“Cyanide, I think. Notice the cherry color of his lips?”

Now I do . . .

“There’s still a heartbeat, but it’s faint.”

“Get me an evidence bag!” Kaiser cries above the general clamor.

Turning again, I see that the FBI man has cut open the chair seat, exposing springs, and from within removed a small metal cube, which he places on the rail of the witness box.

“What is that?” I ask, moving closer.

“Careful, Penn,” he warns. “There’s a needle sticking out of it.”

He’s right. I see a sliver-thin hypodermic protruding from the dull metal cube.

“We do need to clear the courtroom,” Kaiser says, “but I don’t want anybody in here to get out and away without being questioned.”

Before I can respond, someone yells, “They shot him! They used a silencer! They’re still shooting!”

For one pregnant moment, everyone in the room goes still. In this surreal slice of time, a face seems to zoom out of the crowd toward me. I don’t know it well—as I do so many in this crowd—but something in its eyes triggers a primal reaction in my central nervous system.

What do I see? Every other set of eyes within my field of vision radiates fear and confusion. These eyes radiate . . . triumph.

“That’s Snake Knox,” I whisper.

Then a woman shrieks and pandemonium erupts, starting a general stampede for the single accessible exit. I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a hurricane. A few clever souls run for the door to the judge’s chambers, but the bailiff blocks it with his drawn pistol. At this point, Tim and his men have begun physically covering the Cage women and Mia with their bodies.

“Goddamn it!” Kaiser curses, furiously scanning the mob. “Somebody triggered that device! Somebody in this room! It could be Knox himself.”

“It was,” I confirm, catching Kaiser’s arm. “I just saw him. I saw Snake.”

“What?”

But already the man I believed to be Snake Knox has been swallowed by the panicked mob.

“Dr. Cage!” Kaiser calls. “What’s Devine’s condition?”

“Heart just stopped.”

“Can you believe it?” says a resigned voice from below and behind me.

Quentin has rolled his wheelchair up to me. He’s staring down at Will Devine’s body, and my father is looking back at him.

“Believe what?” Kaiser asks, motioning for his agents to break through the crowd and come to him.

Quentin slowly bobs his head at the corpse on the floor. “Snake Knox just silenced another Double Eagle. He cut it fine this time, but he pulled it off.”

“John,” I say, reaching out for Kaiser’s arm again.

“Are you okay, Penn?” he asks, looking at me strangely.

“He’s here, John.”

“What?”

“Snake Knox was here. Twenty feet away from us.”

The FBI agent goes still. “Are you sure?”

“Ninety percent. Nothing else about him looked like Snake. But the eyes were his.”