“Stop! Luke, you’ve got to stop.”

The burns on Luke’s hands were evident. The cuffs of his sleeves were blackened and smoking, but his hands were worse. None of the papers looked salvageable.

Luke dropped to his knees, sagging as he stared at the smoldering embers. “We were too late,” he whispered.

“It’s not too late.” Nathaniel had grounds for an arrest, and the entire ugly scandal was about to be blown wide open.

Caroline felt sick as she paced outside the hospital’s examination room, too tense to sit on the hard bench in the hallway. Luke’s hands had been burned, but the doctor hadn’t finished his work, and it was too early to know the severity of her brother’s injuries.

Nathaniel sat on a bench, holding a chunk of ice wrapped in a towel to his swollen lip. They were the only ones in the hallway, for Wilkie and the other agents were all at Holland’s house, scouring for more evidence, but almost everything had been burned.

Luke was right. They should have moved faster. She’d gotten a glimpse of his face as they carried him in on a stretcher. He looked destroyed, his face a mask of anguish. To have sacrificed so much for this cause only to lose the evidence in a bonfire was heartbreaking. She had begged to be let inside the room as the doctors began the painful task of treating the burns, but they’d warned her away.

So did Luke. “I don’t want anyone seeing me like this,” he had told her, his voice heavy with despair.

It wasn’t fair. Luke deserved a medal, not this.

Nathaniel was far more levelheaded than she was, calmly sitting on the bench and telling her for the third time not to worry. “Holland is in jail. Wilkie will have the time and freedom to launch a proper investigation. It will all be aboveboard.”

Normally Nathaniel’s unshakeable demeanor appealed to her, but did he always have to be so logical? She wanted to scream or throw something, not be calm and rational.

“Sit down,” he urged. “It seems like forever since we’ve had a chance to talk. Tell me what’s next for you now that the new team is on board at the White House.”

She kept pacing. “I have no idea.”

And it bothered her. Except for that single trip to see Luke in Cuba, she had worked every day for the past eighteen months. Now she had the freedom to do something else, but she didn’t know what. It was like being adrift at sea without any wind in her sails and no harbor in sight.

“What about that school?” Nathaniel asked. “I’m sure Ludmila would love to see you there.”