For a moment, he took what she said as defeatism. That she’d given up on finding Suzanne. But that wasn’t what she meant at all.

“Where is she?”

Titus came back from the truck and whispered something in Calista’s ear. Calista listened but kept her eyes on George.

“I’m afraid we’re out of time,” she said.

“Where is she?” he yelled. “Answer me!”

“Enough!” she snapped, then took control of herself again. “That’s enough. I think we’re done here.”

George looked up at her from his knees.

“I see. And am I your last loose end?”

“Nearly,” Calista said and held out her hand. Titus handed her a radio. She turned up the volume and rested it on her knee. It was the communications channel for a Cold Harbor tactical team.

“Jenn Charles! Daniel Hendricks! Step out of the house. We have warrants for your arrest,” a voice barked over the radio.

“We have a white female on the porch,” a team member said.

“Is it Charles?” asked a second.

“Stand by.”

George held his breath. The voices chattered back and forth.

“Positive contact. Visual confirmation. It’s Charles.”

Calista looked back to George.

“Very nearly.”

Fred Tinsley knelt on one knee deep in the woods and watched with mounting irritation the standoff develop between Charles and the seven men from the black SUVs. He’d been waiting here all day for darkness to fall before taking the house. It would have been simple. He knew its layout from the last time.

Then, as if on cue, these men had roared up, gung ho, bristling and loud. Charles didn’t believe they were FBI. Tinsley didn’t care one way or another. Whoever they were, they couldn’t be allowed to take anyone from the house. Tinsley needed one of the three alive. Temporarily. There were questions that needed answering. Gibson Vaughn, if possible. He appeared to have leapfrogged ahead of the other two, and Tinsley wanted to know how.

Tinsley studied the battlefield. In a direct exchange of small-arms fire, he would die. That was undisputable. His Sig Sauer was a fine weapon, but it was no match for seven trained men. Five with assault rifles.

He knew, however, how to neutralize their advantage.

Rising out of the shadows, Tinsley hugged the tree line, slipping out of cover a few feet from the rear SUV. One man stood on each side of the vehicle behind an open door. The engine was running, masking Tinsley’s footfalls on the white stone driveway. It helped that their focus and their rifles were trained on the confrontation with Charles.

Tinsley took the first man in a single practiced sweep of his knife. Blood splashed the window. He lowered the man to the ground into a sitting position to die.