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Triton Books

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Triton Books is an imprint of Riptide Publishing.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

Assassins: Nemesis

Copyright © 2017 by Erica Cameron

Cover art: Damonza, damonza.com

Editor: Kate De Groot

Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at tritonya.com, or at marketing@riptidepublishing.com.

ISBN: 978-1-62649-423-7

First edition

January, 2017

Also available in paperback:

ISBN: 978-1-62649-424-4

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Being orphaned and almost kidnapped in the space of a week sent Blake Marks into hiding. For months, Blake tries to help the Calvers—a family of vigilante bodyguards—investigate the people behind the hit on Blake's father, Isaac, but then the safe house is compromised. Just as hired thugs storm the house to grab Blake, Daelan Calver dives into the fight, getting them both out alive.

Hiding isn't an option anymore, but hit squads, under-the-table deals, and international espionage? Blake has no idea how to handle any of it, not even with Daelan's family there to play teachers. The one thing Blake knows for sure is that there are only two options: keep up with the Calvers or get out of their way.

But even with the Calvers' help and the glimmer of a possible future with Daelan giving Blake hope, chances of survival keep shrinking. The man who ordered the hit on Isaac may be dead, but his partner is viciously cold-blooded, and her plans could change the course of history. Blake wants to finish what Isaac started, but it's looking like someone is going to die before this is over. And that someone might be Blake.
For Kat and Cait.

You know what you did.
It is not tolerable, it is not possible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge.

—Charles de Gaulle

About Assassins: Nemesis

Etobih-lin, Sea of Japan

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Ongma Potseu, Gomin

Chapter 3

Baltimore, Maryland

Chapter 4

Bronx, New York

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Major Cities

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Ontario, California

Chapter 9

Miami, Florida

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Niigata, Japan

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Washington, DC

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Dear Reader

Acknowledgments

Also by Erica Cameron

About the Author

More like this

The vicious squall battered the Sea of Japan, roiling the waves and sending high winds screaming across the water. Those waves crashed against the shores of the small, isolated island sitting between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Wind bent trees and displaced rocks on the island's tall mountains.

Inside the Lyohwa Labs research facility on the northwestern edge of Etobih-lin, none of that could be heard. Especially not on sublevel two.

Lab six was a large, windowless room with a door that couldn't be opened from the inside. Cameras in the corners were positioned to monitor everything, with no blind spots, but at this early hour of the morning, there didn't seem to be much to watch. Only one woman—wearing a white, full-body, level A hazmat suit—was at work.

Hands braced on a backlit glass table, she stared through her faceplate at the rack of glass vials in front of her, furrows across her forehead. The vials seemed to glow with the light from the table, and the intensely green liquid was vibrant in the otherwise stark white and stainless steel room. Though her gaze jumped between the vials and the tools laid out in front of her, she ignored the alerts popping up on the wall-mounted screen to her left and the beeps of the various machines, all of them labeled LyoLabs.

"They'll kill you if this works." The words were quiet, but the distortion of her breathing apparatus gave them an ominous rasp. "Whatever. At least you won't be here anymore, right?"

However cavalier the words seemed, her hands shook when she straightened and tried to lift a vial out of the rack with a pair of tongs. She took a deep breath, the sound made mechanical by her respirator. Her hands steadied. After lifting it clear of the rack, she turned and placed it in another on the epoxy resin workspace behind her.

Slowly, carefully, she extracted a small amount of the green liquid with a pipette and placed three drops into the brown mixture simmering in a beaker over a lit Bunsen burner. The color shifted as the bright drops swirled and dissolved into the bubbling liquid. From a vacuum-sealed jar on the table, she measured out 0.03 milligrams of an extremely fine powder. When she added it to the beaker, lines of dark blue spread through the mixture like ink, but when she stirred it with a thin glass rod, the solution cleared.

"Almost there."

Another alert buzzed through the computer's speakers. The tone was lower—a grating sound meant to draw attention—but she didn't spare the screen more than a cursory glance.

The door behind her opened; the hiss of the airtight seal releasing would've made that obvious even if the door's handle hadn't clicked as it lowered and announced company.

A leanly muscled, olive-skinned guy wearing a LyoLabs security uniform walked into the room, a Colt handgun in his hand. He kept it pointed at the floor.

"I don't care how impatient you are," she said without turning around. "There is no possible way for me to make these machines work any faster. Either shoot me, or let me get back to my work."

"Adila?"

"Who else?" she muttered. "It's not like you assholes let me have assistants anymore."

He stopped at the wall display that had been flashing a red alert box. When he saw what was written there in bold black-and-white Korean letters, he cursed. When he crossed the room, his footsteps were heavy and quick. "Adila, we have to go. Now."

"Go. Stay. Come. Work. I'm not a goddamn dog!" She slammed her hand down. The stirring rod clenched in her fist shattered when it hit the countertop. Releasing the broken pieces, she turned. "If you want me to figure this out, leave me alone and let me— Who are you?"

Though the gun-wielding newcomer was dressed as a guard, he looked like he might be twenty at the oldest. He seemed too young to be working there, but his dark eyes searched the room with purpose, and he held his Colt like someone with decades of experience shooting it.

"I'm your ticket out of here if you follow me," he said. "But the offer won't be worth anything in about four and a half minutes."

Adila hesitated only a moment. In a burst of motion, she grabbed a flash drive and jammed it into one of the computers, activating a command to back up the data.

"Time is running out," the guy warned. "Is that info worth our lives?"

"It's worth a hell of a lot more than that." Adila dumped the clear liquid from the bubbling beaker into the sink, then filled the beaker with a solution from a large bottle next to the sink, and poured the rest of the bottle's contents and all of the green-filled vials down the drain. When the computer flashed Backup Complete, she ejected the flash drive and pressed it into her rescuer's hand.

After executing a command to format the computer and wipe the drive clean, Adila followed the stranger out of the lab, slowly stripping the hazmat suit as she walked, dropping the pieces behind her.

As the suit fell away, the body underneath it became visible—and the scars that body wore. Old, healed burns from pinky finger to elbow up the side of her left arm. A misshapen bump on her nose that might've been a badly treated break. Thin lines were almost hidden in the natural creases of her neck, but they were too pale against her tan skin to disappear completely.

"Annyeong, fuckers," she said as the door shut behind them.

Who's afraid of the Bigger Badder Wolf? Wolfess. Whatever.

The taunting words fell flat even in Blake's head.

She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes when the words on the tablet began to blur. The way her eyes burned wasn't just from staring at the computer screen; pretending it was wouldn't make it true. Her chest ached and her eyes watered. Brain throbbing with exhaustion, she folded her arms on the kitchen table and let her head drop.

No matter how hard Blake pulled bravado around herself like armor plating, she was afraid. She'd been scared of Garret Hadley and Lillian French even before she knew their names, had had nightmares about them when all she knew was that they were the target of her father's latest—last—investigation. That fear had only gotten worse, grown claws and fangs and a spiked tail, since she gained actual information about the people her father had been tracking down.

The same people who'd had him killed.

But fear hadn't stopped her mother from becoming one of the best helicopter pilots in the Army, and it hadn't stopped her father from investigating killers, corporations, and thieves for the FBI.

It sure as hell wouldn't stop Blake from helping the people trying to take down her father's murderer.

Garret Hadley was already dead, but Lillian French wasn't. Back in February, she'd tried to either kill or kidnap Blake—no one was sure which had been the ultimate goal. Still, the incident probably meant that Lillian or someone working for her thought Blake had information. About their goals, about their organization, about where her father might have hidden information, or about something else entirely.

"That's why I need to read through everything," Blake had argued earlier in the week. Her two guards and her co-protectee, Bernard, had eyed her with sympathy. Or skepticism. Both expressions had only made her fight harder. "Look, we already know that I don't remember anything important, but that doesn't mean I don't actually know anything! Maybe there's a detail in those files that will jog a memory, okay? At least let me try."

They'd given in and loaded her tablet with all—or at least a lot—of the files they had on Garret Hadley, Lillian French, and Redwell. A week later the only change was that her nightmares were full of new faces, vivid details, and so much more blood. She'd read through it all, and she hadn't slept more than a few hours a night for the last two days.

Going through it again was only making things worse.

She was doing it anyway. Nightmares weren't anything new. Not after watching the video of her mom's helicopter being bombed out of the sky six years ago. And definitely not after seeing the pictures of the bloody car wreck that had taken her dad four months ago.

War and sabotage. It all ended the same way, with bloodshed and grieving families left behind to pick up the pieces.

Lifting her head, she pressed the button to wake up the tablet screen and read.

It wasn't long after Lillian French's arrival that Redwell began cooperating more closely with the technology development teams of various armed forces, working with those divisions to research and then develop new tech, weapons, and systems instead of only manufacturing existing designs. It appears that she was instrumental in several of these early agreements and contracts, and so her progression from lackey to official military liaison for Redwell's military work was quick and nearly unobstructed.

The chair across from her scraped against the tile floor. "How far in are you?"

"Finished. Second run now." Blake put the tablet down and rubbed her eyes. "I just got to the part where she joins Redwell."

"Hmm." With the tips of his fingers, Bernard shifted his large black coffee mug a quarter turn. "The nightmares will only get worse if you go through this again."

As much as Blake would've liked to deny that, she knew it wouldn't work. Especially not after she'd just finished thinking the same thing. Plus, it was a small house, and she'd woken up screaming twice this week. "I know, but I can handle nightmares. I've had them before."

"Nightmares of your own past are different. You earned those scars." There was concern in his dark eyes and in the lines of his face. "This isn't yours to carry. You don't need this to dig itself any deeper into your head."

"You think this isn't already in my head?" Blake scoffed. Her eyes still burned and the ache in her chest twinged at what she was about to say, but she could ignore it when faced with Bernard's genuine care and worry. "Garret had my dad killed."

"And Garret is dead." Bernard seemed resigned, like he had no expectation that his words would actually be listened to. "You can't get revenge against a dead man."

"I can make sure the witch he was working with doesn't profit off of whatever plans they had," she said through gritted teeth. "It's what my dad would do if he were here."

Bernard nodded at that, a sad smile on his lips. "I'm pretty sure you're right."

The lump that rose in Blake's throat was smaller than it had been four months ago—or even four weeks ago—but it was still enough to trap everything that she wanted to say.

He'd barely known her dad, but one thing Bernard seemed to understand was how dedicated Special Agent Isaac Marks had been to tracking down the bad guys and building a strong enough case against them to lock them in prison for the rest of their lives. He'd been excellent at his job, but he hadn't been invincible. Garret's hired thugs had proven that.

"I just don't know if Isaac would be proud of you for doing this, or be trying to shoot me for letting you get involved. Probably both," Bernard said with a sigh. Draining the last of his coffee, he got up and put the empty cup in the sink. "Have you seen Scott in the last few minutes?"

Blake shook her head and pulled the tablet closer, touching the button to activate the screen again. "I don't think I've seen him since lunch."

Three months ago, she never would've thought being guarded 24-7 could become so commonplace that she stopped noticing. It helped that Scott and Max, their two bodyguards, were excellent at being unobtrusive. Even when they refused to let Blake and Bernard out of their sight anywhere but in the house. It probably also helped that Blake had spent most of her life around soldiers and paranoid, government official/secret agent types, so these two had become familiar fast.

"I'm going to go find Scott." Bernard patted her shoulder gently as he passed. "We're running low on some bathroom things."

Nodding, Blake bit her lip and kept reading.

Susan Phan was hired by Lillian in 1999, two years after Lillian's promotion to military liaison. After five years working directly under the military liaison, Susan moved laterally into a position in Redwell's security. We now believe this switch was made so that Susan could act as an intermediary between Garret and Lillian, coordinating work on their various shadow ops. She was promoted to director of security for Redwell's corporate office within eighteen months of the initial transfer.

For a few minutes, the only sound was the soft ticking of the clock on the wall and the laughter of the kids a couple houses away. The window in the kitchen was open, the curtains closed. Scott and Max had argued with Blake over that, but she'd won. It wasn't like the glass was bulletproof. If someone dangerous wanted to get into the house, a closed window wasn't going to stop them. The fresh air helped clear Blake's mind, and the noise of life in the neighborhood kept her from feeling like this two-story, three-bedroom cottage was a comfortably appointed prison.

She'd spent a lot of time the last month of their residence in Rhode Island listening to the neighborhood, and paranoia had made her hypervigilant. By sound alone, she knew the neighbors and their habits. She didn't always notice the normal sounds anymore, but she paid a hell of a lot of attention when something fell out of sync with the patterns she'd learned. Something like the fast, pounding footsteps getting closer. Their house was the last lot on a dead-end road, and there was nothing but a thick line of trees behind them. Plus, people didn't go jogging on this street.

She opened her mouth to call for Bernard and Scott.

Someone dove through the open kitchen window.

They flew over the sink and easily cleared the countertop, tucking into a ball as gravity brought them down. Hitting the ground rolling, they were on their feet in a graceful flash.

A second later, Blake was on hers. She lifted her arm from the folds of her long, khaki skirt and aimed her mother's beautifully customized, antique Smith & Wesson revolver at their chest.

"Make a move for a weapon, and I'll shoot you," she warned. "Who are you?"

They turned slowly and lifted their hands about a foot away from their body. Average height, medium build, olive skin, and male, as far as Blake could tell. He had hair like hers—black, cut to about an inch long, and curly—and his face was ambiguously young. Blake wasn't sure if he was closer to fourteen or twenty-two.

"Uh, hi." Clearing his throat, he smiled sheepishly. It was a smile that brought out a dimple in his right cheek and made him look a lot younger. "I come in peace?"

"I don't." Somehow he seemed nearly harmless; if Blake hadn't just watched him dive-bomb through a window, she might've believed it. "Who are you?"

He held his hands higher, the gesture somewhere between placation and surrender. "It's okay, Blake." She blinked but didn't lower the weapon. "I'm Daelan Calver. My family sent the team who got you out of Baltimore."

"How do I know you didn't steal that information or . . . something?" She looked to the side, down the hallway. Where the hell were her supposed bodyguards? And Bernard?

"I guess you don't. But I also don't think you're going to do much damage trying to shoot me with an unloaded gun."

"Unloaded?" Her dark eyes locked on his, she pulled the hammer back, and moved her finger to the trigger. "Willing to bet?"

"Blake, no!" Bernard burst in, tearing into the room so fast he had to grab the wall to keep himself upright. His eyes were wide as he took in the showdown. "You all right, Daelan?"

"Yep. 'S all good." He grinned at Blake, his expression relaxing even more when she released the hammer and slowly lowered the weapon.

"This is really Daelan?" Only now did her voice and her hand start to shake. A lot.

"Yes." Bernard swallowed and nodded slowly before he eased away from the wall and stretched his arms out to her. "Daelan isn't going to hurt us. I promise."

When Bernard rested his hand on her shoulder, Blake let out a long, shuddering breath, then nodded once, the gesture sharp. She placed the weapon into the pocket of her skirt.

"It has pockets? That can fit a gun?" Daelan looked delighted. "Where'd you get that? My sister would love that skirt." His expression dissolved into something serious—one that made her revise his age up a few years again—before Blake could respond. He glanced at Bernard. "Where are your guards?"

"Max is sleeping. I thought Scott was checking the perimeter, but . . ." There was fear in Bernard's eyes. "He wasn't out there, was he?"

"If he didn't shoot at me when I parkoured myself through the window, then, no. We can assume he wasn't." He stepped left, reaching for Blake's tablet. "We need to move. Now."

"Why didn't you use the door?" Bernard turned toward the front of the house. "And where are Cassidy and Hugo?"

"Mom didn't come. Dad and Aaron are tailing someone suspicious we saw lurking nearby, and I saw someone in the woods, watching the front, so the door wasn't a good option. We need to get moving before—"

Glass shattered. A bullet smacked into the wall.

"Get down!" Daelan ducked and rolled, dropping the tablet in favor of a gun as he came up in the protection of the wall dividing the dining room from the living room.

Blake pressed against the cabinets on the other side of the room, revolver back in her hand and eyes wide. The thin material of her skirt and loose white crop tank top was far from Kevlar. Bernard had fallen to the tile floor, hands covering his head like this was a tornado drill.

"Bernard! Grab that tablet!" Daelan ordered. "Both of you get low and crawl here! Fast."

She bunched up her skirt and scampered across the kitchen floor as quickly as she could manage. Bernard grabbed the tablet and moved right behind her.

"Why the hell didn't I take a comm?" Daelan muttered as he pulled out an old Nokia and pushed a single button to call someone. "Under fire. Multiple enemies. Civilians intact. Situation dire. Sweep the forest."

He hung up and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. They all flinched when something clattered into the kitchen. It looked like a matte-green metal canister with a lever stuck to the top.

It couldn't be . . .

Daelan's breath gusted out of his chest, the sound pained, and his eyes locked on the device. "Consarn it all to hell!" He sprinted across the kitchen, scooping up the projectile and chucking it out the window. Momentum dropped him back to the floor. "Stay down!"

Boom.

Screams from outside. Light flashed through the window. So bright. Like lightning had struck the yard. And the explosion was loud. So loud. Her ears rang, a constant high-pitched noise overlaying everything else. Noise and light, but no fire. Flash-bang.

Daelan rolled to his feet, a wild-eyed look on his face. The gun he pulled out of his pocket was small, a subcompact, but he held it expertly as he edged toward the window. Blake aimed her gun through the living room at the front door.

Where was Max? There was no way anyone could sleep through this noise. If he hadn't come running, there wasn't much of a chance he was conscious. Or . . . No. Blake's mind shied away from the only other possibility. The only likely possibility.

Daelan fired two rounds. "There are more coming. If you know how to use that thing, Blake, you better get ready to pull the trigger."

Swallowing, Blake nodded. She hoped Daelan saw the motion, because speaking wasn't an option right now. Fear had closed her throat; each breath was a struggle. Her ears still rang, but thankfully that was beginning to recede.

Thirty seconds of undisturbed silence. Daelan was at the window, waiting and watching. Blake's hands trembled. She kept the weapon pointed at the door anyway. Perfect aim wasn't a requirement. She just had to stall whoever came into the house long enough for Daelan to take care of them.

When Bernard shifted next to her, discomfort and fear on his face, Daelan made a noise to catch their attention, then lifted his hand, palm flat and fingertips pointed toward the ceiling. A simple sign for "Whatever you're doing, stop." Bernard froze, and the tremor in Blake's hands subsided.

Daelan strode to the door on the opposite side of the kitchen, peering out to the back porch. Blake turned to the front door.

The kitchen shared an open plan with the dining room, but the wall Blake was using as cover separated that space from the main living area. A long mirror in a rustic frame hung along one wall, and curtained windows took up most of the other two. It was only because of the mirror that Blake noticed the shadow moving past the opposite windows.

"Tssst!"

Daelan looked her way instantly. She pointed toward the motion. Nodding, he walked silently in her direction, but didn't veer off toward the living room. Instead, he eased into the short hallway leading to the master suite.

Holding his finger to his lips, he motioned for them to head for the stairs opposite their hiding place. She was breathing too quickly, and her pulse rushed even faster. As soon as she stood enough to take a step, all of that adrenaline racing through her body sharpened her focus. She grabbed Bernard's arm and raced toward the stairs. And almost tripped on her skirt. Swallowing a curse, she rucked it out of the way and picked up the pace.

Should she go to the second story? No. That would put them too far away from Daelan. What if someone trying to get in the house climbed up on the eave and through a window upstairs? Scott and Max had warned her that— No. Staying within sight of Daelan was better.

When Bernard would've continued past the landing between the floors, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop, shaking her head. He looked confused, but then his gaze shifted to Daelan, and he nodded, crouching in the corner of the small space. She pressed her back against the wall, aiming her gun down the steps. From here she could see up to the second story, but she could also see Daelan. She could watch his back if anyone tried to sneak up behind him.

He glided silently down the hall, stopping just outside the bedroom, his head cocked like he was listening. Then he settled. His shoulders dropped. The arm holding his gun relaxed. His chest expanded enough that the breath was visible from more than ten feet away.

What is he doing?

Daelan dropped to his knees in the open doorway of the master bedroom. He aimed.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Four shots. One scream. Two solid thuds, like deadweight hitting a wood floor.

Blake shuddered.

There were bodies in that room now. No longer people, just masses of meat and bone and blood.

Bile rose in her throat. Bad people, she tried to remind herself. They had been coming for her and Bernard. To capture them or to kill them.

Daelan stood and reholstered his gun as he moved down the hall toward Blake and Bernard. There was no sign of what he'd just done in his eyes. Nothing on his face. As he approached, Blake was absolutely positive this wasn't the first time he'd fired a gun and ended a life. She should be grateful that he'd been here to do what she might not have been able to, but . . . it wasn't that simple.

"What do you need to get?" he asked. "It can't be more than we can carry out of here in the next five—" His head snapped to the right and his hand went to the single-strap backpack he had slung across his back. He wasn't reaching for the easy-access weapon. It had to be out of bullets. Someone was coming.

Daelan ran toward the stairs, ducking so low he was almost bent in half.

A man in jeans and a Kevlar vest burst into the hallway behind him. His face, even at a distance, was familiar. Tan skin, sharp nose, deep-set dark eyes, long face. This was one of the two men who'd tried to kidnap—maybe kill—Blake in February. And now he was barreling toward Daelan with murderous determination on his face.

Shit.

Blake fired.

Daelan dropped to his knees and spun in one motion, a different, larger gun in his hand. He followed up her shot with two more. Hers had struck the thigh. His first bullet ripped into the guy's throat. The second dug itself into the wall when he slumped to the floor. There were several more gunshots from outside.

Oh God. Her hands shook. Her skin chilled. I shot someone.

Daelan stood up, the motion full of a surety Blake couldn't hope to match right now. His gun loosely gripped, he crossed to the man and used the toe of his boot to nudge the body spilling red onto the pale-wood floor. When the guy didn't react, Daelan nodded and pulled a phone out of his backpack, a different one than he'd used to report in before. He swiped at the screen for a few seconds before putting the phone away and slipping the gun into the holster peeking out of his pocket.

"So." Daelan looked at Blake, his expression so carefully neutral that she didn't have a hope of reading it. "What say we pack up and get the hell out of here before the next guys roll up with a rocket launcher?"

Blake closed her eyes and tried not to cry.

Everything blurred after she gave in to the tears. Only a few moments stood out in highly detailed relief.

Daelan peeling Blake's too-tight grip off the revolver, his skin warm and dry against her cool, clammy hand, and his murmured words meaningless but soothing. He smelled like sulfur. Like gunpowder and burned-out matches.

Being introduced to Hugo Calver and Aaron Tanvers, Hugo's stolid stance and Aaron's empathetic smile almost reassuring.

Dazedly helping Bernard grab clothes and gear for them both while the others hurriedly packed the most important tech and possessions in the house.

Getting shuffled into an SUV and racing out of Providence.

A bottle of orange juice being pushed into her hand, the condensation further chilling her skin, and Daelan softly but insistently urging her to drink it instead of stare at it.

More than an hour in the backseat of the SUV with Daelan and Bernard, squished between the two but looking at neither, their warmth just enough to keep her from shivering.

Switching cars and splitting up, Bernard and Hugo, Daelan's father, getting into a dull-gold sedan while Daelan guided Blake into the backseat of a different SUV with Aaron driving.

Through it all, she spoke and breathed and slept a little, but none of it felt real. Most of her mind was back in Providence.

When she closed her eyes, she heard the blast of the flash-bang and the pops of the gunshots, felt the recoil of her revolver and the thudding terror of the attack.

And she saw the bloody body.

There had been so much blood. Some of that blood had been spilled because of her bullet.

The man who had died was the same one who had tried to kidnap her once already, though. He might've been one of the people involved in her father's car accident.

Both of those facts should have made her feel better. She'd thought they would, had wished for the deaths of everyone who had a hand in the plan to kill her dad. But now one of them was dead, and whatever family he had in the world would be left to mourn him. If they ever knew what had happened today at all.

Around her, and now because of her, there had been too much bloodshed and loss in her sixteen years of life. She didn't want to think about it, couldn't face it, so she let herself sink into the recesses of her mind. The chill over her skin helped her become numb.

For a while, it helped her forget.

Apparently, wherever they were going was far enough that they had to stop on the way there.

After simple—but surprisingly effective—disguises were in place on everyone, Daelan and Hugo checked them into a motel outside Oneonta, New York, while Blake stayed in the car with Aaron. Once they had room keys, Blake followed them into the motel, trying to ignore the blur that reading glasses made of the world, the itch of the long black wig Daelan had helped pin on in the car, and the too-tight fit of the SUNY Oneonta sweatshirt Aaron had bought at a gas station just outside of town.

Room assignments happened seamlessly: Daelan and Hugo ushered Blake into one while Aaron and Bernard claimed the second. Hugo, who looked very much like Daelan, only with lighter eyes and hair cut down until it was like a shadow over his head, sat on the bed closest to the door with a laptop open on his thighs, and a cell phone held between his shoulder and his ear. It wasn't much of a conversation; he wasn't saying a word.

Without the noise of the engine and the murmur of Daelan and Aaron's quiet conversation as a distraction, Blake didn't know what to do. Sleep would mean nightmares, but what else was there? Sitting on the bed and staring at the beige wall didn't sound appealing either.

"You doing all right?" Daelan gently asked as he handed over a hastily packed backpack of clothes.

Nod. Smile. Pretend everything is fine. It wasn't clear if Daelan believed it. Which was okay; Blake didn't quite believe it either.

"Go ahead and shower now if you want. We'll eat and then, hopefully, you can get some sleep." His lips parted like he was considering saying something else, but he shook his head. "Let me know if you need anything, okay?"

It was as good a plan as any, and as a bonus, someone else had come up with it. Blake nodded again—because words wouldn't come—took the backpack, and retreated into the bathroom. A shower wouldn't fix anything, but that didn't mean it wouldn't help.

Blake began to feel a little less shaky and a lot more human after vigorously scrubbing the day off skin, hair, and teeth. Digging through the backpack, Blake tried to find something that felt right. The flowy skirt had been nice this morning, but when the world started to implode, there had definitely been an internal longing for jeans and sneakers instead of sandals and an overflow of cotton.

It wasn't just the clothes, though. "She" no longer felt right. Blake needed to become someone else, to adjust internal and external expectations, and "he" felt better. Stronger. Which was stupid and played straight into the gender expectations Blake had spent years shedding like costumes—or trying to—but the world was made up of or, not and. People treated Blake differently based on what they assumed was between his legs. He fought that binary most of the time, but some days . . . Whatever. Sometimes it couldn't be helped.

Running a hand over the options, Blake gripped a baggy pair of men's jeans and a medium-gray shirt that would hang loose on his toned frame. In the skirt and the crop tank top he'd been wearing before, his small breasts and the curve of his waist were highlighted. Outfits like this accentuated his height and the breadth of his shoulders. His short hair—much easier to manage than the shoulder-length cut he'd had last year—easily blended in either direction. Sports bra and boxers went underneath it all.

Although none of the clothes would be any better at stopping bullets than the skirt had been, he still felt better dressed in the solid layers. It was like armor, and he needed that today.

Hugo was gone when Blake left the bathroom ten minutes later, and Daelan stood in the center of the room, talking on his cell phone.

"That should be fine. Just remember she's also allergic to nuts," Daelan said.

"He." It was an unthinking correction, out of his mouth before his filter could stop it. He cringed. His friends and his family had gotten used to his shifting pronouns, but strangers? The reactions could be . . . unpleasant. He held his breath, stomach sinking, and waited to see which way the pendulum would swing this time.

Daelan blinked, nodded once, and kept talking. A little of the tension in Blake's chest eased.

"Check the ingredients, okay? We can't risk having to take him to a hospital because of an allergic reaction." He hung up the phone and looked at Blake. "Do you use 'he' all the time, then?"

He raised an eyebrow at Daelan. "Do I look like a girl right now?"

"Because of the clothes? My sister wears stuff like that all the time. Hell, I've worn more than a few skirts. Clothes don't necessarily mean much." He shrugged. "You don't have to explain if you don't want to. I'm just curious. Whatever pronoun you use is fine; just let me know so I don't get it wrong again."

"You haven't."

Another blink. "Uhh, you just told me to call—"

Blake exhaled heavily. Maybe it would be better to get the full explanations out of the way. "If you know about my allergies, then you must have my medical records."

Daelan's expression turned guarded, almost like he was bracing for a tirade. "Yeah, we do."

"Then you know I'm intersex."

"Yes, but that's . . ." His lips pursed and his nose wrinkled. "Yes, I did make pronoun assumptions earlier because of the skirt—which I still think my sister would love—but that's because when I looked it up, there wasn't a pronoun for intersex."

"Trust me, I know."

"Yeah, sorry. I'm sure you do," he said, ducking his head and looking a bit sheepish. "But you don't . . . Don't you mind people switching pronouns on you all the time?"

Blake shook his head. "No. It's easier to let them make assumptions. I don't really feel like either gender—or some days I feel like both—so I don't mind the switch. My friends go with whatever I'm presenting as that day." He picked at a loose thread hanging off the pocket of his jeans, unable to meet Daelan's eyes. "I used to text my dad every morning to let him know if it was a 'he' day or a 'she' day."

Daelan cleared his throat. "What about 'they' or something off the binary?"

The last time someone asked that question, it had been a psychology guest lecturer at Blake's boarding school. That asshole used the question as a precursor to a twenty-minute tirade on the harm Blake was doing to the progress and equality of nonbinary people everywhere by not adopting a more fitting, permanent, alternative pronoun. Blake probably would've punched the guy if Blake's friends hadn't dragged him out of the classroom. That sort of pointless righteousness wasn't what he saw in Daelan's face, so he took a long breath and took a chance.

"My life is complicated enough without becoming a walking lesson in the grammar of alternative pronouns. I'm not hiding who I am, but I don't want to debate the world day after day." Blake looked up. "I might change my mind eventually. Not now, though. Partially because once that conversation starts, all the rest of my labels get involved and things get even more convoluted."

Instead of confused, Daelan looked intrigued. "How many labels do you have?"

Smirking, Blake shrugged. "A few."

Not long after Blake's birth, the doctors had informed Isaac and Kim-Ly Marks that their infant was intersex. It took a few weeks, though, for those same doctors to grudgingly admit that neither surgery nor heavy hormone replacement was vital to Blake's health.

After that, his parents had taught themselves—and later Blake—about living outside the binary. He'd been raised not as male or female, but as Blake. Even the name they'd chosen was intentionally unisex and inherently contradictory. "Blake" meant light and dark, and it was used for both male and female children.

Growing up, Blake had always been both and neither.

From early conversations about gender, it hadn't been a leap for his mom and dad to teach him about the sexuality spectrum, the romantic spectrum, the expectations of society, and how all of that would inevitably shape how Blake saw himself no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

His labels had changed daily as a kid, something his parents had encouraged, but they'd been surprisingly stable since he was thirteen. Three years and, so far, his exhaustive personal description still felt as accurate as the English language could get. It took a while to say, though.

"Like?" Daelan's gaze was intently focused on Blake's face, not a single trace of disgust or judgment in his expression.

Most of the time people asked because they saw Blake as the jackpot of the "look how tolerant I am because I'm friends with a (fill in the blank)" game. That didn't seem to be why Daelan wanted to know. "You really want all of them?"

"Yeah. If there are that many, I definitely want all of them."

Blake rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm mixed race, multiethnic, allergic to more things than I want to name, intersex because of partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, expressively gender-fluid but mentally agender, and panromantic graysexual. There are more, but those are the most important ones."

"Well, I'm mixed race, multiethnic, only allergic to certain painkillers, expressively male but gender indifferent, and sapiosexual with a strong competence kink." Daelan slid his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall, his smile small but warm. "It's nice to finally meet you, Blake."

"Nice to finally meet you." Finally. Everything Blake had been trying to ignore about today—about the past several months—came rushing back with that word.

Daelan and his family had been protecting Blake from a distance for months prior to this meeting, and watching Isaac Marks's investigation into Garret Hadley and Redwell, Inc. for longer than that. Blake hadn't met the Calvers before today, but even though none of them had been there the day two fake FBI agents couldn't finish Blake's emergency code phrase, the Calvers were why Bernard, Max, and Scott had been in time to save his life.

Taking a slow breath, Blake tried to smile back. "You too, Daelan." But the Pandora's box of thoughts had been opened, and now Blake couldn't shove them away fast enough to focus on anything but, "Why today? How did you guys know to come get us?"

"We got a message." The smile on Daelan's lips fell flat, his open, pleasant expression becoming almost eerily unreadable.

"That seems like it should be a good thing? At least, considering . . ." Considering what could have—would have—happened if they hadn't arrived when they did.

Daelan winced, the shift of expression so fast Blake almost missed it. "No, it's not—" Growling something that didn't sound like English, he rubbed his hand over his face. "The problem is that the message came from an anonymous source."

"And that's bad?" Anonymity seemed like it'd be a common thing in the world of freelance bodyguards/assassins/whatever the hell the Calvers were.

"The fact that not even my mom can trace the trail all the way back to a source that makes sense? Yeah. Very bad." Daelan exhaled slowly, pulling out the desk chair and sitting down. "You haven't met Mom yet, but she's a techno wizard. If she can't track an electronic message, then something is definitely dodgy in Denmark. It means there's someone out there who doesn't want us to know who they are—but who knows exactly who we are—and they seem to have access to information that could be a lot of use to us. Or could destroy us."

"Oh." Blake sat on one of the double beds, hoping it hid the way his knees had buckled. "Yeah, that sounds potentially bad."

"Sorry. I'm being a little overdramatic about this, but I don't like not knowing things."

"No one knows everything."

One side of Daelan's mouth curled up. "Maybe not, but I can sure as hell try."

Someone knocked on the door.

At the first knock, Daelan was on his feet, smoothly pulling a gun out of a holster that he apparently had hidden at the small of his back. Blake's revolver was on the nightstand five feet away.

Two more slow knocks.

Daelan's head cocked toward the door. Blake rolled into the space between the beds and crawled for his gun.

One more slow knock. Two quick.

Thunk.

The door unlocked. Daelan lowered the weapon but didn't put it away, not until Hugo, Aaron, and Bernard entered the room. Hugo and Bernard walked in with damp hair, like they'd just showered. Aaron carried three plastic bags with THANK YOU printed repeatedly down the side. Surrounding the men was an odd combination of smells: soap and Thai food.

Daelan's gun disappeared from sight quickly, but it took a couple minutes of deep, even breaths—each one infusing his brain with more mouthwatering scents as Aaron and Hugo unpacked dinner—before Blake relinquished the revolver and stopped shaking. It was too soon after Providence for another spike of terror and adrenaline like that. He'd run out quickly. Maybe. If that was even possible.

Can you become immune to adrenaline?

"Yes, in a way. I've seen a theory about people developing adrenaline resistance because of consistently heavy stress, but I don't buy it. I think, unless you have some sort of genetic predisposition for it, the possibility of that happening naturally is way beyond long-shot odds," Daelan said as he unpacked dinner. "Though there was one study a few years ago that involved injecting adrenaline directly into the brains of mice. They couldn't seem to feel fear after that."

Blake blinked. "What?"

"Adrenaline immunity." Daelan looked up, squinting a little. "You just asked about it."

"I said that out loud?"

"Did you not mean to?" Daelan seemed more confused, not less.

"No." Blake covered his face, digging his fingers into his hair. "I should just go to bed."

"Food first," Hugo said. "A blood-sugar crash will only make the loopiness worse."

Blake rubbed his hands down his face and made himself open his eyes. "And this is life for you guys? This is what you do every day?"

Despite both of his parents having dangerous jobs, Blake had never gotten caught in that before, had never seen firsthand the kind of situations they put themselves in. Now, he couldn't comprehend the reality of it. How did anyone ever get used to this kind of fear? Not the nebulous, distant kind he'd been living with the last few months, but the solid, very real dread that death might be waiting on the other side of every door.

"Only recently," Daelan said, that inscrutable blankness back on his face. Hugo glanced at his son as he placed a container of red curried chicken over rice on the bed near Blake.

"It's not like you don't know how to handle yourself. I heard you did well today." Aaron smiled with his lips, but the rest of his expression looked hesitant, like he wasn't sure Blake would take the compliment well. Unsure or not, he kept talking. "Where'd you learn to shoot?"

"My mother was an Army pilot and my father was a federal agent. They took me to the gun range as soon as I was big enough not to get knocked over by the recoil." He'd been fond of the memory once, but now that feeling was tempered by loss and time. And the much more vivid image of blood on pale-wood floors.

"That's right. I forgot your mom was military." Wistful regret crept across Aaron's face. "I was a Marine for almost a decade."

"Oh, stop it, Moaning Myrtle," Daelan sniped. "You're still a Marine. I checked your status, like, three days ago."

Aaron's full lips rolled between his teeth and his right eye twitched. "We both know that ain't gonna last."

"And I told you I have strings to pull, but I can't do anything until this whole mess is resolved." Hugo said this like the argument was old and the statement practically rote.

Blake knew a little bit of Aaron's story from Bernard. He was a Marine sergeant but had gone AWOL back in January, risking a solid career to hunt down the people who'd convincingly staged his sister Jenna's suicide. It was the stuff Shakespearean dramas and blockbuster thrillers were made of, and it pained Blake to see that kind of devotion punished.

"I can . . ." All four men looked at Blake, and all of them waited for him to find the words. "I mean, if this goes well and I'm somehow alive at the end of it, the special agent in charge of the Baltimore branch of the FBI is my honorary uncle, so I might have some strings too. If you need them."

Aaron seemed shocked. Bernard and Hugo looked pleased. Daelan, for some reason, looked a little pissed. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything? But Blake couldn't leave it there, so he steeled himself and tried to explain.

"You all saved my life today. For the second time." He ran his hand over his short curls. They'd be overly fluffy without some kind of product taming them, but he couldn't be assed to care right now. "If we make it through this in one piece, making sure you don't get court-martialed is the least I can do."

"Well, I—" Aaron coughed, his golden-brown skin flushing darker on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. "Um, I might take both of you up on that. Thank you."

The rest of the meal passed smoothly as the conversation moved to easier topics—mostly the rest of the Calvers waiting back at what they all kept calling "the Citadel"—and soon Aaron was collecting the empty to-go containers and tossing them in the trash, and Blake was aiming for the bathroom. Brushing his teeth to avoid waking up with Thai-flavored morning breath sounded like a good idea.

Before he could step into the bathroom, Daelan touched his elbow with just enough pressure to hold him in place. Daelan's eyes, when Blake met them, were intense.

"You're not going to die, Blake. We won't let you." Oh. Was that why Daelan had looked mad? "So don't talk like it's the most likely outcome."

The words were confident and his expression determined, but Blake couldn't truly believe him. Not after losing both of his parents to the kind of violence he suddenly found himself in the eye of. Not after fake federal agents had tried to abduct him from his school. Not after his supposed safe house had been attacked.

One of the only things Blake knew for certain was that life guaranteed nothing.

Smiling ruefully at Daelan's inexplicable optimism, Blake patted the guy's shoulder. "I know you'll try. And I'll try not to make your job any harder than it already is."

If they were being honest, that was all anyone could ask.

Narrow, evenly spaced windows lined one wall of the room, but didn't allow in much light. Fluorescents set into the ceiling provided the rest of the illumination for the two men and one woman sitting at the long conference table.

The woman stood, smoothing the front of her forest-green suit jacket. It hugged her full curves, the color vibrant against her black blouse and the black pencil skirt clinging to her thighs. Her green eyeshadow was equally bright against her mahogany skin.

"Gomapseumnida." From the table, she picked up a wooden box with the golden emblem of Patek Philippe stamped on the top and held it between her hands. She offered it to one of the men across the table. "You've been a great help. I think we may be able to wrap this phase of research up soon and move on to more lucrative projects."

"Cheonmaneyo, Lillian." The man stood and took the box with both hands, bowing. He placed it on the table and then picked up a similarly sized box, this one gleaming metal, marked with the logo of LyoLabs, and locked. He offered it to her in the same manner, held between both hands and extended. "We wish you much success in your endeavors."

Inclining her head, she took the box. "A month or two more should do it, gentlemen, but rest assured that I will keep you informed if the timeline changes in any way."

"Ms. French, a word?"

Lillian looked toward the door to the conference room and smiled. "Ah. Right on time. Gentlemen, you remember my associate, Susan Phan?" The men nodded and exchanged greetings with the newcomer in Korean, but otherwise kept most of their focus on Lillian. Smiling at Susan, she said, "I'll be out in a moment."

Susan nodded and backed out, closing the door behind her.

"Annyeonghi gyeseyo," Lillian said, bowing her head to the men across the table.

Carrying the silver box, Lillian French strode from the room, the heels of her green shoes clacking against the floorboards. Susan waited just outside and fell into step beside her with ease. Neither woman spoke as they left the blocky office building.

They slid into the black Mercedes sedan waiting for them in the circular drop-off, and as the car pulled away from the curb, Lillian eyed her companion expectantly.

"It's been all but confirmed. We're ninety-five percent sure that Gasper and the Marks kid got out alive. Possibly injured but . . ." Susan shook her head. "It's not like they're going to go to a hospital and use their real names."

"No, of course not." Lillian frowned, perturbation in the lines between her eyebrows. "And we're getting this intel how?"

"John got out—injured, but alive. According to his report, the strike team took out the exterior guard. They were about to take the occupants when backup moved in out of nowhere. Everything went to hell in minutes. Javier Martinez is dead."

"And Nuura?"

"Wasn't with them on the op. She was working on a project with Amett and Odira for phase three."

"You do not want to know what it cost me to get that location." Lillian's dark eyes hardened. "And now you're telling me it didn't work? And that another of our team is gone?" Then her expression turned speculative. "What kind of backup?"

"John spotted a car. From his description of the driver, I'm pretty sure it was Hugo Calver and his people."

"That shouldn't have happened. There is no possible way he should've known about that hit." Her wide mouth thinned into a tight line. "Your first priority as of now is to figure out what went wrong. Take Charles with you, and let me know what other resources you need, because I expect answers yesterday."

Susan nodded, pulling out her phone and opening a new email.

Lillian sighed and looked out the window at sunlight glancing off the water of the harbor and the blue sky scattered with small wisps of white clouds. "And here I thought it would actually be a good day."

A sharp turn jolted Blake out of a doze. He gasped and sat up. Unfamiliar streets and signs gave him no way to place himself. "Where are we?"

"Detroit," Aaron said. Looking at him in the late-afternoon light slanting through the windshield, Blake was struck by something like déjà vu. The more time he spent around Aaron, the more Blake felt like the Marine reminded him of someone.

"Why Detroit?"

Daelan turned in his seat, sitting sideways to look back at Blake. "The place we have here is as secure as a suburban house that isn't behind a twenty-foot wall can get. We're also close to the Canadian border, which may or may not be useful. Depends on the situation."

"At least it's summer," Blake said. "I don't feel like braving a Canadian winter anytime soon."

Aaron shuddered. "Hell, no. Between growing up in Florida and spending most of the last eight years in the desert, I think I've completely lost the ability to survive in the snow."

"What kind of Marine would admit defeat just 'cause of a little frozen water?" Daelan teased.

"'A little frozen water,' he says," Aaron muttered as he turned onto a gated, well-manicured, tree-lined residential street. Blake saw Hugo and Bernard's car turn in right behind them. "You spend a night in minus forty and then tell me a little frozen water ain't nothing to worry about."

Daelan laughed.

After about a block, Aaron turned again, bringing them to another gate. Blake shook his head. "Wow. You guys weren't kidding when you said this place was suburbia-secure."

"And did I mention it's on an island?" Daelan asked, grinning as they drove over a short bridge. "'Cause it's on an island."

If a strip of land only wide enough for a two-lane road with houses on either side could be called an island, then yes, Blake supposed it technically was. Halfway down the dead-end street, Aaron slowed to turn left across the divider into the driveway of one of the larger houses on the block.

Most of the island was flat, but this house sat up on a hill that was almost certainly manmade. The house itself was a two-story, Spanish mission–style building, and it looked old, a relic from the first half of the twentieth century, maybe. Ornate carvings around the front door, imitation gas-lamp sconces attached to the exterior walls, and a narrow balcony over the garage gave it a distinctly old-world, and old-money, feel.

"It's even cooler on the inside." Daelan grabbed his bag and Blake's, nodding toward the front door. "C'mon."

Blake wanted to protest that he could carry his own damn bag, but Daelan was already moving up the paved path. The thick, dark wood door opened before Daelan reached it. A tall, muscle-bound guy with rosy skin and short, dark-blond hair stood in the doorway. His pale eyes passed over Daelan and Blake quickly, then settled on someone behind them, a wide smile taking over his face.

"You're late, asshole," the guy said. His voice was pleasantly deep, and Blake couldn't help smiling at the honest relief in his face. But he wasn't talking to Blake. He was looking at Aaron.

"Traffic. Construction. Alien invasion," Aaron said. "Pick your favorite."

"Aliens." The guy swallowed a laugh as he stepped aside to let Blake and Daelan into the house. "The answer is always aliens."

"I'll keep that in mind." The words were murmured, the tone different enough to draw Blake's attention back. Aaron had stopped in front of the guy. There was almost a foot of air between their bodies—not even their hands were touching—but Blake had seen people in the middle of a make-out session seem less intimate than these two.

Then Aaron walked into the house and the moment ended, the shift so sudden and complete that Blake wasn't sure he'd read it right in the first place.

"That's Corporal Geomar Ashley James, retired," Daelan said, walking backward and giving the man a somewhat mocking salute. "He can kill you from a mile away."

"Geo. Just Geo." The guy shook his head, amused annoyance on his expressive face. The faint Southern drawl to his words made him seem even friendlier. "Why do you insist on using my whole name, ijit? And medical discharge ain't retirement. And quit telling people I just met that I can kill them!"

"Please. You love it." Daelan laughed and pointed at Blake. "Geo, this is Blake Marks, and that's Bernard Gasper. Civilians, come say hello to the rest of your honor guard."

The room they walked through looked like it might have been a porch at some point before it had been enclosed. It stretched the width of the house, with Spanish tile on the floor and wide windows letting in lots of light. It was empty except for a couple of wooden rocking chairs. Through an arch directly opposite the front door, Blake saw several people moving in the next room. Stepping in, he blinked at the strange scene.

This room was longer than the first, so long that it made the space seem narrower than it was, and the architecture lent credence to his guess that this place was old. Between the exposed beams on the high ceiling were elaborately painted panels, and the stone fireplace on the far left wall was covered with intricate carvings. In the center of the space, completely ignoring the old-world style of the rest of the house, was a tech command center that reminded Blake of the one in the FBI's Baltimore building. New and old squished into one room.

"Hello, family." Daelan's voice rang off the walls. Dropping the bags to the side of the door, he threw his arms open wide. "I have returned victorious! Try to contain your applause."

"Damn it. Can I please throw him in the river?" a girl asked, her tone way too dry for the threat to be taken seriously. She had thick black hair that hung straight past her shoulders, and green eyes that were crinkled with amusement. "I mean, look. It's right there!"

Laughing, Daelan nodded toward her. "That's Dru Calver: elder sister, expert wielder of sarcasm, and collector of strays."

"I feel like I should be insulted by that," the girl standing next to Dru said. Her tan skin was darker than Dru's but paler than Daelan's. What set her apart from the rest of the people in the house was the way she stood. There was a wary tension in her body, and she seemed to watch everything. Blake had seen similar watchfulness when his dad came back from long undercover missions. It was the stance of someone who'd learned not to trust anything. Or anyone.

"Possibly," Daelan admitted. Then he smirked and nodded at her. "Kindra Weston: ex-bogeyman, most recent stray, and currently Dru's girlfriend."

"Ex-bogeyman?" Blake asked, but wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Kindra's dark eyes met his, no clear emotion on her face. "My parents and my sister are working for the people trying to kill you."

"What?" Blake took a step back. Bernard hadn't told him that. Why would the Calvers have her working with them if that was the case?

Kindra shrugged. "If it makes you feel any better, they tried to kill me too."

"That . . ." Her parents had tried to kill her? "No. That doesn't make me feel better." Blake didn't want to meet the person who would be comforted by that news.

Another shrug, this one dismissive. Dru reached out to touch Kindra's elbow, but didn't say anything.

Daelan's smile looked a bit more forced, but he continued his introductions like nothing awkward had happened, gesturing to Aaron. "Kindra and Sergeant Aaron Christopher Tanvers over there were the most recent additions until Aaron kindly let us borrow his boyfriend." Daelan winked at Geo.

"Borrow," Geo scoffed. "Bastard was trying to save his own ass. I would've killed him if he stayed disappeared much longer."

"My dad, Hugo, you've met," Daelan said, indicating the man though Blake already knew who he was. "He runs logistics, and he's the reason we don't work ourselves stupid most jobs."

Hugo rolled his eyes, but smirked.

"And, of course, that brings us to Cassidy Calver, unconventional mother figure and resident mastermind." As much as Daelan took after Hugo in looks, it seemed Dru had inherited a lot from Cassidy. She had brown hair and hazel eyes, and the golden undertones to her skin could be either a gift of the summer sun or a natural occurrence. Daelan threw his arm around Cassidy's shoulders and pressed a smacking kiss to her cheek. "Team leader. Techno-wizard. Mentor to the next generation of genius."

"Flatterer." Color flushed Cassidy's cheeks, though, and she seemed pleased.

"All of you but Geo know Bernard, obviously, but this is Blake Marks, who's calm under pressure and surprisingly handy with a firearm."

Kindra looked intrigued, but Cassidy and Hugo seemed chagrined.

Cassidy sighed. "I'm sorry that happened, Blake. We're still trying to figure out how the site got leaked. You were supposed to be safe there until we sorted out the rest of this mess with Lillian." She ran her hand over Hugo's closely cut hair, worry on her face. "You made it here clean, right?"

Hugo nodded, but Aaron was the one who answered. "We would've noticed a tail over a trip that long. Unless they were doing it from the air, I highly doubt anyone was following."

The word started a chain reaction of thoughts in Blake's head. He gasped. "Oh! That's who—Michael Ealy!" Everyone turned toward Blake, their expressions a mix of surprise, amusement, and confusion—or, in Aaron's case, embarrassment. "Oh hell. Sorry, but you just . . ."

Kindra smirked at Dru. "I told you it wasn't just me."

"I don't look that much like him," Aaron muttered. Dru laughed.

"You kinda do, babe." Geo grinned when his boyfriend glared.

"Well, except for the scar and the eye color—and I think you're taller than him," Blake said. "Other than that, though? You guys could be brothers."

Geo rubbed Aaron's shoulder, still grinning. "I don't know why the comparison bothers you so much. The man is fine. He's no you, but he's damn fine."

"Get off me, ingrate." Laughing, Aaron elbowed Geo in the chest.

Cassidy smiled indulgently at them. Blake got the impression that she'd emotionally adopted all of them, even if Dru and Daelan were her only biological babies. Despite the strange makeup, this group felt like a family, one that Blake was on the outside of in so many ways. The civilian to their black-ops team. The newcomer to their established dynamic. It was overwhelming, and Blake had no idea how to start settling into something like this.

Uncertain, he hung back, concentrating on keeping his weight balanced instead of allowing himself to overthink and blurt out ridiculous nonsense. There must've been something in his face that clued Daelan in, because he looked sympathetic when he caught Blake's eye.

"The bedrooms are upstairs," Daelan said, tilting in that direction. Nodding, Blake picked up his bag and followed Daelan toward the stairs. "The bed situation ended up working out better than we expected. You and I will have to share a room with Bernard because the couples all ended up in their own—not that it matters most nights, since everyone is sleeping in shifts to maintain surveillance."

Surveillance on what? Blake wanted to ask. He didn't. Yet. Getting settled first seemed like the better idea. And maybe being in a house with seven bodyguards instead of two would be enough reassurance to help Blake get more than a couple hours of restful sleep.

Blake touched the carving at the bottom of the staircase, running the pads of his fingers over the curved beak of what he thought was an eagle. The climb wound up a narrow space, three small landings connecting the steps that brought them to the second floor of the house. Daelan walked to the end of the hall and nudged open one of the doors.

"We'll be bunking in here," he said.

There were two double beds surrounded by unadorned blue-gray walls. "Only two?"

"Like I said, most of the time we'll be sleeping in shifts, so if these two are full, another one somewhere else will definitely be open." Daelan shrugged. "Plus, I don't mind sleeping on the floor. I've slept worse places. It should work out all right."

Blake nodded and walked around the room. Opposite the beds was a French door that looked like it led to the narrow balcony he'd spotted over the garage, but otherwise the room was sparse and the walls empty. It wasn't as though the house in Providence had been any better—and neither room was anything close to Blake's bedroom back in Baltimore—but it had been home for the past three months. Blake had had his own room and had gotten used to . . . well, all of it. Looking at the impersonal space made his breath hitch. His hands clenched with the effort to keep from hugging himself defensively. This room, on top of everything else that had happened the past few days, was just the wrong side of too much.

"Welcome to the Citadel, Blake." As though sensing that Blake was reaching the end of the fraying rope he'd been hanging on to since the firefight, Daelan smiled and left, quietly closing the door.

Dropping his bag next to one of the beds, Blake toed off his sneakers and sat with his back against the headboard, his knees tucked close to his chest, and his eyes trained on what little he could see of the quiet street through the glass of the balcony door.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Blake should still have been sleeping, but that wasn't going to happen. Physically, he felt like he'd just gotten over a flu: achy and shaky. Mentally, he couldn't slow his thoughts down enough. Sheer exhaustion would drag him into unconsciousness eventually, but for now he was sitting in the dining room, watching through the sliding glass door as the sun rose over the canal that extended from the Detroit River.

He'd been sitting here for over an hour already, and both Cassidy and Kindra had passed by to refill their coffee mugs. Their presence was more than enough to prove what Daelan had mentioned yesterday: that someone in the house was always awake. It was surprisingly nice not being the only one on a screwed-up sleep schedule. They hadn't said more than hello to Blake, but knowing they were just a hallway and a room away kept his early-morning vigil from feeling unbearably lonely.

It got even less lonely when Daelan joined him, sitting down at the table and offering a cup of peppermint tea, but not pressing Blake to talk. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes before Blake broke it with a question that had been buzzing quietly in the back of his mind. "Why do these windows look warped?"

"Because after we got the message that they'd found you, Geo, Kindra, and Dru reinforced all the glass with two layers of polycarbonate to make them something close to bulletproof. Bullet resistant, at least. As long as no one's shooting a .50 cal. The warped smokiness in that window means the adhesive must not have dried right." Daelan shook his head when Blake glanced quickly between the window and his face. "Nah, don't worry. It won't make it any weaker."

"Why didn't Max and Scott do this in Providence?" Would it have been enough to save them?

Daelan's nose twitched like he was suppressing a grimace. "It's not cheap, and they were legitimately renting that house. That kind of 'improvement' is hard to explain if the landlord drops by for a visit."

The word legitimately caught Blake's attention. "Are you guys not renting this one, then?"

"Nah. I mean, sometimes we squat, but this place we bought."

"You . . ." Blake looked around, eyes wide. "You guys bought this place? How long do you plan on staying here?"

"We've already been here longer than we probably should," Daelan admitted. "A full month anywhere is practically forever for us. We've had this house for a long while—for us, anyway. They bought it somewhen after the economic crash because the owner declared bankruptcy. Got it for nothing, furnished it with consignment stuff, and held it for when we need a place to hole up."

That thought process was practically alien. "I cannot fathom buying a house just because one day it might be useful."

Daelan laughed. "From what I can tell, it's not exactly most people's SOP."

"S-O— Oh. Standard operating procedure?" Blake tried to smile. "Yeah. Not even close."

"I know. This is what I grew up with, though. Almost. Mostly."

He didn't sound like he was aiming for pity or even sympathy; it was a simple description of his past, vague and unadorned. But he'd said almost, which made Blake wonder what might've come before this. He opened his mouth to ask; Daelan moved on.

"I like this place better than a lot of the houses we end up using. It's got character." He rubbed his hand on the carved windowsill. "Back in the 1920s, this island was basically a Who's Who of Detroit social royalty. The family who built this place ran illegal hooch down from Canada and hosted massive parties here. I tried to get everyone to code name the place 'Gatsby.'" He tilted his head and pursed his lips, but it couldn't hide the laughter in his eyes. "I was overruled."

"As you should've been," Blake said. "There's nothing safe about Gatsby."

"It'd be fitting, then, in a way," Daelan said quietly. He took a sip of tea, his gaze lingering on the faintly cloudy glass. "It's not like any of us are very safe either."

"Safe to be around or safe from harm?" The question popped past Blake's filter—he blamed a lack of sleep.

Luckily, Daelan smirked. "Either. Both, some days." Then he put down his mug and rested his elbows on the table, sighing. "You asked me before if Thursday is what my life is like. It's really not. This is more what my life is like." He gestured to the peaceful kitchen and to the living room/surveillance suite, from where the murmur of conversation could be heard. "The moments of chaos are scattered between long bouts of waiting and training and research and surveillance and whatever else needs to be done."

"Boring until suddenly." Blake nodded, placing his mug on the table and absently spinning it clockwise, trying to ignore the details—the memories—of what "suddenly" usually entailed and how bloody it could get. "That was what my parents' jobs were like too."

"Makes sense. What we do is kind of similar to what your dad was trying to do. We just ignore a lot of the more bothersome rules and regs he was bound to uphold."

"Those rules are there for a reason." Blake's voice went harder, harsher than he'd intended.

"Absolutely," Daelan agreed without a hint of sarcasm or condescension. "There are times, though, when they get in the way more than they help. And that's where we come in, to pick up where people like your father have to stop."

Blake stayed silent for a beat. "Like Lillian French."

"Yes. She's kept herself hidden so well, there's nothing to pin on her, legally speaking. If we left it to the government, she'd be running her empire from a nonextradition country for the rest of her plush, happy life." He shrugged one shoulder and took another sip of tea. "Maybe someone from the CIA would step in and do something about her, but even that's a long shot. It'd only happen if she caused exactly the wrong kind of trouble for the US."

"Which she's probably smart enough not to do," Blake said.

Daelan lifted his mug in a mock toast. "Precisely."

"And so you guys have made yourselves judge, jury, and executioner?" The question had felt somewhat severe in Blake's head, but it came out full of curiosity instead.

"Sometimes." There was absolutely no remorse on his face, no regret, but Blake wasn't sure if that was because he couldn't see it or because it truly wasn't there. "When we have to."

"And you're going to do this for the rest of your life?" To Blake, it was unimaginable, being so isolated from what everyone else considered the real world. It was chilling to see in someone so young, or at all, if he were being honest. But—perhaps scarier because of what it said about Blake—it was also comforting. With what he had already seen of Daelan in action, he absolutely believed that Daelan would protect him with his life. Or by taking someone else's.

"Probably. As long as I can, anyway. I'm good at it."

Blake was pretty positive that wasn't an empty boast.

Daelan took another sip of tea. "What about you? Were you going to follow one of your parents' careers? It seems like you've got the right kind of moral compass to sign up to serve and protect in one way or another."

"Are you really asking me what I want to be when I grow up?"

"Absolutely," Daelan said, grinning. He did that a lot, more than Blake had expected when he imagined what Daelan Calver was like.

"I don't know." Though Blake forced the corners of his mouth up, the expression didn't feel genuine. "I thought I wanted to once, but now I highly doubt I'll do anything in law enforcement."

"Why not?" There was a surprising amount of confusion on his face. But he'd obviously been groomed to join a family business. Blake's parents had done some of that too, but not to the same extent. And definitely not without letting him know at every crossroad that Blake could choose whatever path made him happiest. It didn't seem like there had been a lot of crossroads with open paths for Daelan. Maybe he assumed there hadn't been for Blake, either.

"Because I'm pretty sure I want a family of some sort one day, and I . . ." Blake picked at a splotch of paint on table. "I've been the one left at home, wondering if people I loved were going to make it back alive. And then one day they didn't. I don't want to do that to someone else."

Plus, Blake wasn't sure if he could ever make the decision to take someone's life. Shooting almost blindly when bullets and bombs were already flying should have been the easiest test to pass, but Blake had barely been able to pull the trigger. How could a partner, squad, or—worse—civilians rely on someone too moral to protect them? Too black-and-white to even listen without some judgment to his own parents' stories about their jobs?

When Daelan spoke, his words were quiet. "That's more than fair." He cleared his throat. "What do you want to do instead? I mean, after this is over and it's safe for you to go home."

Blake almost cringed. "I have to figure out where home is first."

Although he still had Uncle Altair and Aunt Fayza, it wasn't like he had any biological family left to go home to. Not any that lived in the States.

That realization, that thought, scared him more than all the gunfights in the world.

The agent went from a sprint to a dead stop outside the office of Special Agent in Charge Altair Ameen Zaman and took a deep breath. Her blue eyes traced the engraved nameplate on the door for a moment before she pulled her shoulders back, raised her hand, and knocked.

"Come in," a deep voice called from inside.

As soon as the agent stepped in, she closed the door behind her. "Sir, we just received an alert on Blake."

Altair froze. For a moment, he wasn't even breathing.

In a calm tone completely at odds with the tension running through his body, he asked, "Alive?"

Though he wasn't looking at her, the agent nodded. "As of Thursday, yes. We believe so."

"Thursday?" With a jolt like he'd been shocked, Altair stood and held his hand out for the thick folder she clutched. "Erin, why are we only hearing about this now?"

Quickly, but with exacting detail, Erin told Altair everything she knew. A shootout in a quiet suburb of Providence. An explosion. A car seen fleeing the scene with multiple passengers. Seven bodies found at the house or in the surrounding area.

"The whole scene was such a mess that it's taken the local PD days to process for evidence. Luckily for us, they worked on trying to ID the occupants of the house first. The name on the lease was fake."

In the folder, along with reports on the number and type of bullet casings and blast damage at the scene, were two photos from missing persons files. He stopped at these, setting the heavier stack on his desk. "Blake is with Bernard?"

"It appears so, sir. Five of the dead were mercenaries, but one was a little more elite. Javier Martinez, who we suspect turned assassin several years ago." Erin reached over the desk and lifted a particular packet out of the folder to hand to Altair. "He was an Army corporal who was dishonorably discharged. We believe he also recruited Corporal John Smith, a squad mate of his who went AWOL shortly after Martinez's discharge."

With his free hand, Altair smoothed the thick mustache that almost completely hid his thin upper lip. The gesture seemed absentminded, but the way his eyes scanned the information in front of him was anything but.

"There were two other ex-military personnel identified at the scene—both honorable discharges." Erin picked up the folder and riffled through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Handing it to Altair, she continued the briefing. "Scott Walker and Maxwell Armstrong, both ex-Army. They've been working with a private security company that provides long-term, high-risk protection in situations where, for one reason or another, witness protection isn't an option."

"Like when they suspect a leak inside the organization," Altair muttered as he skimmed the thin histories on each of the deceased bodyguards.

"Precisely. We think that these two may have been the ones to get Blake away from the school back in February," Erin said. "From the photos of the scene and what I got out of the detective who gave me the report, it seems all four of them had been living there for a while. Possibly since a few days after the incident at the school."

Altair's dark eyes widened. "Blake's been safely tucked away in Providence this whole time?"

"I think so, sir." Erin bit the inside of her lip and watched Altair closely, as though she wasn't sure how he'd react to the news.

The man sagged. He rubbed his hand over his face, closing his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Praise Allah."

Erin exhaled heavily and stepped back, looking out the office window as though to give him a private moment. When he cleared his throat, she turned back to him.

"If the men protecting Blake are dead, who has him now?"

"The only person they were able to get a clear traffic cam shot of was a passenger in the getaway car, and . . ." She nodded toward the file. "Honestly, it makes no sense at all. The name they pulled up from a facial recognition scan was for an AWOL Marine sergeant named Aaron Tanvers."

Altair frowned, his mustache twitching and the creases around his mouth etching deeper into his brown skin. "I've heard that name before."

"In connection to what?" Erin shook her head as he walked around his desk and typed something into his computer. "We don't deal with the AWOL personnel until they do something stupid enough to grab our attention."

"Yes, and this guy— Oh. Redwell."

"He worked for Garret Hadley?" Erin's nose wrinkled.

"No, but his younger sister had an internship at Genesis Financial, which was a Redwell subsidiary. She died just before Christmas last year; it was ruled a suicide."

"But we don't think it was?"

"We had no reason to think about it at all until her brother came back on emergency leave and started raising hell about it being staged." Altair read the initial information that appeared when he searched Aaron Tanvers's name. "Even after that, the only reason this came across my desk is because of the Redwell investigation. Suspicions about the actual cause of Jenna Tanvers's death were included in the file Bernard passed us."

Erin stilled. "Oh."

"And now Aaron Tanvers and Bernard Gasper are both with Blake. And Blake is on the run because of his father's investigation into Garret Hadley." Altair flattened his palms against the desk and stared at the computer screen. "Damn it, Blake. What did we get you involved in? What the hell am I missing here?"

Blake didn't have a lot of clothing to choose from, but what had been salvaged were some favorites. Today, looking at the potential outfits, "he" didn't feel right anymore. She picked out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with red, white, and blue words down the center reading None of the Above.

Running her hand over the front of the shirt, she tried not to let the memory overwhelm her—of her dad bringing it home, a twinkle in his eyes. He'd thought it was the best find in the universe. Blake had pretended not to agree, but had worn the shirt so often her dad had gotten six more as backups in case of wear and tear. The other five were in the drawers at her house and at Uncle Altair's. It had been a fluke of fate that she'd been wearing this one when she got called into the head of school's office the day Max and Scott rescued her.

Closing her burning eyes, she gripped the fabric of the shirt tight.

God, Dad. I miss you.

A quick double-rap drew her attention to the door. It opened as soon as she called permission, and Daelan walked in. His gaze immediately went to her shirt. He raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, amusement in his eyes.

"It's meant to be political, I think—Dad bought it during the last presidential election cycle—but it's sort of appropriate for me." The corner of Blake's lips quirked up. "And, yes, it's a she day."

"Well, then, my lady," he said with a bow. "Want to see something cool?" After she nodded, he took a step backward into the hallway. Blake sat down to pull on socks and combat boots, quickly tied them up, and then followed Daelan downstairs.

Over the weekend, Blake had already wandered through the house a couple of times, checking out all of the unique—and sometimes straight-up weird—details. One room she hadn't spent much time in was the kitchen, but that was where Daelan led her now. Or, more specifically, to the door just off the kitchen that Blake had thought led to a storage closet. Instead it revealed a stairwell.

Blake looked down the stairs and then out the kitchen window to the river. "We're so close to the water level, and from the look of it all, I thought this island was man-made. How the hell did they manage to build a basement?"

"Reinforced walls and money." Daelan started down the steps. "The house had to be raised to make headroom for a boat garage. It created enough extra space to fit a basement level without digging into the island. And you're right. This whole strip of land is man-made, and I think it's pretty shallow. The other houses here don't have basements."

"What do you guys have down here?" Blake asked as she followed.

"Training room and firing range." Daelan looked at her over his shoulder, his brown eyes sparkling. "But back when the place was built, this was an honest-to-God speakeasy."

Blake gasped. "Shut up."

That was so cool. He'd called the house Gatsby, and had mentioned parties, but she hadn't realized that the comparison extended that far. This place had an underground club?

"That was very Mean Girls of you, Regina," Daelan said around cackling laughter. "This house was a really lucky find, and this level was perfect for our purposes once we added all the soundproofing."

At the bottom of the stairs, he opened a door that was double the normal thickness, and led her into a long, seemingly windowless room. The smell reminded her of Daelan, or the day she'd met him—sulfur and gun oil. Three of the walls were covered in what looked like beige quilts. The fourth wall had a large cutout that opened into what had obviously been the bar. With the exception of that oddity—and especially because the ceilings were maybe eight feet high at most while the rest of the house was high and open and wide—the room felt a bit like walking into a long, padded, solitary-confinement cell.

"This is a little creepy." More than a little, if Blake were being honest.

"But necessary if we don't want every single person on this street to freak out and call the cops because of the gunshots." Daelan walked to the opposite end of the room, where a wide homemade backstop sat: plywood, metal sheeting, and a lot of ballistic rubber pieces. He pinned a target silhouette to the wood, picked up a cardboard box near the target, and jogged back to Blake.

"What are we doing, Daelan?" she asked as he set down the box near the door.

"Since we have some free time, I thought I'd attempt to interest you in spending the morning shooting at shadow people." He drew the handgun from a holster on his belt and passed it between his hands. Barrel held in his left hand, he offered Blake the grip.

She hesitated, the too-vivid memory of the last time she used a gun surging to the forefront of her mind, but other thoughts simmered underneath that.

The guys who killed Dad are still out there. Whoever ordered them to come after you isn't going to just give up. The Calvers are doing everything they can to protect you. Are you just going to sit back and cower in a corner the next time something happens?

Pulling her shoulders back, she cautiously but firmly took hold of the gun. She checked the safety, ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, slid the magazine back in place, and racked the slide to chamber a round.

"Good," Daelan said, looking pleased. He offered a simple leather holster with a clip to hook over her waistband.

Blake clipped the holster in place, but didn't stow the weapon. Instead she looked at the gun in her grip, familiarizing herself with it. "Why are we doing this again?"

"Because we need to know what you can do, what you're comfortable doing, and how to use both of those factors to make sure you stay safe. It's why we never hand Bernard a gun—he's hopeless with one. You know the basics, but I need to see how good you are with it."

She'd been expecting a joke or sarcasm, something like what he'd said the first time she asked, but he looked completely serious.

"I want to see how consistent your aim is for places other than center mass. Head, neck, arms, legs. Those are the places that won't usually be covered by body armor, and with the people we're facing, it's safer to assume that they will always be wearing body armor."

Okay. Right. That was a good thing, she told herself. She wanted to finish her dad's work, and that meant taking his place in this particular battle. If she expected the Calvers to trust her to watch their backs, to not accidentally shoot them instead of the enemy, she had to prove to Daelan that she knew what she was doing.

Despite nightmares and regrets and doubt, neither of her parents had ever stopped doing whatever was necessary to protect their units. The country. The world. The Calvers had been wearing that same mantle for years, and now they had brought her into the fold. They were inviting her to help, and she wanted to help, but there was a problem . . .

"I don't know if I can shoot someone in the head." She was still freaked out about the guy she'd shot in the leg, even if it hadn't been her bullet that killed her twice would-be kidnapper.

"Extremities are good too." Daelan's tone was a bit too pleasantly agreeable, considering the topic. "They can be kill shots, so don't think that you won't ever take a life—I mean, you nick the femoral or brachial arteries and that guy is fucked fast. Most of the time, though, a leg shot will at least give you the time to get to cover. Or get away."

I know all this.

She held the words back, accepting the reminder. The last time she'd had a lesson on any of this, it had been meaninglessly nebulous; she hadn't been able to picture herself landing in a situation where taking that kind of shot would be necessary. Now it had already happened once, so she shut her mouth and let Daelan talk.

"This target is only about thirty feet away, but to be honest there won't be a lot of situations where you have to shoot a pistol accurately from this distance."

Blake wasn't sure if she'd actually heard an emphasis when he said "you" or if she'd imagined it. Given his life and what she'd seen him do back in Providence, the emphasis was probably real. The Calvers' version of normal didn't exactly seem to line up with the rest of the world's.

Daelan moved toward the box near the door, removed a few items, and came back quickly. He gestured for her to holster the weapon and, once it was safely stowed, handed her safety glasses and ear protection. He stepped back, donning his own protective gear while she put on hers. Then he bowed at the waist, sweeping his arm out to the side, an expansive, ridiculous gesture all to say, Go right on, girl. Whenever you're ready.

So she turned, drew the weapon, and adjusted her stance, bracing her feet and familiarizing her hands to the feel of the new-to-her gun.

Then she flicked off the safety and fired.

Over the next couple of hours, Daelan put her through her paces. Once he was sure he'd tested her stationary accuracy enough—and begun the process of training her to hit the right targets on the enemy—he switched the game. He rigged up what looked like a clothesline across the narrow width of the room, attached a fresh silhouette, and announced that she'd be aiming at moving targets now.

"I'm trusting you," he joked from the cover of the bar. "Shoot straight."

She did. Not every shot met its intended target, but none of them came anywhere close to Daelan.

Several reloads later, he changed the game again, rolling out thick, soft mats and testing her skills at hand-to-hand. He was riotously pleased to discover she wasn't completely unskilled. Blake tried very hard not to roll her eyes and call him an idiot.

"I'm a child of the military. Plus, I'm nonwhite, sometimes female, and definitionally transgender," Blake said. "My parents put me in every self-defense class they could find as soon as I could walk."

He went quiet at that, his enthusiasm for Blake's skill seeming to dim. "Have you had to use it like that?"

"More times than I wish I had to. Less often than some people, though."

"I don't understand 'normal' people," Daelan muttered as he rolled his shoulders and prepared for another disarming drill.

Blake raised her arms and resettled her weight. "Me neither."

She'd never loved the Krav Maga, karate, or judo classes, but she more than appreciated her parents' forethought after puberty hit and the world got weirder. And, at times, dangerously opposed to her existence.

What had never struck her until this moment, though, was that she'd never hesitated to physically defend herself in those situations. There had been times when she'd even—hyperbolically—wished she'd been holding a gun. It had been fear in control then.

She likely wouldn't have used it even if one had magically appeared in her hands. But the time she'd been backed into a corner at a college party she shouldn't have been at? Or the moment an acquaintance who only knew her as a he had seen Blake in a dress, and gotten so enraged that he almost broke Blake's arm? Yeah. She definitely hadn't had a problem protecting herself then.

So why did the thought of someone using a gun for—theoretically—a much more noble purpose than self-defense cause her so many moralistic problems?

As she blocked Daelan's punch and aimed for the button on the side of the gun that would eject the magazine, something else occurred to her. What did it say about her that she got on so much better with a family of bodyguard-assassins than she usually did with anyone else?

And what did it say about the rest of the world that a family of bodyguard-assassins accepted all Blake's differences so naturally when the rest of humanity made her fight for even the smallest concessions?

At noon, everyone except Bernard and Hugo, who were monitoring the surveillance of Lillian's most powerful and frequent contacts, gathered around the dining room table for lunch. Loaves of bread and piles of sandwich fixings were scattered across the long wooden table, and Blake couldn't quite keep up with the group's conversation about people she only knew from the intel she'd begged off Bernard.

Cassidy smiled kindly at Blake as she sat down in the next seat. "How are you doing? Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine, thank you." Blake managed most of a smile as she spread mustard on her bread. "I just . . . I didn't think it would last this long."

A few days, they'd told her in the beginning, promising to get her back to her life as soon as the threat from Garret Hadley had been neutralized. But days had turned into weeks had turned into months. She'd missed an entire quarter of the school year, and her friends probably thought she was dead. There was no way that Uncle Altair wasn't panicking at the lack of contact and using every single FBI resource he could realistically access to find her.

"We didn't think they'd still be after you this much either," Cassidy admitted. "The only reasoning that makes sense is they think you might have access to something of your father's. Research or information."

"I know, but . . ." She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Talking about it brought up the memories and the nightmares and everything she wished she could forget, but if wishes were dollars, she'd be set to retire by now. Wishing wouldn't get her anywhere; working with the Calvers to end this would. "You haven't learned anything new?"

"We've been digging as wide and deep as we can into Lillian French's life, essentially writing a dissertation on the woman." Cassidy shot a look toward the surveillance center. Where Bernard was. It wasn't an angry expression, but it wasn't entirely pleased, either. "Some of which I know you've already read."

"I made him give me that," Blake said. "I couldn't— Look, it was driving me nuts just sitting there. I thought fresh eyes and a perspective that's not . . . whatever it is you guys are."

"What are we?" Daelan looked at his mother, amused confusion on his face. "I'm liking the sound of 'vigilante bodyguard' personally."

"That's probably a more accurate description than I wish it was," Cassidy agreed.

"It works so well for the ones who need you, though." Bernard smiled at the Calvers as he stepped up to the table, grabbed sodas and chips, and returned to the surveillance suite.

"Chasing down a target as well hidden as you've been is time-consuming, expensive, and exhausting. To keep it up this long, Lillian has got to have a solid reason for ordering it, but there's no consarn way for us to be sure what that reason is with the info we've got," Dru said, jumping into the conversation as she finished making her own lunch. "Unless there was something in those files that sparked a memory?"

Blake shook her head. She'd told her guards—and through them, the Calvers—everything she knew months ago. Even the details she hadn't thought would matter. "I looked through what Max and Scott gave me, but none of it rings bells. If I know something they don't want me to tell anyone, or if there's some detail they want out of me, it's gotta be buried so deep in my subconscious that only magically strong hypnosis is going to pull it back out."

"I don't think that's something we have in our repertoire," Dru said. The tone sounded like a wry joke, but she looked worried. When she spoke again, even though her green eyes were fixed on Blake's face, it didn't seem as though she were talking to Blake. "What did they want with you, then? Because everything about the setup at the school indicated a grab, not a hit. If they'd wanted to kill you, they would have been far better doing it from a distance."

A chilling thought. It sat heavily in Blake's mind and her stomach, but they'd tried twice. They would probably try again if given the opportunity. And from the way the shots had flown in both directions during the Providence raid, it was easy to think they didn't care if she died in the cross fire. Figuring out why Lillian was hunting her with this much dedication could possibly help the Calvers negate that threat. So Blake pushed the roiling discomfort aside and tried to think.

"Do we know who they were yet? In Providence?" Blake asked.

"One of them we knew already," Daelan said, an odd hesitance in his words. "That last guy?"

He made it a question, as though Blake wouldn't remember the first—and so far only—human being she'd ever shot. She nodded.

"His name was Javier Martinez." Daelan still seemed cautious, his words spoken slower than his usual speed, his gestures more contained. "We know from the descriptions Max and Scott gave us months ago that Javier was one of the people who tried to grab you back in February."

"I . . ." She swallowed and nodded again. "I thought it was him, but everything was such a fast blur that I couldn't be sure." And she hadn't mentioned it after because the man was dead. What did it matter at that point?

"He was part of a team that Garret Hadley hired to hunt my family after we failed to kill Bernard the first time around," Kindra said.

Failed, yes, but from what Bernard had told her about that moment, the hit had missed by inches. Less than that, possibly. He'd felt the heat of the bullet on his cheek as it passed.

"And we also think . . ." Daelan looked at his mother, but whether for support or confirmation, Blake couldn't tell. "We think he might have been one of the people responsible for what happened to Isaac."

Blake pressed her hand flat against the tabletop. Her heart stalled. It felt like her ribs had turned into vise-tight bands around her lungs.

"We don't have anything but timing and intuition to prove that," Cassidy said, her soft words floating into the silence that had settled over the room. "But we know that Kindra's family wasn't given the order for that hit, so Martinez's team is the most likely possibility."

I should have shot him again. I should have been the one to kill him.

She regretted the thought—or questioned it at least—as soon as she had it. And she wasn't sure should mattered anyway. If she hadn't been able to kill him to protect a life, would she really have been able to kill to avenge a death?

"From what we saw of the report the Providence PD put together, no one else on his team was among the dead. So if John Smith and Nuura Umarov were there, they got away alive." Cassidy seemed to be watching Blake's reactions carefully as she laid out the information, even as she dumped chips onto her plate with her sandwich and took a can of soda from the center of the table. "What it means is that Lillian still has—or had, until Providence—Martinez's team and the Westons on her payroll."

"And they're probably still working together unless something major has changed since February," Kindra said. "I just don't understand why Lillian was wasting the money sending Martinez himself after Blake when it'd be cheaper to have some salaried security guard or mercenary attempt the grab."

"Which brings us back to the million-dollar question of why," Dru said.

Blake wanted an answer to that one too, because she didn't think she knew anything worth this much trouble, and she couldn't think of any other reason that made sense. Her family had some money, but they weren't wealthy enough for it to be worth kidnapping and robbing Blake. Not to someone with as much money and power as Lillian French. When her father was alive, being used to force him to lose or compromise important pieces of an investigation might have been a potential threat. The only family she had left in the States, though, wasn't technically family. Her father's old training partner was like an uncle to her, but Uncle Altair wasn't a blood relation.

He was, however, in charge of a major base of operations for the FBI.

"What about Altair?" She spoke as soon as the thought entered her head, and she only realized afterward that the others had continued the conversation without her, a conversation she'd just broken into with all the social grace of a drunken dude-bro. That conversation halted, and everyone turned to look at her. She regretted her impetuous words, but she couldn't back off now that she had their attention.

Clearing her throat, she tried again. Hoping to make more sense, she explained what she'd thought about her father and then said, "I was just thinking that it would maybe make sense if she was after me not because of information, but because she wanted something out of Uncle Altair."

"It's crossed our minds once or twice," Cassidy admitted. "But even if it was true, it wouldn't change what we're trying to do—we would just have to keep keeping you safe."

"But we're . . . relatively certain that isn't her goal." Dru ripped a corner off her sandwich, but didn't put it in her mouth. "Her habits have been more in the realm of threats of death and then actual death. Hostages for coercion take a lot of work—if it's going to be effective, the hostage has to be kept relatively safe and whole in between whatever uses the captor has for their captive. It's more effort than we've seen Lillian put into controlling other people so far."

Kindra nodded, her heart-shaped face slack and unreadable. "Yeah, if someone doesn't comply, she seems to kill them and make sure their replacement will."

"And honestly, Altair has a lot of pull in the US, especially in this quarter of the country, but that power doesn't extend beyond the country's borders," Cassidy said. "Which is why none of this makes sense, and why we don't think she'd bother grabbing you for that reason. Her reach is too internationally focused. It's almost certainly something else. Unless she planned on forcing him to move into a different position with more power—"

"Which isn't impossible, but does seem unnecessarily complicated," Daelan interjected.

"—there isn't much he can do from Baltimore than she doesn't already have people in position to do elsewhere," Cassidy finished as though Daelan hadn't spoken.

"So we don't know anything?" Blake wasn't even sure why she wanted a why so badly. It wouldn't change anything. Knowing why people were hunting her wouldn't give her the chance to go home.

"Not about you, unfortunately." Cassidy's smile was sympathetic, frustration only giving it the faintest edge. "But what we do know is that Lillian French's access to Redwell's internal systems was terminated a week ago. At her request. She resigned for—according to the letter she sent the company—health and personal reasons."

"And you think that's bullshit?" Blake asked.

"If she was having health problems, she would be somewhere trackable, somewhere with the best health care she could buy and plenty of opportunities to pamper herself," Cassidy said. "It's in her history. Her financials don't show a tendency for excess, but the woman never skimped. Anytime she bought anything—car, house, electronics, vacations, whatever—it was always the best her money and connections could get her. Subjectively speaking, at least."

"But she also has a history of doing what it takes to get shit done," Kindra added. "If she suddenly needed to cope with a little privation to see through whatever endgame she's aiming for, I don't think she'd consider that a problem."

"At least, after what we got from my contacts, we know for sure that she's not hiding in South America," Bernard said.

"I'd rather she be in South America than somewhere in Asia." Dru broke a chip in two and tossed the smaller piece into her mouth.

"I know I would," Aaron grumbled. "She vanished too close to Gomin and North Korea for my liking. Doesn't leave much doubt that she was using her military ties to sell them intel."

"It's looking that way," Kindra agreed. "That can't be all she was doing, though."

The conversation stalled there for a while, each of them throwing out theories of what other black-market businesses Lillian had been running—each idea more ridiculous than the last—until Aaron's suggestion that she'd been smuggling illegal, exotic pets all over the world reminded Daelan of a movie he'd just seen. From there, everyone broke off into their own smaller discussions, like Aaron and Geo's quiet but invective-filled debate about some obscure fact from a history book they were both reading.

Blake sat with them but didn't engage, letting the exceedingly normal conversations pull her thoughts away from the realization that another person who'd been responsible for orphaning her was dead, but that there were two more of them out there somewhere, hunting Blake. The Calvers' conversation distracted her and comforted her too, a little. It was a reminder that the safe, civilian life she remembered hadn't vanished completely, and that most people in the United States were still living it. It was a reminder that, one day, as long as the Calvers found a way to wash the bull's-eye off her forehead, she might get to go back to it.

Only one lamp was lit, casting more shadows than light across the hotel room. It illuminated the Remington handgun and three full magazines lying on the dresser, but barely touched the broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, nearly motionless man sitting on one of the two double beds. If not for the glow of the laptop resting on his thighs, he would have been unnoticeable in the dim room. If not for that same glow, the tremor running through both of his hands as they rested on the laptop's keyboard would have been invisible.

On one side of the screen, the Folger edition of All's Well That Ends Well was open. The other half was taken up by a map of the contiguous United States, red markers highlighting cities across the country. His gaze flicked from one side to the other as he absently lifted his right hand to his left arm. There, his fingers traced a scar just below the sleeve of his dark-gray T-shirt. The pale-pink, newly healed wound was obvious against his tan skin.

"Amett, we have to be on the road in less than twenty," a woman called from the adjoining room. "We've got to be in DC before ten."

"Lima Charlie." Amett's jaw clenched, but that strain disappeared when a teenage girl strode through the open connecting door. Dark-brown hair highlighted with subtle blonde tones fell past her shoulders. Her olive skin and her nose almost perfectly matched his.

"She's on a rampage," the girl murmured. "Don't piss her off today."

"That's not new, Seraphina." He shifted, rolling his left shoulder as though trying to ease tension held there. The movement also tilted the laptop, making it harder for her to see the screen from where she stood. "When is Odira not? Especially these days."

"That'd be never. Not now that we're playing ringmaster to this circus of death and mayhem. Eighteen cities in a week? Fuck if I even know where we are anymore." She huffed an annoyed breath and grabbed the duffel bag sitting on one of the beds. "I'll get this down to the car. I think John and Nuura are ready to go."

Amett nodded. "I have to finish this. I'll be down in less than five."

Seraphina turned to leave, the large black bag slung over one shoulder, but halfway to the door, she reversed direction. Stopping a foot away from the edge of his bed, she quietly asked, "Do you think Kindra was at the house in Providence last week with Blake and Bernard?"

"No way to know." He shook his head. "John didn't see enough to be any damn use. It's part of the reason your mother has been so pissed since then."

"Kinny would've escaped months ago if she didn't want to be there." Her voice was even and her expression blank, but her hand was clenched so tightly around the strap of the duffel that her knuckles were pale with strain.

"I don't think we left her much choice. She probably thinks you tried to shoot her back in Jacksonville. There's no way for her to know you were trying to give her an escape route." His voice and his face were just as unreadable. "Would you come back if you thought we tried to shoot you?"

Seraphina snorted. "Fuck, no."

Amett waved his hand, the gesture seeming to say and there you go. "If she wasn't working with the Calvers willingly before then, I'd bet my life she was after that."

"Sera! Where the hell did you pack the ammo boxes?" Odira's voice was sharp, laced with annoyance.

"Atropos bless it," she grumbled, turning on her heel. "Never again. I'm never working a long-term job again. And I am definitely not ever running a fucking army. The logistics for this disaster are going to give me a permanent migraine."

"You and me both," Amett said, the words far too quiet for her to hear as she left the room and slammed the door shut.

Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back to rest on the headboard. His fingers absently traced the shapes of the keys on the laptop. After a minute, he sat up and looked at the screen. Clicking a hidden window, he opened an email program and brought up a new message. The subject line he left blank, but he pasted a line of relatively simple code and a block of seemingly indecipherable text into the body. He typed two addresses in the To line. The consistent tremor in his hand shook the cursor as he attached a compressed file labeled with a string of numbers, but he seemed adapted to the motion, easily completing the task. Then, although he moved the cursor over the Send button, he didn't click it.

Linking his hands behind his head, he stared at the screen, his gaze running over the odd text filling the body of the email. Then he closed his eyes, his lips moving without sound. It looked like they formed the words, "I'm sorry."

The five minutes were almost up.

He held his breath and hit Send. His hand was steady when he did.

Blake sat curled up in an armchair in the corner of the living room, a cup of coffee clutched in one hand and his eyes locked on the laptop playing Some Like It Hot.

Discovering the Calvers' extensive digital movie collection had been a delightful surprise, especially since a significant percentage of their list had been released prior to 1970. Some Blake had seen. Others he hadn't even heard of. In moments where nothing else could occupy his mind, he'd begun working his way through the catalog. This morning he'd fallen back on something he knew, a favorite of his mom's and something that almost never failed to make him laugh. The bright, bubbly, black-and-white comedy was halfway over and only just beginning to dispel the aftershocks running through his body.

Spilled blood. Burning buildings. Gunshots echoing from everywhere.

In the dream, Blake had been holding a gun, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to shoot it. Not once. Not even to save someone's life.

The nightmare that had woken him an hour ago was too vivid to be real—and all the more terrifying because of that. It left him quivering and unable to handle the darkness of the bedroom. At least down here there was the noise of life, and the solid reminder that Blake wasn't alone. That the dream hadn't been real. That he hadn't helplessly watched Bernard, Aaron, Geo, Kindra, and all the Calvers die. Hadn't been trapped in a fire with their lifeless bodies.

Maybe in another hour his stomach would be settled enough to handle breakfast.

Ding.

"What the hell?" Dru murmured. She and Kindra had taken the night shift, watching the computers since eleven last night, and they would soon be relieved of duty.

Curious, Blake paused the movie and moved toward the surveillance suite. He hadn't yet reached it when Dru bellowed, "Wigand is back!"

Blake jumped, lukewarm coffee splashing over the rim of his mug. Something thudded heavily on the second floor. Hugo ran into the room from the kitchen, Cassidy and Bernard only a couple of steps behind him. Geo and Aaron spun around the corner from the stairs, both of them still in the process of getting dressed, and Blake blushed when he spotted the bright—and obviously brand-new—love bite on Geo's pale skin. When Geo noticed him notice it, he winked, but the self-satisfied smirk didn't last long once everyone was gathered at the computers.

"What is it?" Hugo pulled up an extra folding chair and sat down next to his daughter.

"This just came in to an older account." Dru pressed a set of keys that brought the email up full screen, the font large enough that Blake could read it from a few feet away. "The encrypted source looks like it's the same style as the email with the tip about Providence. It might be from the same person."

"But you called him Wigand," Blake said. "I thought you knew who it was from?"

Cassidy shook her head. "Code name. Jeffrey Wigand was a major whistle-blower from inside the tobacco industry." She tapped Kindra's shoulder, quickly trading places with her at one of the computers. "Since we're pretty sure whoever this is also works inside the organization they're sending us intel on, and since big tobacco is a powerful, twisted industry that causes about half a million deaths a year, it seemed like an appropriate reference."

Daelan came barreling down the stairs, his hair wet and his shirt clinging to his damp skin, and grabbed another chair, setting it next to his mother as he asked, "What is it?" unconsciously mimicking his father.

"Wigand is back," Kindra told him as Blake read the email again.

FOLGER-MM TN-iii4104105-11w HV-ii44546-11w AWTEW- i166676869-28w

Underneath that single, bolded line was a block of text that looked like absolute nonsense to Blake, barely more coherent than if someone had just mashed their fingers on the keyboard and hit Send.

"Fucking keyless codes," Kindra grumbled.

Dru shook her head. "There's a key. There's always a key. Has to be, or what would be the point of sending it to us at all?"

Blake stared at the bolded line. Something about it was pinging a memory, but it slipped away every time he reached for it. The longer he studied it, though, the surer he was that he should know what it meant. Something to do with the word FOLGER.

"To waste our time," Aaron said. "If we're here trying to solve a nonsense puzzle, then we're not figuring out whatever they're trying to distract us from."

It was probably stupid of him to think he could solve this. What did he know about ciphers and codes and cryptography?

"I don't know. It doesn't look like nonsense to me," Dru said.

The only subject Blake could claim something close to expertise on was— Oh. It couldn't be . . . could it?

"Last time Wigand emailed us, it saved Blake's and Bernard's lives," Hugo reminded them all. "Even if we were almost too late to use that tip."

It might work. If Folger referred to the edition, and the MM was an indication of the mass-market print size, then the letter combination could be plays. TN for Twelfth Night. AWTEW had to mean All's Well That Ends Well, and HV could maybe be Henry V.

"It was barely coded last time, though," Kindra said. "Wigand essentially straight-up told us to go save the pawns."

Okay, so the titles fit. The number of i's had to indicate act number, the number immediately after that could be scene, but then what about the next string of numbers? It didn't matter. It was enough.

"Shakespeare!" The room went silent after Blake's outburst, but he was so hyped up that he hardly noticed. He had to be right. "There was something that reminded me of— Whatever. Not important. It's referencing Shakespeare."

He leaned over Dru's shoulder and pointed at the words as he spoke. "Folger is the edition. The letters are the play—Twelfth Night, Henry V, and All's Well That Ends Well. The stuff after it has to be act, scene, and line numbers. 104105 can't be a single line number because no scene in any play ever went up that high, but it could be two lines."

"What about the bit at the end?" Hugo pointed at the first set that ended in 11w. On the other computer, Cassidy was already searching for digital copies of the Folger editions. "Can you think of anything that might reference?"

Blake narrowed his eyes, willing the number-letter pairing to make sense, but after a minute he had to admit, "No, sorry. It might make sense once I see the text? I've got a few plays memorized, and I've read the rest more times than I ever bothered counting, but the line numbers can change, and I was never great at pulling up lines by number, anyway. No matter what edition I've used, though, no line numbers include letters."

"You have entire plays memorized?" Daelan didn't give Blake the incredulous "why would you do that?" look that he'd seen on some people's faces before. He looked impressed, if anything.

"Some of the plays and a bunch of the sonnets."

His dad had started him on it when he was a kid, reading the plays with him and acting them out in the living room on the weekends. When it had come time to pick a code for them to use, a signal in case something happened to Isaac and an unknown FBI agent needed to pick Blake up, it had come from Twelfth Night: "In nature there's no blemish but the mind. None can be called deformed but the unkind." That line—and the whole play—had always been a family favorite, practically a mantra. Especially on the days Blake had come home hating the world.

"Got 'em," Cassidy said, opening Twelfth Night and scrolling until she reached act 3, scene 4. "And I think . . ." On the page displaying lines one hundred four and one hundred five, she stopped and leaned closer to the screen, gaze intent and lips moving without a sound. Nodding once, she sat back. "Yeah, that would make sense. I think the last bit might be the number of words we're supposed to include in the selection."

She highlighted the segment, copied it, and pasted it into a blank document before opening the other two books and doing the same thing. Before each copied line, she placed the coded segment that had pointed them to it.

TN-iii4104105-11w: What, man, defy the devil! Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.

HV-ii44546-11w: 'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

AWTEW-i166676869-28w: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy rather in power than use, and keep thy friend under thy own life's key.

"There has to be more to it." Cassidy pulled the words and the block of gibberish text into another program, one Blake didn't recognize. "It's not a skip code. Could they be using Shakespeare like Garret used the Bible?"

"It's possible. And it would make sense because it connects to the case they already know we're following. So, using that quasi-logic . . ." Daelan pursed his lips, studying the screen. "If Lillian is the devil—"

"If?" Aaron muttered.

Daelan ignored him. "—then the first part makes sense. 'What, man, defy the devil! Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.' We should fight Lillian because she's an enemy to mankind."

"That's a little terrifyingly broad," Kindra said. "If we take it literally, anyway. 'Mankind' would be global, and that kind of threat is way beyond just leaking state secrets for cash."

"There's nothing 'just' about treason," Aaron said.

"Simmer down, Captain America." Kindra huffed and shook her head. "All I mean is that I don't think mankind refers only to the US, so I think that we could take this as confirmation that treason is only a fraction of her plan."

Aaron narrowed his eyes at Kindra, a reaction Blake could understand. Blake didn't like the implication that whatever Lillian was planning could be worse than treason against the country his parents had died to protect. Had killed to protect. But Blake held his tongue, and when Geo squeezed Aaron's shoulder, the Marine nodded. Grudgingly, it seemed.

"If we continue that kind of translation, I think we can all agree on the next part," Dru said. "''Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.' Don't underestimate the devil, basically."

"It doesn't lend itself to many other interpretations," Hugo said. "Especially in the surrounding context."

"The last part, though . . ." Kindra narrowed her eyes at the screen, her arms crossed as she reread the quote. "'Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy rather in power than use, and keep thy friend under thine own life's key.'"

Blake ran a finger over his eyebrow and looked at the entire list again, the jumbled mess of Shakespeare. "In the play it means don't be too trusting, but be kind; be prepared for your enemies, but don't attack them; and defend your friends with your life."

"The meaning works in this context too," Bernard said. "But I can't tell if it's supposed to warn us to slow down or hurry us along."

"Considering the first part is telling us to defy the devil, I'm gonna guess the meaning is somewhere along the line of 'get your fool asses in gear, but don't go and get yourselves shot,'" Geo drawled.

"The man has a point," Daelan said.

"This pretty much proves that Wigand is someone inside Lillian's organization, doesn't it?" Cassidy looked at Hugo, furrows appearing between her brows. "She's known about us for a long time. Maybe Wigand thought we'd be closing in before now."

"All true, but if they're inside, they know exactly how good she is at cleaning up after herself and should know how little we have to extrapolate from," Hugo said. "If they want us to do their dirty work for them and get rid of her, they need to give us a hell of a lot more to go on than that." He gestured toward the screen, disgust written on his face.

Tense, unsettled quiet fell over the group. Blake scanned the block of data under the line of Shakespeare references. His pulse sped up and his hands got clammy; wiping them on his jeans didn't help much.

What the hell good did he think he was going to do? He might be able to quote more Shakespeare than the rest of them, but he hadn't ever trained in pattern recognition or code breaking. If they couldn't spot the clue buried in those characters, he didn't have a chance.

Useless. He was absolutely useless. All he'd done since they pulled him and Bernard out of Providence was eat up their provisions and waste their ammunition training with Daelan in the basement. He was a liability and he knew that, but he was just selfish enough not to back away from this.

Isaac Marks had died starting this investigation. Blake Marks was determined to finish it.

Somehow.

Kindra's head cocked. She leaned over Dru's shoulder, flicked Dru's hand off the mouse, and highlighted a seven-character sequence. "Does that look like a longitude coordinate to anyone else?"

For several seconds, the room stilled. Only the electronics made a sound. All of their eyes were locked on the six digits and one letter marked in bright blue.

Dru exhaled in a sharp gust. "Holy shit." Reaching up, she grabbed the front of Kindra's shirt and dragged her down for a swift, dirty kiss. "Baby, you are fucking brilliant. What is it with you and codes?"

Kindra blinked quickly, red sweeping across her olive-tan skin. "It's only brilliant if I'm right, Bomb Squad. Get back to work."

Bomb Squad? The nickname seemed odd to Blake, but Dru merely grinned and turned back to the computers. She started sorting through the mess of alphanumeric characters and symbols in the email, proving Kindra right bit by bit. Slowly, the meaningless block of text became an ordered string of map coordinates. Blake counted quickly. There were eighteen sets of longitude and latitude.

Cassidy did something on the keyboard that opened up a different program. A map loaded with an empty white text box at the top. She pasted the sets of coordinates into the box and hit a few keys. A loading bar replaced the text box. One by one, the program placed red markers in the appropriate locations.

Blake's stomach flipped. And then roiled.

Eighteen cities. Major cities in sixteen states spread across the country. Not solely the obvious choices like Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.

The map also marked Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami. And that was just the East Coast.

"Santa María, ayúdanos, por favor," Bernard murmured.

Blake's eyes jumped randomly from marker to marker.

Albuquerque.

Minneapolis.

Kansas City.

Dallas.

Houston.

Seattle.

Salt Lake City.

Las Vegas.

New Orleans.

Chicago.

Denver.

San Francisco.

Whatever this was about, it was happening all across the contiguous United States. Given that Blake had been targeted to die the last time Wigand got involved, it was hard to believe that these cities were marked for any less dire a reason.

"What else is there?" Aaron's voice was hoarse and his brown skin looked paler than it should be. His gaze never lingered long on one city. "There has to be more for us to go on than that."

"Gimme a minute," Daelan muttered, narrowing his eyes at the screen. "There's too much in this block for it to just be hiding coordinates."

He and Cassidy started talking then, speaking in code about codes. Their sentences all seemed half-finished, like they only had to start a thought for the other to pick up on where it would end. It was fascinatingly endearing to watch their bond and how closely and easily they worked together, but listening to it and understanding less than a quarter of what they said was more than a little frustrating. It went on for over an hour, long enough that the others moved away to work on something else. Blake stayed to watch, despite feeling like he'd stumbled into a foreign country where he didn't know the language.

"I think . . . that I . . ." Daelan's tongue poked between his teeth, and his fingers moved across the keyboard faster than Blake had known was possible. "Got something!"

A link popped up in a separate window, and the page it opened was exceedingly simple. Black and white with minimal text and only a couple of links near the bottom of the page. Most of the site was dominated by a list of eighteen number-letter combinations. Next to each was a clock.

No, Blake realized, shivering as he watched the numbers shift. Not clocks.

Countdowns.

There were eighteen countdowns, and all of them were under seventy-two hours.

"What the fuck is this?"

Blake jumped. He hadn't realized Daelan's call had pulled everyone back to the computers. Geo's voice had been practically in his ear.

"Not good," Aaron said. "Whatever it is, it's not good."

"Dae, take a crack at those references—they've got to be the cities. Once you figure out which is which, link the countdowns to the coordinates." Hugo's voice was low, almost hoarse. "We need to know what's happening when."

"We need to know what's happening, period," Cassidy said as she helped Daelan figure out how to match up the countdowns. "When won't help us any if we can't figure out what."

"Do you think this is supposed to be a taunt?" Dru stood behind Kindra, her arms wrapped so tightly around her girlfriend's waist that it looked painful to Blake. "Maybe they don't want us to stop it. Maybe the whole point is tormenting us with just enough knowledge to know we're about to fail."

"Shit. And you think I'm cynical?" Kindra rubbed Dru's forearm gently, like she was trying to take any potential sting out of the words.

Dru turned her face against Kindra's neck, and when she spoke, her words were muffled by skin. "Seeing what she's capable of would make anyone a little cyn—"

"Done." Cassidy's quiet proclamation held absolutely no triumph, and a single look at the map made it clear why.

Whatever was coming would hit the eastern seaboard first. It moved westward hour by hour, striking all of the cities in each successive time zone close to simultaneously, but Blake couldn't keep the math in his head long enough to figure out when, exactly, those clocks would hit the zero hour.

"That makes it, what?" Geo asked before Blake could, frustration in the lines on the bridge of his nose and around his eyes. "Fucking time math. Never could figure it out."

"Just after five thirty on Friday, which doesn't make sense." Aaron shook his head. "If they're aiming for the most damage, they'll probably go for government or financial buildings, but by that time a good portion of the office will have started clearing out, especially before the weekend, and people will be—"

"Can we zoom in?" Bernard asked. When Aaron looked at him with unspoken questions in his golden-brown eyes, he clarified. "Those were very specific coordinates, which means they have to be pinpointing a very specific location within each city."

Daelan's face lit up with understanding first. Cassidy was only a second behind him. Both of them turned back to the computers and typed in commands. There was another slew of half-sentences exchanged, but this time Blake could almost follow what they were talking about. Not the terms or the techniques, of course. The goals were clear, though.

On the map, they zoomed in on each coordinate and captured an image of the exact spot.

"Not buildings," Daelan said almost absently as he screenshotted another location. And another. "I don't think a single coordinate marks a building."

"Because that's not where people will be. They'll be stuck in traffic," Bernard said, his voice hollow. "Rush hour."

But why? The impact and destruction would be worse in a building, wouldn't it? More loss of life. More costly to repair. But Blake seemed to be the only one who hadn't figured it out. Cassidy had closed her eyes and dropped her chin, and Hugo rubbed circles on her back, his jaw clenched. Horror had dawned on Geo's face, and Aaron looked grim. Kindra seemed resigned. Dru had half her face covered by her hand, so Blake couldn't tell what she thought. At the computer, Daelan had stilled, no expression on his face at all.

And then Bernard explained.

"It happened in Echemorro once, years ago." Bernard tightened his grip on the back of Cassidy's chair, his knuckles going white with the pressure. "It was a busy road that ran through a mountain. A whole highway of people who didn't have anywhere to go."

"Fucking hell." Geo sucked in a breath. "It'll be easier than target practice."

Blake tried not to fidget, but he had to move. Pulling at his earlobe and shifting his weight wasn't doing much to stem the rise of restless, almost frenetic energy in his body.

He wanted to do something, but every idea that flashed through his mind was too outlandish, too cautious, too risky, or too stupid to be worth voicing. And, really, it was ridiculous that he was even trying. If a family of bodyguard-assassins and two Marines couldn't come up with a strategy to counteract Lillian's multi-prong terror strike, how much use could Blake's ideas possibly be? Shakespeare and ties to an FBI agent aside, he wasn't sure what use he was to any of them. Except maybe as the official coffee gofer.

"Who can we take this to?" Bernard asked.

"We can't worry about who until we know what," Hugo said. "Because the what might change who we can trust to handle it."

"Or who'll believe us when we tell them to get their asses in gear," Daelan said.

"Who wouldn't believe it if you sent them this?" Geo pointed at the countdown map.

"Uncle Altair would. I know he would." Blake forced the hand that had been tugging on his ear into his pocket and stood straighter. "And he'd use every connection he had and would call in every favor he's collected to stop this from happening."

Cassidy sighed quietly and turned to face Blake. "He'd try, sweetheart. We know enough about him that I am absolutely certain he would try, but there are people in his organization who would do everything they can to make sure he failed. And if they needed to . . ."

Blake's heart missed a beat and a chill rolled over his skin. The sentence didn't need to be finished out loud; he'd already lived it.

If they needed to, they would eliminate Altair's interference permanently.

Just like they'd eliminated his dad's.

"We have to figure out exactly what they're planning, and then we have to find a way to come at it sideways, to pick a defense Lillian isn't expecting." Aaron looked determined, his posture more obviously military than Blake had seen in him before. "She's gotta think that she's cut off all our help, but only God can watch everything at once. There's an angle she missed. We just have to find it."

"Oorah, Sergeant," Daelan said, his eyes never leaving the screen.

Cassidy and Hugo doled out tasks one by one, and then the group scattered to work. Cassidy and Daelan stayed at the computers, digging into the mess of text at the bottom of Wigand's email to see what other information might be hidden there. Hugo, Kindra, and Dru began emailing and calling contacts, reaching out with vague but leading questions to see who else might have an inkling of what was about to hit. Aaron and Geo sat down on the couch with close-up shots of the locations pinpointed by the coordinates, murmuring about ingress, egress, and the different ways they'd plan a mission in those locations.

Blake and Bernard stayed against the wall until everyone had settled in to their tasks. Soon, the space took on the feeling of a library—the clack of keyboards, the rustle of paper, and the murmur of hushed conversation the only sounds in the room.

"I feel useless," Blake muttered. He watched Daelan highlight a portion of the text block and type a command into the computer. Whatever he'd been trying to do must not have worked, because he growled a curse and started over.

"I ran a multimillion-dollar business for three decades," Bernard said. "I was responsible for the employment and welfare of hundreds of employees across three continents." His pause was weighted, and he held Blake's eyes with his dark gaze. "None of that has mattered since the Calvers saved my life."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Blake raised his eyebrows. "It's not working. All it means is that you're in the same boat as me."

Bernard sighed. "All I'm saying is that this isn't our world, so of course we're feeling out of place. Even Aaron and Geo are out of step here."

"They don't look it." And they didn't. Their heads were tilted together, each of them holding a different map up for comparison; they looked like they'd been planning missions for the Calvers for years.

"They're military. They're used to working within a very rigid set of expectations and rules, though. Those are gone here. The Calvers have their own codes and guidelines, but the people working for Lillian don't seem to have any." Bernard slid his hands into the pockets of his khaki slacks and lifted one shoulder. "Aaron and Geomar can adapt, and their training makes them well suited to doing so in this environment. We don't have that advantage, me even less then you, so we have to be willing to step aside sometimes."

"But—"

"And we have to be ready to step in when there is something we can do."

"Is there? Anything?" Blake shook his head. "Because it doesn't feel like that'll happen anytime soon."

"Blake!" Aaron called. "You know DC, don't you?"

Bernard raised his eyebrows at Blake as if to say, See? and then nudged him toward the couch. Blake sat down next to Geo and tried to dredge up memories of parts of DC that he hadn't visited often, pointing out a couple of backroads that Lillian's people might use if they wanted to stay clear of the worst of rush-hour traffic.

As the afternoon wore on, Blake almost began to hope. They might not know what exactly would be happening yet, but it would be big, it would be bloody, and it would be starting at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday. Barely more than two days.

Everyone in this house was determined to stop it, no matter what it took, and Blake would be there with them. Even if all he could do was give them occasional traffic advice and bring the caffeine they needed to keep working.

Whatever it took to end this. For his dad, for Uncle Altair, and for everyone who wouldn't stand a chance against this assault alone.

No one had wanted to leave, even when sleep became an absolute necessity, so the long living room had been transformed into an odd sort of dormitory. Kindra and Dru had set up two queen-size air mattresses on the floor, and everyone had taken turns napping on those or the couch.

"I think I found something!" Daelan's announcement rang through the room, his voice somehow both wired and weary. It sent a frisson of energy though Blake's tired mind, just enough to make him drag himself off the couch he'd been dozing on and toward the computers. The rest of the sleepers surged or stumbled to the center of the room, rubbing their eyes and blinking at the screens.

"The extra numbers and symbols that Wigand used as filler for the coordinates turned into an algorithm when I poked at it long enough." Daelan was speaking at triple speed, and his movements were jerky, missing the smooth control he usually had. Blake guessed that shake might be because of the empty coffee mug and carafe lined up on the desk in front of him. "When I ran the text through a filter that— Well, here. Look."

The email from yesterday was up on the center screen, but now certain letters and words had been marked out in bold font.

What, man, defy the devil. Consider, he's an enemy to mankind. 'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy rather in power than use, and keep thy friend under thy own life's key.

Below the email, those letters had been pulled out and transposed into a meaningless string of consonants, vowels, and punctuation. But then something Daelan typed into the computer shifted them into an almost understandable order.

D E V I L A F T E R Y O U R O W N . F I N D K I N T R A P P E D U N D E R K E Y . T R U S T F E W . W A T C H G O M I N A N D T H E S E A .

"'Devil after your own. Find kin trapped under key. Trust few. Watch Gomin and the sea.'" Kindra spoke before Blake's mind had even begun trying to group the letters into words.

"What the fuck does that mean? Whose kin? We're not missing any kin. And they can't expect us to watch an entire country," Dru said.

"Maybe more than one," Kindra said. "Gomin is an Asian Tortuga—limited government oversight and very few questions asked about anything, as far as I could tell when I was there last year. A lot of countries seem to use it to run their officially unofficial black ops and black-market business. Including its three lovely neighbors: Russia, China, and North Korea."

"So, we're supposed to watch at least four countries? Or more?" Dru huffed. "This is ridiculous. And sea? If they're mentioning Gomin, they probably mean the Sea of Japan, but they don't specify, and there are how many on this planet?"

Mystifyingly, Dru looked at Daelan.

And Daelan answered. "Depends on your definition of sea. Over a hundred, definitely. Closer to one hundred forty if you're generous in your criteria."

Blake blinked, impressed. Daelan hadn't looked it up.

Dru made a sharp gesture. "Exactly! This doesn't help at all. Whoever this is fucking sucks at giving us useful intel."

"Not entirely true. In fact, this is weirdly cryptic for Wigand," Kindra said. Aaron nodded. "They're skilled at multilayered encoding, and we already know they can use it to get us truly useful info. Given that, they should also have been able to figure out how to translate whatever they're trying to say here into something that doesn't sound like a Delphic prophecy."

"Especially since none of this tells us how the attacks are actually going to be carried out or why." Cassidy ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes scanning the information spread across the screens. "But I don't know if that's because Wigand is playing with us or because he doesn't know."

"Lillian doesn't seem to be the type to give people the pieces to the puzzle and the picture," Geo said. "Not from anything I've seen of her so far."

"This part doesn't look like it has anything to do with tomorrow." Hugo had his arms crossed over his broad chest and his eyes fixed on the screens, and he seemed to be ignoring everyone else's speculations. Then he stepped back and shook his head. "Those who still need sleep, go now. Everyone else, get back to work. We're running out of time."

"Hold on!" Daelan's shout was too loud. Even he flinched. Clearing his throat, he gestured vaguely at the screen. "The thing at the bottom, and the—" He growled and jabbed at the keyboard, looking intensely frustrated and on the verge of falling asleep sitting up.

When he was done abusing the keys, a link popped up, and this one didn't direct them to a website. Instead it initiated the download of a compressed file.

Daelan stared at the download completed notification, his jaw slack. "I, uh . . . huh. Well, that's interesting."

"What were you expecting?" Aaron asked.

"Another message? Maybe?" He rubbed his hand over his face. "Everything with this has been stupidly layered, so I thought there was probably another purpose for the block with the coordinates. I ran it through that decryption filter you wrote for the government version of Tru3 v4ult and then this."

"That has only been out for a month. I don't like how well this person seems to know who we are and how we think," Cassidy said quietly to Hugo. "No one on this side of the business even knows I created Tru3 v4ault. The only people who might know us this way are Amett and Odira, but . . ."

Hugo snorted. "Yeah. I don't exactly see either of them being this helpful."

"Amett's the one who told us about Lillian." Kindra's mouth pressed into a thin line, and her stance seemed tense.

It took a second for Blake to connect the name.

Amett. As in Weston. As in Kindra's father.

"And he made you shoot him to hide the fact that he'd talked to you from Odira," Hugo said, his tone firm but somehow not unsympathetic. "I'm not expecting more help from that quarter."

Blake barely stopped his jaw from dropping when the pieces of that particular statement clicked in his head. Amett, Kindra's father and presumably the same person who had tried to kill her, had fed them valuable information and then ordered his daughter to shoot him? What kind of screwed-up Greek tragedy was that?

Hugo put his hand on Kindra's shoulder. "He could have left then if he really wanted out."

Kindra shook her head. "Not without Sera. Not after he watched—" She bit the inside of her lip and broke eye contact, her gaze flicking toward Dru, but only for a second. "He wouldn't walk away. Not without trying to get her out."

"Whether that's true or not," Cassidy said before Hugo could respond, "it doesn't change how we have to deal with what's in front of us."

"It might," Hugo muttered.

Cassidy ignored him as she decompressed and opened the folder. She began issuing orders, assigning Dru and Kindra to start going through the files Daelan had found and banishing Daelan not just to the air mattress in the corner of the living room, but upstairs to an actual mattress.

"No, I just— Coffee. Coffee, and I'll be fine for a while." Daelan blinked; his eyes stayed closed for a few seconds.

"Dae, I will drug you if you don't get some sleep." Dru locked her hand around his upper arm and pulled him away from the computers.

Daelan rose, complying as he grumbled about leaving projects half-finished. Then he turned to Blake and seemed to focus for a moment. "You need sleep too. I don't think you've slept on a bed for a couple of days."

"No, but I've still slept longer than you have." Blake had been organizing papers, reviewing location data, and making sure everyone else ate and stayed hydrated. Not useless, but nothing as crucial as their work. Even if he hadn't slept in a bed, Blake had slept. Still, a bed sounded brilliant. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice to head upstairs and try to forget everything that had happened since Wigand's email arrived. He could see Daelan ready to argue the point, so he cut him off at the pass. "I'll go up and sleep if you will."

Nodding groggily, Daelan peered at his parents. "You promise you'll wake me up if something happens?"

"Absolutely. That's why you need to go sleep now." Hugo gripped the back of his son's neck and towed him closer to press a kiss on his forehead. "We'll need that brain of yours working at full capacity later."

Daelan still seemed tense and reluctant, but he stopped resisting. "All right. But only because you're starting to look fuzzy around the edges."

Blake smiled at the grudging capitulation and nudged Daelan toward the stairs, keeping a close eye on him as they climbed to make sure he didn't trip and fall backward down the unforgiving wood staircase.

They reached the second floor without mishap, but when they walked into the room they shared, they stopped dead in their tracks.

"Oh. Uh . . ." Blake should have realized when Bernard hadn't joined them at the surveillance station that he was up here. Sleeping. In one of the room's two beds.

"I don't mind sharing if you don't," Daelan said, shuffling toward the empty bed. "I don't snore, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure I'll be asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow."

Blake almost said no, that he could just go back downstairs and use an air mattress, or ask Aaron and Geo if they minded him using their room for a couple of hours, but the words didn't come. Instead, he said, "All right."

Toeing off his shoes, Blake followed Daelan to the double bed and pulled the comforter down. He collapsed onto the right side of the mattress, Daelan took the left—neither of them removing more than shoes and belts—and within moments they were sighing in relief as they settled onto their pillows.

"I sometimes sleep snuggle," Daelan murmured, the words slurred with hints of unconsciousness. "Just shove me off if I try to hug you."

"I don't mind." And he really didn't mind, because Daelan had earned his trust. He'd saved his life. He'd listened to Blake's list of labels with genuine interest and little in the way of judgment or curiosity, and had included him in the efforts to track Lillian as much as possible without ever making it feel like pity or charity. Blake appreciated the warning, but sleep snuggling sounded wonderful. It sounded like exactly the kind of comfort he had missed most the past few months—soft, expectation-less human touch. He'd never experienced that kind of touch while in a bed with someone he thought was pretty. Never had the desire or the opportunity to. But now . . .

Holding his breath and taking a chance, Blake closed the inches separating him from Daelan, gently inserting himself into the space under Daelan's chin. Daelan snuffled, his eyes opening blearily, but then he smiled. Draping an arm over Blake's waist, he pulled them closer together. They were almost the same height, and they fit together surprisingly well, no awkward angles or uncomfortably placed elbows. Even though he hadn't shot a gun in at least a day, Daelan still smelled like sulfur and gun oil. And, underneath that, peppermint and coffee.

Daelan seemed to fall right to sleep. Warm, comfortable, and stressed beyond the point of exhaustion, it was only a few seconds before Blake followed him into unconsciousness.

Blake woke up overheated and practically crushed against Daelan's chest, his deep, even breaths gusting past Blake's ear. Bernard's bed was empty, and the room was wonderfully peaceful, so Blake closed his eyes and rested his head on Daelan's chest again.

Personal space wasn't something Blake usually gave up easily, but even now, without the fatigue creating a mental buffer and pushing away Blake's learned inhibitions, he didn't regret the decision. It felt safe here, and being this close to Daelan was appealing in a way that Blake never really experienced. Was, in fact, rarely aware of. There was no part of Blake urging him to act on the feeling, so he basked in it instead, not moving out of the tight circle of Daelan's arms until Daelan started shifting and muttering about codes and countdowns.

Even with that reminder in his ear, Blake's sense of warmth and well-being lasted as they untangled from each other, replaced their shoes and belts, and headed downstairs. It lasted until the moment he and Daelan rejoined the Calvers.

The countdown map had been shifted to the screen on the far left of the table, and its stark simplicity seemed to mock them all, implacably ticking away seconds and getting ever closer to something wicked that was this way coming.

"Where are we at?" Daelan's voice was still thick with sleep.

"Stuck," Dru muttered.

Apparently it had taken a while for Cassidy to break the password-protected files. Daelan's claims about his mother had held true, though. She'd gotten in, discovering confirmation of what Bernard had pointed out about the coordinates—that each one was a bridge or a section of freeway running through a busy city—and limited information on what would happen. There were automatic weapons waiting in each city, a couple dozen people involved in each event, and semitrucks for transporting . . . something. There was also a strict admonition from Wigand not to go to the authorities.

"Why not?" Blake asked. "Uncle Altair—"

"I know. He'd do anything and everything in his power to help stop this," Hugo said, his voice steady despite the stress lines on his face. "The problems haven't changed. Lillian has spies, and Wigand hinted that . . ."

When he rolled his lips between his teeth and looked at Cassidy, she placed her hand over his and squeezed before picking up the explanation. "The information in the packet hinted that any sign of interference from the alphabet agencies or local police will trigger a contingency plan with a much higher guaranteed casualty rate."

"What? On top of that?" Blake gaped at the countdown map. None of the others looked surprised. Pissed, distressed, or resigned maybe, but not at all surprised.

"The information didn't specify exact targets, but it hinted at locations—extra teams in both DC and Houston." Hugo took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "From what little they said about it, it seems the location in DC will be a hard target—probably something political. Congress or the White House, if she's got the pull to sneak in explosives."

"The Houston target could be NASA, but it's likely something softer. Civilian," Cassidy said, weariness in every line of her body. "It's a huge city, so the possibilities are numerous. Schools, stadiums, tourist centers—I mean, hell, the city houses the largest children's hospital in the country."

Dru shuddered. Beside her, Kindra looked carved from stone.

Blake glanced at the clock: 1:19 a.m. If the calculations were right and the attacks were happening at rush hour, they didn't have much time left.

"Why?" Geo's voice was rough, and when Blake looked at him, he looked scared. "What exactly is she thinking she's gonna get by doing this? How the fuck will this gain anyone anything?"

"I don't know." Elbows on the table, Cassidy covered her face with her hands. "I've been looking at every possible contingency and connection, and I just— There's nothing. Nothing makes sense."

"It might be a distraction," Kindra said. "But there's no way for us to know from what."

"And nothing needs a distraction this messy and costly," Dru added.

"It could be a punishment for a bunch of people who've pissed her off," Hugo said. "It's going to hit wide enough that any individual targets will get lost in the chaos."

"She's always been subtler than that, though," Cassidy protested, dropping her hands to the table. "This is something I'd expect from Garret, not Lillian. Not for those reasons, anyway." She shook her head and moved her hand to the mouse and the keyboard before scrolling back to the beginning of the open document on the screen. "There's another angle here we're not seeing."

And it seemed they wouldn't see it unless Wigand sent them another care package.

"So we can't get official help, and we can't be in eighteen places at once, and we can't let this just happen—what can we do?" The question was half plea, half defeat, as if Dru desperately hoped someone would have an answer, but she didn't actually expect one.

For a moment, it looked like defeat would win.

Kindra sat stoic and silent, only the way her eyes kept flicking toward Dru giving away her unease. Cassidy and Hugo looked like they were having an argument in Morse-code blinks. Eyes closed, Daelan sat with his hand over his mouth. Geo looked lost. Bernard seemed like he was about to cry.

Blake didn't feel anything except cold and oddly numb. The whole thing was too big. Too awful. Too unbelievable. It was a plot point out of Die Hard, not something that could ever actually happen.

Warning the authorities felt like the right thing to do—it was what Isaac and Kim-Ly had taught him to do from infancy—but this time the right thing would only put good people in danger. People like the agents and officers of the FBI and the police.

In the DC area, those would be agents Blake knew. He might have been to barbecues at their houses for the Fourth of July and exchanged cheap, silly presents with their kids for Christmas. If the Calvers said Fuck off to Lillian's additional threats and called in the FBI, agents his father had worked with would be running straight into a situation that might kill them. That might kill them before they could even do their jobs. But if the Calvers didn't call it in, all those civilians would be at an even greater risk.

The lives of countless strangers weighed against the blood of dozens of people Blake knew. A few for many. The risk of more civilian targets against the promise of well-trained help on those highways.

How could they balance that equation? And when was the price too high?

Blake couldn't make it work. Even when he remembered that every agent had signed up for exactly this, to put their lives in danger to keep citizens from harm, urging the Calvers to call the FBI felt like asking too much. Of Blake, and of the agents who would be rushing into the line of fire.

Even though he knew it would objectively be—despite the additional danger—the right choice.

Aaron was sitting with his head dropped, the heels of his hands digging into his eyes. With a sharp gasp he sat up, his eyes locked on Geo. "You still got Mike Truong's number memorized?"

"Yeah, but what—" Geo's mouth went slack and his eyes bugged. "Holy shit. Holy shit. Can we?"

"Can we what?" Cassidy demanded.

"Fucking phone-tree it!" Geo laughed, relief and disbelief infused in the noise.

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Hugo asked. Geo had his hands covering his face and was muttering something, so Hugo turned to Aaron, who looked like he was on the verge of shock.

"I think— This might not work, but it might, and . . ." Aaron gripped the back of his head with both hands, his forearms pulled in tight against his cheeks. Shuddering, he dropped his arms. "Okay, so because of the medical discharge, Geo got involved with the local VA, right? Thing is, there are a lot of VAs across the country, and all of those have a whole goddamn list of retired and discharged servicemen and women who'd literally throw themselves on a fucking grenade for their country."

Geo nodded emphatically, his blue-green eyes wide and lit with excitement. "And because a lot of the people in power are assholes who spend more time ignoring vets than monitoring them, there ain't much of a chance that the calls'll get picked up by anyone in French's camp."

"Mike has a lot of contacts. He'll be able to give us a list of who to reach out to in some of these areas while he handles his home base. If we call the right people at centers in the cities we need, I am pretty damn sure we could have a militia organized in a few hours." Aaron was almost hyperventilating, and his eyes were overbright.

His exhilaration made Blake freeze, holding his breath to avoid shattering this glimmering moment of hope. It made sense. The logic fit. It could work . . . couldn't it?

Cassidy exhaled heavily and turned to Hugo. "A few hours might be too late for the East Coast."

"Nothing else we can do will be faster or have a better chance of working. Not without triggering Lillian's additional counterattacks," Hugo said quietly. "Not even if we took the chance of contacting the Feds and getting them involved. Lillian knows every one of their reaction plans, so I can guarantee that her mercenaries have been prepped for those scenarios. They'll know what to expect and how to get around 'em."

"Or plow right through them," Kindra added.

Right through them. Everyone and anyone standing on those highways.

"It's the only plan I can think of that might work," Cassidy said, staring at the map. "And the only one that won't use people who haven't been trained for this kind of fight as human shields. I'm not willing to split us up, which means that we only have the manpower to be in one place, so do we head east or west?"

"We'll have more time to get a base established if we head west," Dru pointed out. "Especially if we rent a plane and fly."

Hugo nodded, the expression in his eyes when he looked at the East Coast cities a tiny bit bleak. "West it is, then."

"Chicago." Daelan zoomed in on that city. The red pin hovered over a section of I-90 near downtown. "What do you think? Broken-down van on the side of the road?"

"One per direction, spread a quarter of a mile or so. Maybe less." Kindra leaned in and pointed to the divide between the two sides of the highway. "We don't know which side they're going to hit. In fact, we should assume they're going to strike both."

Aaron looked at her, his eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"This section leading to the interchange of the highways is an overpass. This part just west of that is divided by the train tracks. There's a tall sound wall on the south side of this segment, and the north side is bordered by dirt and construction. That means they've chosen a portion of the highway that already eliminates a lot of escape routes. If you go to all the trouble of picking a place people can't easily run from . . ." Kindra shrugged. Blake almost would've believed the indifference of the gesture if not for the tension around her eyes.

Dru picked up where Kindra had trailed off. "If you're going to pick a spot like that, you make sure to block the only exits."

Nodding, Kindra said, "Lillian is as vicious as Hera on a revenge kick and even more thorough. She may not be attaching her name to any of her plans, but that doesn't mean she's not looking to make a statement."

"I'd ask if this could get any worse, but I really don't want to know if it can." Daelan propped his elbows on the desk and dropped his head into his hands.

"Don't think about that, then." Hugo handed Geo a cell phone. "You need to make sure these vets help us, because it's the only way any of us are going to survive until tomorrow."

It started in Miami and jumped up the East Coast like blood splatter from a shotgun blast.

On the Julia Tuttle Causeway over Biscayne Bay, the strip of highway connecting Miami Beach to Hialeah, four semis jackknifed, blockading both ends of the bridge. They heedlessly slammed into cars. Two sedans flew over the barrier and down—almost a hundred feet down—to crash into the water below.

Horns blared. Drivers screamed obscenities. Children strapped in backseats cried.

The rear doors of the trucks burst open. Soldiers in full-face masks and solid black tactical gear streamed from the trucks, assault rifles raised and ready.

The screams changed tenor, terror raising voices by octaves. People jumped out of their cars and ran. There was nowhere to go.

Gunshots ripped through the air, echoing off the water. Blood sprayed across the asphalt. Bodies slumped over hoods and collapsed to the sunbaked highway.

Within minutes, news anchors across the country broke into regularly scheduled broadcasting.

"We're getting reports of an attack in Miami. Multiple accidents have been called in by witnesses. Machine gun fire has also been heard."

Then again. A flood of calls. The same thing was happening on an overpass in Atlanta. On the highway running through the heart of Charlotte. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge outside Washington, DC. The George Washington Bridge in New York.

More than one anchor swallowed convulsively or stuttered over the words they saw on their teleprompters. "We— There are new reports coming in of s-similar attacks."

"Do not travel," media outlets warned the populations of major East Coast urban centers. "Stay indoors. Stay where you are. The authorities are mobilizing the National Guard. The police are en route. Do not attempt to leave the city until further notice."

There was a moment of relief when shaky cell phone footage uploaded to YouTube showed men and women in partial American military uniforms herding people behind a barricade of cars, holding the terrorists at bay with handguns and hunting rifles. Maybe this would turn the tide. These brave souls could hold the worst back until reinforcements arrived.

That relief didn't even last an hour, until the next set of reports came in.

New Orleans had been hit. It was the sixth city to feel the explosive force of these attacks. Many "experts" the newscasters called in postulated that the country was facing the worst invasion of an enemy force since the British burned Washington, DC, in 1814. Dozens of other theories flew over the airwaves, but they were all just theories.

The ripple of destruction looked set to spread across the country, and no one knew for sure where the next wave would hit.

The basement was locked and barred from the inside. No windows, extra-thick doors, and few people who ever had a reason to use it. Boxes and equipment and furniture had been shoved in the large room over a period of, from what Blake could guess by the varying designs of it all, years. Everything had been left to gather dust undisturbed for a long time.

It wasn't impenetrable, but for today it would have to do.

Blake, Bernard, and Cassidy would stay here, protected, while they monitored communications, watched through the highway's security feeds—which apparently Cassidy knew how to access with a few clicks—and warned the others when official response was on their way and it was time to run.

"According to official chatter, every SWAT team and National Guard unit in the country is on standby right now. In a situation like this, they're all going to shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe never," Cassidy had explained earlier. "They'll arrest anyone they don't kill. It would be a lot better for all of us if we didn't have to break anyone out of prison today."

Or watch them get shipped to the morgue, Blake was sure they'd all added in their heads. He didn't think he was the only one afraid of saying it out loud, as if speaking the hope that everyone would come back alive might be enough to ensure it didn't happen.

He peered at the screen, watching with a bird's-eye view as commuters crawled past the traffic cameras at the twisting, circular intersection of I-90/I-94 and I-290. At first there had been no news cameras on any of the East Coast roads, but there were YouTube videos and frantic phone calls from eyewitnesses. Soon, officials tapped into the traffic cameras that hadn't been busted to pieces. And they had feeds from news copters, when those weren't shot at to keep them away. The Calvers might not have known the exact details of what was coming, but they knew enough. They knew what to watch for.

Every semitruck that crawled across the screen was a potential threat, and every single one was watched, recorded, and logged—side markings, license plate if visible, and any possible description of the driver.

Each one passed without incident.

The screen closest to Bernard showed images from cameras the Calvers, Kindra, Aaron, and Geo had set up as soon as they arrived—eight that they'd snuck into windows of buildings that bordered the highway, four on the footbridge over I-290, and four on South Halsted Street. Dru, Daelan, Aaron, and Kindra were all wearing cameras too.

"Evidence," Cassidy had told Blake when she passed out the equipment earlier. "How they deploy from the trucks, how they handle their weapons, and what they do when they realize someone is fighting back will all give us clues as to who they are and why they're working for Lillian."

"And if any of us can get pictures of their faces, we'll have something to send the Feds when this is all over." Daelan's smile had looked like a lion baring his teeth. "Gotta make sure we point them in the right direction."

Now, they were as ready as they could possibly be for the blitzkrieg that was about to strike Chi-Town in—according to the countdown clock Blake would be exorbitantly happy to never see again after today—fourteen minutes and thirty-six seconds.

Thirty-five seconds.

Thirty-four seconds.

Several laptops sat on folding chairs in front of them, different news broadcasts from the East Coast playing with captions running but no sound, and several streaming YouTube videos being uploaded from the highways. Blake, Bernard, and Cassidy were each working on an additional computer, all of them monitoring as many news sources and current traffic feeds in Chicago as possible. Knowing what had happened—what was happening—in the cities already under attack would help them figure out what to expect here.

If they gathered enough intel, they could direct the rest of the team, could tell them where it would be most effective to pour their limited manpower and resources. At least until it was time to get on the road and run. The reports were too scattered, though, and the involvement of the vets had added an element of unpredictability to this ordeal.

Unpredictability was one of the major problems. They couldn't be sure that Lillian had planned for each wave of the attack to be identical, even before the Calvers involved the vets. Now? New orders from whoever was coordinating this bloody disaster for her might be spreading across the country, changing any number of things.

Or maybe it would play out here exactly like it had in all the other cities. There was no way to know, but Blake was pretty sure that he was the only one naive enough to even pretend to hope that Lillian would call the whole thing off.

Their building was just south of the highway, a part of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus but separated from the other buildings by West Harrison Street. No one had said as much, but Blake thought that Cassidy would have been doing this job alone from a van just off the highway if not for him and Bernard. If she didn't have the civilians to protect, she'd be able to be closer to her family, ready to jump in if they needed her. Not tucked away.

Blake tried—and failed—not to feel guilty about that. It ate at his stomach, churning whatever was left of the sandwich he'd forced himself to eat an hour ago. Guilt wouldn't make anything better. He pushed it aside and ignored it. As much as he could.

Something nudged his shoulder, and he looked away from the screen.

"Keep this on you from now on. It works on a VoIP network." Cassidy pressed a cell phone into Blake's hand, even though he was already wearing a tiny earpiece that connected him to the Calvers' always-open comm line.

The phone was a newish model, but when he activated it, there were only a couple of apps loaded on the home screen.

"Running through VoIP makes it harder to trace even if someone does manage to listen in on the calls. Not impossible, but definitely harder." She smiled, but the expression was too grim to be comforting. "We should be well out of here before that becomes a problem."

Should be.

If the last few years had taught Blake anything, it was not to put much stock in "shoulds." His mother should have been on a different helicopter the day she was shot down, one that landed safely at the base. His father should have survived that last investigation, because no one should have known where he was. The same reason Blake should have been safe in Providence.

Should meant nothing.

He pocketed the phone.

Seven minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

Blake's right leg bounced in a constant, rhythmless motion that he couldn't stop for more than a few seconds at a time. Was that semi veering into the next lane? No, it was moving again. The strike hadn't started yet. Maybe they wouldn't use semis this time at all. It was possible that, instead of four eighteen-wheelers, the invaders would block the road with twelve passenger vans.

Seven minutes and thirteen seconds.

"I think I see a sniper cell setting up a hide on the third floor of the building at my nine," Daelan said. Blake's heartbeat stuttered. If Daelan could see the sniper, the sniper could almost certainly see Daelan.

Stay safe, Blake prayed. All he could remember, though, was Daelan cannon-blasting through the window in Providence. He wasn't sure he trusted Daelan to know what staying safe actually meant.

"There's a small group loitering on Halsted." Cassidy zoomed in on the people she was watching, and captured two of their faces with a screenshot. "I'll try to ID, but even limiting the search to the military database, I doubt there's enough time to get a confirmation. Keep those two locations in mind, but I think they might be our backup, not Lillian's."

"Good," Hugo said. "It means word kept spreading. Hopefully some of the others are already in place."

Hopefully. They could only hope now. And pray.

Five minutes and twelve seconds.

Blake closed his eyes and prayed. To God. To Brahman. To Buddha or aliens or any being in the universe powerful enough to help and benevolent enough to listen. He'd already lost his family and all of the safety of the city he called home.

Please, he begged. Please let them come through this in one piece.

Clearing her throat, Cassidy announced, "One minute until the countdown ends."

"Assuming they're sticking to it," Kindra said.

"We can only assume so if they went to the trouble of setting it—"

Over the comm, several large engines revved. Cassidy's mouth snapped shut, and her eyes went wide and unblinking. Blake held his breath, watching a semi careen out of control. No accident had caused the sudden sideways motion, but it slammed into cars in the other lanes, crushing them against one another. The back end slid, swiping cars out of the way like a hand clearing a desk.

Blake hadn't had time to exhale before it happened again.

And again.

And again.

It was starting. And it was playing out the same way it had in every other city.

Four eighteen-wheelers forcing their way across the crowded lanes, crushing smaller cars beneath wheels or against walls. Pushing them over the center barrier and into the path of an oncoming train. Daelan was already out of the van and sprinting toward the closest wreck, one hand in the messenger bag strapped across his body.

Metal crunched and squealed. A car was smashed between the cab of the semi and the sound wall, pinned so tight no one inside would be able to get out.

If they're even alive.

A flash from a building window.

The first man out of the south-end truck went down. He didn't get back up.

Daelan closed the last few necessary feet and chucked what was in his hand at the back of the truck. Several of the soldiers jumped out of the way. Not all of them were fast enough.

Boom.

Flames exploded out the back of the truck, but the black-clad figures only jumped out faster, guns at the ready.

Soldiers from the other three semis had begun firing into the cars. Into the buildings on the west side of the highway. Up at the overpasses.

Daelan threw another bomb. This one stuck to a soldier's chest.

The explosion three seconds later took out six of the enemies.

"Por favor, Santa María, por favor protegerlos," Bernard whispered.

It wasn't clear if he was begging protection for Kindra, Geo, Aaron, and the Calvers, for the vets they hoped were hiding along the highway, or the civilians trapped in the middle. It didn't matter. Any of them. All of them. They needed every iota of help they could lay claim to. Blake repeated the prayer, watching helplessly as armed and armored soldiers poured out of the trucks.

"Training and coordination," Cassidy reported. "High-end weapons. Face masks on all of them. They're moving straight for cover as they exit, so they've been warned about the potential resistance. Strategy seems otherwise unchanged, but be prepared for something more powerful than bullets."

On the eastbound side of the highway, Kindra, Dru, and Hugo shouted orders at the civilians. Three ladders were now slung over the K-rails on each side of the center of the highway, the barriers keeping people from falling onto the train tracks. While laying down as much suppressive fire as they could without hitting the people they were trying to save, the Calvers pushed people toward the ladders. The plan was to get everyone either onto the central train platform and up the stairs to South Halsted, or into the train tunnel where they would be relatively safe. As long as the city's transit authority got their shit together and stopped the trains.

"Behind you, Daelan!" Blake warned.

Through the cameras, he watched Daelan spin and take out two mercenaries approaching from the west.

From the building north of the highway, more than one muzzle flashed. Bullets streaked down like deadly hail, and it seemed to Blake as if each found its target.

"Emergency services are overloaded. Calls can't get through anymore." Cassidy's report was almost unsettling in its calm and even delivery. It jarred against the painful fear making Blake's heart pound too hard and quick. "Doesn't matter much. Traffic is backing up everywhere in the area; their response team is going to be a while. CPD's chief and the emergency management director have both of the heli units en route though."

"Doesn't do us a bit of fucking good right now!" Hugo grunted when a civilian tripped and slammed into him at full speed.

"You're holding the worst back," Cassidy said. "The enemy is hunkering down because all of the drivers and the engines are blown."

"Fuck." Bernard's sharp curse—utterly unexpected in his voice—drew Blake's and Cassidy's eyes. His copper skin looked sickly pale, and his eyes were wide.

"There was . . . They said—" He stopped, took a quick breath, and tried again. "Two of the East Coast sites—there were massive explosions. They blew the bridge apart in Miami."

Cassidy sucked a sharp breath. "Be advised! High explosives are possibly onboard those trucks or carried by the enemy."

Almost every person connected to their comm line swore. Fluently. The gunshots ringing through the same open channel never slowed.

"Well, gunshots ain't seemin' to do shit to set it off," Geo said as Aaron helped an old woman scramble over the K-rails. "Gotta be C-4 if anything."

Blake watched the black-clad soldiers shooting indiscriminately in any direction there were fleeing targets. They couldn't have gone into this thinking they'd survive. Maybe the ones who had brutalized the East Coast—maybe—but they had to know that each successive city was going to claim more lives. On their end.

Why were they doing this? What had the devil promised them that was worth dying for?

Someone pounded on the door. Muffled shouts came through the thick metal barrier.

Cassidy brought up a camera she'd installed in the hallway outside that door. In the wide-angle view, Blake saw a group of people—some in tears, some screaming, some white-faced—huddled in the hallway. The ones closest to the basement were frantically charging at the door, battering it with bodies that would bear bruises tomorrow.

"Shit," Cassidy muttered. "They must work in the building. I thought they'd run away, not down here!"

Blake tensed, his eyes darting between the barred door and Cassidy's screen. "What do we do?"

"Pack up!" Cassidy ordered, gesturing for them to head toward the south end of the large room. A second exit, one that led almost straight out to the street, was in that direction. The frightened students, professors, and administrators were like a battering ram, and their impacts rattled the north door in its frame. "I have to let them in here or they'll kill themselves pushing against the door. Head to the van! It's almost time to collect our soldiers."

Blake closed the laptops and slipped them into their padded bags, slinging three of them over his shoulders, but he didn't move more than halfway across the room. He didn't want to be out of sight when Cassidy unlocked the door.

"Let's go, Blake." Bernard wrapped his hand around Blake's wrist and tugged him toward the exit.

Although he didn't fight Bernard, he didn't turn either. Walking backward, he saw Cassidy finish unlocking the door. Panicked strangers began streaming into the room.

"Don't stay here," Cassidy barked, projecting her voice over theirs. A few of them stumbled to a stop, staring at her in shock. "Follow us out the back. Then head south, away from the freeway. Get as far away from this area of the city as you can."

Her words—loud, but firm, calm, and solidly reliable—seemed to soothe the sharpest edges of their terror. The group followed her almost automatically when she headed toward the south exit. Bernard's tugs on Blake's arm got more insistent then, and this time he turned to run.

Cassidy continued to give orders—the best routes to take, how to grab people as they fled, and suspicious things to be on the watch for—but she, Blake, and Bernard split off from the terrified civilians as soon as they reached street level.

Breaking into a run, Cassidy led them east a block to the University of Illinois at Chicago lot off Morgan and Harrison where their—stolen? Borrowed? Bought?—twelve-passenger van was parked. Earlier, Daelan, Hugo, and Geo had collected in-person intel to help Cassidy plan an escape route away from the scene. And the best route was directly through the UIC campus, according to Cassidy.

They ran, and Blake had never been more thankful for his cardio-obsessed gym teacher. He kept up with Cassidy, his breath coming harder than hers but easier than Bernard's.

Then a familiar sound drew his attention to the sky. Coming in low and fast above them were six helicopters: two blue-and-white-painted police choppers, two Air Force Sikorsky Pave Hawks, and two Army Black Hawks exactly like his mom used to fly.

"Looks like the POTUS made some calls. That's more than the National Guard. Military had to be on standby for them to be here already." Cassidy was looking up too. "We got incoming, so get the hell out," she said over the comms. "Convene at the van. We gotta be out in three minutes."

Cassidy opened the van's side door and tossed the bags she carried inside, climbing in after them and scrambling up to the driver's seat instead of walking around the vehicle. Bernard hauled himself in and set to rearranging the bags, getting things out of the way for when the others had to dive in. Blake barely had a chance to step in before the engine roared to life.

"Get in the back and stay low!" Cassidy ordered as she moved the van into position for an exit via what wasn't supposed to be an exit.

Pressing his hands to the seats and the window, Blake followed Bernard to the last row of seats. The chatter over the comm was sharp words and rough voices, but Blake could pick out every single member of their team. They were heading closer. They were almost out.

Alive.

"Daelan!" Dru's scream was full of fear.

No! Blake's knees buckled. He stumbled the last step, his knees hitting the leather seat.

"Son of a mother-loving anteater, this fucking hurts!" Daelan complained.

"Oh thank God." Blake's knees slipped, landing hard on the floor. Dropping his elbows on the seat, he collapsed forward, hands clasped and pressed to his forehead as he silently mouthed a prayer. Bernard's hand rested on the back of his head, the weight and warmth of the touch comforting.

But not nearly as comforting as Daelan's continuous curses streaming over the comm. And all of the others' voices talking over him or telling him to shut up.

The front passenger door was wrenched open so hard the noise shocked Blake upright. He watched Kindra leap into the passenger seat while Dru dove through the open side door almost at the same time. Daelan and Hugo jumped in as Dru moved out of the way. Aaron and Geo were in last.

They shut the doors as the van peeled out of the parking lot, crashing through a chain-link construction fence, using a pedestrian crossing to blast over four lanes, and pushing cars in the street out of the way when they didn't move fast enough. Then Cassidy drove straight onto the wide walkways of UIC's campus.

It would have been a deadly move on a normal weekday. Luckily, either the grounds had already been cleared of pedestrians, or the gunshots had sent everyone scurrying for safety. There wasn't anyone there to hit.

"How bad?" Cassidy asked, tension clipping her words.

"Fucking bullshit sprain," Daelan grumbled. "Most pathetic injury ever. I'd rather get shot."

"Don't even joke," Cassidy snapped, at the same time Aaron said, "I'll trade you."

The van swerved onto a stretch of grass when Cassidy looked back for a second. Blake would've bet a fortune that he wasn't the only one who stopped breathing.

"Do we need a doctor?" Hugo asked.

"Shit, that's close to the brachial." Geo ripped off the Velcro straps holding his Kevlar in place and quickly yanked his black T-shirt over his head. He was much more careful doing the same to Aaron, and even more careful pressing the cloth against the wound.

"Bernard, the med kit is behind your seat." Dru leaned half into the backseat, reaching for the bag Bernard was hauling over the seat back from the trunk.

"I really coulda gone another few years without getting shot again," Aaron said through gritted teeth as Dru and Geo wiped the wound clean.

"You might consider a career change, then," Daelan said from another row up. There was pain in his voice too as Hugo checked his ankle. "I hear GSWs are pretty damn rare for dentists. Or maybe—"

"Do we need a doctor?" Cassidy repeated Hugo's question, stalling Daelan's attempt at humor.

"The shot went into his upper arm, but . . ." Geo sighed, an almost painful amount of relief in the sound. "But no. As long as we can get the bleeding to stop, I think we can handle it. Extraction can wait until we're not bouncing like fucking jackrabbits."

"Good." Cassidy turned, leaving the pedestrian paths of the campus for an actual road. Even more than a mile away from the attack site, Blake could see the panic. Drivers ran red lights in their rush away from the highway. Wide-eyed faces were in every uncovered window.

Traffic was tight, but Cassidy had her route well planned—through parking lots, across parks, over high school football fields, and then finally back on a road.

"CPD and the military knew about the explosives, right?" Bernard asked.

Cassidy nodded, never taking her eyes off the path. "It's on every news channel. I saw official reports going out through law enforcement channels. They know."

She sounded hopeless, like knowing wouldn't make a difference.

"What's our move?" Kindra was riding in front with Cassidy, her gaze on the side window and sometimes behind them.

"We need to get clear of the area completely," Cassidy said. "They'll be scouring this city for weeks. We'll switch cars on Throop, and again when we stop in McHenry. We'll head up to Wisconsin from there. We've got to finish going through the info Wigand sent us to see if there was something in there to explain what the fuck use any of what happened today was."

"Lillian's actions always have a reason." Hugo finished wrapping Daelan's ankle. "It's usually a cold-blooded and fucking twisted reason, but it's a reason."

"Nothing is worth what she's done." Geo's hands were bloody and his every motion tense. He tied off another layer of bandages around Aaron's arm.

"It is to her," Cassidy said. "But never again. She is not going to do something like this ever again."

There was conviction in those words, true determination that what she'd said would come to pass, but the boom of an explosion belied them almost immediately. That and the column of black smoke rising into the air.

Blake turned to look out the back window of the van, kneeling on the seat, his eyes on the aftermath of whatever had just happened on the highway, but he could practically feel the disquiet building behind him.

They switched cars on Throop a few minutes later, communication kept to a bare minimum by some mutual understanding. In moments, they were on their way again.

For the rest of the drive out of Chicago, no one said a word.

Tucked away in a hotel room in Madison, Blake sat on one of the beds, a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders and over the top of her head, and watched the country mourn.

The news was nonstop on every major network. People railed and cried. They celebrated. They questioned. They fought. They quivered with a terror that rivaled, and then overtook, the aftermath of any attack in American history.

For the first time in modern memory, it wasn't a single city, or even a few cities, that bore the weight of destruction and loss. This wasn't like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The MOVE bombing in Philadelphia. The Oklahoma City bombing. The Columbine shooting. The attacks on 9-11. The Fort Hood shooting. The Boston Marathon bombing. The shooting at Pulse in Orlando.

No. Yesterday, within less than six hours from the first semi's collision to the final bomb, the entire nation's illusion of safety, of peace, had shattered.

"There has been no word yet on who was behind the coordinated attack that started in five East Coast cities at the height of rush hour," the newscaster, a woman named Emily Cawan, said.

Blake pulled her knees into her chest and shuddered. It hadn't been long—maybe twelve hours since Chicago. For Blake, the ripples of shock and random urges to cry were almost worse than after Providence.

She hadn't been in the middle of it this time, but she'd been watching closely, helpless as the people trapped on the highway bled out on the asphalt and her chest clenched with the fear that one of the Calvers' team would be next. But she'd also watched the Calvers, Kindra, Aaron, and Geo fight back, their bullets finding the unarmored sections of the enemy soldiers' bodies and leaving death behind.

It hadn't really hit her while it was happening, but the images had been playing on loop in her head ever since.

"Officials are investigating several leads, but as yet no country or terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Many nations have, in fact, offered aid to the cities affected." Emily looked down for a moment, and her hands twitched on the desk before she pulled her shoulders back and resumed the report. "What is puzzling investigators across the country is how the damage was stalled at many sites. Correspondent Kenneth Bryce has more in Kansas City. Kenneth?"

"Thank you, Emily." The broadcast now focused on a man and a woman standing on the steps of an oddly geometric building—the Kansas City police station, according to the caption on the bottom of the screen. "I'm here with Shawna Cole, a retired Navy lieutenant who was one of the brave veterans who helped limit the loss here in Kansas City. Lieutenant Cole, can you explain how you knew what was going to happen?"

She nodded slowly. "It's still a little hard to believe, but the message was passed through the vets starting early in the morning."

"Why did you believe the message?"

Shawna looked at the guy like he was stupid. "What would I lose if it was wrong? A few hours of my day? Maybe an entire night if I had to spend time explaining to a cop why I was wearing body armor and carrying a weapon?" She shook her head. "That's not the kind of warning you assume is wrong; the cost would be far too high."

"If someone knew the attacks were going to occur, why do you think they didn't take their information to the—"

Blake changed the channel.

On the next station, they were interviewing civilians who had been trapped on the highway in Houston.

Blake changed the channel.

A repeat and in-depth analysis of President Elina Vazquez's address to the nation late last night. Fox News was criticizing her for being too soft, for not declaring war after such a blatant attack against the nation, all the while ignoring the lack of evidence against any country or organization. They didn't believe her when she said the NSA had had no warning prior to the attacks.

"Someone knew," insisted the intelligence "expert" they'd brought in. "We've heard it from veterans all over the country—word of the attacks came through early in the morning on Friday, so someone, and likely more than one someone, had to know it was going to happen. If President Vazquez expects us to believe that she wasn't one of those people, then I have to wonder if she's capable of protecting this country from its enemies."

Guilt churned Blake's already upset stomach. It was stupid to feel guilty when the Calvers' actions had saved lives—possibly hundreds or thousands of lives—but every jab at the president or the FBI or the NSA stung Blake. Turning it off didn't seem to be an option; she couldn't make her finger press the power button. Couldn't even change the channel again.

She didn't look up when the door to the hotel room opened or when the mattress shifted and someone sat next to her on the bed.

"Can you believe this?" she asked after another round of unfounded accusations against the president. "How do they get away with making so much shit up out of thin air?"

"When no one has evidence of anything, everyone can say whatever they want." It wasn't exactly a surprise when Daelan was the one who answered her. The odd combination of peppermint and gun oil gave him away. He smelled like soap now too.

"Burden of proof is on the prosecution."

Daelan snorted, the sound too old and bitter for someone who couldn't legally drive. "Not in the media. Proof is in the ratings."

"It's stupid that this bothers me, and I know why we couldn't go through the official channels, but I hate that we're causing her these kinds of problems."

"It'll get better eventually." Daelan's words were serious, but softly spoken. "Once Lillian isn't dangling the threat of more casualties over our heads, we'll be able to give President Vazquez and all of her minions the intel."

"And until then?"

"We'll protect everyone as best we can," he promised, deadly assurance in his voice. "Or, like today, we'll find a way to make sure others can protect them."

Blake pulled the blanket off the top of her head and glanced at Daelan. "How can you do it?"

"Do what?" Daelan tilted his head to meet Blake's eyes, a wry smile on his lips. It was amazing how quickly his mood could shift from lethal to playful. Amazing, intriguing, and just a tiny bit unsettling. "There's a lot I do that no one else understands."

"How can you kill people?"

That smile fell. The amused glimmer with which he usually watched the world faded. He cleared his throat, but he never looked away from Blake's eyes.

"Compartmentalization, a solid certainty that these are people who would do very bad things if I let them walk away, and a series of excellent therapists."

If the words had been spoken casually, thrown out as a blithe brush-off, Blake might've been scared. The person who could do that and joke about it had to be either sociopathic or deeply in denial. She thought that if she hadn't been sitting with Daelan and watching his face so closely while he said the words, that was how she would've interpreted them, and it would have been chilling instead of comforting.

Mildly comforting.

Kind of.

Maybe the comfort was in learning that Daelan thought about the implications and the losses and the bloodshed at all, because nothing Blake had seen in her time with the Calvers had indicated that he did. But she had so many more questions.

"How do you know they're all people who do very bad things? Did you actually know who the guys that raided the Providence house were? Or the mercenaries from the highway? How do you know they're all bad enough that killing them is the only answer?"

"They all had guns pointed at unarmed civilians." His expression had been carefully neutral before, but now there was steel and fire in his eyes. "I don't second-guess that shit."

How could Blake argue against that? If she argued the morality of the point, she'd have to offer a reasonable alternative, reasonable being the key—and difficult to meet—criterion.

Should the Calvers have nicely asked the armed fighters pouring out of semitrucks to put down their weapons? Or risked getting close enough to disarm and contain them without bloodshed? There had been dozens of invaders and only six Calvers in the first moments of the attack. To save the civilians, the enemy had had to be stopped. In any way possible.

It had been the same with the Providence firefight. The intentions of Javier's men had been pretty clear. There had been no chance that Blake could see, even in hindsight, of containing them.

After that day, even Blake hadn't really thought about—and had never mourned—the men themselves. Her thoughts had been focused on their families. On the blood. On the shock of witnessing a life literally come to an end.

So if Blake hadn't been mourning the lives Daelan ended, could she justify being upset with him for not doing it either?

Some of her thoughts must have been written on her face, because he sighed, a little tension seeping out of his posture. "Look, if we're on a job that allows for taking people in alive and bringing them to whatever the proper authorities are, fine. I'm all about that. But when the choice is between them shooting into a minivan and killing a woman who could be a single mother of three, or pulling the trigger myself and sending that asshole to hell, there isn't a choice."

And there was nothing Blake could say that wouldn't essentially mean risking that hypothetical woman's life just to avoid killing the mercenary with the gun.

Daelan was still watching her, the fire in his eyes banked but not gone. In that moment, with that defensive wariness in his expression, he looked . . . he looked exactly like Blake always felt when she was bracing for judgment to be dumped on her like boiling oil by people who had no idea what her reality was like. No way was she going to be one of those people, especially not when she did understand, at least a little. She'd seen it with her parents and heard it from Uncle Altair a lot—decisions made in the middle of a crisis weren't always the right ones or the best ones, but they were the ones you learned how to live with.

Shifting her weight and consciously trying to release the tension from her shoulders, Blake changed the subject. "How did you even get started in this? Your parents don't seem the types to raise their kids in this kind of a business."

"They tried not to." The anger in his eyes lessened, and he sighed, the sound melancholic. "When Mom was pregnant with Dru, they found a couple to foster her—and later me—with. We knew Tom and Dale as our uncles, and we thought we lived with them instead of with Mom and Dad because work kept our parents moving every few weeks. That was true, just not in the way we were told."

"Something happened to them." Blake didn't need to make it a question; obviously, if Daelan and Dru were here despite their parents' attempts at normality, something had happened.

"One of Mom and Dad's enemies found out they had kids and tried to grab us. Uncle Tom and Uncle Dale died getting us out and hiding us."

"Why did— I mean, was it revenge or . . .?"

Daelan lifted one shoulder, a little of that anger kindling in his eyes again. "Not a consarn clue. We couldn't ever figure out who was behind it. From what we did find, it was probably this Russian team our parents pissed off in a huge way the year before." He raised his chin, looking proud. "Mom drained all of their bank accounts into trust funds for the families of their victims. It was brilliant. It pissed people off, though. So it might have been that Russian team, but they died in a bombing eight months after Tom and Dale. We were never able to find out for sure."

Wow. If people like Cassidy and Hugo couldn't find definitive evidence on a case so personally important to them? Whoever had done it must have hidden their tracks very, very well. "And after that they started bringing you with them?"

"Not because they wanted to," Daelan admitted, shaking his head. "They offered us a few different options—like a super exclusive, very well-guarded boarding school—but Dru and I basically said that if they didn't train us and take us with them, we'd run off and try to figure out what had happened to Tom and Dale ourselves."

"How old were you?"

He looked at Blake, the tilt of his chin and the twitch in his cheek making him look simultaneously sheepish and defiant. "Seven."

"Hell." What had Blake been doing at seven? Struggling through Shakespeare for the first time. Whining about self-defense classes. Spending entire weekends on the couch watching cartoons. "That's a heavy choice to make before you're even halfway through elementary school."

"I was in fifth grade by then," Daelan said, his defiance shifting into smug pride. "They had me in an accelerated program. Both of us, actually, but I was catching up with Dru a lot faster than she liked."

Blake could easily imagine it: the two Calver kids getting along more or less, but also locked in a brutal intellectual battle to see who could graduate high school first. She could also easily imagine the kinds of lives they would have led if violence hadn't intervened—exceptional lives, of course, but exceptional in much more relatable ways. Ways that would probably have led to articles in the local paper about the siblings graduating with doctorates at twenty-two, not to this conversation. Not to Daelan knowing at fifteen what it was like to have left bodies in his wake.

Blake's stomach rolled. It was time to change the subject. "I met President Vazquez once, you know, before she was elected to office."

"Yeah? Is she as short in person as she looks on TV?" It was a weak joke, but it eased a little of the tension between them.

"Shorter, actually. She was nice too. And really smart." Blake sighed, turning back to the TV and pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I just keep thinking that there had to have been a way for us to warn them. Warn her."

"Maybe there was," Daelan said. He scooted a little closer and gently rubbed circles between Blake's shoulder blades. "The problem is this: if it exists, we don't know about it. Lillian has been playing this game for a long time, and she's got some pretty powerful allies. A good number of them might not even know about whatever war she's waging now, but that doesn't mean they aren't spying for her."

Blake leaned against Daelan, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes. The smell of hotel soap and laundry detergent surrounding him was so generic that it seemed wrong. This was the kid who wielded a gun with more precision than some of her mom's Army buddies, and spoke either like an eccentric professor, an Army grunt, or a genius five-year-old. There was little about him that fell in the middle of the bell curve.

But that was part of what had begun captivating Blake so much. She was an outlier in so many ways that she'd stopped counting. Finding someone who wasn't her opposite in every way that mattered—like most of the people she met—was such a relief.

He's killed people, she reminded herself again. Never, though, as far as she could tell, without a reason. Never with an intent to harm, either. Only with a desire to protect. Her parents had killed people too, and the thought of it hadn't ever consumed her this viscerally. In the moments that she'd learned the truth about each of her parents, other worries had weighed heavier in her mind. The internal investigations that temporarily suspended her dad twice. The tears streaming down her mom's face when she told Isaac what had happened on her latest deployment. Her parents had been the center of her attention each time. She'd barely given a thought to the people they had killed.

Then again, she'd never watched her parents pull the trigger.

The tiny—and so very rare—spark of attraction that had lit in Blake's chest after Providence was still there, and it had grown. Despite the vivid memories of watching Daelan pull the trigger and kill Javier, and despite what Blake had seen him do on the highway, Blake had also never seen any trace of cruelty or callousness in him. Instead, she'd seen his impish smile and the dimple in his right cheek it sometimes revealed. She'd been stunned by his seemingly infallible memory and astoundingly quick mind. She'd been comforted by his warm brown eyes. So much about him appealed to her, and the more time she spent with him, the stronger the urge became to wrap her arms around his waist, hide her face against his chest, and stay there until the mess they were in resolved itself one way or the other.

The urge was getting stronger, but that didn't mean she had any plans to act on it.

The connecting door opened, and Kindra stuck her head in. "Meeting about to start."

Daelan was off the bed in a flash. "We find something?"

Kindra nodded. "Maybe. The beginnings of something, at least."

Blake tightened her grip on her knees. Did she want to know? The fear of what could happen if she dug deeper into the pits of hell where Lillian French lived was winning out over her determination to see this through.

Then, instead of rushing after Kindra, Daelan stopped and offered Blake his hand.

"I'm scared," she said, tilting her head back to look at him.

"Honestly, I'd be more worried if you weren't." He stepped a few inches closer, his hand extended. "Every one of us is terrified of failing. Of dying. Of watching more people fall to Lillian's execution orders. We've just had a lot more practice hiding it than most people get."

"I'm useless here, though. I don't know codes or what to do with intel and surveillance or—"

Daelan sat down again and rested his hand on her knee; Blake shut her mouth.

"Do you know how much time you saved us by figuring out the Shakespeare link? Hours, at least. Probably longer. Our brains were running through cyphers and encryption and code patterns. Shakespeare?" He smiled sadly and squeezed her knee. "That time was the difference between saving a few thousand people and burying them, Blake. And we had that time because of you."

She had zero arguments against that claim, but it didn't feel true. It helped though. It made it possible for her to loosen the death grip she had on her legs and cover Daelan's hand with hers. And it meant that when he turned his hand over to hold hers and lead her out of the room, she didn't fight.

Maybe she'd have another Shakespeare moment. Maybe something would happen that would finally let her feel like she'd helped finish her father's work.

When they entered the bedroom in the adjoining room, which the Calvers had turned into the new surveillance suite, everyone else had already gathered. They hadn't started yet.

Aaron was sitting on the bed, leaning against pillows—what seemed like every pillow in the room. Though he looked tired and a little pale, even Geo had stopped pestering Aaron about resting, and had given up claiming he was liable to drop dead at any second. Cassidy and Dru were at the computers, and everyone else was spread around the room on the chairs that had been dragged in from the rest of the suite. The foot of Aaron's bed was the only clear spot left, so Blake and Daelan headed there.

"Review first for those of us who haven't spent years memorizing Lillian's criminal history." Cassidy clicked on several pictures, bringing them to the front of the largest screen. "Almost none of this was in the intel you read before, Blake, because it didn't have any connection to Garret Hadley and what your father was investigating."

"But it has a hell of a lot to do with Lillian, so . . ." Dru pointed at the picture of an ebony-skinned women who was maybe in her twenties, her long hair framing her smiling face. "Norah Whittaker. She's been dead for almost thirteen years now, but we've never been able to figure out why the hit was ordered."

"Then Garret sent us after the Michaels family." Cassidy clicked the mouse. The next picture was of a couple who couldn't have hit forty yet and two small, blond boys. "Like with Norah, there didn't seem to be any reason for Garret Hadley—and though we didn't know it at the time, Lillian—to want Lee Michaels dead. But with Lee, there was at least a connection. He worked for a company Garret owned."

Without moving their heads, both Dru and Cassidy glanced at Aaron, so Blake did too. He'd closed his eyes, and his hands were balled in fists on his lap. Next to him, Geo rested his forehead against his boyfriend's temple and whispered something. Although the tension in his hands eased, Aaron didn't open his eyes.

Cassidy took a visible but silent breath and centered the third photo. The resemblance to Aaron was painfully obvious. The grinning girl in the picture had the same apple cheeks, the same warm-brown skin, and the same straight eyebrows as Aaron. Her eyes were rounder and wider—and didn't have his striking amber-brown color—and her nose came to more of a point than his, but Blake knew who this was even before Cassidy said, "Jenna Tanvers is believed to have committed suicide on December 23. It was an overdose of propoxyphene and oxazepam—though no one is sure how she got either one—and there was a note in her handwriting. Besides the oddities of the drugs, there was nothing obvious to tip the detective off to foul play, so the investigation—"

"Never fucking started," Aaron growled.

Dru cast him a sympathetic glance and nodded slowly. "To them, it seemed open and shut, so it was basically opened and then shut."

"But Jenna had displayed no warning signs in the weeks prior to her death, and in the last letter she sent Aaron, she hinted that she knew something was wrong in her world. She wrote this."

Another image, this one of a handwritten letter with a couple of sentences highlighted: To see the honor, the courage, and the determination humanity is capable of and not do our damnedest to live up to our own potential is the worst kind of failure and the darkest of sins. How could I not risk everything to live up to the example you've always set?

Cassidy looked over her shoulder at them. "There's that, plus the fact that she worked for Genesis Financial, a subsidiary of Redwell."

Aaron muttered something under his breath, and Geo leaned in again, responding with whispered words that seemed to settle him. At least for the moment.

"There were a lot of others in between Lee and Jenna," Dru said. With a click, she brought up a document with more than a dozen faces. Date, name, and cause of death were listed under each. "Not all of them worked for Redwell or Garret, but those who didn't had family members who did."

"Family members? Wouldn't extending the search that far out—" Blake shook her head. "I mean, that's a lot of people. Redwell isn't a small company, right?"

"Especially when we include all their subsidiaries and shells," Hugo said, nodding. "Once we started looking into the deaths of Redwell employees, we found half a dozen pretty immediately, but two deaths that were initially suspicious turned out to be legitimate from what we could tell after some digging. But the digging gave us a lot more that hadn't looked suspicious at first glance, and since February, we've been working on determining exactly how global this particular pattern might be."

Blake scanned the mix of faces on the screen. "This is what you guys have been working on since Garret died?"

"It hasn't just been us working on it," Cassidy said. "After we pulled you from Providence, the local PD found enough at the house to confirm that you and Bernard had been there. They ID'd Aaron too, after he showed up on a traffic cam in the area."

"Uncle Altair?" Blake sat straight so fast her spine popped. "He knows I'm alive?"

Daelan's hand pressed to the small of her back, rubbing gently, and she leaned into the contact. It helped ground her despite how quickly her mind was now spinning.

Cassidy nodded. "And once he connected you with Aaron, and Aaron with Jenna, he devoted an entire task force to the investigation. Including finding other deaths resembling Norah's, the Michaelses', or Jenna's."

"You guys are working with Altair?" She tensed, anger and hope colliding in her chest, sparking like the fuse on a stick of dynamite. "Why didn't you tell me that? Can I talk to him? Does he know I'm—"

"Blake, we're not working with him. Not in the way you think." Hugo's words at least partially defused the potential explosion building in Blake's chest, leaving her feeling a little lost. Daelan leaned against her more, and Hugo's expression turned sympathetic. "We're watching his investigation as closely as we can to catch moments like this when he finds something useful, and also so we can try to redirect him if he starts veering in the wrong direction."

"Oh." Blake sank, her shoulders curving in and her chin dropping. Daelan's hand moved to between her shoulder blades; it didn't help.

For so long she'd forced herself not to think about—or at least not to dwell on—what was happening back home in Baltimore. If she'd thought too much about Uncle Altair's focused worry and Aunt Fayza's frantic concern, the temptation to find a way to contact them would've been too strong to fight. Now she felt like the possibility of contact with home had been offered and then snatched away as soon as she reached for it.

"Does he have the new details from Wigand yet?" Bernard asked. Blake looked up.

Cassidy shook her head. "We didn't dare before yesterday, and we haven't sent it since then."

"Not yet," Dru said. "But I think we should be able to embed a message to Altair, right, Mom?"

"A short, very carefully worded message," Cassidy agreed. "But the details will have to wait until later. We think we found a connection that gives us a new lead—" she gestured to the faces still displayed on the screen "—and I want everyone to weigh in to make sure I'm not operating on hope and hallucinations."

Cassidy glanced around the room, meeting everyone's eyes in turn. Then, with a few clicks, she brought up a different page. This one had all of the victims' pictures separated into two groups.

"On side A, we have a mix of cause of death, from obvious assassination to supposed accidents like a 'gas explosion.'" She rubbed her right shoulder, wincing faintly. "Few of them worked directly for Garret and Lillian, but they all at least had someone close to them who did. Like a parent—" She pointed to Norah "—or spouse." She gestured to an Asian man on the top left corner.

"We think all of these people were used as threats against the person who worked for Garret," Dru said. "At first maybe it was coercion for whatever Garret was demanding, and then punishment when they slipped up or refused."

Blake stared at all of those faces. Her hands shook.

"All these deaths were caused by something external. The rest, though . . ." Cassidy sighed. "Eight suspiciously sudden suicides in the last five years. All of them employees of different companies owned by Garret or Redwell."

"What we hadn't noticed before is that all of those companies not only have ties to Genesis Financial, where Jenna worked, but also—through investments made by Genesis's employees—to Lyohwa Labs in Gomin," Dru said.

Hugo pursed his lips. "We think that these people either wouldn't—or maybe couldn't—be coerced. Some likely weren't connected at all until they discovered or witnessed something they shouldn't have, which is what we're nearly one hundred percent sure happened in Jenna's case."

"In either case, Garret and Lillian would not have wanted anyone investigating the deaths or the lives of the dead," Cassidy said. "So the death had to be not worth questioning. Like, for instance, a suicide with an impeccably handwritten note."

"They used Odira and the rest of us for at least three of these." Kindra indicated three faces randomly spread through the rows of pictures. "I can't confirm Odira's whereabouts for the approximate dates of four more."

She indicated four pictures.

One of them was Jenna.

Aaron's jaw clenched and his fingertips dug into his thighs. Leaning closer, almost laying his own weight over Aaron's, Geo closed his eyes. Kindra cast a quick look in their direction, face blank, and Dru moved closer to her girlfriend.

"Why, though?" Blake asked, if only to end the dangerously strained silence. "Do we have any idea what any of these people knew that Lillian wanted covered up this badly?"

Cassidy cleared her throat. "The most solid theory we have came, in part, from digging into the work Jenna was doing for Genesis."

"Jenna was an intern for the international segment of Genesis," Hugo said. "She was still a relatively new intern, so she was responsible for a lot of the data entry, file sorting, and those sorts of projects. Grunt work none of the company's actual employees wanted to do."

Dru nodded and brought up a map of eastern Asia centered on Gomin. "Half of the accounts her direct bosses managed were in Asia, and a third of those were with companies based in Gomin."

"Which isn't a country every firm in the US is willing to trade with," Hugo said. "A rep from J.P. Morgan called them 'the pirate haven of the twenty-first century' last year. The country's banks are often used as tax shelters."

"Jenna always had the urge to know every damn thing." Aaron's voice was beyond pained; it was weighted down and bleeding loss. "Even before she thought there was anything illegal or immoral going on there, she would've wanted to learn as much as possible about every one of her company's clients, just in case it might be useful later on."

"The girl wanted to stay with that company like she ain't wanted anything in years," Geo added, his voice only slightly less agonized than Aaron's. "She woulda been doing everything under the sun to make herself indispensable."

Dru was biting her lip, empathy in her green eyes, but Cassidy simply nodded. "And so, knowing all of that, we've done some digging into those companies."

"It carries even more weight after the little nudge from Wigand about Gomin," Kindra said.

"Exactly, because this company had already caught our attention." Hugo pulled up a new picture, this one of a building so square the architecture made Brutalist look soft and inviting. The sign over the main entrance was written in both English and Korean: Lyohwa Labs.

"Fifteen years ago Lyohwa Labs—LyoLabs—was on the brink of collapse and their assets days away from being seized by the banks," Cassidy said. "Then a windfall contract, that they have never released the details of, and some keen investments by Genesis turned their fortunes around almost overnight. Within a year, they went from broke to breaking a hundred million in profits."

"What do they do?" Blake asked.

"A lot of research—both for industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. They also handle mass production of other people's chemicals and pharma products." Hugo tapped his finger on the desk. "But we think Lillian might've been using them as a way to move information to areas of the world she wasn't supposed to be in contact with."

"Genesis's internal system would've been as impossible to break into as Redwell's, but thanks to the code Kindra planted back in February, we were able to sneak in through a back door," Cassidy said. "We got a sizable portion of the financial data on LyoLabs, and if we correlate it with records from Lillian, Garret, and some of Redwell's other known subsidiaries and shell corporations, we start to see the web."

"Although the actual contracts and transactions between Genesis and LyoLabs are as scrupulously clean and legal as anything can be, that starts to fall apart as soon as you look past the surface." Dru set her chin on Kindra's shoulder, resting her forehead against her girlfriend's cheek.

"Fall apart how?" Blake had been avoiding economics even though it was a required class. This was the first time she'd ever wished she'd taken it when she had the space in her schedule.

"Products that never got delivered—the companies didn't even place the orders most of the time." Cassidy glanced at Aaron, and Blake followed her gaze. Though he and Geo were still wrapped around each other, their eyes closed, they had their heads tilted toward the conversation. "What Jenna most likely found is that several of the international companies Genesis chose to invest in or buy don't exist—they're shell companies of LyoLabs itself. Mostly, we think, to cover an influx of money from an untraceable source."

"Untraceable so far," Daelan corrected.

"So far," Cassidy agreed, her tone not nearly as hopeful as her son's. "But even if we can't trace it, there's a pretty solid chance it comes straight from one of Lillian's seemingly endless number of pockets."

Hugo sighed. "The problem is that we have no idea why. There's not enough coming back out for them to be laundering money for her, and she's paying them way more than makes sense if information middleman is their sole purpose."

"The leading theory is that she has them researching something that she couldn't explain away at Redwell," Daelan said.

"But what that research could possibly involve is beyond me," Cassidy said. "Nothing LyoLabs is working on seems useful to Lillian in any financial way. There aren't even any strong patentable products under development in their departments."

"'Enemy to mankind,'" Blake said quietly. "If she's interested in LyoLabs, then they're working on something that can cause the world a shit-ton of trouble."

"'Why then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open,'" Daelan muttered. Blake blinked and looked at him. His lips curved into the shadow of a smile. "I'm no you, but I know a little."

"Neither of them are wrong," Hugo said, looking at Cassidy. "If her focus is on the whole world, whatever she's planning will probably split it down the middle. Bloodily."

"And it doesn't seem like anyone disagrees with the Gomin theory," Dru added. "So . . . recon?"

Cassidy nodded, absently tapping the space bar on the keyboard. "On-site."

"Has to be, if they're keeping something off their remote-access servers," Hugo said.

"Wait." Daelan sat up straighter, his eyes jumping between his parents. "You mean 'on-site' as in Gomin?"

"We don't have the right ID docs for that country," Dru said. Frowning, she looked at a few bags stacked in the corner of the room. "It'll take us a couple of days to create this many that'll pass scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific."

"Well, take the time and do it right," Hugo said. "If Lillian is working that closely with Gomin, I'm fully expecting her to have the government—especially all airport and harbor security—on alert for all of us."

"Disguises will help, but neither a fake ID nor a set of colored contacts are going to be much of a safeguard." Cassidy turned in her seat and looked at each person in the room. "If we go there, we're limited in terms of both resources and possible allies. Even if all of us are hypervigilant, there's a chance that not all of us will make it out of Gomin."

No one looked at Blake, but she felt their attention focus in her direction just like she felt the loss in the room. To these people and in this situation, Isaac Marks had become a reminder that Cassidy's words weren't empty.

Despite it—or maybe because of it for some of them—no one backed down.

Amett burst into the hotel room so fast the doorknob dented the wall. Seraphina bolted out of bed, her gun aimed at the door.

"Pack," he ordered. "We're leaving now."

She flicked the safety on, but didn't holster the weapon. "Why? Where?"

"Pack, Seraphina!" Amett thrust an empty duffel bag at her and turned away to empty the small closet into a second bag. "Essentials only. We need to travel light."

She moved to obey, not seeming to notice that he was stuffing only her clothes into the bag.

"What happened?" she demanded. "New orders? What fresh level of Hades have we fallen into now?"

He didn't answer; she looked up. Quickly, her gaze jumped from the clothes untouched in the closet to the bag in his hand. The one into which he was now shoving several stacks of cash bound with mustard-bordered currency bands. Sera gaped as her father loaded twenty—forty—seventy—ninety thousand dollars into the bag.

"What aren't you telling me? You said 'we.' Why aren't you—"

Amett spun, closing the space between them in two long strides and gripping her arm so hard she winced. "If you don't shut your damn mouth and follow orders, we're both dead in five minutes. Get moving now."

Thrusting Sera away, Amett turned back to the closet. She stumbled a step, her expression guarded. He grabbed the last few shirts left hanging fast enough to snap the hangers back against the wall. Grinding her teeth, she followed orders, emptying the contents of the only two drawers in use.

"At least tell me who we're running from." She packed several full magazines for a large-caliber semiautomatic pistol into a side pocket of the bag.

"Everyone." Amett dropped the full bag onto the hotel bed. "I'm sorry about this. Don't fight me or it will hurt worse."

Sera tensed. "What the fuck are you—"

He grabbed her wrist, blocked the blow from her other hand, and trapped her against the wall. She fought to get free. Then he took a Benchmade Bedlam out of his pocket.

At the snick of the switchblade popping open, Sera froze. But only for a fraction of a second.

She slammed her head forward, but missed his face. The toe of her boot caught his shin. He grunted. Using his greater weight, he pinned her.

"There's a tracker in your hip," he hissed. "If you don't cut it out before you run, you won't make it to the end of the block."

This time she didn't fight. Leaning heavily against the wall, Sera looked up at her father, an unreadable mess of emotions in her eyes.

"Make your choice, Sera. Either you trust me to do this, or we're both dead."

Eyes wide and lips pressed thin, Sera unbuttoned her jeans. "Which side? And how the fuck did it get there?"

"Left. Odira did it years ago."

"Atropos bless it, that explains so much," she muttered as she rolled the top of her pants down enough to expose a scar just below her left hip bone.

Amett pressed his hand against her abdomen and held her against the wall before digging the tip of the blade into her skin. Wincing, Sera tensed, but she didn't look away.

It didn't take more than a minute for Amett to dig a small, cylindrical device out of her left hip and shove it into his pocket, still coated with her blood.

He wiped the knife off on his jeans and closed it, slipping it into a pocket and grabbing a stack of gauze packets off the nearby desk. Tossing several at Sera, Amett turned to add the rest to one of the bags before zipping both of them tight. By the time he turned around, she'd bandaged the wound and zipped her jeans back up.

"Will you tell me what the hell is happening?" Some of the sharpness had left her tone. Now, as she stepped away from the wall, she almost sounded scared.

"Take this." He shoved a flash drive with a strip of paper folded around it into her hand. "Find a place—as far away from here as you can get tonight—and read everything on that drive."

"What the fuck?" Sera's hand closed around the drive, but her eyes never left Amett's face. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Sweetheart, this is the first time in your life that I'm telling you everything, but I can't do it in person." His voice was even, but his eyes were glassy with unshed tears. "And I can't do it now."

"But I— You—" Her grip on the flash drive tightened. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Disappear, Seraphina, you hear me? Disappear. None of our safe houses. None of our contacts. None of our tech. Vanish and don't come up for air until well after Lillian French has been crucified on international news." He closed his eyes. "Maybe not even then."

"Disappear." Her voice was flat; her face was blank. "Alone. And then what?"

"You live. But first, find somewhere that's as secure as you can make it, and read it for yourself." He swallowed, tremulous fear crossing his face. "And then you have to find your sister."

"What? We've been looking for Kindra for months! How the hell am I supposed to—"

He thrust her back several feet. In one swift motion, he drew his Remington 1911, flicked the safety off, and aimed it at her head. "If you don't go now, I'll shoot you myself."

She blinked. Once and then a dozen times. When his finger twitched toward the trigger, she dove for the bags, grabbed them, and slung them over her shoulders before shoving the flash drive and paper into her pocket. Her right pocket.

Sliding the gun into his holster with one hand, Amett used the other to push Sera toward the door. He opened it and forced her to step into the hallway.

"Run. Nothing familiar. Don't come back to Odira ever, understand me?" Amett gripped her shoulders and yanked her closer, pressing a hard kiss to the center of her forehead. "I'm so sorry. For everything. But now you have to run."

He slammed the door.

Seraphina ran.

She was a floor away in the emergency stairwell when a muffled crack of a gunshot reached her ears. Breath hitching and steps faltering, she almost fell. She caught herself on the railing. Regaining her feet, she pushed faster down the stairs. Slammed through the door. Burst out into the parking lot.

Panting, she bolted across the lot, heading for a black Ford F-Series pickup. Her hands shook when she tried to wedge open the window and shove the slim jim into the space. Cursing quietly, she took a long, slow breath and tried again, catching the lock this time and opening the door.

Less than a minute later, the engine roared to life, and Seraphina fled.

She was running for her life, exactly like her father had told her to. And she was doing it alone.

Which meant there was no one to see when she wiped the tears off her cheeks.

It was the same surveillance suite, but everything else was different. Another empty house on another underpopulated street outside another new city. Portland, Oregon, this time. Blake and Daelan had taken this shift on watch because everyone else was either working on the IDs they needed for Gomin, deciphering more of Wigand's information, or sleeping. They all needed more sleep.

Still, it had only been an hour since they sat down in front of the computers before an alert popped up on the screen.

Daelan sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh, fuck me sideways with a hedgehog."

Blake nearly snorted the water she was drinking up her nose. Might have if she hadn't caught the confused distress on his face. "What happened?"

Daelan's mouth opened, but he didn't speak right away. Closing his mouth, he cleared his throat, swallowed, and tried again. "I, uhh . . ."

It wasn't as though Blake had years of experience to draw from, but she had a feeling that this kind of stuttering uncertainty was rare for Daelan. Which made it all the more unsettling for Blake to see.

"I need to talk to Mom. I—" He cut himself off with a grunt, lines appearing on the bridge of his nose.

"I can watch this for a couple of minutes." Blake made the offer, fully expecting him to—

"Yeah. Yes." He swallowed again, the motion tensing the muscles in his throat, and nodded once, expression grim. "I'll be right back."

He got up and almost sprinted out of the room.

She'd fully expected him to do the opposite of that.

What the hell?

The message that had prompted Daelan's precipitous departure was nonsense to Blake.

LA-CA – F.S.A. – FR / D

– SR: ARES

Blake had managed to pick up pieces of the coded language the Calvers used—she was spending too much time watching them not to learn something—but this was new.

Less than a minute passed before Daelan returned with Cassidy and Hugo in tow, all three with something Blake thought might be fear in their eyes.

"Shit," Hugo muttered as soon as he saw the message. Rubbing his mouth, he closed his eyes so tight they became nothing but creases of skin. "Goddamn it, you asshole."

Cassidy exhaled shakily, resting her forehead on her husband's shoulder for a moment. When she straightened, forcing her shoulders back and approaching the computer with a narrowed, intense gaze, she motioned for Blake to give up the chair. An order instead of the usual request.

Were they going to ask her to leave? She watched the Calvers carefully as she stood behind the chairs with Daelan. Hugo and Cassidy took over the stations. Neither one glanced at her.

"Local LEOs or just the Bureau?" Cassidy typed commands into the computer faster than Blake could follow, even if she had known what they meant. The alert cleared, and instead pages that had the seals and format of the FBI popped up on both screens, the same kind of files she'd seen her dad work on for years.

"The earliest report I'm seeing attached to this is from two days ago," Hugo said, voice hoarse as he scrolled through the pages on his screen. "Police in Ontario, California, responded to a 911 call at a hotel near the airport. They arrived to find a John Doe."

If they found me without my ID, would they list me as John Doe or Jane?

It was a stupid question to be contemplating now, but it stuck in Blake's head as the Calvers spoke in half sentences about crime scenes and official reports and the accelerated processing of evidence. How would the world see her when she was no longer around to correct them? And did it matter when her parents weren't alive to be hurt by the inaccuracy?

"It looks like the proximity to the airport and to the site of the LA attack attempt is what brought the FBI in." Hugo's voice was toneless. If Blake hadn't been in the room to see how taut his posture was, she wouldn't have believed what he was reading affected him at all. "The chemical burns on his hands made them dig deeper on the ID once they got there."

Daelan was leaning over Hugo's shoulder to read the information on the screen. His eyes popped open wide. "He was shot five times?"

"Fuck. Just— Why? Now, after everything . . . I don't understand why she'd—" Cassidy's thin lips pressed together so tight they almost disappeared, and her head dropped, her straight brown hair swinging down to hide her face.

"We don't—" Hugo didn't seem able to finish what he was going to say either. Instead, he leaned closer to her, his hand on her shoulder. They fell silent and still, Cassidy's fingers resting on top of the keyboard, Hugo's gripping his wife, and their eyes on each other.

"Should we—" Cassidy shook her head. "No. Of course we should. We need to tell her."

Tell who what? For a second Blake thought they might be talking about her, but none of them had so much as twitched in Blake's direction through this whole indecipherable conversation. They didn't look at her now, either.

"We do," Hugo agreed slowly, reluctantly. "But fuck if I want to."

"I can do it," Daelan offered.

"No. No." It was only on the second repetition of the word that Hugo sounded sure of his answer. "I should do it. I'll do it. He was my friend once, and I should . . . Fuck."

He took a heavy breath, and Cassidy reached out to offer comfort, running her hand over his shorn hair. Quietly, they waited, though Blake wasn't sure what for.

"Do you guys know where the laptop with the program for—" Kindra stopped short just inside the doorway, her sharp gaze seeming to take everything in at once. When she spoke again, her voice was flat. "What happened?"

Hugo shuddered so hard it looked painful, but after one more sympathetic squeeze from Cassidy, he placed his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet. Normally, his motions were streamlined and smooth despite him being almost six feet tall and broadly muscled. Weariness seemed to weigh him down now, erasing his grace and making each movement ponderous. Kindra grew tenser with each passing second of silence. Hugo's shoulders curved in further.

"We . . . It came in a few minutes ago, and we confirmed it as well as we can from here," he said deliberately. "It— LEOs in California responded to a call, and when they got there they found . . ." A pause. A very shaky breath. Blake couldn't see Hugo's face, but the eerie blankness taking over Kindra's was disturbing. It was like driving past a brutal car crash; Blake couldn't look away.

"Get to the point, Hugo." Kindra blinked slowly, her eyes staying closed for a second longer than usual, and the fingers of her right hand jerked. That was the only sign she gave of anything that might have been happening in her head.

After a long exhale, he delivered the news. "Amett is dead."

To Blake, Kindra had always appeared calm, steady, and still. It wasn't until this moment that she realized she'd never seen true stillness on Kindra's body before now. Not an eyelash fluttered for several seconds.

Then Kindra shook it off, somehow doing so without moving a muscle, and asked, "Just him?"

Hugo and Cassidy looked at each other, and Blake thought she saw uncertainty in their eyes. Whatever they thought about Kindra's reaction, they kept it to themselves.

"If anyone else was caught in whatever happened to him, they didn't die there," Cassidy said softly. "We don't know for sure what happened yet. From the information we received, our assumption is that Odira, Sera, John, and Nuura are alive. It seems . . . There's no way to know yet—we might not ever know—but from the evidence log and the coroner's report, I think that Odira might have been the one to pull the trigger."

"All right." The muscles in her cheek jumped, and then even that small sign of emotion was gone. "Do any of you know where the laptop with the consumer version of Tru3 v4ult is? I need to check something."

Another wary look between the elder Calvers, and Daelan sighed, the puff of air only audible because he was so close to Blake. Cassidy nodded, resetting the computer for the surveillance Daelan and Blake had been monitoring. She stood. "I think it might've gotten packed in one of the munitions trunks in the last move."

She and Hugo murmured something to Daelan and then left.

Daelan flopped back into the chair Hugo had vacated, his hands on the mouse and keyboard, but his expression distant and pensive. After a few seconds he shifted in his seat, clicking to enlarge the camera hidden inside the office of Redwell's new CEO. Daelan still looked lost in his own head, like the motions and the monitoring were happening on autopilot.

She didn't want to leave him to wallow in whatever thoughts had darkened his usual smile—a smile that struck Blake as surprisingly innocent the longer she spent with the Calvers and the better she understood what exactly they did. What they'd seen. Anyone who had lived that life and still had a smile like Daelan's, one that made him appear harmless and almost like a kid despite all the evidence to the contrary . . . Anyone who could still smile like that needed to do it as often as possible.

Blake lifted her hand from the table, moving it toward Daelan. Nothing she could think of was likely to get him to smile, but maybe she could at least pull him back to the present.

Touching his wrist gently, she asked, "What did it mean?" When Daelan looked at her with confusion, she clarified, "The code that popped up. I didn't understand any of it."

"Oh. Well, it's more established abbreviations than an actual code."

The alert had been cleared from the screen, so Daelan wrote out the string of letters on a blank sheet of paper.

"LA-CA meant the message came from the Los Angeles, California, area," he explained, underlining each letter group as he expounded on it. "F.S.A. stands for 'federal search alert,' so when we see that, we know that one of Mom's bugs in the Federal system has pinged us. The attached reports will tell us where it came from—usually one of the alphabet agencies or Homeland departments. In this case it was the FBI."

Blake pretended not to notice the look Daelan gave her, as though just the mention of the agency her father had worked for would be enough to make her well up. A couple of months ago, maybe. Now she just asked, "What about the rest of it?"

"Well, FR means facial recognition, and the . . . the D is deceased." Another glance, but this one at the doorway Kindra had left through moments before. "The last bit—the SR means the search returned a solid result, and 'Ares' is the code name we tagged Amett's file with."

Laid out like that, it was obvious why a few letters had sent Daelan bolting out of the room. What it didn't explain was why Hugo and Cassidy had been so reluctant to tell Kindra the truth. Their gentle delivery of the news had been nice—a lot nicer than when and how Blake had learned about what happened to her father. The adrenaline rush of running from men with guns had crashed suddenly and spectacularly as soon as her unexpected saviors had peeled out of the school's parking lot. The expressions on their faces when they looked at her had been a confirmation of everything she'd suspected as soon as the men in the head of school's office hadn't been able to finish the code phrase.

Blake clenched her teeth against the questions she wanted to demand answers to. Why was it that the girl who didn't seem to care that her father was dead was the one who got the consolation, the offer of comfort from people almost like family, when she heard the news?

Unfair, Blake's mind cried. She knew there had to be more to it, pieces of these complex families' pasts that she didn't know and wasn't considering. It took a minute for her to work up the nerve to actually say to Daelan, "Your parents looked like they were expecting some other reaction from her."

That hadn't made sense to Blake. Kindra had shot her father herself only a few months ago, and since then she had been working with the Calvers against her family. It seemed strange that they'd been bracing for Kindra to be broken up over Amett's death.

Daelan glanced at her out the corner of his eye and sighed. "Bernard must have mentioned Ryce, right?"

The name was familiar, but it took Blake a moment to place it. "He worked with you guys. Bernard told me that he died. I'm sorry."

Nodding slowly, Daelan said, "He took a sniper shot to the stomach the day we grabbed Garret Hadley." Blake's hand rose to her stomach involuntarily. When he noticed the reaction, Daelan grimaced. "It gets worse. We're pretty sure Odira was behind the scope that day."

"And Kindra knew Ryce?"

Daelan's eyes widened. "He didn't tell you? Oh." He covered his eyes with his hands and then dragged his palms down his face. Dropping his arms, he pulled back his shoulders and took a breath. "Okay, so . . . Ryce was Kindra's older brother."

"What?"

"Yeah, and he'd been working with us for four years. The thing is, Odira and Amett Weston aren't exactly the types to let their children make decisions. Ryce wanted out of that family so bad, he was willing to fake his death to get away from them."

He'd faked his death? Damn. Blake took a deep breath. What the hell had their life been like to make that an attractive option?

"Mom and Dad tried to find a way to get Kindra and their sister, Seraphina, out too, but there wasn't an easy solution there. It never happened. Kindra had no idea Ryce was alive until February."

And then she'd lost him again the same month? For Blake, losing her parents once had been almost unendurably painful, but to suffer through mourning the same person twice? That was unimaginable.

Blake's thoughts must have been clear on her face, because Daelan nodded empathetically. "She was . . . not okay for a while. I think they thought this might send her back into that, especially if Odira shot Amett too, and now . . . If anything could send her back to that, it makes sense that it would be knowing that Amett or Seraphina had died."

Which was completely understandable. Blake was almost certain it would have broken her completely to ever have to hear that her mother might've killed her father.

Shot him. Five times.

"I knew her relationship with her family was twisted and complicated, but . . ."

"'Complicated' is probably the nicest way to categorize Kindra's relationship with Amett. Odira probably deserves a much darker description." Daelan tapped his fingers on the tabletop, lips pinched. "I asked her about it once, what she thought of the possibility that her parents might die because of this job. She said that Amett and Odira had never actually been her parents the way we mean the word. Said they'd been her drill sergeants when she was a kid and her bosses in recent years, but never her parents."

He turned his head enough to look at Blake. "Judging by the stories I've heard from Mom, Dad, and Ryce, and what little I've seen of the Westons in person, I don't think she's exaggerating. Probably understating it, honestly."

"It seems like she's in the habit of understating everything." Blake had seen her parents do the same thing sometimes, if to a lesser extent. They'd treated injuries—their own, anyway—like inconveniences or distractions, brushing off concern with a strained smile and an "I'm fine." Sometimes Blake thought they would've done the same with emotional wounds if not for their determined desire that Blake feel like she could talk about everything with them. They'd believed Blake wouldn't tell them anything if they both negated emotional pain as meaningless, and they'd probably been right.

"What Dad said about the chemical burns?" Daelan looked down at his own hands, rubbing his thumbs along the pads of the other fingers. "She doesn't have any fingerprints right now. They might come back as her hands finish healing, but her family had this fucked-up tradition of erasing the identifying ridges on their hands with acid."

Fridays that her parents had been home, the three of them—or, after her mom's death, the two of them—had had movie night. Every time one of them bought fast food at a drive-through, they paid for the meal of the car behind them. When either of Blake's parents felt she wasn't keeping up with the martial arts skills she'd learned, she'd found herself enrolled in a new class.

Those were the kinds of traditions her family had had. Blake didn't think she was capable of imagining a family whose bonding rituals involved acid burns. Not even after meeting Kindra.

"I've been in the room when Kindra wakes up from a nightmare." He grimaced, his hand massaging the back of his neck. "Most people wouldn't know she was having one. The only thing that gives her away is the tension, and the way her breathing gets a little too quick. Sweat gathering on her face, sometimes. She never makes a sound."

And Blake knew how hard that was. On the nights she had a nightmare so terrifying that it woke her up, she was screaming well before she was awake enough to stop the sound.

"Even in sleep, that girl is trained to silence. The life you've gotta live to be capable of that?" Daelan shuddered. "I am not ever gonna blame her for not mourning her parents."

Blake couldn't blame her either. It wasn't likely that Blake would ever fully understand what Kindra's life had been like before she joined the Calvers, but Blake knew enough to see that neither Amett nor Odira Weston were people worth mourning.

For the next ten minutes, they sat there in silence, the only noises coming from the quiet hum of conversations happening in the various rooms they had bugged. Today they were watching the executive offices of Redwell and Genesis, the FBI field office in New York City, and—for whatever reason—a bank in northwestern Florida. They hadn't yet learned much of use from any of those cameras or conversations, but they kept watching, kept slogging through the data in hopes that someone would say something that would point them toward Lillian.

"It's fucked up that the first crucial bit of information our bugs have found in months is that," Daelan grumbled, gesturing to the abbreviations he'd written down. "We're used to being one step ahead of everyone—even the Westons. Or keeping pace with them at least. This whole thing where we're having to wait for someone else to grow a damn conscience and risk contacting us with an update is getting really old."

"You guys figured out a way to mitigate what happened on the highways, though. And you seem to be the only ones hunting Lillian." Even though there were investigators attempting to run a focused search for the mind behind that coordinated attack, they were looking in the wrong directions.

Daelan laughed softly, but it was too dry to be mistaken for a happy sound. "That's what I keep telling myself."

So what if the Calvers' intel mostly came from a source; how could it possibly be otherwise? It wasn't fair of anyone—even the Calvers—to expect themselves to be able to gather the information personally. There was an entire world for Lillian to hide in, and the Calvers only had a team of seven they could trust. Nine if Blake and Bernard were included in the count—which most days Blake thought would be ridiculous for anyone to do. The most momentous thing she'd done yet was figuring out the Shakespeare code, and it wasn't as though the Calvers wouldn't have been able to solve that riddle eventually. She'd just gotten them there a little faster.

Daelan knew all of that, though, and Blake didn't know what else she could say that would convince him their purpose here wasn't the collecting of data, but the deciphering of it. Not the gathering of evidence, but the pursuit of justice. Or retribution.

It felt cowardly, but when Blake's stomach grumbled for food, she took the opportunity gladly. Standing, she said, "I'm going to make us something to eat. Any preferences?"

"Simple and nonliquid," he said, tilting his head toward the computers. Nodding, Blake rested her hand on Daelan's shoulder, squeezing lightly. He lifted his hand to cover hers, glancing up and giving her a small smile. "Thanks."

She smiled back, the expression weak but apparently enough for Daelan in that moment.

The old, empty house they were currently borrowing without permission was technically outside Portland city limits, in a small town none of the Calvers had been to before. Somehow they'd found this place within twenty minutes of crossing the city limits. Or Cassidy had looked it up while they drove. Maybe she had a whole database of abandoned or foreclosed houses across the country. That were magically still connected to the city's water.

This place didn't have power—Aaron and Geo had gone out and bought a couple of generators to give them that—but they were at least able to use the toilets and the showers. And stay farther off any official radars, which was exactly what they needed as they finished creating the fake IDs and passports that would get them into Gomin. And also worked out the problem of how, exactly, they were all going to cross the Pacific.

The number of flights allowed in US airspace had been halved the day of the highway attacks, and there still weren't nearly as many flights as usual, especially since ninety-nine percent of travelers wanted—for understandable reasons—to get away from major cities, not into them. Routes had been altered in the national state of emergency that President Vazquez had declared, and travel was a nightmare.

According to Cassidy and Hugo, security at the commercial airports was as tight as it had been immediately after 9-11. It probably wouldn't go back to what Blake considered normal for another year. Because Aaron, Bernard, and Blake were either wanted by the government or listed on national missing persons databases, going through security that tight would be a risk. Possibly too much of a risk. Dru and Hugo were working on finding alternate means of transportation; hopefully they'd find one soon. Blake was crossing all of her fingers and toes that it didn't end up being a boat.

She headed for a bathroom before the kitchen, the closest one inconveniently located down the hall and between two of the bedrooms. She almost walked past the cracked-open bedroom door without a look, but a single gasped breath caught her attention. It drew her focus into the room, toward the floor in the far corner, where Kindra and Dru sat against the wall, curled around each other.

"But they th-think she— They s-said— Why c-couldn't she—" Kindra's words were lost in a wail that shook Blake, flipping her stomach and sending her reeling.

The seemingly unemotional, battle-scarred assassin was sitting on the floor of a mostly empty room, sobbing and clutching her girlfriend so tight it had to be hurting both of them. Dru, her expression pinched, looked like she was holding Kindra just as tight.

Blake reached out a hand, bracing herself on the wall. The girl's cry wasn't loud. She wasn't screaming. It wasn't volume that made the sound of Kindra's sobs so hard to bear—it was impossibly quiet considering the way her chest was heaving. It made Blake remember what Daelan had said about her training. Trained to silence so well that not even her nightmares made her scream. For that kind of girl to be sobbing at all . . .

Lord, forgive me.

She knew better than to judge people based solely on what she saw. She knew it, experienced it daily on a level most people would never understand, and yet she'd had the gall to think that hearing about Amett's death wouldn't matter to Kindra?

She closed her eyes and moved past the door.

At the very least, Kindra deserved to grieve in privacy. That much Blake could give her.

The mail clerk rolled his cart to a stop outside the office bearing the name of Special Agent Parker Rollins. Per official Bureau procedures and policies, each letter had been opened and screened for hazardous material. Per the same policies, the contents of each envelope were stapled to their packaging, anything found loose taped to a separate piece of paper.

On top of the stack the clerk carried into the office was a battered, travel-worn envelope.

It hadn't arrived carrying much. There had been only two items inside, both of which were now stapled to the packaging. On top was a single sheet of legal paper with a brief handwritten note. Beneath that, a small key was taped to a blank piece of paper.

There were coffee stains and smudges of dirt on the once pristine white envelope, and the corners had begun to tear. The letter itself appeared mostly untouched.

"Morning, sir!" the young clerk chirped as he strolled into the office.

"Hello, Daniel." Parker smiled absently. "How did that chemistry test go?"

"I passed. Barely," Daniel said as he handed over the mail. Parker flipped the legal sheet and the second blank page where the key was taped, checking the return address. "But I don't think many people got higher scores, so I don't feel too bad. I think next time I'll—"

Eyes wide and white against his dark skin, Parker dropped everything else to his desk.

"Sir? Agent Rollins, are you okay?"

"Daniel, I need you to do me a very important favor." Parker spoke without taking his eyes off the envelope, and he kept his voice quiet enough that Daniel had to lean in to hear.

"Of course, sir." The young man looked confused, but he kept his voice just as low.

Parker looked up then, holding Daniel's gaze. "I need you to find Kylie Drusus on the third floor and ask her to come see me as soon as possible. But you can't call her, and I don't want you to tell anyone else that you're sending her to see me. Can you do that?"

"Yes. Definitely. Is . . ." He swallowed, shifting nervously and casting a glance at the open door before leaning closer and whispering, "Is everything okay, sir?"

"I don't know. I hope so, but this—" Parker snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. "As soon as possible, Daniel. Please."

Nodding, Daniel rolled his mail cart into Parker's office, placing it along the wall near the door. "I'll be back to collect this as soon as I'm done."

"Of course." Parker's attention was back on the papers.

He carefully removed the staple from the top right corner of the envelope. Moving with deliberate slowness, he looked at the front again, running his fingertips over the return address in the corner: Matthew Nevarez.

"Letters from the dead," Parker muttered.

He took a long, slow breath and switched his attention to the contents. He traced the edges of the small brass key with his thumb, but his eyes were on the note.

If I'm going down, I intend to take them with me.

Gracelyn Bedford

Mutual Liberty Bank and Trust, Atlanta

129 36

"Jesus Christ, Matthew." Parker let the paper fall to his desk. "What the fuck did you do now?"

Hugo jogged past Blake and into the surveillance suite, nostrils flaring wide and eyes locked on the phone in his hand. The expression on his face made Blake turn to follow him.

"I just got a message from Kylie Drusus."

Cassidy looked up sharply. "Haven't heard that name in years. What did she want?"

Beside Cassidy, Daelan's gaze followed his father for a moment before he turned his attention to Blake. He beckoned Blake closer as Hugo said, "I'm just glad she remembered how to get in touch with us. The first IDs have come back on the dead soldiers from the Miami attack, and every single one of them has ties to either North Korea or an anarchist group operating across Asia called Anarchist Warriors for Asian Freedom. However, what she really thought we'd like to know is that Special Agent Parker Rollins received a letter from a dead man yesterday. Matthew Nevarez."

"Yesterday?" Cassidy shook her head, eyebrows furrowed. "He died in February."

"Who was Matth—" Blake started to ask Daelan in a whisper, but cut himself off when the name finally rang a bell. "The ex-FBI guy who worked for Redwell?"

Daelan nodded, his eyes tracking his parents' conversation.

"Apparently there was nothing to mark the letter as urgent," Hugo said, scorn in the words. "It looked like it had gotten lost behind a filing cabinet or something for the last few months before it finally found its way to Parker."

"Parker was his partner before Matthew left the Bureau, wasn't he?" Cassidy asked.

Hugo nodded. "For years. Almost seven, I think."

"Six years and ten months," Daelan confirmed. Blake was beginning to be unsurprised by the acuity of his memory. Beginning to be, but not quite there yet.

"Ugh." Cassidy cringed. "That couldn't have been a pretty breakup. Not when Matthew left with that cloud hanging over him."

For less than a second, Hugo's nose wrinkled, an expression that might have been skepticism or disgust. Then it cleared and he nodded. "Convicted or not, Matthew was definitely dirty, but Parker stayed to face the tribunal. The investigation cleared him of any connection to Matthew's under-the-table shit, even though they didn't ever conclusively tie those leaks and deals to Nevarez, either."

"They wouldn't have," Cassidy said. "Not if he had Lillian helping him hide his tracks."

"And Matthew's last act was to reach out to the Bureau . . . for what?" Daelan asked. "Not for help. No way would it have arrived in time for that, even if it had been delivered when he thought it should be."

"Kylie sent us something you're going to want to see." Hugo nudged Daelan's hand off the mouse, leaning over the table and clicking a button to bring up one of their email programs. A photo downloaded and opened on the screen. A four-line, handwritten note.

"'If I'm going down, I intend to take them with me,'" Cassidy murmured aloud as she read. "Who's 'Gracelyn Bedford'?"

"I don't know, but the note came with that." Hugo switched to a second picture: a small brass key taped to a piece of paper. "Kylie thinks—and I agree—that it's probably to a safe-deposit box at the bank in Atlanta."

"Is that so?" Cassidy leaned in, studying the picture as though there were another ten layers of code hidden in that brief message. "Now what the hell would Matthew Nevarez think was important enough to stash in a bank in another city?"

Daelan shrugged. "I think the more relevant question right now is if it's worth putting off the trip to Gomin. Travel arrangements and IDs have already delayed us."

"It could be something big. I mean, he had to have sent it the day he died," Hugo said. "If he noticed someone tailing him or Garret said something that spooked him, he might've had time to drop that off between leaving work and getting home."

Cassidy pulled up a copy of their coded logs. "His drive home took longer than usual that night."

"And he's the type to have a revenge play in place." Hugo grinned, more a baring of teeth than a smile. "Well, I don't know about you, but I am definitely interested in anything he thought could take them down."

"And it might be good to have before we head to Gomin," Cassidy said, her gaze lost in the middle distance. "Maybe the intel will at least give us a hint of what we should be looking for at LyoLabs."

Hugo didn't answer, and the moment of silence stretched. Blake shifted uneasily, waiting for a decision.

"It's worth it," Cassidy said at last. "But only if we can get there tomorrow morning. We can't afford more lost time than that."

Daelan cleared his throat. "Well. Guess I'll start booking a flight to the Peach State."

"Unless you can build a transporter in the next few hours," Blake said.

The laugh Daelan gave him was weak, but it was there, and that was all Blake had been trying to do. He called it a win and sat down, ready to help. If he could.

Since commercial air traffic over North America was still limited, getting to Atlanta meant either driving to a small-town airport several hours away or going through about six layovers. Getting to Los Angeles afterward to make the transpacific jump would be a whole separate nightmare. Thankfully, the work the Calvers had already put in to finding a safe way to Gomin was useful for this unexpected leg of their journey too; they'd found a brand-new, twelve-passenger—and thankfully unbooked—Bombardier Global.

Fake passports in hand and necessities packed, the team boarded their private charter within eight hours of receiving the message from Miami. Four and a half hours after that, they landed on a private airfield northwest of Atlanta and loaded everything into two SUVs that were waiting in the parking lot, keys zip-tied to the undercarriages.

"Do we know where we're going yet?" Blake asked as soon as they were on their way toward the center of the city.

"I heard Cassidy mention GSU," Bernard said from the driver's seat.

Aaron nodded. "A coffee shop on campus. We're heading straight there. Setting up a mobile command unit and sending two in at eight, just after the place opens."

"Prolly gonna be Kindra and Dru." Geo sat next to Blake, slumped low in the seat. His chin hung almost to his chest, and his eyes were closed. On Blake's other side, Daelan leaned forward to look at Geo, and Blake guessed that he wasn't the only one who'd thought Geo had fallen asleep. "They'll blend better than the rest of us on a college campus."

Aaron squared his shoulders. "I could—"

Geo snorted, smirking, but didn't open his eyes. "Darlin', don't even go there. You're injured, and the both of us are too war-torn and battle-scarred to fit in with those bright-eyed young'uns."

"And you think Kindra isn't battle scarred?" Blake had only seen a couple of literal scars on Kindra, but that didn't matter. The girl carried her scars in her eyes, her stance, and the way she interacted with everyone. Except maybe Dru.

Opening one eye, Geo grunted. "Someone's gotta go with Dru, though. And trust me; Kindra can cover those scars of hers better than any war vet I've ever met."

"I can do it." The words were out before Blake had thought them through, but hearing them didn't make him want to take them back. Daelan tensed beside him, but Blake pushed the issue anyway. "I'll do it. I want to help."

The guys all spoke at the same moment, a solid, resounding, "No."

"I could easily pass for a college freshman," Blake argued.

"You're not going because, after Providence, Altair reissued the AMBER Alert and updated the missing person's report about you," Daelan said. "He distributed pictures of you, Bernard, and Aaron to essentially every agent, cop, and security guard in the country. The last thing we want is for someone to recognize you. They'll send out an alert that'll get picked up by Lillian's cronies in minutes."

"I forgot they included your mug in that, Aaron," Geo said, closing his eyes again. "Now you're really not goin'."

No argument Blake could come up with swayed them—and it was hard to keep arguing when he knew they were right.

But it meant that once they were in position for the mission, Blake was stuck in the SUV with Bernard, Hugo, and Aaron. The other team had taken the second SUV, moving closer to the rendezvous point. Left behind, Blake and the others watched on a monitor while Dru and Kindra strode down streets in the heart of Atlanta.

They blended in perfectly with the mix of students, tourists, and businesspeople walking south on Courtland. It wasn't any easier to spot Cassidy, Geo, or Daelan in the crowds, not even when Blake knew they were there, preceding or following the girls to serve as backup if necessary.

"You're headed for the library at the corner of Decatur Street Southeast and Courtland Street Southeast, so veer right. The coffee shop is in the northeastern corner of the building," Hugo instructed over the comm.

Blake had one earbud in, half listening to the local police scanner. The Calvers didn't think their contact was setting up a trap, but Kylie wasn't the only one capable of calling in the cops. Kindra's family seemed to collect enemies like Blake's mom had collected decks of tarot cards, and Aaron had friends and family who lived in the area and could possibly recognize Geo. They weren't counting on either of those things happening, but a lot of things had happened in the last few months that no one had counted on. Better that they didn't start taking chances now.

From Courtland, Dru and Kindra turned right, then climbed down a flight of blue stairs that led them into a plaza. They wound through the students waiting there—more of them than Blake had expected to see at this hour—and headed for the glass entrance to the building. Through one set of doors, then another, and then they were there.

After the chaos of their cross-country trip and the tense debate about Blake's involvement, the actual handoff was anticlimactic. Few in the coffee shop appeared to notice when Kylie Drusus got up, abandoning a half-drunk cup of coffee. The only people who seemed to pay any attention to the two girls who claimed the table was a guy with deep circles under his eyes and a laptop bag over his shoulder who'd been aiming for that table. No one at all shifted their gaze when Kindra slipped the small brass key out from under Kylie's abandoned mug.

Kindra and Dru sat there for another twenty minutes, bickering about the specific evils of nonorganic, GMO food. The chatter over the police scanner was just as innocuous as the conversation—at least for the Calvers—and soon all that was left was the leaving.

Then Kindra muttered something the comm didn't catch.

Dru must have heard it though. "Are you sure?"

"No," Kindra said.

"Repeat," Hugo and Cassidy said simultaneously

"Katie, you know how unlikely it is that anyone we knew from back home is here," Dru said. It took Blake a second longer to parse that statement than it did for Hugo.

But it wasn't unlikely, was it? It was what they'd been afraid of. That was one of the possible "everything has gone to hell" scenarios they'd talked about on the plane ride.

"Give us an approximate position." Hugo cycled through the cameras they had access to, his gaze scanning the faces in the crowd.

"I know," Kindra said, "but we are supposed to be meeting that girl—hell, what was her name? Well, her. That was at seven, wasn't it?"

So someone who seemed female and familiar and fishy but wasn't a face Kindra could put a name to was following them. Blake shuddered. How could Kindra even tell? The campus wasn't packed, but there were plenty of people around, some hurrying through the space and others meandering, some people chatting in small groups and some standing on the edges of the courtyard, their eyes seemingly on their phones. Now, with Kindra's warning ringing through the SUV, every single one of those people looked suspicious.

"We're moving in to cover you," Cassidy said.

Hugo checked the cameras again. "You're going to walk to the west side of the building and take the footbridge over Decatur. Down to the ground floor and back out to the street, then head west to the intersection of Central Ave. There's a protected alley between two sections of the building occupying the southeast corner of that intersection. You can reach it on the Central side. It's deserted right now. Lead our Jane Doe there, Dru. Geo, you head around the west side of the building and watch their backs. Cassidy, you go through the building and either find a vantage point or get in front of them to guide them out."

Aaron was tense as Hugo gave Daelan a shortcut to get ahead of the two girls, the fist of his injured arm clenched and his body held taut. To Blake, it seemed like the watchful stillness of a hunter about to pounce on his prey. Even without years of military training pushing Blake to act, he wished for the heft of a handgun and the freedom to follow Daelan. To watch his back while he watched out for Kindra and Dru.

But what good was the urge to protect when he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to act on it?

He gripped the edge of the seat, almost completely ignoring the police chatter in his ears as he watched events unfold a half mile away. Each heartbeat was steady and even, but felt exponentially stronger, thudding through his chest and echoing down his arms into his fingers.

"In position," Daelan murmured over the comm.

"Do you think she'll still be there when we arrive?" Dru asked, sounding unconcerned. The coded wording made Blake tense. Had they lost sight of their stalker? Or was Dru simply worried the follower would vanish before the team could ID her?

Through Geo's camera, Blake watched Dru casually turn in circles as she walked to search the area behind her, appearing as though she was bored with her partner's slow pace.

"As far as I can tell, she'll be there." Kindra was looking down at her phone, nothing in her face, posture, or tone giving away the wariness that had to be running under her skin. It was certainly rushing under Blake's.

"Spotted someone on their six," Geo said. "Moving to follow. Can't tell if she's armed, and her hair is covering too much of her face to give a description. Got a backpack and a duffel."

"Not gonna move fast, then." Hugo quickly cycled through the cameras he had access to, scanning them so fast he had to go back one when the girl came into view on screen. "I've got visual. Be careful. She's digging for something in her bag."

Her head was down as she shifted the contents of the bag, her long, dark, straight hair hanging in a sheet that blocked her face. The position was slightly awkward, not a stance that made sense for anyone to hold naturally. It was more like she knew the camera was there and was purposefully trying to keep her face off of it.

When the girl straightened again, Hugo screenshot the image and zoomed in on the still frame, concentrating on the objects in her hands. "Looks like a lighter and a cigarette." Only the smallest fraction of tension faded from his tone. "Keep your eyes open, but no one shoot unless absolutely necessary. I'd like to avoid ending up on Georgia's breaking-news report."

"Again," Daelan quipped.

"Aaron started it last time," Kindra muttered. Luckily no one but Dru was in earshot. Dru mumbled something about regrettable collateral damage, and Aaron and Bernard both seemed to wince, but Blake barely registered it, too focused on the smoking girl behind them.

Kindra and Dru turned the corner, bringing them to the open-air corridor between the two sections of the building, thankfully still devoid of people. There were a couple of doors, but from the quick glance that Blake got at the handles, they didn't look easy to open from the outside. Likely, they were only used as fire escapes. Trees blocked the view from the street. Blake assumed they were all just praying that no one looked down from the windows on either side.

Out of their pursuer's sight, the girls picked up their pace, swiftly putting twenty feet between themselves and the entrance to the alley. Daelan was waiting near the dead end, gun drawn but held mostly hidden at his side. Cassidy reported that she was in position on the third floor, but Blake couldn't spot her in any of the windows.

Hopefully the smoking girl wouldn't either.

"Line of sight in ten seconds." Geo's warning sent a frisson of fear up Blake's spine. Aaron leaned closer to the screens.

"Five," Geo said.

Four.

Three.

Two.

Smoking Girl turned the corner and didn't stop walking. Head down. Shoulders hunched. Her pace didn't falter even a little.

Had they been wrong? Maybe this girl had just seemed suspicious. It was hard to imagine Kindra mistaking something like that, but no one's track record was perfect. Besides, she—

Kindra sucked in a sharp breath. "No. What?"

Shock. Fear. Maybe relief. There was too much in those two words for Blake to be sure. Smoking Girl trapped her cigarette between her lips and dropped her duffel bag to the brick walkway. Crossing one arm over her chest and linking her hand through the crook of the opposite elbow, she sucked on the cancer stick and blew out a cloud of smoke.

"Sera?" Kindra asked.

Cassidy cursed. Hugo froze. Aaron grunted.

Smoking Girl nodded and took another drag. "If you're going to shoot me, aim for the head. I've had a fucking fucked-up week, and I'm really fucking tired."

Cassidy or Hugo must have magically known where to find empty houses. Or they were masters of multitasking. There hadn't been much time for research, but less than an hour after Cassidy and Geo restrained an unresisting Seraphina Weston in one of the Calvers' SUVs, their group was hidden in a house with a For Rent By Owner sign in the front yard. And it was less than two miles from Mutual Liberty Bank and Trust.

"Kindra, no. We need you to go finish the job." Cassidy watched Kindra with sympathy in her hazel eyes, but that sympathy hadn't made her cave to Kindra's demands. "We're on limited time here. And you're too close to this."

"Like you're miles away from it?" Kindra snapped.

"That's why Aaron and Geo are watching her until you get back. Dae and I need to start going through the information Sera brought in. Hugo and Blake will be the eyes in the sky for you and Dru, and Bernard will be arranging the legalities of a private flight to Gomin." Finally, Cassidy paused for a breath, but not long enough for Kindra to argue again. "I promise that when you get back, your sister will be in exactly the same condition she is now. Possibly even the same position."

Blake looked through the open door into the closest bedroom. He could see Aaron's legs and the gun he held loosely in one hand. Geo leaned against the wall opposite the door. On the floor not far from his feet, Seraphina lay sleeping—or resting with her eyes closed, at least—despite her guards and the bindings on her wrists and ankles.

A chance to sleep before being interrogated—and that had been the word she used, interrogated—had been all Sera asked when she willingly handed over her bags and surrendered. From how quickly Sera had seemed to drop into sleep after she lay down, Blake thought she must have gone without for far too long. Maybe since Amett had died five days ago.

Kindra looked at her sleeping sister. Shoulders high and tense, hands and jaw clenched, and breathing too quickly, Kindra seemed on the edge of an explosion. Then Dru moved in, her finger lightly brushing the silver chain Blake had noticed Kindra usually wore around her neck. "We won't hurt her, baby. Trust us, okay?"

Their eyes caught and held, some silent communication passing between them. Kindra's eyes fell to the silver cuff bracelet on Dru's wrist, something Dru seemed to only take off if she had to. Kindra's shoulders dropped. "Fine. Let's go before I change my mind, Bomb Squad."

Once the decision was made, the girls were out the door in less than five minutes, Matthew Nevarez's key and code in hand. They were armed with research into the bank's policies and the name Gracelyn Bedford. Only when they were in a silver sedan—which Blake was trying to pretend he didn't know was stolen—and driving away did he ask Cassidy, "Do you think Kindra will be able to hold it together for this?" A bank would be a horrible place to raise suspicions.

Cassidy looked out the window in the direction the car had gone, and then at Sera. "Kindra has worked through stress a lot worse than this and done fine. It's not the job I'm worried about right now."

Exhaling heavily and rubbing the space between her eyes, Cassidy walked over to the area of the living room floor where several laptops had been linked into a miniaturized version of their normal tech center. Another two laptops were waiting for her and Hugo. There wouldn't be much they could do from here—apparently even Cassidy's impossibly good computer skills had limits, and hacking into a bank's security feed at the last minute was one of them—but they'd at least be able to warn Kindra and Dru if major, officially sanctioned trouble was heading their way.

They'd also managed to confirm that a woman named Gracelyn Bedford was the branch manager at the bank, and that she'd been working her way up through the ranks at that location for over a decade. It was more than long enough for her to have made a deal with Matthew Nevarez regarding the use and instructions for release for one particular safe-deposit box, though that conclusion was more hope and conjecture than anyone was really comfortable with.

After Sera's unexpected arrival, and the stress of transporting someone they couldn't be sure wasn't part of a trap, the retrieval of safety-deposit boxes 36 and 129 was easy, painless, and quick. Within half an hour, Kindra and Dru were returning with a backpack full of . . . something. They hadn't explained over the comm, and Cassidy hadn't pressed.

As soon as they walked in the door, she held out her hand. Dru handed over her backpack, explaining, "The boxes were the largest ones they had in the vault. The second one, 36, was in Bedford's name."

"She had the key?" Hugo asked.

Dru nodded. "Apparently it was a precaution in case the first one ever got subpoenaed and searched by LEOs, and she seemed thrilled to hand everything over to us and get it out of her bank. Whatever this is, it's got to be good. For us, anyway."

"Matthew definitely went to a lot of trouble to hide it," Cassidy said as she unzipped the bag. Her gaze wasn't on the contents; both she and her daughter were watching Kindra.

She'd stayed still for a moment, but quickly broke away without sparing any of them a glance. It wasn't far to the bedroom where Seraphina was sleeping—the house was small and they'd wanted to keep Sera close—so with only a step backward, Blake could watch Kindra enter the room and stand a few feet from the door, staring at her sister.

"You're getting creepy, Kinny."

Blake and Geo jumped. Aaron's gun hand rose to aim at their prisoner-guest, and Geo settled into a fighting stance. The only one who hadn't reacted at all was Kindra.

"I was waiting to see how long you could keep up the ruse." Kindra took one more step forward and then sank gracefully to the worn beige carpet. "Faking sleep is a stupid trick to use with me."

"Wasn't faking the whole time." Sera groaned and used her bound hands to push herself to sitting, leaning heavily against the wall. "The front door closing woke me up. You've lost your quiet."

Blake knew that the girl eyeing Kindra was about the same age as Daelan, only fifteen or so, but she radiated a level of weariness and cynicism that made her seem decades older. Meeting Seraphina made Daelan's optimism even more amazing. Kindra and Sera were what Dru and Daelan could have been. Might have been if Cassidy and Hugo were more like Odira and Amett.

"How did you find us?"

The girl shrugged. "Luck, partially. I was watching flights to Gomin passenger lists on the commercial flights and flight plans for the chartered ones. I caught the Global booked from Portland and was pretty sure it was you guys when it switched at the last second to Atlanta, so I headed here and watched the airport you guys landed at. Hid a tracker on one of your SUVs." She looked up at her sister, false concern on her face. "You guys should really be more careful."

Kindra did not look amused.

"Why are you here, Sera?" Kindra's voice sounded completely neutral, but her sister flinched.

Eyes down, her thumb tracing the seam of her jeans on the inside of her knee, Sera asked, "You heard about Amett?"

"Yes. And don't pretend you care."

Sera's head came up, and her fingers stilled. "I do care. I heard the shot. He cut a fucking tracker out of my hip and shoved me out of the room less than two minutes before someone came for him." She paused. "Or he came for himself. I couldn't tell."

"Autopsy didn't indicate self-infliction," Kindra said.

"Autopsy." Sera snorted and rolled her eyes. "You know we know how to scam those."

"He was shot five times."

Sera stilled again. "I only heard one." Tilting her head, she admitted, "Okay, fine. Shooting yourself five times would be tricky. I don't think I'd be able to hit myself more than twice before survival instinct kicked in too hard."

"And Amett's was always stronger." Kindra paused, the silence long enough for a slow breath. Then she asked, "Why'd he make you leave?"

"Said we were both about to meet Charon. Just, you know, less metaphorically."

"Who was coming?"

"Don't know. Odira, probably."

"Why?"

"Maybe she figured out that he was fucking with the client's plans for world domination."

"You know who you're working for?" This time there was surprise in Kindra's voice. Dru edged closer to the doorway, and Blake followed, curiosity pushing him forward, but caution making the progress slow.

"I had some of it worked out before the current shit-storm, but no. Mommy dearest isn't in the habit of sharing, Kinny. You know that."

A beat. Hesitation. Even Cassidy stopped searching through the backpack.

Kindra took a breath. "Did either of them tell you that she killed Ryce?"

Sera glared. "Bullshit. I was with her on that job, and she never—"

"Not in Switzerland." Kindra's shoulders sagged. A thread of tremulous pain tightened her tone. "Ryce faked his death. That's why we never found a body in the river. He faked his death and came to work with the Calvers."

Sera's brown eyes jumped from face to face. Whatever she was looking for, it didn't seem like she found it.

"You're lying." The even nonchalance that had been in her voice before was gone now.

"When you tried to blow my head off in Jacksonville—"

Sera straightened off the wall, glaring. "I was trying to give you an escape route!"

Kindra paused, but only for a moment. "The guy who pushed me out of the way was Ryce. He'd been working with the Calvers since he disappeared, and he was with us in February when we grabbed Garret Hadley."

"No, he wasn't." Sera's hand dropped. Her olive skin looked ashen.

"When the sniper that day took the shot, they didn't just kill Garret. They gut-shot Ryce. I watched him bleed out smelling like death." The chill in Kindra's voice was almost tangible, the temperature dropping with each word. And with each word, Sera froze more completely.

"Odira was behind the scope." Her voice was a little hoarse, but otherwise she barely seemed to react. "But she wouldn't've— If he was alive and she saw him, she wouldn't've . . ."

"She would have." Cassidy spoke softly, but her words were steady and sure. "It's likely she killed Amett for passing us information—because from what Daelan and I have seen in what you brought us, he's the only probable candidate for our anonymous source. If she could do that to Amett, and she could raise you two like she has been, why do you think she wouldn't be capable of killing Ryce after he faked his own death?"

Like a TV during a power outage, every sign of emotion vanished, even the weary cynicism Blake had seen in her before. "I'll break into the Treasury and steal you a few million dollars if you let me be the one to kill her."

"I'd say you have to get in line, but . . ." Cassidy's tone was sympathetic, but somehow also wry. "I think you and Kindra get first shot if you're there when we find her."

When, Blake thought, as though that meeting was already inevitable. As though these two girls possibly killing their own mother was somehow inevitable. Maybe it was. Their lives had obviously been brutal. If they didn't kill Odira, it was clear that Cassidy would. The enmity between Odira and the Calvers stretched back for years. Eventually that kind of tension, and this kind of complex spy-versus-spy game, had to end.

And looking at the faces of the people in the room, Blake had a feeling that final meeting would be explosive. He just hoped that the shockwaves of that blast didn't take out anyone he was beginning to consider a friend.

By the end of the day, the same plane that had carried them to Atlanta was now bearing them back to the West Coast. Plus one extra passenger and two massive loads of information.

Matthew Nevarez's two safe-deposit boxes had contained floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, and three manila folders packed with pictures and documents. Adding that to the veritable mountain of data Sera had delivered on Amett's flash drive meant that everyone—Blake, Bernard, and Sera included—was put to work aboard the Bombardier. The trip to Gomin from Atlanta, including stops to refuel in California and Japan, would take over twenty hours, but that wouldn't be enough time to get through even half of the intel. And it definitely wouldn't be enough time to understand how all of the pieces connected.

What Blake could see of the picture they were slowly painting was horrific. With each new brushstroke on the canvas, it became clearer that the rock bottom she thought they'd hit—the worst thievery, the most grievous betrayals, the most cold-blooded murders—kept dropping out from underneath them. Maybe they hadn't found bottom yet because there wasn't one. Maybe there really was no bond or vow or tie sacred enough to keep Lillian from breaking it.

The game Lillian seemed to be playing was long and had been moving so slowly until recent months—and kept so far beneath the surface of her political, business, and military interests—that no one had seen it. Now Blake wasn't sure the little she and the Calvers could do, and the few places they were capable of being at any given moment, would be enough to stop Lillian French from getting exactly what she wanted. Whatever that was.

The details, bloodcurdling as they were, weren't enough to tell them where this game would end. Or why Lillian was willing to kill so many people to get there.

A sharp, confused noise escaped Cassidy. "Odira?"

Blake looked up, watching Kindra and Seraphina pop out of their seats and crowd around Cassidy's chair. Everyone else was only a second behind. Kindra leaned over Cassidy's shoulder to see her screen.

"That is not Odira." Kindra somehow sounded absolutely certain and completely lost. "Look at the expression on her face. Have you ever seen Odira look like that?"

Standing behind his wife's seat, Hugo blinked at the image like he was trying to force it to make sense. "Did she have a sister?"

"You sound surprised there was something we didn't know about Odira Weston," Cassidy said. The tone was wry, but the curl to her lips was bitter.

"Not us. Amett. If that's not Odira, there's no possibility she's not related. Identical twins maybe. If Amett knew about this, he never hinted at it, and . . ." Hugo took a deep breath and shook his head. "Maybe I'm naive, but I really do think she loved him once. Years ago."

Seraphina hummed, not quite agreeing or disagreeing. "If she does, I've never seen it."

"I'm pretty sure the only reason she didn't beat him as often as she did us was that he was bigger than her. And one of the few people who knew how to take her down," Kindra mentioned calmly, as though that kind of dynamic was normal. It made Blake send up a prayer of thanks to God and whatever other power was listening for her parents.

Her parents might have spilled blood, but they had also loved her with every last atom of their souls. Blake had always known that. She'd always been grateful for it. In the face of the Westons' example of what life could have been like, "gratitude" was no longer sufficient to describe the fathomless well of warmth that filled her chest.

"I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks."

Underneath, beyond, and behind that, who was worse: Lillian, who manipulated and ruined the lives of strangers, or Odira, who did it to her own family?

"If that isn't Odira, who is it?" Blake forced herself to ask. "And what does Lillian want with her?"

The picture shifted from the main screen to the smaller laptop, a folder full of dated documents replacing it.

"Shit. This goes back twelve years." Hugo pointed to the first file. "Open that, because if this is what I'm thinking it might be, then . . ."

Cassidy tilted her head back to look at him; her lips were pursed. It seemed to Blake that she shared whatever Hugo feared.

Then she opened the first file. It was an email, and for once there was nothing coded about the message at all.

Odira:

I don't take kindly to threats, and I definitely do not appreciate being told no. It's been a while since we last spoke, but you hid your pressure points well. Even from those who think they're closest to you, I'd wager. Now, though, I have a new job for you as well as some news.

How long has it been since you spoke to Adila? A month or more? I think that she was planning to surprise you with the news, but it's possible that you'll understand why I'm so thrilled to tell you this myself. Your wonderfully intelligent and especially talented twin sister has accepted a job offer with me and is even now on her way to her new laboratory.

Dr. Adila Quadri fully believes that she has been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run her own research team in a state-of-the-art facility, where she'll get to work on top-secret projects that will save lives and benefit humanity. So long as you do as you're told and complete your orders with the professionalism and discretion I know that you're capable of, what she believes and her reality will be exactly the same. Step out of line, Odira, and there is very little end to the misery I will inflict upon your sister. I can make it hurt, and I can make it last.

Don't test me.

I expect your confirmation before 10 p.m. this evening.

The details of the job will follow.

Be good, Odira. Your little sister is counting on you.

Lillian Imani French

"Adalia." Seraphina's random interjection drew everyone's attention, but she was looking at Kindra. "Your middle name. It came from Adila."

"Shit." Kindra sighed. "Do you realize that this means there's two of them?"

"Atropos save us if she's anything like our dear mother. Which, speaking of, I'd really love to know how Lillian figured out where Odira's one weakness was. Is." Sera glanced at Cassidy, eyebrows furrowed. "Was?"

"'Is,' as far as I can tell from these," Cassidy said. After double-clicking on a file dated July 1, Cassidy tilted the screen to better let everyone read it. "This is the most recent one. A few days ago."

I've done a very thorough investigation, and I know that no one in my camp is behind the fact that our most recent plans weren't as effective as they should have been. That means the problem is on your side of the fence, Odira. You were doing well until recently, but it seems you've lost control of your team. Find the leak and plug it. I don't care how.

There's still only one strike left. You have three days before your sister becomes her own test subject.

Don't waste time.

Just a day after Odira read that email, her husband was dead—probably by Odira's hand—and her youngest child had thrown herself on the mercy of a family that she'd probably considered an enemy.

"That explains the timing, at least," Sera muttered.

"I just . . ." Hugo bit his lip and shook his head. "Everyone Odira worked with was an asset to her. It's hard to picture her caring about anyone enough to liquidate all of her assets to protect one person."

"They obviously grew up together, right?" Kindra gestured to Daelan and Dru. "If they had even a normal-ish childhood, there's a chance Adila became the one person Odira let inside her defenses."

"Our lovely auntie was there before those walls were built," Sera said. "Probably."

Kindra blinked, looking at the picture on the laptop again. "I guess she is our aunt, huh?"

"What is that behind her?" Blake asked. "It looks like a chemistry lab."

"I think it is." Cassidy switched the images back to the main screen and zoomed in on what little of the room they could see. The computers on the desk were several years out of date, but otherwise everything looked as shiny and new as every science lab Blake had ever seen in a movie. "There's no record of an Adila Quadri that I can find, but I wouldn't put it past Odira to delete all personal and potentially dangerous information."

"Or for Lillian to delete it after she grabbed Adila," Daelan added.

"Also a possibility," Cassidy conceded as she switched back to the files from Amett. "Everything is here—all the correspondence between Lillian and Odira about Adila. It looks like the only thing he was never able to figure out was where Lillian had her."

"Nothing we've found so far in Matthew's files hints at a likely prison, either." Bernard gestured to the computer.

"Lillian called her 'doctor' in the first note, though," Aaron said.

Geo nodded. "And then she said something about Adila becoming her own test subject."

"And we already know Lillian is a controlling force at LyoLabs," Blake said.

From the utter lack of surprise on Cassidy's face, it seemed that realization had already occurred to her. "Chances are good that she's stashed away in whatever facility LyoLabs uses to work on Lillian's projects."

"If she went to the effort of keeping a hostage for anyone, I guess it makes sense that she would try it on Odira. Hostage and skilled labor," Hugo muttered, disgust thick in his voice. "Lillian must have felt like she'd trapped a leprechaun that day."

"What she did is catch a lioness by the tail and stick her in a cage." Cassidy shook her head. "Lillian has kept from getting mauled so far, but that kind of luck runs out eventually."

"It'll run out faster than Hera's patience as soon as Odira knows for sure Adila is free," Seraphina said. "If we can do that, and you can provide Mommy dearest proof of it without giving her a chance to track us, you'd basically be letting that tormented lioness out of her cage."

"And pointing her at Lillian." The look on Kindra's face was almost smug.

"Well, that could be . . ." Cassidy trailed off, wide-eyed.

"Explosive," Daelan finished.

"To say the least," Kindra said.

Blake wasn't sure if he meant literally or metaphorically . . . but then she thought about the people involved and realized it was probably a lot of both. Lord help anyone who got caught in the blast radius of that particular confrontation.

Part of her wanted to be there to see them destroy each other, and to help whatever fire they lit on each other's backs burn as bright and hot as possible. Would she be able to do that, though? Even knowing that both women deserved to fall into the flames of hell, Blake didn't have faith in her ability to strike that match. Not even to mete out righteous revenge for her father's murder.

Looking oddly proud, Kindra said, "Odira is a cold, vindictive psychopath, but the woman is also very good at being a cold, vindictive psychopath."

"She'll rain Old Testament–style pain down on Lillian, and she'll wield it with Hera's rage and Aphrodite's flair," Seraphina said.

Kindra nodded. "And the implacability of Atropos."

"From your mouths to the Fates' ears," Daelan murmured.

"I guess we know what we're looking for at LyoLabs," Cassidy said.

"Dr. Adila Quadri's prison cell," Aaron said.

"And what, exactly, they've had that doc working on for the last twelve years," Geo added.

Blake shuddered. Whatever it was, it could not be good. Not for anyone but Lillian French.

On the flight to Ongma Potseu in Gomin, several plans had been proposed and dismissed before the team decided their best shot was to break into the LyoLabs headquarters under the cover of night. It would give them the most time to search for what they were after. Blake was determined to go with them. She argued her side of the issue for the last several hours of the trip, and she eventually won. They needed every pair of hands and eyes they had on this job, because it had to succeed; the information they could steal from the company's secure, on-site servers might give them Adila's whereabouts. Hopefully, it would also tell them what Lillian had been forcing Adila to work on.

And why.

Blake was almost certain that Hugo and Cassidy—and a very worried Bernard—had caved mainly because there was absolutely no reason for anyone in Gomin to be searching for Blake. Not once they left the airport, anyway. Despite that, they still made Blake agree to wear a disguise that obscured most of her features.

Several days after they landed—long enough for the Calvers and Kindra to have time to run recon on the LyoLabs headquarters—Blake had learned that disguises were really freaking uncomfortable. The long brown wig itched. The prosthetics changing the shape of her face pulled. The padding that added bulk to her frame made her overheat.

Despite the many levels of discomfort, despite the ominous weight of the Beretta in her hand, she didn't want to be anywhere else. They were finally letting her do something, and this time there was no doubt in her mind at all that she'd be able to hold up her part of this mission.

The port city of Ongma Potseu wasn't small—it was at least as packed and populated as sections of Providence—but when they drove through the streets in the predawn gloom, Blake was struck by how dark the city was. Streetlights, storefronts, blocky apartments buildings—none of them were lit. At all. The darkness was so complete that a power outage was the only explanation that made sense.

"It's really expensive to use electricity here." Daelan spoke in a low murmur, but the words felt loud in the quiet van. "And it doesn't always work in the residential areas, either; the utility companies don't have much in the way of regulation or oversight."

Right. Kindra had described the country like pirate-controlled Tortuga. "But LyoLabs has a security system running full-time?" Blake hoped not—it would make their job easier—but she wasn't counting on it.

Sure enough, Daelan nodded. "They can afford it. And they've earned government contracts from Gomin, North Korea, China, Russia, and several other nations in the last decade. Honestly, it's probably one of the most secure locations in the country."

"Of course it is." Because why would anything about this be easy?

"And because Lillian knows Mom, their systems don't run on any of Redwell's software." The blue-white glow of the tablet in Daelan's lap glinted off his manic smile. "We cracked that a few months back."

"And you're excited about this? Won't the different system make this harder?"

He winked at Blake, his smile softening into something more playful, more inviting. "Easy is boring."

"Has anyone ever told you that you might be a little crazy?"

Laughing softly, he nodded. "All the time. And usually not that nicely. 'Pyromaniacal freakazoid' is one of Dru's favored epithets for me."

"You earned that one fair and square," Dru muttered from the seat in front of them.

"Hey! I haven't blown anything up in . . ." His lips kept moving and his fingers twitched in the air above his tablet, as though he was counting. "Okay, well, if you don't count the flash-bang someone else threw at me in Providence—"

"Then it still leaves you with the device you rigged for Lillian's mercenaries in Chicago." Dru paused. "And whatever you were playing with when we landed."

"You better not blow the servers up before we get what we need," Kindra warned.

"Please. It's a last-resort device. In case everything goes to hell," Daelan said, somehow sounding as innocent as if he were discussing a fallback college plan instead of a possibly deadly incendiary device.

Sera scoffed. "You mean we're not already in hell? I really hope religion is a myth, then. If my life hasn't been hell, I don't ever want to see the real thing."

"Drop-off ETA in sixty seconds." Hugo's pronouncement ended the conversation.

Blake straightened in her seat a second after everyone else reacted. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the Beretta and checked that the safety was on before holstering the gun. Cassidy would be leading the team infiltrating LyoLabs. Seraphina had taken Blake's place, monitoring the exterior and the official law-enforcement channels. Since no one trusted Sera on either end of this job, Kindra was staying with her. Somewhat unsurprisingly, despite the not-yet-healed gunshot wound in his arm, Aaron had refused to be left behind.

"Now you see why I ain't having none of that no more," Geo had muttered, glaring at his boyfriend. "Getting left behind to worry sucks, and not in a single fun way."

The pained look Aaron had given him had almost been funny.

The van pulled to a stop several blocks from LyoLabs. It would stay here, lights off and hidden in the narrow alley between two tall, ugly, concrete buildings, only moving when Cassidy called for an extraction. From here, her team would split in half and make their way to LyoLabs on foot.

As long as no one caught them before then.

Lillian had been so many steps ahead of the Calvers for so long that it was hard for Blake to truly believe Lillian didn't already know where they were. She had to believe it though, at least for the next hour or two. If she didn't, paranoia and panic would have her jumping at every shadow, blinding her to the actual dangers.

Outside the air-conditioned van, the muggy summer air clung to Blake, making the itch, irritation, and heat of her disguise worse. She ignored it as best she could, focusing instead on the hand signals Cassidy used to direct their group. Geo and Blake would follow Daelan. Cassidy would lead Aaron and Dru in the opposite direction, approaching LyoLabs from the east instead of the south. Hugo, Kindra, Sera, and Bernard were holding their base camp this time.

Daelan brushed the back of Blake's hand with his fingertips, lingering a split second longer than necessary to catch Blake's attention, and then moved deeper into the shadows. They walked slowly, keeping their pace even and stepping carefully to avoid making noise. Their path ran through the deepest patches of darkness to catch no one's eye.

Since the city was on the coast, there was brine on the breeze. Layered underneath that scent was gasoline, garbage, and grime. Trash cans on street corners and in alleyways overflowed with so much refuse that Blake knew it couldn't be the product of a single week. This was neglect that had built over more than a month, and the summer heat had baked it to something that—in some piles—almost resembled compost.

She had to breathe through her mouth in shallow pants to avoid gagging, which was why she didn't immediately notice the lack of smell.

Street by street, they closed in on LyoLabs, and the closer they got, the cleaner the streets became. The better the air smelled. By the time they were within sight of LyoLabs, there was only sea, not sewage, on the breeze.

"Guess they don't want to offend the nostrils of visiting officials," Daelan murmured, his voice barely carrying across the two feet dividing them.

Blake's lip curled in disgust, and she nodded, but she didn't dare say a word.

The tiny comm in Blake's ear clicked, a slow-fast pattern that she knew was Morse code. It was too fast for her to decipher. She and Bernard were probably the only ones on the team who had that problem. Daelan responded in kind quickly, then adjusted their path, aiming for the gate in the southern fence.

As they approached, Daelan took a small device out of his bag, something Cassidy had programmed to hack the coded locks on the exterior of the building. With a quick swipe of a white card and several commands entered into the device it was connected to, the gate beeped and there was the snick of a lock opening.

Daelan held the gate for them, and Geo took point, leading them into the protected, carefully manicured garden ringing the perimeter of LyoLabs's property. The massive, square, gray, four-story building loomed ahead of them, only narrow slats of glass breaking up the solid surface. If not for the garden, it would look like a prison. With the intensity of the security they had to get through to reach their destination, Blake wondered if it didn't sometimes feel like a prison to the people working inside.

Guards wouldn't be through this area for another five minutes, according to the timetable Cassidy had worked out over the last several days. The video surveillance in the area should be down if Cassidy's team had been able to disrupt enough of the building's power. There had been something about a signal jammer or blocker or something too, but Blake had gotten lost in the technobabble.

However Cassidy managed it, Blake, Daelan, and Geo reached the south wall of the building safely and—as far as they could tell—undetected. Using hand signals, Daelan ordered Blake to watch the east while Geo eyed the west. The temptation to turn and watch Daelan hack the electronic lock on the door was stronger than she'd anticipated, each beep and faint scratch heightening the impulse, but she resisted. She was there to watch Daelan's back, not watch him work. Eyes out, she reminded herself.

Daelan tapped her shoulder twice. They were in.

The side door let them into an empty hallway, keypad-locked doors lining both walls. A quick scan of the ceiling revealed cameras watching from above. Those eyes should be blind right now if Cassidy's interference was still at work; if they weren't, then this job would be over fast.

So far, they were good. No footsteps. No alarms. No shouts.

Daelan signaled, and they moved forward, up the hall and left at the first junction. The door to the stairs wasn't locked, so they slipped in easily, padding quietly up the steps to the third floor. Now, on the other side of the first floor, Cassidy's team should be disabling the alarm system completely and setting up the backup plan, just in case one of the guards got too close. It wouldn't kill anyone—they couldn't kill anyone without creating proof that someone had been inside the building—but Blake still hoped they wouldn't need to use it.

On the fourth-floor landing, the level where all of the administrative offices were, Daelan clicked a Morse code message over their comm and then pressed a small black disc against the door. A listening device. A wire trailed out of the disc and into what looked like a battery pack. When he flicked a switch on top of the pack with his gloved thumb, faint static resonated through Blake's earpiece. Static, but no sounds a person was capable of making.

Daelan removed the disc and put the device away and then turned to face Blake and Geo. Out, he signaled to them. Walk. Two hallways. Right. Walk. End. Left. Right wall. Five doors. Done. Yes?

Blake nodded. Daelan focused on the keycard lock on the door. Something soft, like the faint brush of a fingertip, touched her cheek.

She jumped, mouth going slack and a fearful shriek on her tongue.

Heart pounding, she clamped her mouth shut fast enough that only a sharp gasp of air escaped. Hair. The touch had been the long strands of her wig.

She took a breath through her nose, released the air through her mouth, and hoped she looked something less than panicked when Daelan checked in with her before pressing down on the lever handle and opening the door.

Geo's hand gripped her shoulder for a second, the expression on his face sympathetic when she looked up at him, but the momentary lapse seemed to have escaped Daelan's notice. Thankfully.

Daelan led them cautiously, quietly, and unerringly through the maze of hallways. Some of the offices had windows looking into the hallway, but most didn't, creating a space that felt narrower than it actually was. Claustrophobia-inducing or not, the hallway was deserted; right now, that was what mattered. Blake would willingly have crawled through the air vents like a movie spy if it meant getting the Calvers the information they needed to finish this.

Daelan's left hand rose sharply, fist clenched, and he cocked his head to the left, angling his right ear toward the intersection of hallways they were about to approach.

He heard something. Someone.

Waving them back, Daelan began clicking a code through the comm. This one Blake recognized. It was the signal to release plan B.

As she backed away from the intersection, she unzipped the pack attached to her belt. She removed the compact respirator from its case and pressed it over her nose and mouth. Behind her, she heard the soft sound of a zipper unlocking; Geo was unpacking his mask too.

Cassidy should have initiated the release of gas through the ventilation of the building as soon as Daelan signaled. Even with the intensity of the dispersal system Daelan had rigged—he'd called it a "controlled-release gas bomb," which Blake was pretty sure was a combination of terms he'd made up—this building was over fifty thousand square feet. That was a lot of air for the gas to infect.

Once the guards had breathed enough of the chemical, they would start to feel disoriented and nauseous. Within minutes, they would be running for the nearest bathroom. Since Cassidy had arranged for the entire night crew to share a meal a few hours earlier—a bonus gift from management, they believed—they should all blame it on food poisoning.

Or at least, that was the plan. But the gas had been spreading for several minutes now, and the guard was getting closer.

Geo readied a syringe, the backup to their backup plan. Blake's hand tightened on her gun. The guard kept walking.

It should've kicked in by now. Why wasn't it working?

Another few feet and the guard would reach the junction. They'd be seen.

The chemical mixture in the syringe would knock the guard out and cause at least a few minutes of memory loss, but if Geo had to use it, the chances of the guards realizing someone had been here rose. If anyone noticed the break-in tonight, Lillian would change plans, and everything would be ruined, and—

A thump against the wall. The sound of someone trying and failing not to gag. Hurried footsteps moving away from their hiding place.

Blake hoped she wasn't the only to heave a silent, grateful sigh of relief.

Another moment of stillness. Daelan crouched and peered around the corner with a tiny mirror. Once they were sure the way was clear, Blake and Geo followed Daelan to the door of the CFO's office. Geo stayed near the door, watching down the hall, and Blake followed Daelan to the desk.

On the wall perpendicular to the windows, a door led to a conference room. Daelan nodded toward that gateway, and Blake moved into place. While Daelan worked on the computer, her sole job was to make sure no one snuck up on them sideways.

It was an easy job. The door to this meeting space was on the opposite wall, using a short hallway that extended off the main one. Chances of anyone approaching this way were so low, it was almost negligible—the hallway was the more likely path, and that was good since the wall between the room and the hall was mostly glass. Blake didn't care. At least they'd let her come.

"It'll be five minutes once I crack the password," Daelan reminded them, his words distorted by the respirator.

"And the password'll take . . . how long?" Geo asked.

"Three or four." Keys clacked as Daelan hacked into the system to steal as much data as he could and then plant a virus that would appear as though it had come from the internet. According to Cassidy and Daelan, it should look like random malware, but it'd be bad enough to disrupt the system and corrupt about forty-eight hours' worth of data, including the security feeds and every single access log for the building's electronic locks.

The virus would turn them all into ghosts.

"I'm in. Five and counting from now."

Blake nodded and looked away from the doorway long enough to check the time on her watch: 3:12 a.m. They were supposed to convene with Cassidy's group at 3:23. This would be cutting it close. Maybe too close.

"Take your time and all," Geo said. "But ya might also want to hurry your ass up."

"You can't rush genius," Daelan muttered. "Or miracles."

"It'd better not take a damn miracle to get us through this." Geo's voice was wry, even through the respirator's distortion, and Blake could picture the sardonic curl to his lips. "I'm pretty sure I already used up all the ones I'm entitled to in this lifetime."

"Well, let's hope Blake has some to spare, 'cause I can't have all that many left to my name either." Daelan's comment sounded absentminded, and the clack of the keys never slowed.

Blake shifted her weight and adjusted her grip on the Berretta. Don't look away, she ordered herself. Your job is this office.

The Calvers had trusted her with one job. If she screwed this up now, they'd never give her another one.

The thought made her stop and blink at the dark, quiet room. Never give her another? As though this were her life now. As though it would be for a lot longer than however long it took to make sure Lillian French was buried under the weight of her countless crimes.

When the hell had this kind of life become normal?

Blake took a breath and pushed all of those thoughts aside. Now wasn't the time. She had to keep an eye and an ear out for—

A flashlight beam angled across the room.

Shit. For that. The light of a guard coming up the hallway no one was supposed to use, and obvious only because of the wall of glass separating them. Which meant that, if he got close enough, he would have just as easy a time seeing them as they did seeing him.

Keeping her eyes on the still-empty office, Blake snapped once and then signaled the warning Daelan had taught her the day before. She could only hope Daelan was paying attention.

The break in keyboard noise—only a second before it picked back up, faster than before—was enough to tell her that the warning had been heard and heeded.

Blake pressed herself against the wall, gun raised and ready, but finger pressed flat against the side. Shooting too early would be just as devastating as shooting too late.

Even, quiet breaths. Steady hands. A watchful eye. Aim for the legs.

Daelan needed another minute, and Blake was going to make sure he got it.

Although Blake might not have mastered the skill of deciphering incoming Morse code, she'd memorized several patterns she could send over the comm. She sent one now.

E-G-C.

Enemy Guard. Close.

Pause.

In the hallway, the footsteps were getting closer. The creak of a leather shoe, the click of a set of keys hanging from a belt, and the slight wheeze of someone breathing with a stuffy nose. Attacking the guard, disabling him in any way, was a last resort, but he kept getting closer. The light kept bobbing across the conference room, reflecting off the shiny black table.

Blake hoped Daelan had been wrong about being out of miracles.

She tapped twice more, a time indicator to show just how close to discovery they were.

The double burst echoed back through the comm—Cassidy indicating that they'd heard. But hearing the message didn't mean they were in a position to do anything about it.

Another sweep of the flashlight. The crackle of a radio. A single cough.

Blake took another breath and shifted her finger to the trigger. A few more seconds and she'd have to take a shot if Geo couldn't get into place with the syringe. Daelan wasn't done.

The guard's flashlight swept the room again—and dropped when his radio crackled to life.

Whatever the message, it drew the guy away. Not quite at a run, but fast enough that he was gone in a second, groaning with each step. Steps that took him away from the office. Down the hall. Farther and farther away, until the footsteps faded beyond Blake's hearing.

"I do not like how close that was," Geo muttered behind her.

Blake shuddered and gave in to the urge to look Geo's way. Though Geo's body was still mostly angled toward the hallway, his head was tilted toward Daelan when Blake turned.

"Almost done, Miracle Max?" Geo asked.

"Just . . . give me . . . another few . . . seconds . . ." The speed of his typing somehow got faster. "Done! Let's GTFO, compadres."

"The sooner the better," Blake agreed as Daelan unplugged the small portable hard drive and stood up from the desk.

Geo led them through the darkened halls, back the way they'd come, but only after clearing each section, checking for any more unexpected visitors.

Their miracle of timing held to the rendezvous point with Cassidy's team.

To their planned exit point on the south side of the building.

To the gate and then out of it.

Back to the sewage-strewn streets of Ongma Potseu.

Blake was almost glad of the smell this time.

Ten minutes after exiting LyoLabs, all six of them were climbing into the van and heading away from the center of the city. Only in the calm, relative safety of the van did Blake hear how fast her heart was beating and feel how her hands shook.

She watched Daelan pass over everything he'd downloaded from the CFO's computer, but the explanation of what he had managed to read during the download sounded like it was coming through a wall. Distant and indistinct.

For a few seconds, until the van was several more blocks away from LyoLabs, the only sound Blake could focus on was her pulse. Everyone else was talking. She knew they were because she could see their mouths moving. Listening—she should be listening. It was important. But holy hell, she couldn't quite believe yet that they'd made it out alive.

"—and so if that's the case, all we'll be able to get off the data stored on-site at LyoLabs is a location. Maybe," Daelan was saying.

Cassidy nodded. "You might be right, but at least we'll have a location."

A location. Of course. And then, once they found out where to go, all they had to do was get there, breach whatever security measures Lillian had in place, rescue—or kidnap—Adila Quadri, get away, and then figure out how to stop whatever else the devil had planned.

Basically, they had to repeat everything that had happened this morning. And somehow not get caught at it. Again.

Blake covered her face with her hand and swallowed laughter that probably would've come out more than a little hysterical.

They'd gotten this far and already too many had been lost. Her dad. Ryce and Amett Weston. Jenna Tanvers. They and so many others Blake didn't know were gone, but the ten of them had made it here with only minor injuries.

Geo had been right—none of them could have very many miracles left.

So how much further would the miracles they did have get them?

Blake wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she was pretty positive that she was about to find out.

Blake rolled her lips between her teeth and tried not to puke. Stabilizers, Daelan had promised. The boat had stabilizers. Even Geo had backed the claim up. "With those on," he'd said, "you won't hardly feel the waves."

What they hadn't known at the time was that the seventy-foot decommissioned military cutter would be facing ten-foot seas.

The boat rose and dropped, each shift unpredictable. Blake spread her hands out, bracing herself between the wall and the edge of the small bunk bed. Now she understood why so many of the chairs were bolted to the floor.

"How much farther?" Somehow she got the words out without losing the contents of her stomach.

"Another twelve miles," Kindra said.

Oh, God help her. Twelve miles.

You asked for this. You begged them to let you help again.

It was true, but the reminder did nothing to settle her stomach. She had fought to be here, involved, not left in the secure, remote bunker in the mountains of Gomin. That was where Aaron, Bernard, and Geo were now, sifting through the data they'd stolen, some of which had led them here.

Figuring out their next step had been easier than Blake had expected, because for once, nothing had been encrypted. It had taken less than a couple of hours of studying the lists of paychecks and supply orders LyoLabs had on its servers for the Calvers' team to map out where all of it was being sent. Almost immediately, their focus centered on Etobih-lin, an island in the Sea of Japan. It was a mountainous, isolated, twenty-eight-square-mile dot in the middle of a watery stretch of nowhere, and it was an island that LyoLabs owned more than half of.

Watch Gomin and the sea.

Wigand—Amett, Blake reminded herself—had warned them of that two weeks ago. Nothing in the intel Amett had managed to pass them had pointed directly to LyoLabs or Etobih-lin, but Amett must have had suspicions or he'd never have aimed them at Gomin at all.

"The eastern half of the island is open for visitors." Daelan had leaned closer to the computers, squinting at the screens. "It seems like the whole middle section is mountains. No roads or even many footpaths leading straight through."

"What if we went in as tourists?" Kindra had asked after Daelan blew up the map full screen and zoomed in on the center point. "We could either hike the mountains or try our luck on the roads to get to the research station."

"Maybe. It's a regional attraction, and Gomin is pretty diverse," Cassidy had said. "We could pull off the look, but— Hey, Sera? How are you with Korean?"

"Speaking in tongues was never my thing." Sera had shrugged. "I only know six fluently, and none of them are Asian."

She knows six languages and still thinks it isn't her thing? Blake hadn't been sure if that was Sera's parents' standards rearing their impossible heads or if that was her own perfectionism showing up, but the cause hadn't mattered—it was ridiculous. The paternal side of Blake's family was from the Dominican Republic, her maternal from Vietnam. Becoming at least conversational in both had been the only way to communicate with her grandparents on either side, so she'd been trilingual before kindergarten—English at preschool, Spanish and Vietnamese with family.

Sera's statement had made Blake's fluency in three languages seem inadequate for the first time in her life.

"Not that it matters," Hugo had added. "We don't have the time to sneak over from the tourist side."

"I know, but it would've been less expensive," Cassidy had said as she brought up a different list: invoices and orders in a mix of English and Korean. They'd been practicing basic Korean since the Calvers made the decision to come to Gomin. Blake's polylingualism had stood her in good stead during those lessons, but it had only been a few days and the written language was still mostly beyond her.

"Okay, new plan," Cassidy had said. "The island is the ass end of nowhere, and too remote to grow much of anything. That means everything for the facility has to be brought in."

"And it isn't likely that the delivery boys know anything about what happens on that island," Hugo mused. "The risk of leak would be too high. Which means they're likely not being threatened. And they're probably not being paid all that well either, if Lillian can avoid it."

"No, the payment is almost certainly more than they'd make crewing another boat," Cassidy said. "Not enough to make them suspicious of why, but enough that they'd feel grateful for the position."

"But that means they'll have a certain degree of loyalty to the job," Kindra pointed out. "They won't want to give it up."

"But it won't be an until-death level of loyalty." Dru turned her laptop around to show them a different page of numbers. "I am positive we can offer them enough to make them quit. I'm just not entirely convinced this is a better route than sneaking in through the tourist side."

There had been a debate between the two options then, one Cassidy had won by pointing out that walking in the front door with credentials—even falsified ones—would eliminate the need for them to spend a couple of days camped in the mountains while she figured out how to disable or get around the lab's security.

Luckily Blake hadn't been the only one to find the thought of hiding in a cave for days unappealing.

They'd started talking about how to approach the crew, the best timing for the supply run, and how soon they could feasibly get everything completed. Blake waited until it seemed they'd decided on their initial approach before she interrupted.

"However you guys are going in, I'm coming too." Cassidy and Hugo had shared a look, their expressions speaking of indecision and worry. Blake hadn't let their argument build steam. "Please. I didn't mess anything up at LyoLabs, did I? I can help. Please. Let me help."

That had been the afternoon of their raid on LyoLabs headquarters. While she was in a hotel room. On solid ground. Now, she might have been regretting that insistence.

Too late to back out. She had a part to play, and she wouldn't let any of the Calvers—especially not Daelan, who she'd be following in the compound—down. Even if she had to do it while feeling as though she were about to lose every meal she'd ever consumed. And possibly her entire stomach.

The boat dropped. Blake tightened her grip on the bed. She swore she felt herself lift off the mattress for a second before gravity forced her down.

"It's a good thing we dropped the tourist plan." Seraphina had claimed the bunk above Blake's. From the tone of her voice now, Blake could almost believe they were chatting in the middle of a slumber party. "This isn't exactly sightseeing weather. Or camping weather."

"Sightseeing usually involves seeing. Visibility is shit in this." Daelan's bunk was closest to the porthole, and he was kneeling on the mattress, looking out at the inky nothingness, when Blake forced her eyes open. "Even the lightning doesn't give me much."

In a way, the storm had been a blessing—it made it easier to buy off the crew who usually ran the supplies out to Etobih-lin and take their places. Cassidy's instinct had been right: the crew were just well-paid deliverymen. As far as the Calvers had been able to tell, the men had no knowledge of or connection to Lillian. The devil's extreme tendency toward compartmentalization had served them well here.

But, Blessed Virgin Mother and all the saints, Blake could not at all blame those crewmen for taking the chance to bail. Being out in this was insane. Certifiably—and possibly suicidally—insane.

Closing her eyes again, Blake counted breaths. In and out in sixes because it was a nice, round number that she liked. The pattern calmed her and gave her something to concentrate on other than the rise and fall of the boat. Which felt like it was getting worse.

Please, let it not be getting worse.

The speaker on the wall crackled. Whatever the captain or crewman said was in Korean, and Blake only caught a few of the words. The speakers had crackled with static, and she hadn't been paying attention. Then she heard someone's boots hit the floor. She opened her eyes again slowly.

"We're almost to the bay," Daelan said. "The chop should cut back in a minute; it'll get a lot calmer once we're protected by the island."

The door to the room opened. Kindra stuck her head in. "Clean up and change. ETA is less than five now."

"Barring any sudden natural disasters." Sera jumped off the top bunk, somehow not falling on her ass when the room tilted as she landed. In fact, she sighed as though utterly bored and hoping for a natural disaster to alleviate the monotony of her life. "Ditch my team, travel halfway around the world, and still end up trapped behind a computer."

"At least you're in a boat instead of a van this time." Kindra stepped out of the way for her sister.

"Oh, the joy and wonder of my life." Sera's voice was high-pitched and singsongy, but her face was absolutely flat. Kindra snorted a laugh as her sister passed and then followed Sera down the narrow hall.

Blake looked away from the door, her eyes locking with Daelan's. When he smiled at her, it was confident and bright, and it was so reminiscent of the one he'd given her the day they met—after she stopped pointing a gun at him—that her heart skipped a beat.

"Ready to get all dressed up and go play hero?"

Blake smiled back and nodded, hoping she was telling the truth. Because ready or not, they were about to land.

The guards at the blocky, concrete facility looked at Blake, Daelan, Dru, and Cassidy with disinterest. At first. One man at the high desk did a double-take at the sight of Daelan, obviously noticing that this was not the crewman who usually delivered their supplies.

"Where is Jin-Soo?" the first guard demanded in Korean.

"Do you think he wanted to sail out here in this?" Daelan answered in the same language, his accent—as far as Blake's untutored ear could tell—a perfect mimic of the guard's. Somehow in the same few days as Blake, Daelan had memorized the language well enough to sound as though he'd grown up speaking it.

"They offered us triple the usual pay just to avoid going themselves," Daelan added when the skepticism in the guard's expressions didn't ease.

The second guard looked out the window to where the storm was still howling. "I don't know if I would have gotten on a boat in this for triple my yearly salary, but I'm glad you guys did. We're almost out of soju."

Guard Three laughed, and Guard One's suspicion finally seemed to ease. He nodded toward the four hand trucks piled with boxes. They'd unloaded only a fraction of the delivery from the small cargo truck they'd used to bring everything up from the dock.

"You'll need an escort. Most of that goes to the kitchen and barracks, but there should be several crates for the research director too. He was expecting a resupply this week." He picked up a walkie-talkie from the charging station on the desk and walked toward a door on the wall behind him. As he approached, something buzzed, and a green light above the door glowed. When he pressed down on the lever handle, the door swung inward. He didn't step aside to let them through. Instead, he fixed the four of them with a steady, almost threatening stare.

"Listen now, because it is the only warning you'll get." He spoke slowly, like he wanted to be extra sure they heard every word. "You will stay together and with me through your entire visit. Do not separate. Do not speak to anyone but me. Do not look into any of the labs. Do not ask questions. Break any of these rules, and I will make sure you never work out of Ongma Potseu's port again."

Guard One didn't move until each of them had bowed to the terms. Hopefully, Guard One couldn't tell how relieved Blake was to hear threats that should've been terrifying. It meant they were in the right place. It meant that all they had to do was find Adila, steal as much information as they could, and then get the hell back to a piece of land that was at least wide enough to hold an airport.

Blake said as little as possible on their short journey to the kitchen, concentrating on peering down halls and watching the faces of the few people they passed. This level seemed to house the less secure areas—recreation and exercise rooms, offices, living quarters, and the kitchen, for which most of their cargo was destined. They passed one elevator and one staircase, but all Blake could tell from either was that there was at least one sublevel to the building in addition to the second story they'd been able to spot from the boat.

If Blake had been keeping someone hostage in a top-secret lab on a mountainous island in the middle of a sea, she'd put them in the basement. Chances were good that Lillian had done the same thing. It was getting down there without raising an alarm that would be the problem.

They entered the cafeteria-style kitchen, empty except for their group at this time of day.

"The freezer storage is this way." Guard One pointed to the large, silver door in the kitchen area. "The rest will be dropped in the—"

Cassidy slipped in behind Guard One and jabbed him in the neck with a small syringe. Daelan stepped in, gripping the guard's wrists and holding him in place.

"What are you doing?" Blake hissed, her heart thudding faster as Guard One struggled, his movements already looking slower. "I thought we were supposed to be sneaking! They'll know we were here now!"

"We're here to kidnap their hostage," Dru murmured quietly. "Them not knowing we were here was never going to happen."

Okay, yes. True. Whether this mission succeeded or failed, they would definitely leave evidence of their presence behind. Blake just couldn't keep from hoping that they wouldn't have to kill any of the guards.

Looking away, Blake moved back to the door they'd entered through, while Dru crossed the room to secure the door on the opposite wall.

A few seconds later, the muffled grunts of the struggling guard stopped.

"That'll keep him out for less than an hour, but we probably only have fifteen minutes until someone comes looking for him." Cassidy spoke with quiet, calm authority. "Dae, help me carry him into the closet. Blake, you and Dru start moving the supplies out of sight."

When Blake turned, Dru was already at one of the hand trucks, yanking a crate out from the middle of the stack. She set it on one of the long tables. Tipping the hand truck back, she wheeled it toward the walk-in freezer. Blake was only a few steps behind.

As they made the trip a second time, Cassidy and Daelan unpacked the box Dru had removed from the stack. Underneath office supplies were four uniforms: the gray button-down shirt, dark pants, boots, pocketed vest, ID badge, and company-branded beret of the facility's security guards. It would be enough to help them move around the compound for a short while, but the game would be over as soon as Guard One was found.

They changed in less than two minutes. Daelan picked up the guard's radio and, with the help of faked static, convinced Guards Two and Three that the delivery crew would need another fifteen minutes at least. Message delivered, Daelan clipped the radio to his belt and fell in behind his mother and sister, following them back into the complex.

"How did you do that?" Blake asked, voice barely above a whisper. "You sounded like a native. I thought you weren't fluent."

"I'm not." He smiled, one side of his mouth lifting higher than the other. "The trick for convincing people you know a language isn't cramming a dictionary in your head; it's making sure the words you do know sound right. Trust me. You can get by with a pretty limited spoken vocabulary as long as no one catches you pronouncing everything like a first-semester language student."

That made a lot of sense, actually. It might take someone a while to realize the person they were talking to was speaking with a third-grade vocabulary, but it'd only take about six seconds to hear someone pronounce a complicated phrase all wrong.

"But that only works as long as you can understand what they're saying in the first place."

Daelan shrugged. "I never said it was a perfect theory."

On the computer in one of the offices, Cassidy found a map of the complex. She also created an administrator-level access code to the security system, giving them unrestricted freedom within the building. For as long as no one discovered them.

"There are two places Adila is most likely to be if this map is up-to-date," Cassidy murmured. She pointed to the southwest corner of the floor two levels below them. "This suite of rooms is probably her living quarters, and this lab here—" she gestured to a room halfway down the hall on the same level "—is the only one with a system that allows it to be locked from the outside."

"The other labs can't be locked? At all?" Blake frowned.

"They can all be locked, but they're secured by key card or punch code. This one has a different system on the door, and it looks like the difference is that it can't be opened from the inside," Cassidy explained while she copied files from the server onto a hard drive. "And it's stupid to make a lab inescapable."

"Scientific accidents can be very . . ." Daelan's expression pinched. "Very not pretty."

"Evacuating when an experiment goes wrong is necessary." Cassidy shook her head. "That lab is a death trap waiting for the right trigger. No one would work in a lab like that."

"Unless they had to," Dru added.

"At this time of day, it's most likely that she's still in her rooms." Cassidy ejected her hard drive and slipped it into a padded case. "Dru and I will head there. Daelan, you and Blake head to the lab and check it out too, in case I'm wrong. We rendezvous on sublevel three at the northeast corner stairwell. There's a tunnel that'll take us out of here to just about half a mile east of the dock."

"Half a mile in this weather is not going to be easy," Dru said.

"It's our best bet out of here once we've got the good doctor in tow." Cassidy strode toward the door, listening for a second before cautiously opening it. "Mission achieved or not, we need to be heading back to the boat in less than ten minutes. Move fast and stay safe."

She pulled Daelan and Blake closer, giving them each a kiss on the temple before stepping into the hall, Dru close on her heels. Blake and Daelan counted to ten, and then they followed, using the passcode Cassidy had created to access the sublevels on the elevator's keypad. In the stairwell, Cassidy and Dru would be doing the same.

The elevator creaked and groaned on the way down, shuddering like the ancient lift Blake and her father had gotten stuck in on their trip to England two years ago. This one shook worse than that lift. Bad enough that Blake spent the too-long ride fighting the urge to brace herself against the wall and praying that they wouldn't have to get in this thing again.

With a surprisingly melodic ding, the elevator jolted to a stop and the doors opened.

Unlike the mostly deserted entry level, sublevel two showed signs of life. A woman with long, graying hair walked by wearing navy-blue scrubs. She glanced at them when the elevator doors opened, but Blake didn't think she saw any further than the uniforms. After a short nod, she looked away, refocusing on the tablet in her hand.

Two men—one east Asian and the other south Asian—walked out of a room at the left end of the hall. They didn't even spare Blake and Daelan the brief greeting that the woman had.

Good. The fewer people who remembered their faces, the better.

"With this many people around, I need you to be my eyes out here," Daelan murmured as they walked. It took her a second to realize he'd murmured the words in Spanish. And an extra second after that to understand what he was asking.

Instinct told her to protest, that she was being shunted off and left behind again. Luckily, rationality caught up before the words springboarded off her tongue.

He wasn't leaving her behind. For once, he was asking for help and giving her what was arguably the more dangerous job. Giving it to her and counting on her not to screw it up for all of them.

"Whatever you need," she whispered back to him, also in Spanish. "I've got your back."

"If Adila isn't in there, I'm going to look for more intel on her research."

"And if she is in there?"

Daelan smiled. "Then maybe I won't have to look."

They reached the door with the punch-code lock, the one lab in the complex with no escape, and Daelan entered their code.

"Five minutes. Starting now." With a deep breath and a grim smile, Daelan opened the door and stepped inside the lab.

Daelan hurried out, closely followed by Dr. Adila Quadri.

"We're blown." He grabbed Blake's elbow and dragged her a few steps away from the lab. He was speaking Vietnamese now.

"Are you sure?" She answered in the same language as they raced through the hall. The few people who had been moving around on this floor were gone.

"There was a silent intruder alarm flashing on the computers. They must've found the guard in the closet."

"But Cassidy hasn't— Oh. I haven't heard anything over the comm since you went in there."

"They might have an emergency system in place to block all wireless signals." Daelan ran around the corner so fast he had to grab the wall to turn. Adila and Blake were close on his heels. "We'll meet them—"

A gunshot.

The bullet embedded in the wall, scant inches from Adila's head.

Blake spun and fired blindly. Hitting a target didn't matter. She just had to keep the guards back long enough for them to get away.

Another three shots were fired.

Guards screamed something in Korean.

Five more gunshots, none of them fired from Blake's weapon.

Cassidy and Dru had found them.

With the Calvers covering their escape, Blake grabbed Adila's wrist and ran.

She and Adila were first through the door and into the stairwell. Everyone else was close behind, but the lock and the doorknob had been shot to bits.

"How do we keep them from following us when you broke the goddamn lock?" Adila screamed.

Cassidy's answer was clear when she took what Blake was pretty sure was a block of C-4 and a trip wire.

"Jesus, you remind me of my sister," Adila muttered as Cassidy finished rigging the device.

"Not a shocker. I worked with her for more than a decade." Cassidy spun around and practically shoved Adila toward the stairs. "Storytime later. Run now, please."

They all bolted. Down the narrow, steep, winding stairs they ran. The staircase went down farther than Blake expected, deeper and deeper into the mountain.

Four flights. Five. Seven. Nine.

Static over the comm.

"Come in, Audrey." It sounded like Kindra. "Shit. Still nothing. We—"

"Here! Extraction lima," Cassidy barked.

"Heard! Hold your breath," Kindra responded.

"Roger." Cassidy muted her comm. "We've got three minutes to get down to the shore."

"I can't believe the guards haven't—"

BOOM.

Flames. Tremors. Blake slapped one hand against the stone wall, and her other gripped the central railing. Above her, someone screamed. Several someones.

"Never mind," Dru muttered. "They found it."

"Pick up the pace," Cassidy ordered. "That won't hold them off for more than a few more seconds."

Another five flights of stairs. The only sounds were their footsteps thundering on the metal grate stairs, and their harsh, panting breaths. And their pursuers several flights above.

A door. The exit. They were almost there.

Cassidy slammed into the door. It didn't open.

After a quick warning to everyone else to get back, Cassidy fixed another explosive, this one a thin strip that she stuck to the seam of the door. Daelan rushed in to help, correcting placement and saying something about blast directionality.

Away from us, please. That was all Blake could ask.

Just in case it didn't go that way, Blake and Dru pulled Adila behind the—admittedly limited—protection of the metal stairs. When Cassidy and Daelan joined them, the Calvers formed a human shield-wall between Blake and Adila, and the door.

"Fire in the hole," Daelan warned. "Cover your ears."

Cassidy triggered the bomb.

The wave of pressure shoved Blake against the wall. Heat and the sharp smell of hot metal blasted her in the face. Over the loud ringing in her ears, she thought she heard more than one person screaming.

A hand wrapped around her wrist and tugged. Her head spun, and it was hard to catch her breath, but her disorientation was only intense enough to unbalance her for a moment. By the second tug of Daelan's hand, Blake had her feet under her again. She ran with him into the storm.

They were soaked in seconds. The torrential rain seemed to be dumping half the ocean on them. Just outside the exit, two guards lay bleeding and still. Unconscious or dead? Blake couldn't tell, and Cassidy didn't stop to check.

Water and wind made the half-mile trek to the shore treacherous, but they were able to use their comms again. That meant when they reached the sea, a small boat was waiting to take them to the cutter. Kindra helped them climb on board while Dru and Daelan covered their retreat, firing rounds up the steep shore to keep the pursuing guards at bay. Once she was stable and safely on the boat, Blake started firing too.

Don't aim, just fire.

"Get in so we can get out!" she shouted to Daelan and Dru. Cassidy joined Blake, laying down suppressive fire that might or might not have actually hit a target.

Blake wasn't sure if she hoped they hit or missed.

The boat pulled away from the shore. Shots aimed at them from land picked up speed, the muzzle flashes and the muffled reports getting more frequent. Blake and the Calvers fired faster too. As the boat carried them toward the cutter, Blake wondered about the guards and personnel on Etobih-lin. What would someone like Lillian do to them for losing her hostage?

Maybe it really would be better for them—or at least quicker—if Blake's bullets hit flesh instead of stone.

The ride back to the ship was short but terrifying. To Blake, after experiencing the roiling sea in that tiny craft, the dips of the cutter didn't seem quite so bad. Plus, at least now she was safely inside and dry.

After warming up, Cassidy and Hugo radioed to the helicopter that would airlift them to shore; it was the only way they could escape the police who had probably already been sent to the port to capture them all. The helicopter would drop them off at the airfield where the Bombardier was waiting. Aaron, Geo, and Bernard would—as long as everything had gone well on their end—meet them there.

It would take a while for the chopper to arrive, though, especially with the storm still tossing the ship around. As soon as the call had been made, everyone gathered in the kitchen to brief the new arrival.

Adila wore borrowed clothes, and now sat with a steaming mug of tea between her palms. Her gaze flicked from face to face, but she kept coming back to Kindra.

"Who are you?" The question was blunt, but her tone was more curious than impolite. "You look like me when I was about twenty."

Kindra and Seraphina shared a loaded look. Then Kindra said, "Your niece. One of them." She jerked her chin toward her sister. "That's Seraphina. I'm Kindra. You had a nephew named Ryce—he was the oldest. He—" She pressed her lips together for a second and seemed to amend whatever she'd been about to say, explaining simply, "He died a few months ago."

"Ryce, Kindra, and Seraphina?" Adila's voice cracked. Her eyes welled. Kindra and Sera blinked, both of them looking thoroughly weirded out. "And you're Odira's kids. Odie had kids?"

When Kindra nodded, Adila's chin dropped. Her hand came up to her mouth and her shoulders shook. Blake was the only one who reached out to offer comfort. Dru and Daelan looked confused, creases lining their faces, and their parents seemed pained.

"Are we sure she's related to Odira?" Dru murmured.

The woman in question was talking under her breath, but as far as Blake could hear, it was a string of curses so random that they turned into utter nonsense.

"I can't have kids." Adila's sudden pronouncement made Blake jump. "I got sick a long time ago and— Anyway. No kids. But I've had a list of names picked out since I was a teenager." She dropped her hand and lifted her head, looking straight at her nieces. "Kindra had always been my first pick for a girl. Seraphina was a close second. And Ryce . . ."

A shuddering breath. A moment of heavy silence. A slow sip of tea. There was strain in each of those moments, but very little of it showed when she looked up at the rest of the group; it was something Blake had to assume that more than a decade as a prisoner could teach a person how to do.

Adila's voice was steady when she said, "I'm sorry to hear about your brother. I'm sure Odie was devastated."

Kindra made a strangled noise, her expression apocalyptic. Next to her, Sera looked confused and maybe—possibly—a little hurt. "I doubt that, since that bitch was the one who fucking shot him."

"What?" The mug clattered to the table and skidded off the side, hot tea spraying everywhere.

"I don't think she'd know devastation even if it came up and introduced itself to her," Sera said. "Wearing a sign. And tap shoes."

Dru and Daelan had jumped up to clean the tea. Adila looked at her nieces, so much conflict on her face. When she rubbed her mouth, her hand noticeably shook. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Adila cleared her throat.

"Obviously I've missed more than I realized." Her voice was thick and hoarse. "And for longer than I thought. And Odira isn't here."

It wasn't asked like a question, but Cassidy answered as though it were. "No, she's not. We actually spend a good amount of time, energy, and money avoiding meetings with Odira as much as possible."

"And so Amett is with—"

"He's dead." Sera's voice was flat and cold. "She killed him too."

"Oh." Adila closed her eyes. "Right. Okay, so . . ." Shaking her head, she opened her eyes. "My sister slowly stopped telling me what was happening in her life not long after she met Amett. I'm gonna need someone to back up about twenty years and give me the highlights of how the fuck we all ended up on this ancient tugboat in the middle of a goddamn typhoon."

Dropping her elbows on the table with a thunk and letting her head fall, Kindra folded her arms over the top of her head. Sera muttered something about making a fake family photo album, while Hugo and Cassidy exchanged a long, speaking look. It ended when Hugo sighed and turned back to Adila.

"Twenty-three years ago, I was in the Army and on a mission in Kuwait. The colonel we were serving under was dirty, and the mission was fucked from the beginning. But just after shit went sideways, this girl showed up and took out our enemies with a perfectly placed grenade."

Adila snorted. "Odie always did love fireworks."

For the next hour, Blake listened as the Calvers and the Westons spelled out the long, bloody, sordid history between the two families. And the even bloodier ties that bound all of them to Lillian French.

"But we still don't know what Lillian had you working on or what any of this is for," Cassidy said when they finally caught up with the present.

"And one thing we all know about Lillian is that she never makes a move without ten reasons, five counterarguments, and thirteen backup plans," Hugo added. "So what's the plan here?"

Adila had barely moved for the last half hour. Her eyes had shifted constantly, their focused gaze locked on whoever was speaking. Now she took a long, deep breath and slowly lowered her hands to the table. "Do you know what the Novichok agents are?"

Everyone except Blake froze.

"Yes," Cassidy said quietly. Hesitantly.

"I don't," Blake countered.

"What do the Novichoks have to do with anything?" There was something very like fear in Dru's face when she asked.

Adila glanced at all of them, but her eyes held Blake's as she explained, "The Novichok series was arguably the most dangerous, deadly group of nerve agents ever created. Despite the fact that there's barely any confirmation of their existence."

"Nerve agents." Blake swallowed. Sweat beaded on her lip and the back of her neck. "You mean they're chemical weapons."

Kindra cleared her throat. "You said was. You said that the series was the most dangerous."

"Yeah." Adila tilted her head back to the ceiling. "When LyoLabs hired me, I thought I'd be working on cutting-edge medical research, creating drugs and treatments that could help millions. Instead, for the last twelve years they've had me locked in a lab, and for the last six of those years I've been trying to figure out how to make the Novichok agents worse."

"Shit." Hugo dropped his head into his hands, the heels of his palms digging into his eyes.

"Worse how?" Daelan asked.

"Alter the dispersal and enhance their potential use as an area denial weapon." Adila straightened and held out her hand. "Give me a tablet or pen and paper or a fucking penknife to scratch into the table with."

Kindra unlocked a tablet and slid it across to her aunt. A moment later, Daelan passed her a flash drive too. Adila nodded and plugged the drive in to the tablet. She messed with it for a moment and then grunted. "Dual PhDs and I still don't know how to work technology." She passed the device back to Kindra. "There's a folder on the drive labeled 'Fuck You Stay Off My Computer.' Pull that one up."

Sera laughed. "Is a sense of humor genetic? 'Cause I think I somehow inherited mine from you."

"If you have one at all, you certainly didn't get it from Odie." Adila accepted the tablet back from Kindra and tapped something on the screen. What she showed Blake and the others looked to Blake like a molecular diagram from her chemistry textbook. Only exponentially more complicated.

"This is Novichok-X—aka Nix, because the stuff kills every-fucking-thing. Probably even cockroaches, though I didn't test that. These changes here," Adila circled one section of the diagram, "they— Well, to be frank, it goes over the heads of some people who have doctorates in chemistry. Basically, they had me find a way to make the powder activate post-dispersal from contact with any liquid at all. Sweat, water, Lysol—doesn't matter. If this gets wet, it's deadly."

"That would make cleanup . . ."

"Close to impossible," Adila finished for Cassidy. "But of course 'close' wasn't enough. I had to increase the length of time an area will stay contaminated, increase the speed of fatality, and make the decontamination procedures even more goddamn time-consuming and expensive. I'd say that it was actually impossible to get rid of, except a thing is only impossible until someone realizes it's not."

"That's awfully optimistic." Sera looked genuinely confused.

"Do you know how many times humanity's insistence on belief in the impossible has been proven wrong?" Adila shook her head. "There aren't any impossible problems; there are only problems we haven't figured out the solution to yet."

"I know guns, not science." Cassidy tapped the edge of the tablet. "Layman's terms, Doc. Why did she want Nix? No country in the world would risk getting caught with something like this, and even most terror groups stay away from weapons this dirty."

"'Why' was never really a part of my discussions with my jailer," Adila deadpanned. "So forgive me if my tactical knowledge is as lacking as your chemistry."

"No country needs to buy it."

Even sitting next to Daelan, Blake almost missed the soft words. She looked at him—so did everyone else—but his gaze was lost on something in the distance, something that probably wasn't the gray metal wall of the mess hall.

"It doesn't matter. No country or terror group has to actually buy the weapon," Daelan continued before anyone needed to prompt him. "All she needs to do it make them—the government or whoever—think that some other entity has attacked with this."

"Shit. Shit. The soldiers she used on the highways. She's already laid the groundwork for blame." Cassidy rubbed her hand over her mouth. "Lillian wanted outrage on a national scale, so she didn't target the government. Too many people don't give a shit about the government. She wanted outrage, so she went after civilians."

"Why would she want outrage?" Blake couldn't make that logic fit. It seemed like Lillian had been going for fear instead, but even that didn't compute if her ultimate goal was power and profits. What was she going to do? Sell bulletproof vests and gas masks?

"Before the highway attacks, we spent a long time focused on figuring out where she's selling secrets. But that's not a business you can run indefinitely." Hugo rubbed the back of his neck. "If secure information is continuously leaked, companies and governments start plugging the holes and setting up traps. Business dries up right quick then."

"But there are other things that won't dry up," Cassidy said. "The military budget in any given year is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But in wartime?"

Sera and Kindra looked at each other. Kindra was the one who cleared her throat and said, "A trillion, some years. If the US goes to war and it's a fight the people can actually rally behind—fuck everything else. The entire national budget will get poured into the war."

"And if it's a war, it won't just be the US throwing money into defense," Sera says. "The other side will have to arm up, and so will anyone looking to stay safely on the sidelines."

"Militias, terrorist groups, citizens looking to build bomb shelters and bunkers . . ." Dru bit her lip and shuddered. "Fuck, that's a horrifying picture. Everyone with access to the same tech and weapons would either create the longest stalemate in history or the most catastrophic war we've ever seen."

"And if Lillian French controls even a portion of the flow of the supply chain for that war?" Cassidy closed her eyes. "She'll do everything she can to make it last. And she'll be perfectly placed to provoke aggressions every time it looks as though things are settling down."

"But she can't—" Blake cut herself off. Her thoughts were jumbled in her head, none of them clear enough to become words. They were all looking at her, though, waiting with apparent patience for whatever she needed to say. "War? What country would we be going to war with? There isn't a flag on this!"

"Flags?" Kindra huffed, disbelief infused in the sound. "The US doesn't have to declare war on a country anymore; they can declare war on an idea. If she can pin it on a little country, so much the better. If the politicians think the country has a shot at a grand, decisive victory, they'll fight."

"And she's already worked on pointing them in the direction she wants," Hugo said wearily. "She's trying to pin it on North Korea and the AWAF."

Blake had forgotten about that bit of news in everything that had happened, but she remembered now. Kylie Drusus had told them about the link back to North Korea and the Anarchist Warriors for Asian Freedom—a group Blake hadn't even heard of until Kylie's report.

"Shit. True or not, most of the voting populace of the United States will believe it, and the people in power definitely will," Blake said. "Hell, sometimes it seems like they're all looking for any possible excuse to declare war on half the world."

"Not necessarily," Cassidy cautioned. "Most of that is rhetoric and politicking. But after the highways? And if this second attack goes through . . ."

"They'll have to retaliate if they can." Kindra pushed her long, dark hair over her shoulder, her lips pressed thin. "And it'll turn into something brutal, because when all you want is to cash in on chaos, you don't care what kind of mess you make."

"Or who's left behind to clean up after you." Daelan's voice was grim, and so was the silence that descended after he spoke.

"The highways weren't enough to cause a war, but they were never meant to be." Hugo rubbed a hand over the top of his very short, dark-brown hair. "The country is finally almost out of a conflict in Afghanistan that started because of a single explosive incursion. And since then? With all the guns our citizens have been turning on other Americans for whatever the hell fucked-up reasons they've got? We aren't gun-shy anymore, but . . ."

He looked at his wife. Cassidy closed her eyes. "The highway attacks were primer. They set the stage."

Daelan nodded. "And I'm pretty sure the next act of this particular play will be a multicity—possibly an international—chemical weapon strike."

"'He is come to open the purple testament of bleeding war,'" Blake murmured.

Meeting her eyes, Daelan almost smiled. "'Sound trumpets! Let our bloody colors wave. And either victory, or else a grave!'"

Adila looked between the two of them. To Kindra, she asked, "Did they just start talking in Old Timey British, or has too much time alone finally broken my brain?"

"Shakespeare," Kindra confirmed, her expression resigned.

Hugo smiled cheerlessly. "'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead.'"

Tears welled in Blake's eyes as she watched the people who had been strangers to her not very long ago silently commit to throwing themselves into the breach that Lillian had created.

They didn't have a plan yet. They didn't have a location on Lillian or the next attacks. They didn't even know for sure if the helicopter would make it to them in this storm. Maybe they were all destined to drown in the Sea of Japan.

Yet and still, the Calvers and the Westons—and, Blake was sure, Aaron and Geo as soon as they knew about it—were girding themselves to take on a mission that seemed guaranteed to be suicidal.

Potentially suicidal and a failure.

But they were all ready to go on regardless. Even Daelan, Dru, Kindra, and Sera, who were only Blake's age—young enough that college, not collateral damage, should've been their primary concern. Young enough that they should've had their whole lives to look forward to.

Watching them all settle into their new reality, their new view of the future, Blake couldn't help thinking about her parents. She couldn't help regretting that her mom and dad never had a chance to know this group of people.

Her mom and dad would've come to love them just as much as she had. Her parents would've helped her protect them any way they could.

She'd been counting on the Calvers to protect her and give her orders and come up with the plans. Until now, Blake had been coasting on their experience and watching them take most of the risks. Sure, she'd been able to use her Shakespeare knowledge to their benefit, but that wouldn't help anymore. She had to come up with something else.

There had to be a way for Blake to offer more. Not necessarily standing on the front lines of a gunfight—she knew she wouldn't be much use in a battle like she'd watched on the highways. But sitting in the belly of a creaking cutter fighting its way through the storm-tossed ocean, watching the Calvers and the Weston girls commit themselves so totally to this fight, Blake felt fire spark to life in her chest. She would find some way to help the team, her team, win this fight. She'd find a way to help them survive it. She had to.

She just didn't know how yet.

Cutter to copter.

The storm made the air trip just as dangerous as the sea had been, but Blake's stomach handled it better.

Copter to airfield.

Cassidy had radioed Aaron and the airfield while they were flying, so by the time they landed at the private airport outside of Ongma Potseu, their three remaining team members and the Bombardier jet were waiting, packed and ready to go. Or, at least, the jet was ready to go once Cassidy promised the pilots double their usual fee for taking the risk—small, but not completely negligible—of flying through the storm.

"Well," Sera said after they were in the air. "We're alive."

"You sound surprised," Daelan said.

"I'm always surprised when I'm still alive at the end of a mission." She swung her legs up and then let her combat boots thud on the small table between two plush seats. "Especially recently."

"Eyes in, everyone," Cassidy said from her seat in the middle of the plane. "We have a lot to go over."

The seats were arranged mostly in sets of two along each side of the plane, the pairs facing each other with a small, collapsible table in between. At Cassidy's order, everyone either twisted in their seats to get a better line of sight or got up and moved in. She introduced Adila to Bernard, Aaron, and Geo, and quickly filled them in on what the doctor had revealed earlier.

Kidnapped. Held hostage. Nix.

Bernard closed his eyes and started praying in Spanish. Aaron and Geo looked at each other for a moment before Aaron said, "You might be able to help us figure something out, then."

Cassidy sat straighter. "What'd you find?"

Blake found herself mirroring Cassidy's tense, expectant posture, waiting for the next bombshell to land. Waiting to see what new damage they'd have to deal with.

"An answer to one lingering mystery." Geo reached out and patted Bernard's shoulder. "In bits of the info dumps we got from Sera, Lyo, and Matthew, we found the real reason they were after Bernard's business so hard."

"It wasn't just the drugs?" Dru asked. Blake sat back, relieved that, for once, they weren't adding a new trouble to their plate. "'Cause I never thought that made any fucking sense."

"No. I'm pretty sure Garret believed that the drugs he was smuggling through Echemorro were why Lillian agreed to the hit on Bernard, but it wasn't the drugs," Aaron explained. "They had planned to expand the drug running using Gasper Exports's government and industrial contracts, but it was solely because Lillian needed the drugs to hide something else."

"Fucking orchids." Geo looked as baffled as Blake felt.

"Orchids as in the flowers?" Blake asked. How had they gone from drugs to flowers?

Geo nodded. "Apparently she needed a safer and faster way to get her hands on a massive number of this particular orchid, whose official name I cannot even pretend to know how to pronounce."

Bernard's lips twitched at that, but a full smile didn't appear. "Cynosorchis aeternum. It translates to eternal orchid, and it only grows in the mountainous areas of northwestern South America. The flower is very rare, very useful, and very expensive."

"And because of all that, they're also very controlled," Aaron added. "The official exports are strictly limited, but there's a black market for them. Apparently parts of the plants have extremely efficacious chemical properties."

"We weren't sure which of those properties made her want them so bad. Then you came back with the doc, and . . ." Geo nodded toward Adila. "Well, with that she said, we think Lillian needed to get the orchids out here for something Adila was working on. Were we right?"

"It's part of the antidote to Nix." Adila closed her eyes and ran the tips of her fingers along the almost unnoticeable scars on her neck. "Or it will be when I finish the fucking thing."

Blake stared in blank horror at the doctor. Adila didn't open her eyes, she couldn't see Blake's fear or the others' expressions, but she kept talking. "Lillian didn't want it to be easily cleaned off the places where it was dumped, but that didn't mean she wanted to risk her own life. As soon as I finalized Nix, she ordered me to start on an antidote to exposure. She wanted a vaccine, but there's no goddamn way that's happening."

Dru finally asked, "There isn't an antidote to that shit?"

Dropping her hand, Adila reluctantly opened her eyes. "I was close to one—I'm pretty sure that I figured out how to fix the last issues—but I took my time. For obvious reasons." She crossed her arms and stared down Cassidy and Hugo. "If I solved it too quickly, I would've sped up this whole mess. If I took too long or sabotaged it too obviously, they would've brought in someone else with more greed than common sense."

"And there are far too many of those people in the world," Hugo said, his eyebrows pulled low.

"But that means we have time, right?" Blake's gaze jumped from face to face, searching for the hope she wanted to see. Daelan had been slumped back against the wall behind their bench seat, but now he sat up and placed his hand on her lower back, rubbing small, gentle circles. Everyone else was looking at Blake. She made herself swallow and ask, "No one would be stupid enough to release a chemical weapon they couldn't protect themselves from . . . right?"

"That's what we're hoping, but we can't count on anything with her," Hugo said. "What's good for us is that if she waits until she has an antidote, it'll be the better financial move. She'll make more off an antidote to Nix than she will off the weapons."

"Fuck money!" Geo slammed his hand down on the armrest of his chair. Blake jumped. "If we don't have an antidote, we won't be able to save anyone. We won't even be able to save ourselves long enough to do anything about it!"

Aaron dropped his hand on Geo's shoulder. "I don't know about you, but after the national spread of the highway attacks, I'm expecting this one to be international." His words were calmly spoken, but Blake found them all the more chilling because of that. They were harder to ignore. "There ain't no possible way in any realm of reality that a team of ten is going to stop more than a handful of release points, antidote or no antidote."

"Even if we called in the vets again, we don't know where to send them." Dru paused before adding, "Yet. And if—when we do, sending anyone out who's not wearing a fully sealed hazmat suit is basically sending them to die."

Blake shuddered. The death toll for vet volunteers on the highways hadn't been zero, but the percentage had been low compared to the civilian casualties. This time, Geo was right. Without an antidote, sending their volunteers up against a powder that would kill them quickly and painfully with even minor exposure was a suicide mission. And it was a suicide mission with a low probability of success.

"It might be worth bringing in the alphabets now. Despite the risks." Cassidy was looking at Hugo when she said it.

Hugo rubbed his mouth, then dropped his hand and exhaled heavily. "I think we're past the point of worrying about things getting any worse. We might be able to get a message to Kylie and a couple of our contacts in LA." He paused, and Blake opened her mouth to mention Altair again. Hugo forestalled her. "But there's still Lillian's moles."

Cassidy nodded. "They'll kill anyone who tries to activate official countermeasures or an emergency plan."

An image flashed in front of Blake: Altair slumped over his desk, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead. Fayza at home, alone and sobbing when someone told her the news.

Blake shut her mouth and sat back, mind spinning. There had to be another way to warn . . . well, everyone. Everyone in the world needed to know what was coming.

"What about Odira?" Hugo looked at Adila. "Our plan was to try to unleash your sister on Lillian after we got you out of there."

"That would be . . ." Adila shook her head. "I honestly don't even know. Deadly, I think. It's been too long since I've seen her. I don't know if she's still . . ."

"'Deadly'?" Sera snorted. "Fuck yeah. That's about all she is."

Adila flinched, but nodded. "Then, yes. If you have a way to reach her, I'll tell her whatever you need me to. I think— Well, she used to listen to me."

They kept talking, and Blake listened with a part of her attention, but the rest of her was crashing hard from the adrenaline rush of the last few days. From the seasickness and the bullet dodging. From the impossibly high spikes of fear that had struck her too often.

"We've got a long flight, and we should rest while we can," Cassidy said, breaking into a few conversations. "Dae, you and Blake can take the first break. I think that bench in the back section folds out into something as close to a bed as we're going to get right now."

Hugo handed one of the laptops to Dru and nodded to a pair of wide armchairs. "Girls, jump into the files the guys have already started going through. We need to keep figuring out what we have so that we can run it through Cassidy's analysis programs."

"'Cause that's not vague," Sera said. It didn't stop her, Blake noticed, from taking another laptop and sitting in the chair across from her sister and Dru.

Daelan got up, slipping his hand through Blake's and tugging her to her feet. It only took them a couple of minutes to shift the couch into a double bed. By the time they found and unwrapped the plastic-encased pillows, took off their shoes, and lay down facing each other, Blake's adrenaline had faded, leaving her body achy.

Her mind, though, was still spinning. Like a tornado, it cycled fast enough to pick up debris, anything that wasn't nailed down.

She thought about everyone she knew in Baltimore. She thought about the soldiers overseas her mom had served with. She thought about the vets who had already done their time in battle, come out alive, and gone back in because their country needed them again. She thought about the billions of people on the planet and how there were so few—a couple dozen, maybe, at most—who really understood the magnitude of what Lillian's plans might mean and the destruction those plans would cause.

And the Calvers' team didn't yet understand all of that. They might be underestimating the devastation that was coming. Might come.

Unless someone on this jet came up with a way to stop it.

But we can't stop it all. Geo was right. There were only ten people on their team. Even if Lillian went for the same number of attacks as she had during the first round on the highways, and even if their team split up to send a person to as many sites as possible, they couldn't cover every—

"Hey, whatever you're thinking, don't." Daelan ran his hand over her hair, scooting closer until their faces were inches apart.

"How do you know I'm thinking anything?"

His hand lifted from her hair, and he touched the tip of his index finger between her eyebrows. "There's a particular line you get right here."

"You've memorized my facial expressions that well?" Blake wasn't sure if she found that endearing or not. No one else had ever taken the time to learn how to read her like that, but then again, this was what the Calvers did. Read people. Predict reactions. It was what had kept them alive to play vigilante-bodyguards for so many years.

"Get some sleep while you can, kids." Cassidy leaned across the bed and draped a blanket over them both, a thick, soft comforter that wasn't like any airplane blanket Blake had ever seen. But this wasn't like any plane she'd ever been on, either. "It'll likely be only a few hours before we have to wake you up."

Nodding her thanks, Blake pulled the blanket up over her head and Daelan's, blocking out some of the light and creating the illusion of privacy for herself. The enclosed space captured the air, strengthening the scent of peppermint from Daelan's mints and the lingering sulfuric smell from . . . from everything that had happened on Etobih-lin. It was a combination of scents that Blake had gotten used to the past few weeks, one that had almost become comforting. It was even more comforting to pretend that she and Daelan were back in the room they'd shared in Detroit. That she didn't know World War III might be on the horizon. That all she wanted was to think of something to do, some way to help, and her brain was a big blank.

She needed to think about something else. Something that wasn't impending death.

"Tell me something."

"Like the air velocity of an unladen swallow?"

Blake blinked. "What? You know the— Why would you ever have had to calculate that? And why would a swallow ever be laden with anything? Aren't swallows small?"

Daelan laughed. They were close enough that each burst of air gusted across her skin. "It's from Monty Python, which I'm now going to assume you haven't seen and make sure I introduce you to later. But never mind about swallows. What did you actually want me to tell you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No. Now all I can do is picture a tiny bird wearing a backpack and carrying a package."

He laughed again, and he moved his hand back to her hair, running his fingers slowly through her curls. "Well, once your mental bird of burden flies on by, let me know."

Blake smiled at that image, but didn't speak. Not yet. The quiet that settled over them felt nice. Safe. For a few minutes she didn't want to break it, but then the shadows of the war crept back into her mind. To keep them at bay, she returned to what she had been about to ask.

"What would you do if you could? Other than this, other than guns and bombs and danger." She spoke quietly, trying to preserve the peace of the space they'd created for themselves. "What else do you like?"

His hand kept up a soothingly steady stroke. "I always thought it would be kind of cool to work in movie stunts and special effects. The real-life kind with the car chases and the explosions."

"So basically what you do now, just without the bloodshed?"

"With only fake bloodshed," he corrected, amusement in his voice. "Or accidental."

"Makes sense." She smiled at the picture of Daelan playing stunt double to some Hollywood celebrity. But as much fun as he'd have getting to blow things up without killing anyone, there had to be something else. "Any possible plans that don't involve destruction of people and property?"

"Psychology was always interesting," he said after a moment. "And a lot of things with computers come pretty easily for me. Programming. Security. Something in there would be something I could do well."

"With your brain, I'm not sure there's much you wouldn't be able to do well," Blake said. "That's not what I asked. What else do you like?"

His hand didn't stop moving, but it took a few moments for him to answer. "I don't know. I can tell you I like classical music, electronic, alternative, rock, and a lot of nineties rap. I hate action movies, thrillers, and mystery novels because they're either too ridiculous and unreal for me to tolerate, or I figure out the plot too fast and ruin it for myself."

He shifted his weight, his feet locking with Blake's. "But . . . I don't know. Everything else isn't really normal. Most people don't like making things that go boom in their spare time or figuring out new ways to hack federal databases for fun. That's what I do, though. And I do like it, but it's also necessary. If I don't keep the skills as sharp as possible, they won't be there when I need them."

"Makes sense," she said again, quieter this time. She didn't like the idea of Daelan's skills failing him when he needed them, and she liked that idea a lot less than the realization that he didn't seem to have anything real, anything that was his, outside of the family business.

"What about you?" He moved closer another inch, close enough to nudge the tip of her nose with his. "What do you like besides Shakespeare? You plan on teaching lit one day?"

"I don't think I have the patience to be a teacher," Blake said. "But I will probably sign up for every Shakespeare class I can when I get to college."

Daelan smiled. "You probably won't need the classes by the time you get to college."

"Need isn't the point." Maybe that was the problem, that so much of Daelan's time and energy was locked up in things that needed to get done. "The point is taking them because I want to. Just like the time I usually spend every week looking up stupid things on the internet. Just because. There's no need for a lot of things."

Most people understood that, but want didn't seem to be too much of a consideration in the Calvers' lives, not in the way it was for the rest of the population. The way it had been for Blake before February.

"Supposing we survive this—" Blake began.

"We will." All trace of a smile was gone.

You can't know that, Blake almost said, but she bit it back. "Right. When we survive this, do you think you'll ever take a break from all this? Not necessarily leave it behind, but . . . I don't know. Try something else for a while."

Blake knew better than to think that Daelan would be able to walk away completely or forever—he reminded her too much of her parents. In Daelan she saw the same hunger for action and the same drive to protect. But everyone needed more than one thing in their life, more than one focus.

"Take a break and what?" Daelan asked gently. "Learn to knit? Go to high school?"

Annoyance rose in her chest. She wasn't stupid. Imagining Daelan in high school was ridiculous. He'd be bored to tears and probably on his way to causing an explosion in one of the chem labs before the end of the first day. "Go lie on a beach somewhere. Take a cooking class. Go on a road trip that involves sightseeing instead of safe houses. I don't know. Something, though. A break. Relaxing."

His hand stopped moving and his expression turned contemplative. "I spent three months in one of those over-the-water cabins in Bali once."

Blake wasn't sure she believed that. "On vacation?"

"Well, kind of," he admitted. He shifted his hand to her back, softly running his fingers in random patterns over her shirt. "I was recovering from a stab wound." When Blake sighed, Daelan hurried on. "The point is, I've had downtime, and I never know what to do with it."

You need to find something else to care about or you'll burn yourself out.

If you don't take breaks, you'll be irretrievably cynical and jaded before you're Aaron's age.

Please don't disappear once this is over. I don't want you to go. I don't want to spend months or years or decades wondering if you're dead yet.

Blake wanted to say all of those things, but she had no right to ask anything of him. She especially didn't have the right to ask that.

"All right," she said instead.

Calmer now, she closed her eyes. Her spinning thoughts had either faded into her subconscious or vanished altogether, and sleepiness was beginning to creep up. Slowly. Like lying outside when it was snowing. Eventually you'd be covered in white fluff, almost lost in the drift, but it wasn't going to happen immediately.

"You almost never say my name."

Blake's pulse stuttered. "What?"

When she opened her eyes, Daelan was watching her, his face unreadable. "I think maybe one of the only times I've heard you say it was in Providence."

"Are you worried I forgot it?"

His eyes crinkled. "No. You can memorize Shakespeare. One name isn't that hard."

"And Daelan isn't exactly Alcibiades," Blake said, forcing herself to smile. Had she really not said Daelan's name since Providence? She thought it all the time, but . . .

"That's not—" He cut himself off, rolling his lips between his teeth and . . . Was he blushing? "Never mind. It's not important."

"Daelan," she said, emphasizing his name. "You don't do 'not important.' What were you going to say?"

"Just that— Well, I know some people wait for permission before they use nicknames, so I was just going to say that you could call me Dae." He swallowed, his eyes darting away from Blake's and back. "You know, if you want to."

"I . . . Thank you." Was that the right thing to say? She felt warm at the invitation, wanted to hold him tight and give him something as meaningful as that nickname. "I'd say you could use my nickname too, but I don't have one."

He laughed, a little of the embarrassed flush leaving his face. "It's not a trade, Blake. I wasn't trying to make you owe me something."

"It's not owing. It's more, I don't know." Now it was her turn to flush. "Reciprocity, I guess."

"Which is basically a nicer way to say you owe me something." The words were teasing, but it seemed like there was speculation in his eyes. "Will you answer a question for me instead?"

What if he asks what I'm planning? Saying yes could mean questions Blake wasn't willing to answer, and she didn't trust herself to lie convincingly. Not to him. He'd already proven today that he knew how to read her face too well. It wouldn't surprise Blake at all if he baldly asked, How exactly do you think you're getting to Baltimore?

But she still said, "Yeah, okay."

His brown eyes searched her face for a moment, his expression seeming determined. Then he asked, "What were you thinking about before? You looked worried."

It was nothing; I'm fine was what came to her tongue first, but he wouldn't believe it. Saying that now would be tantamount to saying, I don't trust you enough to tell you. So she closed her eyes and told the truth. Or part of it. "It's just that it's beginning to feel inevitable."

"What is?"

"Losing."

He stopped breathing. The pause was only a few seconds, but it was long enough to be noticeable. "Nothing is ever inevitable. Everything that happens, even things that seem as though they couldn't have happened any other way, could've been changed. There is always something someone could've done to alter the course of events."

"Could have, but didn't." She looked up at him, ignoring her burning eyes and the tears she knew were there, on the verge of spilling. "Winning isn't inevitable either."

"Yeah." He kissed the center of her forehead and pulled her closer. "Like I said, nothing is ever inevitable. The most we can do is try to be the people who change things."

And the Calvers were. They had been those people for Blake already. For the civilians on the highways. For probably dozens or hundreds or thousands of other people in the years before Blake knew them.

Somehow, Blake thought as she finally started to fall asleep. Somehow I want to be that person for them. For him.

She just needed to figure out how.

When Blake woke up, the blanket had been folded off of their heads—she could feel it in the way the air didn't cling so hot and close over her face—but otherwise they were in the same position. Daelan's hand was trailing along her back and her arm in gentle, seemingly meaningless patterns.

"Did you sleep at all?" she murmured.

"A little."

She cracked one eye open. "Is that code for no?"

"No," he said, laughing softly. "But it is code for 'more than I wanted to and less than I needed.'"

"Better than nothing, I guess." She shifted and stretched as much as she could without dislodging Dae's hand. "What'd I miss?"

"Not a lot. We still haven't found a working contact. All the numbers and emails Sera knew are disconnected now."

"Shouldn't we be worried about that?" Blake asked, more awake now. "You guys have email addresses that have been active for years. She seems to have had those too, but now all of them are gone?"

"Not that worrying," Daelan said. "I'd actually be more concerned if they were still up."

"What? Why?"

"For someone in Odira's position, it'd be a dangerous move to be using the same system now," Daelan explained. "All the living members of her team have abandoned her, and that means her tech, security, and communications secrets are at risk. Maybe she burned it all to the ground after Sera disappeared, when she knew everything was completely compromised. Maybe Lillian ordered her to scrap it all after Amett's leak. There are a lot of reasons she might've shut everything down, and not nearly as many for her to have kept it active."

There were only a couple reasons Blake could think of, and they didn't seem likely. "There has to be a way to reach her. She has to know something, something that wasn't written down anywhere."

"I'm not so sure about that," Daelan said. "Not after Lillian figured out where the leak was coming from."

"True." Exhaling slowly, Blake said, "Then maybe a call for help from Adila will convince her to work with you guys again and go looking for the remaining intel you need."

"Maybe, but, well . . ." Daelan's lips curved just enough to hint at the dimple in his right cheek. "Mom and Dad aren't entirely sure Odira will stop long enough to help before flying for Lillian's throat like a lioness driven mad by captivity."

"I know. And that's not exactly a bad thing, either."

"We didn't think so at first—you know that was always the plan—but it might be a bad thing if Lillian has a dead man's trigger in place. If we harm, kidnap, or kill her, it could set off a worse catastrophe." Daelan's faint smile was gone now. "It's also a worse thing if she dies before we know how to stop her war."

"Right. But there will have to be a time when that's the better option, right? Rather than not stopping the Nix attacks and letting her escape alive."

Daelan's shoulder tensed and his lips thinned. "If it gets to the point where those are our only options, we've already lost."

"But, if she's gone—" Blake couldn't quite bring herself to say dead even though both of them knew what she meant "—then she won't have a chance to make it worse."

"Maybe not, but it's not like she doesn't know we're gunning for her. Unless she's idiotic enough to think she's invincible, she'll have someone else ready to take over. Probably Susan Phan, and we have no idea where to find her."

Blake couldn't imagine they would have an easy time finding Lillian's second-in-command, especially with only the ten of them searching. They needed more eyes. They needed help they could trust. And they needed a way to organize that help without getting anyone killed.

God, Blake wished she could talk to Uncle Altair. This was what he did. The Calvers were experts in small-team covert ops, but Altair had been in charge of massive teams of agents for years, coordinating the movements of undercover and field agents.

It didn't matter. There was no way of reaching him. He would know how to do this, sure, but there was very little chance that Lillian wasn't watching him. Electronically if not physically. Possibly both. Blake had seen firsthand just what kind of monitoring someone who knew what they were doing was capable of, and they had to assume that Lillian was still looking for Blake. Which meant watching Altair, waiting for Blake to contact him.

The best option for getting intel to Altair was in person, but Blake was in a jet somewhere over the Pacific. The Calvers had already vetoed reaching out to him. Even if they could afford to split their focus, they probably wouldn't agree to this. Besides, if they recruited Altair but couldn't tell him where to send any of his agents, what good would it do?

So the Calvers had to keep working on that problem, and Blake would be stuck doing whatever simple work they didn't have time for. Altair and everyone like him who could help would be left in the dark, maybe until it was too late, all because Blake couldn't get to Baltimore and—

Or . . . No. There was no way. Blake's chances of making it to Baltimore without getting caught were about as good as the Calvers' chances of stopping Lillian before a single additional person died.

But what was the other option? Either Blake risked her life, or she let the team that had adopted her risk theirs.

If she did decide to go to Baltimore, how would she get there? Because, for this to work, she did have to go to Baltimore.

I could ask them again. They said it might be worth the risk now. But they'd shot the suggestion down every other time she'd brought it up. Being the messenger who went in search of help was a possibly deadly risk, and everyone on this plane had a job to do. A job that could save thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of lives.

Blake could go. She could take the risk. There was nothing she could do for them here that would be half as important as getting Altair and all of his resources on their side. And if she died in the attempt . . . Well, it would be a small price to pay, a chance to thank this motley family for everything they'd done for her. She would take the risk so they wouldn't lose one of their own—someone who was more a part of them than she was.

"We're going to have to get up in a minute."

Blake gasped. If her thoughts were a window, Dae's voice was like a baseball smashing it to pieces.

"Sorry, sorry," she mumbled, closing her eyes and taking a breath. "I think I must've been half back to sleep or something. You scared me."

"That wasn't sleep, sweetheart." His finger brushed the space between her eyebrows again. "Thinking again. Worrying."

She opened her eyes and looked straight into his. "Can you blame me? Honestly?"

A beat of silence. His lips parted and then closed tight. Shaking his head, he finally admitted, "No. Not really."

"Nothing is inevitable, right?" Blake asked quietly. "Not as long as someone finds a way to change things."

Daelan blinked and seemed to search her face, crinkles in the corners of his eyes. "That's what we're looking for. And we'll find it. We always do."

Nodding, smiling, and gently stroking Dae's cheek, Blake eased out from under the comforter and stood. Maybe Daelan was right, but she was still going to try to find her way to Baltimore as soon as they landed. Or as soon after they landed as possible. As soon as she could get out from under the Calvers' watchful eyes, find a car or a bus that would take her to Baltimore, and make it however far—possibly across the entire contiguous United States—without getting caught by Lillian's people or by well-meaning cops.

Taking Sera's laptop, Blake listened to her instructions about what to focus on and where she'd left off. Sera moved away quickly, abandoning the center of the cabin to curl up in a ball on the floor in the back of the plane.

As she took Sera's vacant seat, Blake bit the inside of her cheek and scanned the occupants of the plane.

Kindra and Dru handed their work off to Daelan and took the bed. After, Kindra chucked one of the pillows at her sister. Aaron and Geo were sitting across from each other at another seat pair, both of them leaning over a tablet on the table between them. Bernard, from what Blake could see of his screen, was scanning financial records of some kind, keen focus on his face. Cassidy and Hugo were each looking intently at their computer screens, but somehow they were still in sync. When Cassidy picked up a document from the wide arm of her seat and offered it to Hugo across the table, he took it without a hitch, even though neither of them had spoken or even looked up.

And Daelan . . . he was working on two laptops at once, his hands and his gaze jumping between the computers. He still glanced up at Blake every few seconds, those lines of concern surrounding his eyes.

She bowed her head as she prayed to God and her parents.

Má, Pai, help me, please. I need you to help me finish this. Even if I don't ever see any of them once this is over, I need you to help me save them, this family I've found.

She prayed for help, for guidance, for the strength to follow through on the plan that was slowly forming in her head. She prayed that someone was actually listening.

Just in case someone wasn't, Blake made plans that had nothing to do with locating Lillian French and everything to do with ensuring that, when the Calvers finally came face-to-face with the devil, they'd have the reinforcements they needed. She wanted to give them a chance to change the inevitable, and at least a chance of making it through alive.

Probably not a good chance, but a chance.

A buildup of body oil darkened the man's blond hair, and a buildup of dark-blond scruff obscured his jawline. The laptop across his knees lit his face with a faint blue-white light that made his skin look washed out and sickly, an effect only moderately counteracted by the city lights coming through the window.

He clicked on a new email that popped up in his inbox.

It is highly likely that the group in question left on a private plane from mainland Asia. Two flights from Gomin, three from Russia, one from North Korea, and four from Southern China are all possibilities, but I've been paying special attention to the plane that left a private airfield just north of Ongma Potseu at 7:46 a.m. local time on Wednesday, July 13. A Bombardier Global is a larger model than they should need with the team they usually work with, but we can't discount the likelihood that they either brought in additional help or attempted to disguise their presence by traveling with unconnected civilians.

In short, they're still in the wind, and I recommend an acceleration of the schedule to compensate for potential interruptions that may or may not be coming our way. Also, all core personnel will have their security details tightened—possibly doubled, if deemed necessary.

And, yes, Lillian, this includes you, so don't bother arguing with me.

This will go into effect in the early morning of each of our local time zones as the additional guards come on shift.

Lastly, it is crucial that any glitches in any system at all or any suspicious activity of any sort be reported to me immediately. Now is the time to cry wolf, because the wolves are actually getting closer to our door. We need to be ready to skin them all when they try to blow our house down.

Susan

"Shit." He pressed his clenched fist to the center of his forehead. Twice he struck himself. "If you do it, she'll kill you."

He took a deep breath and held it, then dropped his hand. Turning toward the window, he stared, seemingly unseeing.

"Either she kills you if you do it, or you don't do it and go crazy." He sighed. His shoulders slumped. "You're already talking to yourself. And you're still doing it, you—"

The cell phone on the bed rang. He jumped, fumbling the device when he tried to pick it up.

He answered it on speaker.

"You saw Susan's email?" Lillian's voice crackled with static and impatience.

"Just finished it."

"Well, Charles? What's the update on your project?"

"I'm nearly there. Another hour at most before it's ready to implement." He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry it took so long, but knowing who we're up against, I figured we'd only have one shot at this. I wanted to get it right."

"Hmm. Yes, but time isn't a commodity we have an excess of right now," Lillian reminded him.

"I'm keeping the schedule in mind, Lillian." He shuddered and opened his eyes, checking the code displayed on the screen. "As long as everything goes to plan, their systems should be completely shut down as soon as they solve the puzzle and find the link."

"Good. If the Calvers get any closer, it won't just be my neck in the noose," she threatened. "Work fast, and let me know when it's done. We need this program in place if we're going to have a chance to track them down and steal what we should've had months ago."

"Yes, Lillian, I'll—" The phone lit up. Call ended.

His mouth snapped shut. The screen went dark.

Muttering to himself, Charles worked for another hour, manipulating line after line of code. The sun was starting to appear on the horizon when he used a single, simple, and utterly uncoded quote in the subject line of the email. Then he placed an equally stark, though brief, paragraph in the body.

"Please be every bit as good as she thinks you are," Charles muttered.

He attached a text file to the message and hit Send.

Daelan insisted that the massive three-story "house" had been intended for a single family, but it had twelve bedrooms that each had their own bathroom, two kitchens, five living rooms, and a recreation gallery with a pool table, a massive TV, and old-school arcade games. This didn't feel like a home to Blake; it felt like a high-end bed-and-breakfast.

Whatever its purpose, it served their team well now, giving their ever-growing group the space and relative security they needed to function.

It was tucked away in the mountains outside of Denver, secluded and unoccupied for the summer season. It might have been a perfect place to regroup and remember how to breathe, but Blake hated it. The mountain house was so secure that he had no chance of slipping away from the others. He had to admit, though, that even if they had been staying in a hotel on airport property, he still wouldn't have had an easy time getting away. There wasn't much chance that he could make it through airport security without getting caught. Not without the Calvers' help.

He must have been more obviously jumpy or upset than he realized, because this was the third time in an hour that he'd caught Daelan watching him from across the second-floor living room turned control room. There was concern and maybe confusion in Daelan's face each time. When he finally approached Blake and quietly asked, "Are you all right?" Blake couldn't bring himself to brush that concern away.

"I don't like how much we still don't know," Blake admitted. "Or how big this is. Coordinating the vets to prevent highway attacks was hard enough. This phase is international, and we can't . . . I mean, it's not like we have every veteran organization on the planet on speed dial. Most of them wouldn't believe us, and even the ones who did, it's not like we'd be able to tell them where to go or how to stop her plans."

Daelan sat down next to Blake, close enough to wind his arm around Blake's waist and draw him closer. "No one knows everything, but we understand a consarn ton more now than we did last week. And we still have more to sort through."

That much was true. But that didn't mean that more was enough.

They still didn't have an antidote, for one, and that particular dilemma was part of why they'd ended up in Denver—this was where Hugo and Cassidy had been able to secure the lab equipment Adila needed to finish her work. It was also safe for the rest of them. Safe enough, anyway. It gave them the time they needed to add Adila's intel to the avalanche of information they were still sorting through from Amett and Matthew.

And Blake had a completely different problem. They might be staying here for another day, maybe more than a week. Since he didn't know for sure, Blake had to assume that this was the place from which he had to escape. Soon. That would be even harder to do if Daelan was worried enough about him to keep watching him.

Rolling his shoulders, Blake eased away from Daelan's loose hold. "Where are we with the rest of the intel?"

Daelan's eyes narrowed and his head cocked, but all he said was, "One of Mom's analysis programs flagged something new. Might give us more of a lead on who else in the world knows about this plan. Or knows about enough pieces to be ready to cash in on the chaos when she hits."

A valid distinction: Lillian's division of labor theories seemed to start at the very top of her organization. No one knew anything that was not absolutely essential to the completion of their job. It must have taken a lot of time and energy to set up—and even more to run—but Blake had to admit that it worked.

"Where are we moving next, then?" Maybe their next stop would be in the eastern half of the country, and Blake could save himself a few days of traveling.

"No clue." Daelan looked toward the computers, and Blake followed his gaze. Most of the team were there working. "It'll depend on how much time Adila needs and whether or not anything else in the files gives us an idea of where Lillian's next strike is—"

"Hey!" Geo called. "All y'all might want to come look at this!"

Oh God, what now? Blake looked at Daelan, not at all comforted when he saw his own trepidation reflected on Daelan's face.

Everyone crowded around Geo, who was plugging an additional screen into the laptop he was using. When he plopped back onto the couch, everyone's attention shifted to the larger screen on the coffee table.

"This just came in. It was sent to one of the Tru3 v4ult email accounts, and Cassidy's filters flagged it and forwarded it to us." Geo finished fixing the dual screen settings and shifted the email in question to the larger screen.

The subject line of the email read, "Buddha said, 'For the good of the many, for the happiness of many, out of compassion for the world.'"

"Holy hell," Daelan breathed.

I can't claim to be doing this out of Buddha-like spiritual nobility, but I'm beginning to see Buddha's point. And how far I've strayed from it in the past six years.

If I die before her plan is either carried out or stopped, know that I'm sorry for my part in it. She didn't trust me for a long time, and didn't reveal all the details of her plans until this past month. Sometimes she flat-out lied about her intentions where certain people were concerned, like Blake Marks, who I am hoping is safely hidden with you. I didn't know what I was involved in at first, and then I was too cowardly to risk my own life to save strangers. This is too much, though.

It's likely that I'll die soon whether I make this last attempt or not, so if I can help it, I'd rather go into whatever afterlife there is without this atrocity staining my soul.

Charles Thomas Upton IV

"Is he dead?" Cassidy looked at her husband, and Blake thought he read more confusion than concern in her expression. "Have we heard anything about him in the past few days?"

"His passport was used to enter Japan a week ago," Hugo said. "But we haven't seen anything come up on him since then."

"Do we believe this?" Cassidy hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. "This kid was Garret's lackey for years and never seemed to care about anything he was ordered to do."

"Lillian isn't Garret," Hugo said. "And ordering a hit on one person—or even a single family—is worlds away from a plan that could kill hundreds of thousands and make entire cities unlivable."

"I know." She raised one of her hands, resting her fingers on her square chin. "I'm just not sure that I believe Charles Upton is the type to have a change of heart."

Dru nodded. "Especially when that change of heart could get him killed."

"He did come off as a me-first survivalist when I met him," Kindra said.

"Exactly." Cassidy went back to staring at the message, uncertainty on her face. She sighed. "We can't not know what he's sending us, but the risk is high."

"I figure there's an eighty percent chance it's a virus." Daelan watched his mother instead of the screen, and Blake kept his eyes on both of them.

"At least," Cassidy said. "On the other hand . . ."

"This could be the last piece of the puzzle we need to stop Lillian's cataclysm." Aaron's voice was grim and his expression pained as he placed his hand over the wound on his opposite arm.

After a moment of silence and a long, deep breath, Cassidy nodded once. "Isolate that computer from the rest of the system, Daelan. Make sure the data is all backed up and then wiped from that machine before you do the final lockdown. Then we'll see exactly which side of the fence Charles Upton lives on."

Geo passed the laptop to Daelan, while Cassidy sat down again at the larger desktop. He started working immediately. Only a few minutes later, Cassidy got up and crossed the room. She tapped Daelan's shoulder and gestured for him to give her the laptop. Though he held up the computer and scooted to the side, he only moved far enough for Cassidy to fit beside him on the couch.

"Time to see if there's a bomb in the gift basket," Daelan muttered.

Cassidy downloaded the text file. It contained a single link: a short string of numbers and letters that only looked like a link at all because it started with http. Taking a breath, Cassidy copied the link into a browser and hit Enter.

A download box popped up immediately.

"Shit. It's force-running an .exe." Cassidy's fingers moved across the keyboard, but the box disappeared too quickly.

Another took its place:

Security protocols engaged.

System erasure in 10 seconds.

Enter password.

One (1) attempt remaining.

"Fuck. I am not that good," Cassidy muttered.

"No one is. Why give us a chance to stop it all?" Daelan looked at the larger screen, where the email was still on display. "Buddha. Try Buddha. It's used three times before the end of the first sentence of the body."

Cassidy typed the word and hit Enter before Daelan had finished speaking.

Blake held his breath.

The screen went black.

"Shit." Daelan rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, at least we isolated this one from—"

The screen flickered. It came back to life with an entirely new display.

"Is that . . ." Daelan's mouth was literally hanging open.

"I think it is." Cassidy was blinking at the screen, shock just as clear on her face as on her son's.

"Consarn it all to every level of Dante's special hell." Daelan laughed mirthlessly and ran his hand across his mouth. "She really is going to kill him."

"Start downloading everything!" Cassidy shoved the laptop at Daelan and bolted back to the desktop. Blake and everyone else dodged out of her way. On the couch, Daelan was already at work, typing in a series of commands that opened a cascade of download progress windows. The top one said Copying 10,678 items (10.2 GB).

Blake glanced at the desktop. Cassidy had reconnected the laptop to her system, and her screen was now covered with similar progress bars.

"I figure we've got five minutes max before someone notices we're not supposed to be here and shuts down all the remote access," Cassidy said. "You get everything you can, Dae. We'll sort it all out later. Dru, coordinate evac. We're gonna need to get the fuck out of Denver as soon as we get booted off this server."

Dru ran out of the room. Kindra, Sera, Aaron, Geo, and Bernard were close behind her. Hugo and Blake stayed with Cassidy and Daelan.

"Are we . . ." Blake looked between Daelan and his parents, uncertain hope rising in his chest. "Did Charles just send you guys a link to Lillian's secret server?"

"That's what it looks like." There was still a heavy dose of wariness in Hugo's voice and stance. His arms were crossed over his broad chest as he watched his wife and son work. "Still might be a trap, but it sure as shit wasn't the one we were expecting."

"When does anything go the way we expect?" Cassidy was working fast, her fingers moving across the keys with a speed and surety Blake could never match, her eyes focused on the screen.

"We're not going to get enough at this rate," Daelan said. "The connection I'm on can only download so fast."

Hugo cursed and grabbed Blake's arm. They sat down at two more computers that Blake thought were connected to the internet through separate data signals. Then, following Cassidy's orders, all of them used the Calvers' computer network to link to Lillian's server through the open connection on Daelan's laptop.

Approximately six and half minutes after the connection had opened on the laptop, it shut down, an error message popping up on all of the screens.

Cassidy stood up and turned off the computer. "We're leaving. Everyone load up. We're out of here in five minutes."

Blake and Daelan ran for their bedrooms. It only took a moment for Blake to shove the few items that had migrated away from his backpacks and duffels back into his bags. Out in the main rooms, he could hear the controlled chaos of the command center being shut down and stuffed into storage crates. The rest of the team had already finished with the other rooms and had returned to help Cassidy.

He'd seen this lightning-quick, get-up-and-go process happen a couple of times now, but when they were all sitting in the cars and vans ten minutes later, already half a mile away from the mountain house, Blake still felt the shock of it ripple through him. It left the rest of the world—and memories of his life before February—feeling slow and a little unreal.

"Is whatever happened with the computer a good thing?" Blake asked after several minutes of tense silence. The Weston sisters glanced back from the bench seat in front of Blake and Daelan, but they didn't respond.

"Yes and no." Daelan rolled his shoulder and looked out the window at the road behind them. For the fourth time in as many minutes. "I didn't exactly get time to study it, but I think Charles took what should've been a virus or spyware and instead embedded an .exe file that dropped us right into Lillian French's super-secret, evil-lair server."

"That sounds like a good thing." For the Calvers anyway. It might not be such a good thing for Charles. "So what's the no side?"

"The lair was guarded. They knew someone uninvited was there as soon as we started stealing the artwork off the walls." Daelan grimaced. "That's why we bolted. When we connected to them, they had a connection to us. If they have anyone worth their paycheck monitoring the system, then they have the IP address we were using. They know we have some of their intel. And because we were prepared for a virus and not a chance to poke around the Death Star's computer systems, we didn't have the better IP masks running. Which means they know we pilfered from their pantry and they know where we were."

Understandable, then, why they had so suddenly decided to not be there anymore. "Do they know which files we have?"

"It's likely. Almost all servers keep activity logs of access, uploads, and downloads."

Blake winced. Of course they did. "What are the chances of her changing plans from whatever is in those files?"

"High." Daelan's tone and words were blunt, but there was tension in his jaw, throat, and hands that betrayed his anxiety. "Almost guaranteed, even if it's only to accelerate the timeline."

"Great." Blake took a slow breath. Held it to the count of four. Exhaled. "What was in there?"

"Haven't got a consarn clue." Daelan slumped in the seat and let his head fall back, but he angled himself to look at Blake. "It was basically the digital version of a smash-and-grab."

"Do you think . . ." Blake swallowed hard. "Do you think something in there will tell us where she's aiming?"

"Maybe. Probably." He leaned a little closer. "My memory is all but eidetic, and even I need to have things written down. If I was running something this long-term, this vast, and this compartmentalized? All the details would have to be laid out and recorded somewhere. There's no possible way that Lillian French doesn't have this mission planned to the second without at least an Excel sheet or something."

From the seat ahead of them, Sera snorted. "I always knew an Excel sheet would either destroy the world or save it."

"She did," Kindra said. "I'm actually starting to believe it now."

Blake shook his head and muttered, "Even a down-to-the-minute itinerary laid out and color-coded won't matter if she changes plans on us."

"Hey." Daelan covered Blake's hand with his, gently wrapping his fingers around Blake's clenched fist. "We can't jump to the worst case yet. Wait until you know what blocks we're working with before you go building doomsday scenarios with them."

"I don't need to build a doomsday scenario," Blake said. "We're living in one."

And they'd been living in one for a long time; they just hadn't known it.

"We'll stop it." Daelan's voice was quiet but intensely sincere. "We'll stop it, or we'll die trying."

That wasn't a comfort, it wasn't something Blake had a response for, and it definitely wasn't anything he wanted to think about. He didn't want to think at all, so he focused instead on unfurling his tightly clenched fist, turning his hand over, and interlacing his fingers with Daelan's.

For the rest of the drive to the lab Adila had taken over, and then the trip east out of Denver with a massive van full of machines, chemicals, and lab equipment, Blake focused on keeping his grip on Daelan's hand tight enough to feel Dae's pulse thudding evenly under his skin.

Counting Dae's heartbeats kept Blake from spending the drive guessing how many seconds were left before the doomsday clock they were racing finally hit zero.

Blake had known where they were headed as soon as he spotted the first highway sign mentioning Detroit, but even hours after arriving at the old house with the odd architectural details and its own speakeasy turned gun range, Blake found himself feeling out of place within the walls. And more than a little surprised to find himself there.

It had only been a few weeks since he and Bernard arrived here after Providence. So much had happened in those weeks. Being here again—especially while making plans to get to Baltimore—felt like trying to go back in time. Blake didn't seem to fit anymore in the skin he'd occupied in June.

If he felt like that here, now, what would it be like if he survived Lillian's cataclysm and tried to go back to the life he'd had? How poorly would his skin fit then?

Almost everyone else had brought their bags up to the rooms they would be occupying again, but Blake stashed his with the crates of gear left in the garage. He hoped that with everyone preoccupied by either Adila's new dictatorship over Bernard and Aaron in her basement lab, or Cassidy's similarly authoritarian rule over everyone else in the reestablished command center, no one would notice the peculiarity of his choice. If his luck held, Adila's need for assistants and Cassidy's directive to search every single file they'd stolen from Lillian would mean that when Blake finally did go, none of them would notice for an hour. Or several.

But he couldn't leave yet. Not without some idea of what was happening. Not without a direction to give Uncle Altair. The problem was that they'd pulled so much information off of Lillian's server that sorting through it all was proving to be far more time-consuming than . . . well, than they had time for. Than Blake had time for.

He did what he could to help move the process along. In Excel files full of numbers that meant almost nothing to Blake, he set up the sheet to auto-highlight cells that matched criteria on a list Cassidy had given him. When that was done, he sorted through a sheet of information that had been culled from various databases. The sheet included fifteen years' worth of employees and listed the length of their employment, locations in the world they'd worked, their trade or specialty, whether they'd ever used bereavement leave while employed by the company, and how their employment had ended—quit, fired, retired, or died. He ran comparisons, searching for matches on several other databases of employees from government and military agencies across the globe.

There were fewer matches than he'd feared, but dozens more than he'd hoped.

He had fully expected to see thousands of names, an impossibly large network that the Calvers' team could never hope to disrupt enough of. Even if they had Altair's help.

It was clear that Lillian's gossamer-fine threads of control encircled the globe—yet they weren't everywhere. Yes, there was a cage around the planet, but there were gaps between the bars.

From the names Blake recognized, or the ones he was able to learn about after a quick Google search, it appeared Lillian had strategically picked people who were perfectly placed within each organization to either lead the way Lillian wanted or influence the leaders. They had a list—possibly incomplete, but not by much according to Cassidy—and that meant once they had a plan, they would know who to go after, who to chase down and isolate.

But they needed a plan first, or none of the names would be worth anything.

Lord, please let them be getting something useful out of everything else. He honestly couldn't tell if what he was working on would reveal anything important to Cassidy and Daelan. It seemed this intel would be of more use after the chaos, to hunt down those who might know how to find Lillian. There wasn't enough time to so much as attempt it beforehand. Not when they didn't even know how many weeks, days, hours, or maybe just minutes were left on the damn countdown clock they were racing.

"Okay, guys." The quiet words from Daelan drew everyone's attention to the desk he and Seraphina had been sharing. "I think we got something."

Cassidy was the first to get up. Hugo was only a couple of steps behind her, and Kindra, Geo, and Blake were only a beat behind him. Blake looked for Dru before remembering that she'd gone upstairs a couple hours ago to get some sleep.

"What'd you get?" Cassidy asked. Blake focused on the screens, coming to a stop between Daelan's chair and Sera's.

"Nothing with Lillian is going to be easy or obvious, so while this mountain of data was running through our filters, Sera and I started visually skimming the file names and dates." Daelan typed in a command that sent his screen to the largest monitor connected to their system, giving everyone a better view of what he was doing. It was one of the sheets on which each cell had been filled with numbers or number-letter combinations that were meaningless to Blake. "I started with the codes we'd already figured out from the payroll and real estate intel Isaac gathered on Garret back in February. Sera used that to see if we could suss out how Lillian and Susan coded their information, 'cause you know Susan had to be involved in this mess."

"More than likely," Kindra said. "If anyone in the organization knows everything, it's Susan Phan. That woman is deep in Lillian's pocket from what I can tell."

"She is," Cassidy agreed. "You cracked the new codes?"

"Some of them," Sera cautioned. "Each country has a three-digit number. I think the assignments may have originated out of some political index, because 001 through 010 are all incredibly independent, stable nations like Switzerland and Liechtenstein."

"What number is the US?" Geo asked.

"060, apparently." Daelan's normally impish grin was weak. "Solid B- on the democracy grading scale."

"What else?" Cassidy asked.

"Everything that starts with a three-digit number under 200 is a geographical location, but it's what comes after that country code that tells you where you're really looking. States or regions are two letters and a number, and they're always preceded by a hyphen." Daelan highlighted an example in bright yellow—015-12N. Apparently that code represented Nova Scotia, Canada. "Cities are four letters and a number, and they're preceded by two hyphens. Military and government sites—like Edwards Air Force Base in California or Parliament in London—follow the same code as cities, but they get underscores instead of hyphens. I think that the assignment is based on—"

"No." Sera shook her head, her brown hair swinging. "Later." She reached over to his keyboard and shut off his connection to the larger screen, switching control of the display to her own. "The code can come later. They need to look at this."

Satellite images popped up one by one. Sera let each one fill the screen only for a few seconds before she moved on. There seemed to be hundreds. Some were over land, others sea. Some showed airfields, others seaports. Blake wasn't entirely sure, but they seemed to be . . .

"How far back does this all go?" Geo asked slowly.

Daelan tilted his head back to look at his parents. "At least fifteen years."

"That's all we have here, anyway," Sera said.

"Oh, fuck whoever recruited this psychopath into the military and gave her the clearance for this." Cassidy's exclamation was bad enough, but it was the bleakly frustrated expression on her face that made Blake's heartbeat stumble.

Then Geo spoke again, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "She's been using her satellite links to watch troop movements."

Damn. That. It had looked exactly like that to Blake too.

Sera nodded. "From what I can tell, she watched everything from actual armed conflicts to war games and emergency-response scenario rehearsals."

"Give me a second," Hugo murmured. He moved back to the laptop he'd been using and asked Daelan to send over the list of geographical location codes he'd figured out so far. Enough time passed as Hugo worked that Kindra, Cassidy, and Geo stayed nearby, but went back to their own projects. Blake couldn't. He stood between Daelan's chair and Sera's, waiting.

"Shit," Hugo muttered. "The code pattern fits here too, and I found the key to one more set. Apparently with people, the code sequence is two numbers—which links back to the company or project they worked on, I think—and then five letters preceded by an underscore and a period."

Daelan made note of that on his screen, but his attention quickly returned to his father.

"It looks like she's gathered intelligence on the plans and preparedness of every permanent member of the UN Security Council," Hugo said. "Plus half of the General Assembly. But she also has detailed personal profiles on every person with a position of power in every one of those countries. Down to the names of their grandchildren, their musical preferences, and their favorite brand of bottled water."

"So she's had time to get into everyone's heads," Cassidy said quietly. "And she probably is using it to predict how each leader is going to react to what's coming."

"And how best to approach them with a solution." Bernard's voice made Blake jump; he hadn't heard Bernard come up from the basement, but he was in the living room and approaching slowly. "It's a business strategy they drum into you. Don't just get to know the company, get to know the CEO."

Geo ran his hand through his dark-blond hair. "We learned that too. It's how we handled one of our asshole COs once. If you know what kind of leader you're dealing with, it's exponentially easier to manipulate them into agreeing with you."

"Well, she definitely knows these leaders," Cassidy said. "And chances are that she has contacts embedded in every single one of their cabinets or advisory councils."

"But we still don't know where or when anything is going to happen now." Blake knew the reminder was unnecessary, but the words had burst out before he could stop them.

"Send me the full code list." Sera peered intently at her screen, furrows of concentration lining her face. "I might have something. If I'm reading this pattern right."

Daelan complied quickly, but it took a while for Sera to apply the code and re-sort data. Bernard moved away first, requesting an update as soon as they had anything new, and then returned to the basement with food for Adila's team. Cassidy, Geo, and Kindra went back to their tasks only a few seconds later, all of them shifting their chairs close enough to keep an eye on the work in progress. Blake waited behind Dae's seat at first, watching, but he had his own tasks yet to complete.

Ten minutes later, he moved back to his laptop and the thousands of people who had been employed by Lillian French's companies over the past fifteen years.

Another thirty-two minutes passed in relative silence, only the clack of keyboards and the click of mice keeping the room from feeling eerily still.

"Oh, fuck." Sera's quiet curse froze Blake. "Someone come here and tell me I'm wrong, because I don't even care about people and this shit seems horrible."

Blake shoved his laptop onto the empty coffee table and joined the rush toward Sera.

"That . . . Shit. That seems right to me." Daelan cleared his throat and looked at his parents. "I'd really like to be wrong this time, please."

"Me too," Hugo mumbled, his eyes locked on the screen.

Me three. But Sera had been right. The information she'd been sorting through, with the help of the code Daelan had cracked, had been simplified into a list as long as it was bone-chillingly horrifying.

Thirteen cities: New York; Washington, DC; Toronto; London; Paris; Zurich; Rome; Jerusalem; Istanbul; Johannesburg; Mumbai; Tokyo; and Sydney.

Multiple sites along seven rivers: Mississippi, Amazon, Rhine, Danube, Jordan, Nile, and Ganges.

Thirteen military bases: three on US soil and one each in Canada, Germany, Cyprus, France, Italy, Israel, Djibouti, United Arab Emirates, Japan, and Guam.

"Do you have coordinates?" Hugo's voice was harsh and hoarse.

"For some," Sera said. "The rest are specific enough on their own."

Cassidy nodded. "Map it."

She opened a map and added the markers one by one. The red icons looked like drops of blood to Blake, a deadly threat hanging over each location, one invisible to those who lived there.

"When?" Blake's voice and hands trembled as he asked the question.

"Originally? August third," Sera said, her voice reflecting none of Blake's obvious panic. "Assuming I'm reading this data right."

Silence. Blake closed his eyes, but he could still see all those red markers—dozens of them scattered all over the planet.

If he'd had doubts about his plan to warn Altair before, they were gone now. No matter how much faith he had in the Calvers' skill and determination, six well-trained vigilante-bodyguard-assassins, two Marines, and two civilians could not possibly hope to stop or even stall a chemical attack on this scale. They needed help they could trust, and Uncle Altair was their best chance of getting it.

"We have to expect her to move up the timeline, even if nothing else in the plan changes," Hugo said.

Footsteps in the hallway drew Blake's eyes. Adila stood there, hands on her hips, with Aaron and Bernard behind her. "What we need to do is find a way to tell Odira I'm alive." She looked determined, almost fierce. She looked much closer to the way Blake imagined Odira. "If we can get her a video message, with the news playing in the background to make her sure it's current and not a trick, she'll listen. I'll tell her to go after Lillian, or turn in what she knows to the Feds, or whatever it is you think would be most helpful for her to do."

"You don't know who she is now," Kindra reminded her aunt, sternly but not unkindly. "She doesn't take orders, and she doesn't care much for anyone's to-do list but her own. I'm still not convinced she'll go after Lillian. Her helping us is not gonna happen."

Sera didn't chime in, but she nodded at her sister's words and watched her aunt's face.

"Yet she let Lillian order her around for the last twelve years because Lillian threatened me," Adila said, her voice too calm to be talking about her own captivity and torture. "Trust me, kid. Odie will listen to me. And I had a thought about how to find her."

While Adila, the Weston girls, and the Calvers tested Adila's idea to send a message behind enemy lines, Blake copied the list of targets from Sera's computer onto a flash drive, checked a few more details, and eased out of the room.

This was the time. He knew enough to take to Uncle Altair, and he could—once he knew it was safe and on a secure line—reach out to the Calvers for all the details he'd forgotten. Or hadn't thought to memorize in the first place. The strike points would have to be enough to start with.

In the garage, he picked up his backpack and his duffel bag. He had cash, clothes, some food, and the memory of a map marked with so many pins that it looked covered in blood splatter. It kept him moving forward, because he wasn't foolish enough to believe this trip would be easy, safe, or as quick as he wanted it to be.

The garage had a smaller side door that let out into the yard. He left through this instead of risking the noise of the old motor on the larger door, and he made sure it was locked tight behind him.

This is a mistake!

Fear clawed at his chest. It was stronger than the fear that had eaten at him before asking Jessica Sasada—the only person he'd ever had a crush on before Daelan—to the school dance last year. It was darker than the fear when Javier Martinez and John Smith had tried to grab him from school in February, or again in Providence in June.

This wasn't fear of ostracization or even death. This was the fear of failing not only himself, but all of the people he loved. Or even cared about a little. If leaving now, alone, led to him getting captured and used against the Calvers, or if warning Altair only made things worse, then Blake would be partially responsible for whatever atrocities were allowed to happen.

This fear made every other kind Blake had experienced feel laughably unimportant.

But Blake had never given in to fear before, and God help him, he wasn't about to start now. Not when it mattered this much.

He took a deep breath and walked faster.

For ten minutes the loudest sounds were his own footsteps and the thrumming engines of the cars that passed him.

"You won't get far on foot."

Blake jumped, barely holding back a scream. Shit. He shouldn't have been surprised that his exit hadn't been as clean as it'd seemed, but he hadn't even gotten a mile away from the house. Daelan hadn't grabbed his arm to stop him yet, though, so he tightened his grip on the strap of his backpack and kept going. "I wasn't planning on walking there."

"Hmm. Bus?"

"I still have one of the fake IDs you guys made me. I can do this." He took a breath and finally risked looking at Daelan. "I need to do this. We can't not warn them all. Please don't stop me."

"I'm not. I'm going with you."

Blake stumbled to a stop. "You're what? Are you serious?"

"Even when I'm joking, I'm usually serious," Daelan said. And there might have been a tilt to his lips, but his eyes held Blake's, steady and calm. And sincere. He was sincere.

Oh, thank you, God. He should probably have tried to send Daelan back to his family, but he couldn't. He was too relieved to see him, to not be alone in this. There was no way Blake could even bring himself to question why Dae had made the decision. He was here. Blake wasn't alone. Together they had a much better chance of making it to Baltimore safely. Right now that was all Blake cared about.

For another block, they walked in companionable quiet. Then Dae focused on a car sitting in the driveway of a house they were about to pass, and he grinned, his eyes sparking with mischief. "Wanna see something cool?"

"Yes."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened up a program that Blake had never seen. It was mostly white with simple buttons in rows. One column had makes of several cars. The other had commands that Blake was sure meant something to Dae, because his thumb moved quickly over the screen.

The lights of the car in the driveway—a black Audi Q5 SUV—flashed. A second later, there was the unmistakable sound of an engine starting up.

Dae had never come close to touching the thing.

"Did you just—" The words caught in Blake's throat. "Did you just break into and start that car with your phone?"

"Ain't technology grand? There's an open backdoor in the onboard computers of a lot of different push-start cars." Dae smirked and nudged Blake toward the passenger door. "We should probably get in and go before someone calls the cops, though. 'Cause what I just did is, like, twenty kinds of illegal. Maybe twenty-five."

Blake moved quickly toward the car. In seconds they were both in. Dae shifted into reverse and eased down the driveway.

On their way out of the neighborhood, Dae was already talking about where to stop to switch out the license plate, and the best route to take to avoid cops while still making good time. The hand not on the steering wheel moved constantly, and his voice was a little too loud and his smile a little too forced. The horror and anxiety about what they'd discovered were leaking through his usually tight control, Blake thought—his mind seemed absolutely focused on getting them through the mission as quickly and safely as possible. Getting Blake through the mission safe.

In the middle of Dae's next monologue, one about how useless most highway cameras were, Blake reached across the center console and took his hand. Blake interlaced their fingers and brought the back of Dae's hand to his own lips, murmuring, "Thank you."

"Of course." Dae's thumb gently stroked Blake's chin. His smile softened into something that might not have been happy, but didn't seem at all forced. "You're right. People need to know. I'd probably be here even if you were wrong, but you are right."

Blake certainly thought so, but being right wouldn't matter if they didn't make it to Altair before chaos hit. Or if they didn't make it to him at all.

The hotel room was pleasantly bland. Earth tones and dark woods and framed art with no personality. Two beds, but only one looked like it had been slept in. The second was littered with bags, clothes, and guns.

At the desk in the corner of the room, Odira Weston sat in front of her open laptop. On the screen, Lillian French sat at a massive, curved cherrywood desk. The office was clean, sleek, and modern, and nothing in the room gave any clue to its location. Especially since the cream-colored shades on the large window behind her were pulled down, blocking the view in, but also erasing Odira's view out. Nothing in the room offered a single clue as to where in the world that office was located.

"It will be tight, but tight doesn't mean impossible, Odira." Lillian picked up her cell phone and checked something on the screen. "In fact, the timeline should work out perfectly as long as you don't make any mistakes on your end."

Off-screen, Odira's fists clenched. None of that tension showed up on her face or in her voice. "The target is still missing. Just tracking them down will likely take the rest of the time we have and then some. If I'm still supposed to be running logistics on the—"

"You're not." Lillian looked up from her phone, placed it on the desk, and folded her hands. "I've already spoken to Nuura. She'll be taking point on that project while you clean up your mess."

"This one is Javier and John's mess," Odira pointed out.

"One of their few. Yet your many mistakes still haven't been addressed in a way I find satisfactory." Lillian's expression was still pleasant, but cold steel was threaded through her words. "Do you really want to argue semantics with me right now? I'm just about done with your failures, and if I'm done with you . . ." She raised one dark, delicately arched eyebrow.

Odira's short nails bit into her palms so hard they broke skin. "I'll report in twelve hours."

"At the latest," Lillian warned.

The call ended. The program logo came up.

Odira picked up the glass of water sitting on the table and chucked it at the wall.

It shattered. Shards of glass and drops of water sprayed in every direction.

Standing, she began to pace the length of the small, cheap hotel room. One hand rose to the faint scar behind her right ear; her index finger traced up and down the two-inch line. Up. Down. Up. Down. One directional stroke for each step she took. Her lips moved too, but none of the words hit air.

The tone of an incoming video call rang through the room.

"Fucking hell. If Atropos doesn't take you, I will," she muttered before she clicked Accept on the call.

It wasn't Lillian.

"Hey, Odie." Adila Quadri smiled sadly at the camera.

Odira gasped like she'd been struck. "Dilly?"

"This is a recording, and it's being played from a location that we're not at, so don't bother trying to trace it or track us or whatever it is that you do. Just sit down and listen, okay?" Adila's face, so like the face of the woman watching the video, settled into grim, determined lines. "I think you owe me that much."

Odira shuddered. Her knees buckled. She almost missed the chair as she collapsed.

"Important bits first. Lillian doesn't have me anymore."

"Oh, thank Atropos." Odira's breath gusted out of her chest. Her eyelids fluttered and almost closed. She seemed to force them back open. She quickly set her computer to record the video playing on her screen.

"For the last twelve years I've been on an island called Etobih-lin—basically a bit of nowhere that's lost at sea between Gomin and Japan. There's not much there except a fishing village, a tourist attraction, and a LyoLabs research facility dug into the side of a mountain. That's where I was, trapped in a lab, working on whatever Lillian's highest priority was at the moment."

Odira's hands tightened around the arms of the desk chair.

"I met your ex-partners, by the way; they're the ones who got me out of my lab prison. I can see why you got along with Cassidy and Hugo for as long as you did." Adila lifted one shoulder, her expression turning resigned. "I can also see why it didn't last. They've got a pretty strong moral center underneath the blood spatter and the sarcasm, and as much as I love you, I know that hasn't ever been your strong suit."

Odira cringed, but she didn't take her eyes off the screen.

"I also . . . I met your girls, Odie. Kindra and Seraphina." Adila shook her head, her fingers covering her lips for a moment. "They're a lot like you—mostly in good ways—but they told me . . . Well, they told me a lot. Like about Ryce. And what they think happened to Amett."

Hands shaking, Odira ran her fingers through her brown hair, biting her lips. She mumbled something indistinct. Her eyes never left her sister.

"You never wanted kids. You shouldn't have had them just because I couldn't—and I know that's why you did it. The names gave that much away. But you never even told me they existed, and now I find out that you killed one of them yourself and I . . ." Adila took a shuddering breath, her eyes welling with tears. "Nothing should be that important, Odira. Not even me."

Both sisters took another breath. Neither breath was steady.

"But this is important, and I need you to listen to me now. If you still care about me at all, if you want to apologize for the bullshit my life has been for the last twelve years, and for killing my brother-in-law and the nephew I never knew I had, then you need to listen to me now and do exactly what I ask."

And it seemed that Odira did. Her sister talked for another half an hour, outlining knowledge and locations and a plan for Odira to follow. In a notebook she dug out of the bag on the hotel bed, Odira took notes on it all.

When the video ended, she pulled up the recording she'd made and played it again.

And again, this time focusing on the details of the room, especially the TV playing MSNBC in the background.

And then she played it again. By the third and final rewatch, she closed her eyes and didn't watch at all. She seemed to be listening intently. Maybe to her sister's voice. Maybe searching for background noises that weren't there for clues as to where Adila was.

When it ended this time, Odira sat with her eyes closed and her hands pressed flat against the desk for several minutes. Her breathing was steady, but her pulse was strong and fast enough to be obvious at the base of her throat, where her carotid thumped under her skin.

Nuura Umarov walked into the room and found her in the exact same position five minutes later. Almost exactly the same—her pulse point no longer looked a second away from breaking through her skin.

"You spoke to Lillian, then?" Nuura stayed on the other side of the room. "I didn't ask for the assignment, you know. Don't particularly want it. This mess is going to be bad for a lot of people."

"A higher number than either of us could count to," Odira agreed. "Are you pulling out?"

"If Bashir were still alive, maybe. Now?" Nuura shook her head, even though Odira couldn't see the gesture. "We took the job. Skipping out on it now would be a death sentence for me, and if the equation is them or me?"

"I've got something else to take care of." Odira stood, closing her notebook and her laptop. She moved quickly and efficiently around the room, gathering her gear and packing it away. "I might not check in until tomorrow."

"Fine." Nuura took a cigarette out of the pack in the pocket of her jacket and lit it, taking a long drag. "I'd say call us if you need backup, but one, we'll be busy, and two . . ." Another drag. "Well, I'm honestly not sure I care."

"Why should you?" Odira slung her bags over her shoulders and headed for the door. "No one else does."

Between Detroit and Baltimore, they stopped for food once and switched cars twice, but it wasn't until about an hour before they reached Baltimore that they finally talked about what they'd do when they got there.

"I'm guessing that your uncle will be at work?" Daelan said.

"Definitely." Altair had probably been at the office for hours already. He usually was. Especially since his commute was all of about fifteen minutes. Dae couldn't be expecting Blake to go to the FBI building, right?

"I can't go there." Blake was a missing person tightly connected to one of the highest ranking men in the building. Anyone who hadn't known his face before, definitely did now. He knew a physical message was the safest way of reaching out to Altair, but getting it to him . . . "Maybe you could sneak in and give him a message?"

"Too big a risk," Dae said, shaking his head. "What about your aunt?"

Oh. Of course. Blake blamed stress and a lack of sleep for missing that option. Aunt Fayza was a graphic designer, and because of a panic disorder and mild agoraphobia, she worked freelance from home. If they could get to the house without being seen, then Fayza would help them manufacture a reason to drag Altair away from the office.

They were inside the city just before noon. After ditching their current car, they headed for the closest bus stop. They didn't want to dump a stolen car in Altair's upper-middle-class neighborhood and attract cops. Cops meant reports, which meant Lillian's people might decide there was something worth checking out at Altair's house.

On the bus, none of the other passengers paid them any mind, but Blake watched all of them. He felt like a foreigner in his hometown, and a city he had wandered through whenever possible seemed more dangerous than it ever had before.

Every passenger was a potential spy. Every loud sound could be the beginning of the end.

Blake knew none of the attacks were aimed for Baltimore; knowing didn't help at all. He was just glad that they weren't heading for the FBI building. Holding it together in the face of so many people he'd come to know over the years would've been impossible. As it was, he knew he'd probably collapse into helpless sobs as soon as Aunt Fayza hugged him.

At the Security Square Mall bus stop closest to I-70, they got off and walked. The route Dae had picked was definitely the long way around, but Blake didn't mind. Overcaution was better right now. It was because of Dae's knowledge and caution that they'd made it this far. They were too close to stopping this cataclysm to ruin their chances by rushing.

They snuck through the back end of a parking lot and climbed over the six-foot wall bordering the plaza. Using the trees that grew along the highway as cover, they moved west for two and a half miles—according to Daelan—only walking in the open when they had to use the highway overpass to cross the Patapsco River. They hadn't been in Baltimore proper for a while, and the area had quickly become quieter as they walked along the highway. Now it was barely developed at all. All they could see on either side of the highway were trees.

They turned north when they came to a clearing cut through the forest for the row of massive power pylons.

"Are you sure these are safe?" Blake eyed the structures that towered over a hundred and fifty feet above their heads. "My parents always told me these were dangerous." When he was a kid, his mom had refused to buy one house they'd considered moving into because it had been too close to similar pylons.

"You don't want to spend a lot of time around them, but they'll help more than hurt now," Dae said. "The electrical energy these power lines run will interfere with a lot of different signals and, hopefully, make it harder for anyone to track us if they're trying to. Well, the power lines and the tree cover."

After another mile and a half of walking with the barely audible hum of the power lines surrounding them, Dae put out a hand to stop him. "It's going to be difficult on this kind of terrain, but you need to walk carefully. Try not to make a sound. We don't know for sure that Lillian's people aren't using the trees as cover to watch the house."

Blake's hands shook at the thought of someone spying on Fayza while she cooked haleem or danced around her office when she came up with a brilliant new design. Or, worse, early in the morning before she'd wrapped her hijab and emerged from her bedroom. Altair knew and expected the dangers of his job, and Fayza had adapted to them over the years, but the thought of someone violating his aunt's safe place, of making even her home a source of anxiety, enraged Blake.

"What do we do if they are watching?"

"You get somewhere safe, and I try to incapacitate them before they can warn Lillian that we're here."

Incapacitate, not "get rid of" or "kill."

Good. Altair did not need the trouble of explaining the presence of one—or more—dead bodies on or near his property.

A fence and a few hundred feet up a hill later, Blake spotted the Zamans' beautiful glass and stone house through the trees.

He took another step forward. Dae caught his wrist, holding him back. Shifting close enough that their cheeks brushed, Dae murmured, "Stay here. I need to check the perimeter first. Silent and still, okay? I'll be right back."

Heart thudding unevenly in his chest, Blake leaned closer. And then Dae pressed a holstered gun into Blake's hand and a kiss to his cheek, and silently moved off to the right, north around the other side of the house. Leaving Blake in the trees alone.

Adjusting his grip on the gun, Blake checked the safety, wishing for a moment that he could use his mom's revolver instead of this solid semi-automatic with an extra-large magazine. Sighing, he hooked the holster into the space between his jeans and the small of his back, and then took the gun out and held it pointing toward the ground, tapping his index finger along the side of the barrel to count the seconds.

Three hundred and twenty taps later, Dae appeared about fifteen feet up the hill—seemingly out of thin air—and gestured for Blake to join him.

"I don't see anyone," he said quietly when Blake was close enough. "Doesn't mean they're not there, but I like to think there aren't too many tricks I don't know how to spot."

It was an easy claim to believe, but a frisson of fear still ran through Blake's chest. "Overconfidence killed the cat."

"I thought it was curiosity," Dae whispered back, just enough of a smile on his face to make his dimple appear.

"Same difference. Come on." Blake holstered the gun—cheeks warming under the approving smile the action earned him—and led the way up to the double door at the back of the house. The doors were made of white-painted wood and square panels of glass, and they opened onto the porch from the kitchen. When she was home, which was most of the time, Fayza kept this door unlocked because she used the porch connected to the kitchen for meals when the weather was nice. He'd warned her against the habit before, but today he was grateful for it.

He pushed down on the lever handle. The door opened.

Baltimore had felt alien, like a city he'd visited years ago and had painted too rosily in his memory. This house, though? Cool air that smelled like frankincense wafted through the open doorway, and he heard the drum and bass techno Fayza inexplicably loved. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen somehow seamlessly combined modern and rustic decor, and it looked exactly as Blake remembered it.

Which was a stupid thought. Of course it did. It had only been five years since they remodeled it. There was no reason for any of it to have changed in the last four—almost five now—months. But, for some reason, Blake must have expected it to. The sameness of it felt surprising. The comfort of it wasn't something he thought he'd get if he tried going home. His real home, the house he'd lived in with his parents. The home he'd lived in with his family.

The house, he now realized with a pang, that he would likely never live in again.

"Altair?" The music, already at a low volume, shut off, and Fayza's melodic alto voice floated in from the direction of her office on the south side of the first floor. "Is that you, habibi? What're you doing home at this hour?"

The words locked in his throat. Tears welled in his eyes. More than Baltimore, and far more than this house, Fayza was half of the only home that Blake had left, and he had missed her more than he'd ever let himself realize.

Now he was within reach of her and he couldn't even say hello.

Then Daelan took Blake's hand, rubbing his thumb along the side of Blake's index finger. Blake finally managed to clear his throat and speak. "It's not Altair, Aunt Fayza."

A thud of something solid striking the wood floor. A gasp. The patter of bare feet running down the hall.

"Blake? Blake!" Fayza rounded the corner at a sprint, her long black skirt billowing around her legs, and the ends of her multilayered hijab in shades of blue fluttering around her shoulders. "Oh, praise Allah, Blake!"

Tears were running down Fayza's round face well before she collided with Blake, hauling him into a crushingly tight hug. Blake had missed being crushed like this, pressed against her soft, round body and absolutely smothered in affection.

He sank into the embrace, crying just as hard as she was, and held his surrogate aunt just as tightly as she was holding him.

"Ma'am?" Dae's quiet interjection was insistent. "I'm sorry, but we need your help, and there isn't a lot of time."

"I know, I know," Fayza said between sobs. She pulled back enough to wipe her eyes on her long-sleeve, gray shirt. Her other hand never let go of Blake's shoulder. "People who have been missing for months don't sneak in to someone's house and scare them half to death when everything in their lives is fine."

Blake flinched with every emphasized word, and not because of the way his aunt's fingers dug into his shoulder each time. "It wasn't safe, Auntie. For me or for you. I couldn't risk what happened to— I didn't want you to—"

"Shhh, arnoub, shhh." Fayza drew Blake in again, running her hand over the back of his head. "I know. Your uncle told me about what happened at the house in Providence. I knew you wouldn't stay away unless you had to. I may not have liked it—and I still don't—but I have faith that you wouldn't have done it if you didn't have a very good reason."

Slowly, Blake got his breathing under control. Not enough to speak, but at least enough to avoid hyperventilating.

"Now, let me look at you for a few seconds while your handsome friend tells me what kind of help you need."

It was Dae's idea to call Altair with a burst water pipe.

It was Fayza's idea to actually burst a water pipe.

"If people may be watching, and we don't want them to know it's a lie, then we should make it as real as possible, shouldn't we?" she argued.

Neither Blake nor Daelan was able to come up with a rational counterargument for that. Luckily, Fayza and Altair were already in the process of remodeling the basement bathroom. It only took a couple good whacks with the wrong end of a hammer for Dae to crack the exposed pipe. Another two to create a hole that sprayed him and Blake with cold water.

Fayza was ready with her cell phone just outside the bathroom, and Blake didn't think the panic in her voice was entirely faked; there was a lot of water.

She told Altair about the pipe and demanded he come home immediately because she was on deadline and this kind of mess meant dealing with strangers and—

Fayza had a hundred reasons lined up and ready to use against him, and all of them were valid. She didn't need more than a few before Altair agreed to come home.

Then they waited. Daelan stayed where he could keep watch, but Blake helped Fayza into the small but cozy windowless meditation room on the second floor. It was painted in earth tones with soft blue accents, lit by a dozen small lights that glowed like candles, and always heavily lavender scented from the oil diffused in the air.

This was Fayza's most sacred of sanctuaries, so he hadn't often been inside, but he knew the feel of the cushioned floor under his socked feet—shoes were always left outside—and he was unsurprised when instead of soft spa music, the stereo started blasting an old Pendulum song. From the table in the corner, he collected two of her pills—one a prescription and one a homeopathic remedy—and then he sat with her while she rubbed the essential oil mix of clary sage, bergamot, and angelica into her wrists and temples. When she was finished, she held out her hand; Blake gladly and gratefully pressed their palms together and held on tight.

For ten minutes they breathed in time with the thudding music before she drew her hand away. Fayza fidgeted constantly at first, resettling the folds of her skirt over her legs or stroking the hanging ends of her hijab. The breathing pattern helped Blake a lot sooner than it seemed to do anything to settle Fayza. Eventually, however, her hands came to rest on her knees and her shoulders relaxed.

Twenty minutes.

The forced calm had temporarily slowed his racing pulse, but the anxiety rose again as more time ticked away, like he was a pot of water and someone had turned the heat up.

Twenty-eight minutes and Fayza began fidgeting with her hijab again.

Thirty-six minutes and being in the windowless room without any idea what was happening was no longer helping either of them. Blake and Fayza rejoined Daelan in the living room, though Blake kept well away from the windows. Just in case.

Forty-five minutes since the phone call and Altair still wasn't there.

"Something happened," he whispered to Dae, trying to hide his simmering panic from Fayza. "He should be here by now."

"If he left instantly, which he probably didn't." Dae ran his hand up and down Blake's back, the motion soothing, but not enough. "He's the special agent in charge of a major branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Blake. He doesn't just get to walk out of the office in the middle of the day unless someone is bleeding to death."

And they'd purposefully decided not to manufacture an emergency that dire; it'd draw offers of help. A burst pipe would only garner him sympathetic winces from his agents.

But still . . . "What if something did happen?"

"Then we'll deal with it." Dae's calm determination soothed Blake's buzzing nerves a little bit. A very little bit. "But nothing happened."

That got harder to believe after another five minutes passed with no sign of Altair.

Six minutes.

Eight minutes.

Blake's panic was almost to the boiling point, bubbling under his mostly calm exterior. Even Dae was getting more restless, standing to one side of the front window so that he could see but not be seen, and shifting uneasily.

Then he stilled, his head turning toward the street. "Silver Prius, right? He's almost here."

"Taking forever to leave the office, just like he usually does," Fayza muttered, picking up her long skirt in one hand and speed-walking toward the door to the garage. Blake could tell that her anxiety was still too high—she made two minute adjustments to her clothes as she walked—but there was relief in the set of her shoulders. She stood in the open doorway, her hands on her wide hips, and started scolding Altair the moment his car door closed. "Almost an hour, habibi? I could have been drowning by now with how slow you moved."

"I have enough faith in your good sense that you'd leave the house if that became a possibility," Altair said, tone affectionately wry. "Are you all right?"

"Well, yes, but get in here and help me figure out what to do." Fayza pressed the button on the wall to close the garage and stepped back into the house, giving Altair the space to come in.

Dae closed the small crack he'd left open in the front curtain and moved to Blake's side, standing close and a little in front of him. Protective and supportive at the same time. And necessary too.

Blake's hands had started shaking the moment Dae spotted the car.

That tremor had spread up to his shoulders by the time the garage door activated. Now he wasn't sure there was a single muscle in his body that wasn't quivering, fear and anticipation mingling into something painfully acute with each audible step Altair took.

"I got a recommendation from Erin on a plumber she's worked with before, but I wanted to take a look at the problem before I gave them a call," Altair said. He stepped past Fayza and closed the door, stooping to kiss her cheek. "I don't know why it's breaking now. They installed those pipes a week ago and we haven't used—"

Altair's entire body jerked when his eyes met Blake's.

Blake said the only thing he could think of, though it didn't begin to cover what he really wanted to say: "I am so sorry, Uncle Altair."

For a long moment no one moved. Blake held his breath, waiting to see which way the emotional war he could see playing across Altair's face would fall, whether relief or rage would pour out of his mouth.

Altair opened his arms and said nothing at all.

Once Fayza had explained that there really was a burst pipe, though it hadn't been an accident, Blake and Daelan spent the next ten minutes getting the worst of the flooding cleaned up while Altair called in the plumber. Once it had been contained, Blake led Dae upstairs.

Fayza had her sanctuary on the second floor, but the attic was Altair's.

The space was finished with the same wood floors and modern-rustic feel as the rest of the house, and it held both Altair's office and an impressive library for the size of the space. The ceiling was sharply sloped—twelve feet high at the center, but only four where the ceiling met the walls—and low bookshelves ringed the long, open room. A desk, seating area, and taller shelves filled the center of the space. At either end of the room were large windows, one looking out into the trees behind the house and the other overlooking the street.

This had always been one of Blake's favorite rooms. Retreating here now felt safe, even if what he and Dae had to tell Altair was exactly the opposite.

"We have about an hour before I need to be downstairs to deal with my oddly real fake home emergency," Altair said. "Tell me what I need to know, Blake."

"Is it safe?" Daelan asked before Blake could speak.

Smoothing his thick mustache with one hand, Altair nodded. "It was when I swept the house last night. This place is as safe as I can make it without paying for the kind of reinforcements and armory that would raise a lot of questions about why I felt so threatened."

Though he seemed to consider the answer and the room for a long moment, eventually Dae murmured, "Go ahead."

Go ahead. Like it was that simple.

"I don't know where to start." So much had happened, and so much of it had happened before Blake was involved. How far back should they go right now?

Altair gestured to Dae. "Maybe with who your friend is."

"He . . ." Blake glanced at Daelan.

"He's spent a lot of time and energy ensuring he doesn't officially exist," Dae finished. "And he would very much like to keep from wasting that work now."

"Just give me something to call you, then, kid." Altair sat on the armchair across from the couch that Blake and Daelan shared. His suit jacket had been discarded within minutes of coming home, and now the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows, the color stark against his bronze skin.

Dae shrugged. "My ID says Chris right now."

"Well, Chris." He leaned back, his attentive eyes seeming to take in everything about the stranger sitting on his couch. "I think you and Blake better start at the beginning. And then tell me why you're here after months of keeping yourself well off my radar."

And so they did.

In turns, Blake and Daelan explained everything that had led to this moment—glossing over some of the details, since the story stretched back almost as long as Blake and Daelan had been alive—but making sure they hit all of the crucial highlights. It wasn't a linear telling. It couldn't be linear, not with how many different threads Lillian had woven into this morbid tapestry, but Altair seemed to be following along fine, asking only a few clarification questions.

When they were approaching the events of the past week, Altair sat with his eyes closed and his steepled fingers pressed to the tip of his large nose. He didn't ask questions, barely seemed to react at all apart from tiny flinches in his expression.

Daelan cleared his throat. "Part of the data we stole from Lillian's server indicated that the original plan was set for the first week of August, but that's definitely no longer valid."

"And you don't believe she'll push it back instead of move it forward?" Altair hardly moved, and with his hands still in front of his mouth, the words seemed to come from nowhere.

"No. She'll almost definitely move it up," Dae said. "If the problem she had to deal with was solely due to a research or logistical issue, something that no one outside of her organization knew about, yes. She'd delay in that case because she's put too much into this and spent too long on it to let impatience ruin the plan."

Dropping his hands to his lap and opening his eyes, Altair nodded. "But that's not the case. Now, there's potential interference from the outside and people who know she's the spider sitting at the middle of this particular web."

"Exactly. We didn't just put a speed bump in her plans to find an antidote, we stole her actual plans. We know where she was going to deploy, and that means there's a chance we'll figure out how to stop it if she takes the time to complete the unfinished formula Adila left behind."

"And just like with the first wave strike, it's likely that she has plans in place to make this impending apocalypse even worse if it looks like you've passed the information to official channels."

"She's done it before," Blake said. "With something this massive, there's no reason to think she wouldn't again. We just don't know what her contingency plans are this time."

"But there's no way we can stop any of this without help." Daelan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between his legs. He held Altair's eyes, staring down a man more than thirty years his senior, a man who had the power to arrest him for a list of crimes Blake didn't really want to think about, with all the aplomb of an equal. A particularly fearless equal. "We got lucky with the highways because we had someone with a contact."

"Aaron Tanvers," Altair said, nodding.

Blake blinked. Dae's head cocked to the side. They'd left Aaron, Geo, and the Weston girls out of the story as much as they could, referring to them only with pronouns and vague descriptions of their roles on the team. How did Altair know?

Altair smiled. "I do have some resources, you know. He was spotted on a traffic camera in Providence, and it didn't take too long to ID him. I'm guessing that Geomar James is with you guys too, because we haven't been able to locate him to ask questions about Aaron."

"Well, yes," Dae admitted. "They're the ones who came up with the idea of bringing in the vets to help stave off the highway attacks."

"If we survive this, remind me to get them both commendations for that," Altair said, rubbing his fingers back and forth across his forehead.

"Aaron will be happy to just not be court-martialed and thrown in prison for going AWOL," Blake said, remembering his promise to Aaron weeks ago.

"He won't be. I'll make sure of that much, at least." Altair re-steepled his fingers, pressing them to his nose again. He'd sit like that sometimes, mind working while his body settled into stillness.

"I don't know if it'll help but . . ." Dae waited until Altair opened his eyes to continue. "Kylie Drusus and Parker Rollins from the Miami office have already given us a piece of this. They were the ones who pointed us toward the information Matthew Nevarez stashed."

"Then I know who outside Baltimore to reach out to first." Altair pushed himself out of the chair and walked toward his large wooden desk by the window.

Before he could sit down, Dae pointed at the computer. "You've checked that, right? And the phone? I can do it if you haven't."

"I blew out a socket in here two months ago, and the electrician found a bug hidden," Altair said as he sat. From a drawer in his desk, he pulled out his old, expandable leather address book. "I've swept the house three times a week since then and wiped some pretty serious spyware off my computer."

"And yet Auntie still leaves the kitchen door unlocked?" The thought made Blake's pulse rate spike. Someone had been in this house, had been spying on Altair and Fayza, and today Blake had been able to walk straight in as though nothing were wrong.

"If Lillian's people wanted in, a lock wouldn't stop them," Dae said. "Neither would guard dogs or barbed wire or any commercially available alarm system."

Blake knew that, but he still didn't like the idea that his aunt and uncle hadn't even been trying to keep anyone out. He couldn't believe that the possible danger hadn't become a new trigger for Fayza's panic attacks.

"We kept it locked for a while, but having no quick route out made it worse for her than the thought of potentially offering someone else a quick route in," Altair explained gently. "Fayza's been keeping my second Glock in her office while I'm gone. And I put almost unnoticeable sensors on all the doors and windows to let her know when one of them is opened."

Which explained how she'd known they were there despite how silently Dae moved. And the thump . . . How close had Blake and Dae come to getting shot today?

"I only found bugs once more, so it makes me think that they weren't being used to spy as much as a message of sorts. I think someone—Lillian French, I suppose—wanted to make sure I knew that I was being watched. But if that's still true, then it might not be safe for any of us to stay here much longer." After checking something in the address book, he started typing commands into his computer. His eyes were on the screen, but he kept talking to them. "There are files I need to back up here, and more I should get from the office if I can do it without anyone thinking that I'm committing treason. If I gave you guys an address, could you get there safely?"

Dae's mouth opened, but Blake answered first. "Yes."

"Good. The plumber should be here any minute. I'll give you a copy of the data from my system—though it sounds like you already have a lot of it," he said with a glance at Dae.

"Where do you think most of your information came from?" Dae asked, the smile on his face a tiny bit smug.

Altair didn't look amused. "A lot of it? Blake's father."

"A good portion of the initial intel we sent you was from Echemorro," Dae conceded, his smirk vanishing in an instant. "Isaac Marks was incredibly good at what he did, and we would've saved him if there was any way we could've."

They stared at each other, the tense silence stretching on. Neither blinked or looked away. They barely seemed to be breathing. Just before Blake cleared his throat and interjected himself into whatever this was, Altair exhaled heavily.

"I think it's only because of what you've done for Blake and Bernard that I believe you when you say that." Altair unplugged a flash drive from his computer and tossed it to Daelan as he stood up. "Baltimore PD has a helipad, and the chief owes me a favor. I'm going to get a message to him to have a team waiting to lift you guys over to the naval base at Norfolk. If you can feed intel to the admiral chief there, we might be able to coordinate—"

"It's a huge risk to send anyone to a military or government installation," Dae said, shaking his head. "We know she has people in place to do whatever is deemed necessary to stop exactly what you're trying to set up. And a base as important as Norfolk? I guarantee you she owns several people on that base."

Altair dropped his fists on the desk hard, enough that his knuckles thudded against the wood, and leaned forward, his head hanging low. A couple of long breaths later, he straightened, determination narrowing his dark, hooded eyes.

The doorbell rang.

"Hopefully that's the plumber," Altair muttered. "Stay upstairs. Let me get him into the basement, and maybe by then I'll have figured something else out. I need you both somewhere safe to help me coordinate this whole plan. You're the only link I have to Aaron, Geomar, and whoever else you guys have been working with."

"All right." Dae leaned back against the couch, letting his head rest on a gray pillow and closing his eyes. "You've only got another half an hour before we have to move out of here, though. Any longer and we're risking being found out. Just 'cause I didn't spot anyone watching the house doesn't mean they aren't there."

"Trust me, I know. Just don't—" He cut himself off, moved around his desk, and crossed the length of the room. Offering his hand, he helped Blake off the couch, cupped the back of Blake's head, and pressed a hard kiss to the center of his forehead. "Don't disappear on me again. Not without letting me know that you're safe."

"I—" The promise Blake had been about to make died on his tongue. "I'll try."

Altair's fingers rubbed through Blake's hair for a moment before he released him. "I can't ask anything more in times like this."

Then, looking as though he had to force himself to move, Altair turned toward the stairs and left the room.

Now what? Somehow they'd made it here and passed on the information, and were poised to take the next step. The problem was there was no clear next step. Blake felt like they'd accidentally driven into a rut and the wheels of their car were spinning out uselessly. Given the current state of global diplomatic relations—and taking into consideration added interference from Lillian's lackeys—it was likely that some countries wouldn't listen, even if Altair did manage to get them a warning. Or they'd listen, but wouldn't take it seriously enough and would act too slowly to prevent the destruction.

There were still so many things that could go wrong, so many ways that Lillian's plan would at least partially come to fruition, and Blake was left with nothing to do about any of it for at least half an hour.

It was odd to think that, if Lillian's goons hadn't tried to grab him back in February, Blake probably wouldn't know anything about any of this. He'd be at school right now, grieving his father, complaining about homework, and trying to let friends distract him, completely unaware of the cataclysm about to strike the world. He wouldn't have known—and Altair wouldn't have, either—until they were both watching the horror unfold on TV.

Just like the seven billion other people on earth.

The pressure of it—and the reality of what getting it wrong would mean—weighed down on Blake, pressing until it was hard to breathe. Getting it right wouldn't necessarily be any easier, though, would it? If they figured everything out and somehow found Lillian, it would be a battle. Blake might be faced once again with that moment he still didn't know how to handle: the instant when the gun in his hand was pointed at a human target and he had to decide what to do with the destructive power he held.

He'd wanted to help finish his father's investigation. That was almost done now.

He'd also wanted—or thought he wanted—justice for his father's death. But after seeing exactly how good Lillian was at hiding her fingerprints, and getting an inkling of how powerful her allies must be, did he really think justice would ever find her? Even if he handcuffed her and dropped her in the middle of the International Criminal Court with a duffel bag full of evidence, Lillian seemed like the type to magic her way out of trouble somehow. Or buy it. He pictured her walking out of that courtroom a free woman, a smug smile on her face.

Sparks of rage rose from the pit of his stomach.

Underneath that, though, was fear. Of what kind of retribution a cold, calculating woman like Lillian would enact, and what kind of horrors she would force Blake to live through.

Maybe Blake truly did want vengeance, to wipe the smile off her face forever. But would he be able to take it if it was standing in his sightlines?

He looked around the library, searching for the comfort he usually found in this room, but he couldn't find it. And he probably wouldn't right now. Not up here.

Over the past several years, his dad had been out of town—sometimes out of the country—on investigations a lot. Each time, Blake moved in with Altair and Fayza, and those stays had been frequent enough that one of the guest rooms was now permanently his.

He couldn't shake the feeling that, once he left, he wouldn't ever see this place again.

"While we're here, I . . ." Blake looked toward the stairs. "I want to get some things from my room and just, I don't know. Just sit in there for a few minutes."

Dae's eyes opened and he sat up. "Is it away from the stairwell to the first floor?"

It was right for him to ask. The stairs and the landing were relatively open, and if Blake happened to walk past that area while the plumber was entering the house, chances were that the guy wouldn't care, and might not even remember seeing Blake, but it would be an unnecessary risk to take.

Luckily . . . "Yes, it's the second door off the attic stairs. You can't see it from the first floor at all."

A little of the worry left Dae's eyes. He leaned back against the couch again, closing his eyes. "Half an hour, max. Wake me up if I fall asleep while you're gone."

Blake thought the odds of that happening were good. It had been a long night, and though they'd traded off driving, neither of them had slept for more than an hour on the way to Baltimore. Knowing that, Blake went to the storage trunk at the end of the couch, pulled out a fluffy blanket, and draped it over Daelan.

Dae smiled when he felt it, opening one eye and murmuring, "Thanks."

Blake brushed his fingers across Dae's cheek and then left, quietly moving down the steep attic stairs. The third one from the bottom creaked, just as it always did. Somehow he'd forgotten that. Four months ago, he never would've let his foot land on that creaky board.

Reminded of it now, he avoided another creak halfway down the hallway, but he'd lost the trick of opening his room without the antique doorknob rattling.

Everything inside was exactly the way he remembered leaving it, down to the clothes hanging over the edge of his laundry basket and the homework scattered across his desk. Dad had been gone a long time before he died—almost three months—and that meant Blake had had plenty of time to make this place even more like home than usual. Pictures and notes were pinned to the corkboard on the wall, art by Osnat Tzadok took up two whole walls, and the windows looked out into the trees—a view that had always given Blake the illusion of sleeping in a treehouse.

If he survived, this really would be his permanent home. He knew that his dad's will gave custody to Altair and Fayza, and he knew there was no way the Zamans would decline the responsibility. But standing here was the first time he really understood that the house he'd spent the last eight years in would have to be packed away and sold off, that it would be gone and he would be here and so many things about his old life would change and—

Blake dropped to the end of his bed, hand over his mouth, and tried to breathe.

The loss hadn't felt this real in months, not since the moment he learned that his father had died. It hit him hard now. A hole opened in the center of his chest, and it was as though all the air he sucked in through his nose leaked out through that gaping wound. His arms shook, and he wasn't sure his legs would hold him if he tried to stand.

This had been a bad idea. He'd thought this room would be comforting, not the blow to rebreak his healing heart. It took most of the half hour he had just to force himself to stop crying.

When he left his room, he closed the door behind himself.

This time, the antique doorknob didn't make a sound.

"I came looking for Fayza. Finding you is so much better."

Startled, Blake spun, his hand rising to strike the person who was suddenly behind him.

A hand on his wrist stopped Blake's fist less than six inches away from the woman's face. A face he recognized. Kind of.

"Adila?" No. It couldn't be. This woman's hair was longer. Her skin was a few shades darker. Her eyes were flinty and cold.

Blake knew who this was a second before the needle jabbed him in the neck.

Odira.

"Don't worry. Lillian won't kill you," Odira said as Blake's vision began to go black. "Not for a few days, anyway."

He gasped for air that suddenly felt too thin. Stomach churning, heart pounding, and vision going completely dark, he fell into Odira Weston's waiting arms.

Consciousness returned slowly, and it brought with it the worst headache Blake had ever experienced. Pain throbbed between his ears and stabbed like needles behind his eyes, making his vision swim and his thoughts scatter. Closing his eyes focused his mind. Not much, but enough for him to attempt remembering.

He'd been . . . somewhere. Crying.

Because of something that'd happened with Altair?

No. Blake had been at his house, though.

And now he couldn't move. Why couldn't he move?

His arms were trying to respond to the commands his sluggish brain was shooting at them—he could feel the muscles shifting and straining—but something was holding him back. Was he— It was almost like he was tied up, but why would—

Oh.

It all rushed back, though the moments after leaving his bedroom were hazy and missing seconds at a time, skipping like his dad's old, scratched records.

Had Adila been there? That didn't make any sense. Adila wouldn't leave the Calvers and risk Lillian or Odira finding—

Not Adila. Odira. The needle. It had been drugs that had knocked him out and then—

Nothing. He didn't know.

How long had it been? He never wore a watch. Even if he did, his arms were bound to the chair, and the angle of his wrists would've made reading a watch difficult. No way would he still have the phone Cassidy had given him. There was a snippet of memory that made him think he'd woken up at some point in a car, but that might be a lie. Or a flash from one of the days traveling with the Calvers.

Forget the time for now. He took a deep breath and tried to open his eyes again. Where was more important than when . . .

. . . but nothing in the room hinted at where.

There was a window, but the thick curtains were drawn tight, giving Blake no clues to place or time; only the light from four fixtures recessed into the ceiling let him see anything. A twin bed with a rustic dark wood headboard and footboard was centered on one wall. The armchair Blake was strapped to was made of the same dark wood. It was solidly built, with bright-red leather cushions. Nylon rope bound his arms and legs so tight that he knew he wouldn't be able to free himself easily or soon. The opposite wall held a long, waist-high dresser. Two doors—one out and one that led to either a bathroom or a closet, Blake guessed.

Nothing else. No art, no lamp, no clock—digital or otherwise. Nothing movable that could be used as a weapon, essentially.

Maybe Daelan or Kindra could've figured out how to get free of the bonds and rig some sort of explosive or weapon or something from the lights in the ceiling, but Blake didn't have that kind of training. He was trapped and almost entirely defenseless.

Not good. None of this was good. Just because it didn't have the severity of a prison cell, didn't mean it wasn't one. Blake had no delusions that it was anything else.

But was Odira holding the keys or was Lillian?

Time passed in stretches of boredom broken by bouts of unconsciousness. Whatever drug Odira had used to knock him out seemed to linger for . . . well, Blake wasn't sure how long it lingered, but it felt like hours.

When he woke up again, he was wearing a hydration pack, a backpack-like water carrier similar to the one he and his dad had used when they were training for a half marathon. They'd done something to the straw to make sure it was reachable—barely. He drank in small sips, not knowing if or when anyone would come to let him use the bathroom.

Plus, he thought for the first few sips, it was probably drugged.

Nothing happened, though. He could breathe fine, and he didn't seem to be collapsing into unconsciousness. The cool water did help clear his dry throat, calm his pounding head, and keep him from dropping into unconsciousness against his will again. It wasn't much, but it was a sign they didn't want him to die.

At least not soon.

There had been days when Blake had—privately and silently—bemoaned the boredom of being stuck in the Providence safe house 24-7. He'd been wrong. That had been paradise compared to being trapped in this chair and forced to stare at a blank, wheat-brown wall.

To entertain himself—and to keep track of time—he began reciting Twelfth Night. He was in the middle of act 4, scene 3 when the doorknob shifted.

The door opened slowly.

Standing in the hallway was a large Asian man in a tactical vest, but he wasn't holding a gun. He was holding a chair. Someone else—a smaller white guy also in a vest—had opened the door for the chair-bearer. They both looked at Blake with idle curiosity, but neither said a word. White Boy stayed near the door while Chair-Bearer placed the seat several feet away from Blake and walked to the doorway. Blake watched them closely, looking for clues. There weren't many to find.

Their uniforms under the vests were pretty standard—dark jeans and a black polo shirt lacking any visible logo or rank indicators that Blake could spot. Motions and mannerisms all seemed professional. They looked aware, but not wary, not as on edge as Blake would have expected from someone who knew what kind of bloody justice might possibly be coming their way. Actually, the longer Chair-Bearer looked at Blake, the more confused he seemed, as though this was the first time he'd seen their captive and he'd been expecting someone different. Possibly someone older? White Boy seemed to be trying to pretend that he wasn't looking at Blake at all, his eyes darting toward Blake and then away several times.

They hadn't said a word, so Blake didn't have an accent or lack of one to help pinpoint where they were from. He didn't know if they were ex-military or just hired guns. He couldn't begin to guess how involved they were in anything or who was giving them orders or—

A rhythmic sound. Footsteps on hardwood floors. Not just footsteps, though.

High heels.

The door to his sparse prison looked directly at a blank section of hallway wall, so the approaching heel-wearer wasn't in sight.

White Boy and Chair-Bearer stepped into the hall. Then Lillian French stood in the doorway.

Her outfit was formfitting without being revealing at all. A knee-length purple pencil skirt and a white collared button-down under a black, belted cardigan. Her shoulder-length hair hung straight, framing a very pretty, round face and a pleasantly bright smile.

If Blake hadn't known exactly who this was, he might have hoped that things were about to get better.

"A villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"

His heart thudded, each pulse reverberating through his entire body.

This woman ordered hits on employees. Children. Her own business partner. She had used drugs as a cover for imports that would allow her to cause even worse damage, and was willing to destabilize an entire country just to get a single plant. The plans she made would, if carried out, kill hundreds of thousands of people. Minimum.

She was the reason Blake's dad had died.

"It's wonderful to finally meet you, Blake." She shifted the angle of the chair with the toe of her purple pump before sitting down, her legs crossed at the ankles. Behind her, the guards retreated from the room and closed the door. "Since you've been spending time with the Calvers, I'm going to assume you know who I am."

Blake nodded. Staying silent unless absolutely necessary seemed like the best plan.

"Going to see Altair alone was maybe not your smartest decision, but it worked out for me, so I suppose I should be grateful that you're young enough to think yourself invincible."

Alone? She thought Blake had gone to Baltimore alone? If Odira had broken into the house and found Blake, it was hard to believe that she hadn't known Daelan was there somewhere too.

It didn't make sense, but fuck if Blake was going to correct the mistake.

"I know Amett was whispering secrets that weren't his to share, and apparently Charles has also proven disloyal. I should have trusted my instincts with him. He was Garret's acquisition, not mine, and it took me a while before I felt I could share more than the most basic parts of my plan with him—I didn't even tell him why I wanted you when we first left the States." She shook her head, gracefully looping her hair behind her ear. "Too late for regrets now, I suppose."

Regrets. Blake almost laughed. Regret and apologies and empathy were concepts that he couldn't believe Lillian even knew how to define.

"Do the Calvers have what Isaac sent you?"

"What?" The word was out before he thought to stop it. Heart pounding, he stared at Lillian. His dad had sent him something? And it was still out there?

"Hmm, maybe not." Lillian folded her hands, and Blake caught a flash of gold polish on her nails as she rested them on her lap. "Amett could have directed you to Gomin, and you could have found the connection to LyoLabs another way. Despite the lack of proof that you were there, I'm fairly certain that you and the Calvers caused the issues LyoLabs's headquarters had that week. It's also a safe assumption you're the ones who hijacked my supply ship, wounded several of my guards, and made off with my head researcher."

Head researcher. As though Adila had been there by choice. As though she'd wanted to be the creator of a poison potent enough to kill half the planet.

But in the back of his mind, all Blake could think was, What did Dad send me? Is that why you've been after me, Diabla?

Lillian clicked her heel against the floor. "I believe that, because of all those things, working under the belief that the Calvers have learned everything—and that they'll try to warn the world—is my safest option."

Whatever it was, she had believed that Blake had it. Which meant it was still out there, something dangerous enough that Lillian had chased Blake across the country for it.

God I hope you find it, Dae. Whatever it is.

At least now the danger made sense. At least now Blake knew why he'd been targeted. Not that it made anything better, but . . .

Lillian paused long enough to hint that she was waiting for a response, or waiting to see if Blake would give her one. He stayed silent. He tried not to react at all, tried to channel Kindra's expertly blank mask, but he could feel the muscles and tendons in his neck tense, straining against his skin.

"What I would like you to tell me is whether you had time to leave a note or a message for your godfather." Lillian leaned in several inches, her large eyes almost cartoonishly innocent and round. "There are several people watching him and your aunt, so I'll know what you told him soon enough, but it will go easier for all of us if you're honest with me now."

She thought Blake had been alone. She didn't know how long Blake had been at the house before Odira had grabbed him. She didn't know a lot, so that meant . . .

Odira was keeping secrets.

Had the Calvers gotten Adila's message out finally? It was the only reason Blake could think of for this tiny, possibly worthless, advantage he'd been handed.

Unless it wasn't a true advantage. It was possible that Lillian knew more than she was letting on. She could be testing him. Toying with him. Lying was a risk, but he knew he was about to do it anyway.

"I don't know what happened." Blake's throat was still dry and his voice hoarse. He coughed, took a sip of water, and tried again. "I'd barely been there a few minutes before everything went black."

"Hmm." She sat back, watching Blake carefully, but—for a moment—saying nothing.

There were sounds of people now, booted footsteps on wood floors and the low tones of conversation. There was a faint smell in the air, a mix of fresh bread and sautéed garlic.

Listening to them move through the house, it seemed they were all acting like this was a normal gathering in a normal week. And to them it likely was, especially if they were in the dark about the next phase of Lillian's plan. Normal, with the possible exception of their tactical gear and playing prison guard to a teenager.

Did any of them know what was coming? Maybe not. Maybe Lillian's compartmentalization extended even to those guarding her. Or especially to those guarding her.

If they knew what was coming, there likely wasn't a thing Blake could say that would convince them to set him free and help him escape.

If they didn't know, Blake doubted they'd believe the tale he had to tell.

Lillian tapped the gold-painted nail of her index finger on her thigh twice. Stopped. Pressed her palm flat against her leg. Inhaled slowly.

"Some people are capable of putting the good of the many over the pain of a few. Altair Ameen Zaman is not one of them." Lillian picked at the nail of her right index finger and then held out her hand as though checking her work. "It's a failing of his that has gotten him into trouble before, and it will again this week. My plan would've been more effective if I'd had you since February, of course, but . . ." She dropped her hand and smiled at Blake. "Strategies tend to change when they rely on the competence and trustworthiness of anyone other than oneself."

Oh. It wasn't just what Lillian thought he knew or whatever his dad had sent him; Altair was why Lillian's men had been after Blake, too. Blake had been right. She had wanted him as a lever to use on Uncle Altair and, through him, a major branch of the FBI.

Bile rose in his throat. His palms sweated. No way would he let saving his life be the reason Altair or the Calvers caved to Lillian French. He would die first.

"He's going to stop you," he forced himself to say instead of threatening to take himself out of the picture. "The Calvers are going to stop you."

Lillian laughed, genuine mirth shining in her dark eyes and her smile bright against her mahogany skin.

"This isn't Hollywood, Blake. There is no abort sequence, and no button to press that will save the world. Everything I've planned has already been set in motion. Stopping it now would mean a coordinated global effort of thousands of highly trained individuals willing to risk exposure to an incredibly toxic chemical weapon." She ran her hands down the front of her purple skirt, smoothing out wrinkles that had barely been visible, before she rose to her feet. "If that kind of unified effort were possible, my dear, my plan wouldn't work at all. There'd be an investigation, not a war."

"So why are you doing this?" Asking was stupid—Blake couldn't imagine he would get an actual response—but the questions tumbled out. "What do you want? The whole world to bow down to you as the most powerful person on the planet?"

Blake wasn't sure about powerful, but evil? Lillian had the soul of Richard III.

"I am determined to prove a villain."

"I am subtle, false, and treacherous."

"You're confusing power and acclaim, my dear. People who want acclaim become actors or rock stars. Power is something subtler. You can have more of it than you know what to do with even though fewer than a hundred people on the planet know who you are." Lillian shook her head. "Only idiots look for both."

"Politicians have both."

Lillian smiled at Blake, somehow appearing both amused and disbelieving. "That's influence, not power. People with acclaim learn to influence those around them—and they can make a significant impact on the world; I'm not denying that—but it's rare they ever have actual power. It's likely that only people I've met will know my name, but the changes I make and the policies I shape will be written about in history books for centuries."

Blake's heart rate had been climbing through this whole conversation. Now it was a struggle to pretend fear wasn't on the verge of throttling him.

Why couldn't Lillian have been crazy instead? Raving and illogical and wrong.

But no. The woman in front of him was perfectly rational. She knew exactly what she was doing, what she had to do to make it happen, and how those decisions would impact everything else in her world. If Blake had met this woman at an FBI gala fundraiser or at a dinner party at Uncle Altair's, he probably would've been impressed by her poise, her intelligence, and her determination. Before knowing what she used those traits to do, Blake would have looked up to Lillian French, and that was terrifying.

But that was the point she'd been trying to make, wasn't it? Power versus acclaim versus influence. And Lillian was using every bit of each that she could accumulate to hoard more power and more money, even if she destroyed the world in the process. And it seemed that all Blake could do was sit here and wait for it to happen.

"It's more of a hassle than I feel like dealing with to keep you tied up day and night. Drugging you between meals is too risky too. It would be even without your list of allergies." Lillian crossed to the door and knocked twice. The door opened slowly, the barrel of a handgun coming into view before anything else. That disappeared quickly, and the door opened. A whispered command from Lillian. A nod from Chair-Bearer.

Chair-Bearer turned sideways to enter the room without knocking into Lillian, and then he quickly crossed to Blake. Reaching for the rope tying down Blake's left leg, he quietly said, "Don't struggle, kid, or I might accidentally break your leg."

He seemed to mean accidentally in a literal sense, not as a veiled, taunting threat, and so Blake nodded. Eventually, Blake would try to escape, but he knew that eventually wasn't now.

The guard untied Blake's leg and folded the leg of his jeans up to his calf. Then he took something that looked like a sleeker, sturdier version of a police tracking bracelet out of his pocket.

"It's something we developed for several private prisons," Lillian said from the doorway, gesturing to the device. "It's meant to be used inside a single building to specifically track movement of any type. For example, the device would know if you have restless leg syndrome and wiggle your foot all night."

The guard rolled his eyes but didn't look up from his work as he checked the settings on the device and then latched it onto Blake's ankle.

"Peter will untie you after he checks to make sure the bracelet is on correctly, but you're going to be confined to this room and the attached bathroom. If you even linger at the door to the hallway too long, the guard will be notified to check on you. To get it off without our help . . ." Lillian smiled. "Well, cutting your foot off is the only way we won't know the instant you try to tamper with it."

Then, in less than the space of a blink, the open friendliness vanished from Lillian's face, her dark eyes going narrow and flinty and her wide mouth flattening into a grim line. "Understand, Blake?"

"I do." He understood that escape had just become a lot harder—definitely painful and potentially deadly.

Lillian and the guards left, only Peter looking back with anything like regret as they closed and locked the door behind themselves. He wondered if they understood that he would try anyway.

Blake stood at the window and contemplated distance.

Ten feet to the closest sturdy tree branch.

Fifteen feet to the ground.

Her arms crossed over her chest, she tapped the index finger of her right hand against her left biceps. The roof was an option. It was only five or six feet up to the eave, but there was no guarantee that the drop from the back of the house would be any shorter or safer than this one.

Not like it mattered. Despite hours spent inspecting the waterproof, damage resistant, and thankfully comfortable ankle bracelet, Blake hadn't been able to figure out how to get it off. Even if she didn't care about alerting Lillian's guards, she had no tools and didn't know where to start.

The Asian guard, Peter, had brought up some paperback books for Blake the day before. A kindness, Blake had thought at first. Then she'd realized that all of the books were thrillers about murder and terrorism and global catastrophe. Was he clueless or cruel? Were these taken from his personal library and all he had? Lillian could have ordered them and told him to bring them to Blake. Or maybe the smile that she'd thought seemed kind had been hiding laughter that mocked and sneered.

Whatever the truth, Blake knew that it didn't matter much, but the question still bothered her. It wasn't like she had anything less stressful to occupy her mind.

The door opened, and Peter came in carrying a lunch tray. It felt a little too early for lunch; Blake wasn't quite hungry yet. The schedule for the last two days had been—as far as Blake could tell—rigidly the same. Why the change now?

"—never seen mobilization on this scale, but none of the authorities of any military involved in the spread of troops across the globe have released statements."

The woman's voice—a newscaster?—cut off when Peter closed the door with his boot. "Chair or bed?"

"Floor," Blake said immediately. If they knew she was eating on the floor, maybe she could get away with pressing her ear against the door and listening for more details.

Peter looked between the bed and the chair before glancing down at the spot just to the right of the door that Blake was pointing to. He shrugged and placed the tray down. "I'll be back to get it in an hour."

He opened the door.

"—going to our White House correspondent Lyle Jaff. What have you learned, Lyle?"

Peter walked out of the room.

"The number of deaths is in the hundreds in the area surrounding Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but—"

The door closed.

Heart pounding and hands shaking, Blake dropped to the floor and pressed her ear against the door, closing her eyes and concentrating.

"—although they did indicate that they . . . leads . . . possible antidote to . . ."

The correspondent's words faded in and out. Blake flattened against the wall.

"One scientist we spoke to said that it sounded like a mass poisoning. In the worst-case scenario, we're looking at a possible biological or chemical attack of some kind. Scientists and government officials are recommending those showing no symptoms evacuate the area immediately. If you have family near Fort Bragg, do not attempt to enter the quarantine zone being established."

Oh God. It had started.

Fuck this. She was getting out of here now. There was a solid chance she'd die trying to flee into the forest surrounding the house—shot in the back by one of the guards, maybe—but that death had to be quicker than whatever Lillian had in mind for Blake now that her master plan was underway.

Successfully underway.

Blake's chest clenched and her stomach rolled. She stood and pushed away from the wall, striding across the room to the window. The tree was out of the question—she'd have to be part flying squirrel to make a jump that long—but the drop was possible. She could hang off the window, removing a few feet from the equation, and maybe use the sheets somehow to eliminate a few more. The window had been sealed shut, though, so to get out this way she would have to break the glass. The sound would draw the guard from the hallway. It'd probably attract the ones patrolling the perimeter too, if she didn't time it right. Then, even if she managed to break the window and drop without hurting herself, there was still the damn bracelet to contend with.

So, basically, this plan is shit, and you're doomed.

It was likely that she'd be shot as soon as she started running. Maybe before then, while she was hanging from the sheet flung out the window. It was probable that the window was alarmed, even if she couldn't spot the system.

This was desperate. Stupid. Possibly suicidal.

But dying in a fight for freedom was better than staying here and letting herself be used for whatever the next phase of Lillian's plans was.

She picked up the pillow and yanked the case off. The sheets were next. Then the duvet from the comforter. She tied them together end to end, and fixed one end of the rope through the footboard of the bed.

The bathroom next. It was as sparse as the bedroom—nothing unnecessary and nothing that could be easily turned into a weapon—but there was a square cup. It was made of something ridiculously sturdy and almost unbreakable. Blake knew because she'd chucked it as hard as she could against the wall the night before. A fruitless display of anger, sure, but it might prove to have had a use yet if they wrote off this noise as another one of Blake's "temper tantrums."

Her hand barely fit inside the large cup, but it did fit.

Standing in front of the window, she adjusted the blanket rope so that the free end would be easy to grab and toss over the ledge. Then she stared at the expanse of glass, a single pane that once could have been opened via a crank. The crank was missing and the locks on the left side of the window must have been glued or welded shut; they didn't budge no matter how hard Blake pried at them.

As soon as she started trying to break the window, someone would head in her direction. When she'd thrown the heavy cup yesterday, there had been someone opening her door, gun drawn, less than a minute after the thunk. Maybe the news downstairs would distract them enough to give her more time. She couldn't count on that, though.

But hadn't there been something . . . A vague memory of a video her friends had shown her, something about tapping out from the center of a window could shatter the glass. She thought that the people in the video had maybe used a screwdriver or something like it, but all she had were her fingers and the cup.

The cup would have to do.

Looping the end of her makeshift rope over one arm and using the other to partially shield her eyes, she adjusted the fit of her hand in the cup and then started tapping. Hard and quick, she tapped in a diagonal line down to the lower right corner of the window.

A small starburst hole in the center of the glass. Cracks radiating from that center break.

Closing her eyes and turning her face away, Blake padded the bottom of the cup with the pillowcase to muffle the sound and then punched the center of the window.

Glass splintered, tinkling softly against the wood floor of her room. Most of it rained down onto the grass two stories below.

Opening her eyes, Blake quickly surveyed what was left of the window. Large, knifelike spikes of glass remained trapped in the white metal frame. Maybe she could use one of those to cut the bracelet off. She'd probably do more damage to her ankle than the thick band, but it was her only option. Unless one of the guards was willing to lend her their knives.

A voice from downstairs. Louder than conversational; not quite shouting. The words were too muffled through the walls for Blake to guess if it was about her, the news, or something else entirely.

Shard of glass in hand, she went down on one knee, sitting back on her foot, and lifted her jeans out of the way. The tracking bracelet had a little give, but the material was thick. She could fit her index finger widthwise in the space between the band and her ankle. It didn't seem like the edge of the glass was sharp enough to do much damage as a saw, so what were her options? The only other way would be to try sliding the glass between the bracelet and her ankle to cut it. It might work, but she would probably need stitches. If she survived the next hour.

She slid the glass knife in with the flat side against her skin.

Oh, this is gonna hurt.

Holding her breath, she twisted it, dragging the edge along the band and hopefully leaving a scar on the plastic as deep as the one she left on her skin. She had to bite her lip—almost bit through her lip—to stop herself from crying out.

Boom.

The floorboards rattled. The door shook. Blake dropped the glass to steady herself against the bed frame.

What the hell?

Shouting. Gunshots.

Boom.

Was that a grenade?

Boots pounding on wood floors, quickly descending the stairs. Her guard leaving?

The fast, heavy fire of automatic rifles.

Blake stood and crossed to the door, limping only a little.

Lillian's higher voice shouting orders.

Bootsteps ascending. They were coming up.

She moved back to the bed, ignoring the throbbing pain in her lip and her ankle, and picked up the piece of glass. It wouldn't do enough damage to save her life, but maybe she could make her murderer's day suck a little more.

Please let this be the Calver cavalry, she hoped—prayed. Without knowing for sure, though, she couldn't risk leaping out into the fray. Lillian at least had a reason to keep Blake alive for now. If the people throwing grenades were enemies of Lillian's, they wouldn't necessarily feel the same way about Blake.

Footsteps in the hall. Closing in.

The door opened.

She slashed, wielding the glass like a knife.

White Boy cried out, hand pressed to his face. He swung with his other hand.

She tried to dodge. His fist clipped the side of her head.

Another slice with the glass. This one caught White Boy across the back of the hand as he wiped blood from his face. He grunted in pain and lunged for Blake.

A hand locked around her throat. She fought, kicking him wherever she could reach and slashing for his face again. His other hand gripped her wrist, hard to the point of pain.

"Try that one more time and I will kill you," he growled. "No matter what the boss wants."

Blake stilled. The glass fell from her hand.

Without another word, White Boy yanked her into the hall. Toward the stairs. He never let her turn to walk straight. Moving sideways, she almost tumbled down the stairs twice. Only his too-tight grip on her arm kept her upright.

More shouting. Something thunked, a heavy, out-of-place noise. Gunshots from the back of the house. Breaking glass from the front.

White Boy cursed and shoved her away so hard she rebounded off the wall and fell to the floor. He raised his weapon and charged into the hallway.

Pop. Pop.

Neither gunshot seemed to have come from his gun. Blood splattered.

White Boy went from a controlled lunge to a dead fall.

Daelan was standing behind him. His eyes locked on Blake's. Relief rolled over her like an electric shock, so strong her arms almost gave out and sent her back to the wood floor.

He came looking for me. He's here. He came. I can go home.

"Are you okay?" Dae knelt next to her, his hands moving over her clothes as though he was checking for blood or signs of pain. "Your lip is bleeding. What happened to your foot?"

Blake laughed, the sound tight and too close to sobbing. "Tried to cut off the tracking bracelet with a piece of glass."

"We'll have to clean that up soon. C'mon. Up you get." He gently wound his arm around her waist and helped her to her feet. She wasn't injured—even the pain from the cut on her ankle had begun to fade to a dull, ignorable throb—but her whole body ached. She trembled. Adrenaline and shock and fear and relief buzzed through her mind, blood, and muscles. It made her unstable. It made her grab Daelan and haul him into a hug so tight it hurt her.

"Thank you," she croaked. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Somehow she found a way to hold him tighter. He didn't protest.

"You're okay. You're fine. You're okay," Dae murmured, his hands skimming over her body like he was searching her for injuries again. As though he didn't trust what he'd found the first time around.

If this had been any other person at any other time, Blake would have been pulling away fast. Now she relished the comforting, concerned touch and pressed kisses to any stretch of skin she could reach—neck, jaw, ear, cheek. She hadn't been sure she would ever see him again. It had seemed so likely that she would die here, or that he would die trying to stop one of the Nix strikes.

Finally, he gave up checking for wounds. His hands shifted, one to Blake's hair and the other stroking up and down her back. "I'm sorry it took us so long to get here. Odira didn't send us the coordinates until—"

Blake jerked back. "Odira? She's the one who—"

"I know." Dae grimaced, the hand that had been running over Blake's hair moving to her shoulder. "She said she had to so Lillian would think that she still owned her. If Odira had broken ranks completely the moment she got Adila's message, Lillian would've changed plans and codes and everything else. And she never would've been able to figure out where Lillian's safe house was. But if she said she had you or Fayza and turned you over, the chances of you being hurt were low and Lillian would believe everything was going as planned."

Blake remembered that now, the comment Odira had made about coming to the house for Fayza. "And she told you guys how to find me?"

"This morning." Dae's voice dropped an octave as he moved closer, resting his forehead against hers. "I'm so sorry you—"

Blake shook her head without moving away from Daelan, and their noses brushed with each pass. "If it was between me and Fayza, I'm glad it was me."

The world overwhelmed her aunt so often already. If Fayza had been kidnapped from her home, drugged, tracked, trapped—no. Blake would volunteer every time to keep her from living through a kidnapping. Even one as mild as Blake knew this one had been.

"What's happening? I heard the news and . . ." She couldn't make herself finish.

"Not as bad as it could have been, but not good either," Dae said. "We weren't able to stop everything. I don't even know yet what the damage is globally. We'll have to get the details later."

"But it's not as bad as it could have been?" she repeated, clutching that news tight.

"No." Dae took a step back but held—tightly—to her hand. "Definitely not."

"I got three," someone called from the other room. It sounded like Kindra.

"Shit. I only ended up with two. How do you always win this game?" Seraphina. That had to be Sera. No one else would consider something like this a game.

"I killed one, I have three," Kindra clarified.

"Oh. Then I win! I got four alive." A guard appeared in the door leading from what Blake thought was the kitchen, his hands on his head. Three more followed, and Sera brought up the rear, a smile on her face and a gun in each hand. "I won," she told them as though they hadn't heard her shouted conversation.

"Good for you." Kindra's tone was either sarcastic or amused. Blake couldn't tell.

"Are you guys done with your reunion yet?" Sera called over her shoulder.

"Sera!" someone else hissed. Dru?

"What? We're kinda in the middle of something here, in case you guys haven't noticed."

A crash. "Nope," Kindra said. A grunt. A thud. "None of that, now. Next one earns you a bullet through those pretty blue eyes, asshole."

"We should see what's going on before they kill all of our prisoners," Dae muttered.

"Is Lillian . . .?" Blake looked toward the living room and back at Dae.

Lips tightening, he shook his head. "That's why we have prisoners."

He took her hand, holding tighter than necessary—but then, so was Blake—and led her into the other room.

Dru, Kindra, and Sera stood guard over the guards who weren't unconscious, guns drawn and pointing at each of their heads in turn.

"You didn't find her either?" There was more than a little accusation in Kindra's tone.

Daelan's shoulders jumped. Almost a flinch. "If you don't think she had a backup plan for exactly this scenario, then you haven't been paying attention."

"The scenario where her hideout is overrun by teenagers?" Sera raised an eyebrow, but didn't look away from the guards. "That's a pretty specific backup-plan scenario, even for her."

"There's no way she'd run on foot—not through a forest," Blake said. "She was wearing heels both times I saw her."

"Don't underestimate what she's capable of," Daelan warned. "She's ex-military and she's got two personal trainers on call. There's nothing helpless or ill prepared about her."

"Still," Dru said. "A place like this should have a basement, and I didn't see a door."

Daelan blinked and looked around. Blake moved toward the wall, feeling for seams or changes in texture.

"Basement isn't the only option. We've seen entrances to panic rooms behind bookshelves, and under floorboards, and— Where else, Sera?" Kindra asked.

"I liked the one where the fireplace slid out of the way. And the stairs that lifted up." Sera stared at the guards, her expression filled with wry disdain. "Anyone feel like sharing with the class where your boss is hiding? I promise to kill you quicker."

"Sera," Kindra sighed.

Sera glanced at her sister and heaved an annoyed sigh. "Fine. I promise I probably won't kill you at all."

"We're not telling you how to find the person we're supposed to be keeping alive." The growled words came from the white, deceptively lank-looking guard who'd brought Blake's lunch yesterday. Peter—still the only one whose name she knew—was sitting next to him, and though he barely moved, his eyes shifted to look at his coworker, hints of skepticism in his face. Maybe he was questioning whatever Lillian had told them. Maybe there was a chance of getting through to him or one of the others if she told them enough of the truth.

Blake took a deep breath as she moved to stand in front of the seven remaining guards. "You all saw the news. You know what's happening in the world right now. The woman you're protecting is the one responsible for that. For that and a list of crimes so long I can't even remember most of them. What happened today was almost a lot worse, and if you help her escape right now, she'll be out there doing it again."

The guards stared at her, their faces masks in varying degrees of impassiveness.

All of them but Peter.

He watched Blake for a long moment before his gaze jumped to the others, and then jumped again, this time off to the right. His expression was unreadable, but not in the same way as the other guards' blank, dead stares. Peter might have been confused, or angry, or guilty, or a hundred other things.

Whatever he was feeling, it made him take a deep breath. "Office in the north corner of the house. Bookcase."

The other guards shifted and muttered, but Peter didn't look at them, and a swift kick from Sera shut them up.

"Button hidden in the left side of the third shelf from the top, and it's almost invisible so make sure you search thoroughly. When you press it, you'll see where to enter the code."

Daelan grunted, already glancing north. "And the code is . . ."

He sighed. "Two-omega-five-eight-three-psi-delta-nine-xi."

"Well, that would be unnecessarily complicated to type in a hurry," Sera said.

Peter lifted one shoulder, the motion made awkward by the bonds keeping his arms restrained. "She can do it in a couple seconds. And the key to Blake's tracking bracelet is in there with her."

"Let's go." Dae hadn't yet let go of Blake's hand, so she followed when he turned toward Lillian's hideout. "Girls, keep these thugs under control for a while longer, won't you?"

"That's not a euphemism for 'kill them all,' is it?" Sera asked, sounding annoyed.

"Definitely not," Daelan called back as they neared the bookcase.

Sera sighed loud enough that Blake heard it from a room away. "Working with you guys is gonna suck, isn't it?"

"Bloodthirsty drama queen," Dae muttered. At the bookcase, he gently extracted his hand from Blake's, drawing a gun from the holster on his vest with that hand while he used the other to feel along the interior wall of the third shelf from the top, looking for the release Peter had said would be there.

With a click, what had been a mirror hanging on the wall became a screen, a digital keypad stretched across the surface, the buttons a mix of numerals and Greek letters.

Daelan typed in the code quickly and without a single error.

When he gave her a gun from the holster on his thigh and signaled for her to move, she complied, pressing herself against the wall on the opposite side of the bookcase. She was expecting the hidden door to swing outward. Instead, the bookcase split down the middle, and the two halves slid apart and into the walls on some sort of hydraulic or electric system.

Aiming his gun at something Blake couldn't see, Dae spoke, his voice colder than she'd ever thought it could be. "Drop it. It would be an actual pleasure to kill you."

Lillian must have obeyed, because after a thud and a scuffing sound, Daelan stepped away from the protection of the wall and into the room. Blake followed close behind, gun aimed in front of her but finger pressed along the side of the barrel.

It was a small space, maybe six feet by eight feet. The eggshell-blue room with its soft brown carpet only held a workstation, a bookshelf, a filing cabinet, and—in a corner where the carpet had been pulled back—an open trap door that looked like it led down into the missing basement. At the small desk, Lillian French sat waiting, a gun resting on the floor a couple feet away. Elbows on the armrests of the leather desk chair and hands clasped over her stomach, she watched Daelan and Blake enter, only hints of annoyance visible on her face, despite the gun Dae had pointed at her forehead.

Sighing, the devil shook her head. "It's gotten impossibly difficult to find trustworthy associates these days."

"Step away from the desk," Dae ordered. "Do it on your own, or I'll make you."

Lillian rolled her eyes but complied, getting up and moving to stand against the opposite wall, her hands clasped demurely in front of herself. As soon as she was away, Dae brushed his fingers against Blake's elbow and said, "Don't take your eyes off her for a second. And if she moves in a way you don't like, shoot her somewhere painful."

"The number of deaths is in the hundreds," the news had said. Hundreds were dead already because of this woman. Just today.

In this moment Blake finally began to understand how some people might be able to kill another human being and walk away feeling as though they'd done something good.

Blake felt for the safety with her thumb to make sure it was off. Just in case.

Dae sat down and went to work at the computer, cursing a couple of times as his fingers flew, trying to stop whatever Lillian had set in motion before they entered the room. From the sound of it, he was winning. Just maybe not as quickly as he wanted.

"I always have admired your computer work," Lillian said, seeming sincere. "Your mother has been one of the best in the business for years, and it seems you might be able to surpass her in a few years. If you haven't already."

"It's a shame we both have actual, working consciences," Dae muttered without looking back.

"Honestly, it is. I was annoyed with Odira for letting Cassidy and Hugo walk away years ago." Lillian tilted her head, almost an acknowledgment of defeat. "I did try to bring them back into the fold, but that plan failed rather spectacularly. It gave them two more team members and made them work even harder to annoy me."

Daelan went still. Dangerously still. Even though she could only see him in her peripheral vision, Blake recognized this stillness.

It was the same stillness that had run through Kindra when she learned Amett was dead.

"You killed Uncle Tom and Uncle Dale." A statement, not a question. A realization.

"Of course I didn't. I paid someone else to." She looked amused at her own morbid joke. Amused. She was making a joke out of lives she'd ended, lives that had mattered a lot to a person currently holding a gun.

Blake adjusted her grip on her own gun. Maybe she really would shoot this woman. If she was ever going to kill someone, it'd be Lillian French.

"You'll never get everything, you know." Lillian's tone was polite and conversational, but the smile on her face was full of malice. "It was annoying to work with a system as scattered as mine ended up being, but this was why I did it. You'll never be able to track it all down."

"That's fine. If we can't do it, neither can anyone else," Daelan said cheerfully, the tone completely at odds with the tension in his shoulders Blake could see out the corner of her eyes.

Lillian laughed. "Oh, there might be one person."

"You mean Susan Phan? Yeah, no." This time Daelan turned, a toothy, sharklike grin slicing across his face. "She's not about to go looking for anything. Last I heard, she decided to see how far the blood spatter would spread if she jumped out a thirtieth-story window."

"What?" No surprise in the question, only naked rage. Lillian's voice, posture, and expression had all gone rigid.

"I think Odira might have taken pictures if you want to see?" Dae's question was falsely congenial. "The unexpectedly helpful Odira also managed to direct the authorities to Charles Upton's hiding place. I'm pretty sure he's going to be in secret meetings with every government official they can shove into a single room for, oh. Hours. Days? Probably months."

A pulse went through the room, like the shockwave from an explosion. Lillian's eyes closed for a moment—longer than a blink, but not quite an expression of defeat.

"Even when I tried not to, I always ended up underestimating your family." When she opened her eyes again, the anger was still there, obvious in every strained line of her face, but now there was fear too. Apparently seeing her escape routes and backup plans falling away one by one was what it took to finally crack the shell of polite indifference she wore so well.

Smiling, Dae turned back to the computer, working in silence now. Lillian's eyes locked on Blake, and she didn't waver—barely blinked—for several minutes. Until she said, "I wasn't the one who ordered the hit on your father, you know."

Blake's hand shook. She brought up her other arm to keep the gun steady. "You think that absolves you of anything? Even without everything else you're responsible for, you were going to use me to threaten the only family I have left."

Lillian rolled her eyes, that careless indifference settling back over her expression. "You've seen for yourself that I don't mistreat my hostages unless it becomes necessary."

"Yeah, 'cause turning a brilliant scientist into a paranoid shut-in with signs of claustrophobia and a growing list of PTSD symptoms and then forcing them to become a mass murderer by association isn't mistreating them at all," Dae muttered.

"And because those scars on her skin were all accidents." Blake had never heard her own voice so angry. So cold. She'd never had so much rage and adrenaline running through her blood that she couldn't feel either one anymore. All she felt was a pinpoint focus on the gun she held in her hand and, at the end of the barrel's sightline, Lillian. All she was waiting for was the moment she knew was coming, when someone had to make the decision to end this woman's life.

"She kept trying to escape." Lillian spoke as though that should've been explanation enough. As though they were stupid for not understanding. "You can't tell me you haven't hurt people to get where you are. I've seen some of your family's work." Her derisive gaze switched from Daelan to Blake. "It's not like your parents were pure as driven snow, either."

"I never said they were." Blake wasn't stupid. She knew what the reality of military and government agent work meant. Isaac and Kim-Ly had had a code, though, and they would have died—they had died—before breaking it. "But you don't get to compare what you tried to do today with anything either of my parents may have been responsible for."

"Okay." Daelan slapped his hands on the desk, then picked up his gun and stood, a measure of satisfaction on his face when he approached Blake. "We have what we need now, so I guess that means we're done here. Unless you have something to add, Ms. French?"

Lillian stared at them, the expression on her face neither challenging nor accepting nor pleading. The blankness of it unnerved Blake.

Was Lillian scared? Didn't she know that the end of the conversation meant her death? Why wasn't she stalling for time or trying to manipulate them into making a mistake or . . . anything else that would have proven she had emotions or a survival instinct? It wasn't possible that a woman who had clawed her way through life as Lillian had was lacking in survival skills, but emotion seemed to be alien to her. Terror or rage. Even something as mild as trepidation or annoyance. If Lillian felt anything close to that, there was no sign of it Blake could read.

It made it easier to imagine watching this woman die.

As she shifted her own finger closer to the trigger, Blake also wished she knew how to shut her own emotions off so completely, at least for a little while. After today, she didn't think she would want to feel anything for a long, long while.

Daelan moved to stand behind Blake, close enough that his chest pressed lightly against her back. Then he tilted his head toward her and whispered, "Do you want us to take her to Altair for a trial?"

The question was quiet and absolutely, deadly serious.

A jolt skittered through Blake's body. He was offering to let the devil live?

It was likely that he was only making the offer because he thought it was what Blake wanted. Because of the conversation they'd had after the highway attacks when Blake—somewhat naively, she could admit now—questioned Daelan about the lives he'd taken.

Three months ago, three weeks ago, or hell, even the day before they found Adila, Blake probably would've said yes. Isaac Marks might have killed when it was absolutely necessary, yet his idea of justice had involved a gavel, not a gun. But that kind of justice was for a corrupt CEO who embezzled, or a serial killer who did their own dirty work.

If they took Lillian out of this house alive, how likely was it that she would ever see the inside of a courtroom? Her lip had twitched when Daelan mentioned Altair, but now the woman was calmly watching them both. If she thought there was a chance that they would let her live, it was likely she was running through her mental contact list, deciding who would be best to threaten or bribe to get her out of jail.

And she would get out of jail. Too many of the people who could testify about her involvement were dead. The rest of the evidence was too vague—sometimes circumstantial, sometimes nonexistent. Hell, she probably wouldn't even need to use whatever "get out of jail free" card she had stashed away; there was a damn good chance that she'd never see jail at all.

She had to die if there was to be any chance of ensuring that this wouldn't happen again. And for the first, likely the only time in her life, Blake wanted to be the one to pull that trigger. For her father, for Aaron's sister, for Kindra's brother, and for everyone else who grieved because of this woman.

Weeks ago, she'd quivered at the thought of even pointing a loaded gun at a person's chest. Faced with actually shooting someone, she'd gone nearly catatonic for hours. Even though the man she'd shot had tried to kidnap her. Had come back to try again. Had been—though she hadn't known it at the time—one of the people responsible for her dad's death. She hadn't been able to kill Javier Martinez.

There was only a moment of hesitation before she pulled the trigger on Lillian French.

The first bullet hit the center of Lillian's forehead. Two more in quick succession clustered around her heart.

Her body jerked with each impact. Her eyes went wide.

Lillian's knees buckled first. Her chin dropped to her chest. She slumped awkwardly against the wall, and then collapsed sideways to the floor. One arm was twisted under her body at a horrible angle, but Blake doubted Lillian cared. Red stains were spreading across the front of her silky, cream-colored blouse, and her open eyes were unseeing.

And Blake had been the one to kill her.

Oh, Lord, forgive me. But even as she prayed for forgiveness, for absolution, she couldn't regret this. Her dad would've done the same thing, Blake was sure. If she'd found herself here, her mom probably would've as well.

There was no such thing as justice for someone like Lillian French; the only judgment she couldn't escape was whatever judgment God laid down.

But Blake had been the one to send her to that judgment.

The gun went off again in her hand.

Blake screamed. Hands shaking, she sucked in air. Too shallow. Too fast. Breathe deeper. Slower. Can't think. Can't— Why won't my hands stop shaking?

Gasping, she stared at the hole in the wall, the only one without a corresponding spatter of blood. Blood. There was so much blood seeping through the thin fabric of Lillian's shirt. Spreading across the brown carpet. Doe-skin brown? Sand? Beige? Maybe it is—

A hand on her wrist and another covering the gun.

Her hands jerked. This time, her finger twitching on the trigger didn't fire the gun.

Why didn't it fire the gun? Something is wrong. Terror burned away every ounce of the capable calm she had somehow held on to. Her vision went dark at the edges. Her blood roared like a gale wind in her ears. Is it jammed? I need the gun or someone is going to find us and kill us and we won't be able to fight back because—

"It's okay, Blake. It's done." The voice was distant and soft, but familiar. Daelan. Dae. He was so far away. Why did he sound so far away? "You can let go. She's gone."

Gone. Dead. Because Blake had actually had the strength—idiocy—willpower—cold-bloodedness to pull the trigger and aim this time. "Oh God."

Her stomach rolled, but nothing came up. The tremor that followed loosened her vise grip on the gun; not entirely, but enough for Daelan to pry her hands off the weapon. Without that solid line of defense to hold on to, she began to shake. Her knees wobbled, and locking them didn't feel like it would keep her on her feet for long.

Months of looking over her shoulder. A solid month of living on the brink of disaster and surrounded by death. And now, with Lillian French dying at her feet and Lillian's associates either dead or being hunted down—by Odira Weston, apparently?—Blake had the chance to breathe.

And still felt like she couldn't.

Dae pressed one hand against the middle of Blake's back, urging her to lean against his chest, supporting her weight. His other hand burrowed into her hair. The heat of his body warmed her—though she didn't know when she'd gotten so chilled—and it should have been comforting. It would have been, except . . .

Neither hand was holding a weapon. They were both pressed flat against Blake.

"The guns. Where are the guns?" She pulled back to look. Tried to. Dae held her too tight. "What if the guards— You don't know where everyone—"

"Shhh, it's okay. I've got them right here." He took his hand off her head and redrew one gun, extending his arm and pointing the muzzle at the door to the safe room. His other hand pressed harder against her back. "No one is coming. No one is going to touch you. I promise I'll keep you safe, Blake. You already got rid of the devil. All we have to do now is sweep up her last few demons."

Devils and demons. Maybe Lillian had once been human, but she was only in dubious possession of a soul. She really had become something closer to a devil. A devil Blake had banished—killed. A devil who had been behind so much chaos and pain in her life during the last year. Lillian had hurt thousands of people. Killed hundreds even before today.

"Are you okay?" His voice was soft with concern, and the kiss he pressed to the top of her head was excruciatingly sweet and gentle, but his hand aiming the gun at the open door never wavered. "What do you need?"

"I don't know." It was an answer to both of his questions; it was all she could say. Her voice sounded small. She felt small as she gripped Dae's shirt and tried to count her breaths. To force her mind back toward calmness, or at least away from this overloaded shock.

Shock, but still no regret.

There was disbelief that she'd found the fortitude to do what her parents and the Calvers had always been willing to do. There was pained understanding of how and why her parents, the Calvers, and people like them could take lives and then move on with their own. There was fear that what she'd done today wouldn't be enough, that it hadn't happened soon enough to forestall whatever other plans Lillian had been making.

The one emotion Blake couldn't find a single iota of was regret.

That goddamn fucking bitch had earned her death.

"If you'd wanted it done but couldn't do it, I would've. And what you gave her was quicker than she deserved." It was an admission of sorts that what Daelan had wanted to do was far worse than what Blake had done. There was part of her that agreed, but no. Blake probably wouldn't ever regret killing Lillian; what she would have regretted was anything else. Drawing it out would've made them far less like her parents—or even the Calvers—and far too close to Lillian herself.

It took another minute, at least, before Blake's breathing eased back from hyperventilation. It took another minute for the tremor running through her body to ease off enough that it didn't feel as though her knees would buckle as soon as she tried to take a step.

"Come on." Dae slid his hand down to the small of her back, gently pushing her toward the door. He stayed close, one arm around her waist and the other still aiming the gun ahead of them.

Logically, she knew that Dru and the Weston girls had corralled or killed all of the guards, and they would probably kill the rest if any prisoner tried to fight back. There was no danger coming from that angle. For this house to be useful as a hideout for Lillian, armed guards and all, it had to be in the middle of nowhere, well hidden. Chances were that no one would find them out here; an attack from outside was unlikely in the midst of everything else happening.

Blake's bubbling anxiety didn't care about logic.

She didn't want to know what was happening in the world, but not knowing the truth would give her mind too much room to create fearsome fiction.

Just before they reached the kitchen, she managed to ask, "What happened? Did all of the attacks . . ."

She couldn't finish the question. The panic in the newscaster's voice was still clear in her memory, ringing loud despite how little she'd heard of the report.

"We're still collecting information." Dae tightened his hold on her. As though he thought she needed the support. Or maybe because he did.

Information. "Dae! Dae, there was something— Lillian said, when I woke up here, she said that Dad sent me something and I don't know what it was but she—"

"Shh, it's okay. It's okay. We know."

Her pulse skipped a beat and began to slow. "You do? What was it?"

"A rosary. There was a flash drive hidden in the base of the cross," Dae said. "Smart design actually. Even in an X-ray, it looks like simple jewelry. It was sent to your boarding school, and the school gave it to Altair after Max and Scott got you out of Baltimore."

"Do we know what was on it yet?" Do we know why it was important enough to paint a target on my back?

"Not yet. Mom looked at it enough to be sure that there was nothing on there to give us more details about the attacks and then we had to—" Daelan shook his head. "We tried, and Altair was a huge help, but we know at least some of the attacks were completed as planned. Traitors on the inside interfering, or help didn't get there in time, or the governments didn't believe the warning, or— I don't know. Mom and Dad were coordinating with Altair to get intel where it needed to go while the girls and I . . ."

While they went looking for Blake. And Lillian.

Daelan pulled Blake tighter against his side; the pressure offered warmth, solidity, and a reminder that they were both fine, that they were both here. He drew her to a stop and pressed a hard kiss to her cheek.

"I am so sorry I didn't keep her away from you," he whispered against her skin.

"I told you. I'd rather it was me." She shuddered at the thought, fighting the instinct to call her aunt just to make sure she was okay. "I'm okay, and I've had time to get used to this."

Dae made a wounded noise. "You shouldn't have had to get used to anything like this. This wasn't your world, and it wasn't your war."

Blake was pretty sure they weren't just talking about being kidnapped, but thinking about what had happened brought it all up too strongly. The jerk of the gun in her hand with each shot. The split second of shock on Lillian's face before she died. The blood. All of the blood.

"Don't be ridiculous." Even as she verbally brushed him off, Blake physically hung on even tighter. She wished she could find the calm, centered certainty that had settled over her the moment before she pulled the trigger; that had shattered, though, and it wouldn't be easy to get back. "There's only one world, and we're both living in it."

For now.

The war had just ended, and the soldiers who had been drafted into it—like Blake—were about to be released, sent home with a pat on the head and a few words of thanks, somehow expected to return to the way things had been.

"Told you you'd still be alive at the end of this, didn't I?" His smile was forced, but the relief in his eyes when they met hers wasn't.

He had promised that, and she had thought that it would be a relief, the kind of bone-melting relief that left her giggling and on the verge of collapsing. What she hadn't expected—and the reason she couldn't think of anything to say in response—was that relief at surviving was the least of what she felt. The rest was so mixed up and overwhelming that she was left adrift. Lost at sea in a storm she hadn't seen coming.

"I just got a report," Dru said when they reentered the living room.

Kindra and Sera had secured the guards better, tying them to each other as well as to the heaviest furniture in the room. Despite the seemingly low chances that any of them would escape from their bound huddle, the Weston girls stood over them with grim eyes and drawn guns. Peter was the only one who sat apart from the group, and the split lip, the beginnings of a bruise on his cheekbone, and the glares two of the other guards were sending him hinted at why.

"Between the news reports and accounts from the governments that we've been able to intercept, it looks like— Shit." Dru cleared her throat, her eyes shifting quickly as she read whatever had come through on her tablet. "It looks like at least six hundred thousand dead so far worldwide. Several hundred thousand more hospitalized in serious to critical condition. They're estimating that the numbers on both of those are way under actual. Reports coming in are still sketchy."

Bile climbed up Blake's throat. For a moment, she hid her face against Dae's neck, closed her eyes, and breathed. Not just thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Almost a million people were dead. Hadn't they stopped any of the attacks?

"Where is Adila on the treatment?" Daelan asked.

Blake lifted her head. No one was questioning them about the gunshots from the panic room. No one even mentioned that Blake and Daelan had come back without Lillian French.

It was probably clear what had happened. In general, at least. Did they know that she'd been the one to take those shots instead of Daelan? Maybe. If they were wearing the always-on comm devices the Calvers usually used, they'd probably heard the whole thing. The whole conversation. Daelan's offer to let Lillian live. Blake's meltdown afterward.

Six months ago, that might have embarrassed her. Now she was simply glad that she didn't have to explain it to any of them.

"Last I heard, she needed to run a few more trials to be sure the results aren't a fluke," Kindra said. "If they're the same, Cassidy is going to give the findings to Altair to pass to the CDC, the Red Cross, the FDA, and anyone else they think will be able to use it."

"We're just lucky that she was this close to a solution when we pulled her off Etobih-lin," Dru muttered.

"I am not liking the way this is looking." Dru's lips pressed thin and her nose wrinkled. "Even with how much was stopped, the fallout from this is going to be world-changing. Catastrophic."

Stopped. Some of it was stopped then.

Which means that it could have been worse?

That wasn't just terrifying; it was sickening. Unimaginable.

There was a pause then, and whatever Dru read made her face drain of color and her eyes widen. She glanced at Sera and Kindra, her throat shifting convulsively. Neither of them had been looking in Dru's direction, but something about the sudden tension in her body must have caught their well-trained senses; they both tilted their heads in Dru's direction.

"Odira was caught leaving the command post in Los Angeles that Susan Phan had been hiding at. The guards shot her." Dru swallowed again. "A lot. She didn't survive."

Unlike the moment Kindra had learned of Amett's death, this news didn't do more than make her blink.

"Shit," Sera muttered, turning back to the guards. "I wanted to be the one who shot her a lot."

"You know Odira. Never could let anyone else dictate how she did anything." Kindra shook her head. "Not even dying, apparently."

"She only jumped on the Calvers' bandwagon at the end because of Adila." There was a wealth of bitterness in Sera's tone, but not nearly as much as Blake thought Odira Weston deserved. "Guess Auntie Adi was right about her sister."

"It worked in our favor, so don't knock it. Plus, now we don't have to worry about her using Amett's L115 to blow our heads off from a mile away," Kindra said. Then she paused. "Actually, I won't believe she's dead until I see a body. And run a DNA test to make sure the body is actually hers."

"I'd say that's heading into overkill territory, but . . ." Dru shrugged.

"Oooh!" Sera gasped, her eyes lighting up as she turned to her sister. The gun in her hand never wavered. "Speaking of overkill, can I—"

"No." Kindra cut her off with a glare.

Frowning, Sera protested, "But it'll be—"

Kindra growled. "You cannot use her corpse for target practice, Sera!"

"It's probably illegal," Dru added, though why she bothered, Blake wasn't sure. It didn't seem that breaking the law would be much of a deterrent to anyone in the room. Not even Blake.

Sera shook her head. "Not if I took it to a gun range or a body farm first."

Leaving them to argue the legalities of corpse desecration, Blake leaned closer to Dae. "Can we go home yet?"

Nodding slowly, he murmured, "As soon as Altair's guys catch up with us to arrest the guards and clean up the mess, we'll get you back to Baltimore, all right?"

Oh. That wasn't . . . The words had been intended to comfort, Blake assumed, but that hadn't been what she was asking.

Baltimore wasn't what she'd been picturing when she said she wanted to go home. She'd pictured 1920s grandeur tucked away on an island in Detroit. Random houses borrowed for a few hours of sleep. Hotels she couldn't remember the name of even three seconds after they checked in. Training games, sparring rounds, and target practice in basements that looked like padded cells. A group of trained killers who felt safer and more accepting of Blake than any group of civilians she'd ever met.

But she'd been right; the war had ended and now the draftees really were being sent home. At least they'd won first. She thought they'd won, at least.

Was partial victory enough of a victory to call it victory at all?

Whatever this was felt anticlimactic. Maybe because they hadn't stopped everything. Maybe because suddenly, after months of hiding and weeks of fighting for her life, she had to face packing the few things she had and heading back to Baltimore. Maybe because no one in the world would know who she was or how hard she and the others had worked to prevent the looming disaster.

Six months ago she hadn't been able to imagine being anywhere but Baltimore. Now she was having a hard time picturing what it would be like to go back. The city would be the same, but almost everything about her life would be so different. And it didn't seem Daelan would be there to help her adjust to any of it.

Home had come to mean, at least in part, wherever the Calvers were. Wherever Daelan was. Which meant that going back to her old life would mean losing home all over again.

She put on a brave smile and nodded, knowing that no matter how much it sucked, she couldn't and wouldn't ask him to leave his life behind solely because of her. "I'm sure you guys will be busy digging up every one of her buried skeletons. Let me know if you need anyone to stand around holding your shovels."

"We will." Daelan smiled back, but his seemed as fake as hers felt. "C'mon. Let's get this mess sorted out so we can get you home."

Home. Right.

As soon as Blake saw Altair, his uncle had given him the rosary, a gorgeous creation hand-carved from wood and inlaid with silver. The information—everything that had been emailed to Bernard months ago, plus details about the shipments of orchids to Gomin, several international bank account numbers, and a list of addresses that had turned out to be some of Lillian's most-protected safe houses—had been pulled off the flash drive in the base and then deleted, a precaution to make sure it was safe for Blake to carry with him. Since then, the only times it hadn't been in Blake's pocket or around his neck were when he went to shower. It was the last gift he'd ever get from his dad.

It had taken a week after the chaos that had left the planet grieving before Altair and Fayza were able to fix the slight damage Odira had done to the house and install a security system designed by Cassidy. Therefore, it had taken a week before Blake was forced to wave good-bye to the Calvers for what felt like the last time.

But then he'd started unpacking and had found a phone rolled up in his None of the Above shirt, the same phone Cassidy had given him the day of the highway attacks. A short—very short, too short—note had been taped to the screen.

You forgot this. Text me if you need anything, B. My number is programmed in.

♡ Dae

It had made him smile, and it had loosened the band of loss that had wound itself too tightly around his heart. Neither the note nor the phone meant that he'd see the Calvers—see Dae—anytime soon, or ever, but it gave him the hope of a chance. And it gave him proof that what he remembered had actually happened, proof beyond the constant coverage of memorials and manhunts on the news. Proof beyond Blake's twice-weekly chats with a psychologist from the FBI. Positive proof.

You're the one still off trying to save the world, Blake had texted back. YOU text ME if you need something. And stay safe.

Promise, was all he'd responded, but it had been enough. For the moment.

And then real counts of the losses were finally made.

When initial reports flooded in—still only estimates, but much closer at the end of July than they had been initially—the number had shaken the world.

Almost two point four million people had died.

The attacks—which the news had begun calling the Nixfall after they got the name of the weapon—were directly responsible for most of the casualties. Nix had made breathing impossible and shut down victims' bodies one system at a time. A percentage of the losses, however, had occurred during the frenzy that spread across the globe after the Nixfall.

One of the few balms to be found was this: if Lillian's plan had been enacted without what little warning there'd been, the total number of deaths could have been closer to twenty-four million. The vast difference between the possible and actual number was a solace in the weeks that followed the attacks. A small one.

Every government in the world launched an investigation, one that was immediately antagonistic and full of people desperate to throw blame on their enemies. From what Altair told Blake, though, the information the Calvers had gathered and then disseminated about Lillian French was what changed the tone. Throughout the month of August, Blake watched as the world's efforts turned into the most cooperative global manhunt in history. The one time that a corrupt, vindictive leader tried to hinder the investigation, he was shoved out of office so quickly by his own followers and countrymen that no one else attempted to repeat the experiment.

Now, two days after the one-month mark, a day most of the world spent remembering those who had perished in the Nixfall, the governments involved in the investigation and the rebuilding were finally beginning to smoothly coordinate their efforts.

Not that any of this was public knowledge, of course. But most of the public wasn't connected to a family of bodyguard-vigilante-assassins or living with a high-ranking federal agent.

It was nice when Altair was home to share stuff with Blake, but that wasn't often. He'd had been in DC for the past two days. And, for the past week, Daelan hadn't answered Blake's texts with anything more detailed than I'm alive. Talk later.

Since school hadn't started yet, Blake was left practically alone in the Zamans' house—Fayza was home, but she was working whenever her anxiety disorder let her. Today was a good day, and he knew she was behind on projects. He couldn't bother her. Shouldn't. She was struggling enough to get past what had happened—the violation of her home, the kidnapping of her godchild (again), the violence against the world—and her naturally anxious mind had barely let her rest since Blake had first reappeared.

Blake had his own whirlpool of anxiety swirling in his chest, and no bandage could patch what hurt him. No reassurance anyone could give made it any easier to stop jumping every time a door closed or the floorboards in the house creaked. No amount of meditation erased the image of Lillian's blood spreading across the carpeted floor. No aromatherapy or acupressure kept the nightmares away when he went to sleep—when he could sleep at all. No medication his allergies allowed him to take seemed to help with any of it.

He spent more time each day pretending to be okay than he spent breathing.

It was exhausting.

He sat slumped on the couch and flipped listlessly through the TV channels, listening more to Fayza humming a song he didn't recognize than to the babbling newscasters. Then a still from what looked like the presidential address he'd missed yesterday flashed across the screen. Blake had already clicked the button for the next channel, but he went back quickly.

"—and although the investigation remains ongoing, recent announcements by the UN, Interpol, and our own government agencies have confirmed that the Nixfall was not the responsibility of any nation or rebel group." The man at the desk was dark-skinned and massive, broad-shouldered and obviously tall even though he was sitting, but the roundness of his face softened the potential intimidation of his bulk. And there was something trustworthy about his large eyes, and something soothing about his baritone voice. "Officials have, however, refused to release the name of the individual believed to have been almost solely responsible for the heinous act of violence last month, fearing, they said, to make an idol out of a villain."

Good. Blake couldn't help feeling relieved that he wouldn't have to walk into school and have everyone talking about Lillian French. Wouldn't hear her name come up in discussions of politics and war and crime for the rest of his life, either. Blake loved the idea that the woman who had been so fond of invisible power in life would be just as invisible—and, thankfully, far more powerless—in death.

"In her most recent address to the nation, President Elina Vazquez had this to say."

The picture switched to the Lincoln Memorial, where a short, olive-skinned woman with gray-streaked, curly black hair stood, her hands resting on top of the podium in front of her.

"Former President Jimmy Carter once said, 'It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.' I have always believed this to be true, but recent events have proven it beyond any shadow of a doubt in my mind.

"If the world we live in is so precariously balanced that the machinations of an individual can thrust countless nations to the brink of war, then we have a choice: to recognize the peril we're facing and do all we can to fix it, or to follow the destructive path we have been walking until now." She looked over the massive crowd gathered in front of her with resolution in her dark eyes. "I choose transparency, trust, faith, and hope.

"Right now, members of every department in my entire administration are tasked with evaluating the way their offices function, the secrets they keep, and why. Change will be slow and arduous. At times, it may appear not to be happening at all. But we will work to open our doors, to turn our relationships with the other nations of this planet into trusting partnerships that will endure the interference of any person or group who would seek to divide us. It is my hope that leaders worldwide will make the same choice."

The broadcast switched back to the newsroom, back to the anchor with the air of pleasantly trustworthy seriousness in every line of his face. "According to recent statements, an unprecedented month-long gathering of top-level diplomats and officials is scheduled in an undisclosed location during October. Countries that have previously refused to participate in summits of this nature are planning to attend, and in some nations, changes are already being seen. Nations like Russia, Gomin, and North Korea have opened their borders significantly in the wake of this summer's tragic attacks, and they are participating actively in the investigation into the source of the chemical weapon used last month to such devastating effect."

The cell phone sitting on the coffee table buzzed, the rattle of the device harsh against the wood.

Blake jumped, one hand pressing over his thumping heart and the other reaching to his hip for a gun that wasn't there.

His phone buzzed again. Though his breath hitched a little, the second shock was like static electricity compared to a lightning strike.

Two new text messages.

The first one was an address, colored and underlined like it was linked. It was an address in Baltimore.

The second one said, Can you meet me there in an hour? I've got something to show you.

His pulse rose, but this time it wasn't terror quickening the beats. The spot was residential, a neighborhood just north of Johns Hopkins University. A neighborhood where Daelan apparently had something to show him.

It took fifteen minutes to convince Fayza and Altair to let him go. Altair only agreed if Blake was driven there by one of the Bureau's cadets instead of taking the bus or calling a cab. It was a stipulation Blake agreed to quickly. Getting driven by a gun-wielding agent trainee who had been vetted—and possibly threatened—by his uncle was so much more appealing than getting into a car with a stranger.

It took eighteen minutes for the driver to actually pull up in front of Altair's house.

And then it took thirty-seven minutes—not that Blake was counting or anything—for them to traverse the twelve miles between the Zamans' house and the very quaint, quiet neighborhood Daelan's directions had led them to.

Two stories and painted a soft yellow, the Colonial-style house was separated from the rest of the neighborhood by quiet residential streets, creating an island of sorts, one it shared with only one other house. The two of them were spacious and surrounded by lush lawns and fenced-off patio gardens, private and somewhat secluded without being obviously so. Sitting on the street between the two houses were two huge moving trucks, but the men and women unloading furniture and boxes seemed to walk more like soldiers than movers.

One of the guys screamed, "Get a move on, Corporal, you're holding up the line!"

Maybe that guess had been more right than he'd thought.

Hope bloomed in Blake's stomach, but he didn't dare voice any of the thoughts spinning through his mind yet. It was too far-fetched. Impossible, almost.

But then the door opened and Daelan was there, a giddy smile on his face, and the hope Blake had been trying not to let take root was suddenly a full-grown tree. Facing it, Blake felt inexplicably shy. The texts between them had all been so short, almost to the point of impersonal. Blake had thought—had hoped—that maybe Dae was beginning to care about him the same way Blake cared about Daelan. It might've all been adrenaline and stress. Maybe once Blake wasn't around every minute of every day, those feelings had faded for Dae. They hadn't for Blake, but . . .

Dae trotted down the brick steps to the sidewalk, and Blake said good-bye to the agent and then opened the door to meet him, hands shoved in his pockets. "Hey."

Dae didn't stop walking until he'd bodily run into Blake, wrapping his arms around Blake's waist and hugging him so tight that Blake's feet lifted off the ground. Whatever he felt for Blake, at least this hadn't changed.

Closing his eyes, Blake held on to him, breathing in the scent of soap, gun oil, sulfur, and peppermint that always seemed to cling to Dae. Blake hadn't realized that he'd miss the combination until Dae was gone.

Dae pressed a kiss to Blake's cheek, and color rushed to Blake's face. Relief. Embarrassment. Uncertainty. Did that mean what he wanted it to, or was it just an extension of the hug?

Then Dae murmured, "I missed you."

Thank God, one side of Blake's mind sighed in the same instant that the other half screamed, Then why did you leave me alone for weeks? Yes, he'd kept in touch, and yes, he'd offered help if Blake needed it, and yes, he was here now, but he'd still walked away and left Blake utterly unsure if they'd ever see each other in person again. If Daelan ever wanted to see Blake again.

"You knew where to find me," Blake said after a long moment of silence, slowly loosening his hold.

When he pulled away a few inches, Daelan looked contrite. "I know, I'm sorry. There was a lot of mess to clean up and a lot of shit to figure out. And also more than a few federal agencies sniffing around my family. I didn't want to get you and Altair implicated or involved in it any more than you already were."

And there had been plenty of involvement, though Altair had kept Blake out of the worst of it. Hours of debriefings and interviews and a metric ton of suspicion when he couldn't—obviously wouldn't—give them details on the people who had been keeping him out of Lillian's hands since February.

After about ten days of that, the investigators seemed to give up on getting anything useful out of Blake. But maybe they hadn't given up; maybe they'd let him go because they'd found a more direct source of information.

If that was what had happened, why? Talking to government agencies had to have been a huge risk for the Calvers. They might be on the "good" end of the pool of moral grayness, but they were probably still wanted for arrest in a dozen countries for a hundred different crimes.

"You still could've come said hi." Especially if he'd been in town already for longer than a day.

Daelan's lips pulled to the left, guilt in his eyes, and Blake turned away to watch one of the soldier-movers carry a long, unwieldy box up to the front door. Which Geo was holding open. "What's going on?"

"A lot, actually. Come inside and I'll explain." Dae held out his hand, waiting with an adorably hopeful gleam in his eyes.

Still uncertain—but more than a little hopeful himself—Blake intertwined his fingers with Daelan's, following easily when he turned them toward the black front door.

"Did you tell him yet?" Geo asked when they walked into the house, hesitating almost imperceptibly on the pronoun. When he glanced over for confirmation, Blake nodded, smiling to himself at another reminder of how easily these people had accepted everything about him.

But then the rest of Geo's words registered. "Tell me what?"

"He just got here, Geo, damn," Dae grumbled, tugging Blake past the entryway so quickly that he registered only bits and pieces of the house. Golden-brown wood floors. A long room with a wide fireplace to their left, the floor covered by boxes and plastic-wrapped furniture sitting under a gorgeous crystal chandelier. Lots of windows for a flood of natural light.

The stairs Daelan led him up were white with a black railing. Up to the second floor, down a hallway, and then up a separate flight of stairs.

Unlike the rest of this house, this room—technically the attic—was unpacked and organized. The fully finished, comfortably livable room reminded Blake of Altair's attic office in small ways. But instead of a simple office and library, this space more closely resembled the Calvers' usual command and surveillance center. Except none of the monitors displayed video feeds. All of the active screens had what Blake thought might be programming code.

And the room was empty except for Blake and Dae.

"This is kind of the only spot in the house that won't get a lot of foot traffic today," Dae explained as he led Blake toward an overstuffed couch pressed along one wall. "I know you have questions."

"So many I don't know where to start," Blake admitted. "'What have you been doing?' and 'Why does it look like you guys are setting up camp in Baltimore?' are vying for first place."

"One kind of leads into the other, so . . ." Dae sat down sideways on the couch, leaning his back against the armrest and gesturing for Blake to sit between his outstretched legs. Blake was more than happy to slide into that spot, curling up against Daelan's chest and sinking into the warmth of Dae's tight hold when he wrapped his arms around Blake.

"Mom and Dad's goal was to retire into something in the civilian sector once they got rid of Garret, but then Lillian popped up and things got even more complicated."

"'Complicated,'" Blake scoffed.

"Putting it mildly, I know." Daelan rubbed Blake's arm. "So when Lillian was finally taken out of the picture—"

Gunshots in quick succession. Blood seeping through cream-colored silk. A woman sliding down the wall and collapsing onto the floor.

Blake shuddered.

"—they checked every way they could to make sure there wasn't another layer of awful hiding in this mess, and then they started putting their retirement plan into action."

"And their retirement involved Baltimore?" Blake asked, tilting his head to look at Dae.

"Well, no, not originally, but . . ." He shifted and cleared his throat. "Uh, well, my retirement plans started to involve Baltimore."

Blake sat up. "You're retiring? At fifteen?"

"Sixteen now, actually." He smiled, the expression sheepishly apologetic. "My birthday was earlier this month."

"What?" For a long moment, Blake glared at him, irrationally upset that he'd missed Daelan's sixteenth birthday. Swallowing and shaking his head, he forced himself to concentrate on the important issues here. "We'll come back to that later. Retirement?"

"It's not gonna be what you think of when you hear the word. I'm not exactly planning on taking up golf."

"So what does it mean?"

"Trying something new for a while." He shrugged one shoulder and rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing darker. "I, uhh, kind of got into Johns Hopkins for the fall semester."

Blake blinked, barely keeping his jaw from dropping. "The University?"

"No, the hospital," he said, laughing.

"Oh, shut it," Blake said, stifling laughter. "When did you apply to Johns Hopkins? No, wait. When did you graduate high school?"

"He didn't do either."

Blake hadn't heard Cassidy come up the stairs. Her voice made him jump. Luckily, she was reading something on the tablet in her hands, so only Dae noticed the twitch.

"Maybe you can convince him that if he's actually going to try to be a civilian, then hacking into a college to slip himself onto their incoming student list isn't a good way to start."

"Hey—"

Blake broke through Daelan's protest. "You hacked yourself into college?"

After rolling his lips between his teeth for a second, Daelan smiled with obviously feigned innocence. "It seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"When I caught him at it—after I yelled at him for about an hour—we did things a slightly more conventional way. If only slightly." Cassidy sat on one of the burgundy armchairs across from the couch, a proud grin on her face. "We showed up at the school with letters of recommendation from the special agent in charge of the Baltimore FBI office, the CEO of a major international import/export company, and the scientist who discovered the antidote for the most dangerous chemical weapon in the world."

"Altair knew about this?" And the jerk hadn't even hinted at it. Freaking government agents and their freakishly good poker faces!

"He did, and I'm sure he'll be expecting whatever you plan on yelling at him when he gets home," Cassidy said, still smiling. "So the letters got the admissions office's attention, and then we promised that Daelan could pass eight freshman-level CLEP tests."

"Which you then did." Blake didn't bother making it a question.

Daelan answered anyway. "Of course I did."

"What are you going to study?" It seemed the best question to ask at that point, especially while most of his mind was still trying to wrap itself around the fact that he knew someone who was starting college at sixteen.

"Double majoring in psychology and physics." Daelan said it like the combination made any logical sense as a pair. "Applied physics if I can swing it. They technically don't have an undergrad program for that, but their graduate program has an incredible laboratory that works on national security and defense research."

"Oh my God," Blake breathed. "You're going to blow something up in the middle of Baltimore, aren't you?"

"No, definitely not." But Blake didn't trust the smile on his face when he said that. And Cassidy's laughter didn't make him feel any better about the next four years.

"But he did need to be in Baltimore," Cassidy said. "And I'm getting almost completely out of the game to focus on Tru3 v4ult and my other software company. I can do that from anywhere, but Hugo and I are also going to be working with the government to help with relief and cleanup efforts as much as we can. Plus, Hugo got talked into a consultant and trainer gig with the CIA, FBI, and NSA, teaching agents the tricks we used over the years; he needs to be in the DC area."

"So we bought this place." Dae grinned broadly, and there was a hint of laughter in his voice. "And the place next door."

"You bought two houses? What do you guys need two houses for?"

"They seem to think a house is an appropriate engagement gift," Geo said from the stairs. "Which it ain't. Unless you're marrying an Astor or something."

"Who's engaged?" Blake looked at Daelan and then at Geo, who, closely followed by Aaron, crossed to the seating area. Geo held up his left hand and wiggled his be-ringed fourth finger. Gasping, Blake stood up and held out his hand in a silent demand to see the ring. "When did that happen?! This is ridiculous! After months of terrifying insanity, I somehow manage to miss everything fun?"

"A couple days after we dropped you off at Altair's," Geo said, grinning besottedly as he placed his hand in Blake's. "Apparently the ijit has had the rings hidden with him since February."

"Rings?" Blake only saw one ring, and it was gorgeous. The silver-colored band had a row of nine square stones arranged in a rainbow gradient, and it was lined on either side by tiny diamonds. Geo gazed down at the shiny piece with a bright, pleased look on his face.

"I bought that one as a joke." Aaron sighed, looking at his boyfriend—no, fiancé—with amused exasperation. "I didn't think he'd actually wear it."

"Then you need to spend more time with me, because you seem to have forgotten who it was that you were proposin' to, darlin'," Geo said, drawing out his natural drawl. Then he showed Blake the ring on his right hand, slipping it off his fourth finger. "This is the one he meant for serious."

At first glance, this ring was exceedingly simple, but then Blake saw why Geo had taken it off instead of just holding out his hand. Engraved inside the ring—and either oxidized or dyed black to make the design clearer—was the symbol of the Marine Corps and a date several years old, expressed in the military's abbreviated day-month-year format. When he looked up at Geo, he didn't even have to ask the question.

"Date we met in boot," Geo explained with a glance at Aaron, who seemed to be trying very hard not to blush. "'Cause he likes to pretend it ain't true, but he's a sappy, sentimental bastard."

Aaron rolled his eyes, but didn't even try to deny the claim.

"You guys are really getting married?" Grinning, Blake gave back the ring, and Geo moved to sit on the arm of the second chair next to Aaron. "And moving to Baltimore?"

"The wedding won't be for a while," Aaron cautioned. "A year at least. And technically only he's moving to Baltimore, since I have to rejoin my unit in two weeks. I'll be gone for a while yet."

Blake smiled wider as he sat next to Dae again. "Still a Marine, then, huh?"

The relief on Aaron's face was obvious when he said, "Magically, yes."

"Turns out having a hand in saving most of the world from poisoning, war, and possible annihilation makes the Corps very happy to drop AWOL charges," Geo said. "And goin' AWOL for a sister who eventually wins the Secretary of Defense Medal for Valor don't hurt neither."

"I'd heard about that." Blake felt like it might be the only unsurprising piece of information he'd been handed since he got here. Jenna Tanvers had received the civilian award, and Blake had accepted both the FBI Medal of Valor and the FBI Memorial Star on behalf of his father. "I know it doesn't make it any better that she's gone, but I'm glad people are going to know what she tried to do and why she died."

That was the little bit of comfort he got every time he looked at the medals displayed in a shadow box on his bedroom wall. Right next to the shadow box with his mother's medals and the folded flag they'd given his father and him at her funeral years ago.

But, nice or not, it wasn't something Blake liked thinking about. And Aaron looked like he might be wishing for a change of subject too.

"So, what about Adila, Kindra, Dru, and Sera?" It hadn't slipped by Blake that in all the talk of the future in Baltimore, they hadn't been mentioned anywhere. And he'd yet to see them, either.

"Adila is working with a select group—CDC, Homeland, hell, maybe even DARPA—in Arlington to explain the work she did on Nix and on the antidote. As for the girls, well . . . they're not quite ready to play civilians," Cassidy admitted, her expression turning rueful. "And, I wish it was otherwise, but the aftermath of the Nixfall is going to last a long time. There are going to be some massive changes on the global stage, and humanity doesn't have a history of accepting change well. The world will still need people to do what we did for a while yet."

"So they're taking over the family business? Alone?" Blake knew that the Westons and the Calvers had both operated with only four- or five-member teams for years, but it was hard for him to imagine how any team that small could ever pull a job off without backup.

"We'll help when they need it," Daelan said blithely, the same way Blake might announce his willingness to loan a friend ten dollars. "Most jobs aren't anything like what we had to do to hunt down Garret and Lillian. Three people is more than enough ninety percent of the time."

Enough to do what, exactly? Blake wanted to ask, but also didn't want to know. He had enough bloodshed in his head already, and he wasn't ready to picture the girls off in the world causing more.

Geo opened his mouth and—

Crash.

"I'm okay!" someone immediately shouted through the house. One of the soldier-movers, it sounded like. "Nothing broke!"

"I told you we should have sat Keller's klutzy ass in a corner and made him inventory shit or something," Geo grumbled as he surged off the arm of the chair and jogged for the stairs. "We recruited from my old squad. I know these guys. You should listen when I tell you one of them can't walk and blink at the same time!"

Aaron was only a couple steps behind him. "Yeah, fine. You can be the one to give him that job, and we'll see how long you resist that kicked-puppy look he pulls."

"Bet you an actual puppy I can do it," Geo said as they descended.

"Like you aren't gonna go pick up a rescue anyway as soon as I ship out," Aaron retorted. "I'll probably come home to a whole damn wolf pack in my living room."

"Our living room, darlin'," Geo corrected.

Laughing softly, Cassidy stood as well and moved to the opposite side of the coffee table, closer to Blake and Dae. "I'm ordering lunch for everyone in a minute. You're staying, Blake, right?"

With a glance at Daelan, Blake nodded.

"Good! Remind me—you're allergic to peanuts, wheat, shellfish, and . . .?"

"That's it for food," Blake assured her.

"So we're covered! Excellent. It'll probably be here in about forty-five minutes." Then Cassidy leaned down and kissed the top of Blake's head. "It's good to see you, sweetheart. I'm sorry that everything took so long. We wanted to get back to you sooner."

Blake smiled, more than willing to forgive all faults. "I never thought you guys settling down here was an option! That would make up for a lot worse than only communicating through vague texts for a while."

"We'll be here at least for a few years," Cassidy said. "But there's time to figure out the details later. Lunch first."

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and started tapping at the screen as she headed downstairs.

Blake heaved a long sigh and relaxed back, tucking himself under Dae's chin. "I honestly wasn't sure I'd ever see you guys again." Not looking into Daelan's eyes made that a little easier to admit. "I would have been constantly worried if I hadn't had that phone. So, you know, thanks for that at least?"

"I'm sorry and you're welcome." He tightened his arms around Blake and rested his cheek against the top of Blake's head. "I knew you'd worry, but it was so much safer for you with Altair. We weren't in the same place for more than a couple days, and we still had some of Lillian's goons after us, and you'd been away from Altair and Fayza so long that—"

"I know. And you're right. They needed me home. Especially Fayza. She checked on me every few minutes for the first few days, and— I mean, I can understand why she . . ." Blake cut himself off, shuddering and hiding his face against Dae's chest, and slid his arms into the small space between Daelan's lower back and the couch. "Too many people I care about have died on me, Daelan. And it always happens after I haven't heard from them for days. Just . . . thank you for keeping in touch and making sure I knew you were alive."

Daelan gently ran his hands up and down Blake's back, the touch easing some of Blake's lingering worry. "I can't promise I'll never have to disappear and stay off the grid for a while, but I'll try to at least warn you when I'm dropping out of contact for a few days."

"It's all I can ask," Blake muttered. It was what his father used to do too.

There was a pause then that Blake didn't know how to fill. He had questions about the investigation into Lillian's organization, the potential fallout for Gomin, the repercussions for the world, the antidote Adila had finally discovered, what Daelan would do with those degrees when he graduated, and a hundred other things, but instead he asked, "Are we dating?"

Underneath him, Dae stilled. For a moment, he wasn't even breathing. Then he laughed—the sound a little nervous—and asked, "Do you want to be?"

"It would be kind of cool to be able to go back to school and tell my friends I'm dating a guy in college."

At that Daelan really did laugh. "Think they'll be disappointed when they meet me, then? If you tell them that, they'll probably be expecting someone who looks closer to Aaron's age."

"You wouldn't mind meeting them?" Blake asked, ignoring the ridiculousness of Daelan's question. The guy was gorgeous—just as gorgeous as Aaron—and no one in their right mind would be disappointed to meet him. Then he poked the pretty boy in the stomach. "And you haven't answered my question."

"I don't exactly know what to say to normal teenagers, but yes, I want to meet your friends. Of course I do." He squeezed Blake and kissed the top of his head. His forehead. He leaned over and—upside-down—kissed the tip of Blake's nose. "And, yes, to answer your question. Since you seem to be okay with the idea, we are absolutely dating. I've never actually done that before, though. You're gonna have to tell me how this is supposed to work."

"We're screwed," Blake said, deadpan. "I've never done it before either."

"Good." Daelan smiled and gently urged Blake to sit up. "Then you won't know when I mess up something small."

"That's what you think," Blake teased, turning and settling astride Dae's lap.

Instead of answering, Daelan cupped the back of Blake's head and tugged him closer. Oh. Were they about to kiss? It made sense that that would be the next step, right? They had just declared they were dating. And sitting like this did imply something more than cuddling, if everything he'd seen in movies and from his friends was right. But as the inches between them vanished, Blake still couldn't decide if he wanted a kiss.

Then Dae brought his lips to Blake's cheek and rested his forehead against Blake's temple. "Are you really okay?"

Exhaling heavily, Blake closed his eyes. "I don't know yet. Is it really over?"

"Lillian? I think so." He traced the line of Blake's ear with his fingertip, nudging aside the curls Blake had decided to let grow back. "There always seems to be someone else to step into this kind of a vacancy, but we're all hoping that even those people will be scared off by what Lillian did and stay to the sidelines for a long while."

"And hoping someone else steps up to stop them next time, too?" Blake could let himself believe that was the case, but he'd seen how the Calvers worked. Retirement or no, he had very little faith in the delusion that the whole family wouldn't risk everything if another Lillian French showed up. They were like Blake's parents that way.

They were like superheroes.

Blake kissed Dae's neck and then rested his head on Dae's shoulder. The embrace was comfortable, and it made Blake a little giddy to think that he had somehow come through this mess and was dating this guy. Daelan Calver—ex–vigilante-bodyguard and certifiable genius, with certifiable easily shifting meanings if necessary.

It was just a pity that Blake's parents would never get the chance to meet Dae.

The next few years probably wouldn't be as heart-poundingly exciting as the last few months had been; that didn't mean they'd be any less interesting. If he knew Daelan and the others at all—which he couldn't honestly claim to yet, but he thought he was starting to—then the years to come would likely be even more interesting than everything that had happened since Daelan came flying through the kitchen window in Providence.

More jokes and fewer death threats.

More movie nights and fewer evil villains.

More chance to heal the world and less people getting hurt.

More cuddling and far less chaos.

And, really, that sounded so much better to him.

Blake had lived with superheroes before, lived with them and loved them and lost them both. He thought that taking the risk again might be worth it with the Calvers. With Daelan. Blake had even become one of those people for a moment, and he was settling into the realization that, yes, he was capable of doing what his parents had done. What the Calvers did.

A while back, Dae had asked if Blake would follow his parents' paths. It hadn't been likely before, but now there was so much work that needed to be done. Damage that needed to be fixed. It would be risky in so many ways.

But since, as a general rule, life tended to bring with it the constant danger of unexpected death, he didn't think that the risk of death was ever a good enough reason to stop living.

In fact, it was exactly the right reason to start.

Revisit book one of the Assassins series, Discord. www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/assassins-discord

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Assassins

Discord

The Ryogan Chronicles

Island of Exiles (February 2017)

The Dream War Saga

Sing Sweet Nightingale

Deadly Sweet Lies

Laguna Tides, with Lani Woodland

Taken by Chance

Loyalty and Lies

Dealing with Devalo (coming soon)

Erica is many things but most notably the following: writer, reader, editor, dance fan, choreographer, singer, lover of musical theater, movie obsessed, sucker for romance, Florida resident, and quasi-recluse. She loves the beach but hates the heat, has equal passion for the art of Salvador Dalí and Venetian Carnival masks, has a penchant for unique jewelry and sun/moon décor pieces, and a desire to travel the entire world on a cruise ship. Or a private yacht. You know, whatever works.

In addition to the Assassins series, she is also the coauthor of the Laguna Tides novels as well as the author of The Dream War Saga and the upcoming Ryogan Chronicles. You can learn more about her books at ByEricaCameron.com.

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