“I’m coming with you,” Sierra said. She stood and tossed the cashmere throw over the back of the sofa. “This is my contract. I deserve to be in on the ending.”

“Yes,” North said. “You do.”

CHAPTER 45

The big house was Victorian in style—architecturally speaking, you couldn’t call it a Gothic nightmare, North thought, but with its darkened windows, wildly overgrown gardens and big iron gates, it certainly qualified as ominous. It looked as if it had been abandoned decades earlier.

There was no sign of a vehicle, but the doors of the three-car garage were all closed.

He looked at his team—his old team, the one he had worked with for the past couple of years. Jake Martindale, Zeke, Dallas and Brianna had volunteered to accompany him on this operation. Everyone at the Foundation knew he had regained his vision, but the fact that the special glasses had been poisoned was a closely kept secret.

“All right,” he said, “stick to the plan. Jake, take Zeke and go in from the back when I give the word. First priority is to secure the basement. If I’m right and there is a vault, it will most likely be underground. The objective is to make sure Loring doesn’t get into it. If he does, he will probably escape through a tunnel. Every serious collector has a safe room and an exit strategy.”

“And if we do run into Loring or one of his Puppets?” Jake asked.

“If Loring is armed, it will be with a standard-issue firearm, not one of the artifacts. He knows better than to take the risk. That’s why we’re all wearing vests. The Puppets, however, may still be armed with artifacts. Both the relics and the Puppets are highly unstable and unpredictable. Use the tranquilizer guns on anything that moves.”

They were working with limited information about the layout of the house. North had found some aerial views but no floor plans. The mansion had never been on the market, so there were no photographs of the interior.

Sierra waited quietly on the side. She had declined the offer of a tranquilizer gun on the grounds that she had no experience with one. Instead she had her locket out from under her leather jacket, within easy reach, and she had removed one glove.

“You’ll follow Dallas, Brianna and me in,” North said to her.

“Got it,” she said. She looked at the mansion. “Lots of bad energy in that house.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the team.

North took the lockpick out of the pocket of his trousers and went toward the gate. But at the last second he stopped and simply gave the gate a shove. It swung open on squeaking hinges.

“Unlocked,” Jake said. “That could be good news or bad news.”

“Pretty sure it’s bad news,” North said. “Loring is running.”

It only went to prove the age-old wisdom that held that every good battle plan fell apart the minute you launched it.