The displaced aliens were the women and children of the jihadis she’d fought in New York. Chief of Staff Culver had thought she should understand what Seattle had planned for them before she committed to the job in Texas. Not that she gave a shit if Kipper wanted to reward his enemies by handing over the very thing they’d tried to take by force. She was just gonna kill whoever needed killing, and then she was outta there.

Peeping through the curtains again, Caitlin could see that large areas of the city remained in darkness, yet to be reclaimed. Some of them, she knew, had not even been cleared of the remains of the dead. When she first arrived in this hotel room, she spent an unpleasant minute or two looking for the telltale stains of the Disappeared. Only once she’d noticed the fresh paint throughout and new carpet did she relax just a bit. The lingering presence of the Disappeared was something she found . . . unacceptable, even uncomfortable, and it surprised her.

Most of her adult life had been spent in an intimate correspondence with death. She had thought herself inured to it. And yet she could not deny a sort of spiritual nausea at the idea of being surrounded by hundreds of millions of vanished souls. She had first experienced it in New York, and the longer she remained on this continent the stronger the feeling grew. As soon as she could walk away from death, she would.

Not being able to account for the fate of Bilal Baumer was frustrating, even worrying to the part of her that had been trained at a cellular level to confirm a kill. But Caitlin was also aware that sometimes you just didn’t know. In her world, the only real certainty was your own eventual negation. Culver was almost certainly right. The air force had probably killed him when they demolished the Rockefeller Center. Still . . .

Her laptop chimed. She abandoned thoughts of the haunted city and crossed the room in five long strides to sit at the large, curvilinear executive workstation. Glorified civil servant she may have been, but at least she wasn’t travelling cattle class. Seattle had leased the hotel to what remained of the Starwood chain, but had reserved suites on the top floor for its own use. Hers was more like an apartment than a hotel room and Caitlin wished that Bret could’ve been here to enjoy a bit of luxury with her. Then again, she could think of about a thousand places she would rather have taken him than Kansas-fucking-City. Perhaps that was what they would do when this was all over: just disappear for six months with Monique. Cash out some of her black funds and visit a few places where they could kick back and not worry about having to outrun a bullet.