“They’ll have to work harder.”

“You think so, do you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Something in his voice made Knox glance over at him. “Were you ever a POW?”

“Six months. This place is actually pretty nice compared to what the Viet Cong thought was humane. All I had there was a pit with a sheet over it, beatings whenever they felt like it, along with an interrogation technique that would make waterboarding seem like dunking for apples. And the food they threw down once a day would not be considered edible by any stretch of the imagination.”

“But we’re not twenty years old anymore, Carr.”

“Call me Oliver, Carr is dead.”

“Okay, but we’re still not twenty.”

“It’s all in the mind, Knox. It’s all in the mind. If we don’t believe they can break us they never will.”

“Yeah, sure,” Knox said, clearly unconvinced of this.

“You got any family?”

“Son and daughter. My boy’s in the Marines stationed in the Middle East. My daughter’s a lawyer in D.C.”

“I had a daughter. But she died. How about your wife?”

“Dead.”

“So’s mine.”

“Brunswick, Georgia? Claire?”

Stone didn’t say anything.

“Guy named Harry Finn said that Simpson admitted to having her killed. That he ordered a CIA hit on you and your family.”

Stone stared at the ceiling, slowly flexing his limbs against the thick leather bindings. “Harry’s a good guy. Knows how to cover your back.”

“I’m sorry about your family . . . Oliver,” he murmured.

“Get some sleep, Knox. Just get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

Stone closed his eyes.

A few minutes later an exhausted Joe Knox did the same.

Chapter 64

CHAPTER 64

“WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME,” Caleb said.

The three of them were sitting around an old picnic table in a small clearing off the main road to Divine. A meal Annabelle had purchased at Rita’s was on the table. Reuben gnawed on a piece of fried chicken while Annabelle glared at Caleb.

“I’m open to suggestions,” she said.

“Maybe Alex can help,” suggested Caleb as he carefully picked the skin off his piece of chicken.

“Help what, screw things up?”

“We talked about Alex, Annabelle,” retorted Reuben. “He’s as professional and brave as they make ’em. And I think Caleb’s got something.”

“What do you expect him to do, come running to help us? It’ll mess up his career. You heard him.”

“You can always ask.”

“Why me?”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” said Reuben. “Anything to help Oliver.”

Annabelle stared at each man, sighed and pulled out her phone. “No, I’ll do it.”

A minute later she said, “Alex?”

“Annabelle? You okay?”

“I—” She stopped. “We need a favor.”

Five minutes later she clicked off.

“Well?” Reuben and Caleb asked together.

“He’s going to help us. He’s coming up here, in fact.”