Mustapha’s Daily Goods

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 7:36 p.m.

I sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the list. My father. My brother and his wife. My nephew. My best friend. Everyone I cared about.

Hugo Vox. The desire to find and kill him was unbearable.

If I were in Vox’s place I’d be hiding from Church. Vox seemed to be doing the opposite; he was on the offensive. But to what end? Pissing Church off even more than he already was would not seem to have a happy ending.

Vox loved chaos, but this seemed like something else. It was vindictive, it was needlessly cruel. What had happened to twist Vox into that kind of monster? Or was this another layer of the real Vox that we were only now seeing? If so, how deep did his corruption go? How deep could it go?

Those were questions I never wanted to get the answers to.

Fear crawled like ants under my skin. My hands were shaking so badly that I dropped the papers, which landed heavily on the corner with the chunky binder clip. It made an odd sound as it landed. Not the hollow metal sound you’d expect from a clip; this was a dull thud.

I snatched it up and peered at it. The clip was heavier than it needed to be to bind papers. I hadn’t paid enough attention to that at first; now I did. I opened the spring-metal jaws and studied the inside. There was a tiny bead of plastic inside, painted the same color as the clip’s body. I grabbed my scanner and ran it over the clip and the electronics detector pinged.

The little bead was a bug of some kind. But what kind?

Then I understood. It wasn’t a listening device or another booby trap. It was a backup in case the papers in the briefcase were stolen.

It was a tracking device.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

Two seconds later an explosion rocked the entire house.

Chapter Seventy-six

Chapter Seventy-Six

Mustapha’s Daily Goods

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 7:38 p.m.

The blast came from the back of the building and sounded like an entry charge. Someone—almost certainly the Sabbatarians—had blasted through the rear door.

Ghost leapt out of a dream and onto his feet. He gave a single startled bark and crouched by the closed door, eyes narrowed, ears straight up, fur bristling along his spine. I tore the Beretta out of my shoulder rig and whipped open the door.

Smoke billowed up the stairwell, and I heard Jamsheed yelling in protest for two seconds before his words were cut off by a meaty thud. No way to tell if he was dead or if they’d clubbed him down.

“Upstairs!” someone yelled in French. I heard someone reply with a German accent.

Definitely the Sabbatarians. Pricks.