“And was all the subterfuge necessary?” Macintosh whined. “Separate flights, separate hotels, you picking me up on the street in the wee hours of the morning to haul me out here to the middle of nowhere. Like some bad movie.”

Luc bit back a sharp retort. Didn’t the damn fool ever shut up?

“Think about that, Tom,” he said, keeping his voice even. It wouldn’t do to betray his loathing for this piece of human garbage. Yet. “Just think about it.”

Macintosh was blessedly quiet for a moment. Thinking, perhaps? That was something he should have done before he demanded to know the secrets of the molecule.

Macintosh—what had he been thinking when he’d hired this slovenly creature? A brilliant researcher with gaping holes in his intellect. Perfect example: if he’d possessed a lick of common sense he never would have come here.

“Yeah,” Macintosh said finally. “I see what you mean. But how much longer?”

Luc lifted his wrist and pressed the illumination button on the rim of his watch. The face lit, revealing 4:11:08. That was Eastern Standard Time. He hadn’t bothered resetting it.

“A few more minutes,” he said.

In truth, the moment he’d been waiting for had passed. Ten minutes and fifty-four seconds after four had been the mark, but he always liked to give himself a cushion. Just in case.

Canvas rustled behind them and a deep voice said, “We’re ready.”

Luc turned and saw a tall figure holding back a tent flap.

“Finally!” Macintosh cried as Luc led him toward the faintly lit opening.

“Good evening, Mr. Prather,” Luc said to the tall, oddly shaped man holding the flap. The owner of the show had arrived.

“Good evening, Dr. Monnet,” Prather said in his deep voice that seemed to echo around him. He pronounced Luc’s surname properly, but with an odd cadence.

Ozymandias Prather. An odd-looking duck—nearly six and a half feet tall, with narrow shoulders, a barrel chest, and wide hips. His long, narrow head completed the conical layout of his body.

“This is Dr. Macintosh. I told you that he’d be coming.”

“You did indeed,” Prather said.

No one offered to shake hands.

The air within was thicker and warmer but only marginally brighter than the starlight outside.

“Didn’t they pay their electric bill?” Macintosh muttered as they followed Prather down the midway toward a better-lit area at the far end of the tent. “And what’s that stink?”

Luc clenched his teeth. “That’s the source.”

At the end of the midway, in a pool of wan light, sat a cage. Above the iron bars a chipped wooden sign heralded the amazing sharkman! in faded red letters. Two roustabouts crouched before the cage, struggling with something between them—something long and dark that ended in three taloned fingers.

“My God!” Macintosh said, stopping and gaping at the sight. “What is that?”

“That… is the source.”

He knew what was going through Macintosh’s mind: Sharkman? That arm cannot belong to a man of any sort. It has to be a fake, a muscle-bound performer in a rubber suit with a clawed glove.