As Tom stared in dazed comprehension, he heard a wet compression behind him. Then another. Footsteps. On damp grass. He turned. Two shadowy figures were moving swiftly down the hill, toward the water.

With his heart pounding dangerously, Tom slipped the phone into his coat and shoved both hands into his trouser pockets.

Ten seconds later, they stood only a few feet away: two strangers in their thirties, their pale faces lighted by the moon. One pointed a pistol at Tom’s belly. As it glinted ominously in the moonlight, a nauseating flash of déjà vu went through him: two Chinese soldiers had confronted him exactly this way in Korea. Only it had been snowing then, and Walt had shot them both.

“Don’t shoot,” he said in a level voice. “I need to talk to your boss.”

“Just who do you think we work for?” asked the man on the left, the shorter of the two.

Tom’s life now depended on a fifty-fifty gamble. Was the answer Brody Royal? Or had Frank Knox’s son eclipsed the older man in power? After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Forrest Knox.”

The two men looked at each other. Then the one on the right said, “You’ve got a syringe and some vials with Sonny Thornfield’s fingerprints on them. Where are they?”

“I’ll discuss that with Forrest when I see him.”

The man with the pistol shook his head. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Doc. This is the end of the road for you.”

Tom was sickened by the fear that surged through him. Only minutes ago he had resigned himself to death. But Caitlin’s message had resurrected the hope of something he’d given up expecting to live to see. Another grandchild. Maybe a grandson, this time. The realization that these two men meant to take that from him—to kill him on this lonely black shore—summoned a blast of adrenaline from his aging glands. Pain stabbed him beneath the left shoulder blade. He needed a nitro tablet, fast. But if he reached for one, the man holding the pistol would fire.

“That stuff isn’t here,” Tom said in a strained voice, closing his right hand around the pistol in his pocket. “Walt’s got it.”

“That Texas Ranger?”

“He’s lying,” said the taller man. “I’ll bet that junk’s right up there in the house.”

The shorter man was working up the nerve to pull the trigger—Tom could see it. The abstract thoughts that occupied his mind earlier had flown from his head like dandelion seeds. He was back in Korea, facing two captors who couldn’t understand a word he said. What he’d learned all those years ago was that speed didn’t matter that much in a gunfight. It was deliberation that counted. Deliberation and steady nerves.