Ozan waited for a man in a blue blazer with brass anchor buttons to walk past. “On a hunch, I called Technical Services, and sure enough, somebody using our ‘Harlan Black’ alias requested a location on Sonny Thornfield’s cell number about the time Sonny says all this happened. That had to be Deke. When he saw Sonny was gone from his camp but his truck still there, Deke got his cell phone triangulated and went after him. He must have walked up on Dr. Cage and that Ranger questioning Sonny and shot it out with ’em. The problem is, Deke’s phone is dead now. And nobody’s seen him, Dr. Cage, or the Ranger since.”

“You have the trace coordinates on Deke’s phone?”

“Damn straight. I already called Air Support and requested a chopper in your name. It’s picking us up at Lakefront Airport in fifteen minutes.”

Lakefront Airport was only five miles away. “Let’s move.”

Forrest’s secure phone buzzed again. He looked down at the LCD and cursed. “It’s Brody.”

Ozan shook his head. “Should we tell the old man what’s going on?”

Forrest stuck up his middle finger. “Screw him. From now on, he gets the mushroom treatment. Get the car, Alphonse. I got a bad feeling.”

CHAPTER 62

A HALF MILE down the shore of Lake Concordia from Brody Royal’s palatial home, his daughter, Katy, sat gazing blankly into her Hollywood-style vanity mirror, which was surrounded by lightbulbs. Her husband stood in the shower a few feet away. Staring into the mirror, Katy saw nothing but fear. In the days since her interview with Henry Sexton, her entire being had been taken over by a steadily encroaching terror, a force that was slowly devouring her, like a lethal infection. She was helpless against this attack, for there was precious little of her left to fight anything external. Katy had lived with fear for as long as she could remember, though she’d never understood its source. Trying to recall her childhood was like dipping her bucket into a well and coming up with India ink. Whenever she’d summoned the courage to dip her hands into that bucket, she’d felt slimy, shapeless things under the surface, things she couldn’t catch hold of long enough to lift into the light and identify. At the frayed end of depression, she’d learned, the mind began to lose its grasp on even the most familiar things. Of course, she hadn’t done her brain any favors over the years, what with the booze and the drugs. But without those anesthetics, she’d have killed herself long before now.