And the FAA comes through for me.

But not in the way I want.

NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED.

I try again, a thick feeling in my stomach getting thicker, from this bit of bad news combined with the fast-food breakfast sandwich I ate an hour ago.

I carefully look at my notes, carefully punch in the number, and just as carefully, the answer comes back.

NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED.

Damn it!

I log off, clear the cache, and walk away, staring straight ahead. The nice older woman at the curved library counter looks up at me and says, “Did you find what you were looking for, hon?”

I attempt a smile in her direction. “What a beautiful library you have.”

I move my Jeep Wrangler out, find a small strip mall, and park underneath an oak tree to give me shade. What does NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED mean?

It means the Learjet 60, as white as it appeared to me yesterday, is black. It belongs to one of the seventeen official domestic or overseas intelligence agencies that supposedly exist here in the United States—trust me, the number is much higher—or to some off-the-books well-financed group that does freelance work for intelligence groups, so in case something goes sour or appears on the front page of the Washington Post, there’s the ever plausible deniability for the White House.

Or it might mean that some corporation or billionaire on the boundary between legal and illegal has the money and pull to keep a registration number on that Learjet in the shadows.

However you want to slice it or dice it, my family—my Tom and my Denise!—were dragged into my world yesterday.

Damn it once more.

My burner phone rings, and I’m happy it doesn’t make me jump. It means I’m still focused on the job at hand.

“Amy,” I answer.

“It’s Freddy,” she says. Most people in the Army know her as Major Fredericka West, but one drunken night—after we both successfully passed the grueling hell-on-jungle that is Ranger training—she told me her real family name was von Westphal, and her great-grandfather had been a prominent general in World War II, fighting on the wrong side.

At some roadhouse in Georgia, both of us in muddy fatigues, hair cut crewcut short to keep it clean, she muttered, “He was a good general, but he stuck around too long. Then he joined the other generals to blow up the little crazy Nazi bastard, and he ended up getting garroted by piano wire for his troubles.”

Now she says, “Under four eyes, huh?

“The most four eyes you’ve ever seen.”

Over the years Freddy has researched and admired her great-grandfather’s military skills—even if they were used in the service of evil—and one German phrase she taught me was unter vier Augen, meaning to talk to someone under four eyes, meaning in strictest privacy.

“What’s up?”

“Two questions, one easier than the other.”

“Which one’s easier?”

I say, “You’ll have to decide.”

A dry laugh. “Okay. Go.”

“There’s an airplane registration number that doesn’t appear in the public records. It’s been scrubbed. I need to know who owns the aircraft.”