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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “Can you?”

  “I don’t have to.”

  Qiamaro swayed, almost toppled, caught his balance just in time. “You’re going to be surprised, then.”

  Mordcai waited for enlightenment.

  “When you die, and you find yourself with the gods.” Qiamaro laughed, spilled some of his drink, very cautiously balanced the shell again, and drank from it.

  Mordcai reached out and put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “There are no gods, Qiamaro. At least, none that have made themselves known in a consistent manner.”

  The youth shook his head vigorously in denial and almost immediately looked as if he regretted the action. “Look around you, Master! Where did all this come from—the sea, the land”—he held up his shell—“the sava! If not from the gods?”

  “I don’t know,” Mordcai said simply.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Wanting to know a fact is not an excuse to make one up.”

  Qiamaro shrugged, uncomprehending. “Can I have the wayfinder’s tools?”

  “For Natano, the dead man.”

  Qiamaro nodded.

  “All right. I’ll find a set,” Mordcai said.

  The young ahkwila smiled his thanks, then half stumbled against the much taller apprentice master. “Now when you die, Master, Natano will be there with his tools to help guide you to the gods, too.”

  Mordcai sighed. How could the ahkwila see the same world the khai saw, yet still not understand it?

  He tried once again to make the youth see reason.

  “Qiamaro, listen: Each time you drink the sava, it has this effect on you. Each time your fellow workers drink it, the same thing. That makes the effect of the sava a known fact. But your gods . . . beings that see us but we can’t see them . . . beings that we go to when we die . . . Do you not see that being dead means to never exchange information with anyone ever again, that—to our knowledge—what happens after death can then never be known?”

  Qiamaro only stared at him as if his words held no meaning and never would.

  Mordcai threw up his hands in frustration. “There’s no reason to accept that gods exist until you can prove they exist. I ask you again, Qiamaro. Can you do that?”

  Then the ground moved again. And again. And the first blast of incandescent lava shot up from the central peak of Nan Moar, sending red light flashing across the island and up against the sudden black cloud of scalding gas and smoke.

  Mordcai and Qiamaro, khai and ahkwila both, stared up at the tower of flame and destruction.

  “I don’t have to,” Qiamaro said, then drained his shell.

  Mordcai looked at the shell in his own hand and let it fall, concerned that he’d left the map unfinished. Just as he was wondering if he could make it back to the hall in time, the concussion of the volcanic eruption struck him.

  Nan Moar was the first outpost to fall.

  NINETEEN

  “You sure you want to do this?” Roz asked.

  Lyle stood before the one-way observation glass. On the other side, David Weir waited. He had been kidnapped, returned, then recovered in the middle of a firefight between two as yet unknown groups of trained and well-armed operators. Yet he didn’t appear troubled by any of it.

  “He hasn’t moved, Roz. It’s been an hour, and he hasn’t moved.”

  Up until last night, Lyle knew he’d been running a straightforward espionage case: A vital defense database had been compromised, and Holden Ironwood was prime suspect. The case had three distinct operational phases of investigation. First, determine if Ironwood was guilty of stealing the SARGE database. If yes, then locate the storage site of the stolen data. Finally, recover the data and arrest Ironwood before he could sell it. The end.

  Then David Weir had become involved.

  Now a member of Lyle’s team was dead and a Stinger missile had been fired on an American street.

  “Is he asleep?”

  “Eyes are open,” Lyle said. “He blinks. He scratched his ear a couple of times.”

  “Then he has moved.”

  “The point is, he hasn’t been screaming to see a lawyer. That’s not normal.”

  Roz tapped his arm with the file he’d asked her to bring. She’d put the other item he’d requested in a small cardboard box on the table beside him. “That’s what it says in here.”

  Lyle took the manila folder and flipped through its meager contents. A life reduced to a trail of paperwork. College transcripts. Bank records. Credit reports. Driver’s license. Tax forms.

  “He’s not normal.” Roz reached over and pulled a stapled two-page form from the back of the file. “Look at this.” She handed him an Army CID security report. “When he joined the army lab, he needed to be cleared by Homeland.”

  The cover sheet was stamped DENIED. Lyle quickly scanned both pages, then shrugged. “I don’t see anything to disqualify him from a basic clearance.”

  “Exactly. I called the investigating agent. He said there was nothing to investigate. No family to interview. No close friends. They couldn’t gather enough information to make a judgment.”

  “Any chance Weir’s in the witness relocation program?”

  “Checked that, too. No record. And the photos we have from his driver’s license since age sixteen? Same guy, same name, just getting older.”

  Lyle picked up the cardboard box, just in case his strategy worked, then started for the door to the hallway.

  “Boss?” Lyle knew what his young assistant was going to say, just by the tone of her voice. She was worried he’d make it personal. “Del was my friend, too.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Then go get ’im.”

  “I intend to.”

  Everything had changed, and David Weir knew why.

  After months of false starts and dead ends, he finally had a promising lead to saving his life. Thanks to Jess MacClary.

  His inner clock and stomach told him it was about 8:00 A.M. He couldn’t remember when or even what he’d eaten last, but food would have to wait its turn. All he cared about now was getting out of here and waiting for Jess’s promised call. The local police were just a momentary problem. After all, technically, he’d done nothing wrong. Last night or this morning. What he’d do about Ironwood, he’d think about later. Jess had been explicit: He could only work for her.

  A faint rasp announced the unlocking of a doorknob mechanism. Besides the irritating hiss of air vents high above in stained acoustic tile, it was the first new sound in more than an hour.

  A moment later the door banged open, as if the person in the doorway had meant to startle him. If so, it didn’t work.

  David recognized the man who entered, from last night at the warehouse. The local cops had deferred to him, even though he’d not been in uniform. No jacket. Blue short-sleeve shirt. Dark blue pants like those of a repairman. His white-streaked dark hair had looked flat, as if he’d been wearing some kind of cap.

  He’d changed since then. Dark suit, white shirt, gray tie, boring.

  The man closed the door and took a chair across from him. He put a cardboard box on the floor and a manila file folder on the table. David could read his own name on the tab.

  “You want to call a lawyer?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “I’m a witness to the shooting. I wasn’t armed.”

  “Oh, right, the shooting. At the warehouse where we found a body on the roof. And a federal agent killed by a Stinger missile attack.”

  That last statement did startle David. He’d been handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car for questioning while one of the uniforms took over with Dominic LaSalle. Half an hour later, he’d been uncuffed and was on his way to police headquarters in Atlantic City. No one had said anything about a dead federal agent or a Stinger missile.

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But I wasn’t the one doing the shooting.”
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  “Who says that’s why you’re here?”

  Okay . . . David thought quickly. Army CID? From the moment he’d downloaded his first files from the DNA lab, he’d known they could apprehend him, even planned that when and if the moment arrived, he’d confess to everything, share the discoveries he’d made, and hope for the best—but that had been before Jess.

  “Nothing to say?”

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  “Jack Lyle.” The man reached inside his jacket for a black leather badge case and flipped it open to show his ID. “Did Ironwood brief you on how to behave when you got picked up? Or maybe his lawyers did?”

  Air force? David watched uncomprehending as the agent returned the badge case to his inner pocket.

  “Not that it matters,” Lyle continued, “but not only do we have proof that you’ve stolen government property, we know you’ve sold it. And the person you’ve sold it to . . . we can make a good case that he’s reselling it to foreign buyers. Ever hear of the Economic Espionage Act?”

  David hadn’t.

  Lyle drew the folder closer to himself, then leaned back in his chair as if settling in for a long discussion. “Why’d you abandon your Jeep last night?”

  No matter who or what had pulled him in, David saw no harm in telling the truth, where he could.

  “The engine died.”

  “There was a kill-switch in it. A radio-controlled one.”

  “I bought the car used. Must have been the previous owner’s.”

  “Who was shooting at you?”

  “People who wanted my computers.”

  “Not at the warehouse. Before that. Under the overpass.”

  That told David he’d been followed—by the air force. Why? “News to me.”

  The agent tapped the folder again. “What about Vince Gilden?”

  “The bookstore guy? He rents a place at the same warehouse I do.”

  “You see him last night?”

  “I saw his car. In the parking lot.”

  “How about Mordecai Diego Rodrigues?”

  The name was unknown to David. “Never heard of him.”

  “Why didn’t you call for a tow truck? When your car died.”

  “I don’t have Triple A. Can’t afford a tow truck.”

  “How’d you leave the overpass?”

  David studied the air force agent, wary. If the man had followed him, he’d know how he’d left the overpass.

  “I caught a cab. On the overpass.”

  “Where’s the receipt?”

  David shrugged. “Didn’t ask for one.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “To meet Dom at the airport.”

  “Then what?”

  “I wanted to show him my lab.”

  “Who was the girl?”

  “Didn’t catch her name. Ask Dom, she came with him.”

  “He’s claiming amnesia from the trauma of being shot. Says he remembers nothing about last night. Doesn’t even remember you. So how long have you known him?”

  David gambled that Jack Lyle had no way to contradict him—for now. “A long time. Friend of the family sort of thing.”

  “What’s your explanation for last night?”

  “Burglars after my lab stuff, and Dom surprised them in the act.”

  The agent’s finger flicked his file. “Was it worth it?” he asked. “Thirty thousand dollars—for the rest of your life?”

  David answered truthfully. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. When you’re convicted under the Economic Espionage Act—and you will be—you’re facing fifteen years’ imprisonment. Per count. That’s forty-five years, minimum. No parole.”

  David stayed calm. “They were personnel files, Agent Lyle. Not even complete ones. Colonel Kowinski can verify that I stripped the personally identifiable parts out. I only extracted geographical data from the sections about next of kin, family history.”

  Lyle picked up the manila folder, as if preparing to go. “I don’t care if you lie to yourself, kid. I do care if you lie to me. You stole from the government while working for the government—a position of trust that you betrayed for money. You betrayed your country. That’s what a judge is going to care about. Same goes for me.”

  David thought fast and hard. Long before he’d ever be tried, he’d die in custody if he couldn’t find a way to make this man release him.

  Then it struck him: If Ironwood was suspected of selling his data to a foreign buyer, then Lyle had probably been listening in to all of Ironwood’s interminable calls to him. That meant he already knew what Ironwood was up to, so . . .

  David had just been handed the advantage he needed. The air force needed something from him, even if Lyle couldn’t or wouldn’t say what that was. What does matter is that he’ll have to trade my freedom for it.

  “What do I have to do to walk out of here?” David said.

  “I thought you’d never ask.” The agent picked up the cardboard box, put it on the table, then took from it a gleaming silver object the size of a paperback. It was the kind of hard drive that could be plugged into almost any computer to provide extra data storage.

  He slid the drive across the table. “Use this to find out where and how your data’s being processed.”

  David couldn’t believe his luck. Both he and the air force wanted the same thing.

  TWENTY

  In the light of the half moon, Merrit studied the two men with him on the beach. He’d probably have to kill one of them at the end of this conversation. He’d prefer killing both.

  It was coming on midnight, and from more than a mile away blazed a kaleidoscope of light from Atlantic City’s boardwalk casinos. The night was cool after a hot and humid September day. Merrit’s black cotton trousers and shirt snapped against him in the breeze.

  “C’mon, Merrit, we didn’t know she was under surveillance.” The speaker’s name was Griffith, and he was angry. Probably because he correctly suspected he wouldn’t be paid the outstanding half of his fee. “I mean, how could we?”

  “By following her.” Merrit left the word “idiot” unsaid but implied. “Establish her routine. ID her bodyguards.”

  “She only took one from the airport. Some guy named LaSalle.”

  “If you knew that, you should’ve known about the other people keeping her under surveillance.”

  “I know about them now, okay? I can still get to her.”

  Merrit doubted that. As long as Jessica MacClary remained on her family’s private jet behind the layers of security at the airport, she was untouchable.

  Amateurs, Merrit thought. He couldn’t see any point in continuing this discussion.

  The second man chimed in. “Listen, Nate—you know what my old man would say. You gotta let him try.”

  Nathaniel Merrit didn’t like being called Nate, any more than he liked Holden Ironwood Jr. Still, Ironwood’s brat had given him the distraction he needed.

  “Yeah, man, gimme a chance to earn out,” Griffith whined.

  Merrit glanced up and down the beach to be certain their privacy would be undisturbed, that there were no unwanted watchers on the distant piers. “Okay, here’s the deal I’m willing to make.” He dropped his KA-BAR down his sleeve and into his palm as he saw his target relax.

  “Pay attention,” he said.

  Reflexively, Griffith and J.R. both eased closer.

  Merrit locked eyes with the man he was going to kill and brought his knife up in a single sweeping motion to puncture the chest below the sternum and drive into the heart.

  Except the target caught his hand first.

  “No!” Griffith cried.

  A challenge. Merrit’s sudden smile reflected his approval. A fair fight was preferable to a simple execution. He’d still win anyway.

  Locked like lovers, he and Griffith pushed against each other, muscles rigid, straining, trembling with the effort, th
e blade easing toward one chest, then the other.

  Close up, Merrit saw glistening sweat in every pore of Griffith’s face. Saw crazed determination in the man’s wide-open eyes. Smelled his sour breath—mints over something with garlic. His last meal.

  The contest lasted twenty seconds. Griffith’s pupils widened an instant before his grip on Merrit weakened, knowing his fate.

  Merrit’s knife turned, pressed in, and this time it met no resistance, only yielding flesh.

  Griffith’s hot, foul breath escaped him in a whisper. His pupils expanded into darkness, became black holes.

  Merrit released him, and the body fell.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” J.R. said—but Merrit heard excitement in his voice. Inappropriate emotion. Death was just the stopping of a process. A regular occurrence. Inevitable. Sometimes profitable.

  “Yes,” Merrit said. “I did.”

  “Yeah? What if the surveillance wasn’t for her?” J.R. stared down at the dead man’s wide-open eyes, at the bloodstain slowly growing across his Caesar’s T-shirt, glistening in the half moonlight.

  Merrit rechecked the beach, the piers. No movement. “Who else?”

  “Maybe the guy.”

  Merrit pulled his own shirt away from his chest, inspected it for blood spatter, saw nothing. He’d still burn it, though. All his clothes. He had seen those CSI shows. “The guy?” He pulled his knife from Griffith’s chest and wiped the blade on the dead man’s shirt. He’d destroy the weapon, too.

  “You know. The lab geek from the army.”

  Merrit stopped his cleanup. “Weir? He was there with her?”

  J.R. looked at him as if he had missed the first half of a conversation. “That’s what I said: She was at his lab when Griffith took his shot.”

  “What the hell was she doing with Weir?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You didn’t think it was important to find out?”

  “C’mon, I didn’t even know it was his lab until I got copies of the police reports.” A truculent J.R. pointed at Griffith’s body. “He didn’t either. So you didn’t have to kill him.”

  Merrit, against all the grounding principles that directed and controlled his life, grabbed J.R. by the shirt. Ironwood’s whelp was thick with muscles but had no idea how to use them.