He didn’t know why, but all the hackles rose on the back of his neck.

White, midtwenties, rail thin, the young man wore a grimy Knicks jersey, a pair of ripped jeans, and the fuzz of a few nights on his chin. He radiated an odor that suggested a night or two spent in the same clothing.

Maybe the guy was homeless—Orion shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Clearly he’d watched one too many episodes of Law & Order during his months in rehab. Orion had probably looked the same way when he arrived at LaGuardia, freshly out of hibernation at his homestead under the loom of Denali.

Orion dismissed the kid and hung on to the bar overhead as the train pulled away from Fulton station. “We could have walked to Foley Square,” he muttered to Ham, who leaned his shoulder against the pole, clearly used to the jerk and roll of the New York metro.

Ham’s gaze was tracking Knicks as he moved halfway down the car.

So Orion wasn’t the only one whose instincts fired.

“You’re limping,” Ham said, not looking at him. He sounded as grumpy as Orion. “And we’re late. The rally has already started.”

“I’m not an invalid. My knee just doesn’t like eight hours on a plane.” He watched as the guy nudged up behind what looked like a college student—brown hair, fuzz on his chin, clean-cut, a black backpack with a purple NYU logo on the flap hanging over his shoulder. “I hope White has answers.”

“If anyone can track down Royal, it’s Senator White. He’s on the Armed Services Committee.”

Orion glanced away, toward the other side of the car. A couple women sat with their bags clutched on their laps. Another woman stood, her bag over her shoulder, scrolling through her phone. A man in a suit coat holding a satchel was reading the paper folded in half in his grip.

Behind them a young man wearing a black hoodie, earbuds affixed, bobbed his head to music. He caught Orion’s eye, then looked away.

“You should have told me that you went to rescue Royal and Thorne,” Orion said, looking at Ham.

Ham met him with a frown. “It wasn’t my information to give.”

Orion’s mouth tightened. “I wasn’t thrilled when Logan Thorne landed on my doorstep last summer, very alive and packing a conspiracy theory.”

Ham turned to face him, as if ready to share answers as to why a former Navy SEAL who’d been taken by the Taliban in Afghanistan some three years ago had appeared alive, although shot, and in the backwoods of Alaska. Thorne surfaced with stories of an off-the-books rescue mission, a CIA cover-up, and the desperate fear that someone was still out to get him.