come for you.”
The line went dead. Sydney hung up, daring a glance around. No one noticed her. Trying to look like she belonged when she didn’t, she pushed her hair back and walked toward the front as if she had a car waiting. Outside, she forced herself not to run, kept her pace even, and lowered her arms to keep from clutching her churning stomach and looking more obvious than she was.
“Fine. It’ll be fine.” Like hell.
What the attackers might have taken from the facility really terrified her. The cold room was supposed to be impenetrable. But then, so was the Cradle. Her mind shifted to the man in the Gilly suit. She hoped he’d gotten the hell out of there. He’d been stupid to go back. But then, he was a Marine. Which meant courage most often won out over personal safety.
Considering what had happened, it was a little too convenient to think that an armed Marine, complete with buddies, was in the area. A four-man team. Snipers maybe? It was a U.S. government project.
Her mind sifted, plucked at information. It’s what she did for a living. Gather data, theorize. Experiment, test, try a new route. If this had been a chemical reaction she could have figured that out easy. But she had a result without the cause. Why hit the Cradle? Why kill a bunch of tech nerds?
Okay here’s your stupid card, Syd. It was top top secret. That alone attracted bad guys. But the Cradle was more covert than the NSA, and aside from an elite group of military and finance council officials, only a couple of handpicked agents knew about its existence.
Now everyone would.
Sydney stopped at the appointed mark, glanced up and down the road, then did as ordered. She stepped into the forest to wait.
She knew what those people were after. The elements in the cold room. Maybe the bomb. No one was supposed to know about that, either. She touched the notes wedged into her panties. If they were after her research, then they had an incomplete formula.
She had the rest.
And now, she had the only copy.
Two
7:31 A.M.
Like an ancient Apache, Jack put his hand on the ground, feeling the vibrations.
The trembling stopped as quickly as it had started. Frightened deer loped deeper into the valley, away from the scent of blood. Smaller animals dug frantically into hollows and underbrush. Earthquake? Cave-in? Crouching, he sniffed the air, scenting only mist and morning.
Slipping his binoculars from his leg pocket, he sighted on the mountaintop. His fingers flexed, and he wished they were around the killer’s throat. Tucked against the truck fender, Jack examined the area three-sixty. He was far enough from Skyline Drive not to feel the rumble of trucks or buses. No personal vehicles could have made such a rumble anyway. So what caused the shaking? There was nothing, no one. And, there was no easy line of sight for shots accurate enough to kill three men a hundred yards apart. That meant more than one shooter.
He was hoping for a head to scalp. Instead, he was alone with three dead friends and no one to blame.
And possibly with a shooter still sighting on him.
He threw a fistful of rocks, keeping low and expecting the soft pop of silenced gunfire. None came, but he still wasn’t taking chances and using the trees for cover, he moved slowly back to the point where he’d first seen the woman. He found large footprints, blood smeared on the underbrush. The man Jack had shot was hit badly. To die and left for the animals, he thought. The woman’s prints were there too. The toe of her shoe made more of a mark than the heels. That meant running at top speed, he thought, then hotfooted it to his deer stand and climbed past the jump seat. He sighted again through the binoculars, his gaze clawing the hillside from the cavern entrance. Nothing. Impatient rage rushed inside him, but he moved slowly, finally swinging right and higher.
The air was dusted, and from this distance, he couldn’t tell if it was smoke, or lingering morning fog; the smudge in the sky was too faint. He climbed down, dropping the last dozen feet into a pile of leaves, then heading toward the top. He hadn’t gone a hundred feet when he heard the whine of motorcycles and knew he was too late to catch them.
He didn’t stop.
7:58 A.M.
The dark sedan pulled up to the contact point, the door popping open without help. Sydney climbed in and shut it. The locks clamped down automatically. Her gaze snapped to the driver, but he was hidden behind black glass. Probably wearing dark glasses, black suit, and no recognizable jewelry, either, she thought, feeling creeped out even as she was relieved to be on her way to safety. She wanted to ask the driver about the others, her colleagues, the sentries. But she knew no one she encountered would talk. It was their job not to.
She stared out the window, her stomach churning miserably, then she looked around, saw the small leather hatch and opened it. It was filled with water bottles, and she took one, cracked the seal and drained a third of it. Her hand shook as she swiped it across her mouth, and she held it out to steady it.
Blood was knitted deep into the cracks of her nails and knuckles. The urge to rub it was overpowering. The young Marine’s death played in her mind again and again.
I’ve never seen anyone die.
She didn’t want to again.
She gulped more water, then tossed the empty aside and grabbed another bottle. She drank.
Her composure wavered and she clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes stinging. Don’t. Crying won’t help. You’re stronger than this. You have to be.
In the back of her mind, she heard her dead father’s voice, cold and imperialistic, telling her logic defeats emotion, fear is the easiest to conquer. She’d bet a grand her father never had anyone shoot at him, either. But he was right, her fear was drowning under the flood of anger flowing through her like overripe wine. Thick and slow. Bitter rage churned in her, spilling over any remaining terror until there was nothing left but the urgent need to find out what happened—and see that someone paid.
She leaned back and waited. Let her thoughts brew. The ride toward Washington would be long. She ought to be flaming mad by then.
How nice.
8:22 A.M.
Cisco grabbed the oh-shit strap and held on as the chopper took a dive over Annandale. “This isn’t an F-18, hot dog. Go silent, we’re alerting the entire county,” Cisco said into the mike, and when the noise inside the chopper died down, he pulled off the headset and tossed it aside. The roadblocks were up, but he had to lock down the mountain before suspicions got out of hand and the local cops pushed their noses into his business. The park opened in—he checked his watch—less than an hour. He’d been forty minutes from Langley when he’d gotten the call, and the gridlock traffic had chiseled into his time. He didn’t have any left to make it clean and accepted it. The fictitious “gas leak” was going to be deadly.
Turning his attention from the view out the chopper window, he stared at the bank of monitors. The sensors were off, way off. He sent the computer an arched look, his gaze hopping across the data spitting across on the small screen. “Copy?”
“Yes, sir,” an agent said, pulling
