The Loch Ness Legacy

NINE

Tyler appeared in Grant’s office doorway at Gordian headquarters looking like he’d only gotten a few hours’ sleep before taking the first morning flight back from San Jose to Seattle.

Thank God the Victor Zim threat was over yesterday, Grant thought. If it hadn’t ended so abruptly, Tyler might have asked him to spend the night at his house to make sure Alexa was safe while he oversaw Gordian’s team investigating the helicopter crash. No telling what would have happened then.

Instead, as soon as Tyler had called with the news of the botched escape attempt leading to Zim’s death the previous afternoon, Grant was able to go home and take a long, cold shower. After retiring early in the evening, he slept twelve hours, something he hadn’t done in years. Even with all the rest, he still felt like he’d run a marathon. All those years in the ring and the Army must have finally been catching up to him.

As Tyler was driving in from the airport, he had called to ask Grant to pick up Alexa and bring her to the office so that Tyler could see her there rather than going home. When Grant arrived to get her, she gave him another hug and a peck on the cheek, one that was a little too lingering. Grant would have flirted with her shamelessly if she hadn’t been Tyler’s little sister. He restrained himself with only the greatest difficulty. Not wanting to encourage her, he kept his mouth shut on the drive downtown. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Tyler know.

“Welcome back,” Grant said. “Find any pieces of Zim?”

Tyler sank into the chair opposite and massaged his injured arm. “Not yet, but it’s a huge mess. It’ll take weeks to sort through. Unless we get a DNA match, I doubt we’ll identify the pilot from the remains we find. What wasn’t flambéed was mixed up with thousands of pounds of steer carcass chunks.”

Grant grimaced. “Sounds appetizing.”

“It’s strictly pasta for me for the next few days.”

“At least Alexa’s in the clear now.”

Tyler nodded. “I think so, but I’ll feel better when we have Zim’s remains. Where is she?”

“In good hands. I left her with Miles.”

“He’s in the office today? I thought he was in Phoenix.”

“Apparently he heard about what happened to you and came back early. He’s waiting to get the story.”

“We’ll go and see him in a few minutes. Did Alexa give you any trouble?”

Grant’s smile disappeared. Normally he could read Tyler like a book, but when it came to his family, Tyler could be cryptic.

“Trouble?” Grant said, trying to act casual. “What do you mean?”

“Did you see anyone suspicious? Anyone that looked out of place in the neighborhood?”

Grant breathed a sigh of relief and shook his head. “Nothing unusual. She thinks you’re overprotective.”

“With both Zims gone, I’m sure that’s the end of any potential vendetta, but I’m glad you were with her just the same.”

“No problem, man.” Tyler smiled, and Grant cringed at what was coming next. Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.

“You’re one of the few people I’d trust with her,” Tyler said.

You said it. Guilt tore through Grant even though he hadn’t actually done anything. The impure thoughts were enough.

Grant cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I got the report from our French division. The explosion on the tower that knocked you flat also took out the water main feeding the Salle Gustav Eiffel’s sprinkler system.”

Tyler frowned. “Carl Zim was trying to blow up the sprinkler system so that the fire would kill everyone in the reception?”

“Maybe. But if that was the case, his timing was pretty bad. The sprinklers started spraying long before Carl’s explosion took place. No way a fire could go anywhere after that. Everything was soaked, including me.”

“Then why blow it up?”

Grant shrugged. “It might not have been the ultimate target, just collateral damage. The Gordian team was able to partially reconstruct an unusual item from the wreckage.”

“How unusual?”

“In the X-Files range. It’s twisted metal from a cylindrical aluminum object about the size of a submarine sandwich. The biggest segments were found on the ground, but they matched bits to pieces on the catwalk where you tangled with Carl Zim.”

“What’s so unusual about that?”

Grant turned his computer so Tyler could see the screen. As Tyler scooted his chair forward and leaned on the desk to get a closer look, his phone rang. He looked at the display and said, “Agent Harris.”

He answered. “What’s the latest, Melanie?” He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Sure, I’ll have someone bring you up to Miles’ office when you get here.” He hung up with a puzzled expression.

“What’s she doing here?” Grant asked. “I thought she’d still be working on finding out who tried to bust Zim out of prison.”

Tyler shook his head. “I don’t know. All she said is that it has something to do with the Eiffel Tower attack.”

Grant felt a chill run down his spine. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with this thing.” He zoomed in on five pieces that had been laid out side-by-side. The edges were bent and ripped, but they clearly fit together because of the letters that were stenciled across it.

Tyler sounded it out. “Alt waf fe.”

“One word. Altwaffe.”

“That’s German, right?”

Grant nodded. “It means ‘old weapon.’ And before you ask, I have no idea why it’s called that. Our guys looked it up and couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere. Could be a code word.”

“Maybe it means the weapon was considered obsolete.”

“That could be why it didn’t go off. Carl might have been expecting a big bang, and it fizzled instead.”

“So we don’t know what was in the tube?”

“No. The heat from the explosion destroyed any residue. But you haven’t seen the best part.”

Tyler raised an eyebrow. “Color me intrigued.”

Grant clicked on another thumbnail to show another piece of the same metal.

“This part was on the other side of the tube,” Grant said.

Tyler’s eyes flicked from the screen to Grant, the muscles in his jaw tightening. “It can’t be.”

Grant nodded. “It is. Our guys report that it’s the real deal.”

Tyler turned back and shook his head at the screen in disbelief. Though the image on the metal showed faintly through the blackened surface, there was no doubt it was a Nazi swastika.

TEN

There wasn’t much more to glean from the report about the Nazi relic. No clue about where it had come from or what its purpose was. Tyler wished he could look at it himself, but there was no way the French government was going to let it out of the country.

Agent Harris texted that she was caught in the Friday morning traffic and was five minutes out. He sent someone down to wait for her while he and Grant headed to Miles’ corner office on the top floor.

The door was open, so they walked in without knocking to the sight of Alexa shoving her shoulder with all her might against the back of their CEO’s iBOT wheelchair. Miles, a burly retired Marine officer who still sported a high and tight crew cut, smiled at them from his perch in the fully upright position that the gyroscopically stabilized chair made possible and grinned at the full mug of coffee in his hand.

“You can push all you want,” Tyler said, “you’re not going to knock him over.”

Alexa released her stance and smirked at him. “I wasn’t trying to knock him over, you dimwit. I have twenty bucks that says I can spill his coffee.”

“You’ll lose that bet. The motors and gears have been modified by him personally. You couldn’t do it with anything less than a forklift.”

She rolled her eyes, took a twenty from her pocket, and slapped it into Miles’ waiting hand. He tucked it in his shirt pocket and took a self-satisfied sip from his mug.

“If I’d known your sister was such an easy mark,” he said, “I would have bet a hundred.”

Alexa rushed over to Tyler and gave him a tight hug. Then she stepped back and inspected his arm. “I thought you were really injured, you dork.”

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounded.”

“It wasn’t? You mean getting shot and then almost blown up before nearly falling 150 feet to your death wasn’t that bad?”

“See? When you put it that way, it sounds like I almost died.”

“You better not,” she said and gave him another brief hug. “So am I a free woman now or do you want to continue with the nanny bit?” She stared pointedly at Grant and rolled her eyes.

“I’d say you need someone responsible looking after you at all times,” Tyler said, “but it looks like you’re out of danger now.” Without going into excruciating detail, he told Alexa about Victor Zim’s threat and his subsequent death.

Alexa’s expression went from fear to annoyance to comprehension in three blinks. She turned to Grant. “So that’s why you rushed over to the house all sweaty.”

Tyler quizzed Grant with his eyes.

“I was at the gym when you called,” Grant explained quickly.

Alexa laughed. “And he smelled like he brought the whole gym back with him.” She looked at Tyler. “I’m in the clear?”

Tyler hesitated, so Grant chimed in. “Unless Zim comes back as a zombie.”

“It’s a long walk from California, so I’m not too concerned about that. Well, it looks like you guys have something to talk about, so I will get out of your hair.”

“Where are you going?” Tyler asked.

“I’m meeting a friend at Pike Place Market for some coffee.”

“Dillman?” Grant said.

Alexa nodded. “He just texted me. He’s not home this morning and thought it would be a good place to rendezvous.”

“Is this the guy who was at Loch Ness with you?” Tyler asked.

“The same.”

Tyler was reluctant to let her go. Though Zim seemed to be out of the picture now, Alexa’s connection to Laroche was troubling. Something in his gut was telling him to keep her here.

“Excuse us,” Tyler said to Grant and Miles. He took Alexa aside and lowered his voice.

“Maybe you should wait for me,” he said.

“Until when?”

“Let’s go down there for lunch.”

Alexa patted him on his good shoulder. “You can’t keep an eye on me twenty-four seven. Besides, I’ve traveled to twenty countries without you. I think I can handle downtown Seattle.”

“But if Zim hired somebody to go after you—”

“What are you going to do? Hire a bodyguard to follow me around for the rest of my life? The guy’s dead. I’ll be fine.”

Tyler sighed. It was tough giving up the big brother routine. “Okay. How about I meet you at Etta’s and we can catch up?”

“Good idea. I’ll let you both treat me to crab cakes.”

“Me and Dillman?”

“No, you and Grant. I want to hear his version of Paris, too.”

Tyler shrugged. “There’s not much more to tell.”

She gave him a concerned look and took his hand. “I know this isn’t the first time you’ve had to kill someone, but it still must have been difficult.”

“It had to be done.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“You don’t need to hear it.” Alexa had been spared the ugliness of killing, which is why he’d never discussed his missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. There wasn’t a common frame of reference, and he was afraid she wouldn’t understand some of the things he’d had to do.

“All right,” she said. “But you know you can tell me anything, right?”

Tyler nodded. “Oh, I had a question for you. Have you seen André Laroche lately?” Because the FBI’s investigation was ongoing, Tyler wasn’t allowed to reveal that he was a suspect.

Alexa furrowed her brow at the seeming non-sequitur. “No. I’ve been trying to meet with him, but Marlo Dunham — that’s his assistant — would only tell me he was unavailable.”

“Has he tried to contact you?”

“Why?”

“Just curious about your plans while you’re here.”

“Last I heard from him was a couple of days ago. He sent me an email about our search for the Loch Ness monster.”

“Was there any clue to where he was going?

“No. What’s this about?”

“I’d like to meet who you’re working for. Has he ever asked you about me?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said sarcastically. “Your name comes up all the time.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“You’re being really weird.”

“Just let me know if Laroche calls you.”

She looked at him dubiously, then slowly said, “Okay.”

Tyler loved her naïveté. He’d seen unlikely people do some pretty awful things, so he wasn’t surprised by it any more. He wanted to spare her that kind of cynicism.

He smiled and changed the subject. “Listen. Grant and I will meet you for lunch at noon. Then afterward I can take you on the sightseeing flight I promised.”

“Are you still up for that with your arm and all?”

“I could fly that plane with two fingers. Besides, it’s a beautiful day for it.”

She smiled, but her eyes still held worry. “Sounds great.”

“And be careful on the walk over to the Market. There can be some sketchy people on Third Avenue.”

“If someone messes with me, I can scream with the best of them.”

She walked over to get her purse on Miles’ desk. Tyler noticed her whisper something to Grant, who smiled weakly at the comment and avoided her gaze as she waved and left.

“What’d she say?” Tyler asked when she was gone.

“Just that I don’t stink any more.”

Tyler sniffed and smiled. “She’s right. You’re a veritable flower.”

“Okay, gentlemen,” Miles said as he wheeled himself over to his desk and lowered the chair to a sitting position. “Now would you mind telling me what happened in California? My PR gal has been working overtime because of you two during the last week.”

Tyler filled him in on the helicopter crash near the Pleasant Valley prison, then Grant brought him up to speed on the report from France.

When Miles saw the swastika, he scowled and said, “Nazis? Again? I thought we were done with those guys seventy years ago.”

“When I saw the report, I asked Aiden to do a little online research to look for Altwaffe,” Grant said. Aiden MacKenna was Gordian’s top computer expert and data-mining genius. “He came up empty on the term, but he sure found a ton on Nazis today. It seems that the neo-Nazi movement has been growing in Europe in recent years, except their hatred is now focused on immigrants from Muslim countries and Africa. Don’t get me wrong. They still hate the Jews, but guys that look like me are scaring them even more these days.”

“Yeah, but you’re scary for a whole different reason,” Tyler said.

“You mean my amazing physique?”

“The smell. Apparently it’s strong enough to knock down a moose.”

“That’s because I ooze testosterone,” Grant shot back and then immediately looked like he regretted it.

Miles’ intercom buzzed. He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and said, “Bring her up.”

Once he put the phone back down, he looked at Tyler and Grant. “That’s Agent Harris. Do you have any other homoerotic banter you’d like to get out of the way before she comes in here?”

Grant feigned shock and cranked a thumb at Tyler. “Please. You think I spend two hours a day at the gym so he’ll notice?”

Tyler opened his mouth with a smartass retort, but thought better of it. “I’ll save that one for later.”

“Good idea,” Miles replied.

Harris entered with a grim expression. Her eyes flicked to Grant first, as if she were inspecting him. She nodded to Grant and Tyler, then shook Miles’ hand.

“Dr. Benson, thanks for letting me come by on such short notice.”

“Not at all. Please have a seat.”

He wheeled around and joined them in the office’s sitting area.

“You told Tyler this had to do with the Paris incident?”

She nodded and glanced at Grant again. Tyler sensed her unease, but he had no idea what the problem was.

“Yes, sir,” Harris said. “I wanted to come to you as soon as I could. This isn’t an official call. I thought since I owed Tyler for the incident in Miami — well, that you deserved to hear it now.”

“Hear what?” Tyler asked. Now he was more than a little concerned. “Is this about Brielle Cohen?”

“What? Oh, no. Nothing to do with her. Well, I suppose in a way. It’s about the guests at the party.”

“What about them?”

“I got the briefing this morning. They informed me because of my connection to Carl Zim’s brother, in case I learned anything about the attack from Victor.”

“Agent Harris, they’re both dead,” Grant said. “And we saved everyone at the party.”

“Did you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyler asked.

“Your own report said that the quadcopter bombs were so small that they wouldn’t have killed more than a fraction of the guests.”

“True. But we don’t know what the attackers’ goals were. Maybe they simply wanted to disrupt the summit.”

“Or maybe it was an assassination attempt,” Grant said.

Harris nodded. “We think you’re right.”

“Who was the target?” Tyler asked.

“Everyone there.”

Tyler exchanged glances with Miles and Grant before turning back to Harris.

“You just said that you agreed with our findings that the bombs weren’t deadly enough to cause that kind of destruction.”

“They weren’t. The bombs were merely a tool.”

“For what?” Miles asked.

“Altwaffe,” Tyler said under his breath. He looked up at Harris. “You know what that is.”

“We think so. Eighteen months ago, a hidden lab was found under Dresden, Germany. It was deep enough underground that it escaped destruction during the firebombing in 1945 that killed fifty thousand people. We believe André Laroche came into possession of the weapon.”

Grant shook his head. “What are the odds?”

“About what?”

“That Laroche also hired Alexa to track down the Loch Ness monster.”

“You’re kidding,” Miles said.

“Yesterday I saw the video footage she shot. She says the creature is real.”

Harris rolled her eyes at the mention of the creature. “I know. He’s an amateur cryptozoologist. You should see some of the stuff at his mansion. We’ve been searching it since yesterday morning, but we’ve found no sign of him or any reference to the weapon. Did your sister say if she’s been in contact with him recently?”

Tyler shook his head. “She hasn’t seen him in a while.”

“When we’re done with his house later today, I’d like to talk to her.”

“She’s meeting with a colleague right now, but I can bring her by your office this afternoon,” Tyler said. “But let me get this straight. My sister works for the same man who supposedly plotted the attack on the Eiffel Tower using a Nazi weapon he found, and the person Laroche paid to carry it out was Carl Zim, the brother of the man I helped put in prison? I was willing to chalk some of that up to coincidence before, but not anymore.”

“I agree,” Harris said. “In fact, the connection with your sister might be why Laroche hired you.”

Tyler was taken aback. “Hired me?”

“We discovered the holding company that financed the display at the Eiffel Tower to hide Zim’s gunmen was the same one that hired Brielle Cohen — and subsequently Gordian — for the investigation that led you to Carl Zim.”

Tyler shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If Laroche was behind the attack, why would he hire us and Brielle to stop it?”

“You might have been more efficient than he expected. We theorize that Zim was duped the way you were and was hired unwittingly by the type of people he hated.”

“Muslims?” Grant asked.

“Jews. Laroche’s mother was a concentration camp prisoner who survived the Holocaust, only to die later during a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem. We believe this is a case of revenge against the Muslim leadership that supports the Palestinian cause. The worst part is that Laroche had dealings with the Israeli government. He may have used his connections with the Mossad to get intel about the summit meeting that would have made the attack possible.”

If there was one thing Tyler hated, it was feeling like he’d been fooled. “And Laroche used us to try to pin the whole thing on white supremacists.”

“If that’s the case, it didn’t work,” Harris said. “The leaders of the summit nations think the attack was sanctioned by the Israeli government.”

“It’s hard to believe the Israelis would use a weapon designed by the Nazis.”

“Not if you’re a Muslim country. They wouldn’t put anything past their mortal enemy. Many of them don’t even believe the Holocaust happened, so why would they think the Jews would have any problem using a Nazi weapon?”

“You said it was found in a Dresden laboratory. What was the lab’s function?”

“It was secretly established to research chemical warfare. Altwaffe was some kind of toxin.”

More disturbed glances ricocheted amongst them.

“What’s happened, Melanie?” Tyler asked.

Harris took a breath. “The French say there were three hundred and ninety-four guests at the Eiffel Tower party. According to intel reports coming from the nations that were part of the summit, three of those guests are now dead.”

“My God. Is anyone else sick?”

“Some of the oldest attendees. All three of the people who died were men in their late eighties, including the Egyptian foreign minister. The scientists don’t yet know how the chemical works. It seems to shut down every system in the body so that the victims waste away. It’s taking longer to affect younger and stronger people, but the doctors think it will prove one hundred percent fatal to anyone who was exposed.”

“How long do they have?”

“A week. Maybe less. Those who are ill seem to hit a wall, and then it ends pretty quickly. If we don’t find or create an antidote soon, every person who attended that party will be dead. The surviving leaders will have the excuse and popular support to invade Israel. The forces are already massing. If an invasion happens and Israel can’t repel them, they might fight back with their nuclear arsenal. We’re looking at the potential start of World War III.”

“Maybe it was bad food,” Grant said. “Salmonella in the caviar or something.”

“And Grant and I didn’t eat because we were keeping a lookout during the entire event,” Tyler said. “I feel fine.”

“And you would. We don’t think you were exposed.”

“I thought you said it was everyone at the party. But wait, it couldn’t have been in the food or drinks. Zim was the one with the tube containing the Altwaffe, and he never got…” Tyler caught himself as he said it. “The sprinkler system. That’s why Carl Zim blew it up. He didn’t want us to know why he was there.”

Harris nodded. “The toxicologists who are working on this — and they are the best in the world — think it was absorbed through the skin. So you wouldn’t be sick.”

Tyler’s stomach went cold. “Because I wasn’t in there when the sprinklers went off. That was the purpose of the bombs. They were a means to set off the sprinklers. Carl was there to inject the Altwaffe into the system.”

Now Tyler realized why Harris had been looking at Grant so oddly. From the moment she stepped into the room, she knew that he’d been poisoned.

ELEVEN

Brielle’s eyes adjusted as she entered the dim lighting of Grady’s, an out-of-the-way biker bar near Lyman, Washington. She’d tracked Wade Plymouth to this seedy joint, the last place his GPS had located him, right before he texted Carl Zim’s name to her. He must have discovered something in this bar that caused him to go missing, and she was determined to find out what happened to him.

Going in with a British accent and a lot of questions wouldn’t get her anywhere with the type of men who would spend the morning in a bar. She’d already scouted the location to check out the women. All it took was a stop at a Goodwill store and a druggist’s cosmetics counter, and she had everything she’d need to blend in: cutoff jean shorts, cowboy boots, and a black T-shirt torn in the middle to reveal her generous cleavage — enhanced even further by a pushup bra. In a bar like this, it was like wearing a uniform, although much less practical than the one she’d worn in the Israeli Army. The fake dragon tattoo on her right shoulder completed the look. Her Star of David necklace, which would have been a dead giveaway, was safely tucked inside her front pocket.

A new accent was the last piece of the disguise. She’d spent a year studying abroad at Vanderbilt in Nashville. Frequent outings to the city’s country and western saloons let her practice her American accent until it was perfected. That helped her blend in when she wanted to, though she didn’t use it often once she found that American men went absolutely mental for the BBC shtick. To the college students in Tennessee, nothing was more exotic.

The wood floors of Grady’s reeked of spilled beer and the occasional spritzing of vomit. A neon Budweiser sign hung above the long bar, half of its bulbs dark. Grungy booths lined the opposite wall, with beat-up chairs and tables taking up the space in between. A honky-tonk tune blared from the ancient jukebox in the corner. It was thirty minutes before noon, and only a few of the tables were occupied.

Every head turned her way as she sauntered in. As she made her way to the bar, she could feel eyes on her form, as if she were fresh meat to be preyed upon by the boldest hunter in the room.

She took a seat on a stool midway down the bar. The bartender, a craggy old man with a full white beard and a missing left pinkie, looked her up and down.

“What’ll it be?”

“Whiskey,” Brielle said.

Without another word, the bartender poured two fingers of Jack Daniels into a highball glass and set it down in front of her.

Brielle downed it in one gulp. “Another.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow, then poured again.

It didn’t take long for the first man to approach her. He was a beefy leather-clad biker with “Mother” scrawled across both biceps. He sidled up to her and leaned on the bar.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “My name’s Big Joe.” He turned to nod to his two buddies who were nursing beers, as if to say this one was already in the bag.

Brielle looked at him for a moment and then went back to her drink. “Big, huh?”

“Why don’t you come party with me and find out?”

“Can’t, Joe. Waiting for someone.”

“Yeah, you’ve been waiting all your life for me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How do you know until you’ve tried?”

She looked Big Joe up and down and concluded he wasn’t the person she was here to find. There was no way someone this undisciplined was part of Zim’s group. She went back to nursing her glass.

“You been here before?” Big Joe asked.

“My boyfriend has.”

“Well he’s not here now.”

“Look, Joe, I just want to drink my whiskey.”

Big Joe put his hand on Brielle’s shoulder and spun her around. “What if I scare off this guy you’re waiting for?”

Now this is where it would get tricky. She had plenty of weapons she could use to defend herself: switchblade in her front pocket and compact Glock in her right boot. But getting into a brawl with a biker and two of his friends wouldn’t go well. For them. Then she’d leave with nothing.

She slapped Big Joe’s hand away. “Get your hand off me, you prick!” she yelled.

“Tell me your boyfriend’s name, so I know who I’m about to crush when he gets here.”

“Carl Zim!” she shouted a little too loudly, as if she were already tipsy.

At the mention of Zim’s name, Big Joe put up his hands in supplication, his eyes wide.

“Whoa, hey,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t know you were with Zim.”

Brielle was surprised by the deferential response. Zim and his militia must have had a tough reputation in this region. “Well, you know now.”

Big Joe looked at his friends and tilted his head at the door. They scrambled out of there so fast that one of them knocked his bottle onto the floor, adding to the odor.

Brielle turned back to her drink, but she kept her eye on the bartender. He kept looking up at a booth toward the back. Brielle followed his gaze and saw the only two men left in the bar talking to each other. The one facing her, a man in his twenties with long blond hair and no chin, looked at her briefly then back to his seatmate. He shrugged and shook his head.

Brielle took her glass and walked over to them. The second man was slightly older and had black hair, a nose that had been broken a few times, and chubby cheeks. She felt sure they knew about Zim and didn’t know what to do with his now ex-girlfriend.

They’d either deny their connection vehemently or they’d fess up and tell her they were part of Carl’s group. Either way, Brielle would be able to plant the tiny tracking device in her palm on one of them before he left. Then she’d follow them back to their compound somewhere in the Cascades forest. Once she had the location, she could either try to infiltrate it to find Wade or she could call in the cavalry in the form of a SWAT team. The latter would be preferable if she could collect evidence that Zim had been there and that Wade might still be held hostage. She tried not to think about the likelihood that he was already dead.

“Were you two friends of Carl’s?”

They looked at each other, then the older one spoke.

“Never heard of him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Because he wasn’t really my boyfriend.”

“Then why were you yelling that to the biker dude?”

For your benefit, Brielle wanted to say.

“I have some money for Carl,” she actually said. “For the job he was paid to do.”

Their eyebrows went up at the word “money.”

“Then you should give it to me.”

Maybe this would be easier than she thought.

“Why?” she demanded. “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

“My memory came back,” the chubby-cheeked man said. “Carl was a friend of mine. We worked on the job together.” He showed her a snake tattoo on his left forearm, the same as Carl Zim’s.

“What the hell are you doing, Harvin?” the younger one said.

“Shut up.” Harvin turned back to Brielle. “Is it cash?”

“Wire transfer.”

Harvin grimaced, like he was deciding what to do.

Brielle suspected that whoever pointed the laser at the Eiffel Tower was only one of a few men Zim had used in carrying out the attack. These guys might have already been paid, but they would see more money as a bonus.

“This is for the second job?” Harvin asked.

That pulled her up short. Second job? She covered the falter by coughing.

“Of course,” she said.

“Maybe we should take her to Zim,” the younger guy said.

“I said shut up, Gaither!” He said to Brielle, “Let me make a call.”

For a moment Brielle was confused by Gaither’s remark. How could they take her to see Zim? He was dead. She’d seen the corpse herself, and there was no doubt of the identity. So what was he talking about?

She remembered that Carl had a brother Victor, his only remaining relative. But Victor had been killed in a prison break the day before.

Something was wrong. She had the intense instinct to get out of there, but if she left now, they’d know she wasn’t who they thought. Her plan would fall apart.

“Here,” she said, handing a USB drive to Harvin. She kept her other hand on the switchblade in her pocket. “Take this to your boss. It has the transfer information.” In fact, it contained the tracking device.

Instead of taking the drive, Harvin grabbed her wrist. “Who are you really?”

With her free hand, she withdrew the switchblade and flicked it open as she plunged it into Harvin’s wrist. He howled a piercing scream.

Gaither moved quicker than she expected and punched her in the gut. The breath knocked from her, she doubled over, but the motion also let her draw the pistol from her boot.

She didn’t get a chance to fire it. She’d been so distracted by the fight that she didn’t notice the bartender come up behind her. He knocked the Glock from her hand, sending it flying across the room. Brielle swung around, kneed the bartender in the groin with a crippling blow, and ran for the rear exit.

If she got out the door, she could make a dash for her rental SUV. But the exit was locked in defiance of fire codes.

Brielle heard pounding footsteps approach and ducked into the ladies room, locking herself in the only stall.

Harvin and Gaither burst into the bathroom. She whipped out her phone and opened the first text on the list. She typed furiously but only got four letters down before Harvin kicked the door open. She hit SEND and dropped the phone behind the toilet as the stall door was bashed in.

Brielle got an elbow into Gaither’s cheek, but Harvin grasped her in a headlock. She thrashed the entire way as they carried her out of the saloon, the old bartender still writhing on the floor as they passed.

TWELVE

When Harris was finished with her briefing, Tyler and Grant escorted her into the elevator and left her to return to the lobby when they got off at the fifth floor. They ambled down the hallway, the silence thick enough to slice with a cleaver. The two of them had been through near-death experiences many times before, but nothing like this. Tyler couldn’t recall a single time when Grant had been sick. The guy treated his body like a temple. Sure, he ate like he was force-feeding a tapeworm, but he also took every natural vitamin and supplement on the market. The idea that his best friend would wither away and die right in front of him was terrifying.

Tyler finally spoke, looking Grant in the face. It had an unusually haggard appearance, with bags under the eyes and crow’s feet at the corners. “How are you feeling?”

Grant wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Never better.”

“You look a little tired.”

“Just some latent jet lag.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Harris must be wrong. I feel fine.”

Tyler couldn’t shake the sense of loss threatening to return. Although he’d never truly banished it after the death of his wife, Karen, he’d finally been able to absorb it into his being and continue on. But if Grant died, too, it would resurface with a vengeance.

“Maybe we should get you to a hospital,” he said. “Get some tests or something.”

Grant stopped walking and faced Tyler. He looked around to make sure no one could hear them. “I’m not going to a hospital. I’m not sick. Besides, you heard Harris. There’s nothing they can do. I’d won’t lie there waiting for the end. You know me. That’s not how I want to go out.”

“I know. I’m here for you. We all are.”

“Don’t tell anyone else, okay? I’ve seen that look of pity before, and I want no part of it.”

Tyler wanted to say he was sorry for bringing Grant into this ordeal in the first place, but that would only make the situation more uncomfortable.

Tyler nodded his assent and tried to gin up a sunny outlook. “Hey, the doctors might be wrong. Maybe the toxin just affects the elderly.”

They shared a smile to reinforce the optimism, although Tyler didn’t think either of them really believed it. A silent look of agreement passed between them that his condition wouldn’t be brought up again unless Grant were the one to do it.

They continued walking to the last door, where Tyler inserted his card key. They entered a gleaming room filled with the latest computer equipment. Most of the workstations were occupied by men and women hunched in front of the screens, headphones capping their ears.

Several of the people looked up at their entrance, but only one person didn’t go back to work, a lanky man wearing black horn-rimmed glasses. With dark curly hair failing to cover the skull-attached cochlear implant that made it possible for the deaf Irishman to hear again, Aiden MacKenna looked as if Elvis Costello had been assimilated by the Borg.

As he rose, Aiden’s hands flew in fluent sign language. “You wouldn’t believe this new girl I saw today. I’m signing because I don’t want anyone in here to get a jump on her first. I want to see if you know who she is.”

Tyler had grown up with a deaf grandmother, so he’d known sign language since he was a boy, a skill he taught to Grant when they were in the Army together. The fluency had given him an advantage in hiring Aiden when his impressive computer skills were sought after by every consulting firm and software company in town. Aiden was also a self-styled ladies man, something he had in common with Grant.

Tyler signed back. “What does she look like?”

“It’s this hot redhead. I met her in the elevator, but she got off before I could get her name. Looked me over, though. I know she wanted me. And she’s got the most amazing body.“

“That’s not going to happen,” Grant said.

“Don’t tell me that sweet young thing is a lesbian,” Aiden said out loud. “What a shame. Although I’m picturing quite a scene—”

Grant waved his hands to stop Aiden. Tyler, on the other hand, was waiting to hear how far he’d go. Aiden squinted at them and put his hands on his hips.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “She’s going with one of you. Which one? I bet it’s you, isn’t it, Tyler?” Aiden edged over and nudged him with an elbow, a sly grin on his face. “You lucky bastard. Tell me, is she as good in the sack as—”

“Her name’s Alexa, and she’s my sister,” Tyler said, saving Aiden from putting his foot in his mouth any further. “My baby sister.”

Aiden turned whiter than a polar bear in a blizzard. “God, Tyler, I didn’t — I mean, I had no way of knowing…” He swallowed hard, but the foot wouldn’t go down.

Tyler grabbed his shoulder in a firm grip, just enough to let Aiden know that he meant what he was about to say. “No worries, Aiden. But you can spread the reminder to everyone in this room that I’m an expert in explosives. I can blow up a house and make it look like an accident.” He smiled. “How do you think my sister looks now?”

“Like she’s radioactive.”

“Good! I can see we have an understanding. Now, I need you to help me with something.”

Aiden nodded furiously. “Sure. Whatever you need.”

“Can you get into the FBI database?”

“Absolutely. My military clearance works for Homeland Security, which allows me to access—”

“Okay. I need for you to get me the video of the escape from Pleasant Valley State Prison yesterday. Harris told me the cameras had a couple of good angles of the helicopter.” He handed Aiden a piece of paper with the location of the video. Harris couldn’t give him access, but she let slip where someone might find it if they were inclined to search.

Aiden took it and said, “Done. I’ll put it up on the Previz screen.” He collected his laptop, and the three of them walked into a glass-enclosed side room outfitted with a screen that took up an entire wall. It was where the Gordian engineers did their pre-visualization design work.

“You think we might get an identity on the pilot?” Grant asked.

“The Feds will have a better shot at an ID. I just want to see how it was done. The report said they used quadcopters at the prison.”

“Sounds like the Eiffel Tower MO.”

“Right. There could be some commonalities. If we can spot something unique, it might give us an idea of who busted Zim out.”

The Cessna pilot who’d landed at Harris Ranch had been useless, a dupe who’d been paid five thousand dollars to land there unannounced. Zim was probably planning to kill him as soon as they landed at their final destination.

“Even if we find them,” Grant said, “that doesn’t mean they have an antidote.”

“No, but they might have more of this Altwaffe. If they do and we can find it, maybe the toxicologists can synthesize an antidote.”

When Aiden entered, Tyler stopped talking. He drew the blinds while Aiden launched a video app that was wirelessly linked to the wall display.

“It looks like someone has already synced up the four videos from the different cameras,” Aiden said. “There’s no sound.” The wall screen was filled with a different image of the prison yard in each quadrant.

They watched the prison escape once all the way through, Tyler’s eyes flicking from one image to the next. His cell phone dinged, but he was so intent on watching the video that he ignored it.

There was Zim edging away from the main crowd. The fight starting. The parachute landing. Zim pointing some kind of device as quadcopters freed from the cargo pallet zoomed away and blew up in orange fireballs. The helicopter taking a hit and spewing smoke as Zim climbed in. The helicopter taking off and flying out of frame.

“What happened after this?” Grant asked.

“The helicopter seemed to lose hydraulic control as it reached I-5 and rammed into a cattle truck at the Shell station.”

“How long after the takeoff?”

Tyler understood what Grant was asking. “Not long enough to set down and take off again. Because we know when the escape started in relation to when Harris got the call about it, her phone log let us establish a timeline. Zim’s chopper would have had to move in a straight line nonstop to get from the prison to the place where I spotted it from the highway. There wasn’t enough time for it to set down.”

“Imagine the planning that escape must have taken,” Aiden said, “only to be brought down by a lucky bullet. It had to be a one-in-a-million shot.”

Aiden’s words brought a sour taste to the back of Tyler’s throat. It was too lucky. “Aiden, play back the escape again.”

The video started over. Tyler pointed at the item in Zim’s hand. “Look at the way he’s using that device. He points it and clicks, and a second later a quadcopter takes off in that direction and flies right at it.”

“You think it’s a laser?” Grant asked.

“It’s got to be. Someone must have smuggled it in for him. It was the only way for him to indicate where the quadcopters should aim. Presetting the targets would have been too difficult. He needed to guide them in real-time. I’ll have Harris see who could have brought it in for him. A guard or maybe his lawyer.”

“So?” Aiden said.

“You’re exactly right,” Tyler said. “This was obviously a well-planned escape. Down to the minute. He knew when he’d be in the yard and where that parachute was going to land.”

“Shit happens.”

“I’m sure that’s what he wanted the US Marshals to think. Just bad luck for him. Fast forward to the helicopter getting tagged.”

The video sped up until it reached the helicopter landing. Tyler watched as Zim got on. At the same time, smoke billowed from the right side of the chopper, the side away from the view of the closest camera.

“Any idea where that shot came from?” Tyler asked.

“Maybe it’s a guard tower we can’t see,” Aiden said.

“Or a guard who came out one of the prison doors,” Grant added.

“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

Recognition dawned on Grant’s face as he watched the scene. “That’s not right. I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.” The helicopter spun around as it took off, giving them a good view of where the smoke was coming from: behind the main cabin.

Tyler’s stomach churned as he walked up to the screen and traced the line of smoke. “See that black smoke? It’s coming out of the helicopter a foot below where the engine is. Nothing that would smoke is located there.”

Grant came up next to him. “The helicopter wasn’t damaged by a bullet.”

“They wanted us to believe that helicopter crashed accidentally,” Tyler said and pulled out his phone. “We have to find Alexa before he does.” He dialed her number.

“You mean, that was done on purpose?” Aiden asked.

“It’s literally a smokescreen,” Grant said. “Zim is still alive.”

“Damn,” Tyler said. “I’m getting her voicemail. We need to go get her right now.” Into the phone, he said, “Alexa, when you get this, call me. It’s extremely urgent. And stay out in the open. We’ll meet you at the original Starbucks in a few minutes to pick you up.”

He hung up and brought up the message app to send her an additional warning by text. The first item was a message he hadn’t seen until now, the one he’d absently ignored during the video.

It was from Brielle. A single word.

Help.

THIRTEEN

The ancient two-door Blazer SUV tore along the desolate fire road, wind whipping Brielle’s face. She concentrated on concealing her emotions as her eyes flicked between the two captors, Gaither in the driver’s seat directly in front of her and Harvin next to her in the back. They didn’t bother to hide their feelings, eyeing her with a mixture of disdain and lust. They had already established who she really was, so she guessed they couldn’t stand the idea of being white supremacists who were attracted to a Jewish woman.

As soon as they got to their destination, Brielle would be as good as dead. She didn’t want to think what would precede the execution. No way they’d let her go with the info she had. Big Joe and his friends would never confess to seeing her, and the militia compound she’d been trying to find in this operation was still in an unknown location. Her phone was the last link to the outside world, and it was back in the bar. No one would be coming for her.

Brielle gently tested the strength of the rope tied around her wrists behind her back. It was competently knotted but not impossible to remove given enough time. Even if she got it untied, she wouldn’t get very far unless she disabled or killed both of them. Harvin and Gaither were armed with M-4 assault rifles, and she was now unarmed, verified by a thoroughly distasteful pat-down. The only positive development was that her Star of David hadn’t been noticed.

The thick woods on either side of the dirt trail abutted the Mount Baker National Forest, providing their sham militia organization plenty of space to hide its operations. It would take weeks of careful searching to find the compound, and even then these men would kill anyone who trespassed on the property. They called themselves survivalists, but Brielle knew it went much deeper than that. The leaders of this group weren’t planning to survive the collapse of civilization. They were looking to start it.

“Come in Harvin, this is base,” a voice said from Harvin’s spread-spectrum handheld radio, a unit similar to one she’d used as a soldier. When it was set to scrambled mode, the coded radio would provide secure communication. They had to be far out of cell phone range.

“Harvin here,” he replied.

“Where are you?”

“Approximately ten minutes out.”

“Roger that. You have her secure?”

“Yes, sir—”

Brielle had only one chance at bluffing her way out of this. She cut in before Harvin released the Talk button. “I know that’s you, Victor!”

Harvin slapped her hard. Brielle had expected something like that and braced herself, but the impact still made her blink back tears.

“Shouting out my name doesn’t matter,” Victor Zim said.

So she was right. Somehow Victor hadn’t died in the prison escape.

“Given your background, Gabrielle,” Zim went on, “you should know our transmissions can’t be intercepted.”

Brielle’s lip curled. Only her parents used her full name, primarily when she brought home someone they considered a schmuck.

“We’re going to have a little talk when you get here,” Zim said.

“Better make it quick,” Brielle said. “My friends are on the way to get me.”

“No, they’re not. I know you don’t think I’m an idiot, so give it a rest. My men would have been stopped by now if you weren’t on your own.”

Brielle glanced at Harvin. The sneer on his face made it clear Zim had covered his bases. She wasn’t going to get out of this without taking some drastic risks. The question was when to make her move.

“When the Marshals find out you’re still alive,” she said, “they’ll put you in solitary confinement for the rest of your miserable life.”

“Gabrielle, I’ll be dead a long time before anyone ever finds your bones.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?” She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering from the adrenaline and, she had to admit, fear.

“Yes. But I don’t have to ask if it does. I’ll see it on your face soon enough. Harvin, bring her to me when you get here. Base out.”

As soon as Brielle reached their compound, escape would be impossible or require luck that she obviously didn’t have. That meant her time was now.

Wanting to get their captive to the compound quickly, Gaither was speeding along the winding fire road far too fast. A curve to the right was coming up along a steep drop-off to the left. If she were going to die, it might as well be now.

As Harvin shifted to put the radio back on his belt, Brielle slumped over into his lap. The maneuver was a challenge because she was belted in to restrict her mobility, but neither Harvin nor Gaither were wearing theirs. They both laughed, thinking that she was trying to win her freedom the hard way.

When Harvin put his hands on her shoulders to pull her up, he was in exactly the position she’d wanted, his face above the back of her head. With a lightning strike, she snapped her head backward, and her skull smacked Harvin directly in the nose.

The plates of the skull are many times stronger than the soft cartilage and thin bones of the nose. Even if she didn’t kill Harvin by driving bone fragments into his brain, the excruciating pain would leave him in a daze for the seconds she needed.

Brielle popped up and saw blood gushing down Harvin’s chin. Before Gaither could react, she sat back, stepped on the seatback release, and slammed the soles of her feet into the back of the driver’s seat. Using every muscle fiber in her quads, she jammed Gaither against the steering wheel so hard that he couldn’t take his foot off the accelerator, let alone follow the curving road around the bend.

By this time, Harvin had recovered enough to paw at her legs, but the injury to his face had sapped his strength. His arms were no match for her legs.

Gaither, his mouth muffled from being plastered against the steering wheel, screamed as the Blazer flew off the road.

Brielle could see they were headed for a huge Douglas fir. Just before the Blazer’s grill met bark, she released her legs so they wouldn’t snap on impact.

The SUV’s hood crumpled, but no air bags erupted out of the old vehicle. Only the sounds of crunching metal and shattering glass. The Blazer was tossed sideways and rolled twice down the hill before it came to a rest, its wheels tilted against another fir.

Brielle had to shake the cobwebs out to get her bearings. Other than a good smack of her head against the side pillar, she was intact.

The two unbelted men weren’t doing as well. Gaither’s head drooped at an impossible angle. He was dead.

But Harvin was still alive. The moaning told her so. And if he got his wits back while she was still in the vehicle, he’d make her pay.

Brielle sucked in her breath and reached with her hands until she could touch the seatbelt release. With a press of the button, she was free.

Of course, her hands were still tied behind her and she was stuck in the back seat.

The fir on the driver’s side made it impossible to get out that way. The passenger window, however, was open. She had to get as far from the SUV as possible before Harvin could return to his senses and bring his assault rifle to bear.

Brielle fumbled the radio from Harvin’s belt holster and awkwardly held onto it as she slithered past him, flopping onto the front passenger seat. She got a good look at Gaither, whose face was a bloody mess.

Brielle wished she could take one of the M4s with her, but with her hands tied behind her back, she couldn’t pick up the weapon. Giving thanks for all those yoga classes she’d endured, she contorted herself until she was in a sitting position and then pushed herself up through the window. Harvin made a weak grab for her hair, but she pulled free and fell onto the soft needles of the forest floor, the radio still clutched in her hands. She rolled over and got to her knees.

In another moment she was on her feet and running.

FOURTEEN

Crowds. Grant never liked them much unless they were cheering for him. His days before the Army when he was a professional wrestler meant he got to absorb the adulation of fifteen thousand raucous fans at a time in arenas around the country. It was fun then, but he’d gotten his fill, and after he left the service he never had the urge to go back to that life. Now he was squeezing through the throngs of people in the Pike Place Market trying to find Alexa, who still wasn’t answering.

Tourists flocked to the Market, a century-old Seattle institution, almost as much as they did to the Space Needle. Situated on a steep hill overlooking Elliott Bay, Pike Place Market is the home of the original Starbucks as well as the venerable Pike Place Fish Market store where crowds gather to watch fishmongers toss thirty-pound salmon to the register to be purchased. On every day of the year, thousands of visitors stroll through the halls taking in the rich colors and scents of fresh fish and crab from Alaska, produce straight from Washington farms, bouquets of flowers, and crafts from local artisans. Dozens of restaurants and shops are tucked away in the multi-level building.

When Tyler got the message from Brielle, he had a tough decision to make. Grant was honored that Tyler trusted him to find his sister since Tyler was the only one who could go in search of Brielle. Grant had brought along Miles and Aiden to comb the vast market looking for Alexa’s eye-catching shock of scarlet hair.

Even with that distinctive mane, finding her would be a challenge, assuming Alexa hadn’t been abducted already. Grant had never seen Tyler so stressed. The two of them had been in hairy combat situations and nearly blown up by bombs too many times to count, but the thought of losing his only sister was devastating. Grant himself felt more than his usual amount of nerves, though he didn’t know if that was because of the danger to Alexa or because of his own impending death.

Grant denied the effects of the poison to Tyler, but he could no longer ignore them himself. The fatigue, the aching muscles and joints, and the sagging of his skin that had been bothering him for the last few days — all of it made sense now. They were the initial symptoms of his sickness, and he could tell that they were getting worse by the hour, accelerating in their intensity. Even his vision and hearing were starting to fade. It was now only a question of how long he could fight the toxin and stay upright.

The knowledge that he had only a week or so to live made him surprisingly focused on his near-term future. What could he do with his time left? Help out his friend, for one, by making sure his sister was all right. Two, he could find who was behind all of this. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get revenge before he died, but he could get justice.

And what about his legacy? He didn’t think he’d have to face that until he was in his eighties, if he ever did at all. He’d stared down death many times, but it had always been in the moment, without time to consider the implications thoroughly, just pure adrenaline. Now that he could see the scythe raising to cut him down, there were elements of his life that were suddenly out of reach. Working hard and playing hard and going on adventures around the globe meant never getting married or having kids. Did he regret that? Grant reminded himself about Victor Zim’s threat to Alexa and decided that attempting any deep reflection — never his strong suit in any case — would have to wait until he was laid up in a hospital bed.

“I’m near the Starbucks, and I don’t see her,” Grant said into his wireless headset. He, Miles, and Aiden were conferenced together on their cell phones. “Anyone else?”

“I’m by the bronze pig,” Miles replied. “No sign of her.”

“Nothing at the opposite end, either,” Aiden said. “I’ll head back in your direction. Why don’t you stay there in case she comes up from the other way?”

“Will do. Grant, did she mention where they were planning to meet?”

“No. And I’ve tried Mike Dillman several times at the number Aiden found, but it goes straight to voicemail.”

“The last GPS signal from her phone indicated she made it here,” Aiden said. “But that was fifteen minutes ago. Now the phone is off. She could be gone already.”

“I’m not giving up until we’ve searched every part of the market,” Grant said. “It might be nothing more than a dead battery.”

The silence that came in reply told him neither Miles nor Aiden believed that, either.

“Let’s all meet at the pig,” Grant said. “I’ll finish my sweep and be there in a couple of minutes.”

Alexa’s spectacular view of the snowy Olympic mountain range framing the arrival of a Washington State ferry was spoiled by Michael Dillman’s paranoid ravings. The Sound View Café was crammed with tourists, many of whom were from the enormous Celebrity cruise ship docked at the downtown terminal. Because the Pike Place Market restaurant was a short walk from the ship, it was a popular stop for a quick lunch and scenery gaping. Alexa didn’t think a single person was paying attention to them, but that didn’t stop Dillman from making her lean in close to hear him.

“I’m telling you,” he said with a conspirator’s whisper, “they hacked into my computer, and I’m pretty sure they did the same with my phone.” A ponytail hung from the bottom of his beat-up Seahawks baseball cap and his darting eyes were barely visible behind dark sunglasses. A reed-thin hand nervously picked at the left cuff of his windbreaker.

“Who?” Alexa said, exasperated. “You’re a videographer. What could you possibly have that’s valuable to anyone? No offense.”

“None taken. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but it seemed like they were looking through my files on the Loch Ness monster.”

He was right. She did think he was crazy. Someone breaking into Dillman’s home to see his Loch Ness files? “Why would anyone do that?”

Dillman slurped his Coke. “I don’t know. What I do know is that my home office was discreetly disturbed. Believe me, I know where everything is down to the inch. Someone messed around with my stuff and then tried to put it back where they found it. It might even be bugged. And I found key-logging software on my computer.”

“Maybe you downloaded a virus.”

“No way. It was loaded by a USB drive. I think it also infected my phone. They might have done the same to yours. That’s why I had you turn it off.”

When Alexa had arrived at their pre-planned meeting place at Starbucks, Dillman had called her and told her to rendezvous with him where they’d first met, which only the two of them knew to be the Sound View Café. Then he made her promise to turn off her phone before she walked over there, claiming it couldn’t be tracked while it was powered down. When Dillman joined her at the restaurant, he told Alexa that he’d covertly observed her walk from Starbucks and didn’t spot anyone following her.

To say Alexa was dubious would be an understatement. Dillman had always been somewhat of an oddball, entertaining her during their tedious work with tales of CIA black programs and alien visitations. She’d expected those kinds of stories from someone convinced that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster existed. But a conspiracy targeting him personally? Now she was worried about the guy.

“Have you heard from Laroche lately?” he asked her.

“You’re the second person to ask me that this morning.”

Dillman’s hackles went up. “Who else did?”

“My brother, Tyler. He wanted to know what I’ll be doing while I’m here in Seattle. I’ve been trying to see Mr. Laroche, but Marlo won’t tell me anything.”

Marlo Dunham was Laroche’s top-notch executive assistant. She knew everything about his business dealings and essentially took care of the long-time bachelor’s life. Dunham didn’t talk about it much, but Alexa knew the two of them had common tragic histories, which was the reason Laroche had hired her in the first place. They kept a professional relationship, but the bond Laroche and Dunham shared seemed to be strong. For her not to know where he was — coupled with Dillman’s story — gave Alexa the first stirrings of concern.

“I did get an email from him a few days ago,” she said.

“What did it say?”

“It was about searching for Nessie, but it was kind of cryptic.”

“How so?”

“It was all over the place. He talked about playing the opening of the Fifth and about squids and hippos and how I should keep looking for the Loch Ness monster. It didn’t make much sense.”

“See? He didn’t send anything to me. He probably knew I was compromised.”

“Michael, if you’re really concerned about this, I can ask Tyler to go over your computer and cell phone to figure out what happened.”

“Is he some kind of computer hacker?”

“No, he’s a partner in an engineering firm. It’s his company, really. They have experts who can check out this kind of thing.”

“He’d do that for you?”

“Sure. That’s what big brothers are for.”

Dillman scrunched his face in thought, then nodded. “I knew you were the only one I could trust.”

Alexa stood. “Come on. His office is only a few blocks away. I’ll take you over there.”

“Now?”

“Why not? You tell him your story, and he’ll have someone check your phone while we’re talking.”

“Okay.” Dillman got up and scanned the restaurant. No one so much as glanced at them as far as Alexa could tell.

“Let me give Tyler a call to let him know we’re on the way.”

Dillman seemed about to protest but held his tongue. Alexa turned on her phone as they exited the restaurant into the walkway leading to the main market area.

When it came on, it showed that she had six messages, three from Tyler and three from Grant. She also had a text from Tyler that said, “Urgent!!!! Call me or Grant now!!!”

She stopped abruptly before they got to the crowd hovering around the outskirts of the store where they were throwing the fish from the iced display racks to the register at the center.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Alexa said. “Something’s wrong.”

Grant hit Answer as soon as he saw who the call was from.

“Alexa, are you all right?”

“Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I tried calling Tyler, but I couldn’t reach him.”

“He’s on his way north.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain right now. Where are you?”

“I’m at Pike Place Market.”

“Where in the market?”

“Near the fish-throwing place.”

“Okay. Stay where you are. I’ll be there in sixty seconds.” He accelerated his pace, dodging people as he walked.

“You’re here?”

“Yes. We’ll get you out of here and tell you everything in the van.”

He hung up and the phone switched back to the conference call. “Where are you guys?”

“At the pig,” Miles said.

“I’m inside,” Aiden said. “Be there in a…wait a moment. I think I see Alexa near the Fish Market.”

“Good,” Grant said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“She seems to be chatting with some bloke.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. She’s talking to him about you.”

“How do you know that?”

“I used to be deaf, remember? Just because I can hear now doesn’t mean I can’t still read lips.”

“That must be Dillman.”

“Hold on. There are two other men looking at them.”

“Tourists?”

“Muscle-bound types. Thick jackets and necks. Not here on holiday.”

“Can you see what they’re saying?” Miles asked.

“One said…oh shite! I think he said, ‘we only need one of them alive.’”

Grant sprinted toward the famous clock sign that read public market center, huffing with effort as he ran. The fishmonger was directly underneath it. He could see Miles motoring inside, his iBot wheelchair cranked to its full height.

Aiden’s voice went up an octave. “The two men just went up to Alexa and the bloke. It looks like they have guns at their backs!”

Grant turned the corner. He caught Alexa’s eye. The look of fear on her face was unmistakable. Grant and Miles weren’t armed, and there were no cops in the vicinity. If these men started shooting in the dense crowd, it could quickly turn into a bloodbath.

The throng watching the fishmongers was so impenetrable that the gunmen steered Alexa and Dillman around it into the morass of people strolling through the market. Running would have been an option for them if the gunmen didn’t have hands wrapped around their arms.

“Aiden, you hang back and call the police,” Grant said, trying to catch his breath. “I’m right behind you, Miles. Can you get the guy with Dillman?”

“He won’t know what hit him.”

Grant caught up with Miles but didn’t act like he was with him. They put themselves directly in the path of Alexa and Dillman. Alexa was on Grant’s left, closest to the crowd watching the flying fish.

Grant fell in behind Miles as if he were waiting for the slow disabled man to move it while the crowd traveling in the opposite direction flowed past. The positioning meant the two gunmen would have to separate and walk around them to either side.

Alexa stared at them, but Grant tried to ignore her. He hoped she was aware enough to keep quiet. If the gunmen suspected anything were about to happen, they’d lose the element of surprise.

As he hoped, the two gunmen shoved Alexa and Dillman apart as Miles approached.

“Pardon me,” Miles said loudly as he jostled Alexa aside.

She stumbled more than the gunman behind her expected. Miles’ right hand grabbed the pistol and twisted it out of the kidnapper’s hand. His left hand threw a wicked uppercut to the gunman’s jaw, sending him reeling backward.

The distraction caused the man behind Dillman to release his grip and turn toward Miles. Grant was in a perfect position to launch himself at his target. He caught the man’s wrists and pushed them toward the ceiling as he shoved the man backward, toppling several tourists as they stumbled toward the ice racks.

Shouts and screams from the surrounding patrons only got louder when Grant’s gunman fired several shots at the ceiling. The crowds scattered as the two of them landed on the freezing piles of ice used to chill the fish. Out of the corner of his eye, Grant saw Dillman run toward the street.

“Dillman, come back!” Grant shouted, but even his deep basso was inaudible over the din.

The loss of focus was enough for his opponent to knee him in the stomach, driving the breath from him. Grant took a gulp of air and responded with a head butt. Normally an impact with his skull was enough to incapacitate anyone, but the awkward angle and his protesting muscles reduced the force of the blow. The gunman staggered backward, blood flowing from his brow. He shook his head and brought his pistol up for the kill shot.

Grant was too far away to get to the man before he fired, so he used the only weapon at hand. He grasped the tail of the salmon next to him and whipped it around. The fish smacked into the gunman’s hand, sending his pistol flying. Grant swung the salmon again, but the man backed up enough that Grant connected with nothing but air. Then the man melded with the fleeing crowd.

Grant considered pursuing him, but he didn’t know if the gunmen had more friends around. His top priority was making sure Alexa was safe. He found her clinging to Miles, her eyes glassy from the ordeal.

“Where’s Dillman?”

Miles pointed toward the street. “There!”

Grant spotted one of the gunmen pushing Dillman into a grey Suburban. The driver plowed through three fruit stands to make the escape.

A wail of sirens heralded the approach of the police, but by the time they arrived, Dillman was long gone.

FIFTEEN

Victor Zim’s Jeep was the first of four vehicles to arrive at the scene of the Blazer’s plunge off the fire road. As soon as he’d received the frantic radio call from Harvin, Zim ordered every available man into the search, weapons in hand.

When the Jeep skidded to a halt, he threw open the door and stalked to the edge of the road, where he stopped to survey the damage. The Blazer’s grill was caved in from the tree, and the side and roof had been battered during its tumble through the woods.

Gaither’s corpse was slumped against the wheel. The remaining live passenger looked pathetic. Harvin was on his butt, propped against the front tire. He glanced at Zim and then looked away in embarrassment.

Exactly the response Zim expected. His stance was intended to provoke awe and intimidation. Legs wide, hands on hips, his muscles flexing in the afternoon sunlight to show off the tattoos snaking down his arms, chiseled jaw set below all-seeing eyes and a hair cut that was two clipper settings from being shaved.

The constant workouts in prison made the bulging veins on his arms stand out even under the skulls and fiery daggers on his biceps. The muscle sculpting was a way to bring his body as close to perfection as possible. As Nietzsche said, “Become what you are.” Zim had.

The escape from prison had gone exactly as he’d envisioned. In a clearing in the middle of an orange grove, his men had set up an inflatable high fall air bag, the type used by stunt men and firefighters. As the remotely controlled helicopter passed overhead, a dead man at the stick, it slowed long enough for Zim to jump, landing in the center of the air bag. They simply folded it up and drove away as if nothing had happened.

Now Victor would finish Carl’s work. His crew, some from his former militia days and some recruited from around the world for this mission by his brother, needed to be convinced that he was now in charge. If there was any man on the team who’d consider disobeying Zim, that man needed to be disabused of the notion immediately.

Zim remained at his vantage point for a few seconds more to see if he could spot any sign of Gabrielle Cohen. Nothing.

Without looking behind him, Zim barked out his orders. “Davis, you and your men take a mile south. Monroe, you go a mile north. The rest of you are with me.”

He jumped off the edge of the road without bothering to grab a handhold and marched down to the Blazer. The men grunted as they struggled to follow as gracefully.

He didn’t need a recap about how Cohen had escaped. He’d gotten Harvin’s sniveling account of it over the radio during the ride to the site.

“Which way did she head?” Zim said when he reached the SUV.

“I think she went that way,” Harvin said, pointing over his shoulder in the direction of Lake Shannon.

Zim glared at him. “You think?”

Harvin nodded, a quick bobbing like a nervous Chihuahua. “I was pretty messed up. The bitch stabbed me in the wrist, and I can tell my leg’s broken bad.” The awkward angle of his foot confirmed the self-diagnosis.

“You’re not going to be much help on this search then, are you?”

“Are you kidding? I’m probably going to be in a cast for weeks with this thing. I need to get to a doctor.”

Zim sighed and nodded. He reached out to Harvin. “Let’s get you taken care of.”

Harvin took the hand and grimaced as he stood on his one good leg.

Zim put one hand on Harvin’s back and snatched the hair on the back of his head. Before Harvin could react, Zim bashed the man’s skull against the hood of the Blazer three times, the dull sound of the impacts swallowed by the surrounding trees. Zim released him, and Harvin slumped to the ground, his eyes staring into oblivion.

“Put him in the passenger seat,” Zim said to no one in particular. “It’ll look like the two of them had an accident.”

None of the men moved, shocked into silence. He turned and saw their stunned expressions. Good.

“Now listen up,” Zim said. “Harvin let Gabrielle Cohen escape, and he became a cripple in the process. If you can’t contribute to the mission, you’re deadweight. When you all agreed to this operation, you knew the requirements and you accepted the risks. Harvin was a good man, but he would have put everything we’re working for in danger.”

He looked into the eyes of each man and saw that they understood. Life was cruel, but those who clearly envisioned what needed to be done could act without hesitation for the good of the cause. If Zim were ever incapacitated and no longer a contributor to society and the team, he would expect someone to do the same for him.

Two men hoisted Harvin’s body into the Blazer. When they were done, Zim directed everyone to begin conducting a grid search and instructed his compound’s helicopter to fly along the shores of Lake Shannon in case they could spot Cohen out in the open. She didn’t have much of a head start and her hands were still tied. She couldn’t have gotten far. With the lake as a natural barrier, they would catch her within the hour.

Still, he had to update his own money supplier. Without access to Laroche’s land, which they were now searching, and his money for funding, the operation would never have been possible.

He took out his smartphone and made the call using the compound’s satellite hookup and Wi-Max base station. The connection beeped.

“What is it?” A modulator disguised the voice in case anyone was listening in. The effect made it sound as if Zim were speaking to a rasping demon from the pits of Hell. His voice would sound the same on the other end.

“We have a situation,” Zim said. Without using names, he spent a minute summarizing the events.

“Do you have it under control?”

“Yes.”

“If she escapes, she’ll be able to lead the authorities to you. You’ll have to abandon the compound immediately.”

“We’re ready for anything, but it won’t come to that. The forest is deserted, and she won’t be able to stay out of our sight for long.”

“Any word on the other one?” Zim had already delivered the bad news that Alexa Locke got away.

He took a breath. “We’ll make sure we find the creature before she does.”

“I hope you’re right, but I’ll see what I can do on my end. I want to be able to count on you like I did your brother. Your planning on the operation last week was brilliant. I rescued you because your talents were wasted in California.”

Zim smiled. “Once we get these two women in hand, I don’t see anything standing in the way of completing the mission as expected.”

“You know you have access to every fund at my disposal. Don’t hesitate to use whatever resources you require.”

“I’ll make sure they’re used well.”

“Good. Now I have some other matters to attend to. Keep me informed of further developments.” The connection terminated and Zim put the phone away.

Hank Pryor, a skinny goateed man who was the electronics genius on the operation, came running up to him, his radio held out in an outstretched palm as if he were offering it to Zim.

“You have to hear this,” Pryor said.

Zim eyed the radio suspiciously, then snatched it from him. “What is it?”

Pryor glanced toward Harvin’s body and back to Zim before clearing his throat. “It’s the Cohen woman. She’s calling for help.”

SIXTEEN

The redolent odor of pine needles, moss, and forest-floor decay surrounded Brielle as she sought something sharp to cut through the tough nylon rope tightly binding her wrists, but rocks jagged enough to do the job were nowhere to be found. After running flat out for fifteen minutes to get out of the immediate area of the Blazer — and falling on her face twice along the way — she’d taken a breather to extricate her arms from behind her back, though she nearly had to pull her arms out of their sockets to get them free.

The cooling breeze told her she was nearing the lake. She pressed on, hoping to use the shoreline to guide her south to the highway, which couldn’t be more than five miles away. If she could make it there, she’d be safe.

Brielle called again over the radio, using the marine emergency channel in the hopes that a boater on the lake might hear her. “I’m calling for help from anyone out there. My name is Brielle Cohen. I’m somewhere in the forest west of Lake Shannon. Men are chasing me and trying to kill me. Please respond if you’re out there.”

She listened, but all she could hear was the plaintive call of a loon coming from the direction of the lake. No answer. Boaters on the lake might not have radios, or they may simply not have had their radios tuned to her frequency. Any of those possibilities meant that she had to carry on as if she were on her own.

By now she had to assume that Harvin had called for assistance from Zim. Once she headed south, she’d have to be careful not to run straight into his men’s waiting arms. But given her inability to contact anyone, she’d have to take that chance.

After another minute, Brielle finally saw water. She threaded her way through the last batch of forest and emerged onto a rocky beach dotted with rotten stumps, some of which protruded from the mirrored surface of the lake that reflected the snowcapped mountains to the north. Though there was a spit of land that would give her a better view down the lake, she kept close to the trees, fearing that she’d be seen if she ventured out there. A couple of kayakers were visible across the mile-wide lake and further north, but they would do her no good. If she called to them and they paddled over, she might even get them killed.

She called on the radio again, but got only static.

Now that she could see how exposed she’d be wending her way toward the highway, she knew her chances of evading Zim’s men was minimal at best. Perhaps her best choice was to find a tree to climb. The thick branches would provide cover, and searchers focused on a running target might miss her in a high hiding place. From there she could continue to broadcast until someone picked up her signal. She might be able to lead her pursuers onto the wrong path and backtrack once they’d passed her. If she were lucky, she might even find one of their vehicles and simply drive out of here.

Her heart leapt as the thumping beat of rotors pounded their way toward her. Without knowing if it was friend or foe, Brielle dodged behind a tree. Its low flight path made her think foe. No one who had heard her radio calls would have been able to get a chopper into the air that quickly.

The noise grew until it drowned out the rustling branches above her. She couldn’t see the helicopter itself, but she could spot the downdraft of its rotors on the water as it passed. Within a minute, it was out of visual range, its blades a distant thrum.

The helicopter had been so loud that she didn’t notice the tinny voice coming from her radio. “…in the vicinity. Say again your position.”

At the same time, she heard snapping twigs and hushed voices approaching from the west. Though they were still far off, their proximity made climbing a tree more likely to get her caught than saved.

Then she realized that the voice on the radio might not be a savior, either. It could be one of Zim’s men pretending to be a rescuer.

Her only hope was to the lead her pursuers astray, and the lake gave her another possibility. She sprinted down the shoreline, talking into the radio as she ran, on the off chance it was really was one of the good guys.

“West side of Lake Shannon,” she said between puffs of breath. “Send the police. Send everyone you can.”

She tossed the radio onto the beach, cracking the case to give the appearance that she’d stumbled and broken it. She kept going. When she saw a massive tree stump in the water that fit her plans, she ripped a piece from her shirt and dropped it, then ran another fifty yards and threw another bit of fabric into the forest. She doubled back, sure that the rocky shoreline wouldn’t betray her deception.

When she reached the stump, she took a last look at the trees and could see no one. Steeling herself for the icy embrace of the glacier melt, she waded into the water.

The water sucked her breath away, and Brielle had to clamp her teeth shut to restrain herself from crying out. She wouldn’t be able to last long at this temperature, but if she could stay out there long enough and keep her nose above water, she might be overlooked.

She swam to the other side of the stump and found a place that made her least visible from shore. She pressed herself as close to the bark as she could. Her black hair wouldn’t stand out. Unless they sent someone into the lake, she would be difficult to spot.

It was unlikely they had a boat since there were no docks on the lake, and the only put-in was at the very southern end. The only danger was the helicopter, but she couldn’t do anything about that now.

Her teeth threatened to chatter, but the sound of men picking their way down the beach made her dig deep to keep them quiet.

A shout told her they’d found the radio. Half a dozen men came running along the beach. More yelling when they found the first piece of her shirt and then the second. One of them remarked that the she must have gone back into the trees. Then she recognized the voice.

It was the man on Harvin’s radio, Victor Zim.

He shushed the men, and they went silent. Brielle held her breath and clung to the trunk.

After a moment, Zim ordered two of the men into the woods. The rest of them were to follow him down the shore. He also radioed the helicopter pilot to turn around.

They took off at a sprint, hoping to catch up with her. By the time they were out of earshot, Brielle’s hands were cramping from the cold.

She was about to swim out of her protective covering when she heard a buzz approaching. It wasn’t the thump of the helicopter blades. This sound was more like the highly tuned motor of a sports car.

Brielle looked in both directions along the lake but saw no speedboats. Then she realized the noise was coming from above.

She raised her head and saw a tiny white and gray plane dipping toward the lake. It had the sleek lines of a dragonfly, its propeller mounted behind the enclosed cockpit.

At first Brielle thought it was going to crash into the lake, but at the last moment she realized that the smooth underside was designed for water landings.

It was a seaplane. And it was headed straight for her.

She looked back at the beach and saw the plane had drawn the attention of Zim’s men, who had stopped to watch this new intruder. They obviously weren’t expecting it, which meant the seaplane wasn’t theirs.

The problem was that they were now in a position to see her as well, and they did.

Zim shouted for them to open fire. Bullets pinged off the stump and plunked into the water nearby. They were far enough away that any rounds that came close were lucky shots, but it would only take one to kill her.

The plane touched down on the glass-smooth lake as gently as if it were settling onto a feather pillow. It made an adroit turn and plowed through the water toward her.

Brielle quickly figured she had two choices. She could head back to shore and make a run for it through the woods with little hope of outpacing them, or she could take the chance that the seaplane wasn’t there by accident.

She was shivering so badly now that a fast run would sap her strength in minutes. A ride in a nice dry seat sounded much better. The seaplane it was.

Brielle pushed away from the stump and paddled toward the middle of the lake as best she could with her hands still tied. Her legs churned furiously to propel her forward, but her progress was achingly slow.

A shadow fell across Brielle, and she realized it was the plane’s wing passing between her and the sun. The engine cut to idle, and the plane was about to glide by her on the right.

The plane’s wraparound glass canopy tilted forward, and a man leaped out of his seat. Through blurred vision, she saw a hand stretched toward her from the transom. Brielle was so cold and tired by this point that she just wanted to be out of the water. Without looking to see who it was, she grasped his hand with both of hers and felt herself lifted out of the water like she was holding onto the prong of a forklift.

When her feet were planted on the small outrigger sticking from the plane’s belly, she latched onto the man’s shirt to steady herself. Bullets zinged around them, a few of them thudding into the plane’s fuselage, and she was unceremoniously dumped into the passenger seat.

The man jumped over her, revved up the engine, and lowered the canopy. Brielle planted her feet on either side of the secondary control stick while the plane turned smartly and accelerated.

“Sorry I can’t offer you a towel,” a familiar voice said.

Brielle rubbed the water from her eyes. She flinched as a bullet grazed the side window, then blinked in astonishment at Tyler.

“It’s you," was all she could think to say.

Never taking his eyes off the controls, he canted his head and gave her an amused grin. “I assumed you heard me on the radio. Got your text.”

“I didn’t think it went through.” She thought about ten things to say but decided to keep it simple. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We’ve got company.”

Tyler glanced in the rearview mirror. Brielle swiveled in her seat and saw the helicopter diving toward them. Muzzle flashes blazed from its side door.

“Better get your belt on,” Tyler said. “We’re expecting a bit of turbulence.”

SEVENTEEN

Tyler pulled back on the stick and the Icon A5 sport plane leaped off the water. He banked right and weaved as he aimed for the nearest valley, making it harder for the gunman in the pursuing helicopter to get a clean shot at them.

Brielle hadn’t been able to strap herself into the four-point harness because of the nylon rope around her wrists. With one hand Tyler took the Leatherman multi-tool from his belt, opened the knife, and waved for her to hold out her arms. He steadied the plane with his knees on the stick and sawed through the rope until she was free and could belt herself in.

As he put the Leatherman back, Tyler took a quick glance at her. Brielle was wearing an outfit that looked like a redneck cliché. If he hadn’t known her, he would have expected her to speak in a barely understandable drawl.

“I’m glad I found you,” Tyler said.

Brielle brushed strands of wet hair from her face and looped them behind her ears. The dodging back and forth didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. “Where did you come from?”

“My plane was ready to go and Seattle is only fifty miles away. Your phone was still on, so we tracked the GPS signal. It was smart to use the radio’s emergency band.”

A bullet thumped into the fuselage.

Brielle looked back. “They’re getting closer.”

“Not much I can do about that. The bad news is we can’t outrun them. This plane is maneuverable, but it’s not built for speed.”

“And the good news?”

“We’re not dead.”

“Brilliant. How do we get away?”

“We’ll try to lose them in the valleys. Once we’re out of sight, we can make for civilization.”

“Do you have any weapons on board?”

“Just a flare gun.”

“Where?”

“In the storage bin behind us.”

Brielle reached back and removed an orange box. She opened it and loaded the shell into the gun without hesitating.

“Only one flare,” she said.

“You’re handy with a gun…Are you feeling recovered enough to make it count?”

She nodded at her open window. “If you can get us close.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Getting closer to automatic weapon fire was not his favorite choice, but if the chopper’s pilot was any good, losing them in the valleys was iffy at best. Better to rely on offense.

“Here we go,” he said, and pulled back on the stick until they were climbing at a forty-five degree angle. The A5 quickly bled speed as it gained altitude.

The helicopter didn’t have any trouble gaining on them, but the radical pitch would make it difficult for the shooter to take aim. He’d wait until the helicopter was in a level position to finish them off.

Tyler increased their climb rate even further, hoping to make it look like he was trying to escape but in reality letting the helicopter catch up more quickly.

When the two aircraft were side by side, Tyler nosed over. The helicopter followed suit.

“Now!” he yelled.

In one fluid motion, Brielle lifted the gun, aimed down the sight, and fired.

The flare rocketed toward the helicopter. Tyler was sure it would be a direct hit. The flare flew right through the open side door of the helicopter, barely missing the shooter, who threw himself backward to avoid the blazing shell.

With luck, the flare would bounce around the cabin, filling it with smoke and making the pilot break off the attack.

This time, however, luck went to the bad guys. The shot was too perfect. It passed through the cabin and out the other side, leaving only a wisp of smoke in its wake.

Brielle tossed the flare gun to the floor in disgust. “Bloody hell!”

Tyler didn’t waste time worrying about the lost opportunity. He rolled left, trying to put some distance between him and the helicopter. Maybe the pilot would be too spooked to continue the chase.

He looked back and saw the shooter waving the pilot on. When the chopper didn’t change course, the gunman turned his weapon toward the cockpit in front of him. That must have gotten the pilot’s attention because the helicopter immediately turned toward them.

“What do we do now?” Brielle asked.

Without a way to defend themselves, they’d keep taking fire from the shooter until he hit one of them or the engine. Going down in the forest wouldn’t turn out well, and landing on water would make the phrase ‘sitting duck’ uncomfortably appropriate.

Tyler had to take out the chopper. And he had only one weapon at his disposal.

“We need to get them close again.” He put the plane into a turn that would take them back over Lake Shannon.

Brielle gaped at him. “Why would you do that?”

“A helicopter’s main rotor is delicate. If it takes any kind of damage, it’ll thrash itself to bits.”

“So? Am I to throw the flare gun at it?”

“No. I’m going to take it out with my wing.”

“But won’t that destroy the wing?”

“Believe me, I’m not happy about the idea. This is a brand-new plane.”

“Can we fly without the wing?”

“No.”

Brielle shifted in her seat to face him. “Don’t you think destroying our plane to get away is daft?”

“It would be if we didn’t have a parachute.”

“Just one?”

“It’s the only one we need.”

“Oh, my God! Have you become a raving lunatic since I last saw you?”

“I should point out that it’s a really big parachute.”

“Where is it?”

Before Tyler could answer, bullets raked the left wing. He could see the shooter sneer at him as he calmly reloaded.

Now was his best chance.

He put the A5 into a steep bank toward the chopper. The helicopter had two options, pull up to let the plane pass under it or dip down to avoid the apparently suicidal maneuver. Tyler was counting on the pilot to take the safer move and gain speed by diving, which is exactly what he did, exposing the main rotor.

Tyler snapped the A5 into a barrel roll.

“Are you insane?” Brielle screamed, but Tyler was concentrating too hard to answer. He had to make this work. If he missed, he would have tipped his hand.

The A5 rolled up and over the helicopter, coming down so that the wing tip went through the rotor’s radial sweep. The blades savaged the carbon composite skin of the A5’s wing, but the damage to the helicopter was even greater. Chunks of aluminum whipped past them, bouncing off the plane.

As the rotor tore itself apart and took the tail assembly with it, the helicopter plummeted toward the lake three thousand feet below.

From the feedback on the stick, Tyler could tell the plane wouldn’t be airworthy much longer. He cut the engine throttle, and the hum behind their heads went silent.

Brielle stared at him in shock. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

He reached back and pulled a cardboard panel off a cutout in the bulkhead. “Pulling our ripcord.” He unfolded the red T-handle underneath. “Brace yourself.”

Brielle, still confused, took her tiny Star of David from her pocket, put the necklace over her head, and gripped her seat’s armrests. “I’m never getting on a plane with you again.”

“Never say never,” Tyler said, and yanked the handle.

A rocket fired from above the center of the fuselage, eliciting another jump from Brielle. Nylon straps peeled away from the skin of the plane as an enormous blue parachute unfurled behind them. Tyler tried to relax, knowing what was coming next.

As the parachute caught the air, they were thrown forward against their harnesses. The plane went from one hundred thirty miles per hour to zero in less than five seconds.

The plane swayed back and forth in eerie silence as it floated toward the water. Tyler looked down and saw a roiling white eddy to the right, which had to be the helicopter’s impact point. By now it would be settling on the bottom of the 280-foot-deep lake.

Brielle was huffing, her knuckles bone white. “You could have told me it was the plane that had the parachute.”

“I thought it would become self-explanatory.”

The A5 slapped the surface of the lake, and the parachute drifted down behind them. Tyler tilted the canopy forward and climbed out. He unfolded his Leatherman again, this time using the saw to cut through the thick straps. He shook his head as he surveyed the damage to the wing. The plane would never fly again, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t take them somewhere safe.

He got back in and fired up the engine. A blip of the throttle sent them cruising toward the boat launch at the southern end of the lake.

“Let’s hope someone at the put-in can give us a ride,” he said.

“I have to tell you something,” Brielle said. “The men who abducted me. They were taking me to Victor Zim.”

Tyler didn’t think he could be more surprised by the day’s events than he already was, but Brielle’s pronouncement that Zim was at Lake Shannon stunned him.

“He’s here?”

“He was on the beach where you picked me up. He must have escaped from prison.”

“I know. I was at his escape yesterday. He’s targeting my sister, Alexa.”

“Is she all right?”

“Zim’s men tried to kidnap her this afternoon. Grant radioed me on the flight up and said she’s all right, but Zim’s men got away with her colleague.”

Brielle unbelted herself to face him. “Why does Victor want to abduct your sister?”

“I think it’s about revenge for killing his brother. You know, an eye for an eye kind of thing. Alexa thinks it’s about something else.”

“What could she have that he wants?”

“She has a theory,” Tyler said, “but you won’t believe it.”

“After my week with you, what could I possibly not believe?”

Tyler sighed. She asked for it. “Her kidnapped colleague suspected that some men were after the files on his computer. Because of that, Alexa thinks Victor Zim wants her to help him find the Loch Ness monster.”

EIGHTEEN

The convoy of five vehicles from the destroyed compound carefully navigated back country roads to avoid any possible police blockades. Once they reached I-5, Zim knew they were safe. Luckily, they were far enough along in their planning that being forced to abandon their base hadn’t resulted in a setback. But he’d lost four men today, and even worse it was because of a Jew helped by Tyler Locke.

At the thought of his brother’s killer, Zim dug his fingers into his fists so hard that his knuckles threatened to split. Zim had only gotten a brief glimpse of the float plane’s pilot, but he couldn’t mistake Locke’s face. Someday he would make sure both brother and sister would come to regret ever crossing paths with the Zims.

As they approached I-5, Zim glanced at the passenger mirror and watched three vehicles behind him take the exit for the interstate headed north to the Canadian border. The twelve men inside would separate at Vancouver International Airport for their flights to London. The travel was expected to go without a hitch. There was no need to take weapons or other equipment, which would all be supplied once they reached Europe. That helped the evacuation go quickly.

Hank Pryor, the driver next to Zim, followed the SUV in front of them onto the south exit ramp toward Everett, where they would take a motorboat to a small town on the Canadian coast. The two of them were alone in the pickup.

“Looks like the cops were too late setting up any roadblocks,” Pryor said in a squeaky voice that matched his spindly arms and chicken legs. “Good for us.”

Zim merely nodded.

Pryor looked at him and cleared his throat, as if he knew what he was about to say wouldn’t be taken well. “I know what you’re thinking. You can’t go making this personal. We’ve got a job to do.”

Zim slowly turned his head and stared at Pryor. If the man hadn’t been an indispensable piece of this operation, Zim would have punched a fist through his squirrely face.

“Are you saying I can’t control myself?”

Pryor nodded, so sure of his abilities that Zim wouldn’t touch him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We’re in this for the good of the white race. You want to put all that in jeopardy?”

Zim turned away. “Do you know why I was in prison?”

“Sure. You were convicted of sabotaging that plant.” Pryor recited the details as if he were recapping the football game from the night before. “You, of course, denied it.”

“I should have gotten away with it. And that’s what I want you to know. Carl and I’d been working out how to do it for three months. We had it planned down to the last detail. No way they should have traced it back to me. I would have come out of it clean as a whistle.”

“Then Locke screwed it up.”

Zim nodded. “They offered me a plea bargain if I’d give up Carl, but I wouldn’t do it.”

“And that’s why Carl agreed to this job?”

Zim chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. “No, he believed in the cause. But he was also a good brother. He paid me back for not squealing. He agreed to carry out the Eiffel Tower mission with you only after he was promised that I’d be busted out of prison once the job was done. This new mission is for one reason: to make sure Carl didn’t die in vain.”

Pryor pursed his lips. “You sure got a raw deal. I feel for you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you feel. This operation is bigger than the two of us. After they wipe out Israel, those Muslims will become even more hated than they are now by the white countries. And that Jew-lover in the plane will be joining all of them in Hell.”

“How did Tyler Locke find her?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

“Do you think he knows how to find the monster?”

“Dillman claims Alexa Locke doesn’t have the Nazi journal, so thanks to him, we have a head start. All we need to do is make sure her brother doesn’t catch up.”

Pryor shook his head and laughed. “The Loch Ness monster. Who would have thought it was the source for designing a weapon?”

“No one,” Zim said. “And no one ever will as long as this all goes by the numbers.”

“At least we know the chemical works. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it happen myself. It only took a few days to kill Plymouth with the dose we gave him. Shriveling up like that didn’t look like a fun way to go.”

Zim agreed. He was astounded that such a powerful weapon had lain dormant for almost seventy years, forgotten in an underground lab destroyed during the Dresden air raid that incinerated fifty thousand good German citizens. Just a single container locked away in a storage room, protected from the firestorm that consumed the city and the scientists who’d developed it. The chaotic last days of the war ensured that any official record of the container’s contents and its companion notebook were destroyed.

It wasn’t until after Laroche bought them from a clueless black market seller that he realized what he’d purchased. It was only by good fortune that the canister found a home with someone sympathetic to Hitler’s ultimate cause.

The appropriateness of the situation made Zim smile, and he reassuringly touched the small metal vial in his pocket — the last drops of Altwaffe in existence, to be used as he saw fit. What better way to rid the Aryan nations of the blight caused by the lower races than with a chemical weapon created for just such a purpose by the Nazis?

NINETEEN

It took several hours for the authorities to take statements from Brielle and Tyler, a process that was punctuated halfway through by a distant boom and a column of smoke rising northwest of Lake Shannon. They went through the events of the attack in excruciating detail with detectives who wanted to know exactly how the plane had come to be riddled with bullet holes. The two-hundred-foot depth of the water made it impossible for divers without special equipment to probe the wreckage of the helicopter and find their attacker.

Brielle was frustrated because the police doubted her assertion that Victor Zim was the one behind the assault. Despite Tyler’s explanation that the helicopter used at the prison was sabotaged, they were operating under the official assumption that Victor had died in the escape attempt.

As Brielle finished eating a protein bar provided by one of the policeman, Tyler showed the forensics team how to fold his plane’s wings so that it could be towed back to Seattle for analysis. She could see him cringe every time he glanced at the damaged section, which looked like it had been gnawed by a gigantic beaver.

He patted the plane on the side and walked back toward her, shaking his head.

“It’ll take me forever to get another one of these,” he said. “Do you know how long the waiting list is?”

She shook her head. “We almost got killed and that’s what you’re worried about?”

“I’m annoyed, not worried. But at least I know the parachute system works. Money well spent, I’d say.”

Brielle crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it in the waste bin. “Can we go meet Alexa now? I have some questions for her. My car is back at the bar.”

“Not quite yet. I’m expecting someone.” He looked past her and said, “There she is.”

Brielle turned and saw a black SUV come to a stop behind her. A thin blonde woman stepped out wearing a neatly pressed suit. She might as well have had “I’m with the US government” written on a name tag.

The woman strode up to Tyler and shook his hand warmly.

“Sorry to see you again so soon, Tyler,” the woman said.

“Likewise,” Tyler said.

The woman turned to Brielle and held out her hand. “Special Agent Melanie Harris.”

Brielle took the proffered hand. “Looks like you know each other.”

“Tyler and I have worked together before.”

Brielle made a mental note to ask about that later.

“The FBI certainly got here quickly,” she said. “Maybe somebody believes it was Victor Zim after all.”

“There’s more to this than I’ve had time to explain,” Tyler said cryptically, “so I thought it would be a smart idea to bring Agent Harris up here.”

“It’s good you did, too,” Harris said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the secondary crime scene. I want you to see something.”

Brielle thought the agent meant the Blazer crash, so she sighed and got into the back of the SUV next to Tyler, ready to go over her story one more time. But other than a few direct questions, the FBI agent remained silent. She had obviously been briefed about the incident on the way up.

They drove the same fire road on the west side of the lake, and Brielle’s mind flashed back through her earlier ride. But when they reached the scene of the crash they didn’t stop. Brielle could make out the blackened frame of the Blazer surrounded by crime scene investigators collecting evidence.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“There was an explosion and fire reported about two hours ago,” Harris said.

“I know. We heard it and saw the smoke. I assumed it was the Blazer.”

“They happened around the same time. The other fire was at a compound about ten minutes from here.”

“It might be Zim’s base,” Brielle said. “Where they were taking me.”

“That’s what we’re hoping Tyler can tell us.”

The SUV wound through the woods until it approached a gaggle of fire trucks and police cars, their flashing lights splashing the forest with blue and red. A state trooper waved them down and then let them pass after checking IDs.

They continued down a gravel road to a clearing in the trees. Brielle could see firemen hosing down several structures. The blazes were out but wisps of smoke were still visible. Three of the structures seemed to be the remnants of large wooden buildings that had been burned to the ground. The fourth had the footprint of a trailer home scattered across a huge swath of grass. Thousands of pieces of steel, glass, and melted plastic littered the ground.

They got out of the SUV and Harris led them toward the pile of debris.

“What do you think that is?”

Now Brielle understood why the agent had wanted Tyler’s expertise.

Tyler squinted at the wreckage and walked around it to get a look from several angles. Finally, he said, “Well, they did a pretty good job at blowing it apart, which means they didn’t want anyone to know what it was.”

“Any ideas?” Harris asked.

Tyler shook his head. “It’s too jumbled. We’ll need to get the pieces back to our facility and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I’ll get a team up here to collect it all, which will take a while. We could find pieces up to a quarter mile away, depending on how powerful the blast was.”

Brielle looked at the twisted wreckage and then at Tyler. “You’ll reconstruct this like you did with the metal rig in Norway?”

Tyler nodded. “We do it all the time with downed airliners. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle.”

“Except you’re missing the picture on the box.”

“That’s what makes it a challenge.”

Harris pointed at the wooden buildings, now reduced to ashes. “It might be more than we get from those.”

“Agent Harris,” Brielle said. “I think Zim and his men abducted Wade Plymouth, a friend of mine. We work together.”

Harris referred to a notebook. “Yes, I got a short briefing about you on my drive here. Can you tell me more about your investigation?”

“Wade and I were hired to discover the location of a small crate found in Germany that may have been related to the Holocaust. Using the information provided to us, Wade tracked the owners of the crate here. The last text I got from him was from a bar in Lyman, and he had learned that Carl Zim was planning an attack from a base near Oslo. That’s how we found Carl’s compound in Norway.” Fanatical right-wing sentiments had been growing in Scandinavia over the last few years, so Norway wasn’t an unlikely place to find extremists.

Harris glanced at the burned-out buildings and said, “We’ll do what we can to find Mr. Plymouth. Let’s hope he can tell us more.”

Brielle could see the agent was going through the motions. She didn’t think Wade was still alive.

A yell came from across the clearing. “We’ve got a body!”

Brielle swallowed hard. They hurried over to the site, where policemen had gathered around two firemen kneeling to examine the corpse. All Brielle could see was that the clothes had not been burned. Her heart raced, knowing that there was only one person Zim would leave behind in his mad scramble to vacate the compound.

“Where did you find it?” Harris asked.

One of the firemen looked up. “It fell out of the tree. Practically landed on top of me. Must have been caught in the explosion and got tossed into the branches. A leg and arm are missing.”

“Turn him over. Brielle, this might be difficult, but we need to know if this is Plymouth.”

Tyler took her gently by the arm and guided her forward.

The firemen turned the body face up, and Brielle gasped when she saw the face of an elderly man, his skin wrinkled and blotchy. She had to blink and look a second time, but she’d recognize the features anywhere. The scar across the bridge of his nose confirmed it.

“Is that him?” Tyler asked.

Brielle nodded in a stupor.

“Are you sure? This man has to be over eighty. He was an investigator with your company?”

Brielle nodded again more firmly. “I’ve known Wade for fourteen years. That’s him, but…” She trailed off, not quite believing her eyes.

Tyler looked at Harris and then back to Brielle. “But what?”

“I met Wade when we were in the same class at university,” Brielle said, the words struggling to emerge from her suddenly parched throat. “He’s thirty-four years old.”

TWENTY

Alexa sat next to Grant in the passenger seat of his Tahoe as they crawled along with the traffic on the I-90 floating bridge toward Mercer Island. She didn’t fidget, cry, rant, or moan. The most vocal she got during the ride was a couple of sighs. She had shed some tears of relief and shock on his shoulder at the crime scene before the police arrived, but she had composed herself and delivered a detailed account of events to the investigators.

Grant was surprised at how well she had recovered from nearly being kidnapped, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. After all, her brother had gone through much worse without blinking. It had to be a Locke family trait.

“How are you doing?” Grant said, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. They were still sore from the fight.

Alexa sighed again. “Oh, I’m okay, but I’m worried about Mike. He’s crazy, but he’s a good guy. They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?”

If they haven’t already, Grant didn’t say out loud. “They must have followed him to the market, to get one of you.”

“And if you hadn’t come to find me, they would have taken both of us.”

“You can thank Tyler for that. He’s the one who figured out that Zim is still alive.”

“Zim wasn’t there, was he?”

“No, but those had to be his men.”

“How could he have men working for him? He just broke out of prison. And why would they be interested in Mike or our search for the Loch Ness monster?”

“You said Dillman thought someone broke into his computer and downloaded his files on Nessie.” Every time they mentioned the Loch Ness monster, Grant had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.

“That’s what he told me,” Alexa said, “but I can’t guess why Victor Zim would want them.”

“Maybe Zim thought your connection to Laroche could lead back to him. You said Laroche sent you an email a few days ago. Could it be related?”

“The FBI didn’t seem to think so. I sent them all my correspondence with André, so I guess they might find some clue. But the last email I got from him was odd. Well, odder than usual.”

“In what way?”

“It was really rambling, like he was drunk or something.” She pulled out her phone. “Here. I’ll read it to you. Even the subject line is weird. It says, ‘Play the opening of the Fifth,’ with ‘Fifth’ capitalized. He’s a fan of classical music, so I was surprised when the email wasn’t about Beethoven.”

She started reading.

Subject: Play the opening of the Fifth

Dear Alexa,

You must continue our search no matter the obstacles. You of all people should know that doubling the degree to which you work is important to reaching our goal.

At times the creature has been said to resemble a sea serpent, a water horse, a kraken, or a plesiosaur. Dinosaurs are extinct, so the key is in the cells of animals still living.

Hydrophis spiralis, hippopotamus amphibius, and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni are all good candidates, but it can’t be any single one of those.

However, if you add the structures of these creatures together, that is how you’ll find the Loch Ness monster.

I wish you good luck and Godspeed.

André

“What’s all the Latin about?” Grant asked.

“Those are species. Hippopotamus amphibius is just what it sounds like, a hippo. Hydrophis spiralis is the largest species of sea snake. And Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni is the scientific nomenclature for a colossal squid.”

“Colossal squid? Is that the same as a giant squid?”

“Different species, and even bigger than Architeuthis. Only a few specimens of Mesonychoteuthis have ever been caught, but the speculation is that they can grow to at least forty-five feet long.”

“The Kraken.”

“Exactly. These squid rarely venture near the surface, but when they did, imagine a fifteenth-century sailor’s reaction to seeing one of those floating next to their ship. Remember that Columbus’s vessels were only fifty-five feet long.”

“They’d be quaking in their boots that it would pull their dinghy to the bottom.”

“Right. So together that’s a water horse — the ancient Greek translation of hippopotamus is “river horse”—a sea serpent, and a kraken.”

“You mean that Laroche thinks the Loch Ness monster is some unholy mashup of those three animals?”

“I don’t know. He’s certainly eccentric, with his unwavering belief in Bigfoot and Nessie. But he also took a very scientific approach to finding them. That’s why he said he hired me. I’m beginning to think he’s onto something.”

“Don’t tell me you believe in the Loch Ness monster now.” Despite the video evidence, Grant just couldn’t buy that there was a dinosaur living in present-day Scotland.

“Unless some elaborate hoax was played on me, I can’t dismiss what I saw.”

“But how can that kind of animal live in Loch Ness all this time with no one ever getting a good look at it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that ever since we captured that video,” Alexa said. “I have some ideas. First, the lake is rich in peat moss runoff from the surrounding countryside, so it’s virtually impossible to see more than a couple of feet deep. Even sonar has trouble resolving echo signatures. Anything swimming under the water is essentially invisible, and it’s a big lake.”

“How big?”

“It’s twenty-three miles long, a mile wide, and up to seven hundred and fifty feet deep. It contains more freshwater than all the lakes of England and Wales combined.”

Grant nodded. “That sounds big enough to hide a monster if it wants to stay hidden. What’s another reason for the spotty visual record?”

“I don’t think Nessie is an air breather.”

“Why not?”

“It would have to come to the surface so often that it would be spotted regularly.”

“So that rules out a dinosaur,” Grant said.

Alexa patted him on the shoulder. “That’s right! I’m impressed.”

“That I know reptiles breathe air?”

“Some people think plesiosaurs are fish. You’re a man who knows his biology. That makes you even hotter.”

She chuckled, and now Grant didn’t know if she was teasing him or not.

“What else?” he said.

Alexa got a faraway look in her eye, as if she were picturing the creature in her mind. “I’d also bet Nessie is nocturnal, spending most of its time foraging at night.”

“But you saw it during the day.”

“At dusk. We might have caught it just as it was beginning to feed.”

“On what?”

“That’s a tougher question. The loch isn’t exactly rich with fish. There’s an annual salmon migration, but during the rest of the year, some biologists have calculated that there’s simply not enough biomass to support a breeding population of large creatures in the loch. If my size calculations are correct, Nessie could weigh two tons or more. Multiple creatures would empty the loch of food in months and starve to death.”

“So it doesn’t exist? I’m confused.”

“I tend to agree with a theory espoused by some other Nessie hunters. It could be a single animal. Specifically, a sturgeon.”

“As in beluga caviar?”

“Right. Most photographic evidence of the creature is completely false. The famous surgeon’s photograph from 1934—you know, the one showing what looks like a plesiosaur rearing its head next to Urquhart Castle? — most analyses show that to be a hoax, which was corroborated by someone claiming to be in on the prank.”

“I’m shocked,” Grant deadpanned.

“But the sheer number of sightings is hard to dismiss, and a sturgeon fits all of the parameters I’ve named. It’s a bottom feeder, so it would rarely be seen at the surface, especially during the daytime. They can grow to well over four thousand pounds. And they are called the Methuselah of fishes because they can live a hundred years or longer.”

“It’s not a native species, is it?”

“Not in Scotland, no.”

“So how did it get there?”

“Who knows? Maybe some visitor to Russia brought breeding stock back with him and dumped it in the loch. André would be so disappointed if it turns out to be something that mundane.” She looked down at the mysterious message on her phone. “It’s as if he were trying to tell me something but had a few too many before he wrote the message.”

Grant had Alexa read the odd email again as he exited the highway onto Island Crest Way on Mercer Island, one of Seattle’s wealthiest suburbs. They were on the way to Laroche’s lakeside estate, where Tyler, Brielle, and Harris were planning to meet them.

“I’m worried about him going missing like this,” Alexa said.

“I hate to tell you, but Laroche might be one of the bad guys.” Since Alexa was now caught up in the aftermath of the Eiffel Tower plot, Grant explained that Laroche was the prime suspect responsible for funding the attack. He left out the part about his exposure to the chemical weapon.

“That can’t be true,” Alexa said, shell-shocked by the news. “He may be an odd duck, but he’s not a mass murderer.”

“His mother was Jewish. The Muslim countries think he’s in league with the Mossad to assassinate their leaders.”

“And what do the Israelis say?”

“They deny it, which is exactly what the Muslim countries would expect them to say.”

“Maybe he was kidnapped like Mike was.”

“Or he’s gone to ground because he knows he’s been implicated in the attack. He’s got enough money to make it happen.”

Alexa shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Not André.”

The sadness in her voice made Grant’s heart sink, almost as if she were readying herself for the inevitable. She was a trusting soul. It was like he was watching innocence lost.

“We’ll find out what happened to him,” he said. “I promise.”

Alexa grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks.”

Grant turned down a heavily wooded lane that took a steep decline toward the western side of the island. They wound through the twisting streets until the navigation system announced they’d arrived. All that was visible was a white iron gate with a speaker box. Grant pulled up and pushed the intercom button.

A woman with elegant diction replied. “May I help you?”

“Grant Westfield and Alexa Locke.”

“Oh, yes. Please park to the right of the fountain. I’ll meet you at the door.”

A buzz sounded, and the gate swung aside.

Alexa crinkled her lips. “Fountain?”

“You haven’t been here?”

“No. Just to his office downtown.”

The driveway curved as it descended. When the forest parted, it was as though they’d emerged through some kind of wormhole into the French countryside. Laroche’s mansion was built in the style of a French chateau, with ornate accents along the eaves, three cylindrical towers topped by needle-sharp spires, and a steeply pitched slate roof.

“This is where Laroche lives?” Grant marveled.

“Why? Have you been here before?”

“No, but I’ve seen it. From the lake, every year when I come down to watch the hydroplane races from my boat. We call it the Disney Castle.”

“It does look like where Cinderella might live,” Alexa said. “Of course, after she marries her Prince Charming.”

A six-car garage sat to the left of the circular masonry driveway that wrapped around a twelve-foot-high fountain.

Alexa peered at the geysers spouting from the waterworks. “I know I’ve seen that before.”

“The fountain?”

“Yes, but I can’t remember where.”

Grant parked, but didn’t see Harris’s government-issued SUV, only a BMW sedan. She must have already dropped Tyler and Brielle off and left to pursue other leads. According to Tyler, the FBI finished their search of the house and found nothing. Laroche had vanished into thin air.

Grant and Alexa got out and went to the front door, which opened as they approached. A woman in her late twenties waited there, smiling at the sight of Alexa. Her painstakingly highlighted coif, tailored Armani suit, and heels that looked more expensive than a semester at Harvard shouted that she was a woman of means. Laroche must pay his people well, Grant thought.

She waved them over and closed the door before grasping both of Alexa’s hands with hers.

“I’m so glad you could come, Alexa.”

“Not at all. I just wish it weren’t true.”

“I know. I feel the same. I’ve been with Mr. Laroche for four years, and I find it unbelievable that he would plan something so callous. The FBI have been through the entire mansion and finally left twenty minutes ago.” She turned to Grant. “Mr. Westfield, I’m Marlo Dunham, Mr. Laroche’s executive assistant.”

“Pleased to meet you. Is Tyler here?”

“In the living room. If you’ll follow me.” She turned and marched away, her heels clacking on the marble floors.

Grant had been in mansions before, but he couldn’t help gawking at the intricate tapestries and artworks that lined the spacious foyer. He assumed it all was original, collected from Laroche’s ancestral homeland.

But other touches were quite odd and seemingly out of place. One in particular made him stop when he passed. Set into an alcove was a nine-foot tall hairy ape-man. At first he thought it was a Chewbacca costume set there as a joke, but a second glance confirmed that it was actually a replica of the Bigfoot that was videotaped in the famous grainy footage he’d seen so many times. It was even posed in the act of walking. Next to it was a plaster molding of a footprint, set into the floor as if it were a celebrity’s at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Grant hovered his boot over it. This was the first time his foot had seemed tiny.

“I told you he was odd,” Alexa said.

“When you have this much money, I believe the word is ‘eccentric.’”

Dunham, who stood at a doorway further on, said, “Mr. Westfield?”

They followed her to an enormous living room like none he’d seen before. On one side of the room, hundreds of pieces of metal seemed to hang in mid-air. They didn’t conform to any particular shape or apparent pattern. It wasn’t until he got closer that Grant could see the pair of ultrathin wires suspending each piece in its place, done so as to keep the fragments from spinning. The mobile was set in a corner against one blank stone wall and one etched with lines.

The rest of the room was furnished with ornate red velvet chairs and settees positioned around polished wood tables inlaid with cloisonné designs. A grand piano sat majestically among them. A third wall was a series of glass doors that opened onto a patio with a lavish garden and pool below. The doors framed an incredible view of the lake, with the tips of Seattle’s skyscrapers visible in the background.

Tyler and Brielle stood at the opposite end of the room, huddled in discussion. She had changed out of the getup that Tyler had told Grant about and was now back into slacks and a light sweater. Behind them was a painting of a lake scene with a moody gray sky and green rolling hills in the background. It looked like any other pastoral scene that caused Grant to glaze over on an art museum tour until he spotted a small shape swimming in the water next to the ruins of a castle. It was a spitting image of the Loch Ness monster from the famous surgeon’s photograph that Alexa mentioned, showing the creature’s long neck rising above the surface.

Things were getting weirder and weirder.

Tyler saw them and rushed over to Alexa, hugging her then holding her out to look at her.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come look for you myself.”

“I understand. I’m sure glad that you’re a smart guy and that Grant knows how to punch people.”

Tyler clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks. I owe you.”

“Happy to do it,” Grant said. “It’s too bad Dillman made a run for it. Any word about him?”

Tyler shook his head. “Nothing. And we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“I know. You couldn’t even wait to trash your new plane until after I’d gotten a ride in it?”

“Sometimes my will to live depends on destroying stuff. I just wish it wasn’t my stuff.”

Tyler introduced Brielle. For a moment, Alexa glanced back and forth between Brielle and Tyler, but she said nothing.

“The FBI couldn’t find anything?” Grant asked.

Tyler shook his head. “They gave up, but I wanted to look around a while longer, so thanks for coming to get us. With Zim gone, Laroche is our only lead now. We’ll try his office next.”

“No luck?”

“Nada. I thought we might notice something they didn’t, but they were pretty thorough…” Tyler stopped talking abruptly and focused on Alexa.

She was staring intently at the piano. She examined it for a moment, deep in thought, and then took out her phone. After a few moments looking at the screen, she turned to Grant.

“That has to mean something,” she said.

“What?”

“The subject of André’s email. ‘Play the opening of the Fifth.’ He hoped I’d come here eventually to look for him.”

Grant shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Give it a try.”

“I don’t play the piano.”

“I do,” Brielle said. “What do you want me to play?”

“The opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

Brielle walked over to the keyboard and played four chords, tapping out the familiar dun-dun-dun-duh.

Grant heard a clunk near the picture of Loch Ness. They collectively gasped when the painting swung aside, revealing a gigantic steel door of the size found in a bank. There was no keypad, keyhole, or combination lock. Just a huge wheel shaped like an old sailing vessel’s helm.

“It’s good you brought Alexa with you,” Tyler said as he stood agog in front of the vault. “Now, how do we get it open?”

TWENTY-ONE

Tyler phoned Agent Harris about their discovery, but she wouldn’t be able to make it back for an hour. While they waited, he wanted to tell Grant and Alexa about what he and Brielle had found at Lake Shannon, but it couldn’t happen until they were out of earshot of Marlo Dunham. The only reason that Brielle had been brought up to speed about the Nazi weapon was because of the revelation about Wade Plymouth’s death.

The Altwaffe designation now made sense. “Old weapon” wasn’t a code word. It was the literal description of the poison’s effects. The Nazis had developed a chemical weapon that somehow sped up the aging process. In effect it was an artificially-accelerated form of progeria, a genetic disorder that causes children to age rapidly, with few living past their teens. The Third Reich had been hoping to unleash this secret weapon to turn the tide of World War II. If Laroche possessed the records of Altwaffe’s development, it might provide information that the toxicologists could use in creating an antidote.

As he considered their next move, Tyler stood next to Brielle at the patio doors and studied the statues that dominated the lawn below. Three enormous white marble carvings of horses and men flanked an even larger statue of women bathing the feet of a seated godlike man in robes. All of the people had the strong features and curly hair he’d seen in Greek-style statues that didn’t seem to fit in with the French motif of the mansion. The only flaw was the missing outstretched foot of the pampered man. Given all of the other strange elements of the house, Tyler supposed that he shouldn’t consider it odd.

“Ms. Dunham,” he said, “does Laroche have any other safes?”

“I didn’t even know about this vault,” she said.

“So you don’t know what he kept in here?”

“No, but I can’t believe that Mr. Laroche would be behind something so heinous.”

“Then let’s hope what we find inside the vault will exonerate him. Any other surprises in this room?”

“The only one I know about is this,” Dunham said. “I showed it to the FBI yesterday.”

Dunham picked up a remote control with a touchscreen display on it. She tapped on the screen, and a segment of ceiling slid aside. A device that looked like a LCD projector lowered with a mechanical whine. When it came to a stop, a white light bloomed from the lens.

Tyler turned, expecting to see a video. Instead, he saw a shadow.

The hanging metal mobile, which had appeared so random, now cast a silhouette on the wall that clearly depicted the outline of a dragon, yet another mythical creature. The spotlight was placed in the only position that could produce the shadow.

Alexa couldn’t resist the urge to pass her hand in front of the light.

Dunham walked over to the mobile. “There are two things Mr. Laroche is passionate about. One is his French heritage, as you can see from this house. The second is cryptozoology, which led to his hiring Dr. Locke. I mean, this Dr. Locke,” she said, indicating Alexa. “He had this mobile commissioned after he’d seen the work of artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who create a similar effect with piles of trash.”

“Similar effect?” Alexa asked.

“Noble and Webster arrange refuse in a distinct way. What looks like a collection of garbage in normal light is transformed when a single light source is projected from the exact right location. The result is a shadow of, say, a couple embracing. They also have a sense of the macabre, creating the silhouette of two heads on pikes using the carcasses of dead animals.”

Alexa screwed up her face at the description. “Lovely.”

“It looks like Mr. Laroche has a taste for the peculiar as well,” Tyler said. “He never mentioned this vault to you?”

Dunham shook her head. “He’s a private man. I have to say I’m disappointed he didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it.”

“Enough with the games,” Brielle said, throwing her hands up. “Can’t we cut it open? Find a specialist who opens bank vaults?”

Tyler shook his head. “Not in the time we have. It would require delicate work with a thermal lance. It might take days, and even then the lance is so hot that it might destroy any document inside. We have to figure out the code.”

“Do you think it’s the piano?” Alexa asked.

“It opened the painting, so that’s a good bet,” Grant said. “And it’s a great way to encode something. There are eighty-eight keys. It’s better than 256-bit encryption. Even a supercomputer wouldn’t be able to crack it.”

“There must be a coded acoustic receiver in the room,” Tyler said. “And I doubt it would be a common tune. Too likely that someone could happen upon the code by sheer luck. Do you have any idea how to get inside it, Ms. Dunham?”

“No clue. Obviously I didn’t know a piano tune could move the painting.”

“The email!” Alexa shouted, clapping her hands. “The rest of it must tell me how to get inside the vault. He was giving me the code.”

“Mr. Laroche sent you a code?” Dunham asked, mystified.

Alexa nodded, pulled out her phone, and read the email to them.

Dunham pursed her lips. “Why do you think the rest of it is a code?”

“What other reason could he have for making it so cryptic?”

“Do you know how to interpret it?”

Alexa frowned. “Uh, no.”

“Read the first part again,” Tyler said.

You must continue our search no matter the obstacles. You of all people should know that doubling the degree to which you work is important to reaching our goal.

Tyler pointed at Alexa. “’You of all people,’ he says. Something you in particular should know.”

“So she needs to double the work she does on this?” Grant said. “How is that relevant? His message is, ‘Work harder’?”

Alexa shook her head slowly. “André was always saying that he was so proud of how much effort we were putting into the job, taking our work to the nth degree. It has to be what he meant. He said it all the time.”

Grant turned to Tyler. “Didn’t we have equations about nth-degree polynomials in linear algebra?”

“Yes, but I doubt Laroche was giving her a math equation to solve. He was aiming this puzzle at Alexa. That means it should be something in her area of expertise.”

“Which is what?” Brielle asked.

“Zoology, with a specialization in taxonomy and genetics.” When she saw Brielle’s confused look, Alexa continued. “I study the classification and heredity of animals. That was the reason André said I was the best candidate to search for Nessie. Once we found it, he wanted me to figure out how to classify it in the animal phylum.”

“Keep going with the message,” Tyler said.

Alexa read the next paragraph.

At times the creature has been said to resemble a sea serpent, a water horse, a kraken, or a plesiosaur. Dinosaurs are extinct, so the key is in the cells of animals still living.

“About the only thing he left out was a yeti and a unicorn,” Grant said.

“He was making a juxtaposition with the mythical creatures,” Alexa said. “André must mean that the key is literally in the cells of these animals.”

“How?” Tyler asked. “Is he talking about genetically combining them?”

Realization dawned on Alexa’s face. Tyler knew the look well.

“Doubling the nth degree,” she said. “Double n, meaning 2n. The key is in their cells.”

Brielle looked confused again. So was Tyler. “What’s 2n?”

“It’s the diploid chromosome number for any living thing. It varies widely. Humans have forty-six chromosomes. Chickens have eighty. Fruit flies have eight.”

She read the next part of the message.

Hydrophis spiralis, hippopotamus amphibius, and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni are all good candidates, but it can’t be any single one of those.

“It has to be what he means. The chromosome numbers for the sea snake, hippo, and colossal squid.” She tapped furiously on her phone touchpad. “There’s an online database at Harvard that I have access to. It’ll take me a couple of minutes to track all three down.”

Tyler shook his head in wonderment. “Laroche would have known that only a zoologist could have connected the dots.”

“But why send a scrambled message to Alexa?” Dunham said.

Brielle stared at the massive vault. “And what the hell is so important for him to protect?”

“Got ’em!” Alexa said triumphantly. “The sea snake chromosome number is eighteen, the hippo’s is thirty-six, and the colossal squid’s is a hundred and eighty-four.”

She read the last part of the message.

However, if you add the structures of these creatures together, that is how you’ll find the Loch Ness monster.

Tyler did the addition in his head. “That’s two hundred thirty-eight.”

“That’s way too short to be a code,” Grant said.

Brielle jotted the numbers on a notepad. “What if we put them side by side?”

“If we go in the order he used in the message,” Alexa said, “that’s 1836184.”

Grant looked at the baby grand. “How do you play that on a piano?”

Brielle shook her head. “Those numbers don’t correspond to notes. Besides, we wouldn’t know what key to play.”

Tyler stared at the mobile and the shadow it cast on the blank wall. Why was that wall bare and the wall next to it lined? It almost looked like a…

He suddenly whipped around, looking for a seam in the ceiling, but there was so much detail in the woodwork that it was impossible to see where Laroche might have hidden a recessed light projector.

He pointed to the lines and asked Brielle, “What do those look like to you?”

Brielle scrutinized the lines, which weren’t all evenly spaced. They were slightly separated every five lines. Her eyes widened when she recognized the pattern.

“Those are musical staves.”

Tyler picked up the remote. “And I’ll bet we can get some music from those lines.”

The touchscreen had a numerical keypad. He plugged 1836184 into it.

The light projecting on the mobile went out and rose back into the ceiling. At the same time another light lowered from a spot opposite the lined wall. When it clicked into place, the spotlight shone on the mobile from the perpendicular direction.

Dots appeared on the wall, perfectly spaced within or on the lines. Some of the dots were formed by two or more of the irregularly shaped hanging metal pieces. If Tyler hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed they could blend together so flawlessly. Some of the dots even had lines extending from them, indicating quarter- or half-notes.

Tyler turned to Dunham. “Have you seen that before?”

Dunham shook her head slowly, a stunned look on her face.

“Can you play that?” he asked Brielle.

She squinted at the notes. “The chords are fairly complex for me, but I’ll give it a try.”

Brielle sat on the bench and flexed her fingers. The rest of them went back and forth between watching her and the vault door.

She played three slow chords, followed by two quick ones. Nothing happened.

“Why does that sound familiar?” Alexa said.

“Are you kidding?” Grant said. “That’s the opening theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“It’s called Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Brielle said. “Everybody learns to play it. But it’s several keys off the normal one, so nobody would have played it by accident. I got some of the notes wrong. Let me try again.”

She played it twice more, getting more comfortable each time until she got it note perfect.

The third time did the trick. A deep hum emanated from the vault. Tyler could almost feel its huge steel bars being drawn from the door. The hum ceased, and the door swung open, a light blazing from beyond. A recording of the 2001 music played from the interior. Laroche certainly had a flair for the dramatic.

When the door was fully open, the music ended. Tyler and the others crept forward until they were at the entrance.

“Oh, my God!” Alexa shouted and dashed inside.

“Wait!” Tyler ran after her. She was already kneeling by a figure propped against a display case.

“He’s alive,” she said, her fingers pressed against the carotid, “but barely breathing. We need an ambulance.”

André Laroche wasn’t on the run. He had locked himself inside his own vault.

TWENTY-TWO

Brielle stood back while Tyler and Alexa tended to Laroche and Grant called emergency services. She looked around and saw that one person was missing.

“Where did Ms. Dunham go?”

She didn’t wait for a response and went to look for her. It wasn’t a good sign when the loyal assistant didn’t stick around to see what was inside the safe.

Brielle backtracked her way toward the entrance and saw Dunham emerge from a side hallway. Without hesitation, Dunham raised a semiautomatic pistol and fired.

Instinctively, Brielle ducked, and the first two shots went wide. As bullets whistled past her, she dodged left and took refuge behind Bigfoot in the alcove. Several more rounds slammed into the stuffed beast, and then heels clacked in triple-time toward the front door.

Brielle poked her head out to see Dunham climb into a BMW. It laid patches of rubber on the stones and was gone.

Tyler yelled from around the corner. “Brielle, are you all right?”

Brielle emerged from her hiding place. “I’m fine. It’s clear now.”

Tyler stepped out from behind the wall. “What happened?” Grant followed, inspecting the bullet holes in the wall.

“It was Marlo Dunham. She shot at me and took off. Silver BMW. I didn’t get the plates, but it’s probably her car.”

Grant shook his head in disbelief. “Why?”

“Because of what we found in the vault. She must have left the room when she realized we were about to open it and would find Laroche inside.”

“I’ll call the police and tell them to be on the lookout for her car,” Grant said. “With only two directions off Mercer Island, she should be easy to spot.” He made the call while they walked back to the vault.

As they waited for the ambulance, they checked out the vault’s contents. Display cases ringed the interior. Each held an artifact, all of them labeled. One claimed the item was a lock of Bigfoot’s hair. Another was the tooth of a Tasmanian wolf, dated 1956. The biggest display case was at the back and held a six-foot-long fish that had been stuffed and mounted. It was labeled a coelacanth.

“What is all this stuff?” Grant wondered aloud.

“It must be André’s treasure,” Alexa said as she cradled Laroche’s head in her lap. “He believed that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster were real, out there waiting to be discovered. Like the Tasmanian wolf, which was declared extinct a hundred years ago, but there are people who think a few still roam the wilds of that island.”

“And the big ugly fish?”

“The last coelacanth was thought to have died in the Cretaceous Period, but fishermen caught one off the east coast of Africa in 1938, proving the species was still in existence after sixty-five million years. Since then, they’ve been caught regularly. I had no idea he had one. I’ve only seen it one other time, at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in DC.”

“So he thinks the Loch Ness monster is like the coelacanth?” Tyler said. “It’s been around since the time of the dinosaurs, and we just haven’t seen it all these years?”

“It might not be a dinosaur, but the coelacanth does show we could be surprised by more species yet to be discovered. That’s what makes my job interesting.”

“I think I’ve found something interesting,” Brielle said, standing at a small pedestal with a case on it.

Tyler and Grant looked over her shoulder as she carefully flipped through a notebook. The pages were yellowed with age.

A single word was emblazoned on the cover above a swastika: Altwaffe. Old weapon.

Brielle felt a chill as she thought of Wade, who had aged fifty years in little more than two weeks.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The paramedics and police would arrive at the mansion any minute.

“Grant,” Tyler said, “did you bring that high-res camera?”

“Just like you asked.”

“Then let’s get a picture of every page in the book. We’re going to have to turn it over to the Feds, but I don’t want to be cut out of the loop.”

Brielle picked up the notebook to hand it over and felt a piece of paper underneath. She didn’t want to cede anything to the police that she didn’t have to, so she deftly swiped it to her side as she gave Grant the book.

Tyler flipped through the pages rapidly for Grant to capture the words on video.

“I’ll bring the paramedics in,” Brielle said and left them to finish documenting the notebook.

The ambulance stopped in the driveway, and two paramedics jumped out with their gear. She led them to the living room and pointed them to the vault. She stayed behind to read the page she had acquired.

Dear Alexa,

I pray that you are the one who found this note. If you are reading this, then you understood my email and discovered my body. I’m sorry for the mysterious email, but I couldn’t let Marlo Dunham know that you were the sole person with the code to get into the vault. If she had realized what I’d sent, she would have killed you. She has held me captive for nine days. I know she planned to kill me when she no longer needed me, and I thought locking myself in the one place she couldn’t get to me was the only option left.

I know she betrayed me and planned to unleash the Altwaffe. When I bought the canister and notebook, I thought it was simply a way to find the Loch Ness monster, and so did the unwitting seller. But when I realized what it was, Marlo convinced me not to turn it over to the authorities, fearing that it would be turned into a potent weapon by the government. Instead, I locked it away, unsure of how to destroy it safely myself. Little did I realize that I was being deceived by my trusted assistant.

She took the weapon, but left the notebook, possibly to implicate me. She didn’t know that the notebook also contains the formula for an antidote. It’s a fairly simple process, once you have the key ingredient, but no one on earth has it.

The reason is simple. To make the antidote, you must have a tissue sample from the Loch Ness monster.

As police rushed past her, Brielle shook her head and read the sentence three more times to make sure she had read it right. The next sentence was even stranger.

The Nazis claim to have acquired a sample taken by Charles Darwin himself. I know that’s difficult to believe, but you must. It’s the only way to undo the damage that I have done by not destroying the Altwaffe when I should have. If only I had recognized Marlo’s insanity sooner.

I can’t take the chance that Marlo has found a way into the vault, and that it is she instead of you reading this note. I can’t lead her to Nessie and help her destroy any hope for a cure. On the back of this page are clusters of numbers and letters. You must follow in the footstep of the Sun King’s Apollo. Place the sheet so that Apollo’s hallux is aligned with the 2n of your favorite animal and his lateral one is aligned with the 2n of that animal’s most feared enemy. Starting at three, the resulting connected code will lead you to a book at the current home of Darwin’s intellect. There you will learn how to locate the creature and find a cure.

I’m sorry to burden you with this quest. I wish I could have seen you again, my dear, but it was not to be. Please understand that I only had the best of intentions.

Your friend,

André

Brielle flipped the sheet over and saw hundreds of numbers and letters speckling the page. There was no identifiable pattern to it, as if it were a connect-the-dots drawing.

“What are you reading?” Tyler asked, startling Brielle. She was about to come up with a lie, but Tyler stopped her. “I saw you take it from the vault. You need to work on your sleight of hand.”

She pulled him aside and whispered to him. “We have to keep this quiet.” She handed him the note.

He read it, then looked at her. “This is incredible.”

“I know. It’s hard to believe.”

“That’s the problem. We need the antidote within the next week.”

“Why?”

Tyler glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “The weapon’s already been deployed. Through the sprinklers inside the Salle Gustave Eiffel. People are already starting to die.”

“My God. Wasn’t Grant inside at the time?”

Tyler nodded solemnly. “And they don’t have any idea how to treat it.”

Wade’s wrinkled face flashed in front of her. “Then this is our only hope.”

Tyler was taken aback. “You really think going after a mythical creature is the best use of our time?”

“Your own sister made a video recording of it.”

“She made a video recording of something. Why don’t we go after Bigfoot while we’re at it?”

“The Nazis obviously believed it,” Brielle said. “And Victor Zim does, too. Why else would he try to abduct Alexa?”

“I don’t know. But I’m certain there’s no sea monster living in Loch Ness. It’s a legend perpetuated by cranks and hoaxers.”

“So certain that you’re willing to bet Grant’s life on it?”

Tyler went silent, then said, “Why are you so quick to buy into this?”

“Because I saw one of my closest friends turned into an elderly man virtually overnight. That makes me ready to believe almost anything, especially if it helps me get the bastards who did that to him. Do you have a better idea?”

Tyler scratched his temple in thought. After a full minute, he cursed under his breath. “All right. I can try convincing Agent Harris, but how does she ask her superiors to put resources into finding the Loch Ness monster? I can imagine sitting in their position and thinking it’s nuts.”

Brielle nodded at his point. Despite her confidence in presenting her case to Tyler, she wasn’t sure if they’d find anything at all. “Then we have to do it ourselves.”

She saw Tyler wrestling with the thought of keeping information from the Feds. He was a big boy scout; doing things the right way was in his blood.

Finally he said, “We know Alexa and Grant will go along with this, so we’ll keep it to the four of us until we have irrefutable proof.”

He pocketed the sheet. Once Laroche’s comatose form was carried away to the hospital, Harris arrived and they spent the next hour answering her questions about the vault, Dunham, and the notebook. Neither Tyler nor Brielle mentioned the letter left by Laroche.

Dunham’s gunshots were enough to implicate her. Her car was found abandoned at Mercer Village Shopping Center. She was on the run with a BOLO issued. The be-on-the-lookout alert had every Washington law enforcement agency on the hunt for her, so they were confident about catching her, but Brielle thought she might have been ready for such an eventuality.

When the FBI was done with them, the four of them finally had the privacy of Grant’s SUV to discuss the note. Grant looked especially hopeful that there was now something he could do to prevent his own death.

Alexa read it twice.

“Laroche may not be any help for a while,” Tyler said. “The paramedics said he might have suffered a stroke and don’t know if he’ll make it. Alexa, do you understand his clues?”

“The stuff specific to me, sure. I told André that the harp seal was my favorite animal. So cute. And the harp seal’s most feared enemy is the polar bear. So those chromosome numbers are easy to find. But then I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do with it.”

“What’s the current home of Darwin’s intellect?” Tyler asked her.

“Where his brain is,” Grant said. “We need to find where he’s buried.”

Alexa shook her head. “No, André specifically said his ‘intellect.’ We have to go where his thoughts are preserved.”

“How can his thoughts be preserved?”

“Of course! The largest collection of Darwin’s letters, notes, and books is at the University of Cambridge library in England. The numbers must point to a specific document in the library. We’ll need to find the right combination of numbers. There must be millions of possibilities on this page.”

Brielle leaned forward. “What’s a hallux?”

“It’s a big toe. The lateral one must refer to the little toe.”

“So we need Apollo’s big toe and pinky toe,” Grant said. “Great. That makes no sense.”

An image of a foot flashed in Brielle’s mind. “The statues in the backyard!” she shouted in triumph. “That has to be what Laroche meant.”

“Because one of the figures was missing a foot?” Tyler asked.

“It’s a statue of Apollo. I’ve seen it before.”

“We can’t use it obviously, but then neither could Marlo Dunham,” Tyler said. “Laroche must have traced the foot to make the clue and then he destroyed it or threw it in the lake.”

“So we’re back to zero,” Grant said.

“No, we’re not,” Brielle said. “The reason I recognized the statue is because it’s a replica.”

Alexa snapped her fingers. “The fountain in the driveway! That’s a replica, too!”

Brielle nodded. “They’re both from the same place. We have to go to France.”

Tyler furrowed his brow at her. “Why?”

“Because the original statue was designed for the Sun King, Louis XIV,” she said, “and it’s now sitting in the gardens of Versailles.”

TWENTY-THREE

Zim allowed himself to enjoy the steady breeze while the thirty-five-foot power boat motored toward the town of Sidney on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. The late afternoon sun was starting to fade over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but they would reach port before dark. Then it was onto a flight from Victoria International Airport to Calgary, then to Heathrow in London and on to Paris after that. Zim wanted to absorb as much of the open air as he could before being crammed into a plane for the next fourteen hours.

The vessel reminded Zim of the one his father had owned when he and his brothers were young boys, the days when they’d gone out on long weekend excursions on Lake Michigan, the days before his father’s job at the auto parts factory was destroyed by the company owned by a Saudi sheik who bought the plant merely to shut it down. Those were the last happy times Zim could remember, and it was his first taste of how ruthless Arabs could be. The family had sold everything and moved to California looking for work, where his father was reduced to pounding out dents at an auto body shop until he drank himself to death.

Despite how much he reveled in the motion of the boat on the waves, Zim knew he couldn’t return to that life on Lake Michigan. He was a wanted man now and always would be. Stepping onto the dock in Everett was probably the last time he’d set foot in the United States. Europe would become his new home. If he ended up dying on this operation, at least he’d be going out in the birthplace of the white race. And he’d do it while making the Arabs pay for what they’d done to his family.

Pryor was down in the bunk napping while Marlo Dunham lounged next to him in a sweater and jeans that hugged her slim body. Pryor had been lusting after her ever since they’d picked her up on Mercer Island, but Zim felt no attraction to her. Brunettes didn’t do it for him. If he ever took a wife, she would have to fit the Aryan ideal of a tall blonde Viking goddess. Maybe he’d settle in Norway. Carl had said it was filled with his type of woman.

“How long until we arrive?” Dunham asked.

“A couple of hours,” Zim said. “We’ll be in plenty of time for the flight.”

“I’m not concerned about that. You both need to alter your appearance to match the passports or we’ll be arrested the moment we go through security in Victoria.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got the disguises in the cabin. We’ll put them on before we dock. What about you? You’re as wanted as we are now.”

“I’ve got a blonde wig, a different nose, and glasses.”

“Blonde, huh?”

Dunham sneered at him. “Don’t even think it. I’m not interested.”

“What if I don’t care?”

“What if I don’t show up at the airport and you have no plane tickets? Remember, I funded your jailbreak, and I control the purse strings on this mission. Without my money, your friend Pryor over there wouldn’t be able to build a flashlight.”

Zim gritted his teeth. He didn’t relish being in thrall to this or any other woman. “Relax. It was a joke. Besides, I don’t want Carl’s sloppy seconds.”

Dunham gave him the finger, leaned back, and put on her sunglasses.

She had hooked up with his brother four years after Victor was sent to prison. Carl told him it was fate, but Zim always thought it was a little convenient that she latched onto him just before presenting her plan to attack the summit with this old Nazi weapon. He later learned that she had found out about the tragic Zim brothers and seen an opportunity. Carl was too much of a stooge to realize what was happening. Dunham pushed all of his buttons in precisely the right way.

She had used their shared mutual tragedies to reel Carl in. Years before, Dunham had fallen in love with some kind of peacenik who joined an aid organization supporting the Palestinian cause. Just like a woman, she was so head over heels for the guy that she went to Gaza with him. When an Israeli airstrike hit the apartment complex they were living in, her boyfriend was killed, and Dunham was injured so badly that not only did she lose the baby she was carrying, she lost the ability to ever have children.

Zim didn’t like Dunham, but he could identify with her sudden change of attitude. Tragedy could do that in an instant. Dunham returned to the US stewing in hatred and convinced that both the Israelis and Palestinians were scum. Laroche kept a close watch on Israeli news and, unaware of her pathological grudge, took pity on Dunham because his own mother had been killed in a Palestinian suicide attack. He offered her a job to take advantage of her education in archaeology, which she had planned to indulge when she moved to the Middle East. Laroche hoped her background would dovetail with his cryptozoology passion. With no other job prospects, she took the position and worked for him faithfully for the next three years, despite his allegiance to Israel.

Laroche’s fortuitous purchase of the Nazi chemical weapon reignited Dunham’s need for revenge, but her plan required muscle to make it a reality. When she met Alexa Locke, she briefly considered Tyler for the job but quickly found out what a do-gooder he was. He would never agree to it. She needed someone who would understand her desire for vengeance, and when she heard about Tyler’s involvement with Victor and Carl Zim, Dunham sought Carl out and convinced him to join forces with her. Carl’s only condition was that they would free his brother once the job was done.

Carl was totally dazzled by Dunham and wrote about her in glowing letters to Victor that his attorney was able to bring in uncensored during regular visits. Victor suspected there was some fabrication and embellishment of the story on Dunham’s part, but it didn’t matter. Their goals were aligned perfectly: now Dunham would get the destruction of Israel and Zim would make Islam a dirty word in the western nations while taking out all of their leaders at once.

Zim put the boat on a heading that would take them around Orcas Island. “How are you going to keep the money flowing now that they’ve found Laroche?”

“Embezzling from that old fool was easy,” Dunham said. “I’ve got enough cash stashed away for whatever we need.”

“Are you sure they won’t find it? You thought they wouldn’t find that vault for weeks and look how that went.”

“And they wouldn’t have if your men hadn’t screwed up and let both Alexa Locke and Brielle Cohen get away.”

Zim shifted in his seat. “I’m down four men because they had help. Tyler Locke and Grant Westfield rescued them.”

“I realized that when they showed up at Laroche’s estate.”

“Which wouldn’t have been a problem if you had killed Laroche when I told you to.”

Dunham had Laroche locked in a room at the mansion, delaying the inevitable need to kill him because of some misguided sense of pity. She learned her lesson when he broke out of his room long enough to send the email to Alexa and lock himself in the vault.

Zim looked at Dunham with undisguised disdain. “Why didn’t you kill them all at the mansion?”

“There was no point in giving myself away if they didn’t get into the vault.”

“You should have had the gun with you.”

“How was I supposed to know they’d open the vault so easily? I’ve been trying to figure out the code for days. The only reason they could do it was because of the clues Laroche sent to Alexa.”

Zim grunted but said nothing. It sounded like a bunch of flimsy excuses to him. If he had been there, all their adversaries would be dead, and he would have destroyed the notebook, making the rest of this mission unnecessary.

“We should split up in London,” Dunham said.

“Why?”

“Because if they get to Versailles before you do, we’ll have to stop them in England. You’ll take Pryor with you to France and meet up with the men there. I’ll take the other half of them and stake out the library at Cambridge.”

Zim scowled at her. She was getting too used to ordering him around. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“You’re so sweet,” she said with a mock baby voice. “You’re worried about me getting hurt? Please. Carl trained me on weapons. I’m ready.”

“I’m worried about you getting captured and losing our money,” Zim said.

“I’m not going to sit back in a hotel while the Locke siblings and their friends screw up a year of planning. If they find the Loch Ness monster in time to make the antidote, then your brother died for nothing.”

“And if we find the monster first?”

“Then not only do we have to kill it,” she said with a shrug, “we have to make sure its corpse will never be found.”