The car was a Ford Fiesta, pale gray and well worn. Abel, the one with green eyes, handled the driving, while Cain sat next to her in the backseat. Absent their balaclava masks, she saw their faces for the first time and was shocked by their youth. They wore heavy coats, were carefully shaven, and smelled of sandalwood cologne. Cain was squeezing her arm with his left hand and holding a gun in his right. Elizabeth tried not to look at the weapon or to even think about it. Instead she stared silently out her window. It had been more than two weeks since she had been outside; two weeks since she had seen another human other than Cain and Abel and their masked accomplices; two weeks since she had seen the sun or had possessed even the most basic sense of time. The window was her portal on reality. Cain and Abel were from the world of the damned, she thought. On the other side of the glass was the land of the living.

For a few minutes her surroundings were unfamiliar. Then the entrance of the Camden Town Underground station flashed past, and from there she was able to track their route south across London. Despite the pleasant weather, the streets were oddly quiet. In the Tottenham Court Road she saw holiday wreaths and realized it was probably Christmas morning.

They crossed Oxford Street and headed down Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, then made their way along Whitehall to Westminster. As they turned into Victoria Street, Elizabeth saw a crowd milling about beneath the North Tower of the Abbey. Standing beneath a leafless tree, next to a tired-looking man in an ushanka hat, was a tall, distinguished-looking figure in a fedora who bore a sharp resemblance to her father. It wasn’t her father, of course. Her Colorado-born father would never be caught dead in a hat like that.

A moment later they turned into Abbey Orchard Street. Abel pulled into an illegal spot and shut down the engine. Cain slipped the gun into his coat pocket and squeezed her arm tightly.

“We’re going to take a very short walk,” he said. “At the end of it, you will be released. Get out of the car slowly and put both your hands in the pockets of your raincoat. We will lead you where we want you to go. Keep your eyes on the ground and don’t say a word. If you don’t do exactly what we tell you, I’ll shoot you in the heart. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she said calmly.

Cain reached across Elizabeth Halton’s lap and opened her door. She swung her legs out of the car and stepped into the street, her first step toward freedom.

The hands of Big Ben lay at 9:57 when Gabriel’s earpiece crackled. The voice he heard was Adrian Carter’s.