A burning chill twisted through Ryder’s gut. It wasn’t panic. He was too disciplined to allow emotions to override his mission. More like dread. How many times in the early days of the war had he led his men into dark pits as they scoured the caves of Paktika for Bin Laden? Every single time, he’d been certain it would be his last.
He’d left part of his soul behind in those dark crevices that devoured all light and life. Had barely dragged himself and his squad home again.
Other men had nightmares filled with blood and bombs, shrapnel, limbs flying, innocents and friends alike shredded...not Ryder, although he’d seen his fair share. No, it wasn’t the blood that haunted Ryder, even all these years later. It was the black, where the greatest enemy you faced was the fear you’d carried in with you.
His captor yanked him forward toward the dark, gaping mouth of the mine.
Into the black once again
, he thought, the words accompanied by the trees sighing in the wind. He’d barely escaped the first time.
This time, would it finally kill him?
<<<>>>
I OPENED MY
eyes to bright sunlight streaming through a set of tall windows. Definitely not my apartment. I blinked, surprised I didn’t have the scratchy dry eyes I usually had after a fugue. None of the cottonmouth or body aches either. In fact, I felt amazingly refreshed.
Then I realized. I was still in Daniel’s room, on his bed. Had I been there all night? I turned my head. I was alone on the bed. Where had he gone? Maybe my brain was more blurry than I realized.
“Morning, doc.” Flynn appeared at my side, dressed head to toe in black as always. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Good. What happened to Daniel?”
She frowned at my question. “Daniel?”
“Where is he?”
“He’s in his room. Where else would he be?”
As I blinked, the light shifted and I realized the wallpaper wasn’t the muted blue of Daniel’s room, but rather a pale peach. And the bed that a moment ago had looked exactly like Daniel’s was now a simple cherry—instead of heavy, dark oak—with elegant lines and Queen Anne-style curves.
“I could have sworn...”
“You gave us a scare, sleeping so long,” Flynn continued, sounding happier than I’d ever heard her. “Dr. Louise said it was a good thing, though.”
Why wasn’t she interrogating me for answers? Demanding any information that might help Esme or the other children? Unless... “Esme? The children?”
“Fine. They’re all fine.” A strange look crossed over her face. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m not sure—I can’t remember,” I stammered. “Daniel was about to give me...” My mind stuttered. The answers were right there, but I couldn’t quite grasp them.
“You really don’t remember?”
I tried to sit up but could barely support my weight on my hands to push myself upright. That’s when I realized I couldn’t feel my legs. Panic surged through me like an electrical shock.
Flynn reached around my torso and shifted my position with practiced movements. Then she pressed a button to raise the head of the bed. It wasn’t a regular bed. It was a hospital bed with a special mattress designed to prevent stasis ulcers.
I fought to keep my terror from my voice. “What happened?”
“I’m going to call Dr. Louise.” She turned to leave, but I grabbed her.
Or rather, I tried to grab her, wanted to grab her arm. Instead, my hand flapped across the space separating us, fingers clumsily closing around her wrist but without enough strength to actually hold her in place.
“No. Tell me.”
“After you visited Daniel, while you were inside him, your blood pressure shot up—from the PXA, Dr. Louise said. You had a stroke. When you woke up, you were fine except you were paralyzed.”
“That was last night?”
She shook her head, glancing at the windows. For the first time, I noticed they were open. The trees beyond were green, the air scented with lilacs. “No. That was four months ago.”
“Then why can’t I remember?” Had I had another stroke while I slept? “Did I have trouble with my memory after the stroke?”
“No. Angie—” Her eyes went wide. “You did it. You brought back the cure. The kids are saved because of you.”
I frowned so hard it strained my muscles. “No. Daniel never—” I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t remember him giving me the cure. I don’t remember leaving him, waking up.” My voice rose, pitched up like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “I don’t remember any of it.”
She patted my arm. So unlike Flynn who was always ready with a weapon but never with reassurance or comfort. “I’ll get Dr. Louise. She’ll sort all this out for you.”
I watched her leave, wondering where Devon and Ryder were. At work, I assumed. And if Esme was cured, she’d be back at school.
I focused on my feet, straining to move them, to get the slightest twitch. Nothing. That’s when I noticed the wheelchair waiting beside the bed. It looked brand new, as if it’d never been used—not even a butt crease in the cushion. Had I been trapped here in a bed for four months?
My energy spent, I flopped back against the pillows and closed my eyes against the sunshine. What else had I lost while I slept? I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. If it really was April, I should have been long dead, killed by my fatal insomnia.
Yet, here I was...but I had no idea what sort of life I’d woken to.
TYRONE’S MEN HAULED
open the metal gate guarding the entrance to the mine and escorted Ryder and Grey inside. Ryder scoured the area for weapons, cover, alternative exits. Anything to give them an advantage when they made their move.
The entrance was a wide cavern carved from the rock. Several more lanterns were arranged on makeshift sawhorse tables, illuminating the space in wide swaths of shadow and light. Pebbles of shale and coal crunched underfoot, echoing off the ragged rock face that made up the walls and ceiling. Water dripped and dribbled along the front wall in rusty-gray streaks, leaving puddles in its wake. The smell was a strange mixture of fresh water, moldy wood, and rusted metal, making Ryder’s nose wrinkle.
The right-hand side of the antechamber was filled with the remnants of a structure built into the cavern wall and partially caved in by a rock fall. He made out a timber doorway, twisted beneath the weight of the collapse. On the opposite side of the cavern stood a similar, fairly intact structure—he wasn’t sure if it qualified as a room or a building, since half its walls were the native rock, but it also had a roof and windows—with a sign over the door in faded stencil letters, reading:
HOSPITAL
. The rear section of the chamber was cloaked in darkness, but he made out the faint gleam of metal scaffolding extending overhead.
“Tyrone, Tyrone,” Grey said in a disapproving tone, ignoring his guard to saunter over to the nearest table, peering down at the papers scattered over it. “Up until now you’ve been so careful. But killing a federal agent and a police detective? Reckless.”
“Who said anything about killing anyone?” Tyrone answered. He moved to roll up the set of building plans and nodded to the guard to escort Grey away from the table.
Ryder stayed where he was, motionless, hoping his guard would ignore him and pay attention to the conversation between the others, give him time to formulate a plan. So far, what he saw wasn’t giving him many ideas short of a suicide mission. Too soon to think that way.
Grey turned to face Tyrone. “Don’t play coy with me. I know you too well.”
“Then you know we do not kill randomly. That’s not what we’re about.”
“What do you want with us?”
“Information. And time, that’s all.”
“If it’s answers you’re looking for, the first one I’ll give you for free. Ask me how many men are closing in on you right now.” Grey’s chest puffed out with bravado. “Go ahead. Between the federal, county, and state SWAT teams, I think we were up to forty operators, weren’t we, Detective?”
Ryder played along and nodded, plastering a smug smile on his face. “Forty-two, to be exact. Seven six-man teams. Not counting support units, of course.”
“Right.” Grey shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the restraints securing his hands behind his back. “So now’s your chance. Surrender, cooperate. You have my personal guarantee that you’ll get the best deal possible.”
For a moment, Ryder actually thought Grey’s bluff had worked. He had no idea how large Grey’s team was, but sooner or later they’d track them here. Just a matter of buying time.
Tyrone glanced at each of his men in turn. Then he smiled. It was the kind of smile seldom glimpsed on a person. It reminded Ryder of the stained glass at St. Tim’s, portraits of a benevolent martyr beaming down at the men preparing to kill him. A smile not shadowed by fear, but rather, illuminated by private, secret knowledge and unshaken faith.
“Nice try,” Tyrone said. He took the GPS tracker from his pocket, held it up against the lantern light before dashing it to the ground at Grey’s feet, where it bounced against the rocks and chips of coal. “Not exactly government issue. Which, I’m guessing, means no warrant or authorization.”
Ryder clenched his jaw tight before he could show any dismay. If Tyrone was right, then Grey had played him—there was no backup on the way, no rescue coming. He focused on Grey, trying to read the agent.
Grey’s lips thinned, but he kept silent. Tyrone didn’t seem to be expecting an answer. He drummed the rolled-up papers against his thigh, pacing away from Grey as if thinking. After a few steps, he whirled back, paused for dramatic effect, conveniently situated so the harsh light from the lantern was at his back, creating a halo effect. Whatever Tyrone’s background, it had definitely included acting experience, Ryder decided.
“But I don’t need to guess. Because,” he slid a phone from his pocket, waggled it before Grey before tossing it onto the nearest table, “we’ve heard everything.”
Shit. Ryder hated when the bad guys used law enforcement tactics. Cloning a subject’s phone and switching it out with one equipped with an omnidirectional microphone was a tried-and-true method of planting a bug while also collecting a phone’s data.
“Which means you have nothing to bargain with, Special Agent. I already know all I need to know about you and the lack of trust your supervisors have placed in the case you’ve been trying to build against me. But, your friend here...” Tyrone approached Ryder, still drumming the papers in that nerve-racking rhythm. “You, sir, you interest me. I can’t wait to get you talking.”
<<<>>>
TOMMASO LAZARETTO MIGHT
have been a brilliant scientist, but his skills as a criminal were no match for Devon’s. He ferreted out Tommaso’s hiding place within minutes: one of the cartons of specimen jars had creases on the cardboard lid where it had been repeatedly folded open, but the top layer of jars was intact. Once Devon lifted them out, below the cardboard separator was a video camera, collapsible tripod, laptop, and cell phone.
He smiled as he repacked the box. “If he’d taken a few out of the top, I might have missed it,” he told Ozzie as they retired with their bounty back through the maze of corridors.
Ozzie wagged his tail at Devon’s genius. It was a tiny, insignificant triumph, nothing compared to the forces they faced, but Devon would take it. He tried to stay positive around the others, talking about defeating their enemy and taking the fight to them, never surrendering, but it was all bullshit—and he was pretty sure everyone else saw through it as well.
“Like Dmitry always said, it’s not good intentions that pave the road to hell, but denial.” Ozzie liked that one as well, nodding his head at Devon’s borrowed wisdom. Of course, it sounded better in Dmitry’s Russian and after several shots of vodka.
They passed the corridor leading to the hospital incinerator, heat and the smell of burning oil wafting from behind the closed metal doors, and then finally moved back into the tunnels. Devon breathed easier once the doors locked behind him. He searched out the cameras Flynn had placed and waved so as to not alarm the parents she had set to watch them.
Another corridor, this one lined floor to ceiling with shelves on both sides, and then two sets of fire doors, both with new locks Devon had added to create an inner security perimeter. Now they entered the heart of the tunnel complex—room upon room that Devon hadn’t had time to fully investigate.
When he took over the tunnels, he’d quickly realized that it would take months to fully map and inventory them all, so instead he’d created a rough map. He’d started with the rooms he’d already accessed and set up what he visualized as honeycombs: collections of rooms secured behind locked doors. The rooms created rings of self-contained inner defense areas, each with at least one main room that he’d equipped with basic supplies: food, water, weapons, medical supplies, communications equipment.
He’d thought his plan was original, only to find that apparently both the initial designers and, more recently, Daniel Kingston had thought along the same lines. When he began exploring each section of the tunnels, a slow and dangerous process, given the booby traps Leo and the drug dealers who’d used the tunnels in the past had left behind, he’d found several of these supply stations already in place. A few had been ransacked—mainly the ones nearest the Kingston Tower, where the Royales gang had its headquarters—but many stood intact.
Devon and Ozzie moved through the tunnels lit by their red light bulbs, the noise of their passing covered by the intermittent gurgle of the pipes overhead. He didn’t mind the dank and the dark, but he was growing to hate the siege mentality. He may not have had a formal education, but he’d studied history, especially that of great generals and leaders. Once a battle turned into a siege, it pretty much had already been lost.
They needed to find a way to go on the offensive—with more than Angela’s gift to rely on as a weapon. Maybe Tommaso’s work would give him some clue as to what the enemy wanted. Then he could find a way to use that against them.