She broke off, a stir in the adjoining living room turning both their heads toward its entrance. Everyone in the makeshift command post was suddenly moving, exchanging hurried questions and answers, bringing cell phones out of their pockets.

Ashley felt sweat slick her palms, felt her legs tremble beneath her. Whatever news had broken and spread through the command center like a wave was critical, good or ill, and the op beside her could not hide his recognition of it.

“Mrs. Gordian.” He was suddenly on his feet beside her, motioning toward his vacated chair. “Ma’am, why don’t you wait here while I—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m okay, really. Let’s just get in there.”

She rushed toward the living room, almost running into Megan Breen as they converged on the entry from opposite sides.

Megan was gripping a cellular in her hand, tears streaming from her eyes. It was the first time Ashley had ever seen her cry, and the realization seemed to bring her heart to a standstill.

Then she noticed the smile beneath her tears, wet with her flowing tears, and took what she would always remember as the deepest breath of her entire life.

“Ashley—”

“Meg—”

“Julia’s on the phone,” Megan said, and held it out to her. “She’s on the phone, they’ve found her . . . and she wants to say hello to her mother.”

The Sedco oil platform. Offshore Gabon. Roger Gordian stood behind a podium in the glare of high-mounted kliegs, grim eyes staring from faces where smiles were to have held, silence around him where festive music was meant to have been played.

In each of his pants pockets was a folded sheet of paper. On each sheet, a different speech: the one near his left hand a scripted concession to madness, the other written in stubborn, unrelenting hope of its defeat.

Gordian glanced at his watch, then back at the solemn faces lined in rows before him.

Moments to go, and bitterness sat at the back of his tongue.

He would mouth the words that needed to be spoken. For his daughter’s life, for the slimmest chance at saving her life, he would do that, do anything necessary. Whoever had taken Julia from him, whatever monstrous intent was behind the act, her kidnapper had known an essential truth:

In Gordian’s heart, the Dream had been born. But while the past and present were things of hard reality, only the future lived in a man’s dreams . . . and Julia was truly, beyond all doubt, the child who carried it on her shoulders.

He stepped forward, took the podium, began to slowly reach for the words in his left pocket.

And suddenly caught sight of movement beyond the faces, the eyes. Someone racing toward him the blinding lights.

An excited shout: “Boss . . . Gord . . .”