The authorities were of no use, so Whitman set out to find them. He spent the next eighteen months in monomaniacal pursuit, after which he had to admit to himself that he was no closer to finding out where they had gone or what had happened to them. It was as if they had fallen off the face of the earth.

He was of no further use to Special Forces, so when his tour of duty ended he left. “I joined the FBI, became a profiler, as you know. What I never told you was that I had met a man named Preach. It was Preach who told me he could find my mother and sister. Little did I know then that the reason he could find them was because they were dead.”

*   *   *

“It’s safe now. You can come out.”

Julie waited for Orrin to appear, but when he did not, she went down the hallway and into the bedroom. He was standing, his back to one of the two windows. Outside, the muffled sounds of passing vehicles; across the street a building loomed with floors filled with empty eyes. There was a baseball bat in his hands. She wanted to laugh, but he quailed away from her, and she looked down.

Orrin stared from her face to the revolver she still held and back again. “What … what happened out there?”

“He’s dead. Suicide. We’re safe.”

“I’m afraid not.”

She whirled to see Luther St. Vincent. He was aiming a silenced handgun in his good hand at a space equidistant between the two of them.

“Drop the Glock, Ms. Regan.” The muzzle of his gun moved toward her. “Really. I mean it.”

She allowed the revolver to slip from her icy fingers. This is the end, she thought. No one here gets out alive.

The handgun swung back slightly. “And now you, Mr. Jameson.”

Orrin let go of the bat. What was he going to do with it anyway?

“How did you find out?” Julie said. She found that, at the end, she was intensely curious about every detail that had led to this moment.

“We have a contact inside the AG’s office.” His gaze swiveled toward Orrin. “You were careful, Mr. Jameson, just not careful enough. This is the NSA you’re dealing with, Directorate N you’re trying to fuck with.” He shook his head. “That won’t do. Not at all.”

“What … what are you going to do?” Orrin said, his voice breathy, as if he’d been running a marathon.

“What do you think I’m going to do, Mr. Jameson?”

“He’s going to kill us, Orrin,” Julie said. “He’s going to shoot us dead.”

St. Vincent turned to her. “You’re smart for a woman. Maybe too smart for your own good.”

“Smart enough for you to recruit me into Directorate N?”

This raised St. Vincent’s eyebrows. He seemed genuinely startled. “Is that a joke?”