“I trust Davidow. I’m done listening to you,” he said savagely. “I’ve always known you were lying. It even amused me to toy with you and play the game because I always knew I’d win. But I’m finished with it now. I know what I need to know about those horses, which is the most important thing.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “As for who brought you and those horses to that school, I’ll find that out soon enough. There are security video cameras mounted all over the grounds at St. Eldon’s, and I had my men pull them during the raid. You can never tell what might prove valuable when you’re dealing with rich parents and their spoiled chicks. My lawyer’s clerk went through them. Most of them were no help, but this one was interesting.” He handed her his phone. “It was you sitting on the paddock fence and smiling down at a woman. A very affectionate smile. The woman is older than you but not nearly old enough to be your mother.”

It was Alisa on her last visit to the school when Sasha had been so eager to show her Chaos’s progress. “She was just a visitor. She liked the horses.”

“Another lie. You look eager, almost loving. As I said, not your mother. Sister? She doesn’t look like you. Though she’s extremely hot. Perhaps she’s your father’s mistress come to check on his daughter? Possible?”

“She was just a visitor,” Sasha repeated.

“No, she wasn’t. But I’ll find out the truth. Now that we have this photo, we can run a facial recognition program.” He turned on his heel. “Not that it matters right now. Chaos is more important than what I might be able to get for you later.”

She watched him walk away and then turned back and knelt beside Danella, who was sobbing in terror. She felt as panicky as the girl as she took her in her arms to comfort her. These last minutes had been fraught with terror and confusion for her, too.

Masenak was getting much too close to finding out who Alisa was and what she meant to Sasha.

He’d mentioned a race. What race?

Who was Reardon?

And Masenak knowing about Chaos’s potential might bring sudden and complete disaster.

The only thing that was perfectly clear to Sasha was that time was running out.

Chapter 8

Chapter
8

1:40 A.M.

Masenak’s camp is just ahead.” Margaret turned to Alisa as she closed her computer and slid it into her backpack. “We’ve got all the measurements we need. From here, the drones would only have to take a sharp right over the camp clearing before they zero in on Masenak’s troops using infrared.” She grimaced. “And then if Korgan gets his technical calculations right, we’ll have a very satisfying big boom.”