“Look, I think I can talk them into it, but it’s gonna take a while.”

“And what, I just wait for you to call? Not knowing when? Or if?”

“You know I want you there.”

“No,” Sam said. “I don’t!”

“Well maybe if you’d fucking let me in, you would,” Jake snapped.

Sam almost dropped him. “Fuck you. There has to be another way!”

Jake took a deep breath. “Sunee, we just have to do what’s best for the kids.”

“What, and that’s ripping away someone who wants to be there for them?”

“Jesus, Sunee, it isn’t just about you!”

“What about Khun Mae? She’s the one in charge, really.”

Jake sighed. “Khun Mae said yes.”

“You asked her before me?” Sam’s voice rose.

“Yeah,” Jake replied. “Because you’re taking it exactly how I expected.”

It was after dawn when they reached the home atop the hill. Silence filled the hours. They spoke just enough to agree on a story for the children. They put on their game faces at the end, smiled and projected happy thoughts.

And the children saw right through them.

Sam begged Jake and Khun Mae for a few days to come up with alternate ideas, then forced herself to think them through.

She could appeal to Ananda for money to keep the orphanage going.

She could go back to Phuket, take Lo Prang up on his offer, start a career as a prize fighter to raise funds.

She could start a charity, ask for donations.

She could sell samples of her own cells and their fourth-generation enhancements on the black market.

She considered each idea, and others, and discarded them all.

Ananda would be watched by the ERD.

She knew nothing about running a charity.

Winning fights for Lo Prang would raise her profile and increase the risk of the ERD finding her. And how long before the mobster asked her to hurt men outside the ring?

And her genetic tweaks… Selling them would mean deaths, somewhere, far away. Deaths of men and women like her, doing their jobs, trying to protect their country or save the innocent. She wouldn’t have that on her conscience, not even to save the orphanage.

In the end she had nothing.

The second night she woke to terror, to thoughts of faceless men bursting in, ripping her away, ripping Jake away, taking the children.

Nightmare!

It pressed down on her even after she woke. She looked at the doorway to her room and masked men appeared – bad men.

No, not real.

Not her nightmare, the children’s. It crested over her, paralyzing her, freezing her to this bed, trembling.

Get up! Sam yelled at herself, and the dream’s hold on her broke.