Exposed

CHAPTER

1

Lake Victoria Uganda, Africa

Waheem was already bleeding when he boarded the crowded motorboat. He kept a bloodstained rag wadded up and pressed against his nose, hoping the other passengers wouldn't notice. Earlier the boat's owner, the man islanders called Pastor Roy, had helped Waheem load his rusted cage stuffed full of monkeys onto the last available space. But not even a mile from shore and Waheem noticed Pastor Roy glancing back and forth from his wife's tight smile to the blood now dripping down the front of Waheem's shirt. Pastor Roy looked like he regretted offering Waheem the last seat.

"Nosebleeds seem common on these islands," Pastor Roy said, almost a question, giving Waheem a chance to explain.

Waheem nodded like he had no idea what the man had said. He understood English perfectly but pretended otherwise. There wouldn't be another charcoal or banana boat for two days, so he was grateful for his good fortune, grateful that Pastor Roy and his wife allowed him on board, especially with his cage of monkeys. But Waheem knew it would be a forty-minute trip from Buvuma Island to Jinja and he preferred silence to the pastor's chatter about Jesus. All the others had boarded first, so Waheem was stuck sitting up front, in salvation range. He didn't want to encourage the pastor to think he might save one more soul on the trip across the lake.

Besides, the others—a sad assortment of women and barefoot children and one blind old man—looked much more like they needed saving. Despite the bloody nose and the sudden throbbing pain inside his head, Waheem was young and strong and if things went as planned, he and his family would be rich, buying a shamba of their own instead of breaking their backs working for others.

"God is here," Pastor Roy called out, evidently not needing any encouragement. He steered the boat with one hand and waved the other at the islands surrounding them in the distance, beginning one of his sermons.

The other passengers all bowed their heads, almost an involuntary response to the man's voice. Perhaps they considered their reverence a small fee for passage on the pastor's boat. Waheem bowed his head, too, but watched from behind his blood-soaked rag, pretending to listen and trying to ignore the stink of monkey urine and the occasional spatter of his own warm blood dripping down his chin.He noticed the blind man's eyes, white blurry globes that darted back and forth while his wrinkled lips twitched, but there was only a mumbled hum, perhaps a prayer. A woman beside Waheem held tight the top of a burlap bag that moved on its own and smelled of wet chicken feathers. Everyone was quiet except for three little girls on the back of the boat who smiled and swayed. They were singing softly in a whispered chant. Even in their playfulness they were evidently aware that they shouldn't disturb the pastor's words.

"God hasn't forgotten you people," Pastor Roy continued, "and neither will I."

Waheem glanced at Pastor Roy's wife. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to her husband. She sat next to him at the front of the boat, rubbing her bare white arms with clear liquid from a plastic bottle, stopping every few seconds to pick tsetse flies from her silky, long hair.

"All of Lake Victoria's islands are filled with the outcasts, the poor, the criminals, the sick—" He paused and nodded at Waheem as if to differentiate his handicap from the rest of the list. "But I see only Jesus' children, waiting to be saved."

Waheem didn't correct the pastor. He didn't consider himself one of Buvuma's diseased outcasts, though there were plenty of them. It wasn't unusual to see someone sick or covered with lesions, open sores. The islands were a last resort for many. But not Waheem. He had never been sick a day of his life, at least not before the vomiting started last night.

It had gone on for hours. His stomach ached from the reminder. He didn't like thinking about the black vomit speckled with chunks of blood. He worried that he had thrown up pieces of his insides. That's what it felt like. Now his head throbbed and his nose wouldn't stop bleeding. He readjusted the rag, trying to find a spot that wasn't soiled. Blood dripped onto his dusty foot and he found himself staring at the pastor's shiny leather shoes. Waheem wondered how Pastor Roy expected to save anyone without getting his shoes dirty.

It didn't matter. Waheem cared only about getting his monkeys to Jinja in time to meet the American, a businessman dressed in equally shiny leather shoes. The man had promised Waheem a fortune. At least it was a fortune to Waheem. The American had agreed to pay him more money for each monkey than Waheem and his father could make in a whole year.

He wished he had been able to capture more, but it had taken almost two days to secure the three he had shoved together into the metal cage. To look at them now no one would believe the struggle he had gone through. Waheem knew from experience that monkeys had sharp teeth and if they wrapped their tails around a man's neck they could slash his face to shreds in a matter of minutes. He'd learned that much from the two short months he had worked for Okbar, the rich monkey trader from Jinja.

The job had been a good one, but there were nets and tranquilizer guns that Okbar had provided that made it seem simple. Waheem's main responsibility was to load up the sick monkeys the British veterinarian expelled out of the shipments; shipments that included hundreds of monkeys that would go onto a cargo plane destined for research labs in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The veterinarian thought Waheem loaded up the monkeys and took them away to be killed, but Okbar called that an "outrageous waste." So instead of killing the monkeys, Okbar instructed Waheem to take the poor sick ones to an island in Lake Victoria and set them free. Sometimes when Okbar came up short of monkeys for a shipment he had Waheem go out to the island and get a few of the sick ones. Oftentimes the veterinarian didn't even notice.

But now Okbar was gone. It had been months since anyone had seen him. Waheem wasn't sure where he had gone.One day his small,messy office in Jinja was empty, all the file cabinets, the metal desk, the tranquilizer guns and nets, everything gone. No one knew what had happened to Okbar. And Waheem was out of a job. He'd never forget the disappointment in his father's eyes. They would have to return to the fields and work long days to make up for the job that Waheem had lost.

Then one day the American showed up in Jinja, asking for Waheem, not Okbar, but Waheem. Somehow he knew about the monkeys that were taken to the island and those were the ones he wanted. He would pay the premium price. "But they must be the monkeys," he told Waheem, "from the island where you took the outcasts."

Waheem wasn't sure why anyone would want sick monkeys. He looked in at them now, hunched over, crowded together in the rusted, metal cage. Their noses were running and caked with green slime. Their faces were blank. They refused food and water. Still, Waheem avoided eye contact, knowing all too well what good aim a monkey, even a sick one, had when he decided to spit in your eye.

The monkeys must have sensed Waheem examining them because suddenly one grabbed the bars of the cage and started to screech. The noise didn't bother Waheem. He was used to it. It was normal compared to their eerie silence. But another monkey joined in and now Waheem saw the pastor's wife sit up and stare. There was no longer a tight smile on her perfect face. Waheem didn't think she looked frightened or concerned, but rather she looked disgusted. He worried the pastor might make him throw the cage overboard, or worse, make Waheem go overboard with them. Like most islanders he didn't know how to swim.

The throbbing in his head joined in with the monkeys' screeches and Waheem thought he could feel the boat rocking. His stomach threatened to spew up again. Only now did he realize the entire front of his shirt had blossomed into a huge red-and-black stain. And the bleeding continued. He could feel it inside his mouth, filling his throat. He swallowed and started coughing, trying to catch the chunks of blood but not quite successful. Some splattered the pastor's leather shoes.

Waheem's eyes darted around but avoided Pastor Roy. Everyone was watching him. They would vote to throw him from the boat. He had seen them bow to the man's words. They would, no doubt, do whatever he asked. They were too far away from the islands. He'd never be able to stay afloat.

Suddenly the pastor's hand waved down at him and Waheem winced and jerked away. Only after he sat up and focused his eyes did he see that Pastor Roy was not getting ready to shove him overboard. Instead, the man was handing Waheem a white cloth, brilliant white with beautiful, decorative embroidery in the corner.

"Go ahead, take it," the pastor said in a soft voice, this not a sermon meant for any of the others. When Waheem didn't answer, Pastor Roy continued, "Yours is all used up." And he pointed to the dripping rag. "Go ahead, you need it more than I do."

Waheem's eyes darted around the small boat, all still watching, but none like the pastor's wife whose face had twisted into an angry scowl. Only, she no longer looked at Waheem. Her eyes, her anger now directed at her husband.

The rest of the trip was quiet except for the singsong chant of the little girls. Their voices lulled Waheem into a dreamlike state. At one point he thought he could hear his mother calling to him from the approaching shore. His vision became blurred and his ears filled with the sound of his own heartbeat.

He was weak and dizzy by the time the boat docked. This time Pastor Roy had to carry the cage for him while Waheem followed, stumbling through the crowds, women with baskets and burlap bags, men loitering and bicycles looping around them.

The pastor put down the cage and Waheem grunted his thanks, more a groan. But before the pastor turned to leave, Waheem dropped to his knees, choking and heaving, splattering the shiny leather shoes with black vomit. He reached to wipe his mouth and discovered blood dripping from his ears, and his throat already full again. He felt the pastor's hand on his shoulder and Waheem hardly recognized the voice calling for help. The calm authority that preached sermons had been replaced by a panicked screech.

Waheem's body jerked without warning. His arms thrashed and his legs f layed in the dirt, a seizure beyond his control. It was difficult to breathe. He gasped and choked, no longer able to swallow. Then he felt movement deep inside him. He could almost hear it, as if his insides were ripping apart. Blood seemed to pour out from everywhere. His brain registered no pain, only shock. The shock of seeing so much blood and realizing it was his own, seemed to override the pain.

A crowd gathered around him but they were a blur. Even the pastor's voice became a distant hum. Waheem could no longer see him. And he wasn't even conscious of the American businessman who slipped his gloved fingers around the handle of Waheem's rusted monkey cage and then simply walked away.

CHAPTER

2

Two months later

8:25 a.m.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Quantico, Virginia

Maggie O'Dell watched her boss, Assistant Director Cunningham, push up his glasses and examine the box of doughnuts sitting outside his office as if the decision might impact lives. It was the same intense look she saw him make when determining any decision, whether choosing a doughnut or running the Behavioral Science Unit. His serious poker face, despite the weathered lines in his forehead and around his intense eyes, remained unchanged. An index finger tapped his thin—almost nonexistent—upper lip.

He stood with a rod-straight back and feet set apart in the same stance he used to fire his Glock. A few minutes after eight in the morning and his well-pressed shirtsleeves were already rolled up, but meticulously and properly turned with cuffs tucked under. Lean and fit, he could eat the entire dozen and probably not notice it on his waistline. His salt-and-pepper hair was the only thing that hinted at his age. Maggie had heard rumors that he could bench-press fifty pounds more than what the recruits were doing despite being almost thirty years their senior. So it wasn't calories that affected his choice.

Maggie glanced down at herself. In many ways she had modeled her appearance after her boss. Creased trousers, a copper-colored suit that complemented her auburn hair and brown eyes but didn't distract or draw attention, a lock-n-load stance that conveyed confidence.

Sometimes she knew she overcompensated a bit. Old habits were hard to break. Te n years ago when Maggie made the transformation from forensic fellow to special agent her survival depended on her ability to blend in as much as possible with her male counterparts. No-nonsense hairstyle, very little makeup, tailored suits, but nothing formfitting. Of course, the FBI wasn't an agency that punished attractive women, but Maggie knew it certainly wasn't one that rewarded them, either.

Lately, however, she had noticed her suits were hanging a bit loosely on her. Not necessarily a result of that overcompensation, but perhaps from simple stress. Since July she had pushed her workout routine, going from a two-mile run to a three-mile then four, now five. Sometimes her legs cramped up, but she continued to push it. A few sore muscles were worth a clear head. That's what she told herself.

It wasn't all about stress, but rather an accumulation of things that had fogged up her mind the last several months. She had a logjam of files on her desk and one file in particular, a case from July, kept creeping back to the top of her stack: an unsolved murder in a restroom at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. A priest stabbed through the heart. A priest named Father Michael Keller who had taken up plenty of space in Maggie's head for too many years.

Keller had been one of six priests who had been suspected of molesting young boys. Within four months all six priests had been murdered, all with the same MO. In July, Keller's murder was the last. Maggie knew for a fact that the killer had stopped killing, had promised to stop for good. Maggie told herself that if you make deals with killers you can't expect to keep a clear head.

That was the dark side of the fog. On the bright, or at least the flip side of the fog, there was something—or rather someone else who preoccupied too much of her mind. Someone named Nick Morrelli.

She snatched a chocolate-frosted doughnut out from under Cunningham and took a bite.

"Tully usually beats me to the chocolate ones," she said when Cunningham raised an eyebrow at her. But then he nodded as if that was explanation enough.

"By the way, where is he?" she asked. "He has court in an hour."

Normally she didn't keep tabs on her partner but if Tully wasn't there to testify then she would get stuck doing it, and for once she was taking off early. She actually had weekend plans. She and Detective Julia Racine had scheduled another road trip to Connecticut. Julia to see her father and Maggie to see a certain forensic anthropologist named Adam Bonzado, who showed some hope of taking Maggie's mind off the e-mails, the voice messages, the flowers and cards that a very persistent Nick Morrelli had been showering her with for the last five weeks.

"Court date's been changed," Cunningham said and Maggie had almost forgotten what they were talking about. It must have registered on her face, because Cunningham continued, "Tully had a family situation he needed to take care of."

Cunningham finally decided on a glazed cruller. Still examining the box's contents, he added, "You know how it is when kids get to be teenagers."

Maggie nodded, but actually she didn't know. Her family obligations extended as far as a white Labrador retriever named Harvey who was quite happy with two daily feedings, plenty of ear rubs and a place at the foot of her queen-size bed. Later this afternoon he'd be sprawled out and drooling on the leather backseat of Julia Racine's Saab, happy to be included.

She found herself wondering what Cunningham knew. She couldn't remember her boss ever being late because of a "family situation." After ten years of working alongside him Maggie had no idea about the assistant director's family. There were no pictures on his clutter-free desk, nothing in his office to give any clues. She knew he was married, though she had never met his wife. Maggie didn't even know her name. It wasn't like they were invited to the same Christmas parties. Not that Maggie went to Christmas parties.

Cunningham kept his personal life exactly that—personal. And in many ways, Maggie had modeled her personal life after him, as well. There were no photos on her desk, either. During her divorce she never once mentioned any of it while on the job. Few colleagues knew she was married. She kept that part of her life separate. She had to. But her ex-husband, Greg, insisted it was some kind of proof, another reason for their divorce.

"How can you possibly love someone and keep such an important part of your life separate?"

She had no response. She couldn't explain it to him.

Sometimes she knew she wasn't even good at compartmentalizing. All she did know was that as someone who analyzed and profiled criminal behavior, someone who hunted down evil on a regular basis, who spent hours inside the minds of killers, she had to separate those portions of her life in order to remain whole. It sounded like a convenient oxymoron, separate and divide in order to remain whole.

She found herself wondering if Cunningham had to explain it to his wife. He obviously had been more successful at his explanation than Maggie had been at hers. One more reason she had adopted his nondisclosure habits.

No, Maggie didn't know Cunningham's wife's name or if he had children, what his favorite football team was or whether or not he believed in God. And actually she admired that about him. After all, the less people knew about you the less they could hurt you. It was one of a few ways to control collateral damage, something Maggie had learned the hard way. Something she had learned perhaps too well. Since her divorce she hadn't let anyone get close. No need to separate personal and professional if there was no personal.

"Wait." Cunningham grabbed Maggie's wrist, stopping her from taking a second bite.

He tossed his cruller on the counter and pointed inside the box. Maggie expected to see a cockroach or something as lethal. Instead, all she saw was the corner of a white envelope tucked on the bottom of the box. Through a doughnut hole she could make out bits of the block lettering. A box of doughnuts was a familiar congratulatory gift amongst the agents. That one should include a card and envelope didn't warrant this kind of reaction.

"Anyone know who brought in this box of doughnuts?" Cunningham asked loud enough to get everyone's attention but keeping the urgency Maggie saw in his eyes out of his voice.

There were a few shrugs and a couple of mumbled noes. They all went about their daily routine. This was not a shy bunch. Any one of them would take credit where it was due. But whoever had brought in the box had not stayed and that realization set the assistant director's left eye twitching.

Cunningham took a pen from his breast pocket and slipped it into a doughnut hole, lifting carefully to reveal the envelope. Maggie did think it suspicious someone would place a note at the bottom of the box where it would only be discovered after most of the doughnuts had been consumed. A sour taste filled her mouth. It was only one bite, she told herself. Then just as quickly wondered how many of her colleagues had already devoured several.

"Sometimes one of the other departments sends us down a box with a congratulations card," she made one last attempt, hoping her explanation would prove true.

"This doesn't look like a regular congratulations card." Cunningham pinched a corner of the envelope between his thumb and index finger.

"MR. F.B.I. MAN," was written in block printing across the middle of the envelope in what looked like a first grader's attempt at practicing capitalization.

Cunningham set it down on the counter gently as if it would shatter. Then he stepped back and looked around the room again. A few agents waited for the elevator. Cunningham's secretary, Anita, answered a ringing phone. No one noticed their boss, his darting eyes and the sweat on his upper lip the only signs of his growing panic.

"Anthrax?" Maggie asked quietly.

Cunningham shook his head. "It's not sealed. Flap is tucked."

The elevator dinged, drawing both their attention. But only a glance.

"It's too thin for explosives," Maggie said.

"There's nothing attached to the box, either."

She realized both of them were talking about this as if it were a harmless crossword puzzle.

"What about the doughnuts?" Maggie finally asked. That one bite felt like a lump in her stomach. "Could they have been poisoned?"

"Possibly."

Her mouth went dry. She wanted to believe their suspicions were unwarranted. It could be a prank between agents. That actually seemed more likely than a terrorist gaining access, not only to Quantico, but all the way down into the Behavioral Science Unit.

Once he made the decision, Cunningham took less than two seconds—maybe three—to untuck the flap, barely touching the envelope with a butter knife. Again pinching only a corner he was able to pull out the piece of paper inside. It was folded in half and each side was folded over about a quarter of an inch.

"Pharmacist fold," Maggie said and her stomach did another flip.

Cunningham nodded.

Before nifty plastic containers, pharmacists used to dispense drugs in plain white paper and fold over the sides to keep the pills or powder from falling out when you lifted them out of their envelope. Maggie recognized the fold, only because it was one of the lessons they had learned from the Anthrax Killer. Now she wondered if they had been too quick in simply opening the envelope.

Cunningham lifted the paper, keeping the folds intact, making a tent so they could see if there was anything inside. No powder, no residue. All Maggie saw was the same style block printing that was on the outside of the envelope. Again, reminding her of a child's handwriting.

Cunningham continued to use the end of his pen to open the note. The sentences were simple and short, one per line. Bold, capitalized letters shouted:

CALL ME GOD.

THERE WILL BE A CRASH TODAY. At 13949 ELK GROVE 10:00 A.M.

I'D HATE FOR YOU TO MISS IT. I AM GOD.

P.S.YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME.

Cunningham looked at his watch, then at Maggie. With his voice steady and even, he said, "We'll need a bomb squad and a SWAT team. I'll meet you out front in fifteen." Then he turned and headed back to his office as casually as if this were an assignment he issued every day.

CHAPTER

3

Reston, Virginia

R. J. Tully slammed on his brakes, setting off a screeching chain reaction behind him. The Yukon driver who'd cut in front of him now waved a one-finger salute before realizing he'd have to stop for the changing traffic light.

"This is not my fault," Tully's daughter, Emma, said from the passenger seat. She was holding up her Starbucks latte with two hands, the protective spillproof lid intact, not a drip spilled.

Tully glanced at his own coffee where he had left it in the console's cup holder with the lid still off from when he had put in his cream. He hated drinking out of those spillproof lids. But maybe cleaning up the car's interior would be an incentive to use them. Coffee had splashed all over including the knee of his trousers.

"Why would this be your fault?" he asked her, but he kept his eyes on the Yukon driver who was staring at him in his rearview mirror. Was he goading Tully into a game of road rage? One of these days he'd love to pull out his FBI badge and wave it at an idiot like this. Especially now that the guy was stuck waiting for the red light just like the rest of the cars he had cut off.

Tully glanced at Emma when she didn't answer. She was staring out the passenger window, sipping her latte. "Why would you say that?" he asked again.

"You know, you're late for work because you have to drop me off." She shrugged without looking at him."So you're in a hurry. But it's not my fault you're late."

"The idiot cut in front of me," Tully said, almost adding that this had nothing to do with him being in a hurry. And it certainly wasn't his fault, either. Thankfully he stopped himself. When had they gotten into playing the blame game? He and his ex-wife played it all the time, but only now did Tully realize he was taking on the same ritual with his daughter as if it were implanted in their genetic makeup, an involuntary reaction to outside stimuli.

"It's not your fault, sweet pea," Tully said. "You know I don't mind taking you to school. I'm glad to do it. I just need a bit more warning."

"Andrea got sick.You knew as soon as I knew." She shot him a look as if daring him to challenge her.

He didn't take the bait. Satisfied, Emma swiped at her long, blond hair that continually fell across her eyes. He stopped himself from saying anything.

"It's the style," she told Tully every time he nagged her about the habit. She had beautiful blue eyes. She shouldn't be hiding them. Though he didn't mention it now to avoid the eye-rolling and heavy sigh that usually followed his comments.

The light turned green. Tully eased his foot off the brake, slowing himself down. Maybe the knot in the back of his neck wasn't from the rude Yukon driver. Things had been tense between Emma and him. It was her senior year. She constantly reminded him how much stress she was under, yet all he saw was that she wanted to go have fun and hang out at the mall or the movies with her friends.

He grew frustrated with her cavalier attitude about studying, about her grades and yes, about college. And while he piled up college-recruitment catalogs on her bedroom desk she covered them with Bride and Glamour magazines, more excited about being her mother's maid of honor than landing an academic scholarship to the college of her choice.

She reminded him so much of Caroline sometimes. It didn't help that the older she got the more she looked like her mother, the fair skin, blond hair, the sapphire-blue eyes that knew almost instinctively how to manipulate him. The only thing she seemed to get from Tully was her tall, lanky figure.

He'd be glad when the wedding was over and done with. Only a week left. Perhaps he would survive. He didn't need Freud to remind him that his daughter's excitement about her mother's new marriage didn't just stick in his craw because she was ignoring her college plans.

Tully didn't begrudge Caroline getting married. This wasn't about their divorce. That had been years ago, so many years he had to stop and count them. No, it was the nagging feeling that he was losing his daughter to Caroline's new life.

Right after their divorce Caroline had sent Emma to live with him so that she could move on with no reminder of her past life. Or at least that's the way Tully played it over and over in his mind. Now everyone was excited about the wedding and just expected Tully to plod along as the everlasting bearer of stability. He hated that he was so reliable and dependable that to be anything else wasn't even a consideration.

He glanced at his watch. Reliable, dependable and late. It seemed to bother only him, especially the late part. Even when he called his boss, Assistant Director Cunningham, to leave a message that he would be late, he could hear Cunningham dismiss it, a bit of impatience in his voice that Tully would feel it necessary to call.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Emma said, bringing him back to his senses, back to the task at hand.

She'd flipped her hair back out of her eyes and was turned toward him, giving him that hopeful look of a little girl who wanted to make things right. They had been through a lot together in the last four years and she was right, it shouldn't result in this current state of animosity. Once again she was the wise one, setting him straight, reminding him what was really important. No, they didn't have to be arguing with each other and blaming each other. He welcomed a truce.

He sighed and smiled at her just as he pulled to the curb in front of her school. But before he could tell her she was right and that he loved her, she said, "I wouldn't have to depend on Andrea if you bought me my own car. It'd be so much easier."

So that's what this was about. Tully tried to keep the disappointment from his face while Emma pecked a kiss on his cheek. She scooted across the seat and was out the door, backpack in one hand, latte in the other, brushing aside any hopes he had of an actual truce.

CHAPTER

4

Elk Grove, Virginia

Maggie didn't like what she saw. The address in the note was in the middle of a quiet neighborhood of well-kept bungalows that were surrounded by huge oak trees and carefully manicured yards. The house owned by Anne B. Kellerman could be any house in any suburb in the country. Why had he chosen here?

A red bicycle with tassels on the handlebars was left in the driveway. Two houses down a gray-haired man raked leaves. A moving truck was parked at the end of the street where a woman paced the sidewalk, directing two men with a sofa.

No, Maggie didn't like it at all.

Why would anyone want to set off a bomb in a sleepy, suburban neighborhood? In the middle of the morning the only ones home were preschool children and their caregivers and a few retired people.

Is that what he meant by,

YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME?

Perhaps the bomber wanted to make a statement, targeting the innocent, the vulnerable. Did he want them to know he had no limits, no qualms? That he could and would strike anywhere? After all, they might be able to beef up security at airports, in subways and train stations, but there was no way they could patrol every residential neighborhood in the D.C. area.

"I don't like this," Cunningham said.

They were curbside in a white panel van with an orange-and-blue plumbing logo that looked authentic, but inside, three FBI techs tapped at keyboards and watched wall monitors that showed four different angles of the house in question. The cameras relaying those angles were attached to the helmets of SWAT members getting into place. A duplicate van was parked behind them. A public-utility van was a block away, waiting with a bomb squad.

Maggie readjusted a purple-flowered jacket she'd never own, but that fit perfectly over the bulletproof vest. She had found it in one of BSU's closets that housed an odd assortment of potential disguises. Unlike her copper-colored suit jacket that said, "Warning, FBI agent knocking at your door," the purple flowers hopefully would get a "welcome" nod. That is, if no one noticed the bulge of her gun.

She readjusted her shoulder harness and the Smith & Wesson in its holster. Other agents had updated years ago to Glocks, but Maggie stayed with her original service revolver. Situations like this she couldn't help thinking it didn't matter what kind of gun she used. The bulletproof vest wouldn't make much difference either, especially if they tripped an explosive device.Guys who sent invitations to law enforcement officers usually did so because they enjoyed blowing apart a few of them.

Cunningham had put in place as many precautions as he could. Unfortunately, a house-to-house evacuation was impossible. And they were running out of time.

Maggie glanced at her wristwatch: 9:46.Her eyes searched the neighborhood again—at least what she could see from the tinted back window.

He was probably here.

Watching. Waiting.

Maybe he had the detonator.

"What about the moving truck?" Maggie asked.

"Too obvious." Cunningham dismissed, without looking away from the monitors.

"Sometimes the ordinary becomes the invisible."

He glanced at her and for a second she thought it might be a mistake to quote his own words to him. His eyes darted back to the monitors but he fingered the miniature microphone clipped to his lapel and said into it, "Check the moving truck."

In a matter of seconds they watched an agent dressed in a tan jumpsuit with the same plumbing-company logo slip out the back of the van behind them. He approached the truck, checking the addresses on each house against a clipboard in his left hand. He was still talking to the truck's driver when Cunningham pointed to one of the other monitors, an impatient chess player anticipating the next move.

"Can we make out anything inside the house yet?" Cunningham asked the tech tapping the computer keys without a pause.

Maggie watched the moving truck, but glanced at the monitor that Cunningham was anxious to view. Somewhere behind the house in question, one of the SWAT-team members wore a helmet-mounted thermal imaging camera.The infrared-sensor technology could pick up body heat, distinguishing between a sofa and the person on the sofa. Hot objects appeared white, cool ones black. Anything above 392 degrees showed up in red.Firefighters used the cameras to find victims in smoked-filled buildings. Here they hoped to get a heads-up of how many people—whether victims, hostages or bombers—waited for them inside.

"Small heat source in the first room," the tech said, pointing at the screen as the first white mass glowed bright white. A few seconds later he was tapping the coordinates of the second heat source. "Maybe a bedroom. The person's lying down."

They waited, Cunningham leaned over the tech's shoulder, pushing up the bridge of his glasses. Maggie sat back where she could keep an eye on the other monitors and glance out at the moving truck. The agent waved a thank-you to the driver, but he walked around the open back of the truck, continuing his charade of checking addresses.

"Is that it?" Cunningham finally asked the tech. "Just two heat sources?"

"Looks that way."

Cunningham glanced out the window then looked to Maggie as he buttoned his jacket, a worn tweed borrowed from the same closet where Maggie found the purple-flowered one.

"Ready?" he asked as he grabbed a handful of campaign flyers and adjusted the Glock in his shoulder harness.

She nodded and scanned the neighborhood one last time.

"Ready," she said, then followed him out the back of the van.

CHAPTER

5

Washington, D.C.

Artie left the SUV in a public parking lot where the government-issued license plate would warrant little attention. He was a quick learner and he knew better than to get tripped up on a simple parking fine or traffic stop. Like Ted Bundy. The guy gets away with murder, escapes prison and then gets pulled over in a VW bug, driving after 1:00 a.m. on Davis Highway in Pensacola, Florida. An astute police officer thought the orange VW looked out of place and checked the license plate, discovering the car had been stolen in Tallahassee.

Artie knew stuff like that. Bits of trivia about killers. He also learned from it. He knew not to draw attention to himself. So he parked the SUV and walked. He didn't mind walking. He was in good shape, though he didn't work out. Practically lived on fast food, switching from one kind to another. The hotel was only a few blocks away. He arrived as the tour bus was boarding. Perfect timing.

He had taken this tour of the Washington monuments a couple of times before. It was a great way to add to his collection. He could get DNA samples from people all across the country just by riding the ten-mile tour. Last time he had been lucky enough to confiscate a long red hair from a woman wearing a Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt.

The driver collected Artie's pass and he took an aisle seat across from a middle-aged couple. They said hello to him and immediately he pegged them from the Northeast, maybe New Hampshire. It was a game he played with himself, matching dialects to places.

"Where are you folks from?" he asked, friendly enough for a response.

"Hanover, New Hampshire," both said in unison.

He smiled and nodded, satisfied.

"How about yourself?"

"Atlanta," he chose this time, always using a city too big for anyone to expect him to know their aunt or cousin. Then he opened his tour brochure and closed the conversation. That was all he had really wanted, after all, was to prove himself right.

They took the hint but he could tell they would have liked to have asked more. He could morph himself into different characters. And he could be quite charming when he wanted to be. As a result, everyone seemed to enjoy talking to him. Sometimes he allowed it. It was good practice. Sometimes he could make up the lies faster than they could ask the questions. But he wasn't in the mood today. He had other things that required his focus.

He glanced at his watch. In a few minutes the FBI would be storming suburbia, expecting a crash, and he would be miles away. Artie believed the plan ingenious even though he didn't get to participate. He could imagine the routine. They would bring a SWAT team and a bomb squad, only they wouldn't be anywhere near prepared for what they'd find. They were such linear thinkers. The fact that they couldn't see that seemed just deserts for what was about to happen.

He slid his bulging backpack on the empty seat beside him. Usually it discouraged the stragglers, the tourists who thought they'd go on the tour alone and chat up other losers traveling by themselves. Speaking of losers, one was coming down the aisle now. He recognized the wandering eyes, looking, searching for one of its kind yet scurrying to find a seat. She wore a purple sweatshirt with embroidered butterflies and faded blue jeans and carried a huge, black purse, practically a saddlebag. Artie avoided eye contact when she looked his way, pulling open the brochure and pretending, once again, to be interested though he knew the route by heart.

She slid into the seat in front of him. In the reflection of the window he could see her pull the purse into her lap and start sifting through the contents. Soon he heard the click-click of nail clippers, and found himself thinking it was the nervous energy of a straggler held in captivity.

How rude. Whatever happened to common manners? People brushed their hair in public, scratched their private areas, picked their noses and trimmed their fingernails. And of course, he actually loved it, because he had learned to use their bad habits to his advantage.

Artie grabbed a tissue from his backpack and accidentally dropped his brochure. As he picked it up with one hand, he took a swipe at the floor with the tissue cupped in his palm. He wadded it up and stuffed it in the book bag without anyone noticing the gestures or the fingernail clippings he had collected.

Then he sat back, pleased. The tour hadn't even begun and it was already quite successful, providing resources for the future. He glanced at his watch again.Yes, it was turning out to be a good day, a very good day.

CHAPTER

6

Elk Grove, Virginia

Maggie's hand stayed tucked inside her jacket, fingertips on the butt of her Smith & Wesson as the door opened. It had to be a mistake or a brilliant setup. The little girl who answered the door couldn't be much older than four, maybe five years old.

"Is your mom here?" Cunningham asked and Maggie didn't hear a trace of his surprise. Instead, his voice was gentle and soothing, like a man who had once been a father to a child this age.

Maggie's eyes searched the room beyond the doorway. A noisy TV was the main attraction, with pillows, dirty plates and discarded toys surrounding it. The place was a mess, but from neglect, not a hostage takeover.

The little girl looked neglected, too. Peanut butter and jelly with crumbs stuck to the corners of her mouth. Her long hair was a tangle that she pushed out of her eyes to get a better look at them. She wore pink pajamas with stains where cartoon characters' faces used to be.

"Are you sellin' something?" Maggie could tell it was a question she was used to asking, well rehearsed and even with a dismissive frown.

"No, sweetie, we're not selling anything," Cunningham told her. "We just need to talk to your mom."

The little girl took a glance over her shoulder, a telling sign that the mother was, indeed, here.

"What's your name?" Cunningham asked while Maggie edged closer inside.

She could see two doors, one door was open, showing a bathroom. The door to the right was closed. From what she remembered on the computer monitor, the second heat source was on the other side.

"My name's Mary Louise, but I don't think I'm 'posed to talk to you."

The little girl was distracted and watching Maggie. She wasn't as smooth with children as Cunningham and somehow kids always sensed it. Just like dogs. Dogs always seemed to be able to pick out the one person who was uncomfortable being around them, then gravitated to that person as if trying to win her over. Dogs, Maggie could handle. Children, she didn't have a clue about.

She heard the whisper of one of the FBI techs in the microphone bud in her right ear, "Nine minutes," and she glanced back at Cunningham. He touched his ear to tell her he had heard, too. They were running out of time. Maggie's gut instinct told her they should snatch up the little girl and just leave.

"Is your mom asleep, Mary Louise?" Cunningham pointed at the closed door.

Mary Louise's eyes followed his hand as Maggie slipped behind her and into the room.

"She hasn't been feeling good," the little girl confessed. "And my tummy hurts."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Cunningham patted her on the head. The distraction worked. Now Mary Louise didn't even glance back at Maggie, who tiptoed across the room, her eyes taking in everything from the People magazines scattered on the coffee table to the M&Ms spilled on the carpet to the plastic crucifix hanging on the wall. She looked for wires. She listened over the TV cartoons for any buzzing or clicking. She even sniffed the air for sulfur.

"Maybe I can help you and your mom," Cunningham told the girl who stared up at him and nodded.

Maggie could see the girl was on the verge of tears, biting her lower lip to keep from crying. It was a gesture she recognized from her own childhood and she hated that adults were evidently still using that stupid ruse that "big girls don't cry."

But it was clear Cunningham had won the girl over. She reached up and took his hand. "I think she's really sick," Mary Louise said under a sniffle with a quick swipe at her nose. Then she started leading Cunningham to the closed door.

That's when Maggie heard another whisper in her ear, "Four minutes left."

CHAPTER

7

Quantico, Virginia

R. J. Tully couldn't believe he was missing out and all because Emma didn't have a ride to school. He didn't want to think she might have orchestrated the entire event just to convince him she needed her own car. He wasn't ready to believe his seventeen-year-old daughter could be that manipulative. And he certainly wasn't ready to give in. He hated the idea of her having her own car. A car was a huge responsibility. He had a job for three years—starting at age fifteen—before he was allowed, or rather, could afford his own car. A car was a level of independence he wasn't willing to grant Emma just yet. It should be something she earned. Although he wasn't sure what she'd need to do to prove herself worthy. "How many doughnuts?" Keith Ganza's monotone brought Tully back to the FBI lab. Getting in late put him in charge of the evidence, so here he was in Ganza's glass-enclosed work space.

"I don't know," Tully said. "Does it make a difference?"

"It does if they've been tampered with." Ganza's skeletal frame with sloped shoulders was bent over the center counter as he dissected a glazed cruller.

Maybe there was something wrong with Tully because, tampered with or not, the cruller still made his mouth water. He'd had only coffee for breakfast, most of it spilled over the interior of his car, and lunch was a couple hours away. He glanced instead at a couple of white-coated scientists in the glass-enclosed labs across the hallway. Tully disliked his claustrophobic office, four floors below the earth back at BSU, but he knew he'd never be able to work here in the labs where your every movement could be observed. Each lab—the techno-term was "biovestibule"—really amounted to a glass cubicle, a sterile workstation surrounded by metal contraptions, test tubes in trays and microscopes attached to computers. The glazed cruller on Ganza's stainless-steel tray seemed out of place.

"Doughnut places don't deliver, do they?" Tully asked, thinking out loud.

Ganza looked up at him, pale blue eyes over half glasses that had slid to the end of a hawkish nose. He reminded Tully of a friendly version of a mad scientist or of a tall scarecrow wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. The cap forced Ganza's thinning gray hair to stick straight out over wide-rim ears, adding to the overall picture. His lined and haggard face registered a perpetual frown, and now he shot Tully a look that said, "You've got to be kidding," but Ganza would never say that. He knew that ridiculous questions sometimes ended up cracking a few cases.

"There might be a place in the District that'll deliver, but out here to Quantico? I'd guess, no."

"We're going over everyone who came and went this morning. So far there's been no unusual activity," Tully said.

Tully noticed that the box was plain white cardboard with no logo imprinted anywhere outside or inside.

"From the note it sounds like the doughnuts were only a means to deliver the threat," Tully said, "rather than the actual threat."

"You never know." Ganza slid crumbs from the cruller into a test tube.

Ganza was a process machine, a scientist before a law officer. He didn't decide what needed to be done, he simply did it, discounting chance, luck or speculation. For Ganza, the evidence always told the story. It wasn't just props for a story or theory already in progress.

He poured a clear liquid into the test tube, capped it with a rubber stopper and began to agitate it. Tully watched him rock back and forth on the balls of his feet as he rocked the test tube, almost like someone would rock a baby to sleep. He tried not to think of Ichabod Crane doing the Robot or he might burst out laughing. That was the kind of morning he was having.

Tully's stomach growled and Ganza raised an eyebrow at him. They caught each other glancing at the counter where the remaining doughnuts sat in their box.

"There's a tuna sandwich in the fridge. You're welcome to half," Ganza offered, nodding toward the refrigerator in the corner where Tully knew there were also lab specimens. Possibly bits and pieces of tissue and blood. It would all be contained, bagged or capped, even on a separate shelf, but still too close for Tully.

"No, thanks," he told the lab's director, trying to sound grateful instead of disgusted.

Tully had watched Ganza eat between tests and he had seen his partner Maggie O'Dell eat a breakfast sausage biscuit once during an autopsy. But Tully viewed it as his last bastion of civility that he wouldn't cross that line. There were so few in this business left to cross. At least, that's what he told others. Fact was, it made his skin crawl just a little to combine the idea of eating a meal with the blood and guts of a murder.

Tully was still thinking about his stomach when he picked up the two plastic bags, one containing the note, the other the envelope. He had used plain white paper sold anywhere from office supplies stores to Wal-Mart. The ink he used would, no doubt, test to be the same ink used in just about every ink pen. And the guy didn't seal the envelope, so no chance of salvia, no chance of DNA.

Tully had put in a call to George Sloane before joining Ganza. Sloane was Cunningham's choice documents guy ever since the anthrax case in fall 2001. Tully thought forensic document sleuthing was more luck than anything, but he didn't see any harm in letting Sloane play his magic. Of course, Tully realized that his thinking of Sloane's contribution as little more than voodoo was no different than what some people thought of criminal profiling. Both depended on recognizing behaviors of the criminal mind, which was never as predictable as any of them hoped.

Ganza had set aside the test tube and was poking around the box again. With long metal forceps he pinched what looked like microscopic pieces, and was putting them into a plastic evidence bag. He pushed up his glasses and dived the forceps in, suddenly getting excited.

"Might be his," Ganza said, showing Tully the half-inch black hair now clenched at the end of the forceps.

Tully caught himself before he winced. So much for craving any of those doughnuts.

Ganza placed the hair on a glass slide and slid it under a microscope. "Got enough of a root for DNA." He twisted the focus and swooped down to the eyepiece for a better look. "At first glance, I'd say he's not Caucasian."

"Also could be someone at the doughnut shop," Tully said.

Tully looked at the note and envelope again. "So how many people would know how to do an old-fashioned pharmaceutical fold like this?"

"He may have read about it somewhere. Could be showing off," Ganza answered.

Tully lifted the envelope and piece of paper higher so that the lab's fluorescent light shined through both. That's when he saw it, almost invisible in the corner on the back side of the envelope. Sometimes you didn't need a forensic documents expert to catch stuff like this.

" We might have something here," Tully said, continuing to hold the plastic bag to the light, waiting for Ganza to leave behind the microscope and come around the table.

"Son of a bitch," Ganza said before Tully could point out the subtle indentations on the envelope. "Bet he didn't plan on leaving that behind."

CHAPTER

8

Elk Grove, Virginia

Maggie tried to keep Mary Louise from seeing the Smith & Wesson gripped in her hand and down by her side. Cunningham moved the little girl to the corner behind him, shielding her from whatever they were about to find.

"Backup is at the front door," Maggie heard in the earbud. She avoided glancing over her shoulder. "Bomb squad is scanning outer perimeter. They're ready to go in. Are you coming out?"

Maggie looked to Cunningham.

"Negative,"he said, barely audible while he smiled at Mary Louise. The little girl was chattering to him about eating a whole bag of M&Ms which she really, really loved and was probably the reason her tummy hurt.

Maggie knew they were out of time, yet Cunningham was hesitating. She watched him scan the door frame again and again. Nothing looked out of place. Not on this side. Cunningham cocked his head as he listened for any sound behind the door. His right hand clutched the doorknob. His body kept close to the wall. His left hand stayed open and ready in front of Mary Louise like a traffic cop holding her back.

In an ambush situation they'd kick in the door, weapons drawn. But the threat of rigged explosives with hidden trip wires warranted slow and easy. Maggie knew they should let the bomb squad take it from here.

Cunningham wasn't budging. Another victim, Mary Louise's mother, was on the other side. If they picked up the little girl and ran, would it set off a panic? Was someone watching the house with a detonator, waiting for them to do exactly that?

"Ready?" he asked Maggie.

She wanted it over with. They had already wasted too much time. Yes, she nodded, and he eased the door open.

There was no click. No sizzle. No bang.

Nothing.

Except for an unnerving rasping sound. Someone inside the room was having trouble breathing.

Mary Louise swept past both of them while Cunningham grabbed and missed. She bounded up onto the bed where it looked like a pile of bedding had been dumped in the middle. The SWAT team swarmed the outside room, moving so quietly Maggie didn't even notice them brush behind her, already in the bedroom.

"Mommy, Mommy, someone came to help," Mary Louise sang out to the swaddled bundle.

Cunningham rushed over and he swooped the girl into his arms, cradling her close to his chest. But then he stopped dead in his tracks, and turned back to Maggie. There was a flicker of panic in his eyes, but his voice remained calm and soothing as he said, "There's blood."

A pause and another glance, then, "A lot of it."

Maggie came in closer. She could see only the woman's head, matted hair sticking to her forehead. She was gasping, almost a gurgle. Blood spurted from her mouth and nose onto a stained pillowcase. There was blood all over the bedding. But she couldn't see any external wounds.

Then Maggie remembered the note's warning. She realized it was too late. There was no bomb. There were no explosives.

"We may have expected the wrong kind of crash," Maggie said. Instead of relief, her stomach took a plunge.

"What are you talking about?" Cunningham tried to get a closer look while the little girl squirmed in his arms.

"Instead of a bomb squad we should have brought a hazmat team." She could feel everything around her grind to a halt. The bomb squad and SWAT team were frozen in place by her words.

That's when Mary Louise started throwing up. Her upset tummy spewed up red and green all over the front of Cunningham, spraying Maggie, too.

"Christ!" he muttered as he wiped vomit and spittle from his face.

CHAPTER

9

Quantico, Virginia

R. J. Tully watched Keith Ganza process the envelope with the indentation using an ESDA (Electronic Detection Apparatus). He remembered as a kid rubbing the side of a number-two pencil over indentations in a notepad to reveal what had been written on the page that used to be on top. He probably read how to do it in Encyclopedia Brown. He was crazy for those books when he was about nine or ten, long before he even knew what an FBI agent was or did. They had an influence. Made him realize how much he loved solving puzzles. If only Emma read something more than Bride and Glamour. He had no clue what she was interested in these days, although if text messaging became a career skill she'd have that mastered.

It amazed him how much that generation depended on computers. Kids knew how to access e-mail and create MySpace profiles, but logic and ingenuity, even puzzle solving, were foreign concepts. As Tully watched Ganza he couldn't help but think that a lead pencil would do the trick and be quicker. At least they would have known already whether there was something to process. But the expensive equipment didn't destroy the evidence. And that was important.

Ganza adjusted the light on the ESDA. He had the envelope sandwiched between the metal bed and a Mylar overlay. When he was ready he'd pour a mixture of photocopier toner and tiny glass beads over the Mylar. The machine created an electric static charge with the glass beads scattering the toner and attaching it to the indented parts of the paper, almost like inking an embossed image. At least that's how Tully understood it. With the image visible they could then take a picture of it and enlarge it.

Sometimes the images appeared to be only scribbles. But this time it looked like they had more. The envelope had definitely been underneath a piece of paper that someone had written on, pressing hard enough to leave indentations. The solution almost seemed too easy. But even criminals, especially cocky ones, got sloppy. Could they be that lucky?

"You think it's his handwriting?"Tully asked, meaning the guy who left the bomb threat."Or just some accident? Maybe someone at the bakery?"

"He'd never let the note out of his sight or put it in the doughnut box until he was ready to unload it." Ganza handled the transparency with gloved fingertips, placing it on a light box gently as though it would shatter.

He fidgeted with some buttons and suddenly the impression grew and darkened. There would be no further tests needed. The letters looked as if they had been jotted quickly, but they were easy to decipher. The note read:

Call Nathan R.

7:00 p.m.

All the periods and the colon were especially indented from extra pressure.

Tully held up the plastic bag with the original note, trying to make an amateur handwriting comparison.

"Block printing, but not all caps like in the note," he said.

"Almost as if he didn't think he had to disguise this."

"Because he didn't think we'd ever see it."

Just then Ganza's cell phone started ringing. He yanked off his latex gloves and flipped the phone open while walking to the other side of the lab. Ganza barely said hello and Tully's cell phone started chiming like a Chinese dinner bell. He'd hit the button yesterday and accidentally changed his ring tone.The damn thing drove him crazy. He was constantly screwing up settings in his search for missed calls or voice messages. And now he'd have to make up with Emma long enough to get her to fix it.

"R. J. Tully," he said after three chimes.

"We've got a problem." He recognized Maggie O'Dell's voice without an introduction.

Before she could explain the problem, Ganza was rushing across the lab, his eyes locking onto Tully's. Into the phone he said, "We can be there as soon as I get packed up." To Tully, he said, "We've got to go now, before the military gets their hands on the evidence."

"Oh, good," Maggie said in his ear. "You're with Ganza."

"What's going on?" he asked, but Ganza was headed in the other direction again, gathering equipment, the cell phone still pressed to his ear, his long strides almost wobbly like he was hurrying along on stilts.

It was Maggie who finally answered, "We've got a real mess here."

CHAPTER

10

U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases Fort Detrick, Maryland

Colonel Benjamin Platt, M.D., didn't question Commander Janklow's order. He was used to taking orders whether they included jumping out of an aircraft into the Persian Gulf while wearing full scuba gear or organizing a biocontainment team and heading out to suburbia. Although back in his jumping days he was a bit younger and much more idealistic. Still, he wouldn't question his orders. Instead, he hurried down the hallways, his stride confident, the heels of his spit-n-polish shoes clicking hard against the tiles, the only indication of nervous energy.

Platt wouldn't question the commander's orders, but he couldn't help wondering if the man might be blowing this situation out of proportion. New to his post with less than three months under his belt, Commander Jeremy Janklow was an outsider, a political appointment that most everyone viewed as a favor rather than a competent leader of USAMRIID (pronounced You-SAM-Rid), one of the most respected research facilities in the world. Platt worried that Janklow had spent too much of the last decade behind a desk. Was it possible the commander was simply looking for a crisis? A fire to put out that might boost his reputation?

One of the lab doors opened before Platt got to the end of the hallway and the stocky, bearded man who emerged waved Platt to the office next door. Neither said a word, not even a greeting, until they were inside and the door closed.

Michael McCathy slipped off his lab coat and exchanged it for a navy cardigan, cashmere and not a speck of dust on it. McCathy was older and bigger than Platt. Any signs of his long-ago days as a linebacker had been replaced by pale skin, sagging jowls, a slight paunch and tired deep-set eyes, magnified by wireless eyeglasses. Platt, on the other hand, was lean from a daily workout that included running five miles and a half hour of lifting weights. His summer tan was only now beginning to fade, his brown hair still lightened by hours in the sun coaching Little League and now soccer. Platt had a frenetic energy about him, almost a complete opposite to McCathy who always moved with slow and deliberate motions.

Even now McCathy was arranging his crisply pressed lab coat on a hanger, placing it on the coat tree in the corner as though he had all the time in the world. Platt watched McCathy's methodical gestures, each grating on his nerves. The man was obsessive-compulsive about everything. He was egotistical, and annoying as hell. Platt could only take him in small doses. But the new commander, Janklow, thought McCathy was a genius and insisted he be included in this mission.

A law enforcement dropout, somehow McCathy had ended up at USAMRIID as a civilian microbiologist, a biohazard expert, apparently content to spend his days with test tubes and microscopes, concocting and speculating terrorist scenarios that might include biological warfare.

Platt and McCathy had little in common except for a shared fascination of biological agents, particularly viruses and filoviruses. Platt had held Lassa, a Level 4 virus, in his gloved hands while inside a makeshift medevac tent outside of Sierra Leone. McCathy had been a bioweapons inspector in Iraq who claimed to have seen and handled canisters filled with biological soup. He insisted there were hundreds more just waiting for a weapons delivery system. He and his team were the last ones that Saddam Hussein threw out before the war and their testimonies were part of the argument used to go to war. Platt respected the work McCathy had done. It didn't mean he liked the man.

"I thought you said your team would be in civilian clothes?" McCathy gave Platt's uniform an up-down glance like a disapproving headmaster.

"Civilian clothes and civilian vehicles, except for the panel truck." Platt tried to contain his impatience. He didn't need to explain himself to McCathy. It'd take him five minutes in the locker to change into jeans, a T-shirt and his leather bomber jacket."They're almost ready at the loading dock. Do you have everything you need?"

McCathy nodded but now was taking off his rimless eyeglasses and cleaning them with absolutely no sense of urgency. "It'll be tight if we have to change in the truck. And slow going. Probably only one at a time with a two-man support team.You sure there isn't someplace on-site we could use for a staging area?"

Platt hated this, McCathy questioning him, second-guessing him. McCathy constantly reminded everyone that as a civilian he didn't have to take orders from anyone except his boss, the commander.

"It's residential," Platt explained, even though he'd already told McCathy this on the phone.

"What about a house next door?" McCathy asked, pulling a small bottle of disinfectant from his trouser pocket and squirting some in his hand.

"Orders are to not evacuate. We don't want a panic."

"You've got to be pulling my leg," McCathy said under his breath to emphasize his disgust. "What if it's something?"

"Then we'll be prepared to contain and isolate."

McCathy smiled at him and shook his head. "We both know that won't be enough if this ends up being anthrax or goddamn ricen."

"Evac team is on standby."

"Standby." McCathy repeated with another smile. No, this was a smirk. And Platt recognized it and the tone. McCathy used it in meetings to show his disdain for authority and for rules in general. Platt wondered why McCathy would want to work at a military research lab. He carried himself like a man with some special entitlement, smug in his cashmere cardigan, as though he was the only one brilliant enough to see incompetence, and he seemed to see it running rampant all around him.

McCathy was older than Platt and had been at USAMRIID for much longer, reasons enough in the scientist's mind to dismiss Platt. Also, as a civilian, McCathy didn't have to adhere to a rank-and-file hierarchy. It didn't make a difference to him if Platt was a sergeant or a colonel. He still wasn't going to take orders from him. To top things off, McCathy had managed to draw the attention and favor of Commander Janklow.

None of that mattered to Platt. McCathy didn't intimidate him in the least. Platt had seen things and done things that would shock the fluorescent-skinned McCathy who, outside of his stint as a weapons inspector, was used to living in his sterilized, controlled lablike world. No, men like McCathy didn't intimidate Platt. They simply annoyed him. He was in charge of this mission and he wasn't going to be lured into a pissing contest, especially with someone like McCathy.

"I'll meet you on the dock in ten," he told McCathy and he didn't wait for a response.

CHAPTER

11

Elk Grove, Virginia

Maggie had a premed background only because once upon a time her father had encouraged her to become a medical doctor. However, after a sideswiped childhood that drop-kicked her into the role of caretaker for her alcoholic suicidal mother, Maggie discovered she was more interested in what made the mind tick rather than the heart.

Still, she studied premed out of a sense of obligation to her dead father. Eventually she ended up in psychology and then forensics. Her premed training allowed her to assist at autopsies and sometimes came in handy at crime scenes. This time it helped her recognize that Mary Louise and her mother had not been poisoned. Instead, they'd been exposed.

If the threat in the note proved true, that there was going to be a "crash," then Mary Louise and her mother had not only been exposed to some biological agent but it was now trying to live inside them.

Maggie recognized the term, often used as "crash and bleed out" when military and medical personnel spoke about biological agents. The crash would come when the biological organism ended up destroying its host, and it usually did so from the inside out.

The SWAT team had recognized the term, as well. It had taken little to convince them to leave, even though they all wore gas masks and would have, most likely, been safe. At first Cunningham had ordered Maggie to leave with them. It didn't take long for her to see the realization in his eyes. There was a combination of regret and guilt, maybe a bit of fear when it finally hit him. He couldn't let her leave. He couldn't let either of them just walk out.

They agreed they had to stay out of the bedroom but only after a brief argument. Maggie knew Cunningham was right. They had no idea what they had walked into. Yet Maggie's medical training and her instinct clashed with common sense. What if there was something she could do for Mary Louise's mother? The woman's raspy breathing mixed with a rhythmic hiss and spray. It sounded like she was choking on her own blood and mucus. Maggie knew how to perform a field tracheotomy that would clear the woman's airway.

Cunningham's response was to order Maggie out of the room. When she started to challenge him, he stood between her and the sick woman and pointed toward the bedroom door. She had no choice but to turn around and leave. Cunningham wouldn't allow Maggie to help. Instead, he took Mary Louise to the bathroom to clean her up and clean himself, as well. He stopped Maggie from even following them. She knew he was trying to protect her, a valiant but useless gesture. Maggie knew that it was probably too late. Mary Louise's vomit had sprayed her, too.

For some reason memories of her first crime scene came back to her. Perhaps because Cunningham had tried to protect her then, as well. She had just finished her training as an agent after a year as a forensic fellow at Quantico. It was in the middle of the summer, hot and humid, and the inside of the double-wide trailer must have been ten to fifteen degrees hotter. She had never seen so much blood sprayed everywhere: the walls of the trailer, the furniture, the plates left out on the kitchen counter. But it was the sour smell of rotting flesh and the buzzing of flies that stayed firmly implanted in her memory.

She had thrown up, contaminating the crime scene, a newbie losing it on her first case. But Assistant Director Cunningham, who had been so tough on her throughout her entire training—pushing her, questioning her, nagging her—kept one hand on her shoulder while she retched and choked and spit. He never once reprimanded or chastised her. Instead, in a low, quiet, steady and reassuring voice he said to her, "It happens to all of us at least once."

Now here in this little house in a quiet suburb that day seemed so long ago. Maggie looked around the living room, zoning out the laugh track and sound effects of TV cartoons.

How did he do it?

She let her eyes take in everything again, only this time she tried to imagine a similar delivery system like the doughnut container. There were no pizza boxes, no take-out containers, no pastry boxes. He would have wanted it to be something ordinary, something disposable and most importantly, something unnoticeable.

There was much to learn about a killer from the victims he chose. So why did he choose Mary Louise and her mother? Maggie took in the contents of the room. The furniture was an eclectic combination: a particleboard bookcase, a flowered threadbare sofa and mismatched recliner, a braided rug and a brand-new flat-screen T V. The wooden coffee table with scuffed corners appeared to be the centerpiece of the family, holding the TV remote, a pair of reading glasses, dirty plates and mugs sitting in milk rings, crumpled potato chips, spilled bags of M&Ms, a coloring book and box of sixty-four crayons, some scattered and broken on the rug.

In the corner two stacks of magazines teetered next to a desk. A pile of mail—catalogs, envelopes and packages in various stages of opening—covered a writing desk; some of the pile had fallen onto the chair.

There were several pictures on the bookcase: Mary Louise at different ages, sometimes with her mother. One with an older couple, perhaps the child's grandparents. But there were none with a father and none with pictures that looked like a father had been cut out.

Mary Louise and her mother appeared ordinary and happy and harmless. And maybe that alone had been the sole reason for the killer to choose them.

Then something caught Maggie's eye. On the desk, sticking out of the lopsided pile of mail, was a six-by-nine manila envelope. She could see only the return address but it was enough to draw her attention. It was handwritten in block lettering, all caps, and it looked an awful lot like the lettering on the note she had just seen about an hour ago.

Maggie looked around the room again. Cunningham had already told her they would need to call in the nearest disease control and containment center. That meant Fort Detrick and that meant the Army would be taking over. Most likely they'd seal off the rooms—probably the entire house. Their first priority would be biocontainment and treatment of the occupants. Processing evidence would come later. Would they even know what to look for?

She found a box of large plastic bags with Ziploc seals in a kitchen cabinet. Back in the living room she lifted off the top pile of mail so she wouldn't have to tug the manila envelope out and risk smearing anything. Then carefully using only her fingertips she picked up the envelope by a corner and dropped it into plastic bags. She sealed it and dropped it into another plastic bag just to be safe.

She told herself she was saving the Army a bit of work. Of course they'd be grateful, but still, she tucked the double-bagged envelope into the back of her trouser's waistband, letting it lie smoothly against the small of her back. She pulled her shirt and jacket down over it, just in case they weren't so grateful.

CHAPTER

12

North Platte, Nebraska

Patsy Kowak tucked the package under her arm and examined the postage-due envelope. Roy, their mail carrier, would never hold back a piece of mail. He was good about that. But this was embarrassing. The return address was her son's office. Maybe that new assistant. Still there was no excuse. Almost two dollars due.

She slipped the envelope inside her denim jacket as she glanced down the long dirt driveway. No sense in upsetting her husband, Ward. As it was, they were barely speaking.

Patsy took in a gulp of the crisp morning air and tried to clear the tension from her mind. She listened to a distant train whistle and the cawing of crows on their way to feed in the fields. She loved this time of year. The river maples and cottonwoods that surrounded their ranch no longer hinted at fall, but were lit up with red and gold. She could smell smoke from their fireplace, a soothing scent of pine and walnut. Ward insisted it was too early to turn on the furnace, but he was good about getting the chill out of the house with an early-morning fire.

Yes, she loved this time of year and she loved her walks to the mailbox, a daily ritual that included filling her pockets with peppermints for Penny and Cedric. This morning she included apple slices for the duo. Ward grumbled about her spoiling and pampering the two horses who had long been retired, yet he was the one who brought home the three-pound bags of peppermints from Wal-Mart. Her gruff-and-tough rancher husband had a soft spot he rarely showed. It came out more often with their granddaughter, Regan, and sometimes with Patsy, and always with the animals. But hardly ever with their son, Conrad.

She shook her head remembering their latest argument about Conrad. It seemed to be the only thing they argued about anymore. The boy was a successful vice president of a large pharmaceutical company. He held a master's degree in business, owned his own condo, had access to the company's private jet, and yet, Ward Kowak would have none of it. Her husband's idea of success? Having something precious to pass on. Like this land. Like your good name.

His good name.

She shook her head at the reminder. It had only been the beginning when Conrad legally changed the spelling of his name from Kowak to Kovak. He said it was important that business associates pronounced his name correctly, and since the "w" is pronounced as a "v" sound in Polish, what did it really matter? That was their son's reasoning, his explanation. Their son with the master's degree and the VP after his newly spelled name. How could he not know something like that would hurt his father?

The name change had only been the tip of the iceberg. The sinking of the Titanic had come over the Fourth of July when Conrad announced he was getting married. Patsy couldn't have been happier. Conrad's younger sister had already been married for five years with a beautiful daughter, their angel, Regan. Even Ward softened to the boy, thinking—perhaps hoping—that it was finally a sign of Conrad maturing and settling down. That is, until they discovered the woman was fifteen years older than Conrad, divorced and already had a teenage child.

It didn't matter to Patsy. She just wanted her son to be happy. But Ward seemed to take it as another personal affront, yet another defiance by his son to somehow blacken the family name. Her husband was being childish and Patsy had told him so.

As she neared the house she found herself relieved that Ward's pickup was still gone. He muttered something over breakfast about having "some errands to run in town."

On her way up the steps she patted Festus, their old German shepherd, lounging in the patch of sunlight on the porch. The dog used to go with her on her walks to the mailbox. She didn't like to think about how much he was slowing down since his years measured her own.

As soon as Patsy came into the house she tossed the mail on the kitchen counter. Except for the package. She retrieved a pair of scissors from the junk drawer and slit open the brown padded envelope then slid the contents onto the counter.

No letter, not even a note. That was her son—Mr. Organization at work, but it didn't transfer to his personal life. He was always on the run, throwing things together at the last minute, even when he was trying to make a point. That had to be the case, since the last time they talked to Conrad, Patsy remembered Ward complaining about the hike in airline tickets as if that would be excuse enough to not attend the wedding. Money didn't matter to Ward, though Conrad believed it did. He had called his father "cheap," not understanding the difference between cheap and thrifty. This had to be Conrad's point. Why else would he send a Ziploc bag with what looked to Patsy like several hundred dollars in cash?

This was ridiculous. Her son was being just as childish as his father. She simply wouldn't allow this family feud. Instead, she'd have to stash the money somewhere so Ward wouldn't see it.

CHAPTER

13

Elk Grove, Virginia

It was too late.

Tully knew as soon as they turned onto the street. Even Ganza stopped chewing, a wad of tuna sandwich still stuffed in his mouth while he muttered, "Son of a bitch, they beat us here."

A guy with short cropped hair, an athletic frame and confident gestures waved the FBI's plumbing van away from the curb to make room for a white panel truck. Tully recognized the way the man moved, the way he held himself, a taut jawline, steady eyes that captured everything around him. He was a commanding presence and although he wore blue jeans and a leather bomber jacket, Tully knew this guy was a soldier.

"They're sending our lab techs home," Tully said, pulling his own car over to the side, a half block away.

Ganza threw his sandwich on the dashboard and started digging through his pockets. Tully stared at the sandwich crumbs scattered and falling all over his car. He remembered the coffee spills from that morning. It seemed like days ago instead of hours. Ganza was punching a phone number into his cell phone while Tully watched the soldier direct the panel truck up onto the lawn, guiding it as it backed all the way to the rear of the house. He bet this guy never had a half-eaten sandwich on the dashboard of his car or coffee stains on the upholstery.

"We're right outside," Ganza was saying into the phone. "They're sending away our van. What are we supposed to do?" Ganza's monotone didn't give away his urgency. He left that to his long, bony fingers, tapping the console between them.

Another white truck passed alongside them. This one had Virginia Water and Sewer printed in black on the sides. The truck was too white, too clean. From where Tully sat he noticed the tires showed little wear. Two men got out of the truck, dressed in white jumpsuits, logos on the pockets, polished black boots, not a speck of dirt. They started taking construction-crew sawhorses from the back and blocking off the street. Neighbors might believe the house in question had a water main break or a gas leak. That is if they didn't notice the clean boots and new tires. The old man raking his front yard stopped to watch, but Tully didn't think he looked alarmed or even interested. After a few minutes he went back to raking.

The FBI's plumbing van passed through the narrow opening between the sawhorses. It pulled up beside Tully's car and the driver's window of the van came down. Tully opened his window, too. The agent inside was familiar to Tully though he knew him only by sight and not by name. It didn't matter. He looked past Tully and over to Ganza when he said, "It's a military-slash-Homeland Security operation now. Nothing we can do about it."

"What about collecting evidence?" Ganza was still on the phone, responding to both the agent and whoever he had on the line. Tully wondered if it was possible Ganza had a direct line to the FBI director.

"Secure and protect," the agent said. "That's their priority. They're treating it like a terrorist threat, not a crime scene. And we're not invited to the party."

"But we've got two agents inside," Tully said, looking back at the house, realizing Maggie and Cunningham weren't with the SWAT team climbing into the second plumbing van. "They're still inside, right?" Tully glanced at the agent, who now looked away and rubbed at his jaw.

"Yeah, they're still inside. That's the reason Assistant Director Cunningham called in the troops." He glanced back at Tully and Ganza, who were quiet, staring and waiting though they already knew what they would hear. "They've both been exposed."

CHAPTER

14

Elk Grove, Virginia

Colonel Benjamin Platt understood that fifty percent of a biocontain-ment operation was containing the news. Commander Janklow had been quite clear. They were to take every precaution possible to keep the news media out and if that wasn't possible then Platt was to convince them this was a routine response to a routine request. He was not to use any "scary terms"—Janklow's words—that would incite a panic. Phrases like "crash and bleed," "lethal chain of transmission," "evacuation," "biohazard" or "contamination." And under no uncertain terms was he to ever use the term "exposed."

Truth was they had no idea if there was even a problem. Platt still had hopes that this was a knee-jerk reaction, someone getting a little too excited. After the anthrax scare in the fall of 2001 there had been hundreds of prank letters, attempts at fame or hopes of revenge. Platt knew there was a fifty-fifty chance this fit into that category. Somebody wanting his fifteen minutes of fame on the six-o'clock news.

Platt saw McCathy waiting for him at the back door of the panel truck, scratching his beard and frowning, tapping his foot to show his impatience. It was McCathy's turn to wait.

Finally satisfied that everything and everyone was in place, Platt knocked on the truck's back door. Within seconds a lock clicked and the metal door gave a high screech as it rolled up into its tracks. Platt had the truck backed to the rear door of the house, blocked by a privacy fence on one side and toolshed on the other. It'd be difficult for anyone to see inside the truck, and they'd have only three steps to get inside the house. The back door entered a small enclosed porch, then another door opened to the kitchen. Platt figured they'd be able to use it as a decon area when leaving.

McCathy started to climb into the truck but Platt stopped him.

"It's my mission, I go in first.You'll come in second."

McCathy nodded and stepped back. It wasn't a courtesy, it was a risk, and McCathy wouldn't argue. If anything McCathy looked relieved.

Two of Platt's sergeants, two of his best in the biohazard unit, waited inside the truck. He climbed up and pulled the thick plastic sheet down behind him to cover the open back. He started changing into the scrubs Sergeant Herandez handed him, though she averted her eyes as soon as he unbuckled his belt. She was young, he was her superior officer. In a few seconds he would be trusting her and Sergeant Landis with his life as they made certain he was sufficiently secured against a potential biological agent, and yet she seemed to be blushing at the sight of him in his skivvies. It almost made him smile.

Platt had hired twice as many women on his biohazard team than his predecessor at USAMRIID who had made it known that he didn't think women could or should work inside a hot zone because they'd panic or become hysterical. Platt knew better and ignored everything his predecessor taught him about women, but at times like this the differences surprised him, maybe even amused him. And Platt wasn't easily amused these days.

Landis held the Racal suit up, ready to help Platt into it. Unlike the blue space suits they used inside USAMRIID's Level 4 suites, the Racal suit was orange, bright orange and field designed with a battery-powered air supply that could last up to six hours.

Platt pulled on a double pair of rubber gloves and Herandez taped them to the sleeves of the suit while Landis taped Platt's boots to the legs, creating an airtight seal. The helmet, a clear, soft plastic bubble, was the final step and usually the telling one. Platt had watched men and women, brave soldiers, dedicated scientists, freak out in a space suit from claustrophobia, clawing their way out. Platt had spent thirty-six hours behind enemy lines in Afghanistan trapped inside a tank disabled by an IED (improvised explosive device), hoping someone other than the Taliban would find him while he treated his fellow soldiers, one with a gaping head wound, the other with half his arm blown off. There wasn't much that could compare to that. Entering hot zones in a cocoonlike space suit seemed like a cakewalk.

He waited while Hernandez and Landis double-checked his suit. Even before they switched on the electric blower Platt was sweating, trickles sliding down his back. The motor whirled and he heard the air sucking into the suit while it puffed out around him.

Herandez gave him a thumbs-up. It was difficult to talk over the sound of the electric blower. Platt waved a gloved hand at the tape and made a tearing motion. She nodded, understanding immediately, and started ripping off three-to-five-inch pieces then attached them one on top of the other to Platt's sleeve where he could easily reach. If there was a break in his suit he'd use the pieces to patch the hole before the suit lost pressure. Any kind of break or tear could render the suit useless in a hot zone.

It had been a while since Platt had done this in the field. The last time had been at the Miami Herald in 2001 when a letter addressed to JLo found its way to a photographer. The letter was filled with anthrax spores. The photographer died weeks later. Platt still had hopes that this wasn't anything close to anthrax. In fact, he'd be pleased with a hoax.

Finally he returned Herandez's thumbs-up. Waddling like a toddler learning to walk, he let the pair of sergeants help him out the back of the truck. He waited to get his balance. In three steps he was at the back door of the house and ready.

CHAPTER

15

Elk Grove, Virginia

When Maggie was a little girl she loved to watch old black-and-white horror movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was her favorite but she also loved Alfred Hitchcock and episodes of The Twilight Zone. As soon as she saw the man in the orange space suit walk through the kitchen door she almost expected to hear Rod Serling's voice narrating the bizarre scene.

Earlier, Cunningham had reluctantly made the call to the Army Research facility. It was either USAMRIID or the CDC, and USAMRIID was only about an hour away. Cunningham had given Director Frank of the FBI and Commander Janklow the basics, along with a layout of the residential area. All three men agreed extraordinary measures would be taken, including whatever it took to prevent a panic. Then Cunningham asked Maggie to unlock the back door to the kitchen and they waited.

They had been expecting a group from USAMRIID. Maggie had even watched the white panel truck back onto the lawn. She saw the construction crew block off the street. And yet, she wasn't sure what she had truly expected—men and women in gas masks, perhaps. Maybe surgical scrubs and gowns. But certainly not space suits.

It was just a precaution, she told herself. Of course, they had to take every precaution. But at the same time she told herself this, she also felt a bit sick to her stomach.

The man in the orange space suit didn't see her at first. It took full body movement to turn and look around. And he couldn't possibly hear her. His suit hissed and whirled to keep the pressurized air circulating. Maggie imagined it was even noisier inside the plastic bubble.

He moved slowly, deliberately, a moonwalk into the living room. The boots looked heavy. His arms stuck out, not able to rest against the puffed suit. He stood less than six feet away when he turned. She couldn't see his face through a fog of mist built up on the plastic helmet. With a gloved hand he pushed the plastic against his face and was able to smear the inside moisture away.

His eyes met hers. They were intense, dark brown and his brow was furrowed. He looked as if he was trying to decide what to say to her. The plastic started to fog up again and this time he slapped it against his face, causing a hiccup in his electric motor. The air pressure gasped, hesitated then started sucking air again. When he looked at Maggie a second time he attempted a shrug, as if to say he had no idea what had just happened. And then he did something Maggie never expected. He grinned at her. It was enough to break the tension and she actually laughed.

That's when Cunningham came into the room with Mary Louise close behind, close at his side. The little girl took one look at the spaceman and started to scream.

CHAPTER

16

Elk Grove, Virginia

Tully punched the number into his cell phone again. For security purposes he never saved numbers in his phone's memory. Or at least he wouldn't even if he knew how.

Still no answer.

After two rings it went to voice message again. He flipped the phone shut. Both Cunningham and Maggie had their phones turned off. He'd rather believe that than the alternative—the U.S. Army wasn't allowing them to answer.

It wasn't that Tully didn't respect the United States military… okay, that wasn't true. He didn't respect military officers, especially like the guy he had seen earlier, the one directing traffic, able to order and command with only a wave of a hand and a nod of the head. How many soldiers had that same officer sent to their deaths with as little as a wave of a hand or a nod of his head? Anytime Tully had worked with the military on previous operations the officers in charge took over and did so without apology or even much notice. They didn't play nice and usually they preferred to do so in secrecy. And as far as Tully could tell, they were doing the exact thing right here, right now.

Tully had moved his car to the other side of the street, still along the curb, but at an angle, so he could see between the panel truck and the back of the house. It was just a slice but enough to make out an orange field suit moving from the truck to the back door several minutes ago. And now he could see a second orange suit just blurred across the same path.

He glanced away to watch Ganza loping across the street from the construction crew, making his way back to Tully's car. Ganza wasn't much taller than Tully—maybe an inch or two—but he seemed to carry his height like it was a burden on his skeletal frame. His long, thin legs with knobby knees poking at sagging, brown trousers, skinny neck and sloped shoulders reminded Tully of a giraffe. Even his white lab coat—he hadn't bothered to leave it behind during their rush to the scene—looked like the spotted hide of a giraffe with gray-and-brown splotches where Ganza had attempted, unsuccessfully, to get out stains. When Tully first got divorced it had been a game for him to guess which men he met were married and which ones were single. Caroline would have never let him leave the house with a stain on his tie. Now stains would be a permanent part of his wardrobe if he didn't have women in his life—Maggie, Gwen, Emma—constantly wiping at his shirt cuffs,his tie,his jacket lapels.Tully guessed early on that Ganza had never been married. Not only that, he evidently didn't spend much time around women who even wiped at his stains.

Ganza opened the passenger door and slid in, slamming the door shut with more force than necessary. It was the most emotion Tully could remember the man ever displaying.

"Sons of bitches won't let us collect evidence," Ganza said in his trademark monotone, despite the slammed door."They have to isolate and contain."

Tully could have told him that before Ganza bothered to show his ID and badge to the soldiers masquerading in construction-crew clothing.

"They're right, you know." He didn't glance over to see Ganza scowl at him. He didn't need to. He could feel it. "They can't risk more people getting exposed, if there is something in that house."

"I know that. But they'll destroy whatever evidence there is. They don't know what to look for." Ganza grabbed the half-eaten tuna sandwich from the dashboard. It had been sitting there since he left it, in the sun. He took a bite and another then said with his mouth still full, "I offered to gear up and collect it."

"You mean in one of their space suits?"

"Sure, why not?"

"You ever been in one before?" Tully asked.

"Can't be much different than a gas mask." But Ganza sat back and gave Tully a long sideways look. "What? You've been in one?"

"Once. A long time ago," Tully said and left it at that.

He and Ganza weren't friends and Tully wasn't the type to share more than what was necessary, a trait Gwen Patterson constantly reminded him was—what were her words?—"rather annoying." Of course, she didn't like it. She was a psychologist by trade. She could get people to share their deep dark secrets. And if Tully wanted her to be a part of his personal life he would need to learn to share those deep dark secrets with her.

But Ganza…he didn't owe Ganza anything. Besides, Tully didn't like to be reminded of the four-hour episode that had been early on in his FBI training. It had been part of basic training back then—after all, 1982 was still the Cold War—that they should all spend several hours in a space suit, although the activity was more about breaking agents down than about biocontainment.

Tully saw something. He could see motion through the slice between the truck and the back of the house. He jerked forward, practically diving around the steering wheel to get a better look. He hoped he was mistaken. But if he wasn't, it looked as if they were taking someone out of the house and into the rear of the truck in a clear plastic body bag.

CHAPTER

17

USAMRIID

Fort Detrick, Maryland

They called it "the Slammer," and Maggie knew about it only from rumor. She would have preferred to leave it that way.

The Slammer was actually a Biosafety Level 4 containment hospital, an isolation ward within USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. The Army used it for patients suspected of having an infectious disease or of being exposed to a biological agent. Those patients, until proven otherwise, were also suspected of being highly contagious.

For the most part, Maggie understood that the Slammer was used, or ready, primarily in case any one of USAMRIID's scientists was accidentally exposed in one of the research labs. USAMRIID housed frozen specimens of all kinds of nasty organisms, viruses and diseases. At one time during the Cold War USAMRIID's chief assignment was to collect and design biological warfare. These days, as far as Maggie knew, it was solely dedicated to developing vaccines and controlling, or rather containing, any exposures or outbreaks. And after 9/11 and the anthrax scare that followed, it was also USAMRIID's job to come up with remedies for any terrorist threats that might include contaminations or deadly pathogens.

If one of their own pathologists or veterinarians or microbiologists got pricked with a contaminated needle or cut by a broken test tube or bitten by a lab monkey they had to be able to treat them. They wouldn't be able to transport them to an area hospital and risk further exposure or media. So they'd take them here, to their own hospital that they, themselves, had nicknamed the Slammer, because it was exactly that, a biological solitary confinement. Maggie realized that Assistant Director Cunningham probably had no idea that when he agreed to the Army taking control of the situation it meant committing himself and Maggie to the Slammer.

At first glance the rooms appeared to be ordinary hospital suites, if you didn't mind one of the walls being a full-glass viewing window and having double steel doors locked from the outside. Maggie suspected that she and Cunningham would each get their own room, their own solitary confinement. Mary Louise and her mother were also here somewhere. Maggie hoped they were together.

A woman in a blue space suit escorted Maggie to her room through a series of staging areas. Each had thick heavy doors. Each slammed shut behind them, but it wasn't until the last door, when the air locks sucked in, sealing the door shut, that Maggie felt a panic begin. It started slowly, quietly, ticking in the back of her mind like a heartbeat, only a heartbeat that didn't seem to belong to her. The air was different inside this room. Different from the hallway. Different from the inner staging areas they had just passed through.

Maggie told herself it was just a slight bit of claustrophobia. She'd be fine. Maybe if she told them she had been stuffed into a freezer last year by a madman, they would sympathize and let her go?

Probably not.

To be fair, the panic had actually begun earlier back at Mary Louise's house. It started when Maggie watched the two orange spacemen take Mary Louise's mother out the back door of her suburban house sealed inside a sort of bubble stretcher, what almost looked to Maggie like a plastic body bag. That's when Maggie felt her skin go clammy and sweat trickle down her back. She worried they intended to take all of them out in plastic body bags and she knew she wouldn't last a minute inside. It didn't matter that the contraption had its own oxygen supply. She would panic. She would want to claw her way out. And she had already started to feel her heart racing and her breathing start to become labored.Yes, that was when the panic started.

The spaceman, who she later learned was Colonel Platt, must have seen the terror in Maggie's eyes. He had already had to settle a screaming child and load up a sick and bleeding woman. Had he been worried that he might have another person in hysterics, clawing her way out of his expensive contraption?

Later Maggie would learn they simply didn't have enough bubble stretchers for all of them, so Cunningham and Maggie ended up getting a decon shower in the kitchen. The spray misted their clothes, their skin, their hair but didn't soak through their clothes. Her plastic bag tucked up under the back of her shirt and coat remained safely in place and out of sight, damp and sticking to the sweat of her skin. She could still smell the bleach. It seemed to stay inside her lungs, stinging if she dared to take a deep breath.

"OVERNIGHT," the woman in the space suit yelled at Maggie over the hissing of her air blower. She handed Maggie a hospital gown that had been folded on the chair. "WE'LL NEED TO KEEP YOU OVERNIGHT."

Then she motioned for Maggie to sit up on the bed while she unwrapped a plastic tongue depressor and cotton swab. She set aside a sealed syringe. "I NEED TO TAKE A THROAT CULTURE AND THEN DRAW SOME BLOOD," she shouted, mouthing and exaggerating the words slowly in case Maggie still couldn't hear her. Then showing her a specimen cup she said,"AND I'LL NEEDYOU TO FILL THIS."

Beyond the glass wall Maggie could see others watching. But the woman in the space suit must have misunderstood Maggie's misgivings and pointed to the corner where Maggie could see she, at least, had her own bathroom.

Still, she wondered if it was normal that she could hear her heart beat so loudly. How long had it been pounding this hard against her chest? There was no doubt now. This one, this heartbeat, did belong to her. She tried not to listen. She tilted her head back when the woman was ready, and opened her mouth, trying not to concentrate on not being able to swallow, to breathe, even if it was for a few seconds. The woman was good, experienced, fast. Thank God.

She bagged the swab then picked up the syringe. Maggie looked away while the needle pricked and sunk into her skin. She could see tubes and equipment along the other walls, a camera in the corner of the ceiling, monitors blinking and beeping even though they weren't attached to her yet.

The last time she was in a hospital room, shortly after the freezer incident, she remembered waking up, startled to find tubes and wires connected to her body, bags of fluids hanging above her, monitors bleeping out the rhythm of her heartbeat. She was told that another minute or two of hypothermia and the freezer would have been her ice coffin.

They had drained all the blood out of her to warm up and then put back in. She wasn't sure how that was possible. She didn't like to think about it even with her medical background. For weeks afterward she had nightmares about the procedure. Otherwise she remembered little about the entire ordeal, except for the cold, the panic, the claustrophobia, all of which culminated in an overwhelming exhaustion.

The woman in the space suit capped one tube of blood and began to fill yet another, Maggie focused on the window. At least it wasn't a one-way view. She could see the faces on the other side. There were four, maybe five people, punching keyboards, watching monitors, computer screens. All were occupied except for one. One who must have just joined them because she hadn't noticed him until now.

He stood close to the window, watching her. Having someone she recognized calmed her even if he did have a furrowed brow and worried eyes. She released a sigh and realized it was almost as if she had been holding her breath.

She smiled at R. J. Tully and he gave her a stiff wave, his face lined with concern. She remembered the envelope, double-bagged and swaddled, carefully hidden within her neatly folded jacket. She'd have to find a way to get it to him. But for now she mouthed to him, because she knew he'd never be able to hear her through the thick wall of glass, "Harvey. Please check on Harvey."

He simply nodded.

CHAPTER

18

Reston, Virginia

Emma Tully pulled out the letter from the yellowed envelope. At first, the stack of envelopes that were gathered together with an orange rubber band had grabbed her attention because the top one, this one, had a twenty-cent stamp with a woman's picture: Ethel Barrymore. She'd never heard of Ethel Barrymore before. Perhaps she was Drew's grandmother? It didn't matter. What caught Emma's attention was that she couldn't believe stamps had ever been twenty cents.

She wondered if the stack of envelopes had long been forgotten. She had found them the last time she stayed at her mom's house in Cleveland. The bundled stack was stuffed in the back drawer of the guestroom bureau. Forgotten perhaps, but important enough to save. And her mom was definitely not the pack-rat type. The letters were even kept in chronological order. Again, not something her mom would do unless these were special.

Emma didn't know anyone who even wrote real letters anymore. This was a treat. Especially if Emma's suspicions were true. Were these old love letters her dad had written to her mom before they were married? That was like awesomely romantic. It was like taking a peek into a part of her own history.

She settled back into her pillows.

August 26, 1982 Dear Liney,

I got in last night around eight. Yes, safe and sound. You didn't need to worry. Although now I can admit I was a little rattled about flying. I know I told you it didn't bother me and I know I'm right about the odds of two major crashes happening within a couple months of each other. It's just not going to happen. But for a few minutes when I sat in the plane while we were still on the tarmac at O'Hare I did think about all those burning body parts blown all over that New Orleans neighborhood. I just told myself that I'm going to be the guy who investigates what went wrong.

You should see this place. Quantico's like a whole little town hidden inside a pine forest. I guess I expected military barracks or something.

I found my room at the dorm. Three guys to a room and they're not big rooms.But that's okay. The other guys don't seem too bad.Hey, we all want to be feebies, so we've got that in common.

It's funny, because almost immediately we assigned each other nicknames. That's not entirely true,"Razzy"came with his and thought we all needed one, so Reggie's J.B. because the guy eats jelly beans like his life depended on it. Seriously, he brought his own bag. I think it's a three-pounder. He says President Reagan eats them, too. I don't know if that's true or not. I picked up the latest Time at the airport because they had an interview with Reagan. They didn't mention anything about jelly beans. Just about the recession and him riding horses with the queen. But hey, if he eats jelly beans that's kinda cool.

Oh and my nickname—bet you'd never guess. It's Indy. Yeah, okay, obviously because I'm from Indiana. These guys have no clue where Indiana is, let alone Terre Haute.

I know I told you once that I hate nicknames. You remember that, right? Mostly because as a kid my dad called me "dimwit"or "klutz."Stupid stuff like that. But I don't mind this nickname. I actually like it. It reminds me of the movie, you know, Indiana Jones. That was the second movie we saw together last summer, remember? Of course you remember. How could you forget, right?

So anyway, I kind of like the idea of being associated with a guy who carries a whip and wins the girl with very little effort. That's definitely more my style than klutz. More my style than what my dad had in store for me. He was still going off on me this morning about deserting the family business. Hey, I even look a little like Harrison Ford, don't you think? Besides, Indiana Jones, Indy is definitely more in line with what I have in mind for myself.

Yeah, Quantico is only the beginning of my brilliant career. I've got big plans.

Until next time.

Yours truly,

Indy

Emma pulled out the next one but stopped when she heard the front door. Footsteps marched directly to her bedroom. What now? She swooped up the letters and stuffed them under her bedcovers, just as the knock came.

"Hey, sweet pea," her dad called. There was no anger. She sighed in relief. "I have to do a favor for Maggie.You want to go for a drive with me?"

Normally she'd groan and make some excuse. But tonight she didn't mind. Maybe she was curious to see if she could notice any trace of Indiana Jones.

CHAPTER

19

Razzy's

Downtown Pensacola, Florida

Rick Ragazzi closed out the cash register, slamming the tray, hoping his partner, his cousin Joey, would take the hint. He couldn't seem to get Joey to understand that this was a business not his private haven to entertain guests. Tonight Joey prepared crème brûlée, on the house, for a group of six who'd stopped by after the Saenger Theatre's evening production up the street. It would have been an okay gesture for a party of six who maybe had dropped several hundred bucks on dinner, but this group had ordered only coffee.

"What? No dessert?" Joey had joked, stopping at their table during his usual stroll to greet the guests while his kitchen staff cleaned up for the night. He asked their head waitress, Rita, to pour more coffee for the group while he headed back to the kitchen. Within minutes he returned, presenting his creation. He had them laughing and applauding. Cousin Joey, the chef, was no better than an actor, craving and demanding attention, then lapping up praise.

They were so different from each other that sometimes Rick wondered how they could be related. Of course, it was those differences that made them such good partners. Rick had the head for business. He was a numbers guy, an operations whiz. He had calculated salaries, overhead, product cost and was able to come up with a plan, complete with projections, net earnings and profit margin. But it wasn't because of his thrifty spending and efficient management that they were able to post a profit after only eight months in business. Even Rick knew it didn't matter how brilliant his business plan would be without his charming cousin, the award-winning chef. At twenty-four Joey was a culinary magician or at least, that was what Gourmet magazine had called him.

People came to the restaurant the first time out of curiosity. They returned over and over again because they liked the food. And that was all Joey. Rick made sure the staff was well trained, courteous and prompt. But he couldn't poach an egg or filet a piece of fish to save his soul. He looked down at his hands, nicks and cuts in various stages of healing. The most recent reminder was a cut on his index finger from attempting to help chop vegetables. Joey was definitely the talent, the product. Rick was simply the manager.

Their success got a boost from trendy spring breakers and summer tourists. Now came the tough part. They'd need to hold on until they entered the holiday season. September had already shown a slowing down. October would be the hardest. And just yesterday their main refrigerator, the expensive monster that Joey insisted they had to have, had started freaking out on them. Of course, the warranty expired last month and the repairman claimed it needed a whole new compressor—seven hundred dollars they hadn't planned for.

Rick watched Joey with his audience. It was hard to stay impatient with him. When they first started setting up the place Rick suggested they replace the kitchen wall with glass so diners could watch Joey perform. Turned out to be too expensive, so they put it off. Otherwise they would have done it. Rick was used to Joey being the center of attention. He really didn't mind. Sometimes he joined in and played Joey's straight man. As kids they actually did bits at family gatherings with Rick doing the setup and Joey getting the punch line. Everyone thought it was cute because Rick was a couple years older and bigger, a bit taller, back then.

As teenagers they were each other's best friend. During the summers they chased girls together on Pensacola Beach until Rick finally admitted he really didn't like girls all that much. Even that admission had been something they worked through together, with Joey being the first one to say it wasn't that big of a deal. It just meant less competition for him.

In college, Joey studied culinary arts, and Rick, business management. Opening a restaurant together seemed a no-brainer for both of them. But keeping it open would perhaps be a miracle. Especially since they had no silent partner, no rich beneficiary or obligated family members.

Rick's family wasn't interested and Joey refused to accept help from his father. Rick wasn't sure why Joey was being so stubborn. Uncle Vic, at least, wanted to help and unlike Rick's dad, Uncle Vic had never called Rick "a queer" or told the two they'd "never make it." Hard to believe the two men were brothers.

Rick had honored Joey's wishes. But Joey had no idea how much it cost to run things each month, each week. Rick knew their meager summer profit would never get them through a slow winter. If they had to close the doors any one of the area's restaurants would snatch up the opportunity to have Joey Ragazzi. But Rick? What would he do? Get a job at one of the local accounting firms?

Hell, this was his one chance. So when the envelope from Uncle Vic came about a week ago—to Rick, not Joey—he decided not to tell Joey, but not to send it back, either. Made sense. Even Uncle Vic understood his son wouldn't take his help, but maybe his cousin would. There was a thousand dollars in cash. Rick had counted it twice then put it back inside the sealed Ziploc plastic bag it came in.

He justified his secrecy by telling himself a thousand dollars wasn't enough to make or break them. It wasn't a big deal. And yet this week with the refrigerator compressor going out, a thousand dollars could change everything.

CHAPTER

20

Newburgh Heights, Virginia

R.J. Tully mashed cooked carrots into the stainless-steel bowl. He knew the routine and in case he forgot, Maggie had instructions on a laminated note card attached to the inside cupboard door. His partner rarely asked favors and the few times she had all involved taking care of Harvey.

He looked out the kitchen window at the white Lab catching the glow-in-the-dark Frisbee each time, no matter how wild of a throw Emma sent him. Tully shook his head. She'd never been good at athletics. Maybe his fault. Their father-daughter sports outings included a remote and recliners more often than a glove and a baseball.

He pushed up his already folded shirtsleeves and added dry dog food to the bowl. Then he stirred in the mess of carrots. He was glad he had stopped and picked up his daughter. She had a special connection with Maggie's dog, Harvey. He liked watching them together.

Being with Harvey was one of the few times Emma let her guard down. She could run and laugh and be silly with the dog. Tully felt like he was seeing a snapshot in time, a time not that long ago, and it reminded him of that ache—half awe, half protectiveness. He used to get that feeling just looking at her when she was a baby and then a toddler. He'd catch himself watching her and shake his head in disbelief that he was a father of such a beautiful, smart and funny little girl.

"How about putting on a sweatshirt?" he yelled out the back door.

She ignored him. He expected it despite his reminiscing. He'd give them a few more minutes before he let Harvey know his dinner was ready.

Tully filled the water bowl and cleaned up the counter. The kitchen was huge. The house, the backyard, the property was huge, especially compared to Tully's two-bedroom bungalow in Reston. He understood Maggie had bought the place in this prestigious neighborhood with some sort of trust her father had left her. She kept the house nice and simple but classy with a few scattered pieces that made it feel like a home. The place seemed sparse, again, perhaps only compared to his messy, overflowing bungalow.

Still, he knew the house and décor had little to do with why Maggie had bought this property. The purchase had more to with the natural barrier of the river that ran behind the house and the privacy fence surrounding it along with the state-of-the-art security system.

Tully looked around the well-stocked kitchen and wondered if Maggie ever cooked. Her best friend, Gwen Patterson, was a gourmet cook, just one of her many talents that Tully appreciated. They'd sort of been seeing each other officially for several months. Though he wasn't quite sure if she'd agree their relationship was "official." They hadn't really declared it as such and he had no idea what criteria had to be met to make it official. Maybe it was just in his own mind. He hadn't been with another woman since his divorce from Caroline. Gwen thought he was doing her a favor by letting them take things slow. Tully let her believe the favor was one-sided. It seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do. Fact was, anything more serious scared the hell out of him.

"He's hungry." Emma came racing in with Harvey wagging behind her. She didn't wait for Tully. She grabbed the bowl off the counter and presented the food to Harvey, making him go to his designated eating place, telling him to sit and then setting the bowl down.

Yes, she sure did remind him of when she was little, bright eyes and lopsided grin, sitting on the floor next to the dog with knees up, one pink scar showing through the threadbare denim. She looked…happy. Amazing that a dog could do what a father couldn't.

"Is Maggie okay?" she asked.

The question surprised Tully. For one thing it was a grown-up question and he was reminiscing about his little girl. Also Emma rarely asked about anyone unless it somehow concerned her. She wasn't rude, she was just a teenager. That stage where everything and everyone in the world either didn't exist or existed only to revolve around them.

"She'll be okay," he said. And he knew that was true, despite her panic. Actually Maggie had been good at hiding her panic. No one else probably saw it. He almost wished he hadn't. It didn't seem natural to see Maggie vulnerable.

"So what's up with the special delivery?"

Emma pointed to the bouquet of flowers they had found wrapped neatly in tissue and left at Maggie's front door. It looked to Tully that the local florist knew exactly where to tuck them on the portico, safe from the wind and drive-by viewers, as if the florist was used to delivering to this address. Tully knew Maggie had been getting flowers at Quantico, too. And although she didn't explain or comment, he gathered that she wasn't too happy about the deliveries, but at the same time she didn't seem distressed.

Women. Sometimes Tully thought he'd never figure them out.

"A secret admirer," Tully told Emma.

"Oh, so she's not, like, sick and dying or something?"

"No. God no," Tully said before he caught himself. Then he smiled, trying to defuse any indication in his voice that might have said otherwise. He hoped that wasn't the case, that she was seriously sick. Of course that wasn't the case.

"You said she'd be gone overnight?" Emma wanted to know.

"Yeah, she'll be back tomorrow." He hoped that was true.

"We're not going to leave Harvey here by himself all night, are we?"

"He'll be okay, sweet pea. He's stayed here by himself before." But she didn't look convinced. She was petting him as he licked up the last remnants, orange bits of carrot stuck to the black part of his nose.

"If we take him with us it'll save us a trip in the morning to feed him."

She gave him that look, that "pretty-please" look.

"And tomorrow's Saturday," she said."I'll stay home and watch him."

"What if your friends call?" He knew she hadn't thought this out. Emma? Home all day on a Saturday? Tully was sure it'd take more than a dog, even a dog she adored, to keep her from hanging out at the mall or going to a movie on a precious Saturday.

"I'll just tell them I can't. That we're doing a favor for a friend. They'll understand. That's what you do for friends, right?" She gave Harvey's neck a hug and the dog's tail thumped against the wall. "And Harvey and I are buds, right, Harvey? Besides, I don't have school on Monday either. Fall break, remember?"

He liked the idea of having Emma home, though he'd have to see her actually stay home for three days in order to believe it. Next weekend was the wedding and she'd be distracted and gone. But she was right. If they needed to come back it was a forty-minute drive from here to their home in Reston. Tully was pretty sure Maggie would not be released tomorrow, probably not all weekend. He only hoped she didn't realize that.

"That's kinda cool," Emma said and Tully had no idea what she was talking about until she pointed to the flowers again. "It's sweet, you know, to have someone send you flowers." Then she sideswiped him with her follow-up, "Did you ever send flowers to Mom?"

Tully's cell phone interrupted before he could answer.

Saved.

He shrugged an apology as he glanced at the phone number but it wasn't one he recognized.

"Agent Tully."

"So what do you have for me?" a man's voice bellowed.

"Excuse me?"

There was dead air for a few seconds then, "This is Sloane, for Christ's sake.You called me, remember?"

Tully had left a message for George Sloane earlier in the day. He hadn't worked with Sloane for a while and had almost forgotten about his brusque, rude "why are you bothering the mighty Oz?" manner.

"And I appreciate the quick call back," Tully said, getting in his own dig, although he already knew Sloane wouldn't catch it or acknowledge it. Actually it was a cheap dig, really sort of beneath Tully, but something about George Sloane always brought out the worst in Tully. "Assistant Director Cunningham would like your expert opinion on a special delivery we had this morning."

"So why isn't Cunningham calling?"

Tully suppressed a sigh and shook his head. It wasn't about protocol with Sloane. It was about entitlement. If prodded he would insist he was important enough to be asked by the top-level people, not a "grunt like Tully."

"He's a bit tied up right now," Tully said and was reminded that he hadn't been able to talk with his boss since morning. He had tried to see Cunningham at USAMRIID. They wouldn't allow it. Seeing Maggie was grudgingly allowed and even then as a sort of consolation prize. He hadn't been able to reach Cunningham by phone, either.

"How soon could you take a look?" Tully asked.

"I've got time right now."

"Tonight?" Tully saw Emma flinch at the word and wondered how many times he had left her to make her involuntarily flinch at the interruption. "Where are you?"

"Here at the university."

Tully watched Emma shove dog food into a plastic container. She was pretending to not listen in. "He'll need more than that, Em," he told her. She nodded and started searching the kitchen pantry.

"Oh, I see," Sloane said and Tully could hear the smirk. "You have a hot date. I understand."

"Emma is my daughter, George."

"Of course, your daughter, Emma. How old is she now? She must be in high school."

"This is her last year," Tully said and caught Emma rolling her eyes at him. She hated when he talked about her.

"I have a class at Quantico tomorrow morning at nine. My forensic documents for dummies in law enforcement. I can take a look at Cunningham's stuff before class while the retards are finding their seats."

Though Sloane was being his snide self Tully was surprised to have him compromising without a challenge. The two of them went back a lot of years and Tully could count on one hand the times George Sloane had cut him some slack. It felt like this time might be because of Emma.

"That'd work great. Thanks, George."

"I'll see you in the morning."

Tully closed his cell phone and turned to find Emma staring at him, waiting.

"I'm not going anywhere tonight except home with you, sweet pea," he told her.

She rolled her eyes like it didn't matter, but the smile was genuine. Harvey, however, was the one who got the hug.

"Help me shut off some of these lights."

Tully flipped the backyard switch and headed to the entryway to reset the complicated alarm system. He passed a side window and noticed a car parked up the street. He shut off the nearest light and backed up enough to glimpse out the window again, this time without being seen. In this neighborhood with circle drives and houses set back off the street no one parked on the street. Especially at this time of night.

CHAPTER

21

Artie heard the monkeys down the hall, screeching again. It was late and whoever was supposed to feed them had probably forgotten or figured no one would notice on a Friday night. Assholes. And no one would notice. No one ever came down here on weekend evenings. That was exactly why he was here. The place was quiet and he didn't have to worry about anyone walking in on him, wanting to know what he was doing.

He decided if the monkeys were still screeching when he was ready to leave he'd use his key card and at least throw them some biscuits. They were sneaky little bastards and Artie didn't like being around them. They reminded him of little old men with bright eyes and beards and they looked at him like they knew something he didn't know. He couldn't explain what it was that gave him the creeps. He didn't trust them but he did feel sorry for them. He couldn't imagine being stuck in a cage all day, depending on someone else.

Artie let the monkeys screech at his back as he walked all the way to the opposite end of the hall. The door had a metal sign attached that said: QUARANTINE in red letters. He used his key card and let himself in to the small deserted lab. No one used it anymore except for storage.

They used to keep sick, contaminated monkeys in here while they tested them. He wondered if they'd made the monkeys sick just so they could do their tests. That's what they were doing with the ones down at the other end of the hall. But the ones that occupied this little lab had been different. He wasn't sure how. No one talked about it. Probably because every single monkey ended up dying.

Ever since then, the lab remained unused, untouched. The monkeys' cages still lined up against one wall. It was as if whatever happened here was beyond repair. At least everything had been washed down and sterilized. The smell of bleach lingered, helped along by Artie's recent contributions. He thought it was silly that science-minded people, logical thinkers, would be superstitious.

That made him smile.He actually liked that people—even scientists— were so predictable. In fact, that was one of the things he could pretty much count on. It didn't matter what social class, what background and upbringing, what occupation, there were basic factors like greed and suspicion—even superstition—that everyone had a small dose of.Like it was engineered into human DNA. And Artie freely admitted that he included himself.Yeah, he was a little superstitious. It certainly didn't hurt to be a little. If he did something a certain way and good things happened, then he repeated those steps. Maybe that was more of a ritual than superstition.

He wrestled out of his gray hoodie and slung his backpack onto the long, narrow stainless-steel table that took up the middle of the room.

Behind him were floor-to-ceiling cabinets. He wiped his sweaty palms on the front of his baggy T-shirt then twisted the combination of a padlock on one of the cabinets.

He began his ritual, taking out everything he needed: a gallon jug of bleach, latex gloves, a surgical mask, goggles, a tray of surgical utensils and a box of Ziploc plastic bags. From his backpack he pulled out a small box and snapped it open.

This was the part he still hated. He carefully removed the loaded syringe and took off the cap. He knew the vaccine was as good as liquid gold and worth a small fortune on the black market. At least that's what his mentor had said when he told Artie to use it sparingly. He clenched his teeth, made a fist and stuck the needle into his arm.

Artie put on the surgical mask and goggles, then two layers of latex gloves. He always put them on in the same order—call it superstition, ritual, whatever—it worked every time. Again from his backpack he brought out the plastic bag with fingernail clippings he had snatched from the tour-bus floor. He also laid out two mailing envelopes with the labels already attached. The block lettering looked perfectly amateurish, almost childlike. Perhaps the person at Benjamin Tasker Middle School who would receive one of the packages would even think that it was sent from a student.

Finally ready, Artie went to the old chest freezer that rumbled in the corner. He worked the combination to the padlock on its door. He swung open the lid and made himself look at the dead monkey wrapped in clear plastic, lying on its back with arms and legs flaying, locked in place and looking as if the monkey were trying to claw its way out. Artie avoided its eyes. Even frozen, the little bastard gave him the creeps. He grabbed a plastic bag from the side of the freezer and shut the lid, worked the padlock back into the handle, made the lock click.

He tossed the bag from hand to hand, a frozen glob, a Popsicle of blood and tissue. All he needed was a sliver.

CHAPTER

22

Newburgh Heights, Virginia

Tully climbed over a dark corner of Maggie's privacy fence without much effort or sound. He was tall, long-legged and still in good shape if you didn't count a bum knee. Of course it helped that there was an air conditioner unit he could use as a step up. On the other side he slinked down and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He glanced back at Maggie's house and hoped Emma was following his instructions, packing Harvey's leash and toys and not looking out back to see what exactly her father thought he needed to check on.

Worrying about Emma reminded him of Caroline. When he first met Caroline she seemed enamored of his career choice. It wasn't until years after they were married and after Emma was born that Caroline pushed for him to get out of the field, stay home more, quit jumping fences and stop hunting killers.

"What about teaching?" she had asked over and over again.

Ironically, just as he managed to get the ultimate teaching job—or at least, Quantico was the ultimate FBI teaching job for him—Caroline decided she wanted a divorce. She had countered his travels with travels of her own as the CEO of a large advertising agency. And what he believed had been requests for the safety of their daughter—him getting out of the field and out of killers' radar—had really been some strange, selfish jealousy. She wanted the adventure and not the responsibilities that came with being a parent.

Instead, it was Tully who constantly worried that his job could and would put Emma in danger. She had been on the cusp before. To o close for comfort. And so was this.

Tully didn't like prowling around while Emma was only yards away. But if someone was watching Maggie's house Tully needed to find out why. Was it possible that the same guy who sent Maggie and Cunningham to the Kellerman house was now outside Maggie's home? Maybe Tully and Emma had interrupted his plans.

Tully kept to the outside fence line, staying in the shadows. The few streetlights were decorative ironwork with faint yellow globes, another perk of the prestigious neighborhood with expensive alarm systems and false security. Tully had already figured out the route he needed to take so he could approach the car from behind. Along the fence, beside the evergreens and directly out to the street, hidden the entire time by shadows and branches.

He tucked his hand inside his jacket, wrapping his fingers around the butt of his Glock. Then he stood up straight and walked casually past the last set of bushes, coming to the trunk of the car, rounding it quickly and pulling out his gun. He had his Glock pressed to the car window with his badge flapping beside it before the driver even looked up at him.

By the time the man rolled down the car window Tully was already shaking his head and holstering his weapon. "What the hell are you doing, Morrelli?"

CHAPTER

23

Saturday, September 29 The Slammer

Midnight came and went but time dragged on. Maggie channel surfed. She asked for a novel, a newspaper or any current magazines, maybe a pen and notepad. The woman in the blue space suit said she'd see what she could find, but when she arrived again she had only another syringe to draw more blood.

The faces on the other side of the glass came and went, too. There were fewer as the night grew longer. They had taken her cell phone but allowed her access to a corded phone inside her room. They told her, without apology, that all her phone calls would be monitored then "reminded" her—though it sounded more like a reprimand than a reminder—that she was not to talk about what had happened or mention anything regarding her whereabouts. "Whereabouts," that's what the woman in the blue space suit called it.

Earlier Maggie had made two calls. The first she had to leave a voice message, knowing the call wouldn't be able to be returned. She told her friend, Gwen Patterson, that she'd be okay. "Talk to Tully," Maggie said, hating that it sounded so mysterious when she really just wanted to let her friend know that she shouldn't worry.

The second call was to Julia Racine and the detective picked up after only one ring. It was less than an hour before the two were supposed to leave for their weekend road trip to Connecticut.