It had been more than a challenge and in the last year Knox had seriously contemplated retirement after talking his way out of the Middle East where no Muslim trusted anyone with light skin who held a firm belief in the supreme holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’d pulled enough time. He could go out on his terms. He was actually on a short sabbatical when Hayes had called. And now look at him. And the same old question had raised its ugly head once more:

Will the sun come up for me tomorrow?

He walked into his kitchen, tossed his keys on the counter, opened the fridge and popped a beer. He sat down in his small study and considered what he did and didn’t know, the latter unfortunately being far more voluminous than the former. He slipped the pages from his pocket. He’d taken the two-page order with Macklin Hayes’ signature on it. It was probably a felony stealing government property but Knox really didn’t care at this point. He looked at the precise signature of the man.

What were you thinking when you signed that order, General?

He now had a connection between Hayes and Carr. That changed the dynamic of his mission, Knox just wasn’t sure how. Yet it did explain one thing.

He was told he’d been ordered to track down Carr because the former Triple Six held secrets that would embarrass the U.S. government, or at the very least the CIA. Sometimes, for Knox, it was hard to tell the two apart. Hayes had said that Carter Gray had been concerned about that too. And that he’d been after Carr, but Carr had evidently gotten to him first.

That’s what hadn’t made sense. Carr had been at Gray’s house the night it was blown up. So he’d evidently already known where Carr was. And on top of that Carr hadn’t opened his mouth these last thirty years. So why would Gray or Hayes and the CIA be worried that the man was going to open it now?

Perhaps Gray had been after Carr for some reason, but not to kill the man. Ordering his grave to be dug up? Was he trying to flush him out, make him run? But why? Knox had a hunch the answer lay in the area he was prohibited from looking into. But he’d been “ordered” from doing things before. And he’d still gone ahead and done them.