Vik sighed. “Tom, this is painful, physically and psychologically painful for me to say, but I think Wyatt was right.”

“Really?” Wyatt said, surprised.

“Just say nothing at Matchett-Reddy,” Vik urged him. “Not a word. And Evil Wench, no gloating. In fact, not a word from you.”

Wyatt smiled wickedly. “I was right, Vik was wrong. Ha-ha!”

Yuri kissed the top of her head.

Vik groaned. “That qualifies as gloating and saying a word.”

“Actually, it was gloating and saying six words,” Wyatt corrected him.

“And two ‘ha’s,’” Yuri agreed, gazing at her adoringly. Then he turned to Tom. “I am in agreement with them. You must endeavor not to speak this time, Thomas. Nod in greeting, but that is all. Then perhaps, you should conceal yourself somewhere where no one will be finding you. I will come and retrieve you from this hiding place before we are due to depart.”

“Got it,” Tom groused, slumping back in his seat. He couldn’t believe this had happened. In the course of mere hours, any shot he had at a future in the Intrasolar Forces had been whittled to the caprice of some executives at Matchett-Reddy.

This one was do or die.

The Interstice took them as far as the capitol building in Sacramento, California, and they were shuffled into helicopters and flown over a vast, sprawling wilderness. They landed on a rocky cliffside, and Tom stepped out with the others to behold a greeting party of high-level Matchett-Reddy executives and their sponsored Combatants, Lea Styron and Mason Meekins, both Hannibals.

Tom made sure to seal his lips and nod in a manly way as he shook hands. Then he clasped the hand of the last executive in the greeting line.

Tom’s heart stopped for a moment, he swore it.

Oh. Oh . . .

He realized it. Matchett-Reddy was doomed. It had been doomed since he’d stuck the police on a naked leecher in Las Vegas.

He met the familiar gaze of Hank Bloombury, and recognition sparked in the bald man’s face. “You!”

“Me,” Tom said.

“It’s you!” Bloombury said again.

“It’s him,” Vik said, unasked, from where he was standing at Tom’s side. Then, confused, “What’s happening?”

“Huh?” said Wyatt, on Vik’s other side.

“I know you,” Bloombury insisted. “You were the one who called the police on me last week! My lawyer subpoenaed a surveillance feed of it! You knew who I was”—his finger jabbed Tom’s chest—“but you told them I was a crazy, perverted, drug-dealing terrorist!”

Tom grew aware of Wyatt clapping her hand over her mouth, Vik’s incredulous face like he didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified, and Yuri, gazing grimly. His mind raced over his options. He could play dumb, or he could apologize.