. The currents were equally hazardous.

Gray pictured the entire platform sinking, crushing the damaged pylons beneath its weight. In the time it took Gray to cross the lobby, the water rose another foot. They needed a way to escape the flooding tower before the island’s descent became a fast plummet-or worse, the entire platform started to cant and tip, toppling buildings over like a waiter dumping a tray of tall glasses.

He didn’t know if Jack Kirkland was alive, if he’d survived the pyrotechnics that blew out the understory of the platform. Gray had activated the homing beacon Jack had given him, hoping for the best, and left it with Kowalski, who still carried Amanda.

But Gray wasn’t counting on hope alone.

He stared at his goal beyond the doors of the tower.

It stood across the park. The roof of the yellow Hummer-the one they’d hid behind earlier-was still above water for the moment, but that wasn’t Gray’s target. They weren’t going to be driving off this island.

Beyond the bulk of the truck, the matching yellow jet boat bobbed. The rising waters had floated it off of its trailer. Straps still tethered it in place, but someone hadn’t properly ratcheted the boat down.

Gray had a dagger strapped to his wrist, ready to cut the craft the rest of the way loose. He hoped he could get the boat started, but if nothing else, at least it floated. He would take that versus clinging to debris at the whim of the eddying currents and riptides.

Reaching the entrance, he shouldered into one of the doors. Swinging the half-submerged barrier open proved a challenge against the weight of water. But it slowly budged. He got it wide enough to slip outside.

The buffeting currents tried to rip him from his perch atop the steps that led down to the park. All that held him in place was his iron grip on the door handle.

A shout drew him around.

He stared back into the lobby.

Seichan stood with the others on the stairs. The waters continued to chase them up the spiraling steps and appeared to be rising faster now. Gray’s toes could barely touch the surface of the marble floor. But it was more than the encroaching flood that concerned her.

Her arm pointed out toward the city.

“Lights!” she called. “Coming this way!”

Gray turned, hanging by his arm from the handle.

Down the wide central avenue that ran along one leg of the star, a trio of lights came racing toward the Burj Abaadi. They wove back and forth in a zigzagging search pattern.

Speedboats.

Gray doubted they were a rescue operation. Not on this island, not with who truly ran this place. More likely it was a contingent from the fleet that patrolled the waters around the island. Someone must have sent them to make sure there were no survivors of the assault on the hidden station.

“Stay out of sight!” Gray called to Seichan. “Keep moving if necessary!”

Acknowledging this, she waved the group farther up the spiral stairs.

With time running out, Gray eyed his bobbing target and dove into the surging waters. The currents tugged and hauled, dragging and throwing his body, but once away from the wave actions churning against the walls of the tower, the strength of the tides ebbed. He popped his head clear, sighted his target, and swam with strong kicks.

Submerged obstacles turned out to be the bigger challenge. As he headed across the park, his leg became tangled in the branches of a drowned tree, and he had to fight his way loose.

All the while, he kept an eye on the approaching boats.

He realized he would never reach the Hummer before the patrol arrived at the tower. Still, the waters were dark, and the flotsam plentiful. With care, he might not be seen bobbing amid the debris. He would wait until the patrol left before freeing the boat and rescuing his teammates.

At least that was the plan until flares streaked into the sky, rising from the speedboats, and burst above the flooded park. New stars were born up there, hovering on small chutes, blazing with crimson fire, turning night into a hellish twilight and the waters a dark ruddy hue.

Gray searched for cover before the boats got here. A long, low crate floated ten yards off, slowly spinning in an eddy, offering some shelter.

He kicked toward it, sweeping with his arms.

The whining scream of the engines grew in volume.

He reached the crate and grabbed an edge, catching his breath. He kept his eyes on the boats as they rode out of the flooded avenue and into the drowned park. The trio fanned out from there.

He hugged closer to his meager shelter.

With the enemy splitting up, he would have to be careful to ensure the bulk of the crate remained between him and the patrol at all times. He clung to the edge and kicked with his feet, dragging the box with him, careful not to move too fast, trying to maintain the illusion of another piece of flotsam.

Then a pair of boats angled toward him, splitting to either side-not with intent, just poor luck on his part. He slipped underwater and moved beneath the crate. His hands blindly sought the underside of the box, to hold himself steady until the boats passed.

But as he searched, his palms found no bottom to the crate. It was open on the underside. Reaching up, he felt a pocket of air. He rose into it and took a deep breath in the darkness. His fingers discovered soft, cushioned fabric lining the inside.

He suddenly knew where he hid.

He pictured the casket used to transport Amanda here, resting in the back of a pickup truck. It must have been washed out of the rear bed, the lid ripped off.

The waters lightened to either side as the two boats swept by with their headlamps shining.

After they passed, Gray continued his swim across the park, hidden beneath the casket. He didn’t know if this mode of transportation was good luck or a bad omen. Still, he forged on, slowly floating his way toward the boat. Hopefully, the patrol would be gone once he got there.

After another half minute of silence, Gray risked ducking back outside to gauge his trajectory across the park.

As his head cleared the water, a thunderous scream jerked him around. He stared back toward the Burj Abaadi. The trio of boats faced the entrance. From the center one, a streak of smoke cut through the blood-tinged night and slammed into the multistory glass façade. The explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade shattered into the lobby. Sheets of glass fell from above like a hundred shimmering guillotines, opening a wide chasm.

A pair of the engines whined into a roar, and two of the boats swept through that gap and into the dark lobby. Once they were inside, another flare burst like a red sun.

Gray hoped the others had taken cover and that the patrol would only make a cursory pass before exiting the tower.

In the meantime, he had his own mission.

Before he could turn away, an eerie vibration shuddered through the water. The surface of the lake trembled.

With a low groan, the world began plunging down all around them. Towers sank faster, floor by floor. The last of the treetops vanished under the waves. Trapped air bubbled out everywhere, the last drowning gasp of Utopia.

Across the park, the blasted hole in the façade of the Burj Abaadi had shrunk to a lowering archway as the tower submerged. A single boat came racing through, the occupants ducking under the fangs of broken glass.

The second boat got trapped inside, circling futilely behind the glass, as the hole closed. The patrols on the outside tried to fire another rocket, but by the time they readied a shot, the entire lobby had sunk away.

Gray swung around, taking advantage of the distraction, knowing the crews would be focused on their trapped companions.

The Hummer and jet boat were gone, vanished fully underwater.

Reaching where they had sunk, he took a huge breath, kicked his legs over his head, and dove down through the fiery surface waters. Far below stretched only darkness.

Gray strained for those black depths.

4:33 A.M.

Seichan fought for more height.

Below, a rising flood chased her and the others, swallowing the spiraling stairs beneath them. But that wasn’t all. A few floors down, dark shadows pounded their way up, their panicked flight lit by the shine of a few emergency bulbs. The trapped crew of the patrol boat sought the same escape they did, running for higher ground, staying ahead of the cresting water.

Seichan wanted to put three floors between her team and the water table before abandoning the stairs and trying to reach the far windows on one of these levels.

But she had another problem. She was thoroughly turned around. With the power out, the tower levels had stopped rotating and settled into a haphazard corkscrew. Floors stuck out in all directions. On top of that, the dizzying spiral of the staircase left her disoriented. She no longer had any idea which side of the building she was supposed to meet Gray.

A gunshot echoed up from below.

She scowled at the source.

The fleeing patrol.

First, what did the bastards think they could hit?

And second, fuck you very much.

But if they wanted to play that game, she wouldn’t mind eliminating a few worries.

“Kowalski! Do it!”

“Anything you say.” He still lugged Amanda over one shoulder, but he reached to a pocket as he ran. He let the pellets he collected dribble between his fingers, falling away like a trail of bread crumbs onto the steps.

She watched between her toes and waited until the shadows below reached the littered section of stairs.

“Now!” she yelled.

Kowalski pressed his transceiver, igniting the last of his C-4 pellets. The blast took out the point man, and the survivors retreated from the shattered gap in the glass staircase. They were trapped with no other way up.

Sorry, fellas. You started this war.

She continued her maddening flight up the steps. After a few more turns, she heard screams rise from below.

She used their cries to judge the distance to that drowning flood. Either the waters were rising faster, or their pace was slowing. Whichever the case, they were losing this footrace.

“Next level!” she shouted to Tucker. “Take that one. Find the shortest path to the outer windows.”

Reaching that floor, Seichan raced after the handler and his dog, a silent prayer on her lips. Tucker turned into a long hall.

“Over here!” he yelled. “A balcony at the end!”

“Shoot out the lock!” Seichan hollered back.

They needed every second.

She sprinted, trailed by Kowalski. To the man’s credit, he kept up, even burdened by Amanda’s weight. He was a veritable draft horse.

Gunshots blasted ahead.

She reached Tucker and Kane as the man hauled open the sliding glass door. A wide balcony beckoned. They all fled out onto it.

Seichan moved to the rail. The rising water churned one floor down. If they had to jump, she feared two things. If they didn’t leap far enough, the undertow caused by the plunging tower would drag them all down. And even if they cleared that danger, these rough seas had sharks-and not only the ones with fins.

A patrol boat drifted to the right, not far from the park.

They would never be able to swim fast enough to escape it, and their splashes would likely draw the crew’s attention.

Seichan searched the drowning city.

Where are you, Gray?

4:35 A.M .

C’mon, c’mon…

Running out of air, Gray blindly sawed at the nylon strap with his knife. It had taken him too long to find the boat as it hung in the dark depths, still tethered to the trailer. The positive buoyancy of the vessel had locked the tie-downs tight. There was no unclipping them from their bolts.

He’d already cut the straps at the bow. Once free, the boat’s nose rose toward the surface, hanging vertical, still anchored at the stern. Keeping one hand on the transom, he worked at that rear strap of the tie-down. Pressure built in his ears as the island sank deeper, dragging him and the boat farther underwater.

As his air began to give out, he sawed frantically.

Stubborn piece of-

A light flared overhead, brightening the waters. A dark shadow idled into view on the surface, limned against the glow of its own lamps and accompanied by the slow putter of its engines.

Gray waited, despite the screaming burn in his lungs.

Once the shadow was directly overhead, Gray cut through the last of the tie-downs. Freed, the jet boat torpedoed upward, becoming a buoyancy-propelled battering ram.

4:36 A.M.

Seichan watched the speedboat drift closer, coming within fifty yards of the tower. One of the crew shouted; another pointed a rifle. Her team had been spotted. A blast echoed over the water. The round ricocheted off the balcony railing.

Seichan ducked.

She and the others were too exposed on the balcony, but where could they go? The waters roaring up the side of the tower promised only a quick death by drowning.

She took potshots back at the boat-then an antediluvian monster blasted out of the sea and rammed into the edge of the speedboat. The force cracked the hull and flipped the boat, tossing the crew out of their seats.

Nearby, the monster settled to its carbon-fiber keel, resting on the water.

It was the yellow jet boat.

Gray popped up beside it. He had his SIG Sauer in hand and fired at the floundering men, hitting three of them. The fourth already floated facedown. Nearby, the cracked hull of the speedboat flooded and sank into the depths.

“Gray!” Seichan shouted and waved an arm.

He turned to face her-just as a second speedboat flew around the tower to the left, drawn by the gunfire. It raced under the balcony, spraying machine-gun fire up at it.

They all flattened, but Seichan knew they weren’t the assault’s true target. The patrol was only knocking them back to pass beneath them and go after easier prey.

Move it, Gray!

4:37 A.M .

Gray hauled himself over the side of the jet boat and sprawled flat on the deck, making himself a harder target. The second speedboat came shooting around the curve of the Burj Abaadi.

Gunfire shattered the marble off the balcony façade.

His teammates ducked away-except for one.

As the boat sailed under the sinking balcony, a sleek shape vaulted into view, back paws kicking off the railing for extra distance. Kane flew across the short gap and landed in the midst of the four patrolmen.

The effect was the same as if a grenade had been tossed into the boat.

One man flung himself overboard in fright and got chewed up by the frothing riptide of the sinking tower. Kane latched onto the throat of another. The driver screamed, yanked the wheel, and, in a panic, drove the boat at full speed into an uprooted, floating palm tree.

The boat hit the thick trunk, shot into the air, and flipped upside down before crashing hard into the water.

Bodies floated up seconds later, lifeless or unconscious.

The only survivor proved his skill at dog-paddling.

Before that deadly collision, a sharp whistle from Tucker had sent Kane leaping from the boat, tail high. The dog landed safely in the calmer water, but the currents were pulling him back toward the churning tide at the base of the tower. Kane fought against it, burdened by his vest.

No, you don’t.

Gray lunged into the captain’s chair of the jet boat. He searched and found the key in the glove box and started the ignition. He feared the depths might have damaged the engine, but he also knew jet boats were built for such abuse. As he hoped, a choking burble, a spat of water from the stern jets, and the engine roared lustily.

He shifted the throttle and shot toward where Kane struggled.

Hang on.

Sliding next to the dog, Gray lunged out and grabbed Kane by his waterproof vest. He struggled to get the sodden, sixty-pound dog into the boat. Recognizing it would take both arms, he let go of the wheel. Unpiloted, the craft got pulled closer to the tower. The churning water growled hungrily, the undertow sucking everything down.

Finally, with a heave of his body, he hauled Kane aboard. The shepherd shook his heavy pelt, tail wagging, and bumped him affectionately.

“Thanks!” Tucker called over to Gray.

“Hey, what about us?” Kowalski complained.

By now, water flooded the lower deck of their balcony, churning hungrily. Gray’s three teammates clung to the railing.

Manning the wheel again, Gray opened the throttle and gunned his way over to the balcony. He brought the boat alongside them and worked the throttle to hold the craft steady. They climbed over the balcony and dropped on board. Tucker helped Kowalski with Amanda. She stirred enough to lift an arm and swat at the bigger of the two.

Kowalski pushed her arm down. “Sheesh. That’s the thanks I get for hauling your butt up ten flights of stairs.”

With everyone settled, Gray swung away from the sinking tower.

The jet boat was only a four-seater. With six on board, counting Kane, the boat drafted deeper than it should, making it sluggish and slow.

But they were afloat.

The same could not be said for Utopia.

The currents shifted under the boat, dragging the craft strongly to port. Gray corrected against that pull-but it only grew worse.

What the hell?

“Pierce!” Kowalski hollered, drawing his attention away from the currents to the skies above.

He craned his neck in shock.

The tower of the Burj Abaadi leaned precariously over the boat.

Gray searched outward. Across the rest of the island, towers and spires all canted in the same direction, as if blown over by a stiff wind.

Oh, hell…

Seichan recognized the danger, too. “The island is tipping.”

Gray jammed the throttle forward, picturing the island capsizing.

They needed to get to open water.

Off in the distance, a spire broke from its foundation. It toppled and slowly crashed into a neighboring building.

Closer at hand, a mighty moan vibrated through the waters. It was the deep groan of concrete and steel under stress. No one doubted the source.

All eyes turned to the Burj Abaadi.

4:40 A.M.

It seemed the Eternal Tower was not living up to its name.

Aboard a large patrol boat, Edward bore witness to the island’s slow destruction. A quarter-mile away, Utopia upended, breaking apart, sliding back into the sea, a modern Atlantis. At its center, the Burj Abaadi toppled, the upper levels breaking and sliding off the central axis, like plates toppling from a tall stack.

Word had reached him that the patrols sent to the tower had gone missing. Attempts to raise them on the radio had failed.

It had to be the work of the group that attacked the base.

Measures would have to be taken.

But not without guidance.

Petra stepped through a nearby hatch, carrying a satellite phone in her hand. Her eyes locked with his, warning him it wasn’t good news.

She held out the phone.

He lifted it to his ear and heard the computerized voice greet him. “IS THE CHILD SECURED?”

“Yes.”

“AND THE MOTHER?”

“Dead.”

Surely she had to be.

“THEN COORDINATE ALL FORCES ON-SITE, ESTABLISH A NOOSE AROUND THAT ISLAND. HUNT FOR THOSE WHO ASSAULTED THE STATION.”

“And if they’re found?”

He was given very specific instructions, ending with, “PETRA WILL TAKE MATTERS IN HAND FROM THERE. SHE KNOWS WHAT IS NEEDED.”

He swallowed hard, feeling demoted-but he dared not complain.

And in the end, maybe it was better not to know.

31

July 3, 4:44 A.M. Gulf Standard Time

Off the Coast of Dubai

Gray raced the jet boat as the island tore itself apart around him.

The sinking platform, twisted by tidal currents and punched from below by partially intact pylons, broke into smaller sections. Suddenly unmoored and top-heavy, those pieces began to topple and capsize, dropping buildings, spires, and scaffolding all around them.

Gray tried to avoid the worst of that roiling gristmill, flying at full throttle.

Still, more towers fell. Walls tore apart with explosive retorts. Windows shattered in showering bursts.

Floating debris choked their path, growing more treacherous by the minute. Gray jigged and jagged his way through the worst of it. The boat’s resilient carbon-fiber hull took care of the rest.

He needed a way out to open water, but rubble and ruin seemed to block him at every turn.

“Gray!” Seichan clutched harder to a brace.

“I see it.”

Ahead, a huge cross-section of a spire under construction-nothing more than a frame of iron-broke loose, hit a condominium tower, then rolled in their direction. Like some coin in a pachinko machine, it bounced and crashed toward them.

Kowalski swore coarsely.

A sentiment shared by all.

There was no way past it, and Gray had only seconds to act.

He sought the only cover available-but it would be tight.

“Everyone duck!”

He swung the jet boat to the right, spun the craft 180 degrees, and slammed it sideways under the protruding upper-story balcony of a sunken building. The tumbling monstrosity of iron clattered over them-then bounced away.

“Nice job parallel-parking,” Kowalski commented.

With a blast of the jets, Gray blew the boat back out of the shelter.

He turned, dug in, and sped for the distant glimmer of open water.

But even that path was closing.

Ahead, two residential towers leaned drunkenly against each other. The one to the right crumbled against its partner, dropping slowly, raining broken glass and debris.

“Go for it,” Seichan said.

Gray had no choice. He gunned the engine, firing the jets behind him into a roar. The boat blasted away like a rocket, striving to duck under that lowering guillotine of steel, concrete, and glass.

Kowalski curled over Amanda, whom he cradled on his lap. “I can’t watch.”

Seichan reached over and gripped Gray’s forearm.

Tucker braced his legs against the back of the captain’s seat.

Only one crew member had a different assessment.

Kane came forward, tucked under Seichan’s arm, and jumped up to bring his nose into the wind. His tail wagged fiercely, striking Gray in the shoulder.

With that bit of encouragement, Gray tightened his fingers on the wheel. The jet boat screamed across the last of the water, skimming along the surface at over sixty miles an hour.

Ahead, the building fell faster, the path below it pinching closed.

But Gray was already committed.

“Down!” he yelled.

Seichan’s fingers dug hard as she ducked, keeping Kane pinned under her arm.

The jet boat reached the gap and shot under the toppling tower, shattering through a rain of falling glass. For several seconds, the world filled with the scream of tortured steel and the thundering grind of concrete.

It felt like a derailed freight train tumbled past overhead.

Then they burst clear-

– as the tower crashed into the sea behind them, casting up a huge wave that shoved them, along with a flotilla of debris, farther out into the dark waters.

But those waters weren’t entirely dark.

A cordon of lights blocked the seas three hundred yards out, including a yacht-sized cutter.

The island’s security fleet had set up a blockade.

Gray slowed their flight.

“Maybe they didn’t see us,” Seichan said.

Gray glanced doubtfully back. As he turned his attention forward, his fears were confirmed.

A trio of those lights broke away, coming toward them.

He spun the jet boat and raced in the opposite direction. More lights hovered out there, too, other vessels in the blockade. But that wasn’t his goal. Once he gained some distance, he swung behind a floating pallet of construction lumber.

“Don’t think hiding here is going to work,” Kowalski said.

Gray stood and pointed overboard. “Everybody out.”

Seichan grabbed his arm. “What are you thinking? We can outrun them.”

“Not weighted down like this,” Gray said, speaking fast. He pointed to the fuel gauge. “Almost out of fuel. Don’t have enough to make it to the mainland.”

“Then what are you going-?” Seichan looked harder at him. “You’re going to lead them off.”

“It’s the best chance for Amanda. I dump you here, run off, and get them to chase me for as long as possible.” He pointed to Kowalski. “You’ve got Jack Kirkland’s homing device. Maybe he survived and can reach you. If not-”

Kowalski eyed the stack of lumber. “I’ll build a boat.”

“Do your best,” he said.

The others quickly shed boots and outerwear. Tucker stripped the vest off of Kane, so his partner was not weighted down.

They left Amanda in her hospital gown. She had begun to shake off the anesthesia, but she remained in a dull haze. Gray feared she was edging toward shock. He hated to leave her floating in the sea, but what other recourse did he have?

He helped Tucker and Kowalski get her overboard. At least the surface waters were temperate, as compared with down deep.

“Keep her head elevated,” Gray warned.

Kane splashed in next to them.

He turned to Seichan. She remained fully clothed, with her arms crossed.

“You’re not coming with me,” he said, guessing her intent.

“I am.”

“We’re not both going to sacrifice ourselves.”

She frowned and looked him over as if he were crazy. “Who said anything about sacrificing myself? You want a distraction, something to keep those boats from poking their noses over here.” She pointed beyond the lumber pile. “See that big boat? That patrol cutter?”

“Yeah.”

“Time to turn the tables.” She lifted an eyebrow. “It’s high time we played pirate.”

4:58 A.M.

Tucker could no longer hear the whine of the jet boat. He had watched the initial chase, saw them tear off to the side, leading the trio in a wild pursuit, running along the edge of the blockade.

He hoped their plan worked, but he had his own mission to address: to keep Amanda safe. After pulling her off that surgical table, he felt extra responsible for her-especially as he’d abandoned her newborn in the rush to escape.

I should have been more thorough in examining her.

But there was nothing to be done to correct that mistake, except keep Amanda protected.

To that end, he swam out toward where a plastic trash barrel floated on its side. He grabbed the handle. The plan was to build a nest around their hiding spot, to do their best to camouflage themselves amid the debris field.

Off to the east, the skies were already growing pale with the coming sunrise. He wanted better cover before then.

He didn’t expect they would have to remain in hiding for long. Maybe two hours. A disaster of this scope-the sinking of an entire island-would draw a global media circus: scores of television helicopters, curiosity seekers, and news reporters. Only then would it be safe to move Amanda out of hiding and search for a rescue, something to be caught on film.

That exposure should keep Amanda safe.

Such a story would attract a large audience.

Nothing like blood in the water to draw attention.

As he turned and dragged the barrel, a fin rose out of the water ahead of him. Then another. And another.

He forgot that blood drew more than just attention.

He pictured the hammerheads he’d seen earlier.

Something bumped his leg.

He let go of the barrel and yanked out his dagger. He’d left his pistol tucked in the stack of lumber.

He searched, twisting all around, but the waters were pitch-dark. Even the fins had vanished.

Then something touched his ankle. He kicked, striking something hard. It rose up under him, shoving him high. Seconds later, black water sluiced off the glass deck of the Ghost.

The hatch popped open, and Jack Kirkland poked his head out. He eyed the dagger still in Tucker’s fist. “You planning on attacking my boat with that knife? After all I went through to save your sorry asses?”

Tucker sheathed his blade, wanting to hug the man.

“You try swimming through a crumbling forest of concrete with an island falling on top of your head.” Jack wore a huge smile. “Was the time of my life! now let’s see about getting you all on board.”

By the time that was accomplished, Jack had turned more somber. Especially seeing Amanda’s condition. She was shivering, blue-lipped, and pale, on the edge of shock.

Kowalski wrapped a dry blanket around her, from the stores aboard the Ghost. He was surprisingly gentle for such a lumbering fellow. But a blanket was far from enough.

“She needs immediate medical help,” Tucker said as he settled her into one of the seats.

Kane sat next to him, leaning against his knee.

“I know where she can get it,” Jack said. “Close by. I’ve got a state-of-the-art facility aboard the Deep Fathom. We can be steaming out of these waters within the hour and get her somewhere safe.”

Tucker sank into his seat, grateful and relieved.

Jack lowered the Ghost back under the water and piloted them away. “What the hell did they do to her?”

“I don’t know,” Tucker said numbly.

And I hope I never do.

“What about your other friends?”

Tucker looked up through the glass roof and admitted the same.

“I don’t know.”

5:01 A.M .

“We’re on fumes,” Gray shouted.

At least, I hope I have even that.

Seichan sat next to him with her two SIGs on her lap. She glanced over at him. A glimmer of fear shone in her eyes-she wasn’t stupid-but it seemed only to ignite the larger excitement found there. She smiled, her hair whipped by the wind, the collar of her blouse snapping, showing the length of her neck.

“Let’s do this.”

Ever a woman of few words.

He grinned back, which only made her smile deepen-still hard-edged and purposeful, but now shining with something darker and softer, something he wanted to explore.

When they had the time.

He spun the jet boat back toward the blockade. They’d given the trio of pursuers a wild ride, weaving in and out of the line. The carbon-fiber hull had a few new holes in it, but Seichan had shot the same number of men.

She had proved her marksmanship had not dulled since he first met her. Of course, back then she’d been an assassin for the Guild, shooting at him.

Gray aimed their jet boat for the larger patrol cutter, a hundred-footer, plainly the command center for the fleet. He was confident that no eyes were looking toward where he’d hidden the others. He had planned on coming out here alone, expected to be captured, maybe killed.

And that hadn’t changed.

Only Seichan had offered another plan-to gain something from their sacrifice. This entire mission had started from an act of piracy; perhaps another act of piracy could end it.

Half of piracy involved bloodshed and destruction.

From the sinking of the island, from the trail of bodies, they’d already accomplished that well enough.

The other half of piracy was the theft of treasures.

That is what they’d come here to do.

Gray raced toward the patrol cutter, heading dead-on, a maneuver the smaller ships had not expected. Caught off guard by the sudden suicidal move, the smaller boats were slow in closing the gap. Seichan further discouraged them. She stood, one knee on her seat for balance, her two arms raised out to either side, black SIGs in each hand. She laid down a deadly barrage of fire to hold that gap open long enough for Gray to slip past their line of defense.

Nothing stood between them and the lead ship of the fleet.

It was a fast-response-class cutter, typically holding a crew of twenty, painted stark white. And, like most modern patrol vessels, it featured a stern launch-and-recovery ramp, made for deploying pursuit boats, even while under way.

That was their target.

The ramp was currently empty, as the entire fleet had been called to duty to build the blockade around the island.

Gray aimed for that ramp with the last of his fuel and opened the throttle.

Crew members ran to the stern of the ship, flanking the ramp. Automatic weapons pointed. On deck, a 25 mm stabilized caliber gun mount swung toward them. Additionally, a patrol guard manned the round black disk of an LRAD-long-range acoustic device, used as a sonic nonlethal shield against pirates, a useful tool in these waters.

There was no way to assault that ship.

They had only one choice.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I’m out of bullets anyway,” Seichan said.

Gray throttled down, killing the engines-then stood up, joining her. He laced his fingers atop his head. She made a broad display of tossing her pistols overboard, then took the same position, hands on head.

“We surrender!” he called out.

The jet boat’s momentum carried them to the stern ramp and nosed them halfway up. Weapons tracked them on both sides.

A commotion followed.

The captain of the boat appeared at the top of the ramp. His dark features and heavy shadow of beard marked his Arab heritage. He was flanked by a thin, mustached man and a hard-muscled woman with a stern blond bob.

“On your knees!” the captain said, pointing a pistol.

They obeyed.

The captain barked an order in Arabic. Four men came racing down the ramp and dragged the boat the rest of the way up, then tied the craft in place, ensuring they didn’t try to flee. Another two boarded and pulled their arms down, cuffing them behind them.

Only then did the captain and the others come forward.

The thin man approached on Seichan’s side of the vessel, commenting in a stiff British accent. “She would be a perfect research subject, don’t you think, Petra?”

The blonde crossed over to Gray. “Careful, Dr. Blake. That one’s not for you. At least not yet.”

Petra leaned toward Gray. “Or this one. We thought hunting you or one of your colleagues would be harder. That makes me suspicious.”

She lunged a hand at his neck, fast enough to catch his throat. He reflexively tried to pull away. A ghost of a smile appeared, amused by the surprise in his expression. Her other hand moved equally swift. A needle jabbed into his throat. A burn, like acid, spread as she pushed the plunger.

He coughed at the intense pain.

Petra straightened. “No, we have special plans for this one.”

“What plans?” Blake asked, but his question had a faltering note, as if he didn’t want to know the answer.

“He’s a skilled sniper,” Petra began.

Gray fought to listen, but the acid burned through his consciousness. The world constricted, her voice drifted back down a long tunnel.

“Forty hours from now-”

Her final words trailed to a whisper as he slumped to his side, sprawling next to Seichan. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint. Through that tiny hole, he watched Seichan shift her knee, switching off the camera attached to Kane’s abandoned vest, hiding the fact that she had been recording the conversation before the others grew any wiser.

He prayed someone was listening-someone had to be listening.

This was the pirate bounty they’d risked so much to steal.

The most valuable treasure in the world.

Information.

As Gray faded to black, those last disturbing words followed him into oblivion:

“Forty hours from now, this man will assassinate the president of the United States.”