"Reinforced walls, six feet thick," he had said, "with filtered air. Built originally by Bedard Stoddard himself and modernized by LeMar in the eighties. We've been told that anyone inside here during a nuclear blast will survive as long as the generators keep going, even if the warhead hit as close as Washington."

Gabe spent twenty minutes wiping down the space. Drew groused about having it be his room but in the end agreed that his safety was what their mission was all about.

Before he headed back upstairs, Gabe made one final survey of the quarters, three stories below the ground, surrounded by solid granite and six feet of reinforced concrete. His knee-jerk reaction was that despite serious efforts to make it comfortable and inviting, the space gave him claustrophobic jitters. Still, he acknowledged, it would be the perfect sanctuary for the president . . . or the perfect coffin.

CHAPTER 55

The noise, from the stairway behind Alison, was faint—the opening of the door. A footstep on the top stair.

The sound was significant. It meant, in all likelihood, that she wasn't dead.

She had no idea how many hours it had taken for her cardiac, respiratory, and nervous systems to recover from having been overdosed with metaproteranol—the pharmacoactive drug in Alupent. She still felt jittery, sick to her stomach although she hadn't eaten for thirty-six hours or more, and profoundly ill at ease.

Her muscles ached terribly, even though she could not recall having been injected after the inhaler overdose. It was doubtful that Griswold had any idea of what dosage of metaproteranol a person could survive. More likely was that he had simply kept forcing the medication into her lungs and bloodstream until the apparatus had run dry. It was a miracle her body hadn't simply given in—her lungs exploding, her heart ceasing to beat, her brain shutting off altogether.

She had to find a way out—to cause Griswold to make a mistake of some sort.

The footsteps continued down the stairs.

The monster was back for another session. She had beaten him this far—even gotten him to boast that there were, in fact, various drugs adulterating the president's Alupent—and somehow, she vowed, she would beat him again.

Or die.

Softly she began to hum, singing the words in her mind, preparing herself for whatever was to come.

"This world ain't always tasty like candy. . . . That's what my mama once told me. . . ."

Another step . . . then another. Alison tightened her eyes shut and clenched her fists.

"Sometimes it'll shake and bend you. . . ."

The footsteps ended on the concrete floor. Then she heard a woman gasp.

"¡Ay, Dios mío!"

Constanza came into Alison's sight.

"I can't believe he let you down here," Alison rasped through parched, split lips.