Oh, for God’s sake, she knew her brother had always despised conflict—and that their father had made him jumpy. But no one had ever seen him except her, so clearly he could pick who he showed himself to.

“Daniel.”

In a moment of panic, she wondered if he was never coming back. Had there been a good-bye on his part that she hadn’t caught?

Again, no response from the appliances.

Figuring she’d have more luck putting them to work, she went over to the icebox and cracked the door, wondering what the hell she could whip up for her and her father.

One thing was for sure: dinner wasn’t going to include omelets.

It was going to be a while before she made an omelet again.

As darkness settled in, the headlights of Matthias’s unmarked swept over the road ahead. There were other cars traveling along the same asphalt as his, other people behind those wheels, other plans in other heads.

All of it was irrelevant to him, with no more significance than a movie playing on a screen.

No more depth, either.

He had issues. Bad issues. The kind that tied his brain in knots and made that pain he’d been having on his left side fire up to the point that he struggled to keep conscious.

Shit . . . Jim Heron knew way too much about what should have been private thoughts and private knowledge. It was as if the man had tuned in to Matthias’s inner radio station and heard all his songs and jingles and traffic reports.

And the fucker was right. Matthias’s second in command had only truly distinguished himself after Matthias’s little “accident” in the desert: In the last two years, that operative had made himself indispensible and, looking over the assignments and situations Matthias had dealt with, the guy had gradually influenced Matthias’s decisions until he was all but making them himself.

It had been so subtle. Like someone slowly turning the flame up under a pot of water. His second in command had been the one to change his mind about letting Jim Heron go. And the man had been driving Matthias to kill Isaac. And there had been a hundred more examples—many of which he’d acted on.

He hadn’t even noticed it happening.

God, it had started with killing Alistair Childe’s son. That had been the first of the bright ideas.

Of course, the logic had been unassailable and Matthias hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger. But when he’d watched the footage of the death, the captain’s weeping had touched him. Opened up a door he hadn’t even known had been in his hallway.