Thomas nodded, swallowed. 'You said it yourself, Sam. You said you knew these people, remember? If you got on the phone and told Atta you had your SUB cornered, what do you think would happen, huh?'

Sam glanced out the windshield. 'They'd scramble a tactical team,' she said simply. When she looked back, her eyes were bright with indecision—and admission. They would kill Neil.

She knew it as well as he did.

'If Neil dies,' Thomas said, 'so does Frankie. You're my only chance, Sam.'

'We can't do this, Tom,' she said, blinking away a tear.

'Fucking A,' Gerard muttered in obvious relief.

Thomas held her gaze, stared deep into eyes that were only beginning to discover him. She was strong, he knew.

Strong enough to do the right thing, even if it meant sacrificing the man she loved. Or his son.

'But I wasn't asking,' Thomas said. He reached past her arm, punched the horn.

The surrounding woods seemed to shriek with reverberations.

'You did not just do that!' Gerard sang. 'No fucking way!'

Visibly shaken, Sam stared at the cottage. All three of them held their breath.

Thomas saw a shadow bend before one of the golden windows, pull aside the sheers.

It was him, etched in warm interior tones, peering out across cool evening gloom. Neil. He seemed something not quite human, as though he stared through a portal, breathing a different, brighter atmosphere. Then he vanished. Moments later, the cabin went dark.

Fear like a warm bath.

'I guess we do it your way,' Sam said. Her smile was at once sad and fatalistic. She pulled her automatic and turned to Gerard. 'I'll go round back. You keep the front covered. When I give the signal, we both go in, got it?'

'So you're just going to let this prick pull our strings li—?'

'Do you got it?'

'Got it,' Gerard grunted.

She turned to Thomas, her eyes bright with fear and excitement. 'You stay here,' she said, then she disappeared out her door. Thomas watched her sprint through the trees, keeping her head low. Kicking up leaves, she crossed a shallow clearing, then hooked around to flank the structure.

Nothing matters.

'You're a fucker,' Gerard muttered as he shouldered open his door.

'And why's that?' Thomas asked—numb words.

The agent stared at him with wide, honest eyes. He looked different in the gloom, contradictory, as though the skin of a handsome man had been stretched across something doughy and stupid.

'Because you flickered us.'

Thomas watched Gerard shuffle sideways, using the Mustang for cover, then dash toward the cottage. He disappeared in the shadows where the porch jutted from the log walls, but not before Thomas caught a glimpse of grim panic on his face.