DESPITE LOREN’S PLEAS FOR HIM TO STAY IN BED and rest, Pitt rose early the next morning and dressed for work. His body ached worse than it had the day before, and he moved slowly until his joints gradually limbered up. He contemplated drinking a tequila with orange juice to deaden the pain but ultimately thought better of it. The aches of injury took longer to vanquish, he thought, cursing the mark of time and its toll on his body.

Loren summoned him to the bathroom, where she cleaned the scrape on his head and applied a fresh bandage.

“At least your hair will cover that one up,” she said, scraping her finger across several scars on Pitt’s chest and back. Numerous bouts with death in the past had left their share of physical marks, as well as a few mental ones.

“A lucky blow to the head,” he quipped.

“Maybe it will knock some sense into you,” she replied, wrapping her arms around his torso. While Pitt had told Loren of the events in Ontario, he had neglected to mention that the landslide had not occurred by accident. She reached up and lightly kissed his scalp, then reminded him that he had promised to take her to lunch later in the day.

“I’ll pick you up at noon,” he promised.

He reached his offic e by eight o’clock and sat through a pair of research briefings before phoning Dan Martin later in the morning. The FBI director sounded excited to hear from Pitt.

“Dirk, your tip yesterday was a good one. You were correct, the janitorial service at the George Washington University lab works in the evenings. We reviewed the lab’s security video and found a clean shot of your wayward morning janitor. He fit your description to a tee.”

Sitting in the airport lounge in Elliot Lake, Pitt had finally made the connection between the man at the Co-op and the janitor he had bumped into at the lab just prior to the explosion.

“Have you been able to identify him?” Pitt asked.

“After confir ming that he was not part of the building maintenance and janitorial staff, we ran his photo through the Homeland Security identification database. Not an exact science, mind you, but we came up with a potential hit list and one pretty good match in particular. On this side of the border, he goes by Robert Ford of Buffalo, New York. We’ve already confirmed that the registered address is a fake, as well as the name.”

Pitt repeated the name Robert Ford, then thought of the alias he had used in Blind River, John Booth. Too coincidental, Pitt thought. John Wilkes Booth was the man who had shot Lincoln, while Robert Ford had killed Jesse James.

“He has an admiration for historical assassins,” Pitt offered.