The agent retrieved the bag and held it out to April, who just looked at it, her hands cuffed behind her back. Not about to hold the bag for her, he unlocked her cuffs and resecured her hands in front of her. She closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. “What if the real criminals are at the library right now?” she asked, thinking of Meng.

“We’ve got the real criminal,” Prichard said.

“You don’t understand,” April said. “The Gutenberg Bible is my responsibility. If it disappears, then everything I’ve ever worked for disappears too. My entire life is wrapped up in that book.”

“Then why don’t you tell us more about the Orphans?”

April heaved. “I told you, I don’t know anything about them.”

“We’ll see if you have the same answer in the interrogation room,” Millar said.

April’s mind raced. She had to get back to the library to protect the Gutenberg. Once they reached headquarters, her chances of escaping would be less than zero. She had to do it now.

She retched into the bag.

Both Millar and Prichard looked away, disgusted, which gave April a short window of opportunity. She dropped the bag to the floor.

“Are you done?” Millar asked.

“No,” she said, raising her arms.

Before he could react, April reached forward and slipped the chain of her handcuffs over the Samoan’s head. She yanked back with all her might and listened as the big man wheezed against the constriction. He reached up to save his neck, and the SUV careened into oncoming traffic.

Prichard and Millar shouted as the SUV slammed head-on into a metro bus filled with commuters. Air bags exploded and an acrid, gunpowder-smelling smoke filled the cabin. The entire world came to a deafening halt.

April shook her head and tried to get her bearings. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the Samoan was unconscious, a thin trail of crimson trickling from the corner of his mouth. Millar was out as well, the window next to him cracked and spiderwebbed from the spot his head had smashed. In the front passenger seat, Prichard was motionless.

Damaged in the crash, the SUV’s horn blared nonstop, exacerbating the screams emanating from the metro bus. April struggled to remove her seat belt, watching as Prichard stirred to life. He turned, blood dripping from a gash in his forehead. A lens in his glasses had popped out. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I have to get back to the library,” April said, fumbling to unlock her door.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Prichard said. He pushed the air bag away and with an agonized growl rose to his knees on his seat. He reached into his suit and withdrew a pistol, which he stuck in April’s face. “Don’t move, and let me see your hands.”