of sophisticated equipment—a situation that might crop up in an underdeveloped country, for example—to make a nuclear weapon. Turned out they could. The government called it the Nth Country Experiment. You can read about it online if you’re interested. And in 1994 a teenage Eagle Scout built a nuclear reactor in his backyard, using materials he found around the house.”
“So you really could build a bomb?” The idea made her skin crawl.
“I’m sure I could, given enough time and the right materials.” He scrawled something on a piece of paper and passed it over to her. In case anyone is listening—building a bomb isn’t the problem. Building one small enough for one person to carry around inconspicuously is.
She nodded and crumpled the paper, holding it tight in her clenched fist. “I still don’t see how I can help you.”
“Perhaps you’re merely here to boost my morale.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”
He frowned. “I only meant that having someone to talk to is a nice change.”
Right. Maybe she had grown too accustomed to the company of Duane’s goons who, despite their boss’s orders not to lay a hand on her, spent plenty of time leering and making lewd remarks. “How have you kept from going crazy, alone here for so many months?” she asked.
“I try not to think about it too much,” he said. “And I focus on the work.” He turned back to the lab equipment.
She stared at his back for a long while, then stood and walked to the window. He could focus on work all he wanted, but she was going to focus on finding a way out of here.
In different circumstances, she might have enjoyed the view out this window. The cabin sat on a slight rise at the edge of a valley. Feathery junipers and piñon pines dotted the rocky ground amid a thick blanket of snow. A few hundred yards beyond the cabin the land fell away in a steep precipice. Across from this gorge rose red rock mountains, the peaks cloaked in white, the setting sun painting the sky in brilliant pinks and golds. How ironic that such a peaceful-seeming place could be the source of potentially great destruction.
A cloud of white off in the distance, moving in their direction, caught her attention. “I think someone’s coming,” she said.
Mark was by her side within seconds. “That looks like Duane’s entourage,” he said, as three black Humvees slowly made their way up the narrow, rutted track. A guard who must have been seated on the other side of the door rose and walked to the edge of the narrow porch, an automatic rifle cradled in his arms. When the vehicles stopped in front of the cabin, the guard snapped off a salute.
Erin didn’t even realize she had backed away from the window until she bumped into Mark. He rested one hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and she fought the urge to lean into him. She didn’t even know the man, and didn’t fully trust him, yet she felt safer with him than with any of those on the other side of the door.
Men piled out of the first and third vehicles, all dressed in camo and bristling with weapons. One man unpacked a wheelchair and set it up next to the middle vehicle, while another man opened the back door of this Hummer, leaned in and lifted out Duane Braeswood.
Mark sucked in his breath. “Is that really Duane?” he asked. “What happened to him?”
Instead of camo, Duane wore a black suit and turtleneck. His thin body was twisted and hunched, and tubes trailed from his nostrils to an oxygen tank that one of his goons hooked to the back of the wheelchair.
“You didn’t know?” She had been shocked, too, the first time she saw this sick, diminished version of her stepfather. But he was diminished in physical stature only. His spirit had struck her as stronger than ever.
“I haven’t seen him in almost a year,” Mark said.
“Don’t let his appearance fool you. He isn’t weak.” Despite his disability, the man in the wheelchair radiated power, with every man out there focused on him.
The group headed for the cabin, two of the men lifting the wheelchair, with Duane in it, onto the porch. Mark pulled Erin into the middle of the room as locks snicked and the door opened.
She forced herself to look at her stepfather, to meet the blue eyes that burned feverishly in his withered face. “Erin, dear.” The sound of her name on his lips made her flinch. “Your mother sends her greetings.”
She bit back a curse, aware of the guards looming on either side of him. She had found out the hard way what they thought of any slur on the man they viewed almost as a religious figure. “How is my mother?” she asked, because she wanted desperately to know, though she knew Duane would tell her the truth only if it suited him.
“Helen is fine.” He rolled his chair toward the lab. “Renfro!” The strident voice seemed incongruous coming from such a weakened frame. “What progress have you made?”
Mark walked to the workbench, unhurried, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, the picture of the singularly focused genius who couldn’t be bothered to worry about anything outside of his work. “I’ve almost perfected the refining process,” he said. “And I’m accumulating the quantity of uranium I’ll need for the project.”
“You need to finish within a week,” Duane said.
Mark’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked even more bored, eyes hooded, his expression guarded. “I can’t promise that. The process takes as long as it takes. I can’t change physical laws.”
Erin didn’t see any signal from Duane, but he must have given one. Without warning, two men seized her arms, while a third forced her head back.
“Leave her alone!” Mark shouted, all semblance of boredom vanished, but the fourth guard held him back.
Erin tried to struggle, terrified her captors intended to cut her throat. But the two men who held her remained immobile, impervious to her kicks and shouts. A third man wrapped something hard and cold around her throat. She heard a click, and all three men suddenly released her.
“I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you, Erin.” Duane’s voice had its usual smooth cadence. “The mechanism in your new necklace is fairly sensitive.”
The three goons stepped back and Erin grabbed at her throat, grasping the thick metal collar now fastened there. The edges chafed her skin and the weight of it dragged at her. “What have you done to me?” she demanded.
“You’re wearing an explosive device,” Duane said, as calmly as if he had been commenting on the weather. “It has a timer, and is set to go off exactly one week from today.” He turned to Mark. “You deliver the product as promised by then and we will remove the collar.”
“Why such a hurry now?” Mark asked. “You’ve waited all these months, why not a few more to make sure things are done correctly?”
“I’m done with waiting.” Duane’s voice was strident, his face red with strain. “You will have the device for me in a week.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then the bomb goes off and you both die.”
