Bunny leaned forward. “Look, I don’t like to be the one to piss in the punchbowl here, Boss, but how come we’re not all shouting the name Hugo Vox? I mean, vampires notwithstanding, does anyone really think that he’s not the Big Bad Wolf here? He’s already wanted by every law enforcement agency on the planet. Shouldn’t outing him to the authorities as the main villain be a natural next step to finding and stopping the vamps from triggering five sonofabitching nukes?”

“Seven,” corrected Khalid.

“Seven sonofabitching nukes. Jeez. My point is—”

“We can’t do much about him for now,” I said, “because we don’t know his exact role and we don’t know where he is.”

Top gave me a shrewd look. “There’s something else, ain’t there? I can see it in your face, Cap’n, there’s more to this.”

“There’s one more thing.” They all came to point, eyes sharp and focused, waiting for me to drop the last bomb. “When I took out the first Sabbatarian team today I obtained a briefcase which had, among other things, materials that had to have come from Vox.”

“What kind of materials?” asked Top.

“A list of all DMS staff as of the end of last year. And … the names and addresses of everyone’s families.”

If I’d dropped a flash-bang into the center of the room I couldn’t have hit them harder. Top’s eyes went wide and his lips parted in a silent O. He had an ex-wife back home, and a daughter who had lost both her legs in Baghdad when a mine blew up under her Bradley. It was the reason he joined the DMS, and now he was thousands of miles away from being able to stand between them and an unknown group of killers.

I held up my hands. “Church knows about this and he’s taken steps. Everyone on that list is going to be taken into protective custody.”

“Which won’t mean shit if Vox is behind this,” growled Top. “He had people wired into the cops, the FBI, everywhere. Probably still does.”

“I know, but Church is on it.”

Top looked at me with a stare so hard and cold that it felt like physical blows.

“We didn’t start this war, Top,” I said. “We have to count ourselves lucky that we found that list. It gives us a chance.”

We sat in silence thinking about the possible consequences. If I hadn’t found that list, if the Sabbatarians had been able to move on it, the resulting carnage and grief would have destroyed the DMS at its core. Even if we survived, the damage done to us would be like third-degree burns on our psyche. We’d never recover.

“Vox,” said Top. Just the name, but it had so much meaning; he said so much with it.

“Vox,” I agreed.