A rear door opened and three men emerged: two younger guys in windbreakers, like the personnel already on-scene, and then a man who might have been sixty. He was black, with greying hair at his temples; he wore a dress shirt, suitcoat and jeans with no tie. He surveyed the clustered vehicles for only a moment before his gaze settled on Dryden and Danica. He came to them, the other two men in tow.

“Sam Dryden and Danica Ellis,” the man said. He shook their hands. “I’m Jack Grace—SAC from the field office in L.A.”

“How do you know my name?” Dryden asked; he had not identified himself to any of the personnel present.

“We know a lot,” Grace said. “I’ll be glad to explain all of it, but I need a few answers from the two of you first. I know you’ve already spoken to Russell Moss. I assume he told you as much as he knows?”

Behind Grace, one of the two men who’d landed with him took a phone call. The guy cupped the phone to his ear and wandered a few paces away to speak.

“We don’t want Moss to be in any trouble,” Danica said. “If you need to involve him—”

“We’ll be speaking to him,” Grace said, “but he’s not in trouble, and he’s not a high priority. We already have his information.”

“The blue binder,” Dryden said. “You have it, don’t you?”

For the first time Grace looked surprised. Then he simply nodded. “Ms. Ellis’s father left it in his secure locker at the field office, five years ago. I only learned of it this morning, but I wish to hell I’d seen it before now.”

“Why?” Danica asked. “What’s happening? Why are these people after us?”

Before Grace could answer, the guy with the phone stepped back to him and spoke quickly. Dryden heard urgency in his voice—or outright fear.

“The team in Boston wants to be looped in as soon as we learn anything,” the man said. “Same for New York.”

Grace was already nodding. “Tell them of course,” he said.

The guy paced off again.

“What is this?” Dryden asked. The low-burning dread in his own voice surprised him.

Instead of answering, Grace said, “I imagine Moss told you about Ashland, Iowa.”

Dryden nodded.

“What exactly did he tell you?” Grace asked.

“That it was a military R & D site,” Dryden said. “For off-the-books stuff, some of it possibly illegal.”

“Probably all of it,” Grace said, as if to himself. He glanced away over the parked vehicles, then turned his gaze on Dryden and Danica again, going back and forth between them.