Puppet Master

Flash forward

“I am not in the business of creating supermen.” Louis Massina fixed his gaze on Chelsea Goodman, then shook his head. “No. We can’t go there.”

“You’re just going to let him die?” Chelsea touched his arm. “Lou — boss. You can save him.”

“I’m not Frankenstein. I don’t make supermen.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“It amounts to the same thing. And there’s no saying whether any of it will work. The drugs — we’ve only used them in simulations and on pigs. Pigs.”

“He dies if you do nothing. You can help him.”

“Giving him legs is one thing, even the heart, but the drugs—”

“Without the drugs, Lou, he dies.”

Louis Massina turned toward the window, gazing out at Boston Harbor. The wooden remains of a wharf sat in the distance to the right, a sharp contrast to the gleaming pink granite of the unfinished office building just beyond it. Massina liked the incongruity, the mix of old and new. The wharf had last been used close to fifty years before; Massina was sure he’d been on it around that time, a young man taken to work by his father, just a few days before he disappeared. In his lifetime, Massina had seen the white planks turn gray and grow splinters, then gaps. The slow-motion ruin of the wooden pier not only marked time for him; it reminded Massina that life was circumscribed by limits. There were only so many chances, so much time.

“Listen, boss, you have to do something. He was hurt helping us.”

“We were helping him,” Massina said softly, still gazing out the window. “We were helping the FBI. Not the other way around. This is their person. Their case. Not our problem. Not mine.”

“You’ve saved so many people.”

A new heart, two legs, and a batch of untested drugs to take him from the brink of death in a matter of days, if not hours: was Louis Massina a god, that he could give life like that?

Givens was already dead. Really. The doctors all agreed.

“He won’t survive the operation,” said Massina. “Even with the drug.”

“Now you do sound like you’re playing God. Or Satan.”

Louis Massina did not really think of himself as God. That was sacrilege. But his prosthetics, a sideline of his robotics company, did literally save lives. Was that sacrilege? Or a gift from God that by rights he had to share?

“I don’t understand why you’re hesitating,” added Chelsea.

Massina turned to face her. “The heart is experimental. The spinal attachments are still at a very primitive point. We don’t have FDA approval, among other things. And the drugs—”

“You can get all that waived. You know it.”

“Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Chelsea narrowed her green eyes. She was a pixie of a thing, barely five foot, with skin the color of light chocolate; her face glowed like a dusty rose in the fading sun of the late afternoon. He guessed she might weigh ninety pounds, and that was counting the ink on her tattoos and the piercings she occasionally wore in her lip.

“Boss, you know you can do this.”

“It may be too far,” said Massina, though he had made up his mind. “And we don’t know if he’d agree.”

“He wanted to be resuscitated,” said Chelsea. “His form says, I want to live. That’s the only agreement you’re going to get.”

He’s hardly old enough to understand what it will mean, thought Massina. Even Chelsea has no idea. Choosing to live — it’s a choice for more pain, more suffering. There will be no easy day.

Instead of saying that, he turned back to the window. Chelsea’s reflection was there, looming over the old pier. Two large construction cranes stood in the distance; if the light were better, they would have given the illusion of hoisting his employee’s face into the sky.

“Arrange it,” he told her. “Tell Sister Rose to keep me updated herself. The doctors tend to get lost in the details.”

1 Real time

Louis Massina bent forward and refocused his eyes on the ATM screen.

“What?” He tapped the screen to ask for a new transaction, then once again requested his balance.

“Impossible.”

Massina re-swiped his ATM card and keyed his PIN on the touch screen. There was only one account connected to the card, which he used solely for petty cash. Not only did he know there was money in the account — he had used it on the way to mass this morning — but the sum was $5,437.14.

Massina was very good with numbers.

He tapped the screen, then waited. The machine thought about it, then responded exactly as it had earlier:

Either the bank’s computer network was down, Massina thought, or his accountant had drained it without telling him.

Damn it.

Massina had more patience with computers than with accountants, but only a little. He had considerable experience with both: he ran a robotics and applied AI, or artificial intelligence, firm called Smart Metal, and had in fact been a programmer himself through his early twenties.

That was two decades and three dozen patents ago. In the interim, Massina had built a business worth exponentially more than the amount that should have been in the bank account. But he was not so far removed from a childhood raised by a single mother that he would ignore the disappearance of five thousand dollars, or even five.

He called his accountant as soon as he got back to his car; though it was nearly 11:00 p.m., the phone was answered on the first ring.

“Wasn’t me,” said the accountant, who was used to getting calls at odd hours and on odd subjects. “I’ll check with the bank first thing in the morning.” Robert Pesche, now the head of a sizable firm, had first done Massina’s taxes in a McDonald’s when they were both a year out of school. “It’s probably just a computer glitch.”

“There are no such things as glitches,” said Massina. “Just bad programming.”

But this turned out to be neither a glitch nor bad programming: it was theft. The account had been drained an hour before Massina’s visit to the ATM — one of two dozen that had similarly been robbed. The bank promised to make good immediately, something Massina was surprised to find it didn’t have to do, according to the banking laws.

The felonious transfer both annoyed and intrigued Massina. Not only was his sense of morality and fairness offended — theft, obviously, was a grave sin — but his scientific curiosity was aroused. How did the theft occur? Why was the bank vulnerable in the first place? It was a math problem as well as one of morality.

His accountant couldn’t answer any of his questions. Nor could the bank manager, who came out to meet him when he stopped by just before 5:00 p.m. to collect a new ATM card and some cash.

The manager hesitated as she grabbed Massina’s hand to shake. Massina was testing a new prosthetic — he had lost his right arm from just above the elbow some thirty years before — and people who knew his hand was artificial sometimes thought he was going to crush their fingers.

Which he could have, if he wanted.

“I’m very sorry about this theft,” said the manager. “And your troubles. You are a good customer.”

The manager continued on in an overly sympathetic vein until Massina asked how the account might have been drained.

“It was definitely due to an ATM transaction,” she said. “There were a large number of simultaneous transfers that were just under the amount our security programs would detect.”

“Excuse me — so the ATM system was definitely involved,” Massina said. “Interesting. How?”

She suggested that perhaps he had authorized someone else to use his card and been careless with the PIN.

“How would that account for the other thefts that you said happened at the same time?”

“They, uh, just waited.” She nodded gravely. “You really have to guard your PIN number as if it were your Social Security number. More so.”

“I don’t want to get angry with you,” Massina answered, “but you sound like you’re saying this theft is my fault.”

“No, sir. You are our valued customer.” She glanced at his hand, somewhat nervously. “We value your business.”

Massina resisted the impulse to scoff as he left.

2

Massina’s annoyance at being ripped off and then treated like a dunce by the bank had subsided by the time he woke the next morning in his house outside Boston. There were, after all, many other things occupying his mind, most especially the morning’s test of a new autonomous bot they were working on.

It was just before five o’clock, and still dark. Winter lingered in the low hills around Boston, fogging Massina’s breath as he walked onto the concrete veranda in front of his house. The low-slung, postmodern structure had been situated to take advantage of the view; had it been a little later, Massina might have gazed at the mirror-edged Hancock Tower and the Pru off in the distance. In winter, much of Boston was visible, not just those tall landmarks: you could see the Custom House and even, if the air was clear and the light good, a church spire or two. Thick evergreens obscured things closer to the east and south; the highway, so convenient for his work, was out of sight, as was the industrial area that had first attracted him to the location. If Massina had been more of a dreamer, or rather one who dreamed in a certain way, he might have fantasized that he lived in the middle of untouched land, sufficiently removed from the distant city to be immune from its charms as well as its vices.

But Massina was not that sort of dreamer — no Emerson and certainly no Thoreau; if there was an American he might emulate, it would be Edison or Bell, great thinkers whose thoughts turned to things far more tangible than nature. Though in many respects Massina might be said to be the modern embodiment of the vision Emerson articulated in the essay “Self-Reliance,” Massina’s world was one of computers and robots, of nanotechnology and forces far beyond Emerson’s ken.

The lights at the far end of the winding driveway switched on, announcing the arrival of Chelsea Goodman, who was taking Massina to work today while his car was being serviced. This was a matter of convenience for both of them, since Chelsea didn’t own a car and was using one of the company trucks to transport both herself and the subject of the morning’s test to the proving grounds south of the city.

The gates at the foot of Massina’s property swung open, activated by a coded input from the driver on a small touchpad next to her console. The security system had already read the truck’s license plate, comparing it against its database and DMV data; it had also examined an infrared scan of the interior, making sure Chelsea matched the associated profile. Another sensor “sniffed” the air around the truck, analyzing the molecular contrail that had been enhanced by a light stream of vapor flowing from vents at the side of the driveway; had the contrail contained even a few molecules related to explosives, additional barriers would have sprung up just beyond the gate and an alarm would have sounded.

None of that was actually necessary; Massina in fact disliked security measures of any kind and kept as low a profile as possible in any event. But the system was being tested by his company; grounds security seemed like a growth area, and one where the company’s expertise in advanced AI systems and robotics might possibly give it an advantage.

As it happened, the driver had worked on a small part of the system a year before and was probably as familiar with it as its owner. Chelsea Goodman had joined Smart Metal as an AI specialist barely two years ago. Since then, she had been promoted three times until, at the tender age of twenty-three, she was now Smart Metal’s lead AI developer.

Neither her age nor her rapid advancement was particularly unique, either at the firm or in the industry in general. Even the fact that she was a woman did not make Chelsea Goodman particularly unusual at Smart Metal, which Massina had established as the purest of pure scientific meritocracies from its earliest day. The unique thing about Chelsea was her personality: she practically bubbled when she spoke. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and not just about her field — she could get even a die-hard Red Sox fan, such as Massina, rooting for their longtime nemesis, the New York Yankees, if she wished.

Which made the uncharacteristic frown on her face when she pulled up all the more obvious.

“Problem?” asked Massina, climbing into the Ram 1500 cab.

“We’re good,” she said, lips barely moving, teeth held close together.

“Coffee,” he told her, recognizing the problem.

“I—”

“Starbucks. Go.”

“Thanks.” Her expression brightened; by the time they reached the street she was more or less back to her usual self, adjusting for the hour.

“Long night?” he asked.

“I didn’t sleep. We had some trouble with the secondary logic section.” Chelsea said this with the tone of someone describing their stupendous vacation in Barbados. “In optimizing the memory section, Bobby had used a random fill to get around the zero-bit problem. Of course, he hadn’t been able to test every last permutation, and wouldn’t you know, we hit on a combination that caused a bizarre overload, adding twenty nanoseconds where we should have saved at least sixty-four.…”

As Chelsea described the problem and its solution in great detail — in layman’s terms, or as close to it as possible, it had to do with what was essentially a trick in utilizing memory more efficiently than the logic chip’s cache was designed to do — Massina’s thoughts drifted, scattering among some of the other projects his company was working on. While applications for industrial robots were Smart Metal’s major moneymakers, the company had projects in a vast array of areas; not all involved AI and robotics. One of his engineers had designed a golf club whose head corrected for imbalances in its user’s swing, practically guaranteeing long and accurate drives off the tee.

At least according to its inventor. Massina had never tried it himself. He didn’t particularly like golf, and while he had taken a few swings with the club, he could not personally say that it did anything an ordinary driver couldn’t. He did, however, like the idea that the pros they’d hired to test it raved about it.

“Want anything?” Chelsea asked, pulling into the lot of a strip mall dominated by Starbucks.

“I don’t have any cash,” said Massina, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t managed to get to the ATM.

“I’ll spot you,” laughed Chelsea. “Black, no sugar. Tall?”

“Medium. Or small.”

“That’s tall,” said Chelsea, slipping out of the truck. “Twelve shot latte for me.”

“Hmmph,” he said, mentally calculating the effects of that much caffeine on her small frame.

Chelsea Goodman shivered involuntarily as she stepped from the truck. Despite the fact that she had lived in the Northeast for some six years now — four while studying at MIT, and two with Smart Metal — the San Diego native still had not adjusted to the climate. Winter itself didn’t bother her as much as the long wait for spring that characterized the end of March and beginning of April. Mentally done with ice and snow, she wanted flowers and much longer days, or at least days where she could comfortably bike to work without a parka.

Though it was barely past five, the line at the counter snaked around the ground coffee display to the mocha pots at the store entrance. This Starbucks was one of the few in the area that opened before six, which made it an oasis for caffeine-starved early risers.

Chelsea took a step back and did a high lunge, a basic yoga move that stretched her lower body. The man in front of her glanced around, clearly concerned that she might do something more dangerous.

“Just staying warm.” She smiled at him, twisting left and right. He rolled his eyes and turned back toward the counter.

Chelsea was excited about the morning test; now that they had solved the memory problem, she felt the bot would easily pass its functional tests. The robot was an offshoot of an earlier design used by the military to retrieve mines and IEDs without exposing soldiers to their dangers. Where the original was operated by remote control, this one was completely autonomous; it could be told to locate ordinance, safe it, and then place it in a robot vehicle for transportation or disposal. While these tasks were relatively straightforward — Smart Metal had a “mech,” or programmed robot, that could do all of those things already — the bot’s size and production costs were the real innovations. RBT PJT 23.A — more commonly known to the developers as “Peter”—folded itself into a tool-bag-sized case. The AI computing unit and sensors were all off-the-shelf, the former actually centered around a processing unit used for the latest version of the Apple iMac. Pushing an architecture designed to run a home computer into areas ordinarily reserved for the human brain had been, and continued to be, an exhilarating challenge.

Exactly the reason she was here.

A strange scent tickled Chelsea’s nose as she moved up in the line. It was an off note, a double-flat in the olfactory symphony of coffee blends and roasts.

Rotten eggs?

It reminded her of the ancient gymnastics studio where she’d spent much of her elementary school afternoons.

Mold?

Natural gas?

The Starbucks building was in a small strip mall directly across from a row of much older residential buildings; in a few hours the close-in suburb would be clogged with work traffic, but at the moment the streets were nearly deserted. Massina gazed at the row of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century row houses surrounding the plaza. Varying between three and five stories tall, each building housed several apartments, some two or three on each floor.

The inventor had spent much of his childhood in a succession of similar houses. There was nothing to be particularly nostalgic about; his childhood had been far from gilded. And yet he remembered bits and pieces fondly, and knew he had learned a great deal, whether in the hardscrabble streets or the strict Jesuit grammar school where his abilities were first recognized.

Massina had started working at ten, sweeping the floor of a butcher shop several blocks away from here. His boss, a cousin of his mother, had been difficult; work had nonetheless been an oasis compared to his home, where his mother’s erratic, alcohol-fueled behavior had filled the small rooms with danger as well as…

… The building he was looking at suddenly flashed yellow, then red, as fire surged from a dozen points at once. The air filled with glass, wood, and brick. A shock of air yanked the front of Massina’s truck upward and back; it slammed down so hard that the air bags exploded.

Dazed, Massina grabbed for the door handle and grappled with the seat belt. He fell out to the pavement, the car alarm blaring. Flames seemed to be everywhere, sucking air so quickly it whistled.

Get Chelsea, Massina told himself, struggling to his feet. Get Chelsea to safety, damn you, old man!

His mouth and throat filled with a mist of fine powder from the air bag. Massina began to cough. The air blackened as a furl of soot descended over the buildings; it gave way slowly to a red and yellow glow, the fire pushing away the smoke as it rose. The street looked as if a tornado had cut through a war zone: debris, big and small, littered the road and parking lot.

Legs shaking, Massina steadied himself against his truck, then started toward Starbucks.

He found Chelsea lying on the sidewalk just in front of the building. She had just stepped out when the explosion occurred; knocked backward, she lay on the ground, stunned and surrounded by glass.

Massina bent to her, not sure whether she was dead or alive. He caught a glimpse of people inside the store trying to help each other, moving as if in slow motion.

Chelsea moved her head.

“Up!” Massina barked at her. “We got to get away from the building.”

Chelsea’s face and clothes were speckled with blood where small bits of stone-shrapnel had peppered her skin. She was in shock.

“Chelsea!” Massina barked. “Get up!”

She blinked, then slowly got to her feet. “My coffee!”

“Come on.”

Massina helped her to the side of the Starbucks building, struggling to get his own bearings. The blast had muffled his hearing, and he felt as if he had a helmet over his head.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked.

She waved her hand; she didn’t seem to be hearing well either. But she seemed OK, just dazed.

Massina reached his right hand — the artificial one — into his pocket and took out his phone. “Nine-one-one,” he told the custom dialing app. “Report fire at this location. And an explosion.”

There was already a siren in the distance. People from the buildings across the street came out to see what was going on.

“People!” yelled someone. “There are people inside the building on fire!”

Chelsea looked at Massina and blinked. Her eyes seemed to focus. In the next moment she was on her feet, running toward the far end of the building.

It took Massina a moment to react, and several more before he realized that, rather than running away to safety, she was running toward the fire. “Wait! Wait!” he yelled, running after her.

The Starbucks had received barely a glancing blow from the explosion; the only damage was to the windows. The two stores next to it were similarly pockmarked by flying debris and shattered glass; the masonry fronts on both were caved in but still intact. The real damage was to the older building adjacent to them. The explosion had obliterated the front half of the building, a three-story Victorian-era house that had been clad in shingles; the back wall was twisted and shriveling, though its panels had somehow managed to resist the fire. The two row houses that abutted it on the other side had been largely untouched by the explosion, but they were now on fire, as were two more beyond them.

Chelsea stopped in front of the destroyed building, gaping at the twisted wreckage. A woman in a cotton nightgown stood nearby, her face covered with soot.

“Mrs. Stevens! Mrs. Stevens!” shouted the woman.

“Who’s Mrs. Stevens?” asked Massina.

“Look!”

Massina saw a shadow in the top window. He guessed it was Mrs. Stevens.

“We have to get her out of there,” said Chelsea.

As if on cue, flames flared behind the woman, throwing her silhouette in sharp contrast. She had something in her arms — a child.

Chelsea had stopped a few feet away. She stared up at the house, then started for the front door.

Massina ran to grab her. “No, no, no!”

A ball of flames burst through the first-floor façade. Chelsea stopped short.

“Get the bot!” Massina shouted to Chelsea. “Get Peter.”

She stood motionless for a moment longer, then twisted around and ran back in the direction of the truck.

“She’s going to die,” said the woman in the nightgown. “Where are the firemen?”

“We’ll help her,” said Massina. He looked up at the window. The woman had disappeared.

Chelsea’s thoughts moved in four directions at once; she felt as if her brain were physically bumping against the confines of her skull. She ran in the direction of the truck, or what she thought was the direction of the truck, only to realize that she had gone out to the road; she corrected and darted back toward the rear of the pickup.

The bot’s container was in a large box at the back of the truck bed, wedged between two larger boxes that contained monitoring gear and backup controls. Chelsea grabbed the box and, despite its size and weight, hauled it on top of the truck cab; she had to pull over one of the other boxes to get high enough to reach the snap locks at the top of the case.

Come on, come on, she mumbled to herself. Get it out!

Peter looked a little like a headless horse designed by Picasso. Made primarily of carbon fiber compounds and titanium, the small robot had four legs that articulated from a slim, seven-sided irregular central box; it could stand and move on two or four of any of these legs. The six-fingered claws at the end of each could pick up and hold items as small as a dime. Despite its size — unfolded and standing on four legs, it was only.683 meters tall, or a little over two feet high — it could carry roughly five hundred pounds.

Something exploded in the distance. Chelsea froze, bile creeping into the back of her mouth.

Go, girl, go!

The words were her father’s, seemingly implanted at birth. It was his voice she inevitably heard when in trouble, whether on the uneven bars as a five-year-old or a work project now.

Go, girl, go!

His voice was as strong now as it had been in the gym at the state gymnastics championships — embarrassing then, galvanizing now.

Go, girl, go!

The heat of the fire on Massina’s face felt like a sunburn. No more than two or three minutes had passed since the explosion, yet it seemed like an eternity.

Where are those fire trucks? Where is Chelsea with the bot?

“Here we are!” Chelsea dropped to her knees, skidding on the hard concrete. She had RBT PJT 23.A in her arms.

“The control unit!” said Massina. “Go back and get it.”

“No time,” said Chelsea. “And we don’t need it.”

She reached under the robot’s body and found a small slide; pushing it back revealed a fingerprint reader. Seconds later, the bot stiffened its limbs, signaling that it was powering up.

Massina went down to one knee opposite Chelsea. The bot was between them. He reached underneath, sliding his fingers around until he found the slot where the reader was. The machine, now alive, beeped in recognition.

“Skip diagnostics,” he told the robot. “Natural language mode.”

It beeped, acknowledging the order.

“Proceed to the four-story building that is on fire. Retrieve woman and child from floor four.”

The robot didn’t move.

“Go,” Massina added. “Take the woman and child to safety one at a time.”

The bot still didn’t move.

Massina’s hasty and frankly vague instructions had to be translated and analyzed before they could be acted on; not only were they fairly generic, at least to a machine, but they also related to a task that the machine had never encountered before. Though it had climbed numerous buildings, and it did know what a woman and a child were, it had never had an exercise anywhere near as complicated as this.

“We’re going to have to get the controller,” said Massina. “We need to make sure it knows what to do.”

Chelsea grabbed him as he got up to run. “Wait. Look.”

RBT PJT 23.A beeped and started toward the building.

Massina and Chelsea followed. The heat seemed blast-furnace hot.

But what had happened to the woman? She wasn’t at the window.

The robot continued into the flames.

Turning, Massina ran to the truck. The control unit would be the only way to alter the bot’s commands at this point, and very possibly the only way to get the small machine out of the building if it got stuck.

If this had happened in six months, even three, the bot could get them out. Now, though… there is still so much to do.

Massina grabbed the case and started back to the building. It was a long box, awkward to carry, though not heavy. Firemen were arriving, pulling out hoses, directing a ladder truck. In the confusion no one questioned him; the case made him look as if he belonged.

By the time he reached Chelsea, the woman had reappeared at the window. She was holding her child in one hand and pushing at the glass pane with the other. Someone nearby yelled at her not to open the window, to wait for the firemen to arrive, but even if she could have heard them, the advice would have been difficult to follow, flying against all instinct. She finally succeeded in breaking the glass with the palm of her hand, pulling it back and knocking at the rest of the pane with her elbow. Wind whipped through the opening; the wall at the far end of the room caught fire, flashing red behind her.

“Oh God! She’d better jump,” said Chelsea, running toward the building.

Massina left the control unit in its box and followed, thinking they might at least catch the baby. But the flames at the base of the building pushed them back.

More glass shattered above, raining through the fire and smoke.

“Look!” yelled Chelsea.

Peter had bulled its way through a second-story window. Crawling up the frame, it clawed at the shingles, moving up the outer wall like a slow-motion spider.

“Hey! Get back!” Someone grabbed Massina’s shoulder, pulling him around. It was a policeman. “The place is going to explode!”

“We have to get that woman out of the building!” yelled Chelsea.

“Let the firemen work!”

The officer began pushing Massina back. Massina raised his right arm, took hold of the officer’s uniform, and lifted him backward and out of the way.

Clearly surprised by the strength of the rather short man before him, the officer grabbed at Massina’s arm. It was then that he got his second surprise — never much on appearances, Massina hadn’t bothered to put the “flesh” covering on today, so the cop gripped several tubes of steel and protective carbon tunnels for the wiring.

A fresh explosion rent the air. Flames shot from the top of the building next to them. Massina released the policeman and turned back, searching for Chelsea through the smoke and dust.

“Chelsea!”

“I have her,” yelled Chelsea, emerging from smoke with the baby in her arms.

RBT PJT 23.A followed, moving on three legs; the fourth held the woman it had rescued a foot above the pavement, as if it were an ant retrieving a prize grasshopper for the queen.

3

Standing at the edge of the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fire, Stephan Stratowich felt a surge of relief as the woman was helped to the paramedic van that had just pulled up. It wasn’t because he would have felt any guilt over her death; rather, his boss had told him to avoid unnecessary complications. The woman’s death would have counted as one.

Stephan had blown up two other similar buildings over the past several years; it was a sideline he didn’t particularly like, but the assignments were something he couldn’t refuse, especially when they came from Medved and the other associated with the clans that kept him employed. The trick wasn’t in making a gas explosion look like an accident; it was in limiting the damage. There was always an unpredictability that the most thorough plan could not eliminate. In this case, the explosion had occurred nearly ten minutes after Stephan had intended, greatly increasing the collateral damage — only the commercial building at the end of the row was supposed to have been destroyed. It was empty; the job was probably part of an insurance scam, though Stephan never knew, or wanted to know, the particulars.

Now that the woman was out of the building, Stephan turned his attention to the odd-looking creature that had retrieved her. It was mechanical, some sort of robot, very unlike anything Stephan had ever seen at a fire.

He had other work to do today, a full agenda. Still, the contraption intrigued him enough that he decided to get a better look, so he edged around the back of the crowd. He took his phone from his pocket and slipped over to the video screen. This was definitely something worth taking a video of.

4

Any other boss would have canceled Peter’s tests — surely the bot could not do more to prove itself that day — but any other boss would not have been Louis Massina.

Seeing his frown deepen as he watched the robot climb over a pile of rubble in the test area, Chelsea couldn’t help but wonder at the two sides of the man. At work he was demanding and taciturn, eschewing even the tiniest chitchat in favor of a cold stare that seemed borderline autistic. It was a remarkable contrast to the person he was outside the job, one known not only for charity but also for taking a real interest in the people he helped, always anonymously.

“Why is it moving so slow?” demanded Massina as Peter picked its way over the tangle of steel beams and wire placed at the center of the old rail yard they leased for these sorts of tests. “Isn’t it receiving the sensor information?”

“It is,” said Bobby James, who was watching the bot’s “brain” functions on the array of monitors nearby. “It’s picking a safe route to the target.”

“Hmmmph.” Massina folded his arms. RBT PJT 23.A had been tasked with finding and retrieving a small box that contained gunpowder hidden in the tangle. Besides its own sensors, it was receiving data from a sensor robot stationed nearby. The mech contained a sophisticated “sniffer,” which scanned a fifty-meter circle. Peter took the data and mapped chemicals in the air; the sensor had detected the minuscule plume emitted by the stash and provided the data to Peter.

“It’s got it,” said Chelsea as the robot dug its claw into the pile. “We just have to be patient.”

“Patience should not be programmed into the system,” snapped Massina. There was still soot from the fire on his pants and a smudge on his face.

“Prudence is,” retorted Bobby.

“Where’s the line between prudence and negligence?” said Massina.

“We’re not near it.”

Impatient as he was, Massina generally tolerated a decent amount of back talk — as long as he felt you were dedicated to your job. But his manner of questioning could be cold, and even at times cruel. Any employee who couldn’t deal with that — and stand up for themselves and their project — generally left; there were plenty of rivals who would pay handsomely for someone with experience here. Chelsea wondered if Bobby was getting close to that point; he’d recently complained about how much time he was working, something she’d never heard him do before.

“Chelsea?”

Chelsea turned and looked up into the face of Bill “Beefy” Bozzone, the head of Smart Metal’s security team. Dressed in a dark blue suit, Beefy looked more like an accountant than a policeman… albeit one in very good physical condition.

“A couple of detectives want to talk to you and Mr. Massina about the fire,” said Beefy.

“Not really a good time,” said Chelsea.

“What?” snapped Massina, turning around.

“Sorry to bother you, Lou.” Beefy started to apologize. “But there are some policemen to see you. I didn’t know if—”

“I’ll handle it.” Massina looked at Chelsea. “Finish this, would you?”

Massina followed Beefy out past the rows of parked trailers to the whitewashed cement building at the entrance to the yard. He didn’t like to be interrupted while working, though at this point there wasn’t more he could do with the mech. It had passed all of its tests, albeit a little slower than he wanted.

Two men in ill-fitting suits stood just inside the doorway, shifting nervously. They smelled of cigarette smoke.

“We understand you were at the gas explosion this morning,” said the taller of the two men. He withdrew a well-worn leather case from his jacket pocket and let the front flap drop, flashing a Boston Police Department badge; the other man did likewise.

“Yes?”

“Well, if you could give us your thoughts—”

“My thoughts on what?” snapped Massina.

“Run down what happened,” said the shorter man. “What you saw.”

“I saw a fire.”

“And an explosion?” asked the shorter man. “My name’s Bill Doyle. This is my partner, Cliff Lycum.”

“A flash of light. It was dark. I heard someone say it was gas.”

“You wouldn’t have had anything recording, did you?” asked Lycum. “Because of your… your robot thing? Did you take pictures?”

Massina bristled. Now that the woman and her child were OK, he wanted to avoid giving out any information about the “robot thing” that had been involved.

“No, I’m sorry. We had no photos. We stopped for coffee. We were on our way here. My staff told you I was here?”

“Yes.” Doyle nodded. “The explosion came from the right?”

“Yes, as you face Starbucks.”

“How did you get the woman and kid out of the building?” asked Lycum.

Massina hesitated.

“We don’t want any trade secrets,” said Doyle.

“What do you want then?”

“An accurate picture of what happened. So we can figure out where the fire started, why it started. Like that.”

“I have no idea when it started or why. There was a blast. My truck was jerked back and the air bags deployed. I got out. A few minutes later, maybe less, we saw the lady at a window.”

“And you sent the, uh, machine to get her.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“A robotic device. That’s all.”

“It went right through the flames,” said Lycum.

“It’s designed to deal with worse than that. It’s based on a bomb disposal bot, though that’s not its function.”

“We were wondering if maybe there’s a camera attached to it. The images might be useful,” said Doyle.

“We have sensor data,” said Massina, “but I can tell you it’s not going to be of much use.”

“Could we see it?”

“I’ll have one of my people work through it with you.” Massina explained that the data was not video as commonly understood but rather an array of data picked up by a combination of sensors — infrared and sonar as well as optical — that supplied a multidimensional matrix. It needed to be interpreted and translated from its native format; you couldn’t just download it to a Windows machine or your TV.

“Wasn’t there a surveillance camera on the building?” he asked.

“It was damaged by the fire,” said Doyle. “We haven’t been able to recover the video.”

“Maybe we could help with that,” said Beefy. “We have some good technical people.”

“We would appreciate it.”

“No guarantees,” said Massina. “Bill, you can work out the details. Excuse me. I have work.”

“Thank you, Mr. Massina,” said Doyle. “If there’s anything we can do.”

“Sure,” said Massina, hurrying back to Peter’s test.

Many hours later, having concluded the day’s tests and checked things on a multitude of projects at his office downtown, Louis Massina arrived at Grace Sisters’ Hospital. Walking briskly through the front lobby, he aimed for the rehab ward, eyes fixed straight ahead.

A familiar twinge jerked through his shoulder as he neared the oval-shaped threshold of the wing’s reception area. It was a mere flash, yet one that pained him greatly. For in that moment, he felt not the stump or the electrodes or the muscle impulses that worked the relays… but his missing arm.

What came next was memory: the accident.

More pain, this across his entire body.

He was on his motorcycle, a car suddenly in front of him. He was in the air, flying into blackness.

A truck. The front of a building.

Blackness.

No arm.

That was what he had a memory of. What he couldn’t remember, what he had blacked out all these years, was the sensation of his wife clinging to his back behind him.

It was the dark hole he never ventured near.

“It must be Thursday,” said the ward’s official greeter, wheeling out from behind his desk. “How are you, Mr. Massina?”

“Good, Paul,” said Massina. “How are you?”

“Still not scheduled, but I’m hopeful. Then once that’s squared away, we go to the prosthetics.”

“Hopefully it will be worth the wait,” said Massina.

“A step up.” Paul laughed.

Massina knew that was supposed to be a joke — people said something similar all the time — but he had never seen any levity in anything relating to injury.

“We have some fresh-baked pastry tonight,” said Paul. “Still hot.”

“How about coffee?” asked Massina.

“We have cappuccino, you know. Sister’s new machine.”

“Just coffee.”

Paul wheeled himself to the large counter area at the side. Selecting a French Roast from the rainbow of K-Cups, he loaded the single-cup maker. Fresh coffee poured through the coffeemaker at the side of the lounge, its heady, caffeinated scent overwhelming the slightly antiseptic smell of the rest of the hospital.

The lounge was in many ways a pressure lock, a transitional space between the hospital as a whole and the amputee ward. The array of drinks — the automatic espresso maker and coffee machines were well complemented by refrigerators stocked with juices, sodas, and water — was just one of the subtle amenities designed to make the place more welcoming. The ward was unlike any other part of the hospital, and in fact differed greatly from most conventional health-care facilities. The closest parallels could be found at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio or the handful of units sponsored by the VA or military to rehabilitate stricken soldiers.

Like the military hospitals, Grace Sisters’ had a large residential facility next door where families, as well as patients not needing bed care, could stay for extended periods. But what truly set the ward apart from other rehab centers was the tight-knit community atmosphere. Patients, loved ones, and staff spent considerable time with each other, as if they were one large, extended family.

That, and Massina’s inventions. They were the reason most came here in the first place.

One of the lounge walls was covered with monitoring screens, each of which could be configured to show a different part of the ward. One displayed the exercise pool; another the small lab where Massina’s prosthetics were fine-tuned for patients. Video feeds from the six operating rooms could also be turned on, making it possible for families to follow what was going on.

The ward’s ethos was one of openness; information was freely shared between everyone, doctor, patient, friend alike. That extended all the way to Massina’s prosthetics, to the great consternation of Smart Metal’s corporate counsel, who objected to their lack of trademark protection.

“The goal is to heal,” Massina told the lawyer. “If people take my ideas to help others, even better.”

There had been other words, none too polite, as well. The lawyer wasn’t used to losing many battles and having his advice go unheeded, but it did in this case. He continued to bring the matter up every six months or so for form’s sake, though he had long ago conceded this wasn’t something he would prevail on. Presumably his annual increases in fees provided some consolation.

Massina had just taken his first sip of coffee when a diminutive woman burst into the lounge from the main hallway, arms pumping as if they were piston rods in an internal combustion engine.

“Louis!” she snapped. “And how are you tonight?”

“Very well, Sister. How are you?”

“Blessed.” Sister Rose Marie had given this answer every time Massina had asked, which, given that he had known her for forty-five years, meant he had heard it quite a lot. He’d met her as a boy in grammar school, long before she’d been assigned to the hospital. Sister Rose was the most positive and enthusiastic person he knew when he was seven; she was still that now.

“Come,” she told him, “there are some people I’d like you to meet. Bring your coffee — no cappuccino? You really should try that machine. It was a donation.”

Massina followed the nun as she reversed course and revved down the corridor. Despite the years, Sister Rose seemed the same age she’d been when they met: ancient. The soles of her thick shoes clicked on the freshly waxed floor as she increased her pace. Massina had trouble keeping up.

The Sisters of Perpetual Grace had given up their thick wool habits and long veils even before Massina had encountered them in grammar school. They wore what even the younger nuns called “civilian clothes”—long dresses that came to midcalf and very modest blouses that neither left anything uncovered nor hugged a body part. All wore necklaces of thick beads that signified their membership in the order, as well as a wedding ring that showed they were “brides of Christ.”

Dressed in her typical blue skirt and a slightly darker top, Sister Rose wore one additional item tucked into the side of her waistband that set her apart from some of the others: an old string of rosary beads. These were special to her for many reasons, not least of which was the fact that they had once belonged to her best friend: Massina’s aunt, now deceased, with whom she had gone through the novitiate.

“Would you like to look in on young Thomas?” asked the nun.

She veered left toward a clinic room before Massina could answer. Inside, a child of ten was bent over in the middle of the room, pulling new shoelaces through the loops of his shoe. His mother and father beamed behind him.

Tying a shoelace was hardly much of an achievement for a ten-year-old — except that in this case, the fingers he was using were prosthetic. He had lost both of his forearms two years before when a hurricane had taken down his house, crushing them.

More interesting, at least to Massina, was the exact construction of the arm. The “skin” was actually an inflatable membrane of special vinyl that was the most lifelike Massina had ever touched; it was difficult to distinguish it from flesh. Instead of steel rods inside, the internal skeleton was made of flexible tubing inflated like balloons. Small internal pumps gave the arm far more flexibility than normal prosthetics; it could be bent at a ninety-degree angle, for example.

It would take quite some time before the boy could control that ability. For now, he was still learning the very basics, directing the machine with his nerve impulses.

The arm was an outgrowth of Smart Metal’s work with so-called soft robots, a cutting-edge area that so far had not produced marketable or even practical items. But the “conversation” between brain and mechanical fingers was already a tested technology. Remarkably, it had been only a theory at the time of the hurricane that claimed the boy’s arm.

That was how they worked: fast.

The kid glanced up from his shoe and smiled at Massina. Massina nodded, then watched with quiet contentment as the child finished the bow. The doctor who had helped develop the hands stood at the side of the room, frowning.

The boy’s parents applauded as the child finished. Massina nodded to them, then stepped outside. The physician followed.

“Still a bit of a delay in the software,” grumbled the physician. “We’ll get it.” The complaint pleased Massina — he wanted perfectionists working with him. The doctor was one of the best.

“You think it’s the flex functions?” Massina asked.

“It would make sense. If it would be possible to have D.J. go over the systematics personally…”

“I’m sure he’d welcome the opportunity.” D.J. was one of the systems engineers who had helped develop the arm but had recently moved on to another project. “If there’s trouble, let me know.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

Massina decided to drop in on another patient whom he’d met a few weeks earlier. A soldier who had stepped on a mine in Iraq, he had received a custom-made leg a month before but was still confined to a hospital bed because of continuing complications with his lungs.

The doctors who worked with Smart Metal had developed a series of drugs that could greatly speed his recovery, but they were holding off using them because of concerns over the long-term effects. Massina had actually pulled strings and gotten an FDA waiver for them, but they were holding off until and unless they were convinced that he couldn’t recover without them.

Massina knocked on the door frame, then took a step inside the room. It was completely empty: no bed, no patient.

“Jason’s gone home,” said Sister Rose, catching up.

“What?”

“He’s with the savior,” said Sister Rose.

“Why didn’t they use the drugs?”

“You’ll have to ask the doctors, Louis.”

Damn it. He could have been helped.

“You needn’t feel sorry for him, Louis. He was a good Catholic.”

Massina’s thoughts about religion and the afterlife were considerably more complicated than those the nun preached, but he didn’t feel like having that discussion at the moment. He followed her back to the hall, brooding as they walked to another room.

The occupant was a boy who’d had his arm and leg severed in a train accident. He’d been fitted with a prosthetic months before but was back on the ward because of an unrelated flare-up of pneumonia. The boy’s face lit up as Massina entered the room — the two were old friends, not least of all because they suffered from the same general injuries. Massina had been very fortunate not to lose his own leg.

They spent a few minutes talking about the video games the boy was playing lately. They were all “shooters,” and he had very high scores online — a good sign, since it meant his artificial limb let him keep up with kids who had their original hands.

The boy’s father stood in the corner, watching intently as his son chattered on. Finally, Sister Rose broke up the mostly one-sided conversation, explaining that Massina had a meeting upstairs.

“Fist bump!” said the boy.

Their artificial fists clinked against each other. Massina left the room with a smile.

Trevor Jenkins pulled the lapels of his suit jacket forward as Louis Massina stepped out into the hallway. Jenkins felt a sudden surge of nervousness but fought through it. “Mr. Massina?”

The scientist jerked his head in Jenkins’s direction.

“I’m Trevor Jenkins,” said the agent, striding forward. Tall and well-built, he was naturally imposing. The fact that he was black sometimes added to that aura, but it sometimes worked against him. He hoped it was neutral in this case, though racial prejudices were beyond his control. “I don’t know if you remember me—”

“Of course. Your daughter has an artificial knee,” said Massina, surprising Jenkins by remembering him. It had been two years since they’d last spoken. “How is she?”

“She’s fine, she’s fine,” said Jenkins. “Every day, we thank you.”

“We all do what we can.” Massina started to turn away.

“Actually, I came here on official business. Semiofficial,” added the agent. “You filed a complaint about your bank account. An ATM card.”

“Yes?”

“Your office said I would be able to catch you here,” explained Jenkins.

“You’ve caught the thieves?”

“No, but…” Jenkins shook his head. “I thought, when I saw your name, I would — that you were owed a real explanation.”

“I see.”

Jenkins glanced at Sister Rose, who’d just come out of the room. “Maybe we should discuss this somewhere a little more private?”

“Mr. Jenkins,” said Sister Rose, belatedly recognizing him. “How is your daughter?”

“Very well, Sister, thank you.”

“Business, Louis?” she asked.

“It’ll only take a minute,” said Jenkins. “Maybe in the lounge, or better yet, downstairs?”

Massina looked at the nun.

“We’ll always wait for you, Louis,” said Sister Rose. “Go right ahead.”

5

Gabor Tolevi walked out onto the platform of Boston South and glanced in the direction of the Amtrak train. Its departure had been delayed forty minutes for unspecified reasons — not unusual for Amtrak.

He hated trains — they reminded him of his early childhood in Europe, Ukraine especially, when his father took him on business trips. He loved his father but hated those trips — far too poor for first class, let alone airplanes, they most often went common or fourth class, which meant jamming aboard the sleeping cars and staying there for the duration of a trip. These cars were traveling dormitories where as many as fifty bunks might be partitioned in. Tolevi and his father would share a bed, which was one thing when Gabor was three and quite another at six; they traveled together until Gabor was nearly thirteen, his father unable to find a suitable sitter after Gabor’s mother died. A splurge might buy a platzkart, or third-class ticket, which meant a real seat in another car, but that, too, they would have to share, generally as a tag team. The Russian trains were usually cleaner than the Ukrainian, though that was simply a matter of degree, and he’d been on a Russian train when a fat walrus of a man tried molesting him at age nine. The incident had changed Tolevi, but in his estimation for the better: he had learned how to fight and stand up for himself, and if it was his father who slit the man’s throat that night in revenge, it could just as well have been him with the knife.

The Amtrak train was heading for New York City, a destination that Tolevi would have much preferred to have flown to. But he was taking the train, and this train in particular, at the request of Yuri Johansen. Johansen wanted to talk to him, and Tolevi couldn’t easily turn down such requests.

Tolevi had met Johansen more than twenty years before, when both had been not only younger but also borderline naive. Tolevi was a young officer in the Ukrainian army, looking to come to America and not particularly concerned about how he got the money to do so; Johansen was a freshly minted CIA officer whose responsibilities included helping people like Tolevi. Johansen had recruited Tolevi following a three-month “courtship”; as these things went, it was rather quick, but it had proved immensely valuable over the years.

The relationship was mutually beneficial. With minimal but strategic assistance from Johansen, Tolevi had exploited his connections in both the Ukraine and Russia to build a thriving import-export business, one that was generally, though not always, aboveboard. American by birth as well as a Ukrainian passport holder, he was now a property owner and a man of some means. The fact that he occasionally worked with the Russian mafya was both necessary and a source of endless opportunity, not just for him but for Johansen, too. Johansen had moved up the ranks at the CIA. Even so, he continued to “run” Tolevi personally.

Johansen had once explained to Tolevi that he kept up contact because he “liked to keep a hand in.” Tolevi doubted that was true — he suspected that the CIA officer used trips from the Washington area to Boston as a cover for something else, including a mistress — but he was used to Johansen, and in fact would have balked if he had been handed off to someone of lesser importance.

Johansen liked using trains for contact. This was inexplicable to Tolevi. Perhaps it had to do with the CIA officer’s ability to scan the tickets and ID passengers; maybe he got some sort of agency discount. It did solve one problem: Tolevi had to be especially careful in Boston, as there were plenty of people around with connections to the Russian mob and, through them, to the intelligence services. Even a chance sighting of him next to a CIA agent would add complications to his life that he preferred not to deal with.

The train was late. He walked back into the station building, circling around toward the eating area between Dunkin’ Donuts and the Au Bon Pain. There were no seats, so Gabor satisfied himself with examining faces, trying to decide who in the small crowd might be following him.

No one. No reason for paranoia.

The train was finally called. Tolevi made his way on board, finding a seat in the first car. He took the window seat and left his jacket on the aisle seat, a precaution to ward off a neighbor. The train, though, was relatively empty, and as it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long — Johansen got on at Route 128, the second stop after the station, a little less than fifteen minutes after pulling out.

“This seat taken?” asked the CIA officer.

“Go ahead,” said Tolevi roughly. He dropped his jacket onto his lap, repositioning his Kindle Fire atop it.

Johansen pulled a laptop from his briefcase before sitting down. Neither man spoke; they never admitted to knowing each other or made any sign of comradery or even bare courtesy during these meetings. They communicated by typing on their devices, pretending to be talking to someone else.

As always, Johansen started the conversation with an inane question.

Tolevi resisted the impulse to reply with something nasty.

Yes, Tolevi thought. You definitely will compensate. He typed:

That was the extent of their conversation. Johansen shut down the word-processing program and pulled up the browser; he watched a movie until they reached Westerly, Rhode Island, where he got off.

Always suspicious that Johansen might have left a trail or even some sort of device to watch him, Tolevi waited until he reached New York and was in a cab to make the call.

“Yes?” said Iosif. It was a bare syllable, more a grunt than a word, but it immediately identified him beyond any doubt.

“I’ll be out of town for a few days. We have a shipment coming on the ninth.”

“Taken care of.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“Stratowich stopped by. He wants to talk to you,” added Iosif.

Stephan Stratowich was a low-level goon who worked with some of the mafya people, Maarav Medved in particular. He obviously had been sent to bug him for either a favor or money.

Probably money. Tolevi owed Medved a payment: a “tax” for the benefit of not being interfered with.

“He was ranting about a robot,” added Iosif.

“A robot?”

“You know Stratowich. Always something.”

“Was that what he wanted?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I. Tell him I’ll be back in a few days.”

“I did.”

“Let me know if anything comes up. I’ll check in from Europe.”

“Right.”

6

According to Trevor Jenkins, Massina was just one of a hundred people who had been victimized in a strain of identity theft involving ATM skimmers.

“The theory is they used a skimmer,” said the FBI agent. Massina listened patiently as the agent then explained what a skimmer was — a device that was placed on the ATM, reading the pertinent information.

“There was nothing like that there,” said Massina when Jenkins finished.

“They are quite clever,” said the agent. He unfolded a sheaf of papers with photos demonstrating how the machines were placed over the ATM’s card apparatus. They ranged from crude card readers with a keyboard to a far more sophisticated device that looked like a card slot with a fat lip. “As soon as the PIN is keyed in, the thieves have all the information they need.”

“I don’t recall seeing anything like these,” said Massina. “I think I would have noticed.”

“Well, the ATMs seem to be the only link,” said Jenkins apologetically. “There have been a rash of these, at different banks.”

The incident was one of half a dozen in the area over the past several weeks, explained the agent. The thefts occurred within moments of each other — literally nanoseconds, as computer programs directed transfers over high-speed Internet lines. The transfers would cascade across a number of accounts until finally disappearing somewhere in Eastern Europe, where tracing them became very difficult.

The FBI had dealt with these sorts of devices for years and had a fairly good feel for what they looked like and were capable of. They also knew what sort of fraud pattern they generally corresponded to — quick hits on a number of bank accounts that had only one thing in common: a withdrawal at the compromised ATM. Most skimmer operations were relatively primitive; in most cases, the skimmers had to be recovered for the data to be used. This was more sophisticated; the transfers happened instantly, in small amounts that defeated normal security screening. And it involved transfers rather than cash.

“We have a number of the ATMs under surveillance,” added Jenkins. “We’ll catch them eventually.”

“You’re watching every ATM in the city?”

“I wish. Has your bank offered to make good on the money?” asked Jenkins.

“They said they would.”

“Then you’re ahead of the game. Many banks don’t. Technically, they don’t have to. If the PIN is used, they claim that you didn’t keep it secure.”

“That’s bull.”

“They can say anything they want, right?” The agent laughed nervously. “When I saw your name this morning on the list, I felt I had to tell you what was going on. Twenty-three people were hit last night. They got about ten thousand dollars. Your account was actually one of the bigger ones.”

“Must be my lucky day.” Massina stood. “I’m sorry, but I really need to go see Sister Rose and her committee.”

“Of course.” Jenkins took a business card from his pocket. “If I can help — if you have trouble getting your money back — just call. We can put pressure on the bank.”

“Thanks,” said Massina.

“I’m sorry that I can’t be more positive,” said Jenkins.

“Give my best to your daughter.”

“We think about you every day. You really changed her life.”

7

If there was one way to get Louis Massina interested in something, it was by telling him it was impossible. And while Agent Jenkins hadn’t used that word exactly, everything he had said about the ATM card thieves made it sound like catching them would be very difficult without some sort of lucky break.

That was a challenge.

Still, Massina never would have pursued the matter had the bank’s manager not called him a short while later to tell him that the bank had reversed its decision to reimburse him.

“Why?” Massina asked.

“You must have used your PIN,” said the manager apologetically. “The regional office told me that I have to follow the rules.”

“This is part of a skimmer operation,” said Massina. “I’ve already spoken to the FBI.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s no evidence that there was a skimmer. We checked the tapes, and there was no physical alteration at the machine.”

“Why would I have used an ATM to make a transfer,” said Massina, not even bothering to make it sound like a question. “And from that account?”

“I can’t explain that,” said the bank manager.

“If you look at the way that account is used—”

“I’ve been all through it with my bank’s security VP,” she said. “If they credit your account, they’ll have to credit everyone’s.”

“As they should.”

“You can take it up with regional,” said the manager. “My hands are tied.”

“You realize I have other accounts with you.”

“I told them that. Several times.”

He hung up. Chelsea Goodman was standing at his door; she’d heard his side of the conversation.

“The ATM theft?” she asked.

“They think I did it.” Massina suppressed a growl. The unfairness angered him. While he could easily afford the loss, the idea of being ripped off annoyed him beyond proportion. Part of Massina realized he should be spending his time on something more productive, but it was overwhelmed by a simmering rage and a desire for revenge, however irrational it might be. He was angry at the thieves, but nearly as mad at the bank; he had to struggle to maintain his outward calm.

“Why don’t you just hack into their system and see where the transfer went?” asked Chelsea.

“If I do that, I might just as well reverse the transaction,” said Massina.

“That’s a thought.”

“An illegal one.”

“It’s your money.”

“Tell me how Peter did,” he said, changing the subject.

Though Massina cut her off, Chelsea’s suggestion started a chain of thoughts that led him to call Jenkins later that day.

Much later. It was a few minutes past midnight.

“I have a proposition,” he told the FBI agent. “I’d like to help you and your case.”

“Really?”

“We’ll do anything short of hacking into the banking system. Though if you want us to—”

“No, no, uh, we, uh, I wouldn’t want…”

“How can we help?” insisted Massina.

“Uh…”

“You don’t have the resources to watch every ATM, is that your problem?” asked Massina.

Jenkins didn’t answer. Massina finally realized he had woken him up.

Not that it mattered.

“The first thing we have to do is analyze the location of the ATMs that have been hit already,” said Massina. “I can supply surveillance equipment to watch a hundred units at a time. Analyze the theft patterns and we’ll stake out the likely ones. We can use a remote system. We’ll train the computer coordinating it to alert you to suspicious activity. We can then track the suspect, and you take it from there.”

“Track them how?”

“We have UAVs,” said Massina. “Small ones.”

“Drones?” asked Jenkins.

“Depending on the geographical spread, you should only need six or seven.”

“Well, I, um,” Jenkins stuttered. “B-But…”

“What?”

“Well, for five thousand dollars — you’d be going through a lot of trouble.”

“You have dozens of cases like this?”

“Over a hundred.”

“Do you want to solve this or not?”

“I’ll have to talk to my boss.”

“Two of my people will be at your office at nine a.m. tomorrow. I’ll call them now.”

“Um, Mr. Massina, it’s after midnight.”

“They’ll be at work. It’s not a problem. What’s the address?”

“Who were you talking to?” asked Jenkins’s wife as he slipped his cell phone back onto the nightstand.

“Mr. Massina.”

“Louis Massina? Who helped Deidre? Is he in trouble?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Why is he calling this late?”

Jenkins pulled the covers up to his neck, then rolled toward his wife. “He wants to help an investigation I’m involved in.”

“Couldn’t it have waited?”

“Just be thankful I don’t work for him,” he said, closing his eyes.

8

Three days later, Trevor Jenkins found himself sitting in the back of an FBI control van, monitoring some fifty ATMs with the help of small video cameras installed on or near the machines. While Jenkins flipped back and forth between different feeds, the real work was being done by a monitoring program hosted on one of Smart Metal’s servers down in Boston. The program not only singled out ATMs where there was activity but also looked for images that corresponded to ATM skimmers, as well as tools and other assorted items deemed possibly suspicious, such as briefcases and large bags. There had been five alerts in the three hours since the system had gone live; all had been quickly ruled “benign” by the computer as well as Jenkins.

He still didn’t one hundred percent trust the computer — garbage in, garbage out, as his supervisor had warned when he told him of the plan two days before. But it did make things easier to manage. According to the Smart Metal people, the program was an off-the-shelf security program with a few tweaks — none of which Jenkins understood, though it had been laboriously explained to him by one of the program’s original authors, Chelsea Goodman.

The vivacious twenty-something had offered to sit with him and his team during the surveillance in case there were bugs; Jenkins had turned her down, citing Bureau rules against civilians in the van, though in reality he was worried she would be too much of a distraction for his unmarried partners, Johnny Givens and David Robinson.

“Bases loaded,” said Givens, who was watching a game summary of the Red Sox and Tampa on his phone as they monitored the machines. “Lookin’ good.”

Jenkins switched through the video feeds, settling on a bank drive-up five miles away. Three cars were queued up — a long line for this particular machine.

The Bureau had tried analyzing the various ATMs that had been targeted but failed to come up with any useful data on why they had been picked. There were no discernible patterns, aside from the fact that they were all within ten miles of downtown Boston. Inside, outside, drive-up, walk-up — it all seemed particularly random.

“Damn,” said Givens softly. “Big Poppy struck out. Still no score.”

“They always break your heart,” said Robinson. Though he’d lived in Boston for a few years, his baseball allegiances were still tied to his hometown, L.A., and the Dodgers.

“Anybody up for coffee?” Givens asked.

“Me,” said Robinson. “Assuming I can’t get a beer.”

“No beer,” said Jenkins. “I’ll take one, too.”

Givens slipped into the cab unit of the van, checked the surroundings, then hopped out. They were parked near a grocery store that anchored a suburban mall; there was a Dunkin’ Donuts at the far end.

“Think we’ll catch ’em tonight?” asked Robinson.

“Real long shot,” said Jenkins. “May not even be a skimmer.”

“It has to be a skimmer,” said Robinson.

“Yeah, but it bothers me that there’s no marks on the machines and no one’s ever spotted one — you look at most skimmer cases, eventually someone figures it out.”

“That’s because the bad guys get greedy. Some of these are damn good.”

“I guess.”

Givens returned a few minutes later with coffee and a box of doughnuts. The Sox had scored a run while he was gone, prodding him to formulate a theory that the team needed him to be walking so they could score. This of course drew guffaws from Robinson, and the two began trading even more bizarre theories about how the universe intersected with baseball.

That was Givens’s real asset on a surveillance team — he tended to lighten the mood. Givens had joined the Bureau after a brief stint in the Army, where he’d qualified as a Ranger but not found a slot in the battalion — a distinction that was lost on Jenkins but apparently mattered a great deal to Givens.

“Time to rotate,” said Robinson finally, glancing at his watch. They changed stations every hour to keep a fresh set of eyes on the monitors.

“Don’t break anything,” Jenkins said, giving up his seat. He was just about to open the van door and get out when Robinson cursed.

“Spilled the coffee,” said the agent.

“It’s not much,” said Jenkins. “Just clean it up.”

About a quarter of the cup had sloshed onto the floor. A few drops were on the counter near the keyboard. Robinson carefully daubed them up with a napkin while Givens threw paper towels on the floor. The damage seemed contained until Robinson went to switch the feed. The keyboard didn’t respond.

“It froze,” said Robinson. “Damn it.”

“Man, you have a bad aura,” said Givens. “No wonder you like the Dodgers.”

“Let me see.” Jenkins pushed back into the seat in front of the console. The displays had frozen, and nothing he tried could get them to unfreeze.

“Maybe we should just reboot the system,” said Givens, looking over his shoulder. “Hit Alt-Delete-Control.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Robinson.

“The computer’s a PC.”

Robinson shrugged. “Your call, boss.”

Not knowing what else to do, Jenkins decided it couldn’t hurt.

He was wrong, though — instead of a frozen screen, the computer went completely blank. A hard reboot — turning it on and off — changed the color to blue.

“We’re screwed,” said Robinson. “Great going, Johnny.”

“All right, time to call the cavalry,” said Jenkins, looking for the paper with Chelsea Goodman’s phone number.

Five miles away, at the Smart Metal building in downtown Boston, Chelsea was watching a video of RBT PJT 23.A pick its way across the debris-strewn railyard where it had been tested a few days ago. It got where it had to go, but its movements still weren’t smooth enough for the scientist, for whom fluidity of motion was an indication of efficient programming. She was just about to reexamine some of the bot’s decision tree when her cell phone began to vibrate.

She took it from her pocket warily. Her ex-boyfriend had called several times over the past week, trying to “talk things out.” Tired of the emotional roller coaster he represented, she’d blocked his number; he’d gotten around this by using friends’ cells.

Not recognizing the number, she reached her finger to the Ignore tab, then realized it was the FBI agent she’d been assigned to help. She hit the green button and held it to her ear.

“This is Chelsea.”

“I need help,” said Jenkins without introducing himself. “The computer froze. I tried to reboot—”

“No, you shouldn’t do that.”

“I know. Now.”

“Where are you? I’ll get an Uber.”

“I’ll send someone to get you if you want,” said Jenkins.

Chelsea spotted the blue Bureau Malibu twenty minutes later. The driver pulled over to the curb and flashed his FBI credentials.

“I’m Johnny,” he told her. “You’re Chelsea?”

“Yup.”

“You need tools?”

“They’re right here,” said Chelsea, tapping the side of her head as she got into the car. The Red Sox game was on the radio. “What’s the score?”

“Four-two. We’re up.”

“Good.”

“You a Boston fan?” Johnny asked.

“Now. But I grew up in San Diego.”

“Don’t tell me you like the Padres. That’s a triple-A team.”

“Ouch.”

“At least you know something about baseball,” said Johnny.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Which do you prefer?” asked Chelsea, deciding to needle him, “defense-adjusted ERA, or defense-neutral ERA.”

“Um—”

“The one advantage of defense-adjusted ERA is that it can give you an indirect idea of how good a team’s defense really is, since it goes back to NRA.”

“I don’t really get all that stat stuff,” confessed Johnny.

“So you’re not really into baseball.”

“No. It’s just — there’s more to baseball than statistics.”

“Like?”

“Like hot dogs. What’s baseball without hot dogs?”

Chelsea laughed.

“Hamburgers you can do without,” said Johnny. He was just about to expound on his reasoning when the scanner mounted under the dash crackled with a call.

“That’s a robbery at an ATM,” said Johnny. “It’s about ten blocks away.”

“Are we going?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

Johnny pulled the car up behind a city police cruiser, angling it so the other vehicle could pull back if it needed to. He flashed on a scene from his childhood — the football field where the varsity team played was only a block and a half away, and he’d spent some of the best days of his youth there. On one particularly glorious afternoon, having completed twenty of twenty-five passes with two touchdowns and no interceptions, he’d run down this very street, shouting, “We’re Number 1!” with a pack of friends.

Faded glory now.

“You stay in the car while I see what’s going on,” he told Chelsea. “Deal?”

“All right.”

“They probably don’t need us,” he added. “But, we’re here. So, you know.”

“OK. Fine.”

He was torn — Jenkins was waiting. On the other hand, maybe this was related. It involved an ATM.

Outside the car, Johnny trotted toward the bank. He waved his creds at an approaching police officer. “I’m with the FBI. What’s going on?”

“Two suspects, somewhere in that back alley, we think,” said the officer. “Sergeant McLeary’s in charge.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Up over there, behind the car.”

McLeary’s skeptical glare when Johnny introduced himself told him everything he needed to know: he wasn’t needed or wanted. That wasn’t atypical — many local departments felt the Bureau interfered or at best tended to hog the glory when they were involved in a case.

“We’ve been watching ATMs in the area for a case,” Johnny explained. “We’d be interested in talking to your suspects.”

“Gotta catch them first,” answered McLeary. “We have them in that alley, we think.”

“I may be able to get some backup,” offered Johnny.

“I have a couple of more cars on the way, and a helicopter with infrared,” said McLeary, warming a little.

“I know this street pretty well,” said Johnny. “I grew up around here. They could go over the roofs of those houses on Pierce and get out that way.”

“Yeah.”

“You have somebody there?”

“Not yet.”

“I can drive around there for you.”

“All right. I’ll have a car out there in five minutes, maybe less. I’ll tell them to look for you.”

If there was one thing in the world Chelsea wasn’t good at, it was waiting. The police radio made it even worse, tantalizing her with snippets of action that she couldn’t be involved in. It was clear from the clipped communiqués that the police believed they had their suspects trapped somewhere in the alley, but it was equally clear that they weren’t sure how exactly to get them.

The driver side door suddenly opened. Surprised, she twisted around.

It was Johnny.

“Hang on,” he said, pushing the car into reverse. “We’re going around the corner to watch the buildings.”

Johnny slowed as he turned the corner. He scanned the street ahead, then glided into a parking spot across from the buildings.

“They might come out that way,” he said, half to himself, half to Chelsea. “Off the roofs.”

“Do you know this area?”

“Definitely. There’s a high school that way.”

“Your school?”

“No. We wanted to steal the mascot one time. We got caught… well, chased, actually. We ended up in that alley. And we got out climbing the building.”

“Really?”

Johnny laughed. “Good times.”

“There’s a car down the block with someone in it,” said Chelsea. “Is that a cop?”

“What car?”

“Way down near the corner.”

“The pickup?” asked Johnny.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a truck. It’s not a cop.”

“There’s someone in the driver’s seat.”

“You’re sure?” Johnny strained to see.

“Positive.”

“Stay here.”

Chelsea folded her arms across her chest, watching Johnny walk down the street. He reached his right hand behind his hip as he walked.

He’s got a gun there, she thought.

Well, duh. He’s an FBI agent.

Until that moment, it all had been very theoretical — modifying the program, helping them test it and implement it, then coming out to help them. But now she realized it was something a lot more than a problem to be solved in a laboratory, more than a movie or a video game.

He was really walking down the street, approaching a truck that might be involved in the case.

Or maybe it was just a guy waiting for his wife, or catching a smoke, or…

The truck jerked forward.

Chelsea started to climb over the console to the driver’s seat. Something flashed behind her — a police car had just turned onto the block.

It took Johnny Givens a few seconds to realize the truck was moving. He started to raise the gun, then realized he had no idea whether the vehicle was involved. He raised his left hand instead.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Police! Police!”

The truck lurched in his direction, accelerating. As he jumped back, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Then something hard smacked him in the buttocks, and he was dizzy, and everything was black.

9

Jenkins stared at the phone in disbelief. “Why was he there?”

“Someone was robbed at the ATM. We went over to help.”

“What hospital?”

“Boston Med.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Jenkins hit the Disconnect button and slumped back from the console. The van seemed to have shrunk in half, everything closing in.

“What’s going on?” asked Robinson.

“Johnny was just run over by a truck and a cop car. They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

“What?”

“We’re closing down for the night. Shit.” He spun the phone in his hand, still in disbelief. Finally he clicked the map program up and queried the location of the hospital.

The Trauma Center and Emergency Department at Boston Medical Center was one of the finest Level I trauma centers in the world; the acute-care facility was studied as a model throughout the Northeast. It was a place where miracles occurred. But there were some things that no hospital, no doctor, could do, no matter how skilled, and the face of the first surgeon Jenkins met told him that saving Johnny Givens’s life very well might be one of them.

“We’re talking very severe injuries,” said the doctor. “It’s touch and go.”

Jenkins bit his lip so hard he could taste blood in his mouth.

It was better than the bile that had been rising from his stomach, and far less painful than the mental anguish turning every thought red. Against all logic, he felt responsible.

He’d never lost a man, not at the FBI, nor the two police departments he’d worked at before joining the Bureau.

God!

“I need to see him,” he told the doctor.

“Heavily sedated, but come on.”

The physician led him down the hall, past a computer station where patients were tracked. Spare equipment lined the walls below a large clock that ticked off seconds with a staccato beat. About halfway down the hall, they entered a room crowded with doctors, nurses, and other aides, all focused on a man who looked agonizingly small. Wires and tubes rose up from him, connecting to machines and displays that blinked with analytic precision, a sharp contrast to the hushed whispers of the people staring at the injured man.

“No — you’re going to have to get out,” said one of the doctors through her mask.

“I’m his boss,” stuttered Jenkins. “FBI.”

“I’m sorry. We’re doing what we can. Please.”

The surgeon who had led him in apologized and put his hand on Jenkins’s arm.

“We’re doing our best. His legs are gone.”

“His legs?”

“Completely crushed. His spine, his lungs — I don’t know that we’ll save him.”

Jenkins let himself be led out of the room. The voices seemed to get louder once he was in the hall.

“There was a woman with him,” said the surgeon. “She’s in that room over there.”

Chelsea Goodman was sitting in a chair next to an empty bed, her cell phone in one hand and a Styrofoam cup in the other.

“How is he?” she asked, looking up.

“I–I don’t…”

“I’m so sorry. I saw—”

She stopped. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. Jenkins wanted to comfort her but had no idea what to say.

“Maybe we should pray,” he told her finally.

“OK. Tell me what to say.”

10

Lying helpless on the bed, Johnny tried to focus.

Blue and red, blue and red — what did any of it mean?

Legs? Where are my legs?

There.

Arms?

Present.

Johnny’s heart floated above his head. He could see it pumping, pumping, and pumping. It started to move slowly around the room.

This is what it felt like to be alive: surrounded by pain and a world gone alien.

11

It occurred to Jenkins that he was closer to Johnny Givens than anyone else at the Bureau, which very possibly meant that Jenkins was the closest person to Johnny in the Northeast and maybe the world. Johnny wasn’t married or involved in a relationship: the girlfriend he’d broken up with had moved to Chicago some months before, something the young agent spent much time grousing about. He was an only child and had no relatives in Massachusetts or the Northeast, for that matter. His mother was dead; his father was in Florida somewhere. He’d listed his father as his next of kin, but the number had been out of service for six months, according to the phone company.

Jenkins wasn’t sure what else he could do, aside from stalking up and down the hospital hallway, a reminder to the staff that he was here, damn it, and that someone cared, and that they better do the best they could to save the kid’s life. He was angry and he was sad and he was tired, all at the same time, and when his wife, Joyce, called to ask where he was, he didn’t even bother to guard his feelings, either from her or anyone nearby.

“I’m in the hospital with Johnny Givens,” he told her, his voice a notch too high. “I’m waiting — I don’t know what they’re doing. He was hit by a car.”

“Oh, God,” said Joyce. “Are you all right?”

“I wasn’t even there. I sent him on an errand, just to fetch someone, and he got — God, I don’t know.”

“What hospital are you at?”

“Brigham — no, Boston Med.” Brigham was where his brother had died.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“No, listen, Joyce, there’s no—”

Jenkins stopped, realizing she’d already hung up. Folding his arms but still holding his phone in his hand, he walked outside the hospital, circling around in the area where the ambulances waited. It was moments like this, thankfully few and far between, that he wished he smoked; it would have given him an excuse to be here, where he was so obviously out of place.

He thought of calling Joyce back and telling her not to come, claiming that he was on his way home. That would have been a very obvious lie, however, and he decided not to bother.

He wanted her here, in fact. He glanced at his cell phone, mentally calculating how long it would actually take her — twenty minutes, at least — then started patrolling up and down the sidewalk, trying to avoid the temptation of talking to himself. When he calculated fifteen minutes had passed since Joyce hung up, he moved closer to the door, positioning himself so he could see her as she came up the driveway.

Even though he was primed, it was Joyce who spotted him first, approaching from the other side of the street. He saw her as he turned back, just in time to open his arms to meet her hug.

It lasted long enough that it would have embarrassed him under other circumstances.

“Any word?” she asked when finally he eased her back.

“No.”

“It reminds you of James, right?”

“Not really.”

The fleeting look of disappointment in her grimace told him Joyce hadn’t been fooled, but she said nothing. His brother’s death was still a difficult subject, even between them.

“There was a girl with him,” said Jenkins, eager to change the subject.

“Girlfriend?”

“No, she — she’s helping us with the job. She works for Smart Metal, Mr. Massina’s company. There was a problem with the computer. She’s a techie, and I asked him to get her.”

“So it was a car accident?”

Jenkins sighed, then explained the circumstances as he knew them.

“It’s not your fault,” said Joyce. “I hope you’re not blaming yourself. But I know you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Where’s this young woman? Maybe she needs something.”

Chelsea was in the same chair where he’d left her; she seemed not to have breathed, let alone moved, in the time since Jenkins had left her. When Jenkins introduced his wife, Chelsea stared at him blankly.

“They said you could go home,” Jenkins told her. “Should we call someone?”

Chelsea didn’t answer.

“Is your car at your office?” he asked.

“My house is a few blocks away. I don’t have a car.”

“You want me to drive you?” Jenkins volunteered.

Chelsea rose without speaking.

“I’ll take her,” said Joyce. “You stay here with Johnny.”

“OK — all right with you, Chelsea?”

“I can get Uber.”

“It’ll be easier and quicker if I drive,” said Joyce.

Jenkins went back to his pacing, adding a loop inside near the nurse’s station. The first few times, he stopped and asked whoever was there how Johnny was doing; after that he simply nodded and gave the best smile he could manage.

He was just going out the door when his supervisor strode up. Jenkins was shocked; Perse Lambdin was a tall black man who always dressed impeccably, often in a throwback three-piece suit. Tonight he had on a gray sweatshirt and faded, sagging jeans.

His manner, though, was as imperious as ever.

“What’s going on?” Lambdin asked.

“Touch and go,” said Jenkins. “I was just coming out for air.”

Inside, Lambdin demanded to see the doctor in charge, even after the nursing supervisor explained that he was busy trying to save Givens’s life. When it finally became clear to the nurse that Lambdin wasn’t budging, she called a resident to talk to him. Jenkins knew that the doctor wasn’t directly involved in the case, and he guessed that Lambdin probably knew, too, but the resident was the perfect audience, looking thoughtful and worried and respectful all at the same time. He assured both men that everything was being done for their agent; the head of surgery herself had been called in, and the trauma team was one of the best in the nation.

“Don’t bullshit me,” said Lambdin. “Just get the job done.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do.”

“Good. Good.”

The resident clamped his lips together and nodded his head before retreating.

“Now how the hell did this happen?” Lambdin asked Jenkins.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” said Jenkins. He repeated what he knew about the incident. They thought the driver of the truck was the ATM thief or an accomplice, but he was still at large.

If the police car hadn’t sped down the block…

“I want the bastard who hit him caught,” said Lambdin.

“The cop car hit him and did most of the damage.”

“The other one — the truck,” said Lambdin. “I want that bastard hung.”

Chelsea pushed her head back against the headrest of Joyce Jenkins’s car. No matter how tight she cinched the seat belt, it still felt loose.

“Turn right on Beacon Street?” Joyce asked.

“Yes.” Chelsea couldn’t remember telling her where she lived, but the GPS was open, moving an arrow along the map.

“Are you from Boston?” Joyce asked.

“San Diego. I came out for school. MIT and then I stayed.”

“You’re a computer scientist? There aren’t too many women in that field.”

“No.”

“It’s kind of funny to hear Trevor talk about computers,” said Joyce. “He can barely get his phone to work. And forget about programming the TV.”

Chelsea didn’t answer.

“I imagine it must be hard for you to deal with all the men in your field,” added Joyce after a few moments of silence. “Are there other women where you work?”

“A few.”

Actually, just two dozen, including Massina’s personal assistant. The male-to-female ratio in the technical fields was generally abysmal.

“I work in an elementary school,” said Joyce. “The girls seem more excited about math than the boys at that age. But they peter out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hormones.”

“Huh?”

“I think hormones mess a lot of us up. By the time we recover, we’ve missed our chance. Girls need encouragement. When they show aptitude. Was there a key? To get you interested?”

“I just was. In math. And stuff.”

“Only child?”

“How did you know?”

“I just did.” Joyce smiled at her.

“I wish I had stopped him,” Chelsea blurted.

“It wasn’t your fault, hon.”

“I know, but I wish…”

Jenkins and his boss were joined by a “comfort team,” specialists who worked with the family when an agent went down. Jenkins didn’t know them, but he knew their work — a similar team had met him when his brother was shot.

The night passed slowly, like a crippled man crawling up a long staircase. Finally the surgeon he had met hours earlier came out.

Jenkins sprang to his feet and began walking toward him. His heart began pounding in his chest; he could feel his pulse in his neck, a hard roll on a snare drum.

“He’s still critical,” said the doctor, nodding his head. “We had to take both legs. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial. There’s internal bleeding. Did you know that he had a heart defect?”

“No,” said Jenkins.

“It’s been stressed. There’s a hole — I’m very sorry. He needs a transplant, and I don’t know.”

“Of his legs?”

“No, the heart. Without it, and soon, very soon, he’s gone.”

12

Chelsea didn’t sleep. She tried, stripping off her pants and curling beneath the blanket, but the accident kept playing in her head. She kept seeing Johnny Givens’s face in that last moment when the car hit.

As she thought about it now, logically, carefully, she didn’t think that she had seen his face. She’d been too far away, hadn’t she? And in the car, and there hadn’t been much light.

And yet she saw it in her mind, clearly.

She’d done nothing to stop it.

After a while she gave up even pretending that she could sleep. She was sorry that she had left the hospital. How was he?

Maybe dead by now.

She opened her cell phone’s list of calls and found the number for the FBI agent, Jenkins.

“How is he?” she asked when he answered.

“Chelsea?”

“Is he out of surgery?”

“You mean Johnny?”

“Who else would I be talking about?” she demanded. “Damn — is he… all right?”

Jenkins’s pause told her more than she wanted to know.

“He’s alive. Barely.” The FBI agent ran down a list of injuries that sounded like the index to a medical encyclopedia. Johnny Givens had already lost two legs; he needed a liver and a new heart — those were the highlights.

“You need to get him to a better hospital,” blurted Chelsea.

“Better care?”

“We have… Lou has connections. He can help.”

“Mr. Massina has already done a lot for us and—”

“I’ll call you back,” she told him quickly. “I’ll call you back.”