Chimera

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+15:48

When Chapel was convinced Julia wasn’t going to wake up at any moment, he took care of one task he’d neglected all day. Removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt, he plugged his artificial arm into a power outlet near his seat, using a retractable cord built into the shoulder. While he waited for it to recharge he called Angel again and asked her about the next two names on the list. “Start with the one in Chicago, first,” he said.

“Eleanor Pechowski,” Angel replied, and he heard her clacking at her keyboard. “Eleanor, who are you? Let’s see. She’s a retired schoolteacher.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone a genetic freak would want to kill,” Chapel pointed out. “Maybe a disgruntled former student…”

“She worked for the UN, for a while,” Angel went on. “In UNESCO. Let’s see… she lived in New York City at the time, on Roosevelt Island. Looks like she taught English, math, and American history to the children of UN delegates. Maybe she fell in with the black helicopter crowd.”

Chapel rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you’re not a conspiracy nut, Angel,” he said.

Angel laughed. “No, I was just kidding. But just to work at the UN schools, Eleanor Pechowski had to have a security clearance. So the intelligence community would have been aware of her.”

“It’s a pretty tenuous connection. Just because somebody did a background check on her doesn’t mean she ended up working for the CIA. And the last time I checked, the agency didn’t hire a lot of English teachers. Okay, what about Jeremy Funt, the one in Atlanta? What’s his story?”

“That one’s easy. He was a government employee, and all his records are right here. Nothing hidden at all.”

“Tell me he worked for the CIA,” Chapel said, leaning forward and nearly pulling the plug on his arm.

“Not exactly,” Angel said. “He worked for the FBI.”

“Huh,” Chapel said. That didn’t make much sense. The CIA and the FBI had little to do with each other, other than both being government agencies. They weren’t even overseen by the same cabinet department. “Is it possible that’s a cover?”

“Not unless it’s an extremely good one. His service record is an open book, here — and it shows him working a steady load of cases from 1981 to 1996, all pretty standard stuff, missing persons, kidnappings, wire fraud. The one question mark is that he left the bureau in 1996 at the age of forty-five, long before mandatory retirement. With a file like that, normally you’d expect that he left the bureau in disgrace, that he messed up somehow and was forced to retire, but there’s no indication here he was anything less than a solid asset to the bureau.”

“So Funt just dropped off the bureau payroll with no explanation, huh? That’s interesting. And at least he sounds like a more likely target.” He had no idea why the chimeras would want to kill Funt, but if he had to prioritize targets, an FBI agent sounded higher in value than a retired schoolteacher. It sounded like Atlanta might have been the right choice after all. “Angel, what else can you tell me about this guy? What does he do for money? Does he have any family in Atlanta?”

“I’m looking at that right now. It looks like — hold on. Chapel, give me a second here, there’s something wrong with one of my laptops. Looks like somebody got a keystroke logger in my system, but that’s — hey!”

“Angel?” Chapel asked.

“Somebody’s piggybacking on my signal,” she said, sounding indignant. “Just who the hell do they think they are? Hacking me, why, I ought to—”

Static filled Chapel’s ear and then the signal went dead.

“Angel?” he called. “Angel, come in. What just happened? Angel?”

A new voice spoke to him.

“Captain Chapel, I presume,” the voice said. “You and I need to have a little talk.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:02

“Listen, I don’t know who the hell you are, but this is an encrypted line,” Chapel said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. The screen showed he was still connected to the number (000) 000-0000. There was no indication anything had changed. “Intruding on this channel is a violation of any number of laws, and—”

“Law?” The voice in his ear chuckled. It was a male voice, a little gravelly as if its owner was a habitual cigarette smoker. There was iron in that voice, but also a little silver — it was the voice of someone used to speaking for a living, like a salesman or a voice-over actor. “I know all about the law,” the voice said. “I apologize for cutting in, but they weren’t going to let me speak to you, otherwise.”

Chapel bit his lip. This was very, very bad. If someone could compromise his line to Angel, then they could find out everything he’d said to her. They could know all his plans and everything he’d learned.

He couldn’t imagine that the chimeras could be doing this. They weren’t stupid, but they had shown no sign of having the kind of organization it would require to pull off this kind of stunt. He hadn’t forgotten, though, that someone had to be helping them. Somebody had broken them out of the facility in the Catskills. Maybe, for the first time, he was running up against that shadowy organization.

“Tell me your name, right now, and who you work for,” Chapel insisted. “That’s not a request. I can have you up on charges for impeding a federal investigation — and maybe treason, too. You’ve made a very bad mistake contacting me like this.”

“Captain, do me a favor and look at your phone. All will be explained.”

Chapel frowned, but he looked down at the screen of his phone. The screen went blank and then lit up to show a grainy video feed. He saw what looked like an image of someone’s office, a desk with a green blotter and behind it a window looking out onto a night-shrouded cityscape. After a moment, someone stepped into the frame and sat down behind the desk so the camera could focus on his face.

Chapel recognized the man right away. It was Franklin Hayes.

“Your Honor,” he said, despite himself.

Hayes was the Denver-based federal judge whose name was on the kill list. This was one of the people Chapel was trying so desperately to protect.

So what the hell was he doing breaking into Chapel’s encrypted line?

“I know this is surprising, Captain,” Hayes said. He was an older man, maybe seventy, with silver hair but sharp, intelligent eyes. He wore an immaculate suit with a handkerchief perfectly folded in the breast pocket. “I know it’s unorthodox. But I assure you I mean no harm.”

“Your Honor, I apologize if I was abrupt, but I was serious about the breach of security. This line—”

Hayes waved one hand in dismissal. “Director Hollingshead wouldn’t even tell me your name,” the judge said. “Director Banks proved a little more tractable. He owed me a favor, from long ago, so I’ve called it in. My friends in Langley were able to tap into your line.”

So Hayes had connections with the CIA? That was interesting. Chapel made a mental note to look into it. It seemed everyone on the kill list — with the exception of Christina Smollett — was related to the CIA somehow.

“I’ve been trying to contact you all day,” Hayes said, “ever since I was informed my life was in danger.”

“Yes, sir,” Chapel said. “I had one of my people call you about that. I wanted to make sure you knew to get to a safe place, somewhere you could be protected.”

“And I’ve done just that,” Hayes told him. “I’m in my courthouse. I keep a cot here in case I work too late and can’t go home, so I’m relatively comfortable. I have state police crawling all over this building.”

“Then you should be fine. They can protect you until I arrive.”

“Captain. Please don’t insult my intelligence. I know what happened to Helen Bryant. And I have some notion of what kind of man is coming here to kill me. Oh, I don’t know all your secrets. But Director Banks filled me in on a few pertinent details.”

Chapel wanted to strangle Banks, and not for the first time. This case was so secret even the people working on it weren’t allowed to know any details. Yet Banks had clearly spilled some of the unknowns to a civilian, just because he’d asked nicely.

“I know,” Hayes went on, “that the man in question is more than a match for a few state police. They’re little more than highway patrolmen. I need better protection than this. I think I might rate a personal visit from the one man we know is capable of taking out one of these killers.”

“I’m sorry?” Chapel asked.

“I’m saying, Captain, that I want you to come here, to Denver, and protect me personally. Director Banks tells me I’m the highest-value target on your list. That I deserve the best protection. It’s clear that you’re it.”

“With all due respect, Your Honor, that’s not possible right now,” Chapel said. “I’m in the middle of an investigation, and I can’t break it off now.”

“I understand you’re on your way to Atlanta,” Hayes said, as if Chapel had said nothing. “That’s good, you’re headed in the right direction. It will only take a few more hours in the air for you to get here, to Denver. I’ll have a car waiting for you at the airport and it will bring you straight to me. I’ll let you know when I have the name of the liaison you’ll be working with—”

“Your Honor,” Chapel cut in, “I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

Hayes waved his hand in dismissal again. “I’ll give you complete autonomy on how you want to set up your defenses. You’ll be in charge of my escort and you can requisition any more units you need from the local police department, should—”

“I said no,” Chapel said, more forcefully.

If anything, that just made Hayes look confused.

Judges had a lot of power. In their courtrooms, they were like gods, able to hand down judgments and throw anyone in jail on contempt charges. Chapel could only imagine how godlike a federal judge must feel most of the time.

Chapel had met enough generals to know that people like that, people who thought of themselves as omnipotent, stopped understanding the word no. It didn’t just make them angry — they fell out of practice with knowing what it meant. People did what they said, all the time, and nobody ever questioned them.

So it took a few seconds for the negation to sink into Hayes’s head.

Eventually he pursed his lips and said, “I can make a lot of trouble for you.”

“Is that a threat, Your Honor?” Chapel asked.

“I’m a federal judge, Captain. I don’t make threats.”

The implication was clear. Hayes didn’t need to make threats — when he could make promises instead. Chapel forced a smile onto his face. He was making a bad enemy here, and he knew it. He was about to inherit all kinds of problems. But for this one brief moment it felt pretty good to tell the judge where to stick it. “I’m in the middle of my investigation. More lives than just yours are at stake. The person of interest won’t reach Colorado — can’t reach Colorado — in less than twenty-four hours from now. If I can’t stop him before that, I’ll see you in Denver before he arrives. But in the meantime I have other work to do. So no, I won’t be coming directly to you.”

“Now listen here,” Hayes said. “I don’t remember requesting your opinion, and I won’t put up with—”

A hand fell on Chapel’s shoulder.

He jumped in his seat. Swiveling around, he saw Julia standing behind him. She was looking down at his phone.

On the screen, Hayes had gone silent. His face was a mask of utter surprise.

“Why are you talking to Agent Hayes?” Julia asked.

“Agent?” Chapel asked.

The screen of his phone went black, instantly.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:14

“I’m so sorry,” Julia said. “I didn’t mean to see anything I wasn’t supposed to, or… or whatever. I just woke up because I heard you shouting at that man, and I came over… I guess I shouldn’t have. I’ll go back to my seat now.”

“No, Julia, it’s fine,” Chapel said, grabbing her hand before she could walk back to her seat. “I’m sorry, I was a little worked up there. But what did you mean when you called him Agent Hayes? He’s a judge.”

“He is?”

“You didn’t recognize him? He’s been in the news recently. He’s about to become a Supreme Court justice.”

Julia shrugged. “I get my news from the New York Times, not the TV, so I don’t know what a lot of people look like. I mean, I’ve heard about Franklin Hayes, but… wow. I guess I never put two and two together. It can’t be the same guy, can it?”

Chapel squeezed her hand. “Care to let me in on what you’re thinking?”

Julia inhaled deeply. “This is getting weird.”

“This case? Yeah, it has its peculiarities,” Chapel said.

“No,” Julia said. “I mean the way you’re holding my hand.”

Chapel glanced down and saw he was still holding on to her. He let go. “Sorry. Like I said, I’m a little worked up.”

“Just… never mind,” she said. “Look, I told you a while back about how I knew my parents were in the CIA. Because an agent came to dinner once a year to debrief them. His name was Agent Hayes, and I’m pretty sure it was the same man you were just talking to. He looks a little older, obviously, but, yeah, that was him.”

“That’s actually really important,” Chapel told her. “It helps me fill in a couple of blanks.”

“You’re welcome, I guess,” she said.

“I need to talk to somebody about this. I might have some more questions, but first—”

“I’ll be right over here,” Julia said, walking over and patting the headrest of her seat. “In the meantime, though, I think I’ll go back to sleep.”

“Uh, okay,” Chapel said.

Their eyes met and something passed between them. Chapel wasn’t sure exactly what, and he didn’t have time to think about it. Maybe she was starting to think she’d made the wrong decision, coming along with him. Or maybe…

He put that thought out of his head right away. That couldn’t possibly be right.

“Angel,” he said, to clear his mind. “Angel, are you there?”

“I’m back,” Angel told him. “What happened there?”

“Franklin Hayes broke into your signal. The Franklin Hayes. He had some help from Banks, by the sound of it.”

“Banks hijacked my line?” Angel sounded mortified. “That son of a… I can’t believe it. Well, I mean, I believe he would do such a thing. I just can’t believe he actually pulled it off.”

“I think we need to assume from now on that he can hear everything we say,” Chapel told her. “I don’t like that much, but—”

“I’ll do what I can to change that,” Angel told him. “It means switching to a new system, cutting myself completely out of the network for a while, rebuilding my public and private keys, getting a whole new block of IP addresses. I’ll be offline while that’s going on — I won’t be able to contact you at all. And it’ll take some time.”

“We don’t have a lot of that,” Chapel told her.

“I know. It’ll take about four hours, and even then I can’t guarantee he won’t pull that stunt again. But it’s something we need to do. Director Hollingshead will freak out when he hears about this. Oh my God, I have so much work to do here. I thought I was secure! I mean, I’ve got firewalls in here, I’ve got 256-bit encryption, I’ve got defenses nobody’s supposed to know about. All of it military spec. I’m supposed to be invisible here. I feel like somebody broke into my house and went snooping through my underwear drawer, Chapel.”

“I can imagine,” he told her. “Angel, before you go offline, I just need to know a couple of things. I need you to look at Franklin Hayes. Apparently he worked for the CIA at some point. Can you confirm that?”

“Should be no harm in looking. Wow. That was easy. It’s on his public website. Yep, before he became a judge he worked for the CIA, back in the eighties and early nineties.”

“As an asset?”

“No, as a lawyer. Nothing clandestine,” Angel said. “The CIA has its own cadre of lawyers. Just like the Mafia does and for the same reason — because so much of what it does is illegal. It looks like his time there was pretty mundane. His records aren’t even classified. Let’s see what I can pull up.”

Chapel waited while she tapped at her keyboard.

“Huh,” she said, finally. “Interesting. Franklin Hayes was lead counsel on a couple of high-profile cases. Civil liberties lawsuits, mostly — American citizens claiming the CIA had trampled on their rights. Ninety percent of his cases were settled out of court, but that isn’t unusual. Corporate lawyers have the same ratio, typically. I’m running through the list of his cases… huh. Oh, boy. Chapel, you’re going to like this.”

“Go ahead.”

“One of the cases was brought by the family of a young woman who had been committed to a mental hospital for schizophrenia. She claimed the CIA had sent one of their spies to sneak in her window every night and… ah… take advantage of her in her bed. The case was thrown out for lack of evidence. The judge who heard it chastised the family for wasting the court’s time. Franklin Hayes was counsel for the agency on that case.”

“Why is that relevant?” Chapel asked.

“Because the name of the girl was Christina Smollett.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:23

“Holy shit,” Chapel said. He wasn’t a big fan of pointless vulgarity, but this situation seemed to warrant it. “That’s no coincidence.”

“Definitely not,” Angel said. “I’ll forgive you for sullying my ears with such language,” she went on. “Because right now I feel like fucking swearing myself. I have no way of knowing what the connection actually amounts to. I’m being honest with you here, Chapel. I don’t have any information on what the CIA might have actually done to Christina Smollett. But there has to be some relevance. The CIA did something to her, and she associated it in some way with being sexually assaulted.”

“And Franklin Hayes smoothed it over,” Chapel said. “Covered it up.”

“Worse than that. He tried to countersue the family for besmirching the name of the CIA,” Angel went on. “The judge dismissed the countersuit but agreed to seal all testimony heard in the case. The whole thing was spun as some crazy girl making impossible accusations, and the CIA just didn’t want the public to make something out of nothing. But if there wasn’t something there, we wouldn’t be talking about it right now.”

“I’m not a big fan of the CIA right now,” Chapel said, which was putting it mildly. “But even I don’t believe they’re in the business of raping schizophrenics.” The words felt ugly in his mouth, but that was what they were talking about. He sighed. “If the records are sealed, I guess there’s no way for you to find out what the testimony said.”

“This was back in the late eighties, before anything was digitized,” Angel told him. “Assuming it wasn’t actually destroyed, all that testimony is locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere. Short of breaking into a courthouse and stealing the physical papers, no one is ever going to see it — and that’s more your area than mine.”

“I’m no thief,” Chapel told her. “I’m not about to do that. So we’ll have to find some other way of getting the information. Someone has to know what happened. Franklin Hayes, for instance. I bet he knows all about it.”

“Too bad you just turned him into an enemy,” Angel pointed out.

“Did you hear our conversation?”

“All of it. In fact, so did Director Hollingshead. I woke him up and let him listen in. He’s very interested in what Banks did to my computers. And so am I. Chapel, I need to get started on sweeping my gear and moving to new servers. We can’t let them just eavesdrop whenever they want. In fact, if they know what we’ve just been talking about… well. They’re not going to like the fact we made this connection.”

“True enough. All right, Angel. Do what you need to do. We’re still a ways from Atlanta, and after we land, I’ll be doing some legwork anyway. I’ll need to check in with—”

“Chapel, until we’re secure again, it’s better if I don’t know the details.”

“Got it. Thank you, Angel. Thanks for everything.”

She didn’t respond. The hands-free unit in his ear had already switched off.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 12, T+17:53

The jet set down at Hartsfield-Jackson airport in the middle of the night. Chief Petty Officer Andrews brought them cups of hot coffee and croissants while they taxied to the gate and waited for clearance to debark. Chapel had to admit that if he had to fly, this was the way to go. Hollingshead was a lucky man. Before he knew it, he and Julia were whisked through the terminal and out to where a car was waiting for them.

The driver seemed surprised when they said they had no luggage. “Not even an overnight bag?” he asked.

Chapel just shrugged. Fatigue was starting to get to him. He needed to sleep, but that wasn’t in the cards. He gave the driver Jeremy Funt’s last known address.

“Seriously? That’s down in Capitol View. Not the best neighborhood,” the driver told him.

“It’s where we’re going,” Chapel said.

“You’re the boss.” The driver got the car moving and thankfully had little to say after that. Chapel tried watching through the windows as they rolled along, trying to get a feel for this new city. It all blurred together into lights and pools of darkness. He focused on the street signs instead.

After about twenty minutes he leaned forward, a little alarmed. “You’re driving in circles,” he told the driver.

Had Banks set him up? Was this some kind of ploy to delay him? Or was there something more sinister going on? Was he going to be taken somewhere quiet and quietly shot?

He started to reach for his weapon.

“What are you talking about? I know this city like the back of my hand,” the driver said.

“We just passed Peachtree Street,” Chapel said. “Except we passed Peachtree Street ten minutes ago.”

The driver laughed. “Buddy, you never been to Atlanta before, have you? Half the streets here are called that. It’s the state tree. You never heard of Georgia peaches?”

“Oh,” Chapel said.

He sank back into his seat.

Damn it, he was getting paranoid. Which only made sense given his circumstances, but still — he was losing it. He’d been going too long too fast, never getting a chance to rest. He needed sleep. If he didn’t get it, he would probably start shooting at shadows.

He told himself he just needed to find Jeremy Funt. Once he had the man located and under protection, he could rest.

Just a little while longer.

Within thirty seconds his head fell back against the seat and he was asleep.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+19:01

“Hey. Hey, buddy! We’re here!”

Chapel’s eyes snapped open. They felt gritty and raw. All of him felt gritty and raw. Where was he? What was…

Right. It all came flooding back. He stirred himself, sat up. Adjusted his jacket. He touched Julia’s shoulder, and she slapped his hand away.

“Take your time,” the driver told him.

Chapel nodded and rubbed at his face with his hands. His silicone left hand dragged in his stubble, but the irritation helped wake him up a little. He rubbed Julia’s shoulder with his good hand. “It’s time to wake up,” he told her.

She shifted in her seat, making little sounds of annoyance. Then she leaned forward and laid her head on his chest, one of her arms snaking around his waist. “Let me sleep in today,” she said. “The little Chihuahuas can wait.”

She was so warm against his body in the chilly air-conditioned cab. Chapel felt his body stirring. He put his good hand on her hair and stroked it gently.

Whoa, he told himself. Not appropriate.

He thought of when she’d been examining him in her clinic, and she’d kissed him. That had just been a reward for saving her, though. Except — she had said that it was also maybe because she’d wanted to kiss him.

Her hair was soft and slightly curly. It felt good in his fingers. This was totally wrong, he thought. He had a mission to complete; there was no time for this. But he wanted so desperately to just lean in and kiss her awake.

“Oh, no,” she said, and sat bolt upright. “Oh my God.”

“It’s not what—”

“Oh my God,” she said again. “Oh God. Chapel. I–I am so sorry.”

“You are?” he asked.

“I thought you were somebody else. My ex-boyfriend. Wow,” she said. “That was not appropriate, huh? I’m really sorry.”

Chapel reached for the handle of his door. “It’s fine. Really,” he said. He opened his door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Harsh sodium lamps burned down from above, pushing away shadows that refused to be completely contained. The buildings on either side of him were mostly one- and two-story houses with peaked roofs. Each had a patch of green lawn out front, and most had a tree or two. It looked nothing whatsoever like New York City.

“Do we need to pay the driver?” Julia asked, coming up beside him.

“No — no — it’s all taken care of,” he said, a little too quickly.

She gave him a weak smile. He turned toward the car, intending to ask the driver to wait while they went inside, but the cabbie was already pulling away. He waved furiously to call the man back, but it was no use.

Oh, well. He could always call for another car. Even without Angel’s help he supposed he could manage that.

“So what’s the plan, here?” Julia asked.

“The man who lives here, Jeremy Funt, is like your father — at least in that the chimeras want to kill them both.” She winced and he immediately felt like an ass. She knew her father’s life — just as her own — was in danger, and she didn’t need to be reminded of the fact. “I’m going to get him, and you, out of here. And then I’m going to sit here all night waiting for a chimera to show up. If I can, I’ll take it into custody.”

“How do you know the chimera will come here?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes.

“I don’t, really. But I’m operating under the assumption the chimera has the same list I do, which is how I got this address. Huh. No lights on in the house.”

Julia shrugged. “It’s late. Maybe he’s asleep, like a sane person.”

“Maybe,” Chapel agreed. If it was him, if he knew a psychopath was coming to kill him, Chapel would keep a light on. It would at least make it easier to see the maniac when he arrived. “Come on.” He went up a narrow gravel driveway to the front door of the house and knocked loudly. He glanced around at the surrounding houses. Plenty of them still showed lights. He could see the blue glow of a television set through one window across the street and hear people laughing somewhere nearby. A dog was barking a few streets away. It wasn’t that late.

When there was no answer to his knock he looked around until he found a doorbell and tried that. Still no response.

“Maybe he was really sane, and he went somewhere else. Since he knew the chimera was coming. You did let everyone know they were in danger, right?” Julia asked.

“It was the first thing I did.”

Something here just wasn’t right. He knocked again, knowing there would be no reply. “Okay. I need to get inside, whether he’s here or not, so I can lay my ambush for the chimera. Stand back and watch the street. If you see anyone looking at us and wondering what we’re doing, let me know. If you see a police car, let me know.”

“I’m guessing, in this neighborhood that’s a pretty rare sight,” Julia told him.

“Keep an eye out anyway.” Chapel flexed his shoulder. It had been a long time since he had knocked a door down with brute force. He had little choice, though. He grabbed the doorknob, intending to lift the door in its hinges and then ram it with his shoulder.

Except the knob turned freely in his hand.

The door swung open. It wasn’t locked.

Something here was definitely not right.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+19:12

Chapel drew his weapon and stepped inside the dark house. He motioned for Julia to follow him, then pulled the door shut behind him. “Look for a light switch,” he told Julia. Then he turned to face the darkness and called out, “Mr. Funt? I’m a federal agent. I’m here to protect you.”

He didn’t expect a response, and he didn’t get one.

Behind him he heard a click, and then the lights came on.

The house was tastefully, if plainly, furnished. The front door opened on a living room with a large television set, a comfortable-looking sofa, and a beaten-up coffee table that might have been an antique, once. Bookshelves lined the far wall, but they were half empty.

Two archways led off the main room, one to what looked like a kitchen — he could see a refrigerator and a stove through the arch — and one to what presumably was a bedroom. A curtain of beads hung down from that arch. Chapel pointed his weapon toward each arch and called out Funt’s name again.

It was possible this was a colossal waste of time. Maybe no chimera had come to Atlanta at all. Maybe all three of them were in Chicago already and were beating Eleanor Pechowski to death while he stood here, wondering what to do next.

That kind of thinking didn’t help at all. “Stay close to me,” he told Julia, but she was already walking over to the coffee table.

“Does this guy look like a slob to you?” she asked.

Chapel wondered what she was getting at, but he glanced around the room. There were coasters on the coffee table, and no empty cans or glasses lying around. “Not at all,” he said. “The opposite, in fact.”

Julia ran one index finger along the top of the coffee table. She held it up where he could see it — it was covered in dust. “He hasn’t been here in a while.”

Chapel frowned. That had to mean something important, but — what? Even if Funt had vacated the house as soon as he got the call from Angel, that was still less than twenty-four hours ago. Dust didn’t accumulate that quickly.

“You have a list of addresses for the people the chimeras want to kill,” Julia said. When he started to protest, she held up both hands. “I’m not asking any questions, don’t worry. You can keep your secrets. I just wanted to point out that maybe your list isn’t up to date. Funt might have moved out of here a while ago.”

“Maybe,” Chapel agreed. “I’m going to check the kitchen. Stay here.”

Julia looked annoyed at being ordered around, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He didn’t have time to ask her permission every time he needed her to do something. Civilians were fine in principle, he thought, until you needed them to follow orders.

He went into the kitchen and found another light switch. The kitchen was as Spartan as the living room, with a small table pushed up against one wall and only one chair. There was thick dust on the table, but when he checked the stove and the countertops they were clean. No dust on them at all. Funt might have moved out weeks ago — but he had come back at least once.

“I’m going to check the bedroom,” Julia called.

“No! Wait for me,” he shouted back, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. He turned to leave the kitchen when he caught another look at the table — and the dust on top of it.

Someone had written a message in it, presumably using his finger. Chapel bent low to get a look at it in better light.

“Oh shit!” Julia called.

Chapel ignored the message in the dust and raced back into the living room. He saw Julia standing in the beaded curtain, holding it back with one hand.

“I think we’re too late,” she said. “I think he’s dead.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+19:46

Chapel raced over to her side. He put an arm out to stop her from going any farther, then peered into the darkened bedroom. Like the rest of the house it was only semifurnished. There was a single bed up against the far wall, and a dresser standing next to the window.

The sheets of the bed had been pulled up over a human-sized form. It looked very much like someone had died in their sleep and had the sheets drawn over his face.

Chapel noticed a strange, acrid smell in the air. At first he thought it had to be the stench of decay, that the body had been left there long enough for it to start rotting. But he knew the smell of death, and this wasn’t it. This smelled more like benzene or maybe diesel fuel.

“Just like my mom,” Julia breathed. She sounded like she was close to going into shock — or maybe like she would start screaming.

Chapel stepped toward the bed, intending to throw the sheet back and see if it was really Funt lying there. Something about the position of the body seemed wrong. The body had been lain out carefully, its legs together and its arms at its sides. The way bodies looked when they were lain in their coffins.

The chimera he’d fought in New York wouldn’t have bothered to do something like that. He’d made no attempt to pose Helen Bryant — he’d just killed her and then left her in a heap.

That smell. It was very strong over by the bed. Chapel reached down and touched the sheet near the body’s head. He grasped the edge of the sheet and started to pull it down.

Behind him he heard a click as Julia switched on the bedroom light.

Two things occurred to him in that moment. One was that the form under the sheet was too lumpy. Up close it didn’t look so much like a human being anymore.

The other thing was that he distinctly heard some kind of fizzing sound. It had started the same moment Julia switched on the lights.

He yanked the sheet back and saw what was really there.

Red plastic canisters, the kind used to store gasoline. Or diesel fuel. There were eight of them in the bed, grouped together to resemble a human body. They had yellow plastic screw lids. Chapel unscrewed one and the smell nearly overpowered him. It wasn’t just diesel fuel in there — the diesel had been mixed with fertilizer.

He was looking at a homemade bomb.

That fizzing sound…

It had to be the noise of a burning fuse, which was lit when Julia flipped the light switch.

“Get out! Front door! Now!” Chapel shouted, turning around and pushing Julia ahead of him, through the beaded curtain. He caught her wrong and she nearly went sprawling, nearly fell right onto the coffee table. Chapel grabbed her around the waist with his artificial arm and bull rushed the front door, slamming up against it because he’d forgotten it opened inward.

Behind him he heard a fwoosh as the fuse burned down and set the first canister alight.

The bedroom window exploded outward in a gout of flame and smoke, glass and wood bursting outward in a cone that shredded the hedges and set fire to a tree ten feet away. A billowing wave of smoke came rushing out the front door, and with it a shock wave that smashed Chapel’s face to the side as pieces of burning and broken furniture stormed past him. He slammed his eyes shut to protect them even as the heat hit him, making him feel like he was being roasted alive.

In a moment it was over except for the smoke and the car alarms and the ringing in his ears. He looked down and saw he was lying on top of Julia, his artificial arm wrapped around her head, presumably to protect her from the blast.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

She nodded. Her eyes were very wide. Clearly no one had ever tried to blow her up before.

Chapel wished he could say the same.

He looked up and saw every light on the street was on now, every house awake and alert. People had come out onto their porches to see what was going on. Some of them were standing in the street, watching Funt’s house as it went up in flames.

He looked down and saw he was still lying on Julia. He released her head from his cradling arm, and she pulled herself out from beneath him. Carefully he got to his feet, then helped her up as well.

“I get the feeling Jeremy Funt was expecting us,” Julia said.

Chapel shook his head. He felt a little dizzy from the blast, still. If you want to find me I’ve gone under the underground…

Who the hell was this guy, and what game was he playing?

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA: APRIL 13, T+21:02

Policemen in fireproof suits climbed over the remains of the charred house like ants on a discarded candy bar. Fire engines were parked three deep in front, their engines idling noisily while water leaked from their hose connectors. Up and down the street the locals were leaning off their porches, trying to get a better look.

Tom Banks watched it all on a fifty-inch screen. The image was grainy, especially blown up that big. It was coming through the lens of a cameraphone and the resolution just couldn’t keep up. Every time Laughing Boy moved, the view distorted and broke down into pixels as big as Banks’s thumb.

“Fertilizer bomb,” Laughing Boy confirmed. He’d been on the scene just minutes after the explosion and he’d been liaising with the local cops the whole time. “You know what that looks like. Heh. Domestic terrorism.”

“I thought you took your medication,” Banks said, annoyed as always by his underling’s constant giggling.

“Oh, I did,” the operative confirmed. “Just thought that was funny.”

Banks poured himself a scotch and soda. It looked like he would be up all night. “I don’t suppose we got lucky and they pulled any bodies out of there? Say, a one-armed gimp and a redhead with a nice ass?”

“They made it out. Cops are looking for ’em right now,” Laughing Boy replied. “Jeremy Funt, too. They want to know why he would blow up his own house.”

“Figures. Hollingshead will make that heat go away,” Banks said. He sighed deeply.

“You want me to help the cops out? Or maybe make this problem go away by myself?” Laughing Boy asked.

“Not yet,” Banks told him. “There’ll be time for that after Chapel leads us to Funt. The chimera might do it for us, too. Chapel’s gotten lucky so far, but luck runs out.”

“And if it doesn’t—”

Banks frowned. “When I give the word, you can kill Chapel. Not before.”

“Yes, sir,” Laughing Boy said.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+24:43

Orange light touched Chapel’s eyes. He opened them and looked around, uncertain for a moment where he was. He was lying in a bed, covered by a thick blanket. He was wearing nothing but his pants.

Motel room, he thought. That was right. He and Julia had checked in last night. He had said he would lie down for a little while, expecting his racing thoughts to keep him awake. Then…

His mouth tasted awful. Slowly he sat up and looked around. He heard water running, and decided that Julia must be taking a shower in the bathroom. Her clothes were draped over the back of a chair. His were folded neatly on top of a dresser.

He must have been so tired he just passed out. He couldn’t remember undressing. He reached up with both hands to rub at his face. His right hand touched his cheek. He felt his left hand moving, but it never made contact. He tried to lift it to his face again, and it felt like it went right through him. He had the unnerving sensation that it was passing right through his flesh.

With a start he looked down and saw that his arm was gone.

Chapel was no stranger to the phantom limb effect. Before he’d been fitted with his prosthesis, he’d constantly felt like his arm was still there and he just couldn’t see it. He’d been able, in his mind, to move his left hand, to make a fist. For the first few months after the amputation, he’d experienced severe pain in that hand. That was normal, they told him. The body’s image of itself wasn’t based on present reality but on muscle memory, and his brain was just having trouble remembering that part of his body was missing. He often woke up in the morning thinking his arm was still there. Each day brought a fresh shock when he recalled what he had become.

He had a brief moment of panic until he saw the arm, sitting on a coffee table near the room’s door. It was plugged in and charging. So were his and Julia’s phones, and his hands-free set.

He didn’t remember doing any of that. He didn’t remember taking off his arm. He couldn’t imagine doing it in front of Julia.

And yet here he was.

Another moment of panic came when he looked at the clock. It was nearly seven in the morning — he must have slept until the dawn light came and found him. He stared at the curtains over the room’s single window and saw the light coming through was strong and clear. He had been asleep for more than four hours.

Plenty of time for the chimeras to find their targets. Plenty of time for people to die.

He jumped out of the bed and grabbed his hands-free set. Shoving it in his ear, he called, “Angel? Can you hear me?”

“I’m here, sunshine,” she said. She sounded almost as tired as he felt. Had she spent the entire night reconfiguring her servers?

“Thank God you’re back,” Chapel said. “I’ve missed you. Are you okay? You sound like you didn’t sleep at all.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” she said, with a little laugh. “I didn’t, but I popped a few energy drinks and now I’m fine. This wasn’t my first all-nighter. You’ll be glad to know I’m back up to full speed. Rebuilding my system took a little longer than expected, but we should be safe now — no CIA sneaks listening in. Are you ready to get back to work?”

“Yeah. Listen, the first thing we need to talk about — the police here might be looking for me. I managed to blow up Funt’s house last night.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Angel said. “You do know how to have fun, sugar. As for the police, they were looking for you, yes. I took care of that.”

“Thanks.” Chapel wondered what she had told them to keep them off his tail, but he supposed it didn’t matter. There were far more important things to discuss. “Angel, I need you to check in on Eleanor Pechowski for me. I need to know she’s still alive.”

“Then I’ve got some good news. I spoke with her about twenty minutes ago. After I told her she was in danger, she went to stay at a friend’s house. I have a police detail watching the place twenty-four seven. She’s as safe as she can be.”

That was one stroke of luck. “I’m beginning to think I made the wrong choice,” Chapel told her. “It seems Jeremy Funt might be able to take care of himself.” He briefly filled her in on what they’d found in his house. “The funny thing is, there was at least a week’s worth of dust there. Like he’d been expecting this. He had plenty of time to plan and set his booby traps. Did you contact him yesterday?”

“I did. He thanked me for the information and said he would be careful. Tell you the truth, he didn’t seem particularly surprised.”

“Hmm.” Chapel wondered how Funt could have known what was coming. The chimeras had only broken out of their detention facility a little more than — he checked the clock again — twenty-four hours ago. “He must know something we don’t.”

“Then I’d say you made the right choice, coming to Atlanta,” Angel told him. “Presuming he’s willing to share.”

“That’s a big presumption. From what I’ve seen so far he’s a sneaky bastard. He nearly killed me and Julia last night. If I didn’t think he could explain a few things, I’d be tempted to just leave him to his own devices. Anyway, we don’t even know if a chimera is coming here, much less—”

“Ah,” Angel said.

“What is it?”

“I guess you haven’t had a chance to watch the local news,” she said. “Last night a man was killed at the Atlanta train station. The suspect is described as large and athletically built, with haphazardly cut hair.”

“Sounds familiar,” Chapel said. It sounded like the chimera he’d killed in New York. Well, there it was. He at least hadn’t wasted all this time on a wild goose chase. “Do the police have any idea where he is?”

“None whatsoever. I’m keeping my ears open, though — I can hear all their chatter. If they catch sight of him, you’ll know about it.”

“Thanks. Okay, next up—”

He stopped because the shower had turned off in the bathroom and the door was opening. Julia stepped out, wearing only a towel. Her wet red hair was draped forward over one shoulder, its curly ends touching the top of her breasts.

“Angel, stand by,” Chapel said. He took the hands-free set out of his ear.

“Good morning,” Julia said. She stood framed in the doorway, not moving.

“Hi. I guess I fell asleep,” he said, because his brain wasn’t bothering to engage very well with his mouth.

“Yeah. You conked out. I had to undress you — I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to make you comfortable. I slept in the chair, there,” she said, pointing to where she’d left her clothes. “I woke up a little while ago. Figured I’d take this chance to get clean.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Chapel, you’re staring,” she said, and a blush appeared on her cheeks.

“So are you,” he said.

She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off his left shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Julia said. “I just — I’d kind of stopped thinking of you as only having one arm. The prosthesis is so realistic.”

“It fools a lot of people. But not forever.” Chapel gave her a wan smile. He supposed this moment had been bound to come. He’d started thinking of Julia as more than just an informant. More than just someone he was trying to protect.

He’d known he found her attractive. Seeing her standing there in just a towel, he felt it more than ever. But he’d also seen something else in her, in her resourcefulness, in her toughness. Something he found rarely in anyone of either gender. Something he’d come to admire. He’d honestly begun to think that maybe they could share something more than just… whatever they were to each other now.

But he’d been fooling himself, of course.

He was still a freak. Still three-quarters of a man. He could forget that himself, sometimes. This recent adventure had made him feel more whole than he had in a long time. But it was still true.

“You must have seen this last night,” he said, gesturing at his shoulder with his chin. “You took the arm off.”

“It was dark,” she said, “and I was so exhausted I barely knew what I was doing. I just hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“I’m fine. Do you want me to put a shirt on? I’m sorry, this has to be unpleasant for you. You don’t need to see me like this.” He reached for his T-shirt.

“No,” she said, and he saw her swallow. She was steeling herself for something.

He figured he knew what it would be. When people found out about his disability, they typically had one of two reactions. They either pretended it didn’t exist and looked away — and made a point of never looking at his arm again, even when he had the prosthetic on. Or they pretended like it didn’t bother them, like it was perfectly normal that Chapel only had one arm.

Both reactions used to disgust him. Eventually he’d come to respect that people just didn’t know how to process him. He didn’t fit into their view of normalcy and so they would always be awkward around him.

Julia came over to the bed and sat down next to him. Close enough he could smell her freshly shampooed hair, feel the warmth of her body. A sweet kind of torture. She reached up with her right hand and touched his stump with one finger. “Is this okay?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt.”

She smiled. “This is excellent work,” she told him. She ran her finger along the scar there. Stroked the skin with the back of her hand. “I — oh, God. Just tell me to shut up if I say something offensive. But I’ve done some amputations myself. On dogs and cats, of course. It can be tricky, depending on what you’ve got to work with.”

“Did you ever fit a prosthesis for a dog?” he asked. “Or maybe a peg leg for a parrot?”

She laughed. “You think you’re being funny. But people go crazy over their pets. There’s nothing they won’t pay for if they think it’ll make their pets happy. Dogs with three legs are pretty common and they get along just fine. They learn to hop, and in six months they forget they ever had four legs. But yeah, I’ve seen prosthetic legs on dogs. Nothing as useful as what they gave you.”

She was stroking his shoulder and his chest by that point. Her fingers wove into his chest hair.

He couldn’t help himself. He leaned in to kiss her.

Her lips were soft and warm, and they parted slightly. He touched her tongue with his. Her eyes were closed and she sank against him, nothing between them but a towel, and he started to reach for her with his hand, his real hand.

“Last night in the car,” she said, “when I fell asleep. I curled up with you. I said I thought you were my ex. That wasn’t true. It just felt good to have… someone that close. A little comfort.”

“After the day you had, I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to want that,” he told her. He stroked her wet hair.

She leaned forward and buried her face in the crook of his neck. Her lips brushed his skin. “Chapel, is this okay?” she asked. “Us? Now? Do we have time? I could really use some more comforting.”

“Me too,” he said. “The bad guys can wait.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+25:07

Her towel had already fallen to her waist, exposing her breasts. He cupped one with his hand, and she sighed and pressed close to him. She reached down and unbuttoned his pants, and together they pushed them down and off the bed. Her towel went away and they were naked together. He kissed her throat, her chest, her lips. She pushed him back onto the bed and straddled him. She was ready for him, and he was definitely ready for her.

He started to speak her name, but she put a finger to his lips. Her eyes were closed as she rode him, her hips rocking back and forth slowly, her body shuddering just a little. Her red hair was slicked back and curly tips of it brushed her shoulders, stuck to her chin. She gasped a little, and he put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her, pulling her toward him.

It had been a long time. He didn’t want it to end too soon, so he sat up and kissed her deeply, then flipped her over on her back. She laughed, her legs flailing in the air. Her eyes were watching his face, trying to figure out what he was going to do next. He knelt between her legs, then slid down and buried his face in the red hair between her thighs, breathing in the smell of her, tasting her wetness. Her whole body jerked as his tongue touched her, as it flashed between their bodies.

Her fingers grabbed at his hair and his ears as she squirmed and shook. Squeaks of pleasure broke free from her mouth as he matched the rhythm of her hips, as he slid one finger inside her and found just the right spot. She tasted amazing, fresh and clean and just a little musky, and his excitement only grew as she got closer and closer. In a moment she came, smearing his face and chin with her wetness.

She put her hands over her face as if she was embarrassed. He climbed back up toward her and pulled her hands away and saw her mouth was open, her eyes barely focusing on him. He dug his arm under her back and pulled her to his chest. She was so wet he had no trouble sliding inside her and he thrust against her, making her gasp again, this time finding his own rhythm. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him still closer, pulled him down on top of her. Her hands grabbed the muscles of his back and squeezed as he thrust deeper.

She let out a little cry and kissed his neck, his ear. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m protected.”

It only took a few more strokes. He thrust deep inside her and went rigid as his body exploded, as every muscle in his back and legs tensed and then released and he came, his eyes tightly shut, his skin on fire as she kissed him again and again, everywhere she could reach.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+25:52

Julia went to the bathroom to clean up and dress. At the bathroom door she turned to look back at him. She laughed a little, her eyes studying his face.

Chapel smiled back at her.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” she said, her eyes watching his face very carefully.

“Having second thoughts?” he asked.

“Hell, no. I needed it.” She looked at him for a moment longer, then shook her head and stepped inside the bathroom.

When the door closed, he just fell back against the sheets and breathed for a while. That had burned off a lot of tension.

When she came back out, she announced she was going to go out and find them some breakfast and a few toiletries — things they hadn’t had time to acquire in the mad rush since they’d left New York City. Chapel could tell she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts for a while and he just told her to be safe.

He just lay there for a while when she was gone, reveling. Amazed at what had happened between them. The few women he’d been with since he lost his arm had all wanted him to wear the arm while he made love to them, though none of them had wanted it to touch them. They’d found ways to ignore it.

Julia hadn’t asked for that. She’d seen what he looked like with no arm, with his shirt off. It hadn’t stopped her.

It had been all about the moment, of course. The adrenaline of the last twenty-four hours. The constant threat of danger and death. It made people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Chapel knew all about that. He knew it couldn’t last.

But. But — wow. Damn. It had felt so right. And Julia hadn’t been creeped out. She hadn’t been thinking of him as less than whole, as part of a man. She’d simply wanted him, wanted to be with him, as he was.

It was more than he’d hoped for in a very long time.

Eventually the afterglow started to wear off. Chapel started to think about chimeras and CIA killers and the desperate situation he was in once again. He knew he had to get back to work.

Still, he let himself just be happy, just for a moment.

When he’d luxuriated in that enough, he found the hands-free unit and put it back in his ear. “Sorry about cutting you off like that, Angel.”

“No worries, sugar,” she said.

“Angel,” Chapel said carefully, because he’d just thought of something, “you weren’t — listening to any of that. Were you?”

“Of course not, Chapel. I understand when people need a little privacy.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“I didn’t hear a word. Though, if you want some romantic advice—”

“At the moment I’d prefer to know where Jeremy Funt is,” Chapel said, to change the subject.

“I’m ahead of you there, except I don’t have any answers,” Angel told him. “I’ve been trying to call him every five minutes, but I can’t get through. All my calls go straight to voice mail. I’ve left a bunch of messages, but there’s been no response. I thought if he knew who you were, he might be willing to come out of hiding.”

“He’s scared. He’s gone to ground. He knew, somehow, that a chimera was coming here. He knew long before the chimeras even left the Catskills.” Chapel scratched his head. “The booby trap in his house was meant to catch a chimera. But he also left a cryptic message behind, telling anyone where to find him. Does that make sense to you?”

“No, but then I’m not a paranoid FBI agent being hunted by a genetic freak,” Angel pointed out.

“Right. Me neither.” Chapel sighed. He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face and scrubbed himself with a soapy washcloth. “I need to think like him. I need to figure out what he would do, if I’m ever going to find him. If he left that message, he wanted somebody to follow it. Maybe you have to be the right person to know what it means. Maybe it’s some kind of private joke.”

“Chapel,” Angel said, “I need to point something out to you.”

“Hmm?” Chapel asked, lost in thought.

“Despite appearances, I’m not actually omniscient,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Angel. I’m not following.”

She sighed deeply. Even her sighs sounded sexy. “You never actually told me what the message said. I am a trained intelligence analyst. I might be able to help you, if you’d like to share.”

Chapel laughed. “Angel, I sometimes forget you’re not sitting on my shoulder watching everything I do. I’m so sorry. Yeah, the message. It said ‘If you want to find me, I’ve gone under the underground.’ Does that mean anything to you, just off the top of your head?”

“No, but that’s why God invented the Internet. Let’s see.” He heard her clacking keys. “It seems like he meant for you to find him, so the answer should be obvious, right? Except what I’m turning up, it’s all really confusing. Under the underground, that sounds like a riddle. Let me search some riddle databases.”

Obvious, Chapel thought. The answer should be obvious. She was right — Funt wouldn’t make the puzzle impossible. He would make it as simple as he could. In fact, it might not be a puzzle at all.

In a flash of inspiration, he went and fetched his phone. He’d never actually bothered using it to surf the web — Angel had handled all that for him up to now. He opened up the mobile browser and pecked in a few characters with his index finger.

“Oh,” he said, because before he could even finish typing in his search, Google was already suggesting what he wanted to look up. He touched the screen and it filled up with links. “Ah,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Angel asked. “Chapel, you’re making noises like you’ve figured something out.”

“You were overthinking it,” he told her.

“What?”

“You expected it to be a riddle. So you figured it had to be a puzzle to be solved. That’s the kind of thing you’re good at. But it occurred to me, if Funt wanted to be found — and it looks like he definitely does — he wouldn’t bother making us solve a word game to know his location.”

“Now I’m really confused,” Angel admitted. “It’s not like he left you a street address to go to.”

“He kind of did,” Chapel said. “Just now, on my phone, I googled ‘Underground Atlanta.’ And now I know where Funt is.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:15

“This is not what I expected, not at all,” Chapel said, when he and Julia climbed out of a cab downtown. Before them a massive sign read simply UNDERGROUND. A dark entrance below it led into a cavernlike space.

Just after the Civil War, after Sherman burned the city to the ground, Atlanta had put itself back together, growing and flourishing in the Reconstruction. This whole section of the city had grown faster than the rest as bigger buildings were built and viaducts were raised to carry railroads and then vehicular traffic. The area under the viaducts, which had been at street level in the nineteenth century, had eventually been buried in new construction until the city streets were a whole story higher than they used to be.

Entire city blocks lay down there, covered over and buried as the city grew up around them. Once, Chapel knew from what he’d read about the place, it had been a zone of speakeasies during Prohibition. Then it had been taken over by squatters and the homeless. Now Underground Atlanta was a giant shopping mall.

And, apparently, a bolt hole for an ex-FBI agent named Jeremy Funt.

Chapel and Julia headed inside, joining the flow of early morning shoppers and tourists. Inside, the Underground was paved with brick and lit only sporadically by overhead fluorescents and the occasional light well. It was full of brightly lit shops and souvenir stands, carts selling T-shirts advertising HOTLANTA or THE A, places to get your hair braided or your ears pierced, displays of antique cars and jazz legends and old railroad history. Someone was singing nearby, though Chapel couldn’t see where. The place’s weird acoustics distorted the singer’s voice and made the plateglass windows of the shops around him shake. The Underground smelled of pretzels and old beer and even older mildew.

“Let’s find our man fast and get him out of here,” Chapel said, frowning. He definitely did not like how public this place was. If a chimera came here, looking for Funt, the collateral damage could be devastating.

“Why is he here in the first place?” Julia asked.

Chapel shrugged. “Based on what we saw last night — the way he rigged his house — Funt’s crazy. A paranoid. I expected him to have some underground bunker hidden away on some compound out in the country, a place full of guns and bottled water and a copy of The Turner Diaries.” He glanced around. “Not this.”

Up ahead there was an indoor waterfall where children were playing, splashing one another and passersby. There was a tourist information stand there, a little booth with no one in it. There were brochures available, though, and Chapel grabbed one. “He said he was under the Underground, whatever that means.” He glanced through the brochure, looking for any clue that might tell him where to go next.

Julia grabbed one for herself and started reading it. “Apparently there used to be a wax museum down here. That’s kind of creepy. I can imagine Funt hiding in an abandoned wax museum. The chimera might be confused by all the statues and not know who to beat on first.”

“It’s a thought,” Chapel said. He shook his head and folded his brochure up again. Jammed it in his pocket. “Maybe we can ask someone.” He turned around, looking for anyone who might meet his eye.

The first person he saw was an old guy with a straggly beard wearing a green army jacket. He had a cardboard sign around his neck that read HUNGRY VET PLEASE HELP. When he saw Chapel looking at him, he came over straightaway.

“I’m not going to BS you,” the man said. “Just give me a moment of your time, and I’ll be on my way. I am an alcoholic, it’s true.”

Chapel nodded. He could smell the gin on the man’s breath. At least he was being honest about it.

“Any money you give me I’ll take straight to the bar,” the vet went on, clearly winding up to deliver a well-practiced pitch.

“What branch of the service were you in?” Chapel asked him, beginning to think maybe the army coat was just for show.

“Wait,” Julia said. “Wait — maybe you can help us. Do you know this place well?”

“Like the back of my hand,” the drunk said, staring down at his hands as if he’d never seen them before.

“Oh, come on,” Chapel said.

“We need to find some place here. The place underneath the Underground. Does that make sense?”

“Well,” the drunk said, stretching it out to multiple syllables. “Well, this is about as low as you can get in Hotlanta. About as far down as we go. Except the utility basement, there’s that.”

“A basement?” Chapel asked. “Where’s the entrance?”

The drunk stared at him shrewdly.

“It’s extremely important,” Julia said. “Can you please show us where it is?”

“I’ll do it,” the drunk told her, “on one condition only, from which I will not budge. Should you require my services, on this I must insist—”

“What is it?” Chapel asked.

“That the beautiful lady will consent to give me a kiss.” He batted his eyelashes at Julia.

“That’s definitely not going to happen,” she told him. “How about this?” she held up a twenty-dollar bill, folded neatly and tucked between two of her fingers.

“Right this way,” the drunk said, and started off into the darkened paths between the shops of the Underground. The twenty was already gone, presumably hidden somewhere on his person.

He moved fast, zigzagging through the crowd. Most people drew back when he got too close. Others just ignored him. He weaved and bobbed back and forth, somehow never touching anybody. Chapel had to constantly apologize to the people he bumped into while trying to keep up. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Julia just pushing her way through. Apparently growing up in New York City had taught her how not to get lost in a crowd.

They passed by plenty of closed stores and little stages where jazz bands vied for attention. Shoppers milled around a few of the businesses, but mostly people just seemed to want to get in Chapel’s way. Just as he was starting to get seriously annoyed, the drunk stopped abruptly and turned to face him.

“And here we are, at our destination,” the drunk announced, raising his arms like a tour guide.

“Where?” Chapel demanded. He looked around and couldn’t see any doors leading to hidden basements. Just a lot of thuggish-looking teenagers standing around being bored. There was a big Coca-Cola mural on one rough brick wall, and what looked like a very uncomfortable bench or maybe a utility box.

“Oh ye of little faith,” the drunk said. He tapped the utility box with his foot.

Chapel went around the side of the thing and saw that it was fronted by a pair of low wooden doors, no higher than his waist. It was a hatch to a utility area.

“Okay. Fine. You can go now,” Chapel said to the drunk. He was already trying to figure out how he would get through those doors. They looked like they’d been permanently sealed shut.

The drunk started to fume in protest.

“Thanks,” Julia said, “you’ve been very helpful.”

“How about a hug?” the drunk asked.

“How about not?”

She could clearly take care of herself. Chapel was too busy to pay attention. He was feeling around the edges of the doors. Funt wanted to be found, Chapel was sure of that. So he wouldn’t be hiding behind a sealed door.

Chapel’s fingers found a concealed latch on one side of the doors. He slipped it open and the doors parted. Beyond them he could see a dark stairway leading down.

Jackpot.

He looked around and saw that no one was watching him. He would have much preferred to come back later, after everyone had gone, but he just didn’t have the time. He looked up and saw that Julia had gotten rid of the drunk by giving him more money. Well, as long as he left, that was fine.

“That’s where we’re going?” she asked.

“That’s where I’m going,” Chapel told her. “You’re staying right here.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:36

“You can’t be serious,” Julia said. “I’ve come all this way, and now—”

“The last time we tried to find Funt, we were both nearly killed by an improvised bomb,” Chapel pointed out. “There’s no telling what’s down there, waiting for me.”

“And you think you’re safer on your own?” Julia asked. Her eyes were bright with anger. “I’m not some kid you’re being paid to babysit, Chapel.”

“No. You’re a civilian who doesn’t need to know all the facts of this case.”

Even as the words came out of his mouth he knew he’d made a bad mistake with her. He could see in her eyes that he’d picked exactly the wrong thing to say.

Her mouth compressed in a hard line, and she folded her arms across her chest. “And that’s all that I am. Right?”

He racked his brain for some way to explain what he’d meant better, to smooth things over. But there was no time for that. “I have to go, now. Lives are at stake,” he said, which even to his own ears just sounded bad. “Listen, I need you to stay up here and watch for cops. If they come down after me, it’ll spook Funt and he’ll run away.”

She shook her head and looked away from him.

At least she wasn’t arguing the point.

He ducked through the short doors of the hatch and headed down the stairs.

Angel’s voice sounded in his ear. “That’s not the fastest way to a woman’s heart, sugar,” she said.

Chapel looked up and saw Julia’s legs framed by the open hatch above him. He whispered his reply so she wouldn’t hear it. “I’m still a professional, Angel. I have questions for Funt. He has information I need. Information a civilian shouldn’t hear.”

“I’m torn here,” Angel said. “The part of me that works for Hollingshead thinks that’s absolutely right, and that you’re acting exactly as you should.”

“And the other part?” Chapel asked.

“The part of me that’s a woman thinks you’re being a jerk.”

“I’ll settle for being half right,” Chapel told her.

The stairs before him led down into a dark cavernous space filled with looming shapes. A storage area full of crates. He could see very little while his eyes were adjusting, but eventually he made out a line of pale light ahead in the darkness. It was coming from underneath a door. He reached for the knob and found it wasn’t locked. Beyond lay a corridor painted glaring white, lit by fluorescent bulbs that buzzed angrily as if annoyed at his intrusion.

“—having trouble—” Angel said in his ear. “—losing your telemetry and—”

“Angel?” Chapel asked. “Angel, you’re breaking up.”

“—signal. You’re pretty far beneath the—”

“Angel?” Chapel called. “Angel, repeat. Please come in.”

A burst of static sounded in his ear, but it cut in and out.

Apparently there were some places even Angel couldn’t tread. The vast amount of concrete and steel over Chapel’s head must be blocking her satellite signal. Damn. He hated proceeding without her watching over his shoulder.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:47

Chapel stepped into the white hallway. Three doors, also painted white, led off the corridor in a number of directions. One of them was a heavy reinforced steel door with a sliding plate set into its face. Its latch was protected by a massive combination lock. Chapel lifted the lock and found it had rusted shut — it might have been hanging there for twenty years, for all he knew. The sliding panel looked like it was painted shut.

He could hear music. Faint music that sounded tinny like it was coming from a transistor radio. He banged on the door for a while, but there was no response. He tried the second door, but that was locked, too.

He headed down the corridor to the final door. The music seemed louder there. He rested his ear against the door and through it he could almost make out what song was playing. The sound had to be coming from behind that door.

His instinct was to draw his weapon. It was possible the chimera had beaten him here.

But he’d seen no sign of a struggle. “Mr. Funt!” he shouted. “Turn off your music and listen to me! I’m here to help!”

There was, of course, no reply.

Chapel grunted in frustration and grabbed the knob of the door before him. It turned easily and the door opened on well-oiled hinges.

Beyond lay a linen closet with a number of shelves. On one shelf sat the radio, playing some light jazz.

On another shelf sat a squarish box made of green metal, slightly convex, propped up on a pair of scissor-shaped legs. In raised lettering on the front of the box was the legend FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.

Chapel knew instantly that it was a claymore antipersonnel mine.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:51

Julia considered just leaving. After what Chapel had said to her, she was righteously angry — after everything she’d been through, for him to talk to her like she was an unruly child… it was sorely tempting to just walk away, to get a cab to the airport and go… somewhere else.

She was smart enough to know that would be a terrible idea, though. Laughing Boy was still out there somewhere, looking for her. He would eventually find her. And if she didn’t have Chapel around to protect her when that happened, she would die.

But damn Chapel! She’d thought, after what had happened that morning, that maybe there was something between them beyond just his business. She’d begun to think… well, she had no idea what she’d begun to think. But that was over now. Right out of the question. He’d gotten what he wanted. He was the big strong knight in shining armor and she had fallen straight into his arms — arm — like she’d been following some cheesy Hollywood script, and she hated herself for that a little. Now that he’d fucked her he had lost all interest in her as a human being, clearly. Just like every other man she’d ever met before. If he thought she was going to share his bed again tonight, he was sorely mistaken. She was her own woman and she could make her own choices.

She couldn’t just walk away from him, obviously. She was stuck with him. But while he was off gallivanting around, at least, she considered herself on her own recognizance.

There were shops around her, places she could go find some fresh clothes. Places to get something to eat. She was hungry.

And maybe if she left, the homeless guy would leave her alone.

“Do you like jazz?” he asked her, for the third time. He had a hopeful twinkle in his eye. Still.

“Not particularly,” she said.

Chapel had been down there for what felt like fifteen minutes. What was taking him so long? He just had to grab Funt and come back up. That shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. She wondered if maybe he’d stumbled on some booby trap down there and gotten himself blown up.

It would serve him right, she thought. Leaving her here with this wino so she could watch for the police.

From what she could tell, Underground Atlanta wasn’t exactly high on the list of places cops went to hang out. It was clogged with homeless people and drug dealers.

“You’re not a tourist, I can tell,” the drunk said, as if he’d just proved he was Sherlock freaking Holmes. “That guy you’re with, he’s some kind of — what? Urban explorer? Thrill-seeking spelunker?”

“He’s a building inspector,” Julia said, thinking on her feet. “I’m his assistant. We had reports that radon gas was leaking from this place, so he went down to check out just how deadly it is. Just standing here is probably giving you cancer.”

The drunk’s eyes went wide, but then he laughed. It was not a sound she particularly cared for. Not after the previous day, when she’d had to lock herself in her own drugs closet while a laughing man claiming to be a cop tried to shoot her.

“You’re just foolin’ an old fool,” the drunk said. “Tell you what. Let’s play a game. The game’s called Truth or Dare. You can pick which one—”

“I’ve played Truth or Dare before,” Julia said.

“I’ll just bet you have,” he said, with a leer.

Julia just sighed.

“Okay, I pick Dare,” the drunk said, and he moved around her until she couldn’t help but look in his face.

“I dare you to go brush your teeth,” Julia said. She turned away from him, not even wanting to look at him anymore.

But then she saw something that made her blood ran cold. A man in a charcoal gray suit. A man with a crew cut and a pair of thick black sunglasses, despite the gloom of the Underground. She knew his face.

It was Laughing Boy.

And he was walking right toward her.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:56

Chapel knew all about claymore mines.

They were designed to shred people. Nestled inside that green box were approximately seven hundred steel balls embedded in C-4 plastic explosive. When the mine went off, it would send all of them screaming forward, right through his body. The force of the explosion would deform them into the shape of bullets. Anyone standing as much as fifty meters away from the explosion would be cut to ribbons by the blast. As close as Chapel was, there would be little left of him afterward but red goo.

He threw his artificial arm up to protect his face. It would do no good at all, but it was a reflex action. So was screaming. He managed not to do that.

Instead he shouted, “Funt, I’m DIA!”

He knew something else about claymore mines, too. They weren’t actually mines at all. They weren’t designed to go off when you stepped on them or crossed a tripwire. They were designed to be remotely detonated by someone with a triggering device, someone nearby.

The claymore didn’t explode. At least not for the moment.

Instead, Chapel heard a shrieking sound just behind him. He braced himself for instant death coming from some other quarter. When he didn’t die, he slowly turned around and looked at what had made that noise.

The sliding panel in the reinforced steel door to his side was drawing back, tearing the paint around it as it moved. When it was retracted all the way, he saw a face behind it — the face of a man maybe sixty years old, wearing a pair of thick-lensed glasses. The eyes behind those lenses were hugely magnified. Chapel saw them narrow as they peered toward him.

“DIA?” the man asked. “They sent somebody from Military Intelligence this time?”

This time? Chapel shook his head. No time to unravel that, not with a claymore mine right behind him. “My name’s Chapel. Captain Jim Chapel. I was sent to protect you from the chimeras,” Chapel told him. His arm was still up across his face. Slowly he lowered it. “Please, please, do not detonate this thing. Are you still holding the clacker?”

Jeremy Funt — it could be no one else — held up the green metal detonator for the claymore. His thumb was resting on the trigger. “I am. I’m going to keep hold of it, for now. You have some kind of ID I can look at?”

“It’s in my jacket pocket,” Chapel told him. “I’m going to reach for it now.” The man was a paranoid nut. There was nothing to be gained whatsoever by spooking him. If he thought Chapel was reaching for a gun, he might detonate the claymore on instinct. “Is that all right?”

“Sure. Just do it slow.”

Chapel nodded and carefully removed his laminate from his pocket. He held it up before Funt’s eyes and let the man read it.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” Funt said, “if I’m a little careful.”

“I understand,” Chapel said. “There’s one of them in Atlanta right now. We have to assume he’s coming for you.”

Funt shrugged. “So what else is new? That’s an old, old story.”

Chapel frowned in confusion. “I’m sorry? You’re used to being hunted down by dangerous lunatics?”

“If by ‘dangerous lunatics’ you mean ‘CIA hit men,’ then… yes,” Funt replied.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:03

“Come on, come on,” Julia whispered, pressing the redial button on her phone. “Chapel, pick up already!”

But there was no answer. This was the third time she’d tried to call Chapel’s number and he still wasn’t picking up.

When she saw Laughing Boy coming toward her, she’d panicked. She just ran, not knowing where she was headed, not knowing what she should do. She’d gotten around a corner and found a women’s restroom and ducked inside and started dialing.

She had no illusions that Laughing Boy wouldn’t follow her inside. She just hadn’t known where else to go.

“Shit,” she said under her breath.

And then she nearly screamed, because her phone started to buzz in her hand.

She stared at the screen and saw she was being called by someone whose phone number was listed as (000) 000-0000. What the hell?

The phone kept buzzing. She swiped the screen to answer. “Hello?” she asked, keeping her voice as low as she could.

“Dr. Taggart,” a woman’s voice said, “you’ve been trying to call Captain Chapel for a while now. He’s outside of cellular coverage and can’t take your call, so I thought I’d make sure you were all right.”

“Who are you?” Julia demanded. For all she knew this was somebody who worked with Laughing Boy trying to track her down.

“You can call me Angel,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “I’m sure you’ve seen Captain Chapel talking into his hands-free unit. I believe you said it made him look like a douche bag. I was the person he was talking to.”

Julia shut her eyes and tried to breathe. “Thank God. I’m in real trouble here. I need you to send help or something. There’s this guy — this, I don’t know, he claimed he was a policeman before, but that was in New York, this guy who tried to kill me, and—”

“You’re talking about Laughing Boy,” Angel said.

“Yes,” Julia told her. “He just showed up here, in Atlanta. We’re in some kind of underground mall and—”

“I have your location. Dr. Taggart, I need to ask you a personal question. From everything I’ve seen so far, you’re a pretty strong woman. Would you say that’s a correct assumption?”

Instantly Julia calmed down. She opened her eyes and changed her grip on the phone. “I like to think of myself as a competent person.”

“Right now I need you to be one tough bitch,” Angel told her.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:05

“I don’t understand,” Chapel said. “The CIA is trying to kill you? You know that sounds crazy, right?”

“Captain,” Funt said, “I have a clacker in my hand ready to detonate the claymore mine behind you. I’m well protected behind this door. You might be smart about this and not insult me.”

“That’s a fair point,” Chapel said.

“The CIA has been trying to kill me for nearly fifteen years. I know too much to be left free and alive. I’ve survived this long by being quick on my feet and not taking chances. You claim to be a DIA agent, but it would be relatively easy for a CIA assassin to fake those credentials. So I’m assuming that you’re just the latest in a long line of hit men.”

Chapel shook his head. “You have to believe me. You have to trust me.”

“I do?” Funt asked.

“Yes! There’s a man coming for you right now, someone who isn’t a CIA agent but who definitely wants to kill you. I don’t know what kind of threats you think you’ve survived all this time, but—”

“In 1998, they sent a team of men in commando gear, carrying M4 rifles, to my home. I happened to be coming back from the grocery store at the time and so I nearly walked in on them ransacking my place. I turned around and drove away and never went back. Since then I’ve been moving every few months, staying light on my feet. In 2001, they caught up with me in Montana. You ever been to Montana, Chapel? It’s big sky country. Lots of open space, not a lot of good places to hide. They only sent one man that time, maybe because they figured I would be expecting a team, maybe because they thought they had me cornered. This guy was pretty slick. Claimed to be FBI, like I used to be. Said he wanted to discuss some old cases with me. I had him inside my house and pointing a gun at my face, ready to shoot. The only reason I survived was because I’d already poisoned his coffee.”

“Jesus,” Chapel said. This guy was crazy. Dangerously crazy.

“He lived. I didn’t want to kill anybody, not back then. I just fed him enough rat poison to give me time to get out of there. To escape. I went to New Orleans. Now there’s a place a man can lose himself. Or at least I thought so — until 2003, when the same man, the one I’d poisoned, came for me again. I couldn’t take any chances that time. I set fire to my own apartment on the way out. Maybe he got out in time, maybe he didn’t. I didn’t go back to check. In 2006, a new guy started coming for me.”

I’m going to die here, Chapel thought. I’m going to die because this man is insane and he thinks anyone who comes looking for him is an assassin.

“This one figured he’d play it real simple. No false ID, no tricky attempts to convince me he was an old friend. He just walked up to me in the parking lot of a Starbucks and started shooting. I got out of there by the skin of my teeth.”

“So the bomb in your house—”

“Just in case,” Funt explained.

The story was nuts, but it explained one thing. There had been dust all over Funt’s house, far more dust than could be easily explained. At least, it couldn’t be explained if Funt had set the bomb only after Angel called him.

No. This guy had been expecting an assassin for years. He had no idea that this time the assassin was real — but not human.

“Weird thing about this latest guy. He couldn’t stop laughing, the whole time he was plugging away at me. He came back in 2009—it must have taken him that long to track down my newest identity. I saw him coming in time. Then in 2010—”

“Wait,” Chapel said. “Hold on. Laughing? He was laughing the whole time?”

“It was creepy as hell. I don’t know who you really are, Captain Chapel, but at least you look normal.”

“I know that guy,” Chapel said. “The laughing guy. He is CIA, that’s true. And he’s definitely a killer.”

“Mm-hmm. Do you still think I’m crazy, then?”

Absolutely, Chapel thought. But maybe not delusional. It was possible that the CIA really was trying to assassinate Funt. The fact they’d failed so many times was a little hard to accept — but then again, how many times had they tried to kill Fidel Castro and never got him? “You said you knew too much,” Chapel said. “That’s why they’re after you. I think I have an idea what it is you know, and why it’s so sensitive.”

“Figures. They would’ve briefed you on me when they sent you down here to kill me.” Funt raised the clacker so Chapel could see it again.

“Wait! It’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s why I was sent here, yes, but to protect you!”

“Choose your next words carefully,” Funt told him.

“It’s about the chimeras, isn’t it? That’s what you know about. The chimeras they were holding in some prison camp up in the Catskills. You need to know something, Special Agent Funt. You need to know they escaped. They escaped, and one of them is in Atlanta right now, coming for you.”

Funt looked like an electric shock had run through him. Chapel thought he could see the hair standing up on the man’s knuckles.

“Malcolm got loose?” Funt asked. “Oh crap.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:15

“That’s right,” Chapel bluffed. “Malcolm. Malcolm the chimera. He had your name and address and I came here to make sure he didn’t kill you.”

Funt stared at Chapel. “No offense, guy, but you’re not up to this. I don’t know what kind of training you’ve had, but Malcolm — he’ll be all grown up now. He’ll be more than a match for anything you bring to the table.”

“I can handle him,” Chapel promised.

“They must not have told you anything about the chimeras. They’re tougher than you can imagine, faster than anything human. They’re also meaner and more—”

“I killed one in New York, yesterday,” Chapel said, because he needed Funt to trust him.

“If that’s true — and I doubt it,” Funt said, “then you got extremely lucky. When I first saw Malcolm, he was ten years old. Even then he left me in the hospital for months. No, if he’s coming here… I’m as good as dead. Damn, damn, damn. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to think about this.”

“I can help,” Chapel pleaded.

“I’ll need to lay some more traps. I’ll need to get a gun… damn. Damn! Malcolm, after all this time — he won’t stop. The CIA goons, they lose their nerve after a while, but Malcolm… he’s got good reason to kill me. And they never even need a reason. Damn!”

“Funt,” Chapel said, softly, “you must realize you stand a better chance if you work with me. If you want to live through this, you can’t afford to turn down any help.”

Funt stared at him through the sliding hatch in the steel door. He reached up with his free hand and scratched at his eyebrows. He looked like he was about to start screaming in panic. “Not here,” he said.

“Special Agent Funt—”

“I didn’t live this long by being dumb! I need to think. I need to make some plans. Damn!”

“Just come with me, I’ll take you someplace safe,” Chapel promised.

“No,” Funt said. “No. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll assume you are who you say you are. And I’ll meet with you so we can figure some things out together. But not here, not now. Oh my God — what if he’s already on his way? What if he’s coming here right now?”

“Funt—”

“Stone Mountain. The top of Stone Mountain, eight hours from now. Just be there, and I’ll find you. We’ll talk.”

“Please,” Chapel begged.

“Not now! Not here!”

Funt slid the panel in his door shut with a clang. Chapel grabbed at it and tried to force it back open, tried pushing it with his fingers. Eventually it slid back a fraction of an inch. He pried it open the rest of the way and peered through, even though he knew what he would find.

The room beyond was empty. Funt was gone.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:21

There were a dozen stores in Underground Atlanta that sold the same ugly T-shirts and schlocky merchandise. Julia picked the nearest one and ducked inside, bending low as she flicked through a rack of cheap clothing.

“Souvenir for your trip?” the clerk asked.

Julia gave her the best smile she could manage. “I like this hoodie,” she said, holding up a bright pink sweatshirt with a graphic of jazz musicians printed on the back. The musicians were picked out with glitter and sequins. “And these hats,” she said, picking up an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.

“That’s official Braves merchandise. See the hologram?” the clerk asked, not moving from where she leaned against her counter. “It’s not a knockoff or anything.”

“Perfect. Just ring these up, okay?” Julia stared through the windows of the shop, looking for any sign of Laughing Boy.

Julia had never been so frightened in her life. Even when the chimera had jumped in the cab with her, she’d been too shocked to be scared like this.

“Wait,” she said, as the clerk started bagging up her purchases. “I’m going to wear these out.”

“You got it,” the clerk said.

Julia pulled on the cap first. It hid most of her red hair. The hood of the sweatshirt covered the rest and zipped up easily over her black sweater. The jeans she was wearing were common enough they shouldn’t make a difference. When she was finished putting on her new purchases, she looked in the mirror and barely recognized herself.

“Wow,” the clerk said, and clicked her tongue. “You look like a genuine hoodrat.” She laughed. “When you came in here, I made you out for some kind of lawyer or doctor or something. This makes you look ten years younger.”

Julia gave her another smile. “Perfect.”

She stepped out of the store trying her best to keep her head down so the brim of the cap shaded her eyes. She desperately wanted to scan the crowd and look for any sign of Laughing Boy, but Angel had been very clear — if she was going to live through this, she needed to keep a low profile.

There was an exit from the Underground straight ahead. Julia could see sunlight filtering down from the streets above. It wasn’t more than a hundred yards away. She moved in that direction, forcing herself not to run. Forcing herself to act natural. It was so hard not to panic and just make a break for it.

On her left a group of boys whistled at her, but she didn’t look up. On her right was a store that looked like it had been closed for years, judging by the dust that had collected in the display windows. She caught her reflection in the grease-smeared glass and saw that she was fidgeting with her hands. She forced herself to shove them into the pockets of her new hoodie.

Fifty yards to the exit. She let herself walk a little faster.

Twenty yards.

Fifteen.

“Nice try,” Laughing Boy said, stepping out from behind a cart that sold cell-phone accessories.

She squeaked a little in panic and turned around, intending to run back the way she’d come as fast as her legs would carry her. Before she’d taken a step Laughing Boy grabbed her arm. He squeezed hard enough on her bicep to make her squeal again.

“Maybe you think I won’t do anything out here in public,” he told her, his voice little more than a whisper. He giggled every time he stopped for breath, a raspy sound like his constant laughing had dried out his mouth. “So help me God, I will shoot you in front of a hundred witnesses if you try to fight me or run.”

“Just don’t hurt me, please,” she begged.

“Really? Are you that stupid? I have no idea what Chapel sees in you. Come on. Walk at a normal pace. You were doing a pretty good job for a while there. The clothes might have thrown me off if I didn’t watch you buy them.”

“You saw me the whole time?”

“Sweetheart, I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. You’d do well to remember that. Now come on. We’re headed over there.” He pointed her toward the closed-up store. “I’ve got a nice little place in the back all ready for you.”

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

“Exactly what you think. The guy who’s going to kill you.” He chuckled at the thought.

“But the laughing — what’s that about?” she asked.

“It’s a medical condition, and I’ll thank you not to be rude about it,” he told her. “I’d expect better from the likes of you. It’s called hebephrenia.”

“That’s a kind of schizophrenia, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s right, I forgot you were a doctor of some kind. No, this is different. It’s neurological, not psychological. I took a metal fragment in the head a while back, in Iraq. Messed up the wiring. I’ve been laughing ever since and I can’t stop. I have drugs to stop the laughing, but when I take them I can’t drive or shoot straight. And today I need to shoot.”

Julia bit her lip and tried not to scream. “I–Iraq,” she forced herself to say, instead. “So you’re a veteran, like Chapel?”

“Chapel was in the army. I was a civilian consultant. This is the place.”

They had reached the closed store. The teenaged boys lounging across the way watched her as she was marched up to the doors. What would happen if she screamed for them to help? Would Laughing Boy shoot them? Could he shoot them all before they overpowered him?

Or would they just run off as soon as he drew his gun?

“Go on,” Laughing Boy said. “It’s not locked.”

Julia’s body was very close to freezing in fear. She could barely move her arms. “You want me to go in there,” she said, as if clarifying an order.

“Yep,” Laughing Boy said, giggling.

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “I don’t know anything!”

“Chapel didn’t tell you about the virus? Come on. I don’t have all day. I’ve got lots of other people to round up.”

Julia reached out and touched the handle of the door. It opened outward. She pulled it toward her and looked inside to see the interior of the shop, which was dark and stank of mildew. What a horrible place to die.

“Walk inside and turn around to face me. Then put your hands behind your neck and lace your fingers together.” He laughed. “Seriously, I just want to get this over with. I don’t get any thrill from killing people. It’s just my job.” He chuckled again.

She felt like her legs were made of wood. She couldn’t feel her toes.

She did what he said. To the letter.

“Good,” he told her, taking a step inside the store. He let the door swing shut behind him. “Now—”

“Now!” Julia shouted.

The drunk vet who’d been waiting for her inside the store did exactly as she’d told him to. He had a length of iron rebar in his hands, and he swung it at Laughing Boy’s head with all his strength.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:23

Julia wasn’t there when Chapel came back up through the hatch. He panicked for a second and then he called for Angel, hoping she might know where Julia might have gone.

“Hold it together, sugar,” she told him. “Just head to your left. Now, up ahead — see that abandoned store?”

“Just tell me if she’s all right, Angel,” Chapel pleaded.

“Just fine. Door’s open.”

Chapel shoved open the door and pushed through into the store beyond.

He could not have expected what he saw.

Laughing Boy was sprawled out on the floor, his arms above his head and his wrists tied together around a support pillar. He was chuckling softly to himself, though he wasn’t smiling. There was a nasty-looking bruise on the side of his head.

Julia had been hiding behind the pillar. She came out into the open, and Chapel saw she was holding a silenced pistol. It had to be Laughing Boy’s.

Perhaps strangest of all, the drunk guy in the army coat was standing up against one wall, holding a length of rebar like a club.

“You—” Chapel started.

“Name’s Rudy, not that you asked,” the drunk told him. “You did ask about my service record. First Battalion, Third Marines.”

Chapel nodded slowly. “Army Rangers,” he said.

“A grunt, huh? I guess I can forgive you for being an asshole, then. Since it comes with the branch.”

Chapel found himself smiling. “You rescued Julia?” he asked.

“Not exactly.” Rudy nodded at her. “Just came in for the assist, really, right at the end of the whole thing.”

Julia was watching Laughing Boy. She wouldn’t take her eyes off him. “Angel and I worked together on this. Rudy was a big part of it. You were too busy playing James Bond to get involved.”

Chapel’s smile died on his face. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Laughing Boy’s whole body shook with mirth. “Okay? Okay. Yeah, we’re all okay in here. Too bad it can’t last.”

Julia kicked him in the ribs. “It won’t last for you, that’s for sure,” she said.

Chapel put the scene together in his mind. Laughing Boy must have been following them this whole time, waiting for a time when Chapel and Julia weren’t in the same place. He’d moved in when he got his chance, but Julia, working with Angel and Rudy, had somehow lured Laughing Boy in here and gotten the better of him. His first thought was one of immense relief that it had worked out like that — that Julia was still alive.

His second thought was that they were all in deep shit.

“Go ahead, Chapel,” Julia said.

“Go ahead and do what?” Chapel asked.

“Interrogate him! Find out why he’s chasing us.”

“Julia—” he began.

It was Laughing Boy who answered that, though. “He knows that already. It’s because of the virus, of course. Why don’t you ask Captain Jimmy here about that? About the virus?”

Julia’s eyes flicked toward Chapel, but she was smart enough not to lower the gun or look away from Laughing Boy for long. “Chapel?” she said.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” he told her. “I don’t want to say anything in front of him.”

“Then — then ask him about the chimeras. He must know more than we do,” Julia pointed out.

“I’m sure of it. I’m also sure he’s not going to tell us what we need to know.”

“He will if you torture him,” Julia suggested. “I don’t like it, Lord knows I’m not comfortable with any Guantanamo Bay shit. But if anybody ever deserved it—”

“Won’t work,” Laughing Boy said, chuckling.

“He’s right,” Chapel told her.

“You don’t know how to waterboard somebody? They didn’t train you in that?” Julia demanded.

“They taught me all about interrogation techniques,” Chapel confirmed. “And why they’re no good.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Anything you can do to him, he knows some way to resist it. Damn it!”

“No. The problem is, torture works too well. Ten minutes in he’d tell us everything we wanted to hear. He’d tell us anything at all, to make us stop. He’d tell us ten different stories. One of them might even be true, but we’d have no way to know which one. There’s also the fact that it’s illegal.”

“I don’t care! This isn’t just about your case, Chapel. This man is a murderer. He needs to pay!”

She was right — there was no question about that. She was also fooling herself. Chapel wondered if there had ever been a time in human history when the people who needed to pay actually ended up doing it. The sad fact was that men like Laughing Boy were above the law.

Chapel wasn’t in the business of righting wrongs. He was in the business of protecting people. Right then, that meant getting Julia away from that place.

“Just put the gun down,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Somebody might have seen you and him coming in here. They might have called the cops. If they come and find us like this—”

“No! No way! We are not going to just let him go!”

“We’ll leave him here, like this. He can explain to the cops how he wound up in this position. He won’t name us — he doesn’t dare.”

“This asshole kills people! He killed Portia, my receptionist! And who knows how many other people?”

Chapel walked over toward her and held out his hand so she could give him the silenced pistol. She didn’t move an inch.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Just give me the gun.”

“No,” she told him, and he saw in her eyes that she didn’t trust him. No more than she trusted Laughing Boy. “No. I don’t think so.”

“How does this end?” he asked her.

“You know what he’s capable of. He’s worse than the chimeras!”

“Tell me how it ends,” he asked her, quietly.

On the ground Laughing Boy started to guffaw.

“Does it end with you shooting him in the head? I don’t think it does. You’re not a killer, Julia.” He held out his hand again. “You’re better than him.”

“You could kill him,” Julia pointed out. “You have a gun, too.”

Laughing Boy crowed at the thought. “He doesn’t have the balls!”

Chapel shook his head. “I guess that’s the difference between you and me. You seem to think it’s an act of courage to shoot a defenseless man tied up on the ground. I don’t.”

“Nah,” Laughing Boy said. “Nah. The difference is that you’re one of those military types who takes the whole defense thing too seriously. The difference between you and me is that you think your job is to protect America.”

“That is my job,” Chapel said. “What’s yours?”

“I’m here to make sure America wins. No matter what it takes.”

“Shut up!” Julia shouted at him. “Shut up and stop laughing!”

Laughing Boy chuckled to himself.

Julia lifted the pistol and sighted down its barrel.

“Julia, if we kill him, it won’t even matter,” Chapel told her. “They’ll just send somebody else. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from this.”

“We have to do something,” she said.

“And we will. But not now. We’re done here,” Chapel said. “Julia, give me the—”

Julia squeezed the trigger of the pistol.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:29

She jumped as it went off, perhaps not expecting it to make so much noise. Silencers could cut down the decibels of a gunshot but only so much — the pistol still roared like a lion when it fired.

Blood spurted out of Laughing Boy’s shoe. She’d shot him in the foot.

“Jesus fuck!” Laughing Boy shouted, and his leg flopped around like a landed fish. For a second nobody moved. Finally Chapel recovered and moved closer to Julia.

She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“That,” Chapel said slowly, “will definitely slow him down.”

“I was aiming for his head,” she told him.

Chapel had no idea what to make of that.

He took the pistol from Julia — she didn’t fight him this time — and wiped the grip with the tail of his shirt. When he was sure it was clean, he slid it into the darkness at the back of the abandoned store. “Now we really have to go. Rudy — you too.”

The ex-marine nodded. He didn’t look particularly shocked by what he’d seen. Less so than Julia, for sure. He went to the door and held it open for Julia, who marched out with her head down. She looked like she was near tears.

Chapel took one last look at Laughing Boy. He was still bleeding, though not too badly. His face was screwed up with pain, but he was still chuckling.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” the CIA man said. “You don’t even need to torture me. She’s going nowhere. She might have the bug.”

“She might not,” Chapel said, and he turned to go.

“Maybe,” Laughing Boy said. “Maybe you’ve got it, too.”

Chapel’s blood froze.

He’d considered that before, of course. Anyone who came into contact with the chimeras was at risk of contracting the virus. And he had been in very close contact with the one in New York.

He hadn’t let himself think about it consciously, not before that. He’d put it away in the box of things he had to worry about later.

It would have to stay there, for now. He closed the door behind him and faced Rudy and Julia. Nodding, he led them deeper into the mall. There was no sign anyone had heard the gunshot or wanted to investigate it if they did. When he was sure they were in the clear, Chapel turned to Rudy and offered his hand.

“I’d rather have a kiss from her,” the vet said.

Julia had been lost in her own thoughts. She came to long enough to look him in the face. “How about a hundred dollars?” she asked.

“That works, too,” Rudy told her.

She handed over the money and then turned away, clearly not wanting to look at either of them for a while.

“Maybe we can do better than that,” Chapel said. “Rudy — I misjudged you, and I’m sorry. I thought you were just a drunk.”

“Probably because I told you I was, when we first met,” Rudy said. He had a sunny smile on his face. The hundred-dollar bill was already tucked away in one of his pockets. “I got no illusions. I’m an alcoholic, through and through.”

“You ever thought about changing that?” Chapel asked.

“Sometimes,” Rudy admitted. “The tough part’s getting started, though.”

Chapel nodded. He didn’t have time to help Rudy get to an AA meeting or a rehab facility. But he knew somebody who might. “I’ve got a friend. You’d like him — he’s a jarhead like you. Dumb as a box of rocks, but he’s got the heart of a bear.” He reached into his pocket and took out a scrap of paper and a pen. He wrote down Top’s name and phone number and handed it to the ex-marine. “Tell him a one-armed grunt gave you his name.”

Rudy stared at the slip of paper.

“No obligations,” Chapel said. “Just — if you want to talk to someone. Someone who gets it. Top’s your man.”

Rudy nodded and took the number. “Thank you kindly. But who’s this one-armed fellow I’m supposed to know?”

Chapel smiled. “Just say what I told you, and he’ll know who it is. Now, listen. I hate to be rude. Again. But—”

“But it’s best for all of us if I just walk away now and pretend I never saw you. That’s one thing us marines can actually figure out. When to keep our damned mouths shut,” Rudy agreed. He gave Chapel a mock salute, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Chapel sighed in relief. That could have gone much worse. He reached for Julia’s arm, but she pulled away from him. He could only imagine what she was going through. She’d probably never fired a pistol before. She’d certainly never tried to kill anybody before.

“Just talk to me,” he said. “Just tell me—”

“No,” she said, turning to face him. She drew herself up to her full height. Visibly composed herself. “You tell me. Tell me about this virus.”

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+28:44

Back at the motel he told her everything.

He had struggled with it in the cab ride back. He was duty bound not to reveal any of the limited information he had about the chimeras.

But she had a right to know.

He took the hands-free unit from his ear and buried it inside his jacket, along with his phone. Then he turned on the cold water tap in the bathroom. He didn’t want Angel to hear him talking about this. Not if he was going to be blunt about it. “The chimeras I’m chasing are escapees from a facility in the Catskills,” he told Julia, when he was sure he’d taken enough precautions. “They were held there a long time. Maybe all their lives. They were locked up not just because they’re so obviously dangerous, but because they are carriers for some kind of virus.”

“Like Typhoid Mary,” Julia suggested.

“Who?” Chapel asked.

Julia shook her head in disbelief. “You’ve never heard of her? She was a woman who lived in New York a hundred years ago. She was a carrier for typhoid fever — she never actually got the disease herself, but she worked as a cook for a number of families and everywhere she worked she ended up giving the disease to whoever ate her food. She refused to believe that she had the disease, since she didn’t show any symptoms.”

“What happened to her?” Chapel asked.

“Eventually she had to be quarantined. She spent the rest of her life — thirty years — on an island in the East River, all alone.”

Thirty years, Chapel thought. If Julia was locked up somewhere like that, she might live another fifty years. How long would the chimeras have lived if nobody let them out of their cage?

“This virus the chimeras are carrying—” Julia began.

“It’s why I’m so desperate to catch them. It’s why this is so important that some people are willing to kill over it.”

“Yes. I grasped that part already,” Julia said. She sat up very straight on the end of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. “Is it airborne?”

“No. It can only be passed on through exchange of body fluids.”

“That’s not as comforting as it sounds,” she said, and the look on her face must have been the one while explaining to her clients how distemper or kennel cough worked. “Diseases vary in how difficult they are to pass on — HIV, for instance, is actually very difficult to transmit, that’s why it mostly spreads through sex and blood transfusions. Other bloodborne illnesses are much more robust. For some of them a chimera could sneeze on someone, or spit on them, and transmit it. What disease are we talking about? Some kind of flu? A retrovirus? Ebola?”

“I don’t know. It’s classified.”

Julia frowned. “Classified. They didn’t even tell you that much?”

“Just that it’s hard to detect, and that there is no cure or vaccine.”

“Fuck,” Julia said.

“But you don’t have it,” Chapel told her.

“I don’t? How do you know that? You haven’t taken any blood or tissue samples that I’m aware of. Maybe while I was sleeping, but I imagine I would have noticed that.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you without your knowledge.”

She sighed. “Then how can you possibly know I’m not infected, Chapel?”

“I just do. Your contact with the chimera was minimal. He didn’t bite or scratch you when you were in that cab, and—”

“He manhandled me. Something could have happened. Why did you keep this from me? I thought Laughing Boy was just a homicidal lunatic. There seemed to be a lot of that going around! I had no idea this was a public health issue. Chapel — what if I kissed Rudy, like he wanted? I could have given it to him. Shit — I did kiss you, and more.”

“I had contact with the chimera as well. And I know I don’t have it,” Chapel told her.

“Good God, Chapel! Either of us could have given it to the other. Oh, God — why didn’t I wait at least until we had some condoms? I was so caught up in the moment. I didn’t even think about STDs, much less this! Chapel, what if I had it, and you didn’t, but I gave it to you this morning? Huh? What if it was the other way around? What if you gave it to me when you made love to me?”

Chapel’s mouth fell open. That was — that was a horrible thought. That was beyond thinking about. “But we don’t have it,” he insisted.

“How can you know that for sure?”

“Because I would feel it. I would know somehow!”

She stared at him. “You do know I have some medical training, right? I mean, I’ve patched you up a couple of times now. They call me Doctor Taggart. I went to school for this. I know exactly how easy these things spread. I’m going to go out on a limb here. The chimeras didn’t just pick this up naturally, did they?”

“No. The virus is human engineered,” Chapel confirmed.

“You mean weaponized,” she said.

The word hung in the air like the first drops of rain before a hurricane hits.

“I don’t know,” Chapel said. “It’s—”

“Classified. Which might as well be a yes.” Julia got up and walked into the bathroom. She started washing her hands vigorously. It looked like a reflexive action, something she’d learned to do whenever people started talking about viruses around her.

He had forgotten she was a doctor. He’d forgotten she probably knew a lot more about viruses than he did. He should have been honest with her.

When she came back to the door of the bathroom and looked out at him, her eyes were haunted. “I need to be quarantined,” she said.

“No,” Chapel told her. “No, we can’t—”

“You do, as well. Anybody who’s had contact with a chimera.”

“No! That was what Laughing Boy was after. I refuse to accept his actions were appropriate,” Chapel demanded.

“Call up Angel. Call her right now. Tell her we’re volunteering to go into quarantine. We shouldn’t be out in public.”

Her legs quaked visibly beneath her. She dropped to the floor, her hands rushing up to cover her face.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Chapel, we could be dying right now, and not know it. That fucking chimera might have killed me just by breathing in my face. We could already be dead. What the hell have you done to my life?”

Chapel might have said something, but just then his phone began to ring. He dug it out of his jacket and stared at it. The number on the screen read (000) 000-0000.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+28:55

Chapel set the phone down on the bed. It continued to ring.

“Just answer it,” Julia told him.

Without a word he touched the screen to answer the call. He placed the phone against his ear.

“Chapel,” Angel told him, “please put me on speaker. You both need to hear what I’m going to say.”

Chapel did as he was told. He set the phone down on the comforter on top of the bed. He sat down in a chair and tried not to look at Julia.

“Doctor Taggart,” Angel said, “I know what you just heard must come as quite a shock.”

“You… heard all that?” Chapel asked.

“Give me some credit, Chapel. I’m a spy. I eavesdrop for a living. You muffled one of my microphones, but you forgot there’s a normal wired telephone in the room.”

Chapel looked over at the bedside table and saw it, an old beige model with a big red light that lit up if you had messages. It was such an antique piece of technology now that he hadn’t even registered it. That had been a dumb mistake. Chapel knew about infinity mikes, bugs that allowed any telephone to be used as a listening device — even if the handset was resting on its cradle. He should have thought of that.

“Doctor Taggart,” Angel said, “you’ve already shown your strength. So I won’t lie to you now. Chapel’s correct. You may have the virus. You may be infected already, or you could be a carrier. If you are, then you may need to be quarantined. And most likely that quarantine will be lifelong, or at least as long as it takes us to come up with some cure for the virus.”

Julia wasn’t looking at the phone. She had wrapped her arms around her knees and was gently rocking back and forth.

“I can give you a little comfort, though,” Angel went on. “Information on the virus is strictly need to know. But if anybody needs to know, it’s you. The virus is about as fragile as the HIV virus. Once you have it, there’s no way for your immune system to conquer it. But it is difficult to get from casual contact. When you were with the chimera, did he bite or scratch you? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

“No,” Julia said, rubbing at her nose with the palm of her hand. “He grabbed my wrists and held me down. He screamed in my face. He may have abraded my skin, and he may have gotten some saliva on me.”

Angel sighed in relief. “That’s good. That’s pretty low on the risk scale. We can’t totally rule out an infection, but… your chances are good. I promise.”

“Yeah?” Julia said, looking up.

“Beyond that, the virus has a pretty long incubation period. Several months, in fact. And you’re not contagious, even if you do have it. You won’t be for a long time.”

“Okay,” Julia said, letting out a deep breath.

“Director Hollingshead feels the best place for you now is with Chapel. He can make sure you stay safe. We don’t want you to come in just yet. At the moment, we can’t even detect the virus if it’s in your system. When that changes, we’ll make sure you’re tested — so you’ll know. You’ll know for sure. Only then do we need to start talking about what to do next.”

“Thank you,” Julia said.

“We will take care of you. No matter what, we’ll make sure of that.”

“I appreciate it,” Julia said. A teardrop fell from her left eye.

“It’s the very least we can do. Now, I’m going to have to talk to Chapel in private for a while. And I imagine you could use some time to be alone with your thoughts, after everything you’ve learned.”

“That would be nice,” Julia confirmed.

“Chapel, please put in your earpiece. Maybe you could go outside and let Julia be alone while we talk.”

“I don’t want to let her out of my sight, not after the last time, when Laughing Boy—”

“Laughing Boy is in a hospital about twenty miles from you, waiting to see if he’s going to keep his toes,” Angel said. “By the way, Doctor Taggart — nice shooting.”

Julia laughed, though there were tears in her eyes. “You know I was trying to kill him, don’t you?”

“He deserved nothing less. I’m just glad you made him pay. Now. Chapel?”

“Okay, okay,” Chapel said, and grabbed the phone and the hands-free unit. “You going to be okay?” he asked Julia.

She glared at him.

Crap. It looked like Angel had relieved a little of her fear — but just enough to let her get angry at him again.

Maybe stepping outside for a while was an excellent idea.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+29:02

A long balcony ran outside the motel room, allowing access to all the rooms on that floor. Chapel felt exposed walking up and down, past all the curtains of the other rooms, but there was nothing for it. “Was all that true, what you told her?” he asked.

“Absolutely. I imagine it’s going to be some comfort to you, too, sweetie,” Angel said. There was a distinct note of sadness in her voice. “After all, you had a lot more physical contact with the chimera than she did.”

“And there are three more of them out there,” Chapel said. “I’m going to probably have contact with them as well.”

“You’d be in your rights to be concerned about that,” Angel told him.

“I know what my job is. I didn’t join the army because I thought it was going to be safe.”

“I’m sure Director Hollingshead will be glad to hear that.”

Chapel didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he might spend the rest of his life locked up in a camp in the Catskills. “We need to get back to work,” he said. That was the best way to take his mind off it, he knew.

He filled her in briefly on what Funt had told him. About CIA hit squads and Laughing Boy — and that Funt definitely knew something about the chimeras. He even knew the name of the one coming for him.

“I guess that explains why he’s on the kill list,” Angel pointed out.

“Absolutely. Christina Smollett is still a mystery, but it’s starting to look like this is definitely a CIA hit list. I want to take a look at the rest of the names. My feeling is that William Taggart and Franklin Hayes are the next two targets after Funt. But maybe I’m wrong. Who else do we have?”

Angel tapped away at her keyboard for a while.

“Marcia Kennedy and Olivia Nguyen,” Angel said. “Kennedy is in Vancouver and Nguyen lives in Seattle.”

Chapel nodded to himself. They would both be safe for the moment — it would take longer for the chimeras to get to either of those cities than it would take them to get to Denver. “What do they do for a living?” Chapel asked.

“Huh. Kennedy works at a flower shop. She’s filed some tax forms, but not regularly — only for about ten years in the last twenty. She’s a Canadian citizen, but she wasn’t born there. Looks like her parents moved to Canada in the nineties and she went with them. She was naturalized in 1998, the same year as her parents.”

“So it’s a close family — do they live together?”

“No… but,” Angel said, and clucked her tongue for a second as if she was thinking, “the parents have a house in the suburbs. She lives a little closer in to the downtown area in a studio apartment. Okay, here. The lease is cosigned by her father, Arthur Kennedy. Looks like she was the one who signed the lease in the first place, but the building owners sued her for failure to pay her rent in 2002. After that the father cosigned, and it looks like the rent’s been paid faithfully ever since.”

“She probably doesn’t make much money working in a flower shop,” Chapel pointed out.

“True… wow. Cool. I’ve got to remember how to do this.”

“You found something?”

“Her résumé is online, with one of those services that helps you get interviews. Interesting. She’s worked on and off at the flower shop, on for eight or ten months, off for four or six months. Just about every year she seems to quit, and then comes back and gets rehired a while later.”

“That sounds promising. Maybe the job at the flower shop is just a cover, and she takes off long stretches every year to do undercover work for the CIA.”

“Watching Canada to make sure those rascally northerners don’t try anything?” Angel asked, with a laugh.

“I’m looking for connections here,” Chapel said. “I admit that’s a stretch.”

“Let me take a look at something. Her medical records should be online and easy to get since Canada has nationalized health coverage. Oh.”

“What did you find?”

Angel clucked her tongue again. “Let me just check what this does… okay. Sure. She’s on carbamazepine. That explains a lot.”

“What is it?” Chapel asked.

“Carbamazepine is an anticonvulsant,” Angel said, “which would suggest epilepsy, but it’s also used in the treatment of severe bipolar disorder. Which fits her information pretty well. She can function for most of the year but every so often she probably gets a period of intense depression where she can’t get out of bed, so that’s why she works sporadically and why she had trouble paying her rent.”

Chapel leaned on the balcony railing and closed his eyes. “You’re saying she’s mentally ill. Just like Christina Smollett.”

“Her disease probably isn’t as profound, but, yeah,” Angel told him.

What could it mean? Why on earth would the chimeras be targeting mentally ill women? It was the one fact of the case that he couldn’t comprehend at all. Christina Smollett and Marcia Kennedy couldn’t possibly have done any meaningful work for the CIA, or the DoD, or any other governmental agency. They would never have passed the necessary background checks to get clearance. They didn’t have backgrounds in genetics research, either. They even lived on opposite sides of the continent… it just didn’t add up.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. You’ve already told me there are no red herrings on this list. No false leads. But this is looking just plain weird. I hate to ask, but — Olivia Nguyen. Is there anything there?”

Angel worked her magic for a while in silence. When she came back on the line, she sounded almost afraid to tell him what she’d found.

“Her address is listed as 2600 Southwest Holden Street, in Seattle.”

“It’s a hospital, isn’t it?”

“A psychiatric hospital, yes. She’s been a patient there since 1981.”

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+34:48

Chapel and Julia waddled forward in line with the tourists and sightseers headed to the top of Stone Mountain. Chapel had traded his button-down shirt for a polo that let him fit in a little better. Even this early in the year, most of the people in line for the Skyride were wearing T-shirts and shorts, though most of the women carried windbreakers or sweaters. It was supposed to be cooler up top.

“You still giving me the silent treatment?” Chapel asked.

“Huh,” Julia said, not looking up. She read aloud from a brochure she’d picked up while Chapel bought their tickets for the cable car. “I didn’t know. This was the first project for Gutzon Borglum. He didn’t finish it, though.”

Apparently she was talking to him, now. She just wouldn’t look at him.

He didn’t suppose he blamed her. He’d made a fair share of mistakes with her. He should have told her about the virus. He should have found some way to protect her without bringing her here, without nearly getting her blown up. He should have killed Laughing Boy when he had the chance so she would be safe now.

That was a lot of should haves. It was going to take a while before things thawed out between them, he thought.

“Who’s Gutzon Borglum?” Chapel asked, shuffling forward. The line was taking forever. He’d wanted to be on top of the mountain at least an hour before his scheduled meeting with Funt, but it looked like they would have to wait for the next car.

“The man who carved Mount Rushmore,” Julia told him. “The monument at Stone Mountain was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy,” she read, “in 1916. It took nearly fifty years to complete.”

Chapel leaned to one side to take a look at the mountain. He’d had other things on his mind and hadn’t really bothered to check out the sculpture.

“It’s the largest bas-relief in the world,” Julia read.

Chapel could believe it.

Stone Mountain lived up to its name. It looked like a single piece of enormous rock towering over the nearby landscape, a dome of gray granite almost denuded of trees. From where Chapel stood it rose over him like a sheer wall. Carved into that massive rock face was a portrait of the South’s three greatest heroes: Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. From a distance the carvings hadn’t looked like much, but from the base of the mountain they were colossal and incredibly detailed. It looked like the three giants on horseback were going to leap out of the stone at any moment and go racing across the country, capes flapping in the wind, the heads of the horses rearing, as the three men rode to glory.

Angel snorted in his ear. “What the brochure doesn’t tell you is that this is where the modern Ku Klux Klan was officially organized, and where they had their big rallies until the eighties.”

“During the Olympics,” Julia read, “Stone Mountain facilities were used for the archery, tennis, and track cycling events.” She folded the brochure and put it in her purse. “Are we going to have to wait for the next car?” she asked, and a moment later they watched the Skyride lift away from the ground, headed upward across the carving toward the very top.

“Looks like it,” Chapel said.

“Chapel,” Angel said in his ear, “I know what I said last time, about your being a jerk when you left Julia behind. But I also know you made the right choice, no matter how angry she is with you now. You should leave Julia down here. Just try to say it in a nicer way this time.”

“Not a chance,” he told her. Julia looked at him for a second as if she thought he was talking to her. Chapel tapped the hands-free unit in his ear and Julia rolled her eyes and turned away.

“Listen, sugar,” Angel said, “if Funt is up there and you start asking him questions with Julia around, she’s going to hear everything. That’s not a good thing. Secrets don’t work if everybody knows them.”

“The last time I spoke with him I left her behind. Look how that turned out,” Chapel said. “No, I can’t let her out of my sight anymore.”

“Director Hollingshead doesn’t want her hearing any of this,” Angel pointed out. “You know that, Chapel.”

Chapel sighed. He knew it perfectly well. He knew he was exceeding the limits of need to know. He was, frankly, taking a running leap and jumping as far as he could humanly get past those limits.

He glanced at Julia. She was part of this. She had a right to know. And maybe that exceeded the right of Hollingshead and Angel and the entire government to keep things from her.

He couldn’t very well say that, of course. He was a silent warrior. The kind of man who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut.

Or at least, he’d thought that was who he was.

“She’s coming with me,” he told Angel.

The operator was silent for a long time. “You’ve been given a lot of latitude on how you work this case,” she said, finally. “That latitude can be taken away. If Director Hollingshead needs to rein you in, he will.”

“Is that a threat, Angel?”

“It’s a friendly warning!” she said, sounding exasperated. “I want you to succeed, sweetie. I want you to win this thing. Why are you fighting me?”

Chapel wasn’t entirely certain himself. But he’d begun to suspect something. He’d known for a while that Angel — and Hollingshead — had their own agenda in this. That capturing or killing the chimeras was only part of what they wanted to accomplish.

Maybe it was time he had his own agenda. Maybe it was time to start thinking about what he wanted to get out of this. He looked at Julia again. This time she looked back, a question on her face.

He still didn’t know what he wanted to happen. He didn’t know how this could end well for anyone. But he was going to make sure Julia came out of this alive. That was a start. Alive, and, if he had anything to say about it, free.

If that fit into Hollingshead’s secret plan, so be it. If not — Chapel would have to start making up his own rules for this game.

He had more important things to worry about just then, though. The time for his meeting with Funt was drawing near. He hadn’t counted on having to wait in line to get to the top of the mountain.

“We’re going to cut it pretty close,” Chapel said, staring at his watch.

The line moved forward again as the next car opened its doors. The tourists, and Chapel and Julia, filed in, filling all the available space. The operator of the Skyride announced that this was the last car of the evening, and that the mountaintop would be closing down in just thirty minutes. The tourists grumbled and booed but good-naturedly, disappointed that they weren’t going to have much time at the top.

In compensation, though, they got to see the carving come alive with the sunset.

Red light washed over the face of Stone Mountain, filling in every crack and crevice of the massive bas-relief. The mountain itself seemed to glow like a titanic jewel, a rich luster that only brightened even as the sun faded.

“That’s kind of beautiful,” Julia said, leaning against the side of the car, pressing her face close to the glass of its windows. Behind her the tourists oohed and aahed, but Chapel only had eyes for her, this woman he’d dragged out of New York City and taken with him on this mad trip.

“It’s exactly the same color as your hair,” he observed.

She turned and faced him, her mouth curled up in a look of bewilderment. “I’m trying to give you the cold shoulder,” she said. “You shouldn’t say things like that to me right now. It was way too close to being sweet.”

“Couldn’t help it,” he told her.

She shook her head and turned to look at the mountain again. “I know you were just trying to protect me. But not telling me about the… about you know what. That wasn’t protecting me. That was hurting me.”

“It was?” Chapel asked.

“You took away my right to make decisions for myself. That’s what I hate about secrets. If I don’t know things, I can’t do anything about them.”

“It’s important that some secrets be kept,” he said. Because it was what he believed.

“I suppose so. And I suppose that’s your job.” She sighed. “Chapel, how can I ever trust somebody when I know they lie to me professionally? This is just weird.”

“I can tell you one true thing,” he said. “When I came out of that hatch in the Underground, and you weren’t there, my heart almost stopped. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I was terrified you were gone. That I’d lost you.”

“As it turned out, I didn’t need your protection,” she told him, though her voice was softer than the words would suggest. “Thanks. I guess.”

“When this is over,” he said, “maybe—”

“When this is over, I’m going back to New York. I’m going to live my life the way I choose to. Openly. Honestly. Or — or I’ll go… where they tell me. The Catskills. Wherever.” She shook her head, and her hair swung around in front of the red-stained mountain. He wanted to reach out and put his hands on her shoulders but he didn’t dare.

“That’s what you want,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Just — we part ways, then. And I never see you again.”

“Just… stop, Chapel. Don’t go there.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. Listen, I can’t give you the silent treatment. We’re stuck in this thing together, and if I don’t talk to somebody, I’m going to go crazy. So we’ll work together from now. Be civil to each other. But that’s it. Let’s just keep this relationship professional, okay?” She was silent for the rest of the ride to the top.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:31

The top of Stone Mountain looked like a patch of the moon transported to earth.

Nothing grew up there save a few scraggly bushes and some lichens. It was bare rock, smoothed out by the wind but broken into ridges and basins where a little rainwater could gather and support the sparse plant life. By that point the sunset was over, though a yellow smudge of light still lingered on the far horizon. The rock was lit blue with deep purple shadows that were fading to black.

There wasn’t much to see up top. Just a visitors’ center where the Skyride ended, a few radio antennas topped with blinking bulbs to warn off low-flying aircraft — and the view. In the distance Chapel saw the lights of Atlanta scattered among the darkening greenery of Georgia.

A few of the braver tourists walked out onto the naked rock, perhaps in search of better views of the sunset or the scenery. Park rangers stood around with their hands in their pockets, giving everyone a little time before they had to head back down. There was no sign of Jeremy Funt.

“He must be here by now,” Chapel said. “This is right when he told me to meet him. Maybe he’s hiding inside.”

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Julia said, rubbing at her arms.

It was cold up top, much cooler than it had been when they boarded the cable car. She took out the pink sweatshirt she’d bought in the Underground and pulled it on, zipping it up to her throat. “This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever owned,” she said, “but right now, it’s my favorite.”

Chapel wanted to take off his jacket and give it to her, but he couldn’t. If he did, everyone would see his holstered sidearm, and the park rangers would definitely have questions. If he was going to make this meeting with Funt, he had to stay inconspicuous.

“Let’s walk over to the far side,” Chapel said, pointing at a fence on the other side of the mountaintop.

“There’s nobody over there,” Julia told him.

“I want to make myself as visible as possible so he can find me,” Chapel replied. He didn’t like this. He’d expected Funt to meet him as soon as he stepped out of the cable car. He’d expected the man to want to talk to him.

Maybe that had been too much to hope for.

“Chapel,” Angel said, “I’ve got bad news. Maybe.”

“Go ahead,” he told her.

“I’ve been listening to the chatter on the park service radio channel. They’re all checking in, confirming everybody’s off the mountain and they can close up shop for the night. Except one ranger hasn’t called in yet. They keep requesting he confirm his position, but he’s not responding.”

“Could be anything. Maybe his radio’s battery just died. Or he could have ducked out for a smoke break.”

“Maybe,” Angel said. “Considering how things have gone since we started with this case, you think that’s likely?”

“No,” Chapel agreed. He bit his lip. “Damn. If the CIA knows we’re up here—” he began, but he was interrupted.

“Chapel,” Julia said in a forced whisper, “behind you!”

Chapel swung around just in time for someone to poke a gun barrel in his ribs.

He froze in place.

The gunman wore the uniform of a park ranger, including the Smokey Bear hat. He was grinning maniacally.

“Hi,” Jeremy Funt said.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:36

“Nice to see you again,” Chapel said. He kept his hands at his sides. Funt hadn’t told him to put them up, and he didn’t want the paranoid ex-FBI agent to think he was reaching for a weapon.

“Give me a second here. Look behind you — there, you see?”

From the visitors’ center a park ranger — presumably a real park ranger — made a series of hand gestures, rolling her hands around each other, tapping her watch. Clearly she was suggesting it was time for everybody to head back down. She looked over in the direction where Funt and Chapel were standing. Funt waved his free hand at her, then held up his fingers splayed out as if to suggest he needed five more minutes.

The female park ranger shrugged and headed inside the center.

“In a second we’ll have this place all to ourselves,” Funt told Chapel.

“You know her? You set this up?”

“Nope. I was up here about a month ago, scouting out new locations for booby traps. I watched the rangers and studied their routine. Half of them are hard-core pot smokers. They invite their friends up here after hours and they get high while the laser show plays on the side of the mountain. The supervisors don’t interfere as long as they don’t draw too much attention.”

The tourists were all herded back into the visitors’ center and into the Skyride cable car to head back down to the park below. All the park rangers went with them, including one who turned out most of the lights in the visitors’ center before he boarded the cable car. Eventually it departed.

“Okay, just us, now,” Funt said. “Why don’t you take two steps back, very carefully — the ground here is none too level. And then you can tell me who the hell Red here is, and why you brought her.”

“She’s someone I’m protecting,” Chapel said, nodding in Julia’s direction.

“I’m Julia Taggart. I don’t work for the government.”

Funt didn’t look away from Chapel’s face. “Who do you work for, then?”

“Cats and dogs,” Julia said. She sounded perfectly calm.

Well, Chapel supposed that was easier when you didn’t have a gun pointed at your large intestine.

“She’s a veterinarian. A chimera tried to kill her in New York,” Chapel said.

Funt nodded. “I’ll buy it. For now. I did some checking up on you, Chapel. I still have a few friends left in interesting places. You’re definitely not CIA.” Funt stopped as if he’d just thought of something. “Wait a minute. Taggart?”

“William Taggart is her father. You know William Taggart?”

Funt shrugged. “I met him, a long time ago. Mad scientist type. Liked to clone up perversions of nature in his spare time. Made the chimeras.”

“ ‘Made’ them. I guess that’s not a bad way to put it. What are they, specifically?”

“You don’t know?” Funt asked.

“I only know what I’ve seen. I got no briefing at all, just a warning they were tough. The one in New York was definitely that. He also had funny eyelids. I know what the word ‘chimera’ means, too. An organism with DNA from two or more sources. Which is more than they’re supposed to have.”

Funt nodded. “Okay. I’m going to trust you, just a little bit. I can’t hold this gun on you all night, after all. So I’m going to put it away. But first, you’re going to give me yours. Then I’ll tell you what I know, and then we can discuss getting me out of Atlanta. That’s the deal. You okay with it?”

“I’d rather hold on to my weapon.”

Funt smiled. “I’d rather be married to Phoebe Cates. I’d rather be in Philadelphia right now, eating a cheesesteak. The last fifteen years, I’ve had to deal with how things are, not how I’d rather they were.”

“Fair enough,” Chapel said. Very, very slowly he reached into his jacket and removed his weapon. He handed it to Funt by the grip.

“Good,” Funt said, shoving it in one of his pockets. He lowered his own pistol, but he kept it in his hand. “Now we can talk.”

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:39

“I have a lot of questions,” Chapel said. “Starting with what they are. I want to know about the one you called Malcolm, and what your relationship with him is. I want to know when you first encountered them and—”

Funt held up his hands for peace. “Stop. I’ll tell you my whole story. That should answer most of your questions. But first I need something from you. I want your promise that when we’re done here, we’ll go straight to the nearest airport. You’ll make sure I get a plane ride to anywhere I want to go.”

“Done,” Chapel said.

“That easy, huh?”

“I’ve got carte blanche to deal with the chimeras,” Chapel told him. “My boss — at the DIA — just wants to make sure they don’t kill anyone else.”

“Oh, I’m certain that’s not all he wants.” Funt rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If you get me away from Malcolm, that’s all I care about. Okay. Let me think about where to start with this.”

“The beginning’s always a good place,” Julia said.

Chapel looked across at her. She was standing close enough the three of them might as well be whispering. Clearly she intended to listen in on this. Chapel knew that Hollingshead probably didn’t want her to hear it, but he figured this time he wouldn’t try to stop her. He was in enough hot water as it was. If Funt started revealing state secrets, that would be another thing, of course.

But as far as Chapel was concerned, the chimeras were fair game.

“It started in 1996. I worked for the bureau back then.” Funt looked at Julia. “That’s the FBI.” She just nodded, so he went on. “I wasn’t exactly famous; I mean, it’s not like I was a household name. But I had cracked some missing persons cases, found some kids who’d been abducted by religious cults or their parents or whatever and I had a reputation as the kind of guy who could find anybody. One day my AD — that’s assistant director — calls me into his office and tells me to sign out for the day, then take a train to Virginia and meet with some guy in Langley. It was all very hush-hush and I wasn’t supposed to let anybody know where I was going.

“The guy in question was CIA, which wasn’t exactly a surprise — somebody says ‘Langley,’ that’s what you think. His name was Banks. Asshole. Giant asshole.”

Chapel fought back a grin.

“Tells me,” Funt went on, “that he’s got a missing person he needs found. A kid, about ten years old, named Malcolm. He’s been missing for over a week. I always hated hearing something like that. With abducted kids, unless it’s a parent who took them, if they’ve been gone more than forty-eight hours you think to yourself, I’m not looking for a kid. I’m looking for a body. That’s how you approach the case — otherwise you go insane when you do find the body. Banks assured me this kid was still alive, though he wouldn’t say how he knew that. And he told me it definitely wasn’t his parents who took him. Then he asked for my security clearance. He already knew it by heart, but I gave him what he wanted. He said I was going to see some things nobody was ever supposed to know about. At the time I didn’t realize that meant I wasn’t supposed to know them either, and I was going on his hit list.”

Chapel interrupted. “Why did he bring you in on this in the first place? The CIA couldn’t find the kid on their own?”

“This was the mid-nineties. There wasn’t even an Internet to speak of back then,” Funt pointed out, “much less the kind of satellites we have now. Back then when you needed somebody found, you went to the FBI. I was simply the best man for the job.

“The CIA flew me up to some place in New York State, I never did find out exactly where. They introduced me to William Taggart — your father who, forgive me, miss, was an asshole as well, though not as big an asshole as Banks.”

“I’m not exactly offended,” Julia said.

Funt nodded in thanks. “He treated me like I was a kid. You could tell when he talked he was translating in his head, from big multisyllabic science words down to the kind of slangy English somebody like me might understand. He said the kid I was looking for was named Malcolm, and he was very, very special.

“They showed me some of the chimeras. Had them come out and speak to me, say, hello, Mr. Detective, isn’t the weather nice today. Then one of them took off his shirt. There were a bunch of cinder blocks set up in the room. This kid — his name was Ian, I remember — goes over to them and breaks them, one at a time, by punching them. When he’s done, he’s breathing a little heavy and his eyes go weird. You know what I mean. An extra black eyelid slides down over his eyes and blinks at me a couple of times.

“When I stopped wanting to scream for my mother, I said, thanks, that was very impressive, but what in God’s name did I just see? Dr. Taggart explained they were called chimeras, and they’re the next step in human evolution. Ninety-nine percent human, he said, just like you and me. The other one percent was cobbled together from DNA sequences he stole from chimpanzees and rattlesnakes and something called a water bear, which I’d never heard of. They were survivors, he said. They could live through anything, they could survive gunshot wounds, blood loss, hypothermia. They were faster than people, stronger, and, he thought, probably smarter, though they had a hard time testing for that.

“I asked a whole bunch of questions, like how one percent difference could account for everything he’d told me, and why on earth he’d chosen to do this, and whether he thought the devil had a special place for him in hell or if he was just going to get the usual treatment. He got pretty pissed off then and walked out on me. It was another scientist, a woman with red hair like yours but going gray, who showed me the rest.”

“That… would have been my mother,” Julia said.

“Are you going to get mad if I tell you she was kind of an asshole, too?”

“She’s dead,” Julia said.

“Oh. Crap. I… didn’t know—”

“She’s dead, which is the only thing that keeps me from agreeing with you,” Julia told him.

“… Right. Well, this woman, who didn’t even tell me her name, she showed me the place they had the chimeras living. Camp Putnam, they called it. They were all living in a sort of dormitory there. It looked pretty much like a summer camp, except all the kids were exactly the same age and size, and they all kind of looked alike. And instead of hot little counselors in tight T-shirts and short shorts, they had soldiers carrying M4 carbines. The kids didn’t seem to think it was weird. They’d never known anything else, your mom told me. They’d been there their whole lives.”

“Hold on,” Chapel said. “Julia — your parents moved away from the Catskills in, when, 1995?”

“We moved to our house, yeah. For the first couple of years Dad only came to see us on the weekends, and Mom would commute to and from work. She had to get up really early so I had to get myself ready for school in the morning.”

“But if the camp was operational then, why wouldn’t they want to live closer to it?” Chapel asked. “If that was where they worked—”

“Did you want to hear the rest of my story?” Funt asked.

“Yes. Sorry,” Chapel told him. “Just trying to keep the facts straight.”

Funt snorted in derision and went on. “Good luck with that. This was the weirdest case I ever saw, and I only got little glimpses of it. Your mom took me to see the fence around the camp. At the time it was just a normal cyclone fence, twelve feet high. They were already building a new one when I was there. Much bigger, and with barbed wire on top. Your mom told me the fence was electrified. They didn’t think the chimeras would dare climb it. In this one case, they were wrong. Malcolm had gone right over it. The guards caught him when he landed on the other side.”

“They caught him?” Julia asked. “But—”

“They caught him. They couldn’t hold him, though. Three soldiers, heavily armed. He killed all three of them, snapped their necks, and ran off into the woods. He was ten years old at the time.”

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+35:48

“He was… ten?” Julia asked, her face pale even in the darkness that had settled over the top of Stone Mountain. “In 1996, he was ten… they were all… ten?”

“Yeah,” Funt said. “That significant, somehow?”

“Just… to me. No. I mean, no — it’s not significant. Please, go on.”

Chapel shot her a glance, but her face wasn’t giving anything away. Maybe she had some secrets of her own.

Funt shrugged and went on. He took off his ranger hat and rubbed his arms. “I had my case, anyway. This weird mutant kid had escaped from the camp and I had to track him down. I tried not to think too much about what he’d done to those soldiers, or what the other one, Ian, had done to those cinder blocks. I worked it like any other missing persons. I asked a lot of people a lot of questions, made a lot of phone calls, wore out some shoe leather. I’m guessing the details aren’t too important, not now. I spent three weeks looking, and every day Agent Banks from the CIA would call me and bitch me out for not finding Malcolm. Eventually I tracked the kid down to a house outside of Philadelphia. Nice place, just on the edge of farmland. No fence, just a real big lawn he could play on. It was owned by a family called the Gabors. They’d found him walking along the side of a country road outside of Utica, New York, while they were on vacation. Figured he was a runaway so they took him in, raised him like their own. Hippie types — Mr. Gabor worked for a nonprofit feeding homeless people. The Mrs. was a lawyer, but the bumper sticker on her car said No Blood for Oil, so she wasn’t exactly the rich kind of lawyer. I’m guessing they were nice people.”

“You’re guessing? You didn’t talk to them?” Chapel asked.

“Nope. What I know about them I got from their daughter. She was a student at Villanova. She came home for Thanksgiving and found them in their bed. Her mom had been strangled. Looked like her dad tried to put up a fight. He was in pieces.”

“Oh, God,” Julia said. “Don’t — please don’t explain what you mean.”

“I’d prefer not to, myself,” Funt said. “I don’t even like thinking about what I saw in that bedroom. It was a classic rage killing, from the look of it. What you’d expect if a six-foot-four linebacker came home and found his wife in bed with the mailman. A little more brutal than that, maybe. The daughter was in hysterics, of course, but she gave me the info I needed to find Malcolm. He was in his favorite place, the place he always went to, she said, when he was angry or confused, which happened a lot. He was in this tree fort in their backyard. He was still there when I got to the house. Just sitting up there, staring down at me. He’d been crying. I asked him why he’d done that to his foster parents. Why he’d killed them. He told me. Seems he had been given a cat for a pet, and the cat disappeared. He didn’t tell me where it went and I didn’t ask. I wasn’t in Missing Pets. His foster mom and dad got pretty upset about the whole thing, though, so they must have known what happened to it. He asked if he could have another one, and they said no. Absolutely not.”

“What does that have to do with the parents’ murder?” Julia asked.

“You’re not listening. That was the whole reason. They wouldn’t let him have another cat. So he killed them.”

“What? That’s insane,” Chapel said.

“Yeah. Exactly. The chimeras — they’re ninety-nine percent human. But that one percent makes a serious difference,” Funt told him. “They don’t think like us. They look like us, but they don’t feel like us. To them everything is serious. Deadly serious. When they get frustrated, or upset… even just confused, it makes them angry — and when they’re angry, nobody is safe. They’re not human. They’re monsters.”

Chapel felt a chill run down his spine. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I asked him to come down from his tree house. I told him I would find him some new parents to live with, that everything was going to be okay. Working in Missing Persons you learn how to talk to kids who are so scared they can’t see straight. You learn how to calm them down. You also learn how to get them to climb into a stranger’s car. I got Malcolm buckled in and I drove him straight to the local police station. He started freaking out then, but I thought I could handle him. Then Dr. Taggart — your dad — showed up, and Malcolm went ballistic.

“One of the cops at that station ended up on an early pension. Maybe he learned to walk again. I didn’t have a chance to follow up. As for me, I was in the hospital for a long time with a broken pelvis and two broken legs. I came real close to putting a bullet in Malcolm’s head. Instead, your dad put five tranquilizer darts in him and eventually he fell down and went to sleep. It was the last I ever saw of him.”

“You told him he would be safe,” Julia said.

“That’s right. I lied to him,” Funt told her. “I betrayed him. I feel bad about that every once in a while. Then I think about the five people he killed, and what he did to that cop, and to me. He looked like a kid. He sounded like a kid. When he got angry, he was a demon out of hell. I have no idea what they did to him at Camp Putnam when he got back — for all I know they ran Nazi-style experiments on him night and day. Honest to God, I can’t say for sure if I think he deserved it or not.”

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:02

Chapel shook his head. Some of this was new information, but he didn’t see how much of it helped him. “So the CIA… created the chimeras, and then just warehoused them in this camp. But why? Why create them in the first place? What were they supposed to do? What were they supposed to be?”

“You think they’d tell me things like that? I only got to see the camp so I would know how dangerous Malcolm was. How tough my job was going to be,” Funt said.

“Okay. Okay.” Chapel scrubbed at his face with his hands. He felt soiled just from hearing Funt’s story. “Then—”

“The whole time,” Julia said. Both men turned to face her, but it was clear she was talking to herself. She had her arms wrapped around her chest and was bending over slightly at the waist. She looked like she might throw up — or start screaming. She shivered violently, and Chapel took his coat off and put it around her shoulders, but it didn’t seem to help. “The whole time I was growing up. The whole time,” she repeated. She stared into Chapel’s eyes. “I was sixteen years old when all that happened. My dad was teaching me how to drive. Then he went and shot a boy full of tranquilizer darts and took him back to prison. My parents — I thought I knew who they were, but — oh God. When I was six, they were just being born. Or made, or grown in vats, or whatever. When I was in first grade, learning to read, my parents were giving birth to little monsters. Chapel. Chapel!”

“I’m here,” he said, and reached for her, but she shoved him away.

“Chapel, they’re my brothers. Maybe not in, you know, a genetic way. But in every other way that counts. My brothers!”

“No,” he said. “No. You can’t think like that.”

“How can I not?” she asked him. “How can I think about them any other way?”

He started to answer, though he honestly had no idea what he was going to say. Before any words could come out of his mouth, though, a great booming noise ripped through the air and he jumped in surprise. It was followed by a deafening fanfare, and then a haze of light burst over the top of the mountain.

“What the hell?” Chapel asked. He let go of Julia long enough to run over toward the visitors’ center and see what was going on.

Then the fanfare resolved into music — familiar fiddle music. It was the Charlie Daniels Band, singing about Georgia. The light came from powerful floodlights that were illuminating the carving on the side of the mountain.

The nightly laser show had begun.

Down at the bottom of the mountain, hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists would be staring in awe up at the carving as the lasers animated the generals and made it appear their horses were galloping across the stone. They were probably gaping in surprise and delight, looking up toward where Chapel, Julia, and Funt stood at the summit.

“Come on,” Chapel said. “Right now?”

Nearby someone laughed. Chapel spun around, half expecting Laughing Boy to step out of the darkness. But the figure that moved into the haze of light now was taller than Laughing Boy, and more heavily muscled.

“Funny story, huh?” the figure asked.

“Who—” Chapel began, but he already knew who it was.

“I never heard his version before. Real funny.” The haze of light turned red for a moment, then died down to a less diffuse glow. Chapel’s eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, and he could make out the details of the newcomer’s face.

His eyes were black from side to side, with no white showing at all.

Malcolm had arrived.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:09

“No fucking way,” Funt shouted. “Why did you bring him here?”

Chapel could only shake his head in disbelief.

“Nobody else knew where I was going to be,” Funt insisted. “I didn’t tell anyone. So you must have told him he could find me here! You sold me out, Chapel!”

“No! I didn’t tell anyone,” Chapel protested.

Except Angel, of course.

He couldn’t imagine that she would have told Malcolm where to find Funt. That was just impossible. But her systems had been compromised once before, by the CIA — and the CIA had been trying to kill Funt for years.

But that meant—

A gunshot roared across the top of Stone Mountain, drowning out the blaring music that came from below. Chapel spun around and saw Malcolm looking down between his feet.

“Can’t see very well in the dark, can you, Funt?” the chimera asked. “I can.”

“Wait,” Chapel said. “Just wait.” He held his hands up, outstretched, toward the chimera. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You’ve been manipulated, Malcolm. You were sent here like a heat-seeking missile.”

“I don’t know what that is,” the chimera told him.

“Just — just take my word for it. They made you come here. You’re doing somebody else’s bidding.”

“You’re talking about the Voice,” Malcolm said, nodding.

“Sure — the — the voice. What voice?”

“The Voice on the telephone. The one that told us we would be free, and then the fence came down. The one that told us where to find the ones we wanted to kill. The Voice doesn’t make us do things,” the chimera said, smiling. “It helps us. It helps us do the things we want to do.”

Like killing Funt. Malcolm had a very good reason to want him dead. Just like the chimera in New York had good reason to want to kill Helen Bryant, the woman who made him, the woman who locked him away in an armed camp for twenty-five years.

Malcolm wasn’t being manipulated. Used, yes. But he was only being used to do a thing he wanted anyway.

Revenge was a powerful motivator. In Special Forces training they’d taught Chapel it could break through almost any disincentive — you could torture a man, you could take away everything he loved, but in the end you were only making him more resolved. They’d taught him that the way to fight terrorists wasn’t to punish them, but to convince them you were really on their side.

“They’ll kill you when you’re done,” Chapel told the chimera. “You do understand that, don’t you? They’ve already sent men to kill you. But I can keep you alive. I can protect you.”

“I’m going to kill Jeremy Funt, now, mister. It was nice talking,” Malcolm sneered, “but maybe you’ll shut up until I’m done.”

“No!” Funt screamed, and he fired again. The bullet ricocheted off the rock not three feet from where Chapel stood. He ducked reflexively. “No — you don’t want me. I never hurt you, Malcolm. But he”—Funt stabbed one finger in Chapel’s direction—“he killed one of your brothers! Kill him!”

“Wow. You think you know me so well, don’t you, Jeremy Funt?” Malcolm said, stalking toward the ex-FBI agent. “You don’t know me at all. He killed Brody, yeah. The Voice told me as much. But you know what? Where I come from, if somebody’s strong enough to kill a chimera, that’s something to respect. Killing us is hard. Apparently fooling us is a lot easier. That’s the weakling’s way.”

Funt raised his pistol again, but before he could pull the trigger Malcolm was running — leaping toward him. Chapel reached for his own sidearm and only then realized he didn’t have it. It was in Funt’s pocket.

“No!” he shouted, as the chimera collided with Funt. The pistol fired, and a moment later fired again — Chapel could see the muzzle flares as explosions of light between Funt and the chimera — and then Funt’s arm flew up, bending in all the wrong places. The chimera stomped on Funt’s foot and the man screamed.

“No,” Chapel shouted again, as he closed the distance between himself and the chimera. “No!” He locked his fingers together and swung both of his fists down, hard, into Malcolm’s left kidney.

The pain of getting punched there was usually enough to incapacitate a grown man. It could cause massive internal bleeding and even death and was an illegal move in boxing and every martial arts competition for good reason. It was a nasty, low blow, and Chapel had been trained to deliver it with devastating precision.

It made Malcolm stop what he was doing for a fraction of a second.

Chapel figured that would have to be enough.

Funt was down on the ground, scrambling away from the chimera like a crab, pushing with his heels and his good arm just to escape. His pistol was gone, probably knocked out of his hand when Malcolm broke his arm.

Chapel decided to stop worrying about Funt, as just then Malcolm was turning around to face him — and smiling wickedly.

“You really want some of this?” Malcolm asked.

Chapel dropped into a defensive posture, his fists raised like they were going to have a nice, friendly boxing match.

“Show me what you’ve got,” he said.

The chimera came at him like a runaway train.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:12

There was no way Chapel could stop Malcolm, or even slow him down. The chimera was just too strong, and he outweighed Chapel by a good fifty pounds. So he didn’t try to stand his ground. There was no way he could move out of the way of Malcolm’s charge, either — he was just too fast.

So he twisted on the ball of one foot and let Malcolm hit him, but he rolled with the bull rush, twisting around to slide over the chimera’s back as he went past. Chapel landed on his feet, though not as firmly as he would have liked — the ground was too uneven to stick the landing.

Still, he was suddenly behind Malcolm where Malcolm couldn’t see him.

If he’d been fighting a human opponent, Chapel could have ended things then and there. He could have wrapped his good arm around his opponent’s neck and put him in a sleeper hold. Block the blood flow to the carotid artery, even for a few seconds, and a human body will simply shut down.

He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. But he was out of other ideas.

He brought his right knee up, hard, into the small of Malcolm’s back. The chimera didn’t even grunt in pain — maybe it felt like Chapel was tickling him — but he was ninety-nine percent human, which meant he had the same reflexes as a human being. He arched his back away from the blow, throwing his head back toward Chapel.

Chapel threw his artificial arm around Malcolm’s throat and squeezed.

The prosthetic arm was designed to respond to subconscious commands. Normally Chapel didn’t have to think about how the arm should move, it just acted like a real arm. He could override it, though. He could give it conscious commands and it would obey them, even in ways a real arm wouldn’t.

He told his arm to squeeze, and it acted like a metal noose around the chimera’s neck. It tightened like a vise and stayed locked shut. A living arm could get fatigued. Its muscles were elastic enough to give way as Malcolm bucked and tried to break loose. Chapel’s prosthetic arm didn’t have those weaknesses.

The chimera gasped and spat in rage as he tried to get free. He tried to reach around behind him, to grab Chapel and hurt him enough to make him let go. His fingers found the side of Chapel’s shirt and he tore through the fabric, maybe intending to gouge into the flesh beneath.

Chapel responded by using his good right arm to deliver punch after punch to the side of Malcolm’s head.

The chimera screamed in frustration and ducked forward, bending at the waist until he lifted Chapel right off the ground. With his arm locked around Malcolm’s throat Chapel had no option but to go along for the ride.

For a second he was airborne and flopping back and forth, like a rider holding on to a bucking horse. Malcolm twisted from side to side, trying to shake him free, but the only way that would happen was if Chapel’s prosthetic arm gave out. Chapel forgot all about hitting Malcolm and just tried to hold on, tried to get his legs around Malcolm’s waist, tried to grab the chimera with his free hand.

Then Malcolm started to run — straight toward the side of the mountain. Straight toward the laser show still playing out below.

No — no, he wouldn’t, Chapel had time to think, as he watched the edge of the stone top of the mountain come rushing toward them. He’ll kill us both!

But maybe for a chimera, death was preferable to being taken prisoner again. Malcolm ran full speed toward the edge, toward a drop of more than five hundred feet.

A fence ran around the edge of the mountaintop, a chain-link fence that looked about as sturdy as a lace doily from Chapel’s perspective. It would catch them if Malcolm threw himself over the edge, but with their combined weight and the chimera’s momentum Chapel was certain they would just tear through.

He had no choice. He told his arm to let go.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:14

It was exactly what Malcolm had been hoping for. As soon as the pressure on his throat lessened, the chimera dug in his heels and skidded to a stop. But Chapel had no way to slow himself down, and he went shooting forward over Malcolm’s shoulders and head to fly through the air, carried along by inertia straight toward the fence and the edge.

He slammed into the chain link with a clattering rattle. Lasers and floodlights dazzled his eyes as he felt the chain bend and stretch. It was held up by a series of metal posts spaced about ten feet apart. The posts were anchored in the bare rock of the mountain, but they could only take so much stress. He felt the whole fence jump and dance as one post snapped off at its base, heard another one groan and shriek as the force of his impact bent it down and outward.

He dug his fingers into the chain link, desperate for any kind of purchase. One sharp end of broken chain link dug into his palm, and the pain blasted up his good arm but he refused to let go, refused to even slacken his grip. He felt greasy blood smear his fingers and knew he’d made a mistake.

The chain link began to tilt outward, a whole section of fence collapsing under his weight. He scrabbled to climb up as it bent and twisted, but he couldn’t make any headway — it was giving way faster than he could climb up.

Below him the section of fencing slammed against the side of the mountain, draping over the protruding rocks and stunted trees there. Chapel fought with his panicking brain, trying to convince it that the fence was now a climbing wall, that it gave him plenty of hand- and footholds to let him climb back up, onto the mountaintop.

He did one foolish thing and glanced behind himself. There was nothing beneath him but empty air and blazing lights, nothing but empty space between him and the tree-lined lower slopes of the mountain far below. It was not the kind of fall a human body could survive.

Look up, damn you, he told himself, and he forced his head to crane around and peer back up at the night sky and the top of the mountain. He told his artificial fingers to lock on to the chain link, then used his good hand to reach for a grip higher up. His fingers were sore and trembling and they were slippery with blood, but he forced them through the mesh of the fence, forced them to find purchase.

Carefully, slowly, he lifted his right foot and kicked at the fence to find a place to brace it, to support his weight.

Above him, Malcolm walked to the edge and looked down at him.

“You’re tough, for a human,” Malcolm said.

Chapel couldn’t help himself. “Your brother said the same thing right before I killed him,” he said, through gritted teeth. He forced the toe of his shoe into a gap in the fence. Pushed himself upward a few inches.

At this rate, some time next week he should reach the top.

Malcolm looked away from him, and Chapel worried the chimera would just leave him there and go finish off Funt. That wasn’t acceptable.

“Mind giving me a hand?” he asked the chimera. “So we can finish this like tough guys?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Malcolm told him. He had something in his hands. What was it? It looked like a black plastic box, about eight inches long. What the hell was it? “At Camp Putnam, the fences are electrified. If you touch them, they can burn your hand. We used to dare each other to go up to the fence and grab it with both hands. Somehow that was worse — if you had both hands on the fence, you couldn’t let go. You could feel the electric fire running through your body, but your fingers wouldn’t let go. You had to trust your brothers would knock you off the fence with a piece of wood.”

“That’s some kind of messed-up trust exercise,” Chapel gasped. He lifted his left foot, but it just slid off the fencing every time he tried to get a toehold.

“Some brothers would do it. Some of them would save you. Others wouldn’t. They would just sit there and watch while you cooked like a bird. It was an important lesson to learn. We were brothers, but we were not friends. We did not owe each other anything, even our lives. A chimera can only really trust himself. So when you told me you would help me, you would protect me, that’s what I heard. Don’t worry. I won’t let you cook alive.”

“Is there a point to this?” Chapel asked.

Malcolm held up his plastic box. Chapel saw now it had two metal prongs sticking out of one end. As he watched a spark jumped between them.

It was a stun gun. Capable of delivering fifty thousand volts of electricity to anything it touched.

“No,” Chapel said. “No, Malcolm—”

“A man in a stupid hat tried to use this on me, down below.” Chapel thought of the park ranger who’d failed to radio in. “It didn’t work. I’m guessing it must work on humans, or he wouldn’t have been carrying it. You’re tough, for a human. But humans just aren’t much, in the end.”

Malcolm lowered the stun gun and touched its prongs to the fence.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:21

Chapel had been tased before. It had been part of his training, a ritual everyone in his Special Forces program had to go through. You had to know what it felt like, so if it happened in the field you would be ready.

Except there really was no good way to ready yourself. There was nothing you could do to brace against it. Nothing you could do to stop it taking over your body.

The pain was intense, worse than any kick in the groin, maybe worse, Chapel thought, than getting shot. It felt like your entire body was on fire all at once, like you’d been thrown into a furnace. Worse than that — like you were being burned alive from the inside out. Every muscle in his body twitched and cramped. His spine arched and his teeth slammed together, cutting deep into the side of his tongue. His eyes squeezed shut, and tears burst from under their lids.

It was a horrible violation for a man used to being in total control of his own flesh. He barely managed not to soil himself.

It was all over in a fraction of a second. But after that came the realization. The horror.

His good fingers had let go of the fence. His feet were kicking at air.

He didn’t dare open his eyes. The fall would be brief and the sudden impact would probably kill him instantly. A human body falling hundreds of feet had plenty of time to reach terminal velocity. There would be little left of him but a stain on the ground when he hit bottom.

Goodbye, Julia, he had time to think. I hope you—

Funny.

Definitely weird.

He didn’t feel like he was falling. There was no sensation of weightlessness, no rush of air past his face.

He opened his eyes and saw he hadn’t fallen at all. Looking up, he saw that he was dangling, limp as a rag doll, by one hand. His prosthetic hand.

Of course. The silicone skin that covered his robotic hand was an excellent insulator. The burst of electricity couldn’t get through even a thin sheet of the rubbery stuff. The fingers were locked in place, holding him up.

He would have laughed — except he found he could barely breathe.

The clamps on the end of the arm, the clamps that held it on his body, were designed to tighten automatically when needed, squeezing tighter with the more weight the arm tried to lift. At that moment the arm was holding his entire one hundred and eighty pounds. The clamps had compressed so tightly they were crushing his rib cage, making it difficult for him to draw breath.

The arm hadn’t been designed for this. It had never been meant to hold so much weight on its own. He had to get his good hand up there, had to grab the fence—

Up above Malcolm screamed in rage and hit the fence again with the stun gun. Chapel barely had time to yank his fingers back from the chain link.

It was then he started to smell burning rubber. He looked up and saw the fingers of his artificial hand were smoking. Molten silicone was rolling down the back of the hand, dripping down his shirtsleeve.

If the silicone melted until the metal finger actuators beneath were exposed, he would have no protection from the electric shocks. The current running through the fence would zap the arm’s circuit boards and microchips and short it out. If that happened, the fingers were designed to automatically release anything they were holding. They would go limp, and he would fall.

He couldn’t let that happen. “Malcolm!” he shouted, sucking in a deep breath so he could actually be heard. “Malcolm, listen to me!”

The chimera stared down at him with wide black eyes.

“What the hell are you, human?” Malcolm demanded. “Or are you human? Maybe you’re like me. Maybe…” He shook his head, failing to finish his thought. He grabbed at his hair and pulled until clumps of it came loose.

He was getting frustrated. Which for a chimera could only mean one thing — he was getting even more dangerous than he’d been before.

“Malcolm,” Chapel called, “wouldn’t you rather kill me with your own hands? Wouldn’t that be more satisfying?”

“Shut up!” Malcolm shrieked, his voice suddenly high pitched with rage. “Shut the fuck up! I’m going to eat you, do you understand? I’m going to tear off your flesh and eat it! I’m going to trample Funt until he’s paste! Then I’m going to take your woman and I’m going to fu—”

The chimera’s head jerked to one side. His black eyes blinked several times. A dark spot appeared on the front of his shirt and started to spread.

He didn’t say anything, or make any sound at all. As quickly as it had possessed him, the rage seemed to have flowed back out of him. He raised one hand to touch the spot on his shirt, and his fingers came away dark. A scowl curled across his face.

Then his left eye exploded outward in a miniature cloud of blood.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:28

It took as long for Malcolm to fall over as a tree takes to fall in the forest. Chapel could only stare upward, watching in surprise as the chimera died. Malcolm slumped to the ground in a heap, one hand flopping forward over the fence, as if he were reaching out a hand toward Chapel, a final gesture of reconciliation.

Blood rolled down his fingers and dripped on the mountain below.

Eventually Chapel remembered he was about to fall to his death. He stuffed the fingers of his good hand into the chain link, and some of the strain was taken off his artificial arm and he could almost breathe again.

Julia popped her head over the side. “Chapel?” she asked. “Are you—”

“Make sure he’s dead!” Chapel called up.

She nodded and disappeared for a moment. Chapel heard two more gunshots. When she came back, she was holding Funt’s pistol and the barrel was smoking.

“Can you climb up?” she asked. She looked from side to side. “This fence isn’t going to hold much longer.”

In that case, Chapel told himself, the answer to her question had better be yes.

He shoved one foot into a gap in the fence and pushed himself upward. His artificial fingers had partially fused to the chain link, but he was able to pull them free. Semiliquid silicone came loose in long thin strands. The fingers were gummed together and deformed but they still worked, it seemed.

“Hang on,” Julia said. She pulled off her pink hoodie, then tied one end of it to a fence post that was still holding in the rock. When she lowered the other sleeve down to him, he could almost reach it.

It took him far too long to climb up and grab it. The chain link groaned and started to tear away from its posts, and for a bad, long moment he was certain it would give way. Eventually, though, he managed to clamber up to a point where he could wrap his good arm around a fence post and, with Julia’s help, roll back onto the level ground on top of the mountain.

Julia stared at him as if he would disappear if she looked away even for a moment. She reached up and brushed hair out of her face with one hand, leaving a streak of blood on her cheek.

“Blood,” Chapel managed to say, pointing at it.

Chimera blood. Full of the virus.

She understood at once. “Oh, God — I checked Malcolm’s pulse with those fingers. I didn’t even think…” Shaking her head she grabbed up the hoodie and used it to scrape the blood off her face and hands.

Would it be enough to protect her? Chapel didn’t know. If she hadn’t gotten the blood in any cuts or scrapes, if it hadn’t got in her mouth—

There was nothing to be done for it.

“Funt,” Chapel said. He was still getting his breath back. He didn’t know if he could sit up quite yet. “Is Funt alive?”

Julia nodded. “He’s in shock, though. I did what I could for him. That’s why it took me so long to shoot Malcolm.”

“That’s the second person you’ve shot today,” Chapel said, with a weak smile. “You’re a quick learner.” He started to close his eyes.

“I’m getting better at it. Chapel? Chapel, what do we do now?”

“We have to get out of here.”

“Definitely. Funt needs medical attention. More than I can give him up here. And the park rangers will probably show up any second. I know I don’t want to have to explain to them what happened.”

“My phone,” Chapel said. Very carefully he reached into the inside pocket and found the smartphone. He touched his ear and found his hands-free set was long gone, probably knocked out of his ear when Malcolm threw him at the fence. He dialed Angel and she picked up almost at once.

“I’m here, baby.”

“Angel, we need to be extracted, as soon as you can—”

He stopped talking because the sound of the music coming from the bottom of the mountain was drowned out just then by the rotor noise of a helicopter coming over the far side of the summit. It was a civilian chopper, but it showed no lights.

“Anything else I can do for you?” Angel asked.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:31

The chopper seemed to take forever to land — the top of Stone Mountain was too rough for it to just set down on its skids. Eventually the pilot found a safe spot, and the aircraft settled to the rock.

The same second it put down, two men wearing Tyvek suits and surgical masks came running over to put Malcolm in a body bag. They didn’t even look at Chapel, but Julia grabbed the arm of one of them and asked if he had any alcohol wipes. He handed her a bottle of rubbing alcohol from his kit, and she poured it liberally over her fingers, then scrubbed at her face with the stuff. “We have a wounded man over there,” she said, pointing at where Funt lay, dressed as a park ranger, on the bare rock.

“Sorry, ma’am, we’re just cleanup. But there’s a stretcher in the bird,” he told her. She started to protest, but Chapel grasped her shoulder and then ran to the chopper. The pilot was already pulling the stretcher out of the back compartment. “I have orders to take you wherever you want to go,” he told Chapel. “But I’ll need to file a flight plan before we take off.”

“The closest airport is fine,” Chapel told him. “Help me get this man onboard,” he said, pointing at Funt. “Are we taking the body as well?”

“No, a second craft is coming for that. The two medics I brought will guard the body until it arrives. I don’t suppose you can tell me what’s going on here? I’m not even supposed to be on this shift.”

“Where are you stationed?” Chapel asked.

“Fort McPherson, sir,” the pilot told him.

“Oh, so you’re army,” Chapel said, nodding. “So you’ll understand when I say no, I can’t tell you anything.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” the pilot said, shaking his head.

Together they loaded Funt onto the stretcher and carried it back to the chopper. The ex-FBI man didn’t wake up. His face was bright with sweat, and when Julia came over and pulled one of his eyelids back, the eye underneath failed to track. “His body knows best,” she told Chapel, when he asked if Funt was going to be all right. “When he wakes up, he’s going to be in incredible pain — that arm is shattered. So his body put him to sleep. We should leave him that way if we can, though we need to keep him warm. His body temperature is very low.”

Chapel nodded and put his phone to his ear. “Angel, we’ve got Funt and he’s alive but badly hurt. This chopper’s going to take us to an airport nearby. Can you have an ambulance waiting?”

“I’m on it,” Angel said.

Julia jumped into the back of the chopper where she could sit with Funt and keep an eye on him. Chapel ran around the nose of the aircraft so he could take the copilot seat. Before he got in, though, he took one last look at the top of Stone Mountain — and the body of the second dead chimera he’d seen in two days.

“Angel,” Chapel said, “what are they going to do with Malcolm?”

“A quick cremation. That’s all,” Angel told him. “The men I sent you are trained in bacteriological warfare protocols. They’ll be safe.”

Chapel nodded. There wouldn’t be any ceremony for Malcolm, he knew. No prayers, no weeping mourners.

Maybe it was for the best. The chimera had been a killer, through and through. He’d lived for nothing but revenge. After the story Funt had told, though, Chapel couldn’t shake an image from his head: a ten-year-old boy, sitting in a tree house, scared and very, very alone. Not knowing what kind of future waited for him. Barely aware of where he was.

Enough. Chapel’s job was to hunt down four chimeras, and he was half done.

He climbed into the helicopter and pulled on a crash helmet. “Let’s go,” he told the pilot.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 13, T+36:48

The chopper set down — much more smoothly this time — on a helipad at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, only a few miles away from Stone Mountain. An airport medical team was waiting to take Funt away in an ambulance that sat waiting on the tarmac. Angel had timed everything perfectly, as usual.

Julia ran over to the ambulance to tell the paramedics what she knew about Funt’s condition. The medical team didn’t waste any time getting him out of there. When Julia came back to the helipad, she was frowning. “Will he be safe if they take him to the hospital?” she asked. “Laughing Boy may be out of the picture, but—”

Chapel nodded. The CIA had been trying to kill Funt for years. This was the perfect chance. They could even make it look like a natural death, like he had died of his injuries. “They’re not taking him to a civilian hospital,” he told her. In fact he’d been in touch with Admiral Hollingshead and arranged for Funt to be taken to a military hospital where he could be guarded night and day until he recovered. “As long as they keep him alive until he’s conscious, I’m okay with this. Once he’s awake, well, we saw how good he is at keeping one step ahead of them.”

Julia shrugged. “I guess it’s all we can do. What’s next?”

Chapel nodded toward a nearby runway. Hollingshead’s personal jet was already taxiing toward them. “Say good-bye to Atlanta.”

“Gladly,” Julia said. Her red hair whipped in the breeze. “I’m about ready for another of those goat cheese and mandarin orange salads, too. How can I be hungry at a time like this? I should be sitting in a corner crying my eyes out, begging for somebody to make everything okay. Chapel, I killed a man. I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t feel scared right now. I don’t even feel mad at you anymore.”

He knew the look in her eyes. He’d seen it often enough when he was fighting alongside the Rangers. “It’s going to hit you, eventually. But right now your body knows you aren’t safe. It knows you need to keep fighting. It’s flooding your brain with endorphins.”

She put a hand over her face and laughed. “This is not how I thought my week was going to go.”

He put his good hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She didn’t push him away. Probably because she was in shock.

They had to wait a few minutes while boarding stairs were moved into position, but when they climbed up into the jet, Chief Petty Officer Andrews was waiting for them with hot towels. The jet’s main door was closed and suddenly they were in silence, sitting in comfortable chairs, and nobody was trying to kill them.

Chapel had to admit it was a nice change of pace.

“We’re cleared for takeoff right away,” Andrews told them. “Fasten your seat belts until we’re in the air, okay? Our flight time to Denver will be a little under three hours. I’ll dim the cabin lights now, and—”

“Denver? We’re not going to Denver,” Chapel said.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Andrews told him. “I was informed you were. Was there a last-minute change?”

“There needs to be. We’re going to Chicago.” He needed to check in with Eleanor Pechowski. Make sure she was safe.

And find out everything she knew about chimeras and Camp Putnam.

In his pocket his phone began to ring.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 13, T+36:54

Chief Petty Officer Andrews smiled warmly and went to talk to the pilot. Julia looked at Chapel expectantly. His phone kept ringing.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore, so he answered it.

“Sweetie,” Angel said, “I filed your flight plan for Denver—”

“I need to make sure Eleanor Pechowski is safe,” he told her.

“Of course you do. Which is why I’ve been calling her every two hours and sending police around to keep an eye on the place she’s staying. But Franklin Hayes’s people have been calling me, about every fifteen minutes, wanting an update on where you are and how soon you’ll be arriving in Denver.”

Chapel glanced at his watch. “We have at least eleven hours before a chimera could even possibly reach Denver,” he said.

“More like fourteen, because of the time zone difference,” Angel confirmed. “That gives you plenty of time to get to Denver and set up your defense for when the chimera comes for Hayes.”

“Hayes will be fine. He’s surrounded by security. I have no doubt a chimera is going to try to kill him, but even one of them can’t realistically break into a federal courthouse full of cops. As far as I’m concerned, Hayes is the safest name on the list. I’ve finally got some breathing room here, Angel. I finally have time to follow up on some leads, and the last thing I need is to babysit some judge who’s in no real danger.”

“Sweetie—”

“Unless you know something you’re not telling me, Angel, I’ve made my decision.”

She was silent for way too long.

Chapel closed his eyes. “What does Admiral Hollingshead say about this?”

Angel sounded sincerely apologetic. “He suggested to me — without actually saying anything directly, of course — that your next stop would be Denver.”

“He suggested that, huh? Which suggests to me,” Chapel told her, “that he knows exactly where the chimeras are going.”

“I’m not sure I like what you’re implying,” Angel said, caution thickening her voice.

“Angel. I’m going to tell you something plainly now. No suggestions, no implications. Somebody knew we were going to Stone Mountain. Somebody told Malcolm where to find us.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Angel said.

He was damned sure she did. She just wanted him to say it out loud. Maybe so when things went bad she could cover her posterior. Maybe she just wanted a record of him defying official orders.

Chapel didn’t really care anymore.

“Someone told Malcolm where Funt would be. They wanted Funt killed. Malcolm told me he was getting orders over the phone from someone he called the Voice. I don’t know who this Voice is, but it had to be somebody who can access your line, Angel. Because the only people who knew about Stone Mountain were Funt, me… and you.”

Angel sounded panicky as she responded to that. Chapel wondered how good an actress she was. “You think my system’s been compromised again?” she asked. “Oh my God — should I move to different servers again?”

“I don’t think there’s any point. I think the Voice can get to you anytime he wants to. Which means the Voice might be Director Banks. Or it might be Admiral Hollingshead.”

“You can’t mean that,” Angel said.

“Someone’s been setting me up for a while now, Angel. They tried to get me to run out to Denver while I was still en route to Atlanta. That’s why Hayes was able to break into your line. They must have known Malcolm was on his way to kill Funt, but they tried to keep me from saving him. They wanted him dead. Now the same mysterious person wants me to rush out to Denver rather than check up on Eleanor Pechowski.”

“I promise you she’s safe,” Angel said. “I checked in with her just an hour ago and—”

“I’m sure she’s safe. I’m not worried about her health. But I’m very interested in what she might be able to tell me — and why this Voice wants to make sure I don’t hear it. I’m going to Chicago, Angel. If Hollingshead won’t let me take his private plane there, I’ll walk over to the terminal and buy a ticket on a Delta flight with my own credit card.”

It was a bluff, and one that could cost him. He knew perfectly well that if Hollingshead or Angel truly wanted him in Denver, he’d have no choice. With one phone call they could cut off his credit card — or put him on a no-fly list. They could make it impossible for him to go anywhere but Denver.

There was only silence on the line for a long while. “Angel?” Chapel called, but she didn’t respond.

By his watch, three minutes passed before she came back. “I’ve changed your flight plan,” she said. “You’re cleared to go to Chicago. But Chapel—”

“What is it, Angel?”

“You don’t have a lot of friends. It’s probably best if you don’t start making any new enemies, now.”

It was a cryptic threat but he got it. He understood exactly what he was being told. He was on a leash, a short leash, and he would be choked if he strayed too far.