“C’mon,” he said, gesturing to a stately three-story brick building ahead that looked like it belonged on the Vanderbilt campus. “We’ve got the team assembled.”

She followed him along the path and inside. A few minutes later, he ushered her into a slick “nerve center” style tactical operations center where she immediately spied Nisha, Eli, and Bex along with some new faces.

“Hi, Gayle, I’m Damien Gough,” an early middle-aged man with glasses and wavy dark hair said, shaking her hand. “I’m CISA here at Trinity, or head of conventional intelligence and signals analysis. I’ve worked with Mark for several years now. I understand he’s retiring and you’re his replacement.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Mark apologizes for not being able to make this trip, but his wife is in the hospital and . . .”

“We spoke,” Damien said with a knowing and empathetic smile.

Next she shook hands with Julia Nesbitt, the intelligence director for Trinity. With the meet and greet out of the way, the assembled gathered around a large oval-shaped conference table made of polished white marble with the unmistakable shape of a shepherd’s crook in the middle, created by what looked like naturally occurring gray veining.

“Before we get started, I just gotta ask . . . this is something you had made, right?” Gayle said, pointing to the ghost-gray image in the marble.

“Actually, no,” Julia said. “It was quarried that way. When the slab was cut, the fabricator in Italy reached out to the church and eventually it made its way here.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Gayle said.

“Indeed,” the director said and then after a momentary pause got down to business. “As you can see, Ms. James, we’re taking this threat quite seriously. It is our number one intelligence collection priority and our number one threat prosecution priority. The only problem is . . . since Peru, we find ourselves with precious little to prosecute. I hope and pray that your prompt visit here today is because the Agency has something of consequence to share with us so we can get to work trying to neutralize the threat.”

Gayle felt her cheeks get hot and hated herself for it. She usually had a pretty good poker face, but around these people she suddenly felt like red-cheeked Pinocchio. She did have one lead, but her conversation with Steve in the SCIF at Langley weighed heavy on her conscience. “So long as you take more than you give, you’re golden.” How was she supposed to horse-trade information with these people if she had to show them all her cards the instant she sat down at the table?