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  Sam heard an abbreviated wail, like someone cut off a siren, and car doors slamming. Oh, Jesus, he wasn’t joking. He’d actually called in the Cavalry.

  She didn’t want this to be adversarial. She rubbed her hands together absently, a small comfort, strained to hear the conversation happening in her foyer. She couldn’t, the voices were pitched low.

  A moment later, two women came into the kitchen with Fletcher. The younger of the two had blond hair in a ponytail and dark glasses; the older was a striking redhead who Sam could immediately tell was running the show.

  Fletcher did the introductions. “Dr. Samantha Owens, this is Special Agent in Charge Andrea Bianco, with the JTTF, and Inez Cruz, my assistant. Now, speak.”

  Sam was reminded of the first time she spoke to Fletcher, just a few months before, when he’d answered his phone in the same gruff way, and she’d immediately barked to loosen the tension. That wasn’t going to work this time, she could tell.

  The Bianco woman shot Fletcher a look, then stuck out her hand and approached Sam civilly.

  “Forgive my colleague, Dr. Owens. He needs some more sleep. It’s nice to meet you. Would you mind if we shared your coffee? It smells delicious.”

  Disarming, charming, collected. Everything Fletcher currently wasn’t.

  Sam shook the woman’s hand. “Of course. I’ll make a fresh pot, there’s only a cup left.”

  “Excellent. While you do that, would you mind giving me the lay of the land?”

  The woman was as sweet as pie. She sat down primly at the kitchen table, motioned for her subordinates to do the same. Sam could tell Fletcher was still steamed, but he sat as well, glowering at her.

  Sam explained Xander’s thoughts while she made a fresh pot of coffee. Bianco didn’t interrupt, just listened with her head slightly cocked to one side. The younger girl, Inez, took copious notes.

  When she was finished, Bianco nodded. “Any reason you didn’t share this with us last night?”

  Sam was half tempted to say, I tried, but Fletcher didn’t answer his phone until seven o’clock this morning, but she recognized a chance to perhaps calm his rage, so she just filled the woman’s coffee cup and said, “I called Fletch as soon as I got up this morning.”

  She tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t looking at her. She did notice his shoulders drop, though, some tension dissipating and thought, See, I’m your friend, even if you aren’t mine.

  “I understand. Can you tell me when your gentlemen friend—you said his name is Alexander Whitfield, correct?”

  “That’s right. He’s called Xander. With an X.”

  “Excellent. Do you have any idea where Xander with an X might have gone?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t. I swear it.” She showed her the note. “I wouldn’t hold back on this if I knew. I understand just how important this information could be. I also know that Xander is a highly trained operative who wouldn’t want the government’s time wasted on a wild-goose chase. That’s why he’s gone to do the legwork himself.”

  Bianco smiled. She had a nice smile, seemingly friendly and open. Like a pit viper. Sam immediately distrusted the woman.

  “I can appreciate that sentiment, Dr. Owens. But unfortunately, now we must try to find your Xander so he doesn’t get himself hurt. So I’m afraid we’re going to have to take you into custody while we start our search. Just...informally.”

  Sam glared at Fletcher, who was staring hard at his right shoe. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Yes, I believe it is. All of my resources are at the JTTF, not here in this townhouse. It’s more convenient for me, you see, if you join us there, rather than us trying to set up shop here, waiting for word. As a medical examiner, you’ve been involved in investigations before. I daresay you understand. We’ll have your phone rerouted to your cell, too, just in case.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  Bianco stood, motioned to her team. She gave Sam another one of her beatific smiles. “There’s no need for that now, is there? You’ll come with us and cooperate because it’s the right thing to do, because you’re a patriot who wants to see the bad people punished, correct? We wouldn’t want to have to put cuffs on you and let you sit in a cell while we tear apart your life and tap your phones and freeze all of your accounts indefinitely. That’s so messy, and such a load of mind-numbing paperwork. Then again, that’s why we have assistants, isn’t it? Inez, are you up for a challenge today?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl said smartly.

  Sam’s bluff had officially been called. She sighed.

  “Let me get my bag.”

  Chapter 16

  For many years, he eschewed all forms of technology in his personal life, basking in his Luddism. He didn’t have a television or a computer. He built his bombs and cooked his juice by perfect recall of books he’d read in the library. They were wrong, those amoral creatures who spent their time staring at computer screens, rewiring their brains into hyperinflated mush. To waste your mind was a sin, one of the many he saw committed day in and day out, carelessness and selfishness and greed stamped on their foreheads like so much chattel as they shopped and chatted and commented and simpered and swooned.

  What a waste his society had become.

  He got his news the old-fashioned way, in letters, and from the shortwave radio he kept in the barn, away from the girl, so she wouldn’t be tainted. He needed to keep her clean, to keep her unsullied. Her mother was a perfect example of what the slow march of technology could do to a person. Once unsullied herself, pure and clean and beautiful in her homespun, she was a beauty to behold. And she’d chosen him. Him.

  They’d been married in the custom of their people, with the full and complete will of each individual bound in a collective spirit, no license needed, no priest, just the acknowledgment of their love and the dispersion of property from one parent to a spouse. Like it was supposed to be. And after, she’d lain with him, and he’d found the true glory of life. He found himself hurrying through his chores so he could return to the house and blow out the candle, take her to his bed. Shirking his duties, never, but finding ways to make them go faster, to be more efficient. Then he began coming home for lunch, and filling himself both with her food and her body.

  It must be a sin, the pleasure, because he was not single-minded in his objective. The delights of procreation perhaps outstripped his beliefs. But his faith said to be fruitful and multiply, and he obeyed with tireless drive. Since he enjoyed it so much, more the better.

  When she had fallen with child he had never been so proud. He’d created life. More than cultivating vegetables, and husbandry with the animals, and the high, wide stalks of corn in the fields—he had created a different kind of life, through his love and his joy and his gratification.

  They were at last content.

  And then it all went to hell.

  She was a small woman, and begged to have the child in a hospital, where it would be safe, fearing the wilds and the vagaries of chance. He dismissed that notion out of hand; he knew plenty about birth, he’d been shepherding his flock into existence his entire life. There was no need for strangers to handle the delivery, he could do it himself. He studied the books and relayed the information to her at night. She was resistant to the idea. She actually fought back, told him no. She would not allow it.

  As her husband, he was her lord and creator. She had no right to disagree, to disobey.

  She did not obey.

  When she was six months pregnant, she disappeared.

  Six months after that he found her. She was living in the most wretched city in the world, and the child was not with her. He watched her for days, trying to discern what she’d done with his babe, the rage and fear and anger building in him to the point where he thought he would burst.

  He began to despair, f
earing the child had been lost after all. So he went to her and knocked on her door, and when she opened it she screamed in fear and tried to slam it shut, but he stuck his heavy shoe in the crack, and pushed with his fists, and the door opened wide before him, and she cowered on the couch while he asked her where their child was.

  When she revealed their daughter was with strangers, he beat her senseless, and then started his most important journey. The mother was of no consequence to him anymore. It was his progeny he wanted.

  Adoption.

  That word shrank his soul.

  He was a big man, strong, intimidating. It took little time to establish the child’s new home, in West Virginia, a small mining town, with small people. Took less time to release the child from her bonds, and return her to her proper place.

  He named her Ruth, for his mother. The obedient one.

  Whither thou goest, I will go.

  They’d left the group when she was three, because he felt it was time for them to be on their own. He built their camp by hand: the cabin, the stable, the work shed, the fields. And they lived happily in the mountains, eating the food he caught and grew, being entertained by books from the library in the town forty miles away. He educated her himself.

  And Ruth grew older, and began to look exactly like her mother.

  And hatred grew in his soul. He fought it—the commandments were clear on this, love thy neighbor as thyself—but he couldn’t stem the tide. It built until it flowed over and he felt he had no choice, no recourse, other than to fulfill its destiny.

  The release he felt at this decision made him realize that this was the path he was supposed to follow, and if he were successful, the hatred would dim, and the child’s mother would join him, and they could raise their child in peace.

  In peace.

  But to create that peace, he must first remove the impediments, and there would be death to those who wronged him.

  So he prayed for forgiveness from his God, bought a small, third-hand laptop computer, enrolled in a community college class and embraced technology, for it would mean he could fulfill his plan while staying home to educate his daughter. The one piece of him that mattered.

  Now, he watched the fallout of his actions online, and reveled in his power. He hadn’t planned to do more than scare the people, and eliminate the ones in his way, but the pleasure of seeing his actions discussed everywhere he turned was more than he could have hoped. The plan had been executed perfectly, the diversion laid in, and no one had a clue where to look for answers. It was a masterful performance.

  He knew his compatriots would be discussing it. The people he’d left had a website now, openly discussing their lifestyle. Idiots. He went to the site and sure enough, there they were, talking about him.

  He cruised through the other sites he frequented, before trying to get in to the one he really enjoyed, the supersecret quiet site. He’d been given the password, emailed to him on an anonymous Yahoo.com address he used when he needed a log-in and password.

  It was his favorite place. He knew he was among like-minded individuals. He sometimes felt like they were talking to him directly. Giving him ideas. Allowing his already rampant imagination to flow. He could do anything, be anyone, when he was within its confines. It made giving up his hatred of technology worth it. They were his friends.

  The site was embedded within another, an ingenious hack that the website owner had no idea was there. You had to know where to click on the picture to open the portal to the private site. He clicked the eye of the smiling woman and waited for the log-in box to pop up, but nothing happened.

  He tried again, switching eyes, trying the nostril, the mouth. Nothing.

  The site must have gone down.

  The first edges of worry started to gnaw at him. Why did they disappear? What had driven them away? Unless...the government jackboots had figured it out and gotten into the site. That could be problematic; he had perhaps made one slight little mention of his plan there, not looking for accolades, but to share in their fervor. To fit in. He was getting lonely, just he and the girl in the woods. He’d thought about returning to his group, but they’d been rather adamant when he left that he was not welcome back. Ruth they’d be happy to take in, but not him.

  He closed the laptop. Worry fled, and anger took its place.

  They were keeping him out on purpose. The site wasn’t down, they’d moved, and made sure he couldn’t track them.

  Anger was a sin. He fought it, pushed it down in his gut where it wouldn’t assail him, turning him black with rot, but it was no use. The blackness consumed him.

  There was only one thing left to do then. Reach out in person, with a message especially for them. And he knew exactly how to get their attention. They wanted something to talk about? He’d give it to them.

  Chapter 17

  Denver, Colorado

  Alexander Whitfield

  The plane’s wheels touched down with a juddering impact, and the engines wailed in protest at their violent juxtaposition, reversed to help the screaming bird land and stop before running out of runway and plunging into the prairie land below. Xander had always liked landing. He liked takeoffs, too, but the feeling of 400,000 pounds of metal being slung at the flattened earth and stopping on a dime was especially fun.

  They taxied for a few minutes, and he looked out the window toward the mountains of his childhood and felt a great peace stealing through his system. It was good to be home.

  He grabbed his bag from the overhead bin and exited the plane, back ramrod straight. Some things he couldn’t let go of, his posture and physical fitness only two of many pieces of him the Army still owned.

  Sam must be beside herself with fury at him. He didn’t particularly want to call, but he’d be in much worse trouble if he waited.

  In the terminal, he spied a Blue Mountain coffee shop. He would take his chances. A steaming cup of coffee, a banana, a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water refueled him, and he tossed his trash and started out of the terminal. Once he got into the open air, then he’d call her. Not before. Too many eyes and ears around at airports. Too many opportunities for his words to be overheard, misinterpreted, misconstrued.

  The air outside the terminal was thin and warm, but he could feel the promise of coolness underneath the easterly thermal flow, the slipstream over the mountains whisking the breeze off the tops of the highest still snow-covered peaks. They’d had a late spring here, with a walloping storm that dumped six feet on the fifteenth of May. Those late-spring storms made him nostalgic; born on the last day of April, he couldn’t remember a birthday that didn’t see the bluebells and larkspurs in the pasture shivering under a thick coating of white.

  He got on the rental car bus, went through the indignities expected of him, signed his life away in triplicate, retrieved his vehicle, a Ford Explorer, and once inside the vehicle and out of the garage, flipped open his phone.

  A relieved-sounding Sam answered on the first ring. His initial assessment was correct, she was hopping mad.

  “Where in the name of hell are you? You’ve been MIA for hours.”

  “Hi, honey.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, don’t ‘Hi, honey’ me, Xander. You left me in deep shit here. Where are you?”

  “What kind of deep shit?”

  He heard her swallow, then her tactic changed. Her voice calmed. “I need to know where you are. Things didn’t exactly go as planned this morning.”

  “Fletcher wasn’t pleased with you, I take it?”

  “He’s fine with me, it’s you he’s furious at. Come on, Xander, no more games. They hauled me down to the JTTF. They aren’t messing around.”

  Shit. He was hoping for more time.

  “Is that where you are right now?”

  “Yes. Now, please. Will you just play ball so I c
an go home?”

  Damn it.

  “I’ll call you later, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He flipped off the phone, quickly disassembled it. They couldn’t have traced it that quickly, but all they had to do was get paper from his cell company to see where the call came from. He was going to have to work fast. Without the battery they wouldn’t be able to nail it down better than that last call. So they’d see he was in Colorado, but nothing more.

  He pointed the car toward the mountains, and drove. If his hunch played out, he’d be golden. If not, then he’d face the music. He felt like hell lying to Sam, but it was only to keep her safe, nothing more, nothing less. He just needed a few more hours.

  That fool Fletcher must have strong-armed her into telling him everything, playing on their friendship to get more than their planned statements out of her.

  Well, no matter. Another couple of hours and he’d be where he was heading, and start stalking his prey. Then together they’d be able to quietly and quickly nail the son of a bitch who thought he could terrorize the nation.

  Chapter 18

  Washington, D.C.

  Dr. Samantha Owens

  The JTTF was surprising, to say the least. Having been in multiple law enforcement headquarters, Sam was impressed with their setup. Technologically advanced, for sure. A wide cross section of people from all walks of law enforcement, young and determined, old and grizzled. And they had decent coffee, though she’d had so much caffeine by this point that her hands were starting to shake.

  She was loosely under watch at Fletcher’s desk. He was sitting next to her, and vibrating with anger still. She hung up the phone and glanced at him.

  “He won’t tell me where he is.”

  Fletcher snarled at her. “That’s some man you’ve got there, Sam. Willing to let his woman stay in custody rather than share his whereabouts and whatever idiotic plan he has in mind.”