Ellie didn’t recognize his voice. “Passed out in the drawing room,” she said.

“The what?”

“The big room with the bar and pool table.” She pointed to the hall. “Last room on the right—you can’t miss it. He told me he had an office upstairs.”

The other two dropped their bags and rushed down the hall. After removing Mackenzie from the house, they’d go through his phone and his office computer or computers. Right now Anton had another crew at Mackenzie’s Silicon Valley condo, doing the exact same thing, everyone working well into the night getting to know all about Mackenzie’s online life—passwords for his banking and investment accounts, everything. Once Mackenzie had been shipped off to his new life as a donor, Anton would assume control of all of his accounts, and electronically transfer his money through a series of sophisticated encrypted wire transfers, making it look like Mackenzie had, for reasons unknown, cashed out and disappeared. Anton had developed this side gig, flushing as much money out of rich carriers as he could.

Ellie said, “You want me to stick around and help?”

“Nah, we’re good. Go ahead and take off.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“You did good work tonight,” he said. “Now it’s time for you to go.”

CHAPTER 14

SEBASTIAN PARKED IN a shady spot near a massive rock formation that reminded him of something you’d find on, say, Mars—boulders red and orange and alien looking. For all intents and purposes, this place might as well have been another planet. Human life couldn’t exist for too long here in Death Valley, the hottest and driest place on earth. Rain rarely made an appearance—maybe two inches of water per year, if that—and the temperatures could reach 130 degrees or more during the summer months. Today was a fine December morning, not a cloud in the sky, and according to the digital temperature reading on the Cadillac Escalade’s dash, it was already ninety-seven degrees—and it wasn’t even ten yet.

He killed the engine, and the AC with it, and when he opened the door he stepped into an oven of dead air and dry heat. He was alone. An added bonus of choosing this spot was the fact that park rangers didn’t come here, the area too remote and too dangerous. The access road he’d just traveled hadn’t been used in well over half a century, and during the bumpy drive across the unmaintained dirt road he’d traveled for the better part of an hour, he hadn’t passed a single car or person.

Gravel crunched beneath his loafers and coated them and the cuffs of his jeans in a fine white dust as he made his way to the hatchback. He opened it and unlocked the latch for the hidden compartment used for transporting blood clients back and forth in secrecy from their homes to the transfusion center.

But the man in the compartment wasn’t a client. Lincoln Miller worked for Sebastian’s only supplier for carriers. Link, as everyone called him, was a “runner”; he supervised a group of stickmen and, on a handful of occasions, ran the operations to abduct carriers.