Flood Rising

24

Jenna stared at the journal, not moving, barely breathing. None of what she had endured — not the explosion, the repeated attempts on her life, the crash or the brutal fight that had ended with her killing a man — had hit her as hard as the revelation contained in Noah’s journal.

That baby was me. He took me from the arms of that dead woman.

“I was three months old,” she whispered. Yet, even that was something of which she could no longer be certain. Her birthday was just another fiction, invented by the man that had called himself her father.

He killed my parents, abducted me and raised me as his own daughter. It’s all a lie.

“Jenna?”

She felt Mercy’s hand on her arm, a concerned but tentative touch. Mercy had read every word.

“He’s not my father,” Jenna whispered, the revelation weakening her knees and pulling tears into her eyes. “He never was.” She remained standing only because of Mercy’s steadying grip. “Jenna’s probably not even my real name…” She looked Mercy in the eyes. “Did you know?”

“No. I had no idea. But, honey…” Mercy faltered. “This doesn’t change how he felt about you.”

Jenna felt rage building in her chest. “How can you say that? He kidnapped me.”

“Jenna, you know that’s not what happened. He saved your life.”

“Saved? He destroyed my life.” Yet, even as she said it, part of her knew it wasn’t true. Nathan Flood, wasn’t Noah’s real name any more than ‘Papa’ had been or Noah was now. Mercy had been right. Noah was some kind of special government operative. Probably CIA. He’d been sent to destroy a secret research base. Had been ordered to kill everyone, not realizing that ‘everyone’ included an infant girl. Unable, perhaps unwilling, to carry out such a cold-blooded execution, he had instead concocted a way to save the baby’s life, spiriting her away from the island, and then dropping out of sight. He had led a fictitious life as a widowed charter-boat skipper raising his daughter all alone.

In her heart, she saw it for what it was: an act of mercy. But an unforgivable act of mercy, if there was such a thing. His sudden attack of conscience hadn’t prevented him from murdering everyone else in that compound. The nurse that had been holding her. Her real parents. Had they been sleeping upstairs when Noah had taken their daughter away and hid her in the forest?

She now understood why Noah never permitted her to ask about her mother, why he had actually preferred that she call him Noah instead of Daddy, Father or, God forbid, Papa.

She was so angry that she almost missed the absence of the one thing she had been looking for — an explanation for why someone was trying to kill her.

She wiped a forearm across her eyes and cleared her throat. “We need to talk to this Cort guy.”

Mercy nodded slowly.

Jenna looked back at the silo. She could almost feel the residue of Noah’s presence there, but now every memory she had of him was different. She banished the thoughts as she had banished her tears. People were probably still trying to kill her, and that was something with which she had to deal. The mystery of her own past would have to take a backseat, though her intuition told her that Bill Cort might know a thing or two about that, as well.

She ventured out onto the metal plates and knelt beside the lifeless sack of meat that had once been Carlos Villegas. She wondered if she should say something—good riddance or enjoy your stay in Hell—but what was the point? Instead, she contented herself with a single acquisition: his pistol.

It was different than Mercy’s gun, the one she had lost in the wreck. It was a semi-automatic, but bigger and noticeably heavier, made completely of metal, and lacking the unusual split-trigger mechanism. As she inspected it, Mercy walked over and put her hands on it without attempting to take it away.

“This is the safety,” she said, touching a swivel catch at the back end. She indicated a little red dot. “When you see red, it means it’s ready to fire.”

Jenna nodded, and then carefully worked the safety until the red dot was covered up. She had a lot more questions but this was neither the time nor the place. She stood and made a silent promise to do some more Internet research at her next opportunity. “Let’s get out of here.”

Without another look back, they headed for the exit. As they passed the Villegas brothers’ car, high beams still blazing, Mercy opened the door and leaned inside. Jenna saw another car parked behind it — Mercy’s car. A moment later, the headlights went out and the only remaining source of light was the car’s dim overhead dome light. Mercy closed the door and the light faded away, plunging them into darkness.

But not total darkness. Although the sky was overcast, blotting out the stars, a silvery blob marked the location of a waxing gibbous moon. To the northwest, there was a faint yellow glow, like distant city lights.

Jenna’s eyebrows came together in a frown. Homestead lay to the northeast, and was surely too far away to appear so bright.

The glow grew brighter. Jenna felt her guts knot with dread. “Mercy. Someone’s coming.”

25

Mercy peered out across the dark landscape. “Did they—” She jerked her head back toward the building and the Villegas brothers still inside, “—call some friends?”

Jenna shook her head. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem like their style. But it doesn’t matter. We can’t let anyone find us here.”

“There’s only the one road leading out.”

Jenna focused on the problem. They were in the middle of the Everglades — alligator country — and the paved, dry road was the only safe route to freedom. If even a fraction of the things she’d heard about the vast marsh were true, attempting a cross-country journey, on foot and in the dark, was suicidal. Okay, she thought. What are the other options?

None. They had to drive out. It was the only way. But to do so, they would have to get past the approaching car without being seen.

“Mercy, start your car but keep the lights off. Pull around behind the shed, where they won’t see you, and wait for me there.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No time to explain.” Jenna wheeled around and ran for the other car.

She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, feeling the press of the journal and Carlos’s cell phone in her pocket. She laid the gun on her lap and turned the key. The engine came to life, the dashboard lights dimming as the partially drained battery tried to supply the power needed to turn the motor over, but then it caught and a low murmur filled Jenna’s ears. She located the switch for the headlights and turned them on, flipping on the high beams. Light filled the interior of the building once more, revealing the debris-strewn floor and the carcasses of her tormentors. She put her foot on the brake, exactly as she had learned in the Driver’s Ed class Noah had made her take, and shifted into ‘drive’. She let up on the brake, allowed the car to roll forward through the opening and then stopped.

That was as far as she needed to go. She shifted back into ‘park’ and got out, leaving the lights on and the door open. As she moved back out of the building, she checked to make sure she still had the journal and the gun, and then she ran through the darkness toward the edge of the building, where Mercy was still moving her car out of sight.

Jenna turned the corner of the building and gestured for Mercy to hurry. The approaching glow was much brighter now. She figured they had only a few seconds left before the unknown visitor rounded the corner for the final approach to the silo building.

“Is this good?” Mercy called.

Jenna nodded. “Keep it running but no lights.”

“Aren’t you going to get in?”

Jenna knew that was what she should do, but her curiosity about the identity of the visitor overpowered her logic. It might be a late-night thrillseeker or some kids coming out to party at the abandoned rocket facility. It might be a cop, investigating the open gate, perhaps responding to reports of activity on the closed road. That would be bad, but Jenna’s real concern was that it might be something even worse. She remained at the edge of the structure, the gun gripped tightly in her hand, her thumb hovering above the safety catch, and she watched as the headlights appeared.

They came fast. So fast that Jenna felt certain, even without being able to see for herself, that her worst suspicions were about to be confirmed. In a matter of seconds, the car arrived in the parking area and pulled in behind Carlos’s rental. She couldn’t make out any details about the vehicle itself, but when the doors were thrown open, three men got out. As they ran into the building, she recognized them.

Zack and company. How did they find us here?

The answer came to her almost as quickly as the question. Not us. They followed Mercy.

She ran back to the car and opened the door. The dome light came on, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be visible to the driver in the other car.

As soon as she was in with the door closed, she turned to Mercy. “Do you still have your phone?”

“Sure.” Mercy held up the device. “I don’t think you’ll get a signal out here.”

Jenna took it and hurled it out the window.

Mercy let out a gasp. “Hey!”

“They tracked you here.” Jenna didn’t offer any further explanation, and Mercy didn’t argue, but now she wore an apologetic expression. “They’re inside. If we’re lucky, they won’t be able to see us in the dark, and it will be a few minutes before they realize we’re not here anymore.”

Mercy put the car in gear and let it roll forward. “And if we’re not lucky?”

Jenna shrugged. “Drive like hell?”

“That worked so well last time,” Mercy grumbled. She steered wide, swinging as far out into the darkness as she dared, careful not to touch the brakes, lest a flare of red light give them away. Jenna’s attention flickered between the nearly impenetrable darkness ahead and the bright square of illumination that was the building’s entrance. There was movement within, and Jenna strained her ears, listening for shouts of alarm that might indicate they had been spotted. A moment later they were past the parked cars and headed down the faintly visible stripe of white that was the concrete road. Jenna looked back, watching for some sign of pursuit, but it appeared that their stealthy escape had worked.

“Faster,” Jenna urged.

“I’m going faster than I can see already,” Mercy retorted through gritted teeth.

Jenna pursed her lips and kept watch through the rear window. Not that there was anything to see. The building had been swallowed up by the night.

Suddenly the world lit up red. Mercy had tapped the brakes, just enough to make the northward turn without losing control. Jenna let it pass without comment, but as the red glow vanished, she saw a warmer yellow light in the distance directly behind them, and her heart sank.

“They’re coming.”

26

Mercy kept the lights off even though it meant sacrificing speed for stealth. Jenna took out Carlos’s phone and searched through the history until she found the map she had used earlier to find the Aerojet facility. She had memorized it upon her first inspection, but her attention had been focused on navigating to the silo building.

“There’s a side road coming up on the right,” she said.

“I won’t be able to see it.”

Jenna eyed the little dot on the screen that monitored their progress. “Couple more seconds. I’ll tell you when.”

Mercy let off on the gas and peered into the darkness along the roadside. Jenna saw the faint gap in the foliage. “There. Turn now.”

Mercy wheeled the car onto the siding. There was a crunch of snapping twigs as the left front tire rolled through the brush, but Mercy corrected and found the pavement once more. On the display screen, the little dot was centered on the line that marked the road, and in a matter of just a few seconds, they were halfway to the cluster of squares that marked the derelict Aerojet buildings.

“Stop here.”

Mercy did, and the brake lights flashed again behind them, but she quickly shifted into ‘park’ and shut off the car. Jenna leaned her head out the window and found the bright glow that marked the advancing vehicle. It was close enough that she began to wonder if the men in the car might have seen them turn off. She unconsciously squeezed the gun in her hand and held her breath as the light grew closer, closer…

The car passed without slowing.

Jenna let out her breath in a long sigh, but she had to be sure the ruse had worked. She threw open the door and got out, looking over the car’s roof until she found the glow again, moving away in a northward direction. While it was impossible to judge their speed, she figured it would take the men about ten minutes to reach the highway, if they drove at a reasonable speed. If they threw caution to the wind, they could probably do it in three.

Something about the receding glow changed. It dimmed for a few seconds, and then returned, brighter than before.

Jenna’s breath caught again. They were coming back. She was sure of it. But why? Had one of them seen the car? A lucky guess? She glanced down at the phone, wondering if they were tracking its GPS locator, as they had done with Mercy’s. It seemed impossible that they could have identified Carlos so quickly or known that she now had his phone, but if there was even a chance that the phone was leading the killers to them, it would have to go.

She studied the map again, committing every detail to memory. About a mile ahead, the road intersected a canal, but there was an access road that ran alongside the waterway. There would probably be another gate at the end of that road, but it looked like their only option. She cocked her arm, preparing to hurl the phone away, but then stopped.

Over the tick of the rental car’s cooling engine and the low cacophony of insect noise, she heard a persistent whirring sound that reminded her of a leaf-blower or a small outboard motor. She tried to isolate the sound, but it did not change when she turned her head. It sounded distant, yet everywhere. She looked up at the night sky, seeing nothing, but detecting the sound’s source.

With widening eyes, Jenna realized what the sound was and why the men in the car had turned back. She rejoined Mercy.

“We have to go,” she said. “They’re tracking us with a drone.”

“A drone?” Mercy was incredulous.

“Go!”

Jenna’s mind raced. She knew nothing about surveillance drones beyond the fact of their existence. She had seen them in the sky a few times during charter trips. Various government agencies used them to patrol the Gulf, looking for drug smugglers. Noah had pointed them out to her—UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, that’s the technical name for them—but none of his lessons had included what to do in the event that a drone was stalking her.

There was one obvious detail, though. The people chasing her were pulling out all the stops. She thought again about the FBI agents. Noah had claimed they were bogus, but what if he was wrong? What if the people chasing her, who had killed Noah, really were government operatives? It made a sick kind of sense. Noah had disobeyed orders by saving her life. He had gone rogue. That was the expression they used in those movies. Off the reservation. Under the radar.

All of the above?

Somehow, he had ended up back on the radar, and so had she.

How can I hide from the government?

Mercy had started the car, but they weren’t moving. “Which way?”

“Straight,” Jenna replied, but it sounded like a question in her ears. “Go straight,” she repeated, trying to think about the next move. “Might as well use the lights. They can see us anyway.”

They can see us.

The drone probably had night-vision capabilities. Was it armed? Was it locking on to them with one of those missiles that sounded like the name of heavy metal band…Stinger or Hellfire…something like that?

She shook her head. If that was an option for them, they would have already used it. No, the UAV was just an eye in the sky. The real danger was from Zack and his team. They had to get someplace where the killers couldn’t reach them.

She looked at the map again, not searching for a specific route this time, but trying to download every detail into her brain. The satellite image showed an astonishing degree of detail, but the image wasn’t a perfect reference. For one thing, the data was a couple of years old. The cars that were visible, parked on driveways, or captured while moving down the remote roads, were long gone now. Other details might have changed as well. The entire area had been transformed by the opening of a canal designed to restore the freshwater balance of the Everglades.

“Dead end,” Mercy said.

Jenna looked up. There was a low earthen bank ahead. It was a dike to hold back the canal during the rainy season. If the map was accurate, the access road ran along the top of the earthworks. “Drive onto the dike,” she said, trying to inject a tone of certainty into her voice. “Then turn left.”

They slowed, but in the headlight beams, Jenna saw the ruts of old tire tracks leading up onto the dike. She had made the right call. Mercy eased the car up the bank, and for a few seconds, the headlights shone into the sky like a searchlight. They leveled out and Jenna could see the black ribbon of the canal passing in front of them. Mercy steered left as instructed, and found the road Jenna had promised.

The canal hooked to the northwest a few hundred yards later. Jenna saw on the map that it would bring them back to the highway, just a little way from the gated road leading into the abandoned complex. The men hunting them would know this, too. It would be the perfect place to set a trap.

She searched the map for some alternative route, something to confound the expectations of the hunters and fool the watchful eye of the drone. She settled on a swatch of green with a road that ended in a bulb-shaped parking area. A little blue dot indicated that there were photos and more information associated with the spot, so she tapped on it. “That might work.”

She zoomed out and mentally plotted the route they would have to take. It was only a couple of miles away, but it lay on the other side of the canal.

“Do you trust me?”

Mercy glanced over at her. “Of course I…” The automatic response faltered, replaced by suspicion and dread. “Why?”

In a perfectly calm voice, Jenna told her. “I want you to drive into the canal.”

27

There really wasn’t time to explain, but Jenna knew she had to give Mercy something to support her leap of faith.

“We have to get to the other side of the canal,” Jenna said. “Best way to do that is to drive into it, and swim for it.”

“Best way?” Mercy countered. “I can think of a lot of better—”

“Mercy, we have to do this. Now.”

To her credit, Mercy didn’t balk. She cranked the wheel to the right and punched the gas pedal. The engine revved, and the front end of the car dropped with a violent crunch. The surge carried the vehicle forward, scraping across the edge of the bank until gravity took over. The car tilted down and plunged into the water below.

On any other day, Jenna might have been disoriented by the chaotic upheaval, but after everything she had gone through, the splashdown was about as exciting as a cheap, carnival kiddie ride. Her only reaction to the tepid water rushing in through the open window was to hold the phone above her head to keep it dry. Noah’s journal was going to get soaked. She had mixed feelings about that. There might still be a few more answers within its pages, but she wasn’t sure she could handle any more revelations about her past. And Noah’s answers seemed to lead only to more questions.

With the water level rising up around her, she stuck her head and upper body out the window and pushed off, swimming free as the car settled further down the sloping bank.

“Jenna?”

“I’m here,” she called, and she swam toward the sound of Mercy’s voice. The only light was a murky glow rising from the bottom of the canal: the car’s headlights shining into the muddy water. “Swim for the other side.”

She tried not to think about what else might be in the water. There were a lot of things in the ‘Glades that could kill a person, ranging from alligators and snakes to microscopic bacteria and viruses carried by mosquitoes. The canal was only about as wide as a two lane road and took all of ten seconds to cross, but getting out was a little trickier. The earthen bank slipped out from under her, dropping her back into the water. On her third attempt, her fingers wrapped around a tuft of Sawgrass. She used it to haul herself onto dry land, ignoring the dull pain caused by the plant’s serrated leaves, which tore into her skin. As soon as she reached the top of the bank, she located Mercy and helped her climb over the slick bank.

“Come on,” she urged, eyeing the rising light across the canal. Their pursuers were closing in. She didn’t think they would attempt to follow. With the drone keeping watch, they could afford the long detour required to reach the other side of the canal. Still, she wasn’t going to underestimate them.

Jenna had chosen this spot for the crossing for a very specific reason — a road intersected the canal here. Even without a car, a road was critical to her plan. She searched the darkness until she found the turn off, and then beckoned Mercy to follow.

Her goal lay a mile away, a fifteen minute walk at a brisk pace, but Jenna wasn’t sure they had fifteen minutes. So she ran. At first, the pain of her many superficial injuries, compounded by the gnawing emptiness in her gut and the throbbing pain of a persistent headache, made the run feel like an exercise in self-torture. But the situation’s urgency got her through the first few steps, and after that, she settled into an almost mindless rhythm, dissociated from the pain. Mercy kept up, and after a few minutes, Jenna stopped looking back.

The road led through a wooded area, deepening the darkness, but also providing some concealment from the drone still buzzing above. Not that they needed to hide. Jenna’s plan relied more on what they would do once they reached their destination and less on concealment.

She slowed to a trot and checked their progress with the GPS dot on the map. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the phone display was painfully bright. She cupped a hand over it to shield the light, both from her own eyes and from the drone, and she squinted at the map.

“We’re almost there,” she announced. “There’s a turn-off just ahead.”

“A turn-off to what?” Mercy asked. There was a hint of irritation in her voice. She had followed Jenna this far without question or complaint, but seemed to be reaching her limit for acts of blind faith.

Jenna stalled a few moments longer until the promised turn-off appeared. There was a gate across the drive, a metal beam designed to block vehicle access. No one in their right mind would be traipsing around out here on foot after business hours. As if to emphasize this fact, a low throaty roar — like the sound of someone trying to start a chainsaw — issued from the darkness. Jenna could make out the silhouette of a large sign, just off to the side of the road, and although she couldn’t make out the words or pictures painted on it, she knew that it held the answer to Mercy’s question.

“Gator Station,” she said, clambering over the gate.

“As in ‘alligator?’” Mercy had heard the unseen creature’s bellow and her annoyance deepened.

“It’s one of those tourist places,” Jenna said. “Don’t worry. Gators are usually timid. They’ll run away from us.”

“So now you’re an expert on alligators?” Mercy stood, unmoving, on the other side of the gate.

Jenna did not consider herself an expert, but you couldn’t get through the Florida public school system without doing at least one or two reports on the apex reptilian predator. “They’ll leave us alone if we stay on the road.”

She hoped that was true. The place was a tourist park after all, and while that didn’t necessarily mean that the creatures were domesticated, she was pretty sure that there would be safety measures in place to prevent the animals from having free run of the park.

Mercy gave a sigh and was just starting to climb over the gate when a different noise disrupted the quiet. The sharp zipping sound came from behind Mercy and passed by Jenna’s head, making her flinch. It was followed by a soft, muffled cough.

She spun away from the gate. There was not a doubt in her mind that someone had just shot at them, someone close by, using a suppressed weapon. The noise repeated as Mercy dropped down next to her. The round pinged off the gate.

“Run!”

Mercy needed no further urging. They both sprinted into the alligator park. Over the sound of their footsteps, it was impossible to tell whether more shots followed.

As she ran, Noah’s old advice replayed in Jenna’s head—run toward a gun—and she felt anger supersede her impulse for self-preservation. Part of it was the memory of the man that she now knew was not her father, not in the sense that mattered. But mostly it was anger at having to flee. Again. She was tired of running. She wanted to turn and fight.

To do so would be suicidal, she knew. One or more of the men hunting her had followed on foot.

They probably have night vision goggles, Jenna thought, just like Noah and his team had used.

Don’t think about that, she told herself. Focus on surviving. You can’t fight if you’re dead.

Her hand found the pistol still tucked in her waistband. It had been immersed during the swim in the canal and she wondered if it would still fire. Probably, but until she could see a target, there was no point in wasting bullets.

A square silhouette rose up out of the darkness and then another. She had seen the buildings on the map. Gator Station. Trying to reconcile what she was seeing — what she could barely see — with her mental map, while running from a gunman, was a lot more difficult than she had anticipated. She recalled that there was a path around the buildings toward an enormous pond, which the satellite photograph revealed was brimming with alligators.

She veered in that direction, barely able to make out the path until she was right on top of it. The phone had a built in light that could be used as a camera flash or a flashlight, but using it would be a dead giveaway — literally — even if the men hunting her didn’t have night vision. And if they did…

If they did, then maybe there was a way to level the playing field. Without slowing, she took out the phone and turned it on. The screen display flared brightly, but she held it close to her body, hiding its illumination until she could activate the camera.

She stopped, turned and with the phone held high in her left hand, she thumbed the camera button.

Even though she wasn’t looking directly at it, the flash seemed to light up the world. The path and the trees appeared before her, and right in the center of the scene was a tall figure, caught in mid-stride, a pistol in one hand and a futuristic looking goggle covering one of his eyes. The image vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and when the darkness returned, it seemed even blacker than before.

There was an odd scuffling sound behind her and a snarled curse. Amplified by the night vision device, the flash must have seemed as bright as an atomic bomb blast. Blinding the man, however, was only the first part of Jenna’s plan. She aimed the pistol at the spot where the man had been, thumbed off the safety, and pulled the trigger.

28

The report was deafening. The pistol bucked wildly in her hand, and she almost dropped it. In her haste, she had forgotten about bracing against the recoil. It seemed unlikely that the shot had found its mark, but the show of resistance might give the killer a moment’s pause.

“A little warning next time,” Mercy said.

“Sorry.” Jenna could barely hear Mercy over the ringing in her ears, and she didn’t know if her muttered apology was audible. Yet, she also knew that if another opportunity presented itself, she wouldn’t waste time keeping Mercy in the loop.

She turned back, using the phone’s screen to briefly illuminate the way ahead. The path continued alongside a building and split, with one branch leading to a small wooden grandstand and the other turning onto a long wooden platform that extended out over the alligator pond. Jenna found Mercy’s arm and pointed her toward the latter. As Mercy charged out onto the platform, Jenna ducked into the seating area and faced the path again.

She stood in a textbook Weaver’s stance, the pistol gripped firmly in her right hand and braced with her left. She waited for the man to make his approach. The lingering effects of the loud report faded with each passing second. When she held her breath, she could make out the sound of Mercy’s footsteps on the platform and the more guttural noise of alligators bellowing in the pond.

She let out her breath slowly, quietly, and drew in another.

There was soft squishing sound, the noise of wet shoes on the path. The sound repeated, louder and closer. She homed in on the noise like a bat using sonar to pinpoint a mosquito.

“Jenna?”

Jenna gasped at the sound of Mercy’s voice, a low hiss from the darkness, and pointed the gun away. She had almost pulled the trigger, almost shot her friend.

Even as the horrifying image of Mercy, dead at her own hands, flashed through her mind, Jenna heard the squishing sound again, closer still, much closer than Mercy’s voice had been. The man was there, right in front of her.

She brought the pistol up again and fired. This time, the gun barely moved. The bright muzzle flash illuminated the man for just an instant, and Jenna saw the surprise on his face as he jerked back, surrounded by red mist. She fired again and saw him go down.

In the stillness that followed, she felt the same rush she had experienced after her battle with Raul, a sense of power and victory. She had fought back. She had killed. And now she knew that she could do it again.

She kept the gun at the ready, but risked dropping her left hand to the pocket where she had stashed the phone. In the screen’s glow, she could see the unmoving form. He lay on his back beside the wooden railing where the paths diverged. A ragged wound on the man’s left cheek dribbled blood. The rest of his face was obscured by something that looked like a small camcorder. The lens end extended out from his right eye. The apparatus, which she assumed was his night vision device, was held in place by a web of straps that encircled his head.

She approached tentatively and knelt beside him. She laid the gun on the ground, freeing her hand, and then grasped the monocular. The straps were tight, and her first attempt to pull it loose caused the man’s head to tilt back and forth, a grim reminder that she was looting a corpse, but it also revealed a chin strap, secured with a plastic buckle. The strap was damp with warm blood. She fought back her revulsion and squeezed the clasp until it popped free. The head harness came away, and the monocular fell to the ground with a muted thump.

As she reached for it, a hand shot up and grasped her shirt front. The attack was so unexpected that the man — not quite so dead as he appeared — got his other hand up before she could move. In an instant, both his hands were around her throat.

She clutched at the gripping hands, trying to break the chokehold, even as she threw herself back. Both actions, fueled by a cold spike of adrenaline that raced through her nervous system, were in vain. The man’s grip was like iron, his body an anchor that held her fast. The momentary failure snapped her out of panic mode. She had the skills to escape, but they were useless if she let the primitive part of her brain take over.

She willed herself to stop fighting the choking hands. To let go. Hands free, she clapped her cupped palms against either side of the man’s head. The action elicited a howl of rage, but the man’s grip tightened. Jenna felt her thoughts go fuzzy. She struck him again, feeling the solid contact of her punches against the man’s face, the hard unyielding skull just below the surface.

This isn’t working, she thought, almost frantic, and she knew why. The animal brain was still telling her to oppose strength with strength, but that was a battle she could not win. This man, injured though he was, was stronger, heavier and unlike Raul, he had almost certainly received formal combat training. You know how to get out of this.

She did. She threw her right arm up, and felt the immediate pressure as her collar bone squeezed the grasping hand even tighter. Then, she rolled to the right. The man’s hand, pinched tight by her upraised arm, was forced to bend at the wrist and his grip faltered. She was free.

Almost free.

As she gasped for breath, it occurred to Jenna a moment too late that she ought to follow up with a counter-attack. She drove out with her elbow, but the man twisted away. She landed only a glancing blow that deflected off his rib cage. Then her elbow struck the ground. The impact sent an electric jolt through her arm from shoulder to fingertips.

Then he was on her, driving his full weight into her like a football lineman charging into the scrimmage. She tried to twist away, but she was too slow by a heartbeat. He slammed into her, driving her back into the wooden rail with such force that Jenna heard something snap. The breath was driven from her lungs, and an almost paralyzing pain radiated from the point of impact. But the noise had not been the sound of her bones breaking. It was the rail.

The crack of splintering wood, the shriek of nails being torn out of two-by-fours and an underlying chorus of bestial hisses from just a few feet below, merged to form a discordant symphony. Restless alligators thrashed through the water before her, crowding together in anticipation of a meal. Then, with a stomach churning lurch, the rail gave way and she fell.

29

Jenna flailed for something to stop her fall, but the only thing within reach was the body of her assailant, and he, too, was falling. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the fall stopped. The damaged rail had given beneath their combined weight, but had not collapsed entirely. It sagged over the alligator pond, groaning as the nails slowly lost the battle to hold the structure together.

The jolt of the sudden stop sent another lance of pain through Jenna’s body, but the hissing and snapping of reptilian jaws scant inches below her was a wonderful anesthetic. Her attacker pushed hard against her. She couldn’t tell if he was attempting to shove her the rest of the way over or simply trying to recover himself. Ultimately, the result was the same. The rail lurched and dropped another foot.

Jenna clutched at her assailant. If she was going in, he was, too. Her body was slanted down, as if she was hanging by her knees from the monkey bars on a playground. She could feel solid ground pressing into the back of her thighs. Too much of her weight was already hanging out over the edge. When the rail gave way, there would be nothing to hold her back.

Something struck the rail beside her head, sending a tremor through the wood. She heard another hiss and splash. One of the gators had made a grab for her, missing by inches. The impact was the last straw for the railing. With one last tortured squeal, the nails pulled free, and the barrier dropped, along with the two bodies sprawled atop it.

Jenna’s attacker scrabbled in vain for a handhold. She felt him scrape past her and then heard a splash and a howl of denial that was abruptly silenced amid a tumult of growls, snapping jaws and the distinctive sound of bones cracking.

Jenna however, didn’t fall. She could still feel the ground beneath her legs, but there was something else there, too. A weight was pressing down on her feet, holding her in place. Then she was pulled, dragged back up onto terra firma.

“Mercy?” she croaked, her throat still on fire from her assailant’s chokehold.

“I’ve got you,” came the reply. Mercy’s voice was taut with effort, but to Jenna it was the most beautiful sound in the world. She reached out and felt a hand close over her own, hauling her away from the precipice.

Jenna savored the feel of solid ground beneath her body, and she even welcomed the throb of pain from injuries old and new. Hurt was a lot better than dead. For a few seconds, they both just lay there, panting from the exertion.

Finally, Mercy spoke again. “So, was that what you had in mind?”

Jenna almost laughed, but the quip reminded her that this minor victory would count for nothing if they didn’t keep moving. “Not quite,” she replied, rolling over and rising to her hands and knees. She had lost both the gun and the phone in the struggle, but her groping hands found the former and something else as well: the man’s night vision device.

She turned it over in her hands, feeling the hard lens at one end and the soft rubber eye cup at the other, and held it up to her eye. Nothing. She continued exploring its exterior until she found a small knob. She twisted it, felt it turn and click, and then there was a flash of green as the device turned on, and the world lit up like the dawn.

That’s more like it, she thought, as she settled the straps over her head and locked the monocular into place. It was heavier than she expected, but the discomfort was a small price to pay for the ability to see in the darkness. Jenna got to her feet. Her first few steps were halting. The green display played havoc with her depth perception, but she found that her unaided eye, even though virtually night blind, still helped her see the world in three dimensions.

She turned back to Mercy who was gazing up at her, pupils fully dilated and shining like little white buttons. “We can’t stay here.”

As if to underscore the statement, the display grew almost painfully bright as an artificial light source appeared from somewhere down the path that had brought them here.

“Damn it.” She hauled Mercy to her feet. “I thought we’d have more time. Come on.”

“Where…?” Mercy didn’t seem to know how to finish the question.

Jenna steered her back onto the wooden platform that crossed the alligator pond. With the night vision device, she could see everything in stark detail. A writhing mass of alligators was entangled with the collapsed rail section, biting and snapping at each other as they fought over what remained of the man she had shot.

She looked away and focused on what lay at the far end of the platform. Beyond the alligator pool, the platform descended to a wooden dock that ran the length of a narrow canal. A flat bottomed metal boat with something that looked like an enormous fan mounted at its aft end was moored to the dock.

“That,” Jenna said, pointing to the airboat, “is what I had in mind.”

30

Mercy squinted at the airboat. “Do you know how to drive one of these?”

It was the first time Jenna had ever laid eyes on one of the Everglades’ famous flat-bottomed watercraft, but she had grown up on a boat, and she was confident that she could figure it out. She quickly identified the steering lever, a mechanical arm that controlled a set of louvered vanes behind the fan — push the lever and vanes would direct the flow of air one way, pull and they’d go the other. The engine that turned the huge fan was no more complicated than an outboard motor, and it took just a few seconds for her to prime the fuel line and start it up.

She had known about the boat because she had seen it on the satellite map. She had also seen the network of deep canals that marked the designated routes of the rides. The picture was a couple of years old, but she was sure the boat would be there. Airboat rides through wild gator country were all part of the day’s fun at Gator Station.

“Cast off,” Jenna called out, settling into the pilot’s chair on an upraised platform in front of the idling engine. The seat was equipped with a safety belt. Given her inexperience, it seemed prudent to use it. “Then sit down and hang on!”

Mercy unwound the rope that held the boat in place, and stepped aboard, shoving off with one foot. As soon as she was seated, Jenna engaged the fan. The engine itself wasn’t much louder than a car’s motor, but the rush of air being pulled through the spinning blades sounded like a Category Four hurricane. As the craft began to pick up speed, it felt like one, too.

Jenna quickly got the hang of using the rudder lever to change course, and in moments they had left the Gator Station complex behind and were racing through the marsh. The boat drew only a few inches of water, and skimmed over the surface, almost hydroplaning, effortlessly floating over patches of grass and reeds. She resisted the urge to go full throttle — any faster and the slightest bump might launch the boat into the air.

Her memory of the satellite map was of little use here, where the landscape changed almost as quickly as the weather. But her newly acquired night vision monocular allowed her to navigate around sunken tree boughs and other obstacles that might have stopped the nimble airboat.

After a few minutes, the initial thrill and novelty of the experience wore off, and Jenna remembered the reason she had chosen this form of travel. She glanced over one shoulder, peering through the blurry disc of the spinning fan blades, looking for any sign of pursuit. What she saw made her let off the throttle. The boat coasted forward a few yards until it scraped to a halt atop a patch of reeds.

“What’s wrong?” Mercy asked, evidently sensing Jenna’s sudden anxiety.

Jenna unbuckled her belt and stood up. She turned a slow circle, scanning the horizon. In every direction as far as she could see, the landscape was a flat, featureless tableau, randomly dotted with clumps of vegetation and a few trees. “It all looks the same.”

Mercy tried to peer into the darkness, but without light, she had even less with which to judge their position than Jenna did. “Can’t you use the GPS on your phone?”

“I lost it.” She hadn’t been able to find the phone again after the narrow escape from the alligator pond. It had probably fallen in.

“Well…if we keep going in a straight line, we’re bound to come across something familiar, right?”

“If we can go in a straight line.”

Maintaining a linear course would be almost impossible in the airboat. They would have to steer around large obstacles, and without anything to use as a handrail, there would be no way to make sure that they got back on the same azimuth. The wind and irregularities in the surface might also alter their course without her even realizing it. Minor changes could add up, causing them to meander in circles until their fuel ran out.

Jenna turned her eyes skyward, searching for some celestial clue. The overcast sky hid the stars, and the sun would not appear in the east for a few more hours. The moon, though mostly hidden behind the clouds, gave enough light that she could fix its location, but the moon was not as reliable a navigation aid, especially not when moving at high speed.

There was also the unanswered question of where exactly she wanted to go next. The boat could take them almost anywhere — to the outskirts of Homestead, or even to the coast. If she kept the moon at her back, that would take her in a generally eastward direction. That would put her closer to Miami, and closer to Bill Cort, the man who might be able to tell her the truth about her parents and explain why people were trying to kill her.

East it is.

She sat down, strapped in and pulled the lever back. The boat swung around in what she hoped was the right direction. As it did, she spied movement off to her left. It was just a spot, probably a mile away, but because it was taller than anything else in the landscape, it was readily visible and readily identifiable.

Another airboat.

While there was no way to make out its occupants, the fact that it was running without lights was proof enough that the hunters had not given up.

Jenna pressed the throttle pedal and held the rudder stick on course. She was going as fast as she dared, and for the men in the other boat to have even a chance of catching her, they would have to run at a dangerously high speed. Unfortunately, the men hunting them didn’t need to catch them on the water. All they had to do was follow and stay close. When Jenna and Mercy made landfall, the men would be only a couple of minutes behind.

Not much time to escape, but maybe enough to set an ambush.

Movement, straight ahead and just above the horizon, caught her attention. Not another boat, but something moving above the marsh, flying. There was no mistaking the profile — a solid body in the middle, thinner wings stretching out to either side. It was an aircraft, but much smaller than the Villegas brothers’ plane.

The drone, she thought. But why was it flying so low? The whole point of the UAV was discreet surveillance. It almost seemed like the remote operator didn’t care if she spotted it. As it got closer, cruising just a few feet above the surface, right in the boat’s path, she realized the action was intentional. She was meant to see it.

With each passing second, it became more and more evident that the UAV was not going to veer off or ascend. It was on a collision course.

It’s a bluff, she thought. They wouldn’t destroy a million dollar drone just to kill me, would they?

Because she wasn’t sure, Jenna let off the throttle and steered right. The boat’s forward momentum kept it moving forward. Instead of carving a precise turn, the boat slid forward and started to spin. Jenna momentarily forgot about the game of chicken with the drone. She eased off the rudder and nudged the accelerator, regaining control. At that instant, the unmanned aircraft shot past, its wing tip clearing the airboat’s fan by mere inches. There was a strident whine as the drone’s propeller noise reached a climax and then was drowned out by the boat’s engine.

“What was that?” Mercy shouted.

“The drone just buzzed us.” Jenna saw that the aircraft was climbing back into the sky and circling around for another run. She knew why, too. Dodging the drone had cost her several seconds, and the pursuing airboat was now much closer.

She wondered how many men were aboard. Three men had gotten out back at the rocket facility and a fourth had stayed in the car. Subtract the one she had fought with at the alligator pond…three, then? Three trained killers against Mercy and herself. “Do you still have that gun?”

Mercy’s expression knotted with sudden anxiety, but she held up the pistol. “Why?”

Two guns. Not nearly enough to tip the balance in their favor. Besides, as she had learned from the encounter at the alligator pond, sometimes it took a lot more than a single bullet to kill a man. Still, if she did not do something, and soon, the situation would be the same, only their enemies would dictate the terms.

“Get down,” Jenna said, bringing the boat around until the bow pointed toward the approaching watercraft. “Find something to hide behind if you can.”

“What?” Anxiety transformed into panic.

“We have to take the fight to them,” Jenna explained, with more patience than she felt. “Go on the offensive. Otherwise, they’ll just run us down.”

“And just how are we supposed—” Mercy stopped herself in mid-sentence and then continued in a more subdued voice. “I hope you have some kind of plan.”

Jenna did not have a plan, and did not think she could come up with much of one in the thirty seconds it would take for them to close the gap with the other boat. Her only solace was that the killers didn’t know that she didn’t have a plan.

Run toward a gun. That wisdom had served her well thus far, but always in a literal sense. Now she was going to test it at something a bit faster than running speed.

The distance shrank faster than expected. The boats moved at least as fast as cars on a highway. She could make out the dark outlines of the other boat’s occupants, one man in the pilot’s chair — she thought it might be Zack — the other two hanging onto the passenger seats. All three wore monocular night-vision devices like her own. All three watched her approach with rapt anticipation.

When she was close enough that she could see the look of alarm on the pilot’s face — definitely Zack — Jenna steered to the right, as if to avoid the imminent collision. One of the passengers raised his pistol and started tracking her with the muzzle, anticipating the moment when the two boats would pass.

With just fifty feet separating them, Jenna abruptly steered back to the left, once more on a collision course. Zack reacted just as she hoped he would: instinctively.

Jenna was no expert with the airboat, but her uncanny ability to learn any new skill — physical or mental — had given her a sense of familiarity with how the craft would respond to even the slightest variations of speed and direction. She was still learning, but she was learning a lot faster than the men in the other boat. When she changed course, steering right toward them, Zack jerked his steering lever.

The other boat slewed sideways, out of control, and one of the gunmen was catapulted from his seat like a guided missile. Jenna ducked as the hurtling body sailed through the air toward her. There was a resonant gong as his body hit the fan’s protective wire covering, following by a strident rapid-fire chattering as the bent metal screen struck the whirling blades. The entire boat shook with the impact. A second impact rattled beneath Jenna as the two boats scraped past each other. Amid the chaos, Jenna heard several reports, and she caught a glimpse of Mercy hunched down behind one of the seats, firing into the other boat at almost point blank range.

Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the collision was behind her, and the two boats moved apart. Her boat hadn’t sustained any structural damage, though something was rattling against the fan blades like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle. The noise was an assault on the senses but there was nothing she could do about it. She ground her teeth and steered into a broad turn. Mercy remained crouched down behind a seat back, unhurt.

There was no sign of the man that had been ejected from the boat. He’d been stunned or perhaps even killed by the impact. Either way, the marsh had already claimed him. Zack was just beginning a sluggish turn, and Jenna wondered if one or more of Mercy’s shots had found its mark.

But the battle was not over. She had scored a small victory but if she didn’t press her advantage, she would lose it. She lined up the bow of the little airboat, and opened the throttle once more. The clamor of the fan blades beating against the bent piece of the wire screen reached a fever pitch, climaxing with an eruption of noise and another vibration that shook the entire boat, and then the noise vanished. Jenna glanced back and saw that a portion of the wire screen had broken free, exposing the whirring propeller blades just a couple of feet behind her head.

She felt the boat starting to drift left, and realized that one of the steering louvers behind the fan had been damaged. She tried to correct by turning against the drift, but no matter which way she turned it, the bent vane pushed the boat in the opposite direction. But she did not ease off the throttle. She knew from experience that speed had a way of smoothing out rough seas. She worked the rudder back and forth, keeping the boat on a more or less straight course, and charged the other boat once more.

She couldn’t tell if either man was wounded, but both were preparing for another open water joust. The passenger was concealed behind a seat. Zack did his best to hunker down in place, presenting as small a target as possible. Jenna doubted the men would fall for the same trick, but her experience with sparring had taught her the importance of the feint. She would make them think they knew what she was going to do. Then she would do something else. What exactly, she was still trying to work out. Part of her wanted to just ram the other boat, driving over the top of the two killers. While that would be very satisfying, it would also destroy both boats and leave them stranded in the middle of the swamp.

Zack seemed to divine her intent, and as she closed with him, he accelerated, pushing the boat so hard that Jenna thought she could actually see it starting to float above the water’s surface. The move caught her by surprise, and she barely had time to steer away. Mercy attempted to shoot them, but a fusillade of return fire forced her down. Jenna ducked as bullets smacked into hard surfaces all around her.

That none of the rounds hit her was not quite the miracle it seemed. The shots were not well-aimed and seemed to serve no other purpose than to keep Mercy from returning accurate fire. The boat drew near before Jenna could take any other action, and then, just as it was about to pass, almost close enough to touch, a large moving shape filled the display of her night vision device.

In the instant it took for her brain to process what she was seeing, the man had made the leap to her boat and was on her, driving the naked blade of a knife at her throat.

31

Jenna’s body reacted faster than her brain. She threw her hands up to block the knife attack, catching the man’s forearm, and thrust both feet out for leverage. Her right foot was still on the throttle, and she unthinkingly jammed it down, sending a surge of power to the fan. The sudden acceleration did more to save her from the slash than her flagging strength. The man fell forward against her, his arm folding at the elbow, the blade’s lethal trajectory interrupted.

The man pushed away from her but kept one hand planted against her shoulder, pinning her in place as he wrenched free of her grip and drew back for another thrust.

Run away from a knife. Yeah, right.

It wasn’t very big — just a folding pocket knife, the blade not even three inches long — but as it flashed toward her, it looked like a sword from The Lord of the Rings movies. Jenna knew, with a sick certainty, that even if she survived this, she was going to get cut.

She got her hands up and caught the man’s arm once more. His superior strength began to overwhelm her defense. Her efforts barely slowed his thrust, but she managed to twist to the side as the blade rammed forward.

Something tugged at her left arm, preventing her from moving any further, and her entire arm, from shoulder to fingertips, swelled with what felt like an injection of liquid fire. A cry slipped past her lips, but with the pain came a strange clarity, as if time had slowed to a crawl. She saw the look of consternation on her assailant’s face. He wasn’t looking at her. His attention was on the knife buried to the hilt in Jenna’s left biceps — almost exactly the same spot where she had earlier caught a grazing bullet. The blade pierced her arm and pinned her to the seat back. She could see the rise and fall of his chest and feel his breath on her face. His eyes broadcast his intentions as he grasped the knife hilt, gathering his strength to pull it free like Excalibur from the stone.

No you don’t, Jenna thought, as she brought her knees up into man’s chest.

The blow, coupled with the sudden deceleration as Jenna’s foot came off the pedal, staggered him back. He recovered quickly and launched himself at her again.

Jenna jammed her foot down on the pedal and the engine revved again. As the boat lurched forward, she tried to pull back on the steering lever, but nothing happened. Her arm, still nailed in place by the blade, refused to grip the control handle. The man rocked with the sudden acceleration, but he kept his balance and took a menacing step toward her.

Something about his stance triggered a memory — or rather a muscle memory — and Jenna reacted exactly as she had learned in the dojo. She got her free hand up and grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt. She pulled him forward, adding her energy to his own, and brought her knee up hard.

Although he probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds, his momentum made him seem fifty pounds lighter. He flew past her, arms flailing. An unseen force seized hold of him, tearing him out of her grasp.

Even though she could not see what was happening behind her, Jenna knew with sickening certainty that the man had been pulled into the exposed propeller. There was a wet grinding noise as the fan blades pureed flesh and bones. The engine whined in protest for a moment, struggling against the sudden workload, and then idled down to an almost peaceful rumble.

Jenna forced the vision of the man’s grisly demise from her thoughts. She felt weak, stretched to her limits, almost numb with pain, but the battle was not over. Zack was out there, and the fight would not end until one of them was dead.

She saw Mercy, rising cautiously from her place of concealment, straining to find Jenna in the darkness. “Jenna? Are you okay?”

Jenna refused to admit the truth aloud but she didn’t have the strength to lie. With her free hand, she found the hilt of the knife that held her fixed in place like a bug on a pin. The blade had pierced the meaty part of her arm but had missed the bone. Blood oozed from the wound. She knew that removing a penetrating object from a puncture wound could cause a fatal hemorrhage, but under the circumstances, it was a risk she felt she had to take. She gripped the hilt and pulled, triggering a throb of agony, but the knife refused to budge. After a few seconds of struggling, she gave up and turned her attention back to the more immediate threat.

Reaching across her body, she worked the steering lever with her right hand, and brought the boat around until she found Zack’s boat. She was surprised to see that he wasn’t coming around to face her but was motoring away, as if fleeing a battlefield. For a fleeting moment, Jenna wondered if the demise of his comrades had broken his will to fight. Then she spied movement above him, and grasped the reason for his retreat.

The drone dropped out of the sky, swooping toward them like a hunting raptor. Jenna stared at it, almost hypnotized by its graceful motion.

Mercy made her way back to the pilot’s chair. “You’re hurt.”

Jenna barely heard. Her mind wrestled with this new tactic. When the UAV had buzzed them before, she had assumed it was to block their escape and give Zack and the others a chance to catch up. So why…?

The answer came in a premonition. Even though her first impulse was to reject it as unbelievable, there could be no other explanation. In some distant control room, a decision had been made: destroy Jenna Flood, no matter the cost.

“They’re going to kamikaze the drone.”

Mercy stared back as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. Jenna tore her gaze from the approaching aircraft and looked into Mercy’s eyes. “You have to jump.”

“Jump?”

There was no time to explain, and if there had been, Mercy probably would have refused. So Jenna did the only thing she could think of to end the discussion: she gave Mercy a shove that sent the woman pitching backward into the marsh. When Mercy hit the water, Jenna opened the throttle wide and the boat shot forward.

She had to fight to maintain a straight line at first, and as the airboat picked up speed, she wondered what sort of thoughts were going through the drone operator’s head, watching her struggle to stay on a collision course. Kamikazes both.

She wanted to believe there was a method to her madness. That by accelerating toward the drone, doing something so totally insane and unpredictable, she might…

She shook her head. Maybe there was no rationale. No motivation but her soul-deep weariness. Or perhaps the simple desire to see the relentless pursuit ended on her own terms.

As the drone descended and the boat raced across the water’s surface to meet it, she felt as if she was watching a video played frame-by-frame, complete with range distances and graphs of trajectories. She saw exactly where the collision would occur, where the drone’s nose would strike the boat. If she slowed down and cut power at the last second, would the UAV fall short and crash into the marsh? No, it was leveling out. If the operator was as skilled as she thought he must be, he would stay about three feet above the water — the level of her knees. She had no doubt that the crash, when it came, would kill her. Slowing down would only delay that outcome by a millisecond.

There might be time to steer away. As she considered the possibility, she realized that she didn’t want to die after all, but evasive maneuvers wouldn’t solve anything. She couldn’t keep dodging the drone forever.

There was only one course of action that had any hope of survival.

Fight.

She stabbed the throttle pedal down. The boat rocketed forward so fast that the wind buffeted her face, forcing her to squeeze her unaided eye shut. The effect on her depth perception was immediate, but she had already worked out the distances and the angles. All she needed to do now was stay the course.

Without Mercy’s additional weight, the boat seemed to float above the water, and then, it began to do so quite literally. The shape of the flat hull, turned up at the bow so that it could roll over the tall grass unimpeded, was not all that different from an airplane wing. As air piled up beneath its curvature, the boat did what airfoils do at high speed — it started to fly.

32

The boat lifted free of the water, and Jenna dared to believe it might simply float up into the sky like Santa’s sleigh or ET on Elliot’s bicycle.

The illusion was short-lived.

In the instant that the front end started to rise, the tremendous weight of the engine pulled the rear of the airboat down. The craft flipped up, like a hat blown off in a windstorm. Jenna’s stomach lurched, and a throb of pain radiated through her arm as her body tried to fold itself over. The boat went almost vertical, the bow pointing at the sky. The fan chopped at the water but was unable to overcome the force of gravity. The boat rolled backward, caught in the struggle between the forces of inertia and aerodynamics. It might have continued flipping end-over-end, pinwheeling across the Everglades, but before that could happen, the drone arrived.

There were too many variables to predict an outcome with any degree of certainty, but a lot of what happened was as she had hoped. She had thought the boat might lift off, if she pushed it hard enough. She had believed her best chance of surviving a collision with the drone was to use the boat as a shield/battering ram. In both respects, her desperate plan was a success. The small victory was lost on Jenna amid the chaos that followed.

The drone struck low, almost exactly level with the engine block, and tore the boat in half. The shockwave stunned Jenna, but even worse was the heat flash, more intense than the Kilimanjaro’s explosive end. The airboat’s rapid disintegration and immediate plunge into the marsh saved Jenna’s life from the flames.

Awareness returned in a series of disconnected sensory inputs. Warm water splashed against her face. A distant engine hummed, rising in pitch as it drew close. A faint light glowed in the otherwise all-consuming darkness.

She blinked the water out of her eyes and tried to move. A mistake, she quickly realized. Not only was every muscle of her body stiff and aching, but something held her immobile. The night vision monocular still hung from the strap around her head, but the crash had knocked it askew. When she tried to reposition it, she discovered two things: the electronic display was dark, and only her right arm seemed to be working. When she tried to lift her left arm, a dull throb reminded her that there was a knife blade skewering her biceps.

Working one-handed, she unclipped the chinstrap buckle and let the useless monocular fall away. Her left eye had adjusted to the darkness well enough that she could make out silhouettes against the overcast sky, but in her right eye she saw only a uniform red haze, as if she had stared too long into a bright light. In a way, that was exactly what she had done. The night vision device was essentially a tiny television monitor positioned half an inch from the eyeball.

The engine noise grew louder. The outline of an approaching airboat emerged in the distance. As her mental reboot continued, she recalled that Zack, the man who had been stalking her and trying to kill her for the last several hours, was on that boat. She tried to move again, and was again denied. This time however, she was able to grasp the cause of her immobility. In addition to the knife stuck through her arm, she was held tight by a strap of nylon across her hips. It was the safety belt attached to the pilot’s chair. The boat had been destroyed in the crash with the UAV, but the seat had been torn loose from its mount and deposited upright in the marsh, with Jenna still safely buckled in.

The boat went silent and coasted to a stop beside her. She felt its wake lapping against her chest, and heard a splash as someone jumped into the water.

Warning bells sounded in her head, urging her to release the seat belt and crawl away to safety, but she willed herself to remain motionless. She couldn’t possibly outrun the killer, but maybe…

The silhouette of a man appeared before her. In the diffuse silvery light of the cloud-shrouded moon, she could just make out the black protrusion of a night vision monocular against the pale skin of Zack’s face.

“Damn,” he whispered, shaking his head. He extended his arm, and Jenna knew, without seeing, that there was a gun in his hand. “I guess they were right about you. You are dangerous.”

“Why?” Her question was a barely audible whisper. What she really wanted to know was who? Who was right about her? Who had ordered her death? But she didn’t have the strength to articulate that request.

Zack leaned forward. “You don’t even know what you are,” he said, and Jenna thought he sounded a little sad.

She wondered if Zack and the men with him had felt the same kind of moral reservations about their assignment that Noah and his assault team had felt all those years ago. “I’m…just…a kid.”

“Yeah, right. A kid who just killed three of my friends.”

“Just…defending myself.”

“Is that right? Pretty damn good at it, too, aren’t you? You’re every bit as dangerous as they said you were.” He straightened and aimed the gun. “Look, for what it’s worth, I have to do this, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”

Jenna muttered something barely audible even to her own ears.

“What’s that?”

She repeated the words, but this time, her broken whisper was even softer. Zack leaned forward, turning his head to hear her final confession.

Just as Jenna hoped he would.

Her right hand, which had been snaking across her body toward her wounded arm, now grasped the knife hilt in an ice-pick grip and wrenched it loose with a volcanic eruption of strength. There was a burst of pain and an even greater sense of relief, as the offending piece of metal was removed from her aggrieved flesh. She ignored both and focused everything into driving the knife point into Zack’s eye.

There was a wet hiss as the blade sank into the orb, and just the slightest bit of resistance as it punched through the sphenoid bone at the back of his eye socket, penetrating into gray matter.

Zack howled, all thoughts of finishing his assignment forgotten, as Jenna drove the knife deeper, twisting the blade until both the cries and the thrashing ceased. Zack’s dead weight collapsed into the marsh, tearing the knife from her grasp.

Jenna stared at the place where Zack had stood a moment before, feeling the adrenaline drain away, and whispered, “I said, ‘It gets easier.’”

33

She sat there for several minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to find the willpower to move. She could see the abandoned airboat, just a few feet away, and that she wouldn’t survive without it.

Just need to rest a minute, she told herself. One minute more, and then I’ll move.

A minute came and went, and she did not move. Then another.

You don’t even know what you are.

What had Zack meant by that? What was she?

You’re every bit as dangerous as they said you were.

Dangerous?

Well, she had proven that, hadn’t she? How many men had she killed? They hadn’t all died at her hands, but she had broken Raul’s neck. She had driven a knife into Zack’s brain. Was she dangerous? Definitely. But who had told Zack that she was dangerous? Who knew that about her before she did? Who had unleashed the killers on her, sent them to blow up the boat, sent a drone to track her movements?

This isn’t about Noah at all. It’s about me.

I have to keep moving. I have to find the answers.

One more minute.

She tried counting the seconds, but her time-honored method of measuring the passage of time—one alligator, two alligator—made her think about the local wildlife, so she quickly gave up on that endeavor.

Something splashed nearby. The sound repeated again and again until there could be no doubt that something big was moving through the marsh, headed straight toward her. The memory of alligators, still fresh in her thoughts, was enough to get her moving. She unbuckled the seat belt that held her fast. As soon as it was loose, she slid out of the seat — it had been tilted slightly forward without her realizing it — and she was dumped in the shallow water.

The unexpected baptism snapped her out of her fugue. She stood up and took a few unsteady steps toward the drifting airboat. She half-climbed, half-fell onto the floating platform.

“Jenna?” It was Mercy, calling to her from out of the darkness. “Jenna, is that you?”

“I’m here,” Jenna croaked. “On the boat.”

The splashing intensified and a few seconds later, she felt Mercy’s touch. “Are you all right?”

The question struck Jenna as funny, but she was too tired to laugh. “Not really.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“Everywhere,” she replied, but then she managed to roll over. “Zack… Over there.” She gestured weakly to the spot where she had made her stand. The outline of the half-submerged pilot’s chair jutted up from the water like a buoy marker. “Night vision goggles.”

Mercy seemed to understand. She splashed over to the area Jenna had indicated and began rooting around in the marsh. A few minutes later, she returned. “Got ‘em.” She held the monocular to her eye. “How do you make them work?”

Jenna felt a twinge of disappointment. Had immersion damaged the device? “There’s a…switch.” She couldn’t seem to get out sentences of more than two or three syllables.

“Found it.” There was a pause, then Mercy continued. “Ah, that’s better… Oh.”

“What?”

“Honey, you look awful.”

This time, she couldn’t help but laugh. “Told you.”

Mercy began poking and prodding her, spending almost a full minute probing the gash in her arm. “Okay, the good news is, I don’t think you have any broken bones. Given that little stunt you pulled, that’s nothing short of a miracle. What possessed you—?”

“Bad news?”

“Well, the bad news might not be all that bad if I can get you to an emergency room.”

“No,” Jenna shook her head and immediately regretted doing so. “Gotta get to…Miami. Cort.”

Mercy gave a disapproving sigh. “You’re in no shape to argue. But I suppose if we can get out of this swamp and back to civilization, I can patch you up. But you’re going to need antibiotics. I don’t even want to think about what might have crawled into that cut.”

Jenna had almost forgotten that they were still lost in the Everglades, with no way to orient themselves, much less navigate to someplace where Jenna could get medical attention. “Check…body.” She tried taking a deep breath, felt pain in her chest and wondered if Mercy had missed a cracked rib in her hasty assessment. When she spoke again, she was able to get an entire sentence out. “He must have had a phone or some way to talk to the drone.”

“That makes sense.” Mercy went to Zack’s body again, moving with more certainty now that she could see. When she returned, she was holding something slightly larger than a cell phone. “Found this. I think it’s a GPS receiver.” She played with it for a few moments, then pointed into the featureless darkness. “The alligator farm is just a couple of miles back that way. We can go there.”

“Why there?” Jenna’s brain felt too addled to make sense of this on her own.

“These guys left a car behind, remember?”

“Did you find the keys while you were searching him?”

There was a short pause. “No. But we can hotwire it, if we have to.”

“Hotwire?” Jenna struggled to a sitting position. “I don’t know how to do that. Do you?”

“One thing at a time.”

Jenna couldn’t tell if Mercy’s indirect answer was meant to conceal the fact that she did not possess that particular skill, or rather to avoid admitting that she did. Instead, she helped position Jenna more securely and comfortably for the ride, and then started the engine.

It took Jenna a few more minutes to process the fact that Mercy piloted the boat like an expert. She recalled her friend’s initial ambivalence about using the airboats and contemplated the contradiction. Maybe she’s a quick learner, too. Everybody’s full of surprises tonight.

She was far too preoccupied with what Zack had said to worry about Mercy’s omissions.

They were right about you.

Who?

Dangerous.

She thought about the bomb, left in the Kilimanjaro’s salon. It was never meant for Noah. The bomb was for her. Why? Because she was dangerous? How could she be dangerous? She was just a teenager. She didn’t even have a driver’s license yet.

Who said I was dangerous? Dangerous to whom?

That, she realized, was a much more important question, and there was only one answer that made any sense.

Those men are not federal agents, Noah had told the deputy, but what if he had been lying? Or what if he had meant something else? That they were not FBI agents, but part of some super-secret, alphabet-soup, black ops agency, working outside the law, beholden to none.

Noah had been part of something like that when he had been sent to destroy the compound where she had lived, ordered to kill everyone, including her parents.

Had they been dangerous, too?

Had Zack and Ken and the other killers simply been trying to finish the mission that Noah started — and abandoned — fifteen years earlier? Did it all come back to that?

She could have believed that if not for Zack’s statement. They were right about you. This was more than just a shadowy government agency tying off loose ends. The people responsible for this were convinced that she was a threat, and that made absolutely no sense.

Except in a weird way, it sort of did.

You don’t even know what you are.

What am I?

The engine throttled down as the blocky silhouettes of Gator Station came into view. Jenna pushed herself up to a sitting position and watched as Mercy nudged Zack’s airboat alongside the dock, where they had boarded the destroyed airboat less than an hour earlier. She felt stiff and achy, but surprisingly better than she had any right to feel. More than anything else, she was famished.

Mercy cut the engine and hopped down from her chair to tie off the boat, but stopped abruptly. “There are two bodies here.”

“That can’t be right. There was just the one guy, and the gators got him.”

“I think these are the people who live here. The owners.”

Jenna winced as she stood and stepped onto the dock. She couldn’t see much detail, but she was able to distinguish a man and a woman, both about Noah’s age. The man wore jeans and a wife-beater tank-top. The woman was clothed in a muu-muu with some kind of swirly pattern. The fabric of the woman’s garment hid any signs of violence, but the man’s sleeveless T-shirt showed a dark stain directly over the sternum. A shotgun lay on the dock beside him.

It wasn’t too hard to piece together what had happened. The couple had heard the airboats or perhaps had been wakened by the gunshots. They had come out to investigate and discovered Zack and his crew taking the second boat.

Rage and grief welled up in Jenna’s throat. Zack had called her dangerous, but she didn’t go around killing innocent people who just happened to be in the way.

Mercy knelt down next to the man, and after a few seconds, she held up a ring of keys.

“What are you going to do with those?” Jenna asked.

“First, we’re going to see what kind of medical supplies they’ve got around here. They deal with dangerous animals all the time, so they’re bound to have some antibiotics and bandages.”

“Smart.”

“Thank you. After that, maybe we’ll find some dry clothes and some snacks. And then we’ll see if there’s a car to go with one of these.” Mercy regarded her for a few seconds. “Maybe we’ll start with the car. I think you need to sit down before you fall down.”

Jenna wasn’t sure she would even make it that far.

34

“Wake up, sleepy head.”

Jenna heard the words from the midst of a forgotten dream, but did not fully awake until she felt a hand on her shoulder, rocking her back and forth. She mumbled something incoherent and opened her eyes to greet the day.

It was still dark, though not nearly as dark as it had been in the remote depths of the Everglades. There was no shortage of artificial light — overhead streetlights, neon signs, and the occasional flash of passing headlights. Mercy smiled at her from the driver’s seat. Jenna turned her head to look out her window. They were in a grocery store parking lot with just a few other cars. “Where are we?”

“The address Noah gave for the mysterious Mr. Cort is just a couple of blocks from here.”

Jenna felt her bile start to rise at the mention of Noah — she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as her father anymore — and she fought to maintain her bleary-eyed indifference. Mercy didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger.

“I drove past. It’s a house, no lights. Didn’t look like anyone was home.”

“What time is it?”

“Just past six. How are you feeling?”

Jenna sat up, pleased to discover that her various injuries didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as she had expected, especially considering the cramped conditions. The road-weary Ford Fiesta was not the luxury ride Jenna would have preferred, but it was the only vehicle available. Mercy had driven and Jenna, after devouring a smorgasbord of snack crackers, chips and candy bars, had slept.

“Good as new,” Jenna replied, stretching in place and probing the cuff of gauze around her left arm. It was tender, but the bandage remained dry and supple, which told her the wound was closed and healing. When she had cleaned and dressed the wound, Mercy had remarked that it didn’t look too serious, which was welcome news, but a bit of a surprise to Jenna. It had felt pretty serious when the blade had gone in. But she was a fast healer, or so she had always been told.

Such swift healing didn’t come without a price. She was still famished, and she said so.

Mercy considered the statement. “Normally, I’d say let’s go grab a breakfast burrito.”

“But?”

“I don’t have any cash, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to use plastic. I’m sure that’s the kind of thing they’ll be watching for.”

Jenna was a little surprised that Mercy had thought of that, and even more so that she had not. The realization blindsided her with a rush of emotion, crushing her good mood. She thought this must be how people felt when they got a terminal diagnosis from their doctor. “Wow.”

Mercy looked at her sidelong. “What?”

“I just realized how completely screwed I am…we are. They’re going to keep coming after us. We can’t go back to our lives. We don’t have anything. We can’t even buy a breakfast burrito.”

Mercy laid a hand on her arm. “You’re still alive, Jenna. They sent four guys after you, but you’re still breathing. We’ll get through this. Now, let’s go talk to Cort, and then see what happens. Okay?”

Jenna managed a bleak nod. She hadn’t told Mercy about Zack’s comments, but Mercy already understood that the men hunting them had an official sanction.

They got out and Jenna followed Mercy from the parking lot to the sidewalk running along a busy seven-lane thoroughfare. Businesses and office buildings, many of which appeared to be vacant, lined both sides of the road. Her first ever look at Miami did not match her expectations. Maybe things were different closer to the urban center or in the distinctive neighborhoods that she had always heard people talk about — Little Havana, South Beach and so forth — but this area did not appear that much different from Key West. She paid attention to the unfamiliar environment, noting the street signs. If she got separated from Mercy or had to make a quick escape, some sense of where things were would help.

She wondered how Mercy had been able to find her way here. Noah’s notebook was gone, probably lost forever in the marsh, and Jenna knew that Mercy had gotten only a quick glance at the page with Bill Cort’s address. Maybe Mercy had an eidetic memory, too. Anything was possible.

Two blocks down from the supermarket, they turned west and headed into a residential neighborhood. The street was narrow and dark, mostly lit by the porch lights of the modest houses they passed. The humid air hummed with the buzz of insects and the electrical current passing through overhead power lines, but this only accentuated the otherworldly stillness and added to Jenna’s growing apprehension. A few windows were lit from within, early risers getting ready for a day at the office.

Something about that seemed wrong. It took her a few moments to remember that it was Sunday. It felt like days had passed since the bomb blew her entire life into chaos, but it hadn’t even been twelve hours. I’ve got school tomorrow, she thought, and she wondered when or if she would ever see her friends and teachers again.

“That’s the place,” Mercy said, pointing to an innocuous looking single-story cottage. The house had bars on the screen door and windows, just like every other house on the block. A wrought iron perimeter fence boxed in a neatly trimmed lawn. There was no car in the carport, and unlike the other homes, which had a lived-in look, this house gave a distinct impression of emptiness. Jenna recalled that the first address for Cort had been crossed out, suggesting that he had moved at some point during the years following Noah’s decision to compose a record of his mission. What if Cort had moved again, after the notebook had been secreted away in the Aerojet silo?

What if this is a dead end?

Mercy rested a hand on the fence and looked at Jenna. “Shall we go ring the bell?”

Jenna felt an almost overwhelming urge to turn away, to run, as if by doing so, she might wish away everything that had happened. It was, she knew, just another manifestation of the fight or flight response, a primal fear of the unknown, or in this case, of the possibility that this last desperate hope would end in a crushing disappointment.

No. I’m done running. And if this is a dead end, I’ll figure something else out.

She reached over the top of the gate and worked the release. It swung open without the slightest squeak of protest, and she stepped through. Mercy followed, but not before putting a hand into a tote bag. The canvas sack, emblazoned with a cartoon alligator, was just one of the souvenirs they’d acquired before leaving Gator Station. Mercy had filled it with first aid supplies and snacks. Jenna had consumed all of the latter. The sack also contained the night vision monocular and the pistol she had used to shoot Carlos Villegas. Jenna had a feeling that Mercy was reaching for the gun.

As they neared the front door, the porch light flashed on — presumably triggered by a motion sensor — but nothing else happened to indicate that the house was occupied. Jenna stabbed a finger at the doorbell button and heard a muffled two-tone ringing noise from within. Several seconds passed. Jenna was debating whether to ring again or walk away when she heard the soft click of a lock bolt disengaging.

She exchanged looks and shrugs with Mercy, then tried the door handle. Both the screen and front doors were unlocked. Jenna stood on the threshold, staring into the room beyond. In the diffuse illumination cast by the porch light, she could make out the front room, appointed with tasteful but generic furniture, and little else. There was no sign of the householder.

“This is like the start of a bad fairy tale.”

Mercy nodded. “I know what you mean.”

Jenna stayed there a moment longer, then turned around. While she had not really known what to expect from the mysterious Bill Cort, this was most definitely not even on the list of possibilities. “We should go.”

Mercy started to answer, but at that moment another sound issued from within the house: the distinctive trilling of a landline telephone.

Jenna’s breath caught with a gasp. “Forget fairy tales. This is more like a slasher flick.”

The phone rang without cease. Jenna expected that after three or four rings, voicemail or an answering machine would pick up. After eight cycles, she figured the caller would give up, but the ringing continued.

“I think someone knows we’re here,” Mercy finally said. “So we should either answer it or get the hell out of here.”

“I have to know,” Jenna said. “But hold the door open, okay?”

Mercy nodded.

Jenna stepped inside and followed the electronic chirps to their source, a rather quaint telephone set from the pre-digital age, sitting on a side table. Jenna laid a hand on the cool plastic receiver and picked it up.

She held the receiver at arm’s length, relishing the return of near total silence for a moment, then held it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Jenna?” The voice was masculine and not the least bit familiar. “Am I speaking to Jenna Flood?”

Jenna felt a chill shoot down her spine. “Who are you?”

“The name is Cort, and the fact that you’re talking to me right now tells me that your father sent you there. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Jenna looked around the room, searching for a hidden video camera, but she remembered that the ringing had started when she was still outside. The camera had been on the porch. Cort, wherever he was, had probably been watching them from the moment they opened the gate.

When she didn’t answer, Cort continued. “I’m on my way there right now. Five minutes, tops. Just get inside and sit tight. I know you probably won’t believe this, but you can trust me. I know what’s been happening to you. I can help.”

“You’re right, Mr. Cort. I don’t believe it.”

“Jenna, listen to me. I worked with your father. He trusts me. You know he does. That’s why he sent you my way.”

She felt her rage start to boil again. “You have no idea how little that means to me right now.”

There was a long silence on the line, then a sigh. “I guess you found out about…” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Look, I can explain everything to you when I get there, but you have to trust me.”

“People are trying to kill me, Mr. Cort. I’m not going to trust anyone.”

“I’m going to hang up and drive now, but Jenna I’m begging you to hear me out. The danger you’re in right now is just the tip of the iceberg. This is much bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The only answer was the buzz of a dial tone in her ear.

35

Jenna was sitting on the couch in the front room when Cort arrived, as promised, slightly less than five minutes after ending the telephone call. He looked to be about the same age as Noah, a little taller and a little leaner, but no less grizzled. His bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothing — khakis and a tropical-patterned short-sleeved shirt — conveyed the impression of someone who had crashed after an all-night party.

He gave her an appraising look, then glanced around, as if searching for someone else. “Where’s your friend?”

Jenna did not answer directly. “You’ve got cameras here, right? That’s how you knew it was me?”

Mercy had not liked the idea of waiting around for Cort to come to them, but Jenna saw no alternative. “If it is a trap,” she had told Mercy, “we’re already in it. What we have to do now is give ourselves a way out.”

Mercy was hiding somewhere nearby, keeping an eye and the barrel of her pistol trained on the house. If Cort showed up with a posse in tow, or gave any hint of treachery, she would do what she could to provide cover for Jenna’s escape. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Jenna felt as alone as she had during the ordeal with the Villegas brothers.

Cort laughed — a short barking sound — and sank into a chair on the opposite side of the room. “That’s your first question? After everything you’ve been through?”

“This place is some kind of safe house, right? Cameras, remote locks, who knows what else. That tells me you’re working for the government…well, a government. I’m not sure which one. I think the men that tried to kill me work for the government, too. So…yeah, that’s my first question.”

She held his gaze, as curious about how he would react, as she was about what he would say. His eyes did not move.

Of course not. He knows all the same tricks that Noah taught me. I’ll never know if he’s lying.

“Let’s just cut to the chase, then. Yes, I work for the government. Our government. Just like your father did—”

“He wasn’t my father.” It was out of her mouth before she could even think about whether it was the right thing to say.

Cort’s expression did not change. “Now see, I thought your first question would have something to do with that.”

Jenna did not allow herself to be derailed. “So you do work for the government.”

“Yes, but not for the people that are after you. Not exactly. It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it,” she said. “Or I’m out of here.”

Cort drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair. It was the closest thing to a ‘tell’ that Jenna had seen from him. She thought he might be stalling. Finally he cleared his throat. “Why don’t you invite your friend in? She might be interested in what I have to say.”

Jenna shook her head. “I feel safer with her right where she is.”

“Suit yourself.” Cort stood up. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? There are some Cokes in the fridge.”

Definitely stalling. Jenna stood up and headed for the door.

“Wait.”

She stopped but did not turn.

“I need you to see something. In the signal room.”

“What’s a signal room?”

“It’s like an office. Come on. I’ll show you.”

“If you’re wasting my time…” She let the threat hang. She was not exactly in a position to make demands. The only leverage she had was the ability to walk out the door, and the price for that would be abandoning the search for answers.

Cort led her into a short hall with three doors. The first was slightly ajar, revealing a bathroom. The other two were closed. He opened one of the latter and led Jenna into a space that looked more like the control room of a space ship than a mere office. One entire wall was dominated by enormous flat screen television monitors. There was a long utilitarian desk with two open laptop computers, along with printers, scanners, telephones and other devices that Jenna did not recognize. Large computer servers dominated one entire wall, while the wall opposite the screens was lined with gun-metal gray freestanding cabinets.

Cort moved to the desk and started pushing buttons, waking up the computers and turning on the televisions. He tuned the TVs to different twenty-four-hour cable news networks, and in a matter of just a few seconds, the room was filled with a crowd of voices, all talking over each other. Yet, even though the voices were not synchronized, the various stations were reporting the same story — the story that had been playing when she had walked into Mercy’s bar the previous night. Each news service called it something different, but the gist was the same: Bio-terrorism in China.

“Are you following the story?” Cort asked, gesturing at the screens.

“Been a little busy with something else.”

“There’s been a major outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong. You know about SARS?”

Jenna nodded. SARS — Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — was a coronavirus disease that caused flu-like symptoms, often resulting in pneumonia. It had first appeared in China in 2002, and quickly spread across the world, infecting thousands and killing almost one person in every ten infected. Since that initial outbreak, the disease had been inactive, though a similar coronavirus called MERS — Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome — had appeared in late 2012 and was slowly making its way around the globe. The original SARS outbreak had occurred when she was a very young child, but she remembered hearing the name. She had not heard mention of this latest outbreak.

“The Chinese have closed the borders and aren’t saying much officially. Unofficially they’re investigating the outbreak as an act of terrorism. See, when SARS first showed up, a lot of folks believed it was a biological weapon, genetically engineered to target a specific racial profile — people of Asian, and specifically Chinese, ancestry.” He paused to take a deep breath, as if doing so might lend gravity to his next statement. “As it happens, they were right.”

Despite the fact that the entire discussion digressed from her immediate concerns, Jenna was stunned by the admission. “SARS was a bio-weapon?”

“The 2003 outbreak was a test. A demonstration, if you will. We were very vulnerable…two wars, a recession… We had to let Beijing know that it wasn’t a good time to screw with us.”

This second revelation was even more stunning than the first. “Us? As in the United States? We turned SARS loose on China?”

Irritation flickered across Cort’s otherwise imperturbable expression, but he waved a hand dismissively. “What’s done is done. What’s happening now is…not. Not us, I mean.”

“Then who? And why?”

Cort nodded as if she had given the appropriate response. “I’ll let you think about that. See if you’re as smart as I’ve heard.”

She heard an echo of Zack’s ominous statement in his words—they were right about you—but just as quickly, the answer popped into her head. “It will create tension between the US and China.”

Cort made a gun-shape with his hand and cocked his thumb, as if shooting at her. “What you won’t hear on the news is that we’re in the middle of a full-scale cyber-assault. Someone is exploiting a major source code vulnerability, and when the news finally gets out — and it will get out — it’s going to…” He paused, took another breath, and then in a more subdued tone said, “It’ll be bad.

“China is the obvious suspect. We’ve been in a virtual Cold War with them for the last five years — ever heard of Operation Aurora? GhostNet? The Elderwood Group? Unit 61398?”

Jenna shook her head in response to each, and Cort just shrugged. “Well, we’ve tried to keep most of it under our hat, so to speak. If people knew how vulnerable the digital landscape was, the economy would crater. Up until now, the attacks have always been just a nuisance. They were probing weaknesses, harassing us with phishing and malware, theft and eavesdropping. But this week, the attacks escalated. Exponentially. Way beyond anything the Chinese are capable of.”

“Someone is framing the Chinese for the cyber-attack, right? The same people who are behind the SARS outbreak.” Jenna could almost hear the whir of her own mental hard drive as she processed this information. “So who’s really behind it?”

Cort nodded and rolled his hand in go on gesture. “Who benefits from an all-out conflict between China and the US?”

“Russia?”

Cort made another finger gun.

What does that have to do with people trying to kill me?

“Fifteen years ago,” Cort explained, “the man you call Noah Flood was sent on a mission to destroy a former Soviet research center in Cuba, a facility still being operated by the Russian government.”

“My real parents were Russians,” she said, though it was more of a question. “Somehow they were involved in all of this.”

She didn’t know how, but she could see in Cort’s eyes that she’d gotten at least some of it right. He stared at her for several seconds, then turned to one of the laptop computers. Jenna saw that the information on his computer was now duplicated on one of the wall screens. As he navigated through directories and files, he began talking.

“Does the name Trofim Lysenko mean anything to you? No? Lysenko was a Soviet scientist, their leading agricultural expert from the 1930s until well into the 50s. Lysenko believed the widely accepted theories of genetics, as explained by Gregor Mendel…you do know that name right?”

Jenna nodded. “I learned all about him in biology. Mendel figured out the principles of heredity, and how traits are passed from one generation to the next. We know a lot more about it now. Mendel lived a hundred and fifty years ago. He didn’t know anything about DNA.”

“Lysenko thought Mendel was wrong, and that the genetic traits could be influenced by the environment. The short version of the story is that Lysenko’s ideas were hogwash, and by the 1960s, the Soviets were in a big hurry to make up lost ground, especially in the area of genetic research.”

“That’s what they were doing at the place where Noah found me. It was in Cuba, right?”

Cort regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Did he tell you that, or did you figure it out for yourself?”

“A little of both.” She returned his appraising stare. “Okay, so the Russians were doing genetic research, and someone decided it had to be stopped. Destroy the place and kill everyone, right? Only Noah didn’t count on finding me. He couldn’t bring himself to murder a child, but he didn’t dare tell anyone that he’d disobeyed orders. So, he quit. No, he didn’t just quit. He changed his name and dropped off the grid so that you people would never find me. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Well done. But you’re wrong about one thing. We always knew what your father…” Another hint of laughter. “What Noah had done. He couldn’t hide from us, but he wasn’t a threat, and neither were you. Until now.” Cort returned his attention to the computer long enough to tap in a few more commands. “That facility was conducting a particularly dangerous type of research. They had already let the genie out of the bottle, and we knew we’d have only one chance to put it back in.”

“Bioweapons?” Jenna shook her head in disbelief at the evident hypocrisy. “You as much as admitted that the US engineered the SARS outbreak.”

“Who said anything about bioweapons?” Cort smiled like a magician showing the audience his empty hat. “But speaking of SARS, we’ve tracked down the source of the outbreak. A sample of the virus was discovered missing from a CDC facility in Atlanta. One of the scientists doing research there — a Dr. Kelli Foster — recently traveled to China. Her whereabouts are presently unknown.” Cort pointed at the screen. “That is Kelli Foster.”

The display showed an unflattering mug-shot style photo — taken for an official identification card or perhaps a driver’s license — of a woman in her mid-twenties. The woman had dark hair and an olive complexion that hinted at an exotic ancestry.

Jenna gaped in astonishment. But for ten more pounds and as many years, Kelli Foster might have been her own twin sister.

The image disappeared and another took its place.

“This is Jarrod Chu. He’s a special agent in the FBI cybercrime division. He practically wrote the book on how to fight hackers. If anyone could tell us how to fight this latest attack, it’s Chu. Unfortunately, he’s also missing. I think you can see why we’re very interested in finding Mr. Chu.”

Jenna stared at the ID card picture. Chu might have been thirty, possibly Eurasian if his name was any indication, with neatly trimmed black hair. There was nothing androgynous about his features, but the resemblance to both Kelli Foster and Jenna herself was unmistakable.

Dumbstruck, she turned to Cort and shook her head questioningly. “Am I… Are they my…family?”

“Family?” Cort rolled the word around in his mouth then frowned. “Maybe that’s the word for it. I don’t really know. You see, in a way Jenna, they are you.”

“What?”

“Kelli Foster, Jarrod Chu, you…and at least a dozen others. Jenna, you’re all the same person. You’re all clones.”

36

Cort didn’t allow even a moment for the information to sink in. “Back in ‘99, when the order came down to destroy the research facility, we didn’t know exactly what they were up to, but we knew they had perfected human cloning techniques. We didn’t know if they were trying to engineer some kind of super soldier, or trying to create organ donors for former party officials turned oligarchs or… Hell, maybe trying to clone old Joe Stalin himself. All we really knew was that we had to stop them. So we did.”

Jenna could barely hear him over the sound of blood rushing through her ears. A clone? I’m a clone?

She was still reeling from the news that Noah had killed her parents, and now she was being told that she didn’t even have parents. She was nothing but an experiment. Pinocchio pretending to be a real boy. Frankenstein’s monster brought to life by a mad scientist.

Several seconds passed before she realized that Cort had stopped talking. She met his gaze. “A clone?”

The man nodded.

“Did Noah know?”

“Hard to say. I’m sure someone higher up the chain knew exactly what was going on. That’s probably why they decided to let him go through with his retirement plan. They were curious to see how things would turn out for you. But yeah, I think he probably figured it out.”

Jenna swallowed. The revelation had rocked every fiber of her being, calling into question everything she believed about herself.

Her knowledge of cloning was limited to what she had seen in movies and read about in the occasional science magazine article, but that was enough to grasp the basics. Genetic material from one or more donors, inserted into a human egg cell and then implanted in a surrogate mother for gestation and birth — that was probably how they had done it.

All the years spent wondering what her mother looked like… She didn’t have a mother. Just an anonymous rented womb.

Jenna looked up at the image of Jarrod Chu. “How did they survive?”

“You have to understand that, until this week, we didn’t realize that any of them had. Our working hypothesis is that the clones were removed from the facility after a few years — probably when they were school aged — and sent back to the Motherland for education and indoctrination. Or, they might have been educated by sleeper agents in the US. Both Foster and Chu underwent fairly rigorous background checks and passed without a hitch.”

Jenna fought through the deluge of questions, most of which she doubted Cort could even answer, and tried to focus on the immediate problem. “Why now? Why come after me?”

“Something big is happening. A plan that has been in the works for a very long time. We know that much, and we know that the clones are critical to the plan.”

“How?”

“I think you already know, Jenna. You’re not like other people.”

You are dangerous.

You don’t even know what you are.

“You’re smarter, stronger. Hell, there are things you probably don’t even know you’re capable of doing.” Cort jerked his head toward the screen. “Just like them. Kelli Foster and Jarrod Chu. There are others, too, all geniuses in positions of power and influence, all around the world. Positioned like pieces on a chessboard. It took us a while to figure it out, but once we identified those two, the rest fell into place.”

“That’s why they decided to kill me?”

“Not just you. All of them. In your case, someone panicked. Your father was a senior officer who quit all of a sudden to raise you. Given what was happening, that looked very suspicious. Better safe than sorry.”

Jenna felt no reaction to the word ‘father.’ “You aren’t going to help me, are you?”

Cort took a deep breath. “Jenna, my section wasn’t involved in any of this. If I had known sooner, I could have worked with your father and arranged a safe outcome for both of you. But if you come in—”

A distant gun report interrupted him. Jenna had known the audience with Cort was almost at and end, and she was already poised for action, so when she heard the shot, she sprang into motion.

Cort moved, too, faster than she expected for someone his age. Jenna’s expectations, however, were that Cort, like Noah, would be a veteran intelligence officer, with reflexes honed by training and experience, and a repertoire of deadly skills. Whether or not this was true did not matter. She had prepared for the worst case scenario.

In the five minutes spent waiting for Cort to arrive, Jenna had scouted the safe house, exploring the rooms, identifying potential hazards, and plotting escape routes. She had memorized the layout of each room, and noted what items might be useful for defensive or even offensive purposes. In the room Cort called the ‘signal room,’ she had been particularly interested in the notebook computers resting on the desktop.

As she darted forward, Cort sprang to his feet and took a step back, one hand extended toward her, the other reaching behind him. When the hand reappeared, it held a small pistol, but before he could aim it at her, she had scooped up the nearest laptop and hurled it like a Frisbee. The heavy computer struck dead center in the middle of Cort’s chest. The projectile hit with sufficient force to knock him back a step, but more importantly, it dealt a shock to his nervous system that caused the gun to fly out of his hands.

Jenna took action before the hurled computer clattered to the floor. She pounced on Cort, driving several quick focused punches into his jaw and solar plexus. She felt an unexpected throb of pain in her left arm. The stab wound, aggravated by the sudden activity, reminded her of its presence, but she ignored the sensation and didn’t hold back.

Cort weathered the assault and caught her third punch. He twisted her arm around and attempted to pin it, but she was ready for this move. She relaxed her legs, letting her weight drop, and pulled him off balance. They collapsed together onto the floor in a tangle of limbs. Cort seized on this imagined advantage and tried to roll her over, so he could use his superior size to subdue her.

Jenna didn’t resist. Instead, she reached out with her free hand and in a single smooth motion, seized hold of the computer and slammed it against the side of Cort’s head. The blow dazed him, and she wriggled free of his grasp. In the instant it took him to recover, she found his gun and brought it up, ready to fire.

Cort froze, staring at the barrel of the pistol as if hypnotized. “Jenna, put it down,” he said slowly.

She saw in his eyes that he knew she would shoot, but she also saw that he was calculating his odds of surviving that first shot and taking the gun away from her. He was on the ground, and any move against her would require him to overcome his own inertia. The odds, she decided, were probably in her favor, but Cort knew, as she did, that the best way to deal with a situation like this was to move toward the gun.

She pulled the trigger.

The report was deafening in the small room, but Jenna did not even flinch. A spray of red erupted from Cort’s right thigh, and a curse tore from between his clenched teeth. Jenna kept the gun trained on him, shifting her aim so that it was now trained on his heart.

“Keys.”

“Jenna.” He was breathing fast, angry and in pain. “I can help, but you need to trust me.”

“Give them to me, or I’ll take them off your dead body.”

His hands came up in a gesture of surrender, then he reached slowly toward the pocket just above the spreading red stain. “You won’t make it on your own,” he said, grimacing as he brought out a key ring. “I can bring you in. Keep you safe.”

Despite his evident treachery, the offer was tempting. Cort had given her the answers she sought. He could just as easily have killed her the moment he walked in. She didn’t trust him, but if there was even a chance that he was willing and able to protect her, this would be her only opportunity to accept. If she refused, if she ran, there would be nowhere left to turn for help.

But if I’m as smart and dangerous as everyone seems to think I am, maybe I don’t need help.

She extended her left hand, palm up. He nodded, as if somehow agreeing with the logic of her refusal, and tossed the ring to her. She thought he might try a short throw as a distraction, but the keys landed on her outstretched fingers so precisely that she didn’t even need to break eye contact for the catch. She took a backward step and then bolted from the room, ignoring his shouted parting words.

“They’ll find you! They will kill you!”

37

As she sprinted through the safe house, Jenna heard more shots in quick succession, too many to just be from Mercy’s gun. In the brief time they had to make a plan before Cort’s arrival, they had discussed this possibility. It was their worst case scenario. While she and Mercy had hoped for a positive outcome, the last twelve hours had taught Jenna the importance of making her own luck.

She reached the front door and threw it open. There was a distinctive mechanical click as the remote-controlled deadbolt lock sprang out of the door. She had anticipated that the same mechanism which had allowed her access in the first place might be used to imprison her once inside, so before Cort’s arrival, she had stuffed the bolt hole with a wad of toilet paper to prevent the lock from seating. She had done the same with the screen door, but before she attempted to open it, she took a moment to scan the front yard.

In the brief time that she had been inside, the sky had lightened. The sun was climbing into the sky. While much of the world was still shrouded in shadow, she had no trouble distinguishing three cars that had not been there before, lined up on the street in front of the house. Four men were crouched behind the cars, peering across the street into the semi-darkness between two houses, where Mercy had hid.

Jenna glanced at the key ring in her left hand. The car key was recognizable by its shape and the plastic sheath that contained the alarm remote control. The logo on the fob — a circle with sprouting wings — told her which car it would operate.

Cort rode in style.

A blue Mini Cooper S sat just ahead of two generic-looking sedans that were probably from a government motor pool or a rental fleet. Jenna was reminded of a song she had learned in her early childhood—one of these things is not like the other.

The men at the cars had their backs to her and appeared to be unaware of what had transpired in the house. To reach the Mini, Jenna would first have to get past the fence. Or over it.

Her left arm was pulsing with pain, the sleeve of her shirt dotted red with blood that had oozed through the bandage beneath. A few hours ago, she had barely been able to lift the limb, but now, despite aggravating the wound in the struggle with Cort, she felt certain that the muscles would do whatever she demanded of them.

She wondered if she owed her fast healing abilities to some long-dead Russian scientist.

She darted out into the open, keeping her body bent forward as she crossed the short distance to the fence. Her approach went unnoticed by the gunmen who had their attention fully occupied, but she knew that would change the moment she vaulted the fence. They would see her. They would try to shoot her. She would have only a second or two to get into the Mini. Maybe less. They would probably start shooting as soon as they saw her, but if she could get into the car, lock the doors and stay down long enough to start the engine…

The doors!

Before attempting the fence, she spared another glance at the key fob. There were three buttons, each marked with a different symbol. Her finger hovered above the one that looked like an unlocked padlock, but she didn’t press it until just before she was ready to clamber over the fence. She was afraid the car’s alarm might give her away with a chirp when she hit the button. It did not. Instead something remarkable happened. As she hit the sidewalk, she heard the Mini’s motor begin purring. Cort’s car was equipped with a remote starter.

Whether deafened by the din of their weapons or simply hyper-focused on the threat across the street, none of the gunmen took note of her presence behind them. But Mercy must have, for at that moment, four shots rang out in quick succession, the rounds rapping against the fender of the rear-most car. Jenna made it to the Mini’s passenger door and got it open before any of the men realized she was there.

As she slid inside, Jenna stabbed down on the lock button. A loud crack resounded through the interior, and the passenger window disintegrated, revealing a hard face and reaching hands, but Jenna had already made it over the center column and slid behind the wheel. She thrust the pistol she’d taken from Cort at the would-be intruder and fired point blank. The man vanished. Jenna didn’t know if he’d been hit or simply ducked back at the sight of the gun. She didn’t particularly care. Her focus was on the unfamiliar control console in front of her. She knew the motor was already running. There were just two pedals on the floor — an automatic transmission. Thank goodness for that, she thought. She found the gear lever, shifted it into drive, and stomped on the gas.

The take-off would have earned her a lecture — or worse — from her Driver’s Ed teacher, but under the circumstances, it was perfect. The Mini shot forward like a startled rabbit, and it was halfway down the block before Jenna could even think about what to do next.

She touched the brakes and steered into a tight U-turn. The nimble little car easily negotiated the about-face, despite the narrow confines of the street. In a matter of seconds, Jenna was facing back toward the site of the gun battle. The gunmen and their vehicles were lined up on her left. Mercy was concealed somewhere to the right.

The gunmen shifted forward, the muzzles of their pistols flashing as they hurled lead down the street at the Mini. A bullet smacked into the windshield and plowed through the air right above her head. A jagged crack split the glass but it did not shatter.

Jenna ducked down behind the steering wheel, and moved her foot off the brake, preparing to charge headlong into the fray. Like a chess player working through the moves and counter-moves of a gambit, she rehearsed what would happen next.

Mercy waited across the street from the safe house and the shooters. Jenna would have to stop to pick her up, and when she did, they would both be exposed for as long as it took for Mercy to make the dash to the Mini. She groped for a better plan, but without being able to communicate her intentions to Mercy, there was no better alternative.

Except…there was.

They will find you, Cort had said, and Jenna knew he was right. The killers would never give up. They would not stop until she was dead — she and anyone with her.

Earlier, she had balked at the thought of dragging Mercy into the mess in which she now found herself. Despite the fact that Mercy had saved her from Carlos and had hauled her out the Everglades, despite the fact that the idea of facing the uncertain future alone terrified her, Jenna now saw with startling clarity that there was really only one way to ensure Mercy’s safety.

She stomped on the accelerator and the Mini shot down the street.

One of the gunmen leaped in front of her, striking a defiant pose, as if daring her to run him down, and he started firing. Jenna took the dare. The man realized his mistake a fraction of a second too late. There was a crunch, followed by a thumping sound as the man rolled across the hood, up onto the fractured windshield, and then fell away. Without raising her head or easing off the accelerator, Jenna sped past the cars, past the place where Mercy was hiding, and kept going.

Mercy wouldn’t understand her decision. She had not been privy to Cort’s revelation about Jenna’s origins or the reasons why the government hunted her so relentlessly. She would only know that Jenna had abandoned her.

But she would live.

The killers had no interest in Mercy. They probably wouldn’t even look for her, not with Jenna slipping away. Mercy would be safer without her.

It was cold comfort. As the Mini reached the intersection with the main thoroughfare, the reality of her situation sank in. There was no longer anyone she could ask for help or advice. She would have to face the rest of her life — however short that span would prove to be — completely alone.

But as she coasted through the stop and turned right onto Seventh Avenue, something else Cort had said echoed in her memory.

There are others.

38

The question of how to track down—

My brothers and sisters?

— her fellow clones, and the thornier moral problem of their evident involvement in a worldwide terror plot designed to ignite World War III, occupied Jenna’s thoughts for less than a minute. That was how long it took for the first signs of pursuit to appear.

She realized now that her inner conflict about leaving Mercy behind had hidden flaws in her getaway plan that were now apparent. The Mini Cooper was not the most inconspicuous vehicle, and there was every reason to believe that the men hunting her would have other assets at their disposal — more surveillance drones, traffic cameras, who knew what else?

I need to ditch this car.

Easier said than done.

She had seen the two cars pull out from the cross street, fifteen seconds after she passed. Traffic was light, giving her a clear line of sight to the sedans, which meant that they could see her as well. In the time it would take her to pull over and get out, they would close the gap.

On the plus side of the equation, the Mini was fast and seemed eager to prove it. Despite its compact design and bulldog appearance, it had the heart of a race car and the ground-hugging handling of a go-cart. The only thing holding Jenna back was her own caution, and with each passing second, confidence replaced fear. She was, as she had told Mercy, a quick learner.

Of course, she realized. That’s how I was designed.

Cut it out, a second inner-voice said. Save the pity party for later.

A traffic light two blocks away turned yellow. Jenna pushed harder, knowing that there was no way she would make the light. It turned red when she was still a hundred yards from the cross street, but she had no intention of stopping.

As cars rolled into the intersection, her eyes darted back and forth, fixing each vehicle in her mind’s eye, estimating speeds and rates of acceleration, plotting the course that would carry her through with the least amount of maneuvering. It reminded her of that old arcade game where the goal was to get the frog across a busy street without getting him turned into a green blob of roadkill. If she didn’t get it right — or if one of the other drivers saw her and got spooked — it would be her going splat. As she closed on the intersection, the connections solidified in her mind. Eye, hand and foot, were perfectly synchronized with past, present and future.

It didn’t go quite as smoothly as she had anticipated. The one thing that she could not have accounted for was the reaction of the other drivers. The intersection erupted in a cacophony of screeching tires and honking horns. Jenna had planned her route with the expectation that none of the drivers would stop for her, but some of them tried anyway, slamming on their brakes or swerving out of their lane even though these late reflex actions were unnecessary. It took less than two seconds for the Mini to traverse the intersection, but that was long enough to transform the crossing into total chaos.

With the intersection snarled, Jenna seized the opportunity to put some distance between herself and the chase cars. She stomped on the gas pedal, and pushed the little car faster. The speedometer registered fifty…sixty…seventy miles per hour. Pedestrians on the sidewalk flashed by so fast that she couldn’t make out their features. Cars in the oncoming lanes were a blur. In the rapidly diminishing distance, she saw a traffic light — green — marking the next intersection. This time, there was no need to plot a safe route through. She passed beneath the light before it could so much as flicker yellow.

The road shrank to five lanes, two on either side and an escape lane in the middle. While Sunday traffic remained light, the cars traveling in the same direction loomed closer. Despite the Mini’s superior handling, she was going much too fast to weave between them. She was about to ease her foot off the accelerator when she spied something new in the rearview: the distinctive flashing red and blue lights of a police car.

She mentally kicked herself. She had been so focused on escaping the killers, it had not occurred to her that her escape was not happening in a vacuum. The most probable explanation was that one of the irate drivers from the intersection had taken a moment to call 911 on a cell phone, reporting a blue Mini Cooper driving recklessly.

Surrendering to the police wasn’t an option. Even if she found someone to believe her crazy story, the killers wouldn’t be intimidated by legitimate law enforcement officers any more than the bogus FBI agents that had shot Noah and the two deputies. They wouldn’t even need to use force. They would simply flash their government credentials, claim jurisdiction and take her away. And if any well-intentioned policemen got in their way, there would be more blood on her hands.

The realization that she was now being pursued by government hitmen and the police underscored the urgency of ditching the Mini. She needed to find a place where she could quickly blend in with a crowd — a mall, or maybe the beach if she could find it.

She swerved into the center lane and blasted past a cluster of cars moving at half her speed. In her mirror, she saw the vehicles pulling to the side, making room for the police cruisers. There were two sets of police lights now and they were closing fast. The Mini’s turbo engine might have outclassed the motor pool cars driven by her pursuers, but the police cruisers had a lot more horsepower under the hood. If she kept going in a straight line, they would catch her, and the killers wouldn’t be far behind.

Another intersection loomed. The light was red, and cars streamed across her path at normal commuting speeds. Gripping the steering wheel, she began murmuring, “Green light, green light,” and as if by a miracle, the light changed when she was just fifty yards away.

It was almost enough to make her believe that her mad scientist creator had imbued her with telekinetic powers…but no, it was probably just a lucky coincidence.

The idle speculation was shattered as something flashed into view on her left, a beat-up muscle car blowing through the light, blissfully unaware of the blue rocket hurtling into the intersection.

Jenna’s reflexes took over. She pushed the accelerator harder, feeling the turbo charger respond almost instantly. Her subconscious mind grasped that going left, trying to slip behind the red-light violator, would end disastrously, so she angled to the right, trying to cut in front of him.

It almost worked.

The man at the wheel of the beater must have caught a glimpse of the onrushing Mini. Instead of trying to stop, he accelerated, trying to get out of her way. He succeeded only in changing what would have been a near miss into a glancing impact.

Jenna barely felt the front corner of the muscle car kiss the back bumper of the Mini, but the transfer of energy spun the little car around like a top. The Mini’s low center of gravity kept it on the road, but for uncountable seconds, it pirouetted out of control, its smoking tires laying down a lotus-shaped spiral of rubber in the middle of the intersection.

Jenna’s head continued to spin for a few more seconds after the car came to rest, but a bright light shining in her eyes and the too-loud wail of approaching police sirens brought her back to the moment. She blinked, vaguely aware that she was unhurt and only mildly disoriented. Then she realized that the light still shining in her eyes was the rising sun. The Mini’s wild dance had left her facing east.

East it is.

She pushed the gas pedal to the floor, but nothing happened.

Jenna felt a wave of panic start to build. Her instincts had guided her through this long ordeal, but now her inexperience had caught up with her.

Get out. Run.

No. It just stalled. The spin reversed engine compression, just like the pin maneuver Noah told me about. I just need to restart.

There’s no time.

She ignored the frantic urgings of her fearful brain and heeded the calm inner voice of reason. The police would arrive at any moment. Even if it took a few seconds to get the car started, she would get a lot farther than if she attempted to escape on foot.

As if being graded by her driving instructor, she put a foot on the brake, shifted into park, and reached for the key.

The keyhole was empty.

She remembered the remoter start button on the fob. The keys lay forgotten on the passenger seat, partially buried under a scattering of what looked like tiny diamonds — the shattered remains of the tempered glass window. She found the key, squeezed the button several times, and felt panic replaced by elation as the engine turned over and began purring once more.

Shift. Gas pedal. Go.

The Mini jumped forward like a sprinter at the sound of the starter’s gun, as two police cars screeched into the intersection. The twin vehicles, normally a symbol of help and safety, took on the monstrous appearances of hungry ancient demons racing to devour her. The roar of their engines helped complete the impression, but only served to motivate Jenna further. She crushed the gas pedal down, increasing the distance between herself and the monsters behind her, but rushing headlong into a third.

39

Despite the glare of the sun in her eyes, Jenna spied another set of flashing lights ahead. A third police cruiser was responding to a call for backup. In the instant it took for her to register this fact, the approaching vehicle abruptly cut across her lane and stopped, blocking a portion of the road.

But not enough.

Jenna swung to the left without slowing. The Mini bumped over the curb and kept going, two wheels on the road and two on the sidewalk. A gaggle of pedestrians who had stopped to watch the mayhem dove out of the way, but Jenna was already past the roadblock and steered back onto the asphalt. As she did, she spied a sign post with the distinctive blue and red shield logo of the Interstate highway system.

Jenna felt a glimmer of hope. Even on the freeway — especially on the freeway — the chances of eluding pursuit were slim, but at least she would have a sense of where she was and where the road led.

The failed roadblock bought her a few more seconds of lead time, and after just a few more blocks, she spied the freeway overpass and another sign directing her to the onramp. She slowed just enough to make the gradual right turn and then accelerated again, weaving through a knot of cars heading for the Interstate.

The freeway lowered into view. She had never driven on a major highway, never even ridden along on one, and her first glimpse was a bit of a letdown. She had imagined a daunting river of cars, whipping by like Formula One racers. Instead, she saw only a scattering of vehicles — cars, SUVs, even a few eighteen-wheelers — none of which were moving any faster than she was now.

The onramp shunted her into the flow of traffic and just like that she was transported to a different reality. A concrete wall rose up on her right, eclipsing her view of the city streets she had been on only a moment before. A low barrier separated the northbound and southbound lanes, and beyond that, across more lanes, rose another wall. Jenna understood that, while the freeway might speed her on her way, it would also confine her like a hamster in a Habitrail tube.

Maybe the freeway wasn’t such a great idea.

In the distance, she could make out a green sign marking the next exit. The police had yet to appear in her rearview. If she could make it to that exit — wherever it led — unseen, she might be able to…

There was a subtle shift in her center of gravity, and she heard something change in the purr of the Mini’s engine. She pressed down on the gas pedal again, but the deceleration continued. The speedometer revealed the slowdown. With each passing second, the vehicle lost ten miles per hour. The emergency flashers activated, ticking away.

The cars, which had only a moment before been falling away in her wake, now caught up and blew past her, honking in irritation. She had to get to the side of the road before the Mini came to a complete stop and got plowed by an unsuspecting motorist. The move used up the last of the car’s momentum. It came to rest beneath the imposing wall, at least half a mile from the exit.

Jenna took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm, and she worked through the steps to restart the motor, but this time nothing happened. She pushed the button on the key fob repeatedly with no effect, and a sickening realization came to her. In addition to the remote starter, Cort’s Mini Cooper was also equipped with a theft-prevention lock-down system.

She reached for the door handle but found it locked and likewise unresponsive. Shut down and locked in. Fortunately, the passenger side window had already been shot out. There was just enough room between the car and the wall for her to squeeze out.

The freeway was a deluge of sensation. The sound of cars whooshing past. Engine noise. The rumble of tires on pavement. All of it rising and falling, distorted by the Doppler effect. The smells of exhaust and hot rubber assaulted her nose. And beneath it all, a faint but persistent vibration, as if the elevated road might at any moment break apart, dropping her and all the passing cars into an abyss. It was an inhospitable world, an alien planet not meant to be traveled on foot.

The exit sign seemed unreachably distant. She glanced back into the rush of approaching cars. Still no sign of the police, but she did not fail to notice a dark speck, low in the sky and almost certainly headed for her. Not a drone this time. A helicopter.

Move!

She didn’t know whether it was the voice of panic or of reason, or if for once, both were in agreement, but the inner admonition was as obvious as it was unhelpful. It would take several minutes, even at a run, to reach the far off exit, and she would be in the open the whole way.

On the far side of the highway, treetops rose above the concrete wall, hinting at the ordinary world beyond, and inspiration dawned. She glanced up and saw, directly above her, the green frill of a palm, gently waving above the top of the wall.

The wall appeared insurmountable, a sheer vertical barrier at least twenty feet high, with no handholds. Too bad the mad scientist didn’t give me sticky Spider-Man hands, she thought, but the bitter reminder of her bizarre origin triggered another memory.

You’re smarter, stronger. Hell, there are things you probably don’t even know you’re capable of doing.

She wasn’t a mutant superhero, but she could jump. Really jump. She was the only person in her school who could slam dunk a basketball, an ability that both impressed and repelled boys.

Well, it’s worth a shot.

She scrambled onto the hood of the stalled Mini and then up onto its roof. The surface dimpled under her weight with a faint pop. From this new vantage, the wall didn’t look quite as daunting, but it was still higher than she had ever jumped before.

Never know if I don’t try.

Unbidden, the calculations played out in her head — where to step, the amount of vertical thrust required to get her high enough. She hopped back down onto the hood, pivoted, compressed herself like a spring, and then uncoiled.

In two short seconds, she landed back on the roof, having missed the top of the wall by a foot. Anger welled inside her. So close, she thought, wanting something to punch. Freedom was just a foot beyond her reach.

With an explosion of breath — a kiai shout that was caught away in the wind of passing cars — she leapt skyward again. The semi-rigid fiberglass roof absorbed some of her energy, but there was still more power in her legs than she would have believed possible. She swung her arms up, adding their momentum to the overall effort. This time, her fingertips rose above the top of the wall.

Her hands came down on smooth concrete, but before her weight could fully settle onto them, she brought the soles of her borrowed deck shoes against the vertical surface of the wall and pushed off.

It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did. Her fingers hooked over the back edge of the wall and locked in place. Her scrabbling feet fought against the inexorable pull of gravity, and she managed to climb higher still. She got her forearms onto the wall, elbows locking over the top to hold her in place.

There was another surge of pain in her wounded biceps. If she had been hanging from her fingertips, she would have fallen back down, probably breaking a leg or worse in the process, but she did not fall. Instead, she fought through the pain and heaved her upper torso onto the top of the wall.

She pushed herself up, straddling the concrete barrier, hugging it close. To her left, the top of the Mini and the freeway seemed distant, but to her right, the open ground below the highway looked more like the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Why did I think this was good idea?

The faint chopping sound of the approaching helicopter answered her question.

A long row of tall palm trees rose up alongside the freeway like sentinels, but now they did not look quite as close as before. She chose to trust her instincts and the unrealized potential in her body that had gotten her this far. She had to keep going.

She scooted back until she was under the broad leaves of the nearest palm. She judged the distance to the spindle-straight trunk. Eight feet. It was shorter than her best standing long jump. Of course, she had never attempted a jump from an eight-inch wide strip of concrete, and a sand pit was a lot more forgiving than a tree trunk, but that wouldn’t stop her. Compared to scaling the wall, leaping onto a tree seemed a more doable task.

The hardest part was letting go. She got her feet under her, maintaining contact with the wall, rose to a crouch, and then launched herself across the gap. A low hanging frond slapped her cheek at the top of her arc, and then she fell. Her arms and legs spread wide, and in the instant before contact, she wrapped them around the trunk, hugging it to her. She gripped the cheese-grater rough surface fiercely. When she was sure the fall had ceased, she relaxed her legs and stretched her body toward the ground. Then she squeezed the trunk between her thighs and relaxed her arms, crunching her body into a fetal curl.

She didn’t dare slide. The rough exterior of the palm would tear through her clothes and skin, if the friction didn’t set her on fire first. Instead, she methodically wriggled down the palm, like an undulating caterpillar. Each move brought her a few inches closer to the ground. The cumulative effect of clenching and unclenching, hugging and relaxing, caused her muscles to burn with lactic acid, but she soon fell into a mechanical rhythm, one cycle per second. She counted them out under her breath just as she had counted down the timer on the bomb — six alligators, seven alligators, eight. She reckoned it would take about two hundred alligators to reach the bottom, and she was pleasantly surprised when, at one hundred and sixty-eight, her feet touched solid ground.

She collapsed onto the grassy strip that ran between the base of the freeway and the parallel frontage road. She was amazed that she had been able to hold on as long as she had. As she lay there, letting the acid warmth drain away, she kept counting, and when she reached two hundred, she rolled onto hands and knees and stood up on rubbery legs.

That was when the sky erupted with a thunderous roar. The helicopter had found her.

40

Jenna ran. After a few steps, her legs remembered how to work and she picked up speed. Fatigue melted from her muscles, fueled by an urgency to escape the helicopter’s gaze. The aircraft hovered, as if indifferent to her efforts, but it managed to stay right above her.

The road that ran parallel to the Interstate was mostly closed off. The freeway formed an impenetrable wall to her left, and to her right, across the empty street, was a long swath of vegetation — trees, tall grass and shrubs, which occasionally parted to reveal a chain-link fence underneath. She ran south, but only because it was the direction she had been facing when the helicopter had found her. Turning around, or thinking about which way to go, would have cost her precious seconds.

A T-junction lay ahead, a cross street that didn’t pass beneath the freeway. A sidelong glance revealed a few commercial buildings behind tall fences, but nothing that would facilitate her escape. She kept going.

The next street did pass under the Interstate, and as she angled toward the opening, she glanced up at the helicopter as if daring it to follow. The helicopter was black with no markings. Its sleek aerodynamic fuselage gave the impression of a menacing wasp. Definitely not a police helicopter, she thought, and ran even faster. The pilot dipped the aircraft forward to block her path with the whirling rotor blades, but he was either too slow or too cautious. Jenna ducked around the corner…

And skidded to a dead stop.

Two police cars, emergency lights flashing, raced toward her, just seconds away from the underpass.

Jenna spun around and raced back out, directly beneath the helicopter. Her mind raced through her options. She had survived the Villegas brothers, taken out Zack’s entire hit squad and knocked a drone out of the sky — she could figure out a solution to this problem, too. But no matter how she looked at the pieces, a winning strategy did not come. She was on foot, alone, in an unfamiliar environment, with no time and no choices.

Another police cruiser approached from the opposite direction, half a block away. She cut to the left, trying to reach the road she’d come from, but the police car turned across her path, blocking that route. The other two patrol cars shot past and cut in front of her.

Doors flew open, and the three police officers emerged as one, as if they had rehearsed the move for maximum effect. All three had their guns drawn and pointed at Jenna. She could tell that they were shouting, probably ordering her to get down — to ‘grab the pavement,’ as the ill-fated Deputy Jimmy might have put it — but their voices were drowned out by the tumult of the helicopter directly above.

There was nowhere to go.

She raised her hands, sensing that if she did not, the officers might very well shoot. The reserves of energy she had tapped for the futile sprint shut off. She dropped to her knees, more out of exhaustion than surrender.

Don’t give up, she told herself. An opportunity will come, be ready to seize it.

More police cars were coming from every direction. The knot was tightening. Two civilian cars — a pair of familiar-looking generic sedans — joined the parade. The last glimmer of hope faded away.

Jenna didn’t think the police would shoot her or that the government hit men would do so out in the open, so the loud report — louder than anything she had ever heard — caught her off guard. She started, astonished to see the three officers dive for cover behind their vehicles.

The shot—no, make that shots, plural—had come from the helicopter, and hadn’t been aimed at her. A glance up revealed a man, framed by the open side door of the aircraft, sitting behind a machine gun. The gunner loosed another burst that stitched a row of holes across a police cruiser’s hood, but then Jenna lost sight of him as the helicopter pivoted away, turning in a slow circle above her. More shots followed. Short bursts sparked off the three police cars, keeping the officers down. The helicopter corkscrewed closer to the ground, closer to Jenna.

The bold attack was eerily reminiscent of what had occurred behind the bait shop, and Jenna realized why as the helicopter completed a full rotation and she got another look at the gunner. It was the man who had identified himself as Special Agent Cray of the FBI — the man who had killed Noah.

Jenna turned away, estimating the distance to the nearest police car. She wondered if her legs would carry her that far. Probably not fast enough to outrun a burst from Cray’s machine gun.

“Jenna!” His voice was nearly drowned out by the rotor wash and engine noise, but she heard him repeat the same exhortation he had made twelve hours earlier. “We’re not going to hurt you!”

Why not? She wondered. Why haven’t you killed me already?

Noah’s whispered warning to the deputy echoed again in her head. Those men are not federal agents. You absolutely must not let them put my daughter in their vehicle.

Zack had showed no interest in winning her trust, and Cort had made it clear that the government wanted her dead, no matter the consequences. Cray had tried to capture her alive, and now he was driving the police back, providing cover for her to…what exactly?

“Get in!” Cray’s shout was louder, probably because the helicopter was just a few feet above the ground, a few feet from where she knelt, statue still.

If they had wanted her dead, they would have killed her already, which meant…

We’re not going to hurt you.

But Cray had shot Noah.

Not federal agents.

Then who the hell are you?

There was another report, but it wasn’t from Cray’s gun. The single staccato pop — like a distant firecracker — had come from the outer perimeter. Cray jerked back as something struck the side of the fuselage, too close for comfort. Then he swiveled his weapon in the direction of the new threat.

Jenna couldn’t believe the police would try to bring the helicopter down. Trying to shoot the tires out of a speeding car was one thing, but there was no telling how much damage an out-of-control helicopter might cause if it crashed. As more shots tore into the air, she realized that she had made two incorrect assumptions. The first was that it was the police shooting. It wasn’t. It was Cort’s friends from the safe house. The second assumption was worse. They weren’t shooting at the helicopter — they were shooting at her.

That simplified things.

She met Cray’s eyes, nodded to signal her intention and then waited for him to fire another long burst. As soon as the gun fell silent, she leaped up and threw herself past Cray and into the helicopter.

She heard Cray, or maybe it was someone else, shouting, “We’ve got her. Go! Go!” Then something like an invisible hand pressed her down against the deck. The helicopter ascended, and judging by the g-forces pushing against her and the strident whine of the turbine engines, it was rising fast.

She waited, unmoving, curious to see the consequences of her choice. Would they slap handcuffs on her? Inject her with a tranquilizer? Or simply hold her at gunpoint while they whisked her off to some secret prison facility?

After several seconds, it became apparent that nothing of the sort was going to happen, so she cautiously raised her head.

Cray was still manning the gun, peering out across an urban landscape that was now dizzyingly distant. His was not the only face she recognized. The man who had posed as his partner during the confrontation at the marina was there as well. He nodded in her direction, though the meaning of the gesture was unclear. The riddle of his gesture was quickly forgotten when she saw the other two people seated in the small cabin.

The man was a stranger, but she could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t a professional killer or a government secret agent. He didn’t have that hard edge that she had noticed in Cort, and looking back, that Noah had always possessed. Thin and bookish, with hair gone gray, he looked more like an accountant or a college professor. Whatever his role, he was staring at Jenna as if…

As if I’m his long lost daughter.

No.

No way.

It was almost as unbelievable as the identity of the other passenger.

Mercedes Reyes smiled and opened her arms to embrace Jenna. “Honey, if you keep ditching me, I’m going to start taking it personally.”

41

“How…?” Before she could figure out exactly what she was trying to ask, a very different realization dawned. It had been right in front of her, nearly all her life, as obvious as her own reflection in a mirror. “Mercy, are you…like me?”

Mercy’s anxious glance at the older man was answer enough, but before either of them could elaborate, Cray’s partner gestured to an empty seat. “Better buckle up. This could get a little rough.”

The helicopter was tilted forward and accelerating, so the deck on which she lay was slightly askew. Just like my life, Jenna thought as she crawled to the chair.

She couldn’t help staring at Mercy, at the woman who looked so much like her, who was so similar to her in temperament and interests. Thirty-six-year-old Mercedes Reyes, a Cuban émigré—Cuba? Of course. It makes perfect sense now—had insisted that she couldn’t be Jenna’s mother, that she hadn’t even met Noah until Jenna was three…but then everything Noah had told her was a lie. Had Mercy been in the compound that night? Had she survived and come to America in search of her…sister? Daughter? Clone?

Mercy had known — known Noah’s secret, known the truth about Jenna’s mysterious past. Why didn’t she tell me?

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The helicopter dipped forward and Jenna’s stomach rose into her mouth as the aircraft made a roller-coaster steep plunge earthward. Cray pulled himself back from the doorway and slid it closed, blocking her view of the journey. Without looking, she could visualize the helicopter’s movements in the sky above Miami.

The second phony FBI agent gestured to the headphones that he and everyone else wore. Then he pointed over Jenna’s shoulder to a similar headset. She took the headphones and slipped them over her ears, blocking out most of the engine noise.

“Can you hear me?” the man asked. His voice, electronically reproduced, was eerily out of sync with the movements of his mouth, but she could hear him.

“Loud and clear,” she replied, and heard her own voice over the intercom, just a fraction of second later.

“Just hang on,” he advised. “We’re going to be flying pretty low to avoid radar detection. The last thing we need right now is for the Air National Guard to scramble a couple of interceptors. That would really spoil our day.”

The helicopter banked hard, then performed a series of rapid, stomach-churning maneuvers that made further conversation impossible. Jenna risked a glance through the side window, half expecting to see fighter jets streaking past, but she saw only the concrete and glass towers of downtown Miami.

“Nothing to worry about,” Cray volunteered, as if sensing Jenna’s anxiety. “We’re just trying to confuse anyone who’s looking for us.”

As promised, the helicopter soon leveled out, and Jenna’s stomach settled. A few minutes later she felt the craft descending, and shortly thereafter, the landing gear bumped against something solid.

Cray threw open the door to reveal the tarmac of an airport. A quick look around told Jenna that they were probably at Miami International or a nearby satellite airfield. The helicopter had set down a short distance from a hangar building, but as she stepped down onto solid ground, Cray guided her in the opposite direction, toward a waiting airplane. Jenna was not well versed in aircraft identification, but just a glance told her that the only thing this jet had in common with Carlos’s plane was wings.

“Gulfstream IV,” Cray said, as he followed her up the fold-down stairs, into the luxurious cabin. “It will get us where we need to be in about two hours.”

“And where exactly is that?”

“Somewhere safe. Where I can answer all your questions.” She had been expecting Cray to answer, but instead it was the old man’s voice she heard. His tone was soft, and he spoke with an almost musical cadence. He ascended into the cabin, walking with the aid of an ebony cane. He settled into a chair right next to Jenna. Mercy sat across the aisle.

We’re going to Cuba, Jenna guessed. Right back where it all started. It occurred to Jenna that, by choosing to go with them, she had completely relinquished her independence. For twelve hours, the responsibility for her survival had been hers alone. Now, her fate was in the hands of strangers. Even Mercy was an unknown. She suddenly felt very helpless.

At least I won’t die ignorant. She turned her gaze back to Mercy. “Tell me the truth. Are you my mom?”

Mercy glanced at the old man again before meeting Jenna’s eyes. “Honey, it’s a long story.”

The old man reached out and gave Mercy’s hand a pat. “She has a right to know.” He turned to look at Jenna. “Besides, we’ve got the time, and goodness knows you’ve waited long enough.”

Jenna blinked at him. “Who are you?”

The man’s eyebrows drew together in a frown of irritation. “My dear, I apologize for not making proper introductions. My name is Helio Soter, and I… Well, I guess you could say that I made you.”

Jenna got the sense that Soter expected her to be shocked by the news, but coming on the heels of everything else, his vague declaration was both unsurprising and woefully inadequate. “Cort said that I was a clone. Is that true?”

The old man chuckled. “A clone? Well, I suppose that’s not entirely inaccurate. But calling you ‘a clone’ would be like saying that the Mona Lisa is a painting. It’s strictly true, but hardly does justice to what you truly are.”

Jenna turned to Mercy, who nodded to confirm that Sotor was not exaggerating.

There was a brief interruption as the plane was readied for departure, and then Jenna felt motion once more. Just a few hours ago, she had never been on an aircraft. Now, she was about to embark on her third trip into the sky, yet somehow the experience had already lost its novelty. She was much more interested in hearing what Soter had to say.

A few minutes later, when they were cruising through the sky, Soter resumed speaking. “Cloning is a rather generic and dated term for duplicating cells from a sample of genetic material. Scientists have been cloning cells, tissue, even entire animals, for decades. A clone is nothing but a carbon copy, and most clones are imperfect copies at best.”

“Cort showed me pictures of people, men and women, who looked almost identical to me. And her.” She pointed at Mercy. “Was I cloned from you, Mercy? Is that how this works?”

“Jenna, you aren’t a clone,” Sotor insisted. He drew in an appreciative breath. “You are so much more.”

“I don’t understand.” That was not entirely true. Smarter, stronger…dangerous. “If I’m not a duplicate, what am I? A different version? Like Human 2.0?”

A faint smile touched Soter’s lips. “I couldn’t have put it better.”

Jenna stared at Soter, then at Mercy. She knew that Mercy was in her late thirties — thirty-six if she had been telling the truth, though that seemed pretty doubtful now. She would have been born in the late 1970s, back when cloning was definitely more the stuff of science fiction. She turned back to Soter. “I think I’ve got this figured out. You took some of Mercy’s DNA, spliced in the Mutant X gene, and started growing super-soldier test-tube babies for the Soviet Union.”

Soter’s smile broadened and then he started to laugh. “Those are some remarkable conclusions, my dear. Unfortunately, they are largely incorrect conclusions.”

Jenna felt her face reddening. She was rarely wrong about anything, and to have this man laughing at her…teasing her with the promise of information, like the candy in a piñata at a child’s birthday party, and then laughing when, blind and disoriented, she struck only air…

“Then fucking help me fill in the gaps,” she said in a tight cold voice.

The man’s smile faded some. “To begin with, I have never worked for the Russian government.”

Jenna wasn’t sure she believed him, but she had only Cort’s statements as evidence against him. Noah hadn’t written exactly where the facility was located. Cuba made sense, though it wasn’t the only island in Hurricane Alley. “Then who do you work for?”

Soter’s smile softened into a more thoughtful expression. “What a marvelous question. My research is funded by the US government, but the work I do is for the benefit of all humankind.”

Jenna considered this boast in the light of what Cort had told her. “From what I’ve heard, your genetically modified clones are about to start World War III. Is that part of the plan to benefit humankind?”

Soter winced. She had struck a nerve. When he spoke again however, he did not answer her directly. “I fear I may have given you the wrong impression of me. You see, I don’t actually know anything about genetic modifications. I’m not that kind of scientist.”

“Then what kind of scientist are you?”

“I dabble in this and that, but my formal training is in the field of mathematics.”

Mathematics? That didn’t make any sense. Despite some serious disagreements, Cort and Soter were in agreement on one point: Jenna and the others were the result of a genetic experiment, and Soter had already claimed to be the genius behind it all. “Why is a mathematician involved in a cloning experiment?”

“That, my dear, is the long story that I will tell you now.”