The woman blinked and managed to raise her eyes toward the two of them. Dryden had his open hands out in front of him, the rifle already slung on his shoulder again.

“Who are you?” Dryden asked. “What are you doing here?”

The woman didn’t answer. She just sat there, looking overwhelmed, her focus going back and forth between them.

“Hey,” Danica said. She was addressing Dryden.

He turned and found her holding the red wallet out to him—open now.

Dryden took it. He saw a Maryland driver’s license in the wallet’s plastic sleeve. The photo in the corner was unmistakably the woman in front of them now. Her name was Lauren Coleman.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

JULY 1989

Sam stared at the note from the lint trap. He held it dead still in his hand. No muscle trembled. No part of him seemed to move at all. For five seconds he didn’t even breathe.

Ellis Pierce.

Sam thought of Lauren’s father, dying on the floor in Station 9, trying with his last breath to tell Dani the name of the insider. He’d gotten half of it out—just not the half Dani had thought he meant.

Ellis Pierce.

Five seconds, motionless as a statue, nothing moving but Sam’s focus, back and forth over the three scrawled lines.

Pierce.

Not Dani’s father.

Pierce.

In on it.

Behind it.

The whole time.

Pierce.

Five seconds, staring, thinking, trying to get his mind even halfway around it.

Then he thought of Dani and Lauren, heading for Station 14 right now, and his brain screamed, Think while you run.

Sam dropped the note. He ran.

He vaulted up the stairs in three steps, reached the front door in a few seconds and yanked it open. He spared only a glance for any afflicted that might be nearby—none in sight—and a moment later he was around the corner of the house, sprinting for the back yard and the cover of darkness beyond.

He crossed into the tall grass without slowing. He gave little thought to the two men who had chased him earlier; if they were dumb enough to still be out here somewhere, he would just have to deal with them. It was time to put speed above every other worry. Nothing else mattered if he didn’t reach Station 14 before the girls did, because—

Because Pierce is there right now. He went straight there as soon as he left us. He never contacted the military at all. He’s waiting there near those stairs in the cornfield, at this very moment, and when Dani and Lauren show up—

Pierce would kill them.

Simple as that.

The girls were going to walk right up to him, Dani relieved to see him, Lauren probably still delirious, and they weren’t going to have the slightest warning of what was coming.