So here she was, a lonely woman of twenty-six whose lover was a heartbeat, a shadow, a voice that lived like a ghost inside some of the most sophisticated surveillance equipment on earth, a system she had designed herself, that had one purpose: to watch him and watch over him.

She had continuous satellite imagery not only of him and his team, but of the known hybrid sites, both active and abandoned, and a whole array of bells and whistles that could, in an emergency, enable her to call in military action ranging from rocket attacks by drones or fighters to a cruise-missile attack.

The moment the team had got into trouble, Mark’s telemetry had alerted Gina. He had a piezoelectrically powered transmitter implanted in his chest. Why it had originally been put there and by whom she did not know, but she could certainly make good use of it. Because of it, she could know more about the man she loved than he did about himself.

She had paced as she watched the forest and listened to his frenetic heartbeats, praying that they would not stop, pleading with a God she’d left behind in childhood to please just this once save a man, one precious man, for the woman who loved him but could not see him again unless so ordered.

She played with the satellites’ lenses and filters, trying to see something new in the area. She was no longer panicked, she told herself. But she also knew that she would soon need to send Mark into harm’s way once again.

Moving a toggle, she zoomed in on Willoughby. She could see, in a clearing in the forest, the scattered remains of poor Massy. Not far away was the little farm. She moved the toggle and zoomed in on it. The two boys were running their tractor, and there was no other activity. Okay, she would do the quarantine deal with the local health department and get them moved out of there.

Farther up the road, a couple of RVs were pulled into a siding, awnings out, smoke rising. They could be a problem, too, especially if they hiked into those woods and found the remains—or worse, got offed. She put a marker on the RV encampment, another on the farm. Any movement in or out of the borders she drew around the two sites would trigger an immediate alert.

She wanted to drink something strong, she wanted to go back to smoking after twelve years, and she wanted to just wither up and die. Losing Mark would be worse for her, she imagined, than losing a husband. In addition to the loss of hope, there would also be the secret anguish that he had never known how she felt. She did not have the courage to say anything on the satphone. She could not face what she feared she’d get, which was his usual strictly professional response.