In that same second he saw a burst of movement across the little room. His focus—and the beam of his flashlight—had still been directed at the bloodstained concrete. Now he jerked both of them upward; he saw the woman who’d called herself Lauren Coleman reaching up, grabbing something off the topmost shelf beside the door. That shelf was seven feet high; anything lying flat on it would have been invisible until now.

The woman yanked her hand back down, spinning as she did, leveling her arm toward Dryden.

She held a Beretta M9. It was steady in her hand, centered on Dryden’s face from eight feet away.

He took note of her posture—the modern isosceles shooting stance, right down to the position of her shoulders. It looked second-nature, ingrained by hundreds of hours of range time. Whoever and whatever she was—ex-military, ex–law enforcement—she had logged years at it, and was still in her prime.

Dryden stared at her finger, tight against the trigger. He had the M4 rifle slung on his shoulder, easily two full seconds from being aimed and ready to fire. Next to him, Danica had the Glock tucked into her rear waistband. Dryden rehearsed a sequence of moves in his head: pitch himself sideways, shove Danica down, grab her Glock in the same movement, level it on the doorway and fire.

It would take less than a second.

Which still wouldn’t be fast enough.

They would both be dead before he could even free the weapon.

“Who the fuck are you?” Danica whispered.

“Not your friend,” the woman said.

The blonde took her left hand off the gun and banged her palm down on the shelf beside her. She did it five times in a fast sequence, a loud drumbeat that rebounded off the walls and out into the space at the end of the corridor.

A second later, Dryden heard a clamor somewhere out there. It sounded like wood crashing down onto concrete.

In his mind he saw the cheap melamine cabinet in the third room—the thing that hadn’t fit with his memory.

He thought he could guess the reason now: the cabinet hadn’t been there at all in 1989. It was only there now because—

Dryden cursed under his breath.

The cabinet was there to hide a doorway. The damned thing was more than large enough.

He heard footsteps a moment later—lots of them, running and scuffing the concrete. Behind the blond woman, the dark space of the corridor’s end chamber suddenly flickered with light. Multiple flashlight beams swinging and pointing.

“In here!” the woman yelled; her eyes stayed locked on Dryden, as did the Beretta.