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ISBN 978-0-316-51097-4

E3-20170808-NF-DA

Table of Contents

1. Cover

2. Letter from James Patterson

3. Title Page

4. Copyright

5. Chapter 1

6. Chapter 2

7. Chapter 3

8. Chapter 4

9. Chapter 5

10. Chapter 6

11. Chapter 7

12. Chapter 8

13. Chapter 9

14. Chapter 10

15. Chapter 11

16. Chapter 12

17. Chapter 13

18. Chapter 14

19. Chapter 15

20. Chapter 16

21. Chapter 17

22. Chapter 18

23. Chapter 19

24. Chapter 20

25. Chapter 21

26. Chapter 22

27. Chapter 23

28. Chapter 24

29. Chapter 25

30. Chapter 26

31. Chapter 27

32. Chapter 28

33. Chapter 29

34. Chapter 30

35. Chapter 31

36. Chapter 32

37. Chapter 33

38. Chapter 34

39. Chapter 35

40. Chapter 36

41. Chapter 37

42. Chapter 38

43. Chapter 39

44. Chapter 40

45. Chapter 41

46. Chapter 42

47. Chapter 43

48. Chapter 44

49. Chapter 45

50. Chapter 46

51. Chapter 47

52. Chapter 48

53. Chapter 49

54. Chapter 50

55. Chapter 51

56. SIX MONTHS LATER

57. Chapter 52

58. About the Authors

59. Bookshots.com

60. Newsletters

Chapter 1

Dr. Randall Beck sat in his office and looked across the coffee table at his patient.

Todd Graham was a big man who looked small. He hunched on the overstuffed couch, arms curled in tightly to himself. He looked cold. He looked scared.

You’d never know that a few months earlier, Graham had been one of the top men on the Metro PD’s Emergency Response Team—the Washington, DC, police SWAT team. He had broken down countless doors, been shot in the line of duty, and had seen some of the worst humanity had to offer in hostage situations, drug raids, and murder scenes.

But then he’d been called to a small apartment building in the Southeast, the quadrant of DC known as the worst area in the city. He and his squad thought they were going to take down a crack house.

Instead, they found bodies. Nine of them. Someone had killed all the members of an extended family for a grudge or some deal gone wrong. Graham was the first one into the room. He saw a child curled into the arms of her mother, the same gunshot wound through both of their chests.

Graham could handle danger to himself. What he couldn’t handle was the thought of being helpless to stop it from happening to someone else.

Since then, Graham had been on administrative leave. He’d lost weight. He didn’t sleep. He drank too much.

After medication and regular therapy failed, he’d been sent to see Beck.

Everything in Beck’s office was soft and beige, designed to soothe and calm, the visual equivalent of white noise. Beck’s patients were people who’d had enough chaos in their lives already.

Beck was considered the counselor of last resort for people suffering from severe post-traumatic stress and burnout. His patients included paramedics who’d pulled charred corpses out of plane crashes; doctors who’d volunteered in war zones, patching up children dismembered by bombs; hospice workers who faced a 100 percent mortality rate in their patients; and Special Forces soldiers who spent months in combat, ruthlessly killing to keep the rest of the world safe.

Beck noticed that the one thing all these people had in common was they were used to saving the world, but they had a much harder time saving themselves.

Graham had spent most of their sessions just sitting on Beck’s couch. Quiet. Staring. Today was no different.

“Do you want to talk?” Beck asked, after a long silence.

Graham shrugged. “What’s the point?” he asked Beck. “What’s the point of any of it?”

“You don’t think there’s any point to living?”

Graham shrugged again. He sat back, as he had in their other sessions, finished talking for the day. He seemed to think he could just wait Beck out.

Beck decided he was done waiting. He reached into a bag at the side of his chair and pulled out a Glock 9mm.

Graham was instantly alert.

Beck placed the pistol on the table between them.

“Okay,” he said. “You really want to die? Pick up the gun. Get it over with.”

Graham stared at him, wide-eyed. “You’re crazy.”

Beck shrugged. “I’m a licensed psychiatrist.”

“You’re still crazy.”

Beck sighed deeply. “You don’t want to do it yourself? Well. I’m here to help.” Beck picked up the Glock and racked the slide back, jacking a shell into the chamber. He pointed it at Graham, his hand steady.

“Now. Do you want to die?” Beck asked, looking down the barrel at his patient.

Graham was out of his chair in a split second. He knocked the gun aside and landed on Beck with his full weight, toppling the chair over. He and Beck struggled for a moment as Graham tried to get his hands on the gun.

They rolled across the floor together. Graham came up on top, the Glock in one hand. He pointed it at Beck, kneeling on top of him.

For a second, they were frozen like that.

Then Beck looked up at Graham, bleeding from the corner of his mouth where a stray elbow had hit him.

And he smiled.

“You fought,” he said, grinning.

Graham looked confused. Then angry. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Of course I fought you! You pointed a gun at me!”

He got off Beck and let him up, but didn’t take the gun off him. Beck didn’t seem at all worried.

“Dummy bullets,” Beck said. “Wouldn’t fire even if I pulled the trigger.”

Graham eyed Beck suspiciously, then checked the Glock’s clip. If anything, it made him even more angry. “I didn’t know that!” he shouted.

Beck didn’t stop smiling. “That’s right. You didn’t. And you fought me. For the first time since you walked into this office, you did something. You woke up,” he said. “Looks like you’re not quite ready to die after all.”

Graham stared at him, shocked.

Beck stood up and straightened his clothes. He wiped the blood from his mouth with a tissue, and then took his chair again. He gestured to the couch. Slowly, Graham set the gun and the clip back on the table. Then he sat down, too.

“Excellent,” Beck said. “Shall we get started, then?”

Chapter 2

“You pulled a gun on him?”

Dr. Susan Carpenter was, like Beck, a psychiatrist. She was highly trained, widely respected, and thoroughly professional. She’d seen a wide range of patients with deeply disturbing problems, ranging from trauma to schizophrenia to complete psychotic breaks with reality. There were people who came to her convinced that space lizards were about to take over the planet, and others who were certain that the contestants on Survivor were plotting against them.

In other words, she’d heard a lot of crazy stuff without blinking. And still, she looked like she was on the verge of having Beck taken to a padded cell.

“Dummy bullets,” Beck said. “I couldn’t have hurt him if I wanted to.”

“He didn’t know that,” Susan snapped at him.

“Of course not. It would have defeated the purpose. He had to find a reason to live. I gave him one.”

Susan took a deep breath and got herself under control. “Or you could have broken his trust completely. Or triggered a violent episode. Or convinced him that he really ought to commit suicide. Did you ever think of that?”

“Of course,” Beck replied. “I decided to take the chance.”

“You risked your patient’s life.”

“No. I judged him capable of pulling himself out of his depression, given the right motivation. I looked at his history. This is a cop who once charged a man armed with an AK-47 and took him down barehanded. He has been through the door on multiple drug raids. He needed a threat to bring him back to life.”

“You could have done the same thing by talking to him. You could have reminded him of his experiences—”

“I don’t have that kind of time.”

Susan’s expression softened. There it was. Sooner or later, their sessions always came back to this. It was inevitable.

Beck was dying.

“Do you think your condition is affecting your judgment?” she asked.

Beck made a rude noise. “Condition. Call it what it is. I’ve got a brain tumor. And yes, it’s still killing me. No, it’s not affecting my judgment. I haven’t started drooling or playing with myself in public.”

A month earlier, Beck had been walking to his car when the sidewalk suddenly came up out of nowhere and hit him in the face. He was knocked senseless, and someone passing by on the street called 911. The paramedics took him to the emergency room at Georgetown, where the attending physician knew Beck from several cases he’d consulted on. Beck said he felt fine, he was just a little dizzy, but the doctor insisted on an MRI and a PET scan.

And that’s when they found the tumor. It was a very rare type of glioblastoma that had clearly been growing for some time, undetected. It was nestled deep in Beck’s brainstem, near the parts that regulated his heartbeat and breathing.

Beck saw several specialists. They all said the same thing. Chemo wouldn’t work, because the drugs couldn’t cross the blood–brain barrier. Radiation was too dangerous because the tumor was so close to the critical structures nearby. Which is also why there was no way to reach the tumor with surgery.

The tumor would go on growing, slowly but surely. He’d remain relatively healthy until he wasn’t anymore. He might fall down, and he might have seizures. He might have severe personality changes, memory loss, or delusions. He might lose the ability to walk. Or he might not.

But eventually, the tumor would overwhelm his brain, crushing the parts of it that kept him alive, and he would die.

They had given him anywhere from three months to a year.

Friends suggested that he take a trip around the world, see lions on safari, or just drink margaritas on the beach until it was his time. Beck went back to work. He hated vacations. He didn’t know what he’d do with himself if he wasn’t in his office.

But the doctors were required to tell the medical board about his condition. The board said he had to get another psychiatrist to monitor him, just in case the tumor affected his mental state. It wouldn’t be good to have a psychiatrist with access to patients and a prescription pad if he was losing his own marbles.

Susan seemed like the best person possible to keep tabs on him. They’d both been at the top of their class at Johns Hopkins and had been paired together for their residencies at Georgetown. Like Beck, she specialized in crisis psychiatry—taking the most severe cases she could find.

And she was more likely to put up with him than anyone else. Beck had a reputation as a loose cannon even before he discovered the tumor. He was impatient with theories and studies. He wanted to use whatever worked. It was one reason he was popular with his patients and unpopular with other doctors.

“How are you feeling?” Susan asked with genuine concern.

“I’m fine.”

“Looks like he tagged you pretty hard.”

Beck touched his lip. It was still swollen. “I’m a doctor, not a boxer.”

She didn’t smile. Beck suspected he was in for another version of the Talk.

“That’s my point. You deliberately antagonized a man who gets into life-and-death situations all the time. It could have been much worse for you.”

Yes, it was the Talk again. It usually went like this. She’d tell him he was being reckless. He would nod his head and listen. And then he’d go on doing what he’d always done before.

Today, however, Susan seemed to be out of patience.

“Maybe I should just tell the board to pull your license now,” she said. “You don’t listen. You don’t want to change. And because of your condition—”

“Tumor.”

“—your tumor, you’ve got no reason to change. Do you see that you’re using it as an excuse?”

But Beck didn’t have much patience today, either.

“Look,” Beck said. “I help people. It’s what I do. I don’t have a lot of time left. And by the time these patients get to me, neither do they. They are at the end of their ropes, and they’re thinking of tying a noose. I will do whatever it takes to help them.”

“Because only you can save them? We’ve talked about your Superman complex before.”

“That’s Doctor Superman to you.”

Still no smile. “Answer the question.”

Beck shrugged. “Well. I don’t see anyone else pulling on a cape to save the day.”

Susan looked like she was going to keep arguing with him, but Beck’s phone beeped with a reminder. He checked the screen. APPOINTMENT WITH KEVIN SCOTT—10 A.M.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Seeing a new patient.”

She frowned, but gestured for him to leave. “We’re not done with this yet,” she said. “Call me tomorrow to check in.”

He saluted. “Sir, yes, sir, General, sir!”

She finally cracked a smile. “That’s Doctor General to you.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Beck went to the door, but Susan had one parting shot.

“So what happens when you’re gone?” she asked. “Who’s going to save your patients if you’re not around, Doctor Superman?”

Beck shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll be dead.”

Then he walked out.

Chapter 3

Kevin Scott scowled like Beck owed him money.

Like a lot of Special Forces soldiers, he was compact and muscular. All gristle and sharp edges. He looked at the office with contempt. Too quiet, too beige, too soft.

Beck wasn’t particularly surprised. Scott had been an Army Ranger for seven years. He’d endured grueling training just to have the chance to sleep on rocks in the desert while people shot at him. Guys like Scott were not usually into the touchy-feely crap. It was always the first hurdle he had to overcome.

Because as tough as he was, Scott was also coming apart, according to the reports in front of Beck. The local VA office had referred Scott for psychiatric treatment after he had been arrested in a bar fight. He’d nearly crippled three men after an argument about the Redskins devolved into a full-on brawl. Only the fact that they attacked him kept him out of jail.

So it was pretty clear Scott needed help. But Scott wasn’t an ordinary soldier. He was part of a unit that carried out top-secret missions for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few places that US soldiers weren’t supposed to be. As a result, only a psychiatrist with a security clearance was allowed to talk to him. Beck was one of the few people on that list because of his experience in dealing with Special Forces veterans.

But it meant that Scott had been forced to wait for almost a month while the paperwork and red tape cleared.

Even though they’d never met, Beck had read Scott’s file and it was obvious that he was getting worse. He was shifting in his seat, agitated, and kept checking over his shoulder, like he expected someone to come through the door.

Beck figured there was no time to waste—for either of them. “So,” he said, “who do you want to kill?”

Scott nearly jumped in the couch. He looked at Beck like he was crazy. “What? Why would you say that?”

“Well, you put three guys in the hospital. You seem pretty pissed off at someone. Who do you want to kill?”

Scott made a face. “It was just a fight that got out of hand. I’m only here because the court said I had to get counseling. I’m fine.”

“Right,” Beck said. “You’re fine. So breaking a guy’s collarbone and another guy’s arm in three places is just a fun night out for you? Maybe we should go to Vegas together. I can’t wait to see what you do there.”

Scott rolled his eyes at Beck. Nobody got his jokes. “I told you. It was a fight. They started it.”

“And you finished it.”

“That’s what guys like me do,” Scott said, looking him in the eyes for the first time. “We handle things other people can’t. I know you get a lot of wackjobs in here. But I’m not one of them. Trust me. I’m fine.”

He really sold it. It was almost convincing. Beck could see why people would follow him into combat. But Beck knew better.

“The thing is, Kevin, you don’t seem fine. The VA’s counselor talked to your wife.”

“Jennifer?” Scott looked worried. “Why did they bother her?”

“She’s concerned about you. She says you came home fine from your last tour. You were handling everything. You got a job, you were dealing with civilian life—and then, about three months ago now, you began to act differently. You began sleeping with a gun on the bedside table. You started drinking. You’d disappear at night and on weekends. And when she called your job, they wouldn’t tell her where you were.”

Scott was growing more anxious, picking at the fabric on the chair, shifting around. Beck thought he wanted to jump up and run out of the room.

“She called my work?”

“She cares about you. Maybe she thinks you’re having an affair.”

Whoops. That was the wrong thing to say. Scott stood up and pointed a finger in Beck’s face. “Hey! I love my wife! You watch your damned mouth!”

Beck sat as calmly as he could with a trained killer in his face. “So you’re not having an affair.”

“That’s right!” Scott snapped. “I’m not! And I keep telling you, I’m fine! So you sign whatever little piece of paper you have to, and you let me go back to my life and you leave my wife out of this!”

Beck looked up at him, waiting. Then he said, “No.”

“No?” Scott loomed even closer.

“No,” Beck said. He really wished he had a gun with real bullets. But he didn’t look away.

For a long moment, Scott stood there. Then, Beck could tell, he started to feel stupid. He sat down again.

“Sorry,” he said.

That clinched it for Beck. This guy was not mentally ill. He’d lost control, sure. But he got it back way too fast. He was angry and scared, but he was not suffering from PTSD. There was something else going on.

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me, Kevin,” Beck said.

Scott looked back at him. There was something in his face. He opened his mouth, as if to start speaking. Beck could almost feel it. This was the moment where most of his patients began to open up—to reveal what brought them into the office in the first place.

“You ever done anything really bad, Dr. Beck?” Scott asked.

“Yeah. I have. What did you do, Kevin?”

Scott laughed, then almost choked.

“Nothing yet. But…”

“But what?”

Scott looked at Beck again. He suddenly stood up. “Forget it. Forget I was ever here.”

He went to the door and flung it open.

Beck got up and went after him. He grabbed Scott by the arm. “Hey, wait a minute—” he said.

But he didn’t get anything else out. Scott shoved him back, sending him flying.

“Leave it, Doc,” he snarled. “You’ll live longer.” Scott stomped away.

It took Beck a minute to get to his feet. He was getting tired more easily these days, and his balance was off. Probably the tumor. But he was also angry. He never gave up on a patient, and he never backed down.

And if Scott beat the crap out of him, well, he was dying anyway.

Beck raced down the stairs of his building, breathing hard. He reached the lobby, but Scott wasn’t there. He ran out the double doors to the street, where he saw Scott crossing the road to his car.

Beck was about to yell something at him.

Then a black SUV came screaming around the corner. It was on top of Scott in seconds. Scott turned and saw it, and started to run.

But he wasn’t fast enough. The barrel of a gun emerged from the SUV’s open window, and Beck watched helplessly as Scott was cut down by a hail of bullets.

Chapter 4

Beck sat on the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the blood on his hands.

It had been a long time since he’d had blood on his hands.

As a med student, still doing his rotations in surgery and emergency medicine, he’d been up to his elbows in it, all the time. He’d seen his share of gunshot wounds in those days.

So when he saw Scott hit the ground he knew two things:

Scott was probably dead already.

He had to try to save him anyway.

The black SUV had peeled away, tires smoking as it rounded the corner. For an instant as the car approached, Beck made eye contact with the shooter. He wore a black ski mask. His eyes, the only part of him that was visible, stared coldly back at Beck, and then Kevin Scott was down and the SUV was gone.

And then Beck was tearing open Scott’s jacket and shirt, desperately trying to stop the bleeding.

But it was no good. Scott’s chest looked like raw meat, with multiple bullet wounds opening holes in his chest so that the life poured right out of him. There was a flicker of life left in his eyes as he looked up at Beck, unseeing.

He said one word. It made no sense.

“Damocles,” he gasped.

Then he choked and more blood poured from his mouth. The flicker in his eyes went out.

His chest stopped heaving.

Scott was dead.

The police and paramedics showed up fast. Beck’s office was on a quiet, upscale block, not far from several embassies. It was not the kind of neighborhood that got a lot of drive-by shootings.

The cops pulled Beck away from Scott’s body and sat him down. The paramedics took a look at Scott and didn’t even go through the motions. They just covered him up.

The police took Beck’s statement and asked him if he’d seen either the driver or the passenger. Beck told them about the ski mask.

But that was all he really knew. He was surprised at how useless he was as a witness. He shouldn’t have been. He knew that severe stress—like seeing a man gunned down in the street—makes it hard to notice details.

Still, he couldn’t remember if he’d seen a license plate, or what was on it. He didn’t know what kind of SUV it was. He couldn’t even remember the color of the gunman’s eyes, and he’d been looking right into them.

The cops left him sitting on the sidewalk while they went to look for other witnesses. And Beck looked at the blood on his hands.

He sat that way for what seemed like a long time. Trying to understand what happened. His mind kept racing. He didn’t like where it was leading him.

In his office, Kevin Scott had been scared. Scott had been anxious. And Scott had been hiding something, even from his wife.

His wife. Jennifer. With a guilty start, Beck realized someone would have to tell her about her husband.

He looked up from his bloody hands, to find one of the cops, to tell them.

But instead, he saw two men in dark suits with serious faces walking toward him.

Federal agents. Beck had met enough of them to recognize the look. They wore earpieces and off-the-rack suits with the jackets big enough to hide their holsters. You saw them all the time in DC—at lunch, in line at Starbucks, standing outside one event or another.

These two, however, were here for him.

“Doctor Beck,” the first one said, offering his hand. “I’m Agent Morrison. This is Agent Howard. We’re with the Secret Service. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Beck took his hand, and Morrison hauled him to his feet. He was about a head taller than Beck, who wasn’t short, with cold blue eyes and blond hair spiked straight up. Howard, his partner, was darker and wider—he looked like he put in serious hours at the gym—with his black hair slicked back and frozen in place.

They waved their badges at him. He barely got a look. They both wore grim expressions without a trace of sympathy.

“How did you know the deceased?” Morrison demanded.

Beck tried to shake off his shock. “I told the other officers—”

“We’re not the other officers,” Howard snapped. “We want to hear it from you.”

Beck started again. “He was my patient.”

“You’re a shrink? What was his problem?”

“I’m a psychiatrist, yes. And I can’t say.”

“Not much of a shrink, then, are you?” Howard said. Morrison smirked.

“No. I mean, I can’t say. Doctor–patient communications are confidential. As I’m sure both of you already know.”

Morrison and Howard exchanged a look. “Yeah. Thanks for reminding us, Doctor,” Morrison said. “But the guy is dead, and he was walking out of your office. I think we need to know.”

“And if I had any information that would help someone in immediate danger, I would be ethically bound to offer it. But I don’t. Anything else is private. That’s the law. Why is the Secret Service investigating this, anyway? Isn’t this something for the police?”

“Are you a doctor or a lawyer?” Howard said, his tone sharp and mocking. “You’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.”

“You don’t have the expertise to know what’s important and what isn’t,” Morrison added. “That’s our job.”

“Listen, I have a security clearance,” Beck said.

“How special for you,” Howard said.

“What I mean is, if you just call the coordinator at the Department of Defense—” Beck took out his phone to give them the number. Morrison and Howard reacted like he’d pulled a gun. They stepped back. With one swift move, Morrison snatched the phone from his hand and pocketed it.

“Hey. That’s my phone.”

“Doctor Beck, you’re our sole witness,” Morrison said. “Let’s not get bogged down in technicalities. We need to know what he told you. And we need to know now.”

Beck wondered where the hostility was coming from. He’d heard of good cop/bad cop, but this was more like bad cop/bad cop.

Then he recognized the technique. They were trying to put him off-balance. Make him more pliable, eager to please, by bullying him a little.

It only pissed Beck off.

“You want to know what we talked about? Try getting a subpoena. He was my patient. Even dead, he has rights.”

Howard looked like he wanted to punch Beck. Morrison sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, then pulled Beck aside. He lowered his voice, as if someone might be listening.

“Look, Doctor. I didn’t want to have to tell you this. We are in the middle of something big, and it involves your client. There is more going on than you know. You have to tell us what he told you. Lives are literally on the line here. I know you’ll want to do the right thing.”

This was even more transparent than the bullying. They were trying to make Beck feel like he was important—inside a big secret. He really didn’t appreciate the manipulation, which wouldn’t work on a first-year psych major.

And, for some reason, he just didn’t trust these guys.

Beck lowered his voice, too, as if he were going to cooperate. “Can you tell me what this investigation is about?”

Morrison shook his head. “Sorry. Classified.”

Beck went back to his regular voice, all pretense gone. “Yeah? Then so is what my patient told me. Sorry.”

“All right then, Doctor. Have it your way.” Morrison stepped back.

Beck thought that would be the end of it. He turned to walk away.

So he was surprised when Howard spun him back around, slammed him against a telephone pole, and slapped handcuffs on his wrists.

Chapter 5

The police didn’t object as the two agents marched Beck across the street and shoved him into the backseat of their SUV. They said they were taking him to their office for further questioning. The cops nodded. Not their problem anymore.

Beck realized they were really going to do this—just drag him off to jail, or some locked room, and interrogate him. Unbelievable.

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “This is basic doctor–patient confidentiality. Any judge is going to laugh you out of court.”

“Shut up,” Howard said as he dug around in Beck’s jacket and removed his wallet. Then he slammed the door in Beck’s face.

The window was still open, however. Beck looked at Morrison, who seemed slightly more reasonable.

“Look. If you’re really going to take me away, someone needs to tell Scott’s wife,” Beck remembered. “Her name is Jennifer Scott. Someone needs to tell her about her husband.”

“Yeah, we’ll take care of it,” Morrison said. He nodded at Howard, who took out his own phone and dialed a number, then stepped away to talk.

Morrison got in on the driver’s side and used the button there to roll up Beck’s window. He looked at Beck across the backseat. “Now do as you’re told: shut up.”

Beck sat and stewed. This was really going to happen. He shook his head. Well, at least I get to cross being arrested off the bucket list. He wondered what would happen to his afternoon patients. He had no secretary who could call them to cancel. They would just show up at his office, and they’d wait. Some of them wouldn’t handle it very well if he wasn’t there.

It made Beck angrier. But there was nothing he could do about it now.

Howard got into the front passenger seat, and then, without a word, Morrison started the engine and drove away from the scene.

At first, Beck didn’t pay attention to where they were going. He was too busy trying to think of an attorney he could call. He had a couple of acquaintances who were lawyers, but they did mostly lobbying and corporate work.…

Then Beck saw that they’d crossed the river and were headed into Southeast DC. Morrison turned off the main avenue and began going down side streets, deeper and deeper into some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital.

“Where are we going?” Beck asked.

Howard and Morrison ignored him. Morrison was driving too fast. He ran yellow lights and cut off other drivers. Both he and Howard sat in the same grim silence, eyes fixed ahead.

There was no partition between Beck and the two agents. He knew they could hear him.

“Where are we going?” Beck asked again, louder.

“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Morrison said, sounding bored.

“Then why are we driving away from H Street?” Beck asked. H Street was where the Secret Service’s headquarters was located.

“Branch office,” Howard said, still not looking at him.

The civilized part of Beck’s mind told him that this could all be normal. That he should be polite, and wait to call a lawyer, and this whole mess would get straightened out. That was the part of him that had been a good boy his whole life, the part that told him, like his mother always did, to sit up straight and behave.

But there was another part of his brain talking to him as well—the part that seemed to have woken up since he was diagnosed with cancer. It was like some survival instinct had kicked in since finding out he was going to die.

And this part of his brain screamed at him that something was very wrong here.

Beck looked out the window. The streets were uglier. These were places Beck had only seen in the background on the TV news, usually with a reporter describing the latest gang killing or drug deal gone wrong.

“Where is this branch office?” Beck asked.

Morrison looked back at him in the rearview.

“Just relax, Doc. We’ll be there before you know it.”

And Beck suddenly knew he was in serious trouble.

Memory is a tricky thing, Beck knew. Stress affects the brain and interferes with the transfer of images from short-term to long-term memory. And then, sometimes, those same memories can return in an instant.

At that moment, Beck remembered the color of the gunman’s eyes.

Because he was looking right into them again.

Chapter 6

Beck was handcuffed and trapped in the car with Kevin Scott’s killers.

He had no idea what to do.

He tried desperately to think. He looked out the window again. They seemed to be driving into the very worst section of town—probably so that when Beck’s body turned up, it wouldn’t be considered unusual. Maybe they’d say he was here to buy drugs. Or maybe they’d say he was shot trying to escape.

Beck knew Kevin Scott had been hiding something. But now he knew it was something worth killing for.

And these two federal agents—if they were federal agents at all—wanted to find out if Beck knew it, too.

Beck tried to measure his own pulse. His doctors had told him stress was bad for his condition. His body was working hard enough to regulate itself with the interference of his brain tumor. He could suffer dizzy spells or weakness or seizures if he pushed himself too hard, they’d told him.

And there was also the chance that he was suffering a paranoid delusion. It happened with his condition. People stopped thinking normally as the tumor increased pressure and swelling in sections of the brain. Was it possible that he was just imagining the danger he was in?

Beck didn’t think so. He didn’t feel crazy. He knew psychotic patients rarely did, but he was pretty sure he was still firing on all cylinders. Surprisingly, he felt almost calm. Even though these two men wanted to kill him, it didn’t scare him as much as he thought it would. Beck already knew he was going to die—soon. He’d made his peace with that.

But these men were probably going to torture him as well. They wanted to know what was in his head, and what Kevin Scott had said in his last hour on earth. They would do whatever it took to get that information out of Beck, even though Scott had not told him anything but the word “Damocles.”

Even if Beck told the agents that now, they wouldn’t believe him. They’d hurt him until they were satisfied he wasn’t lying.

Beck could handle the idea of dying. But these men were going to subject him to agonizing pain.

Was he going to let that happen?

Hell, no. If he had to die, it was going to be on his own terms.

That made his next decision easy.

Morrison was still driving too fast. Beck waited for the next yellow light. Predictably, Morrison gunned the engine to barrel through the intersection.

And then Beck flung himself into the front seats via the space between them, and landed on Morrison, knocking his arms away from the steering wheel. Beck began kicking and biting and flailing, his own hands still bound behind him.

Morrison shouted an obscenity. Howard began to scream something, then caught one of Beck’s knees on his mouth.

Beck felt the steering wheel spin and the car tipped crazily.

There was a blaring horn, and then Beck was flying into the air as something hit the SUV like a fist.

Beck saw shattering glass. He felt the airbags explode all around him, burning him with white powder as they deployed. The SUV whirled like a top, and then came to an abrupt, crunching halt.

Chapter 7

Beck blinked and sat up. His side hurt like hell. He shook a little bit and safety glass fell from his face, his clothes, his hair.

He was still in the front seat. The windshield and passenger windows were broken. Deflated airbags sagged from every surface along the dashboard and interior. Morrison groaned underneath him.

Howard was still in the passenger seat. Blood trickled from his forehead where he’d cracked his skull against the doorpost. He looked at Beck, momentarily dazed. His lip was split where Beck had kneed him before.

Howard’s eyes snapped to focus on Beck. He didn’t speak. He growled. And without hesitation, he went for his gun, which, lucky for Beck, he couldn’t whip out with no trouble because Beck was half lying on top of him.

But Beck knew he’d get it sooner rather than later, and in the cramped space of the SUV’s front seat, there was almost no way he could miss Beck if he fired.

If Beck was still being civilized, he might have been scared. But he was far beyond that by now.

And it’s hard to scare a man who already knows he’s dying.

What’s he going to do? Beck thought. Kill me?

He reared his legs back and kicked as hard as he could. He caught Howard in the face. He heard a muffled snap and knew that he’d just shattered the man’s nose.

Howard’s head bounced against the doorpost again. Beck kicked him one more time for good measure.

Beck heard Howard’s gun drop to the floor. He hadn’t realized that the man had been able to get it so soon.

Morrison was thrashing around under Beck by now, pinned by Beck’s weight. Beck struggled to get off him. He realized that Morrison was having trouble using one arm. Then he saw why.

The SUV had been knocked out of the intersection when it was hit. It had come to a halt against a streetlight, which smashed in the driver’s-side door on impact. Morrison’s left arm was trapped in the narrow space between the crumpled door and the steering wheel. It kept Morrison from grabbing Beck or holding him down. Or drawing his gun.

About time I got a little bit of luck, Beck thought. He struggled to sit up again. He had to get out.

Howard was blocking the passenger door, and that was crushed by the impact as well. But the windshield was gone. It was basically an open invitation for Beck.

He used his forehead to smash Morrison’s head as hard as he dared, without giving himself a concussion, and when he saw Morrison’s eyes roll back in his head, he kicked Howard one more time, then rolled across the dash, shedding more glass as he went, and then slid down the hood of the SUV.

He looked up and tried to get his bearings. There was a garbage truck in the middle of the intersection, its front smashed in where it had hit the SUV. The driver stood by, staring at the damage, looking stunned. Morrison, shaking off the hit to his head, was shouting something at Beck.

For a moment, Beck didn’t know what to do.

Then a bullet hit the brick facade of a building, less than ten feet from his head, and he saw that Howard and Morrison had their guns out and were shooting at him.

With his hands still cuffed behind him, Beck began to run.

Chapter 8

Beck ran, his head down, sprinting as fast as he could through the unfamiliar streets.

He had no phone, no wallet, no money, and there were two killers with badges right behind him. There was also the slight matter of him being handcuffed.

He had to get help. He had to get off the streets. Any moment now, a police car could stop him, or someone might see him, and then how would he explain this? He’d be on his way to jail, and probably right back into the custody of Morrison and Howard.

He didn’t think anyone would believe him if he told them that the agents killed Kevin Scott. He barely believed it himself. But he knew what he saw. He just had no idea why.

Beck needed to find out the answers if he wanted to stay alive. He had to find out why Kevin Scott had been killed, and what those men wanted with him.

First, he had to get these damned cuffs off. He felt like a duck, waddling along with his hands locked behind him.

He turned down another corner blindly as he saw a car approaching. He was on a small, mostly residential street with a few businesses tucked in between the blank faces of apartment buildings and crumbling brick buildings. Then he saw exactly what he needed.

An auto repair shop. It was a small, independent operation, not a chain. An older African-American man in coveralls worked in the one-bay garage, spinning a tire off its wheel.

Beck ran across the asphalt to him.

“Hello,” Beck said. And then realized he had no idea what to say next.

The man looked up from the tire at Beck, his expression blank. The name tag on his coveralls read LOUIS.

“Ah, listen,” Beck said, thinking hard. “I’m having a bit of a problem.”

Louis’s mouth curled into a slow grin. “Yeah. I bet you are.”

“I was wondering if you had any bolt cutters? Or anything like that?”

“I might,” Louis said. “What exactly would you want with them?”

Beck wondered if Louis was screwing with him on purpose. Still, he was the only hope Beck had right now. Beck turned around and showed him the cuffs.

“Do you think you could cut these off?”

“I could,” Louis said slowly. “But that’s not exactly my line of work. And I’m not sure that whoever put you in those wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Beck turned back to him. He wanted to scream at the man to just cut the damn things off. But he forced himself to calm down.

“Well, I could pay you.” Damn it. No, he couldn’t. No wallet. “Um. Eventually. I was sort of mugged.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s complicated. But if you can help me, I promise I’ll pay you something later. I swear.”

“I think I’m going to need a little more explanation than that,” Louis said, his eyes serious despite the grin.

Beck thought fast. He imagined trying to tell this man that he was on the run from federal agents who were also murderers. He didn’t think he’d get very far with that story.

He took another look at Louis. One advantage of being a shrink: he was used to reading people quickly. Louis seemed like a basically decent guy. Attentive to detail. A business owner. So, independent and self-contained. Which meant he was suspicious of outside authority. He trusted his own gut.

He’d help Beck, but only if he had a compelling story. A reason.

Beck looked for a wedding ring. Didn’t see one. Looked for any religious paraphernalia—a cross, or a church calendar. Nothing like that on the walls of the shop.

It came to him in a flash.

Beck sighed and his shoulders sagged. He did his best to look embarrassed. It wasn’t too hard.

“You ever have a fight with your girlfriend?” Beck asked.

Louis’s grin got even wider. “No, not me. I do everything she tells me.”

“Well. That’s sort of how I got into the handcuffs,” Beck said, and tried to laugh. “It was supposed to be a game.”

“A game. Right.”

“Yes. She said she wanted to try something a little, um, kinky.”

“Kinky. And that sounded good to you.”

“Well, you know. She made it sound better than it turned out.”

“I’ll bet. So how did you get here, looking like you’ve been beat up?”

“Well. She wasn’t exactly my girlfriend.”

Now Louis shook his head in mock sadness. “Oh, man. Let me guess. She was, uh, what do you want to say, a professional.”

Beck tried to look ashamed of himself. It was surprisingly easy.

“Yeah. And then her—well, I guess it was her pimp—”

“You got rolled.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Well, you should probably call the police. Those cuffs could be evidence.”

Now Beck knew Louis was screwing with him. But he plunged ahead. “Ah, yeah, see, I would. But—”

“But you don’t want your wife to find out,” Louis said.

Beck nodded.

Louis laughed out loud for a good while. Beck looked down and waited it out. He felt like he deserved an Oscar for this.

When Louis finally stopped laughing, he said, “Stay right here.”

Louis walked into the tiny office off the main garage bay. He was gone for a long time. Beck couldn’t check his watch—because of the handcuffs, of course—but it felt like hours. Beck looked in through a grimy window in the door. Louis appeared to be checking the screen of his phone. What was he doing in there? Was he calling the police himself?

Beck felt sweat trickling down his sides and stinging a cut he didn’t know he had on his forehead. He imagined Morrison and Howard driving up the street any second. The world seemed to spin for a moment. He took a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm.

Louis finally came back with his phone and a small, thin strip of metal. “Turn around,” he said, and then Beck felt him tugging on the cuffs. Louis suddenly pushed one of the cuffs tighter. Beck felt the metal sink deeper into the skin of his wrist. “Hey!” he said.

“Just hold on, I won’t hurt you any worse than your girlfriend,” Louis said. And then Beck felt the cuff pop open.

A second later, Louis did the same thing on the other wrist, and Beck was free.

He turned around, and Louis was holding the cuffs and the metal strip and grinning. “All done,” he said.

“How did you do that?” Beck asked, genuinely amazed.

“The shim undoes the ratcheting mechanism of the cuffs,” Louis said. “Saw it on YouTube.”

He put the cuffs and the strip of metal into Beck’s hand. “Here,” he said. “You keep these as a souvenir. And you should probably watch the video yourself, in case you have any more problems with any other girlfriends.”

“I owe you,” Beck said as he pocketed the cuffs.

Louis grinned again. “No charge,” he said. “It was worth it just to meet a man with worse luck with women than me. Now, I suppose you’ll be wanting to use the phone?”

Beck took a moment to assess the situation. He was alone, with two killers after him. One man was already dead, and it was clear he was supposed to be next. He couldn’t risk going to the police, who might hand him back over to the killers. He had no idea what he’d fallen into, and no idea how to get out of it.

But he knew who he could trust.

He took Louis’s phone and dialed.

Chapter 9

Susan looked at him from the driver’s seat. Her voice was full of concern when she spoke.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked.

Beck restrained the urge to shout at her. He’d probably ask the same thing if one of his patients came to him with this story.

And she was the only person he could turn to right now.

She’d picked Beck up at Louis’s shop after he’d called her. She looked over his injuries—a cut on the forehead, bruises, and scrapes—and put him into her car. All he’d told her over the phone was that he’d been in a car accident, and now he was stranded without his car or cash.

Louis hadn’t said anything about the handcuffs, which were still in Beck’s jacket pocket. He just muttered quietly to Beck, “Don’t see why you’re running around if you’ve got that at home.” Then he grinned and waved as Beck and Susan pulled away in her Volvo.

Susan wanted to take him to the hospital, immediately. And so Beck told her what had happened.

She’d pulled to the side of the road and parked her car. Then she looked at him, and began speaking to him in the same tones that she’d use to talk a jumper off a ledge.

“I’m sure you believe this is what happened, Randall,” is how she began.

He saw the sadness in her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. She believed that he’d finally begun to unravel, that the tumor was eating away at his ability to think, and he was suffering from delusions.

He was almost flattered that she seemed so moved. But the rest of him was angry and impatient. He didn’t have time for her sympathy. He needed to find out why someone wanted him dead.

Beck wanted to have her drive back to where the SUV wrecked to see the damage, but he didn’t want to take the chance that they were still there.

And after a few minutes, she lost her therapeutic voice and her temper, and they were both yelling at each other in the car.

“Just a minute,” Susan said. She picked up her phone and tapped the screen. A news app brought up headlines for Washington, DC. “There’s nothing here about a shooting anywhere near your office.”

“Then they must have told the police to keep it quiet.”

Susan gave him another skeptical look.

“I know how paranoid that sounds,” Beck said. “But I know what happened.”

“Do you?” she said. “Think of all the times you’ve had patients convinced that someone was out to get them. Think of how they acted. Do you see any resemblance?”

“Look, if I’m making this up, then where did I get these?” Beck snapped, and showed her the handcuffs.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Susan snapped back. Then she got her temper under control. She breathed deeply and started again. “Please. We should at least get your head looked at. An MRI or PET scan. Maybe the car accident shifted the tumor, or increased the pressure on your brain. You could have a blood clot. You might stroke out at any moment.”

“I feel fine,” Beck said, although he didn’t. He felt tired and dizzy, but he wasn’t about to tell Susan that. “Listen to me. My patient is dead. And they want to kill me, too. I know it sounds paranoid, but you know me. You know the difference between people who are crazy and people who are not. You’ve spent your whole life doing this. Look at me: am I crazy?”

Susan took a long look at him. “All right. Let’s say this is true. Let’s go to a lawyer. I have a friend, she’s a former assistant US attorney, she could—”

“No,” Beck said flatly. “No lawyers.”

Susan threw up her hands. “You won’t go to the police, you won’t go to a lawyer, you won’t go to the hospital. So what are we supposed to do, Randall? How are we going to find out what’s happening to you?”

Good question, Beck had to admit. Then he remembered something that had been nagging at him since he got into the SUV with Morrison and Howard.

“Oh, my God.”

Susan looked alarmed. “What? What is it?”

“Scott’s wife. Jennifer.”

“You think she can help you?”

“No,” Beck said. “Think about it. If they are willing to kill me because I spent a few minutes with Kevin Scott, then what are they going to do about her?”

“Randall, for God’s sake.”

“Susan, think about it. If I’m wrong, I’ll go with you to the hospital. Quietly. I’ll get help. But if I’m right, then a woman’s life is at stake, and we’re the only people who can help her right now. They will kill her, Susan.”

Susan thought about that for a moment. Then she cranked the engine back to life. “Do you have her address?” she asked. Beck didn’t.

“Look it up on my phone,” she said, tossing it to him, then pulled out into traffic. A horn blared as she cut another driver off. Susan ignored it as the phone began giving them directions to the house of Kevin and Jennifer Scott.

Susan’s grip was tight on the wheel. For the first time, Beck thought, she looked like she believed him.

Because she looked scared.

Chapter 10

Morrison and Howard were in no mood for bullshit by the time they rolled up to the tiny auto repair shop.

The last hour had been the most humiliating of their careers.

First, the firefighters had to use pry bars to open their SUV and free Morrison. A paramedic put his arm in a sling. Then she plucked safety glass from an open wound on Howard’s scalp and stuffed cotton up the other agent’s nose before putting a brace over his face to keep the broken bones in place.

The agents had to call headquarters for another vehicle, which was delivered along with the tow truck that took away the SUV.

And while they waited, they had to call the Client and report what had happened.

There was disbelief and scorn in her voice. “A goddamn psychiatrist got away from you? Are you kidding me?”

They promised they would make it right.

“We’ll handle it,” Morrison said.

“He’d better be in a body bag before the end of the day,” the Client said. “And anyone else he’s talked to. Or I’ll find someone who will put you in one.”

She hung up. Morrison had winced. Even though their phones were encrypted, you never knew who could be listening.

Still, Morrison knew she wasn’t threatening. She was promising. He’d worked for her long enough to know.

Morrison had called a contact at the National Security Agency. He had Beck’s phone, which was as good as having the man’s DNA and fingerprints. He explained that he needed to do a quick and dirty search for a high-value target, and had no time for a warrant or to jump through any other official hoops.

Morrison’s friend at the NSA was happy to help. Morrison gave him the last phone number Beck had dialed—a person named Susan Carpenter. The NSA had backdoors into every major telecommunications carrier in the world. A few keystrokes on a computer, and Morrison’s contact had the data for Susan Carpenter’s phone.

Sure enough, there was another call to her, right after the time of the wreck, from a mobile phone located a dozen blocks from the scene of the crash.

This was good news and bad news. It gave them a clue to where Beck was—but it meant he’d talked to someone new. Another loose end to snip.

The NSA guy said he could track Susan Carpenter’s cell phone for them, but that would likely draw the attention of his supervisor.

Morrison told him to forget it. They’d take it from there. But he did want the location of the phone Beck had used to call.

That was easy. The NSA’s coordinates were exact. The phone Beck used had not moved since he called his girlfriend or whoever the hell she was.

So that was how Morrison and Howard ended up standing in front of Louis as he worked under the hood of an old Ford Taurus.

They showed him their badges. He didn’t seem too impressed.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked, going back to work on the engine.

“We need to know if you’ve seen a man wearing handcuffs,” Howard asked.

“You’d think I’d remember something like that,” Louis said, calmly working his wrench into the guts of the car.

“So you didn’t see him?” Morrison asked. Howard was ready to grab Louis’s collar and pull him out from under the hood, but Morrison shook his head. Not yet.

“Not that I recall,” Louis said. “What’s he supposed to have done?”

“He’s wanted in a murder investigation,” Morrison said.

“Sounds like a bad guy. Wish I could help you.”

Morrison sighed. Why did people always have to make things so difficult? He nodded at Howard.

Howard smiled and carefully moved the hood prop out of place, then set it carefully into its clip, using his other hand to keep the hood up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Louis asked.

Howard didn’t answer. He grabbed Louis by the neck and kept him from moving back, slamming the hood down on his head.

Louis screamed. Howard lifted the hood back up, and Morrison hauled him out. He was bleeding freely from his head and cuts on his face where he’d been shoved into the engine block.

“You’re lying to us,” Morrison said.

“N-no,” Louis stammered.

Morrison patted the man down, one-handed. He found his phone in the side pocket of his coveralls.

“We know he made a call from your phone,” Morrison said.

Louis looked shocked for a split second—most people think the government is listening to their phone calls, but it’s another thing to know it’s really happened to you—and then shook his head.

“I—I leave the phone on my desk. Anyone could have used it. I swear!”

Morrison considered this. As excuses went, it was almost plausible. But it wasn’t convincing. “Then how did it get in your pocket, if you leave it on your desk?”

Louis looked stunned, and didn’t answer.

Morrison nodded at Howard, who shoved Louis down and slammed the hood again. Louis shrieked in pain. Howard smiled. He liked this part of the job. Morrison heard something crunch that time.

Howard pulled Louis back out from under the hood. He had several broken teeth, which explained the crunch. He was drooling blood.

“You sure you never saw anyone wearing handcuffs?”

Then it all came spilling out. “I shaw him, I shaw him,” Louis said, his mouth full of mush.

“Where’d he go?”

“I doan know,” Louis said, tears rolling down his cheeks now. “I doan know!”

“You’re not lying to me again, are you?”

Louis shook his head violently, sending blood drops flying. Morrison flinched back with distaste. “I shwear to Gaa,” Louis said.

Morrison believed him. He really sold it.

But it made no difference. He’d seen their faces, and knew they were asking about Beck. They couldn’t take the chance. No loose ends. They’d promised.

Morrison nodded, and Howard pushed him back into the engine compartment. This time Louis was practically weeping, waiting for the metal to crack his skull one more time.

But Morrison wasn’t cruel like Howard. He didn’t let the other agent slam the hood down again.

He just took out his 9mm and put a bullet into the back of Louis’s head.

They left the body in the garage. Howard stopped at the cash register, opened it, and took out the money inside. In this neighborhood, Metro PD wouldn’t look any further for a motive than that. Case closed.

They walked back to the car.

“You should have let me talk to him some more,” Howard said. “He could have told us where Beck went.”

“He didn’t know,” Morrison replied. “He was telling the truth.”

“So how are we going to find him?”

Morrison got behind the wheel. His arm still hurt like hell, but he had no intention of letting Howard drive. Guy was a maniac.

“Come on,” Morrison said. “He’s a shrink. How long before he goes running to the police? Where else is he going to go?”

Chapter 11

Susan pulled up to the Scotts’ house. It was located in what an optimistic real-estate agent would call “a neighborhood in transition.” There were some decent restaurants nearby mixed with cheap delivery joints and empty storefronts. Most of the windows still had bars on them.

“So what do we do?” Susan asked.

Beck sat in the car for a moment. Good question. They hadn’t been able to call Jennifer Scott—her number was in Beck’s notes, back in his office, and it was unlisted. So there was only one thing to do.

“Let’s go up.”

Susan hesitated. “You realize that if you’re right, there could be someone waiting there already.”

Beck had thought of that. But he didn’t see any alternative. “Well,” he said, opening the car door, “let’s hope I really am delusional, then.”

Beck got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk.

He started walking toward the Scotts’ house, a crumbling, single-family home.

Then he had to stop as his head began spinning again. He was sweating. It was warm out, but not that warm. He’d pushed himself too hard today.

Susan noticed. “You need a minute? Or a doctor?”

Beck grimaced. “I’ve got you.”

He expected a sarcastic comeback. Instead, she put her hand on his arm. “Yes,” she said. “You do.”

Beck caught his breath and touched her hand. His head was still pounding, but he felt better.

They walked to the Scotts’ front door.

Beck knocked. The door creaked open at his touch. It was unlocked. It was barely even closed.

He looked at Susan. She shrugged. Quietly, they walked inside.

The door opened into a short hallway—only a couple of feet—before a living room and kitchen area. There was another short hallway branching off the living room, probably leading to a bedroom. Beck could see a door at the end of the short hall. It was closed.

On the inside, the house was tiny and cramped, but spotless. The thin gray carpet was peeling from the floor, but it had recently been vacuumed within an inch of its life. Bargain furniture was placed in front of a flatscreen on the wall, and a laptop computer sat open on a small dining table.

Beck walked over to the laptop. It was powered on and running a screen saver showing pictures from Kevin Scott’s photos. Beck watched the pictures dissolve, one into another, souvenirs from a life cut short just a couple of hours ago.

In one photo, Scott was grinning with a group of other men, all in camouflage, gathered for a group shot in the middle of some desert in the Middle East. They all looked young and healthy and unstoppable.

My patient is dead, Beck thought.

At that moment, he knew why he was doing this. Why he couldn’t just give up. He hated to lose a patient. It always filled him with equal parts despair and rage. But to have a patient taken from him—that was unacceptable. Even if it was all in his head, Beck had to know why this had happened.

He tapped the space bar on the keyboard. The photos vanished, replaced by a log-in screen. There was Kevin Scott’s name, followed by a space for a password.

Beck hit Return. The screen vibrated and reset itself. He’d hoped that Scott hadn’t set a password. No luck. In fact, the screen told him he had only THREE ATTEMPTS REMAINING. Scott must have set a limit on attempts to log in, to keep people from breaking into his computer. Not surprising, considering he used to work top-secret missions.

Susan was searching the rest of the small room. She was thorough, but there wasn’t much to see. She set down a pile of mail, putting it back in the neat stack on the kitchen counter.

“Anything?” she asked.

Beck shook his head. There was nothing here. Maybe he really was losing it. Perhaps this was all in his head. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Perhaps he was becoming paranoid and losing his grip on reality.

He’d seen it before, in some patients. They were so convinced they were right, even as they babbled on about the shadow government and aliens and conspiracies.

Was he making all of this up? Did he injure two Secret Service agents just because of his brain tumor? He couldn’t be that crazy, could he? Was that possible? Had his brain really turned on him like that?

Then he heard a noise from down the hall.

He looked at Susan. “You heard that, too, right?”

She nodded.

Beck went down the hall. Susan followed. He started to open the door, when it whipped open all by itself.

Beck found himself looking at a woman holding a gun.

Well. At least I’m not crazy, he thought.

Chapter 12

Beck winced, but no gunshot came.

Instead, the young woman just stood there.

She was blond and gym-toned, with sharp cheekbones and bright-blue eyes. And she looked terrified.

“Don’t move,” she said, her voice—and the gun—shaking.

“Don’t worry,” Beck said. Both he and Susan put up their hands. She quickly slammed the door behind her.

The woman gestured for them to back up. They did. She backed them down the hall, into the living room.

Then they stood there. No one seemed to be sure of the next move.

“Are you Jennifer?” Beck asked.

She blinked. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kevin’s doctor,” Beck said. “Dr. Randall Beck. Remember? I’m the one he went to see this morning. This is my colleague, Dr. Susan Carpenter.”

She blinked again, holding back tears. “Is he—is he all right?” She stopped and put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes as she choked back a sob.

The gun remained up, however.

She doesn’t know, Beck realized. But she was still armed. And afraid. Clearly something was going on here.

He decided not to tell her about Scott’s death. Not while she was still so agitated and holding a gun, anyway.

Susan had clearly come to the same conclusion.

“Please,” Susan said gently. “Put that down. We’re here to help.”

She stepped forward. Braver than Beck felt, the way that gun was waving around. But Jennifer Scott lowered the weapon, and then let Susan fold her into her arms.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and then stood up straight, pushing Susan back.

“What happened to Kevin?” she said. “He went to see you this morning. He was ranting and crazy and paranoid. I thought he might—might actually hurt me. So I was hiding in the bedroom with his gun. Just in case. And then you two show up. What are you doing here? Is he all right?”

Beck had delivered bad news to relatives before, both as a med student and when his patients decided they couldn’t take the pain anymore. There was no good way to say it, ever. So he always thought it was best to just say it.

“He’s dead, Jennifer. I’m so sorry.”

For a second, her face showed nothing. “What?”

“He was shot outside my office. We don’t know why. I thought the police would have told you—”

Then the news seemed to hit her all at once, and she turned away quickly.

Susan reached out to her again, but she pulled away. “Please. I need a minute,” she said, and hurried down the hall and into the bedroom. The door slammed again.

Beck let out a long deep breath. None of this made any sense. Where were the police? Why hadn’t they come to see her?

And something about Jennifer’s story nagged at him, too. Kevin Scott had been angry, but not violent when he arrived at Beck’s office that morning. He didn’t seem like a man who’d just threatened his wife. In fact, the only time he did get angry was when Beck suggested he was having an affair.

That didn’t necessarily mean anything, of course. Beck had seen domestic abusers who were as cool as ice outside of the home. But it was just one more thing that didn’t add up.

Plus, there was just something off about her. He’d seen many people grieve—too many. He knew everyone reacted differently. But there was always a feeling of depth to it—he could always see the impact of the loss, how it almost echoed inside them, like a stone dropped in a well. Jennifer Scott had seemed like she was holding back a sneeze, not like someone holding back tears.

He said to Susan, “Did it seem like she—”

Susan interrupted. “Randall,” she said.

“What?”

She pointed at the laptop. The screen saver had activated again. It was going through family photos of Kevin Scott. There was a series of pictures from his wedding.

And the woman in the pictures had dark-brown hair.

She was not the woman who said she was Jennifer Scott.

Chapter 13

The woman’s real name was Natalie Mullen. She made sure that Jennifer Scott’s body was stashed completely behind the bed. She hadn’t had much time to hide it before.

Killing Jennifer Scott was easy. Mullen had knocked and said a big friendly hello when Jennifer had opened the door earlier—no one ever suspected that a woman might be dangerous, especially not another woman. It was a real asset in her line of work.

Then before Jennifer could say anything else, Mullen used the butt of her pistol to hit her in the face, knocking her back into the house.

They’d struggled. Jennifer was badly hurt, but still managed to fight back, which shouldn’t have been too surprising since she was a soldier’s wife.

Mullen had hit her with the pistol again. She collapsed on the floor. Mullen dragged her to the bedroom and shot her in the face.

Then she’d heard someone out in the living room.

She worked herself up into some tears, took the suppressor off her pistol, and then came out of the bedroom crying and shaking.

Of course they fell for it.

But now she needed to know what to do about them. She pressed a button on her prepaid burner phone and waited. The Client picked up immediately.

Mullen started to explain, but when she said the name “Beck,” the Client cut her off.

“He’s there? Morrison and Howard were supposed to bring him in. They lost him.”

“I’ve got him right here. He doesn’t suspect a thing. He thinks I’m the target’s wife.”

“We need him,” the Client said. “I want to know what Scott told him and who else he’s talked to.”

“I’ll bring him in,” Mullen said. “He’s with another woman. A doctor. What about her?”

“We don’t need her,” the Client said, and hung up.

Mullen put her phone away. Fine by her. That just made her job easier.

She went to the door and put on her best sad face. This was going to be a cakewalk. Beck and his girlfriend still thought she was the grieving widow. They’d stand there flat-footed and she could do whatever she wanted. Two in the face of the woman, and Beck would wet his pants in terror. He’d do whatever she told him after that.

They’d never see it coming. Nobody ever saw her coming.

Mullen opened the door, tears in her eyes, gun in her hand.

But the living room was empty.

Beck and the woman were gone.

Chapter 14

The woman came out of the bedroom. Beck couldn’t see her. But he could hear her.

He’d heard the door open, but the woman didn’t come out right away. Then she did and he heard the door close, quietly. He heard the woman’s soft footsteps on the carpet in the hallway, then the living room. He was certain he even heard the woman’s sharp intake of breath a moment later.

Then he heard the woman call for him. “Dr. Beck?”

He’d stopped thinking of her as Jennifer Scott. Because whoever she was, she was not the woman in Kevin Scott’s wedding pictures. Now she was just the woman who happened to be in their house. With a gun.

As soon as he’d seen that picture, he’d grabbed Susan and prepared to run out the front door. But the bedroom door began to open, and Beck didn’t think they could make it in time.

So he’d turned the other way and pulled Susan with him into the kitchen. They crouched behind the tiny island in the tiny space, their backs to the counter and the living room.

Now they were frozen, like children with their heads under the covers, hiding from some nightmare.

Beck had to remind himself: it was possible he was wrong. His brain was, by definition, not working properly these days. But it didn’t feel like he was wrong. And Susan seemed just as scared as he felt. She huddled next to him on the cheap tile floor of the kitchen. She took short, shallow breaths. As if she was afraid the woman would hear her breathing.

The woman moved carefully. Slowly. She didn’t act like a woman in her own house. She acted like a hunter, stalking prey.

Beck searched frantically for a weapon. There was a good set of knives in a butcher block on the island over their heads, but if he reached up for them, she’d see him.

He was facing the sink and the lower kitchen cabinets. They were right in front of him. The toes of his shoes were almost touching them. He’d have to find something in there.

He reached carefully. He opened the kitchen cabinet. There was a set of high-end cookware inside—probably bought on sale a long time ago. What was he supposed to do with that?

He heard the front door close, and then lock with an ominous click. They were stuck in here with her now. The woman moved toward them. Susan clutched his arm and huddled into him, as if she was cold and looking for warmth.

Beck pulled out a heavy, cast-iron frying pan and felt faintly ridiculous, like a character in some old sitcom.

He tried to shut the cabinet door quietly, but it slipped from his fingers and closed with a solid clunk.

Beck felt rather than heard the woman turn toward the kitchen. He could almost see her, like a hunting dog going on point.

“Dr. Beck? Dr. Carpenter? Are you in here? You’re really starting to worry me.…”

Beck needed something else. He needed a miracle. He opened the cabinet under the sink.

There was a creak as she crossed from the living room into the kitchen. Susan’s grip grew tighter on his arm.

It would only take another step and she’d be able to see Beck and Susan crouched behind the little island.

It was still possible he was wrong. That his brain was simply playing tricks on him.

But he thought of Susan. He had dragged her into this. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. He couldn’t let anyone hurt her.

He had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. He had to do something.

“Dr. Beck,” the woman said, and there was the edge of a cruel laugh in her voice. “You’re a little old to be playing hide-and-seek.”

He heard her take that next step. She was right on top of them.

He looked at Susan, and silently mouthed, Stay down.

Then he sprang up and faced the woman.

She had the gun they’d seen her holding before. Only this time, it was pointed right at Beck’s face.

Chapter 15

Beck didn’t hesitate. He put his arm forward and pressed the nozzle of the can of oven cleaner he’d found under the sink, and sprayed it directly in the eyes of the woman with the gun.

The woman shrank back and shrieked in pain as the chemicals hit her in the face. She waved the gun around wildly, bringing it back in Beck’s direction.

Beck swung the frying pan, with all his might.

He heard a clang and a gunshot, almost on top of each other. He felt something connect with the frying pan at the end of his arm, and lost his grip on it. It went tumbling to the floor. He went deaf in one ear and his vision went blank from a bright flare, and he realized that was the muzzle flash of the gun being fired. For a moment, he wondered if he’d been shot.

But he didn’t let it stop him. He leaped blindly over the kitchen island and slammed into the woman with all his weight.

They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The woman was still screaming, but now in rage mixed with pain. They collapsed on the floor.

Beck somehow got on top of her. He blinked his vision clear and saw the woman he’d thought was Jennifer Scott underneath him. The oven-cleaner foam still clung to her face in places. The chemicals had scorched her skin, leaving vivid red burns. She was bleeding from burst capillaries in her eyes, and she stared up at him blankly, unseeing. She was blind. Probably for life.

For a split second, the doctor in Beck wanted to help her, even though he’d caused her injuries. He hesitated for just a moment, unsure of what to do. She had to be in tremendous pain.

But it didn’t even slow her down. She reached up, found Beck’s face with her hands, and immediately landed two hard punches to his head.

Beck tried to grab her, to stop her, but her fists were as fast as a boxer’s. She hit him again. And again.

It suddenly became painfully clear that this woman had killed Jennifer Scott. She had been trained, and probably knew a dozen ways to kill him with her bare hands, even as injured as she was.

She hit him again. Then her hands found his throat. She dug her thumbs into his Adam’s apple and started to squeeze.

He had to get up, get away from her.

With everything he had, Beck knocked her hands away from his neck, and staggered backward.

He fell on his ass and bounced into the kitchen island. He felt it come loose, pulling away from the floor.

Beck became aware of Susan, suddenly jumping into the fight. He wanted to shout at her to stay back, but he could barely breathe, let alone speak. Susan was already on the woman. She was trying to rescue him.

The woman couldn’t see Susan, but it didn’t matter. As soon as Susan landed on her, the woman punched her hard and fast in the chest, stomach, and throat. Susan recoiled in pain, and the woman kicked up with both legs and sent Susan flying.

She hit the kitchen island and knocked it completely away from the floor. Beck heard wood splinter as Susan fell back and hit her head on the refrigerator door.

She slumped to the floor and didn’t move.

Beck saw her fall and felt rage hit him like a tidal wave. It swamped all his thoughts. All he wanted to do was hurt the woman. He scrambled toward her on the floor, ready to beat her, to strangle her with his bare hands—

Only she’d found the gun again.

The woman turned and aimed it in Beck’s direction. Blindly. But she was close enough. She could not miss at this range.

Beck was dead.

Chapter 16

Beck didn’t even have time to close his eyes. He knew that she was going to pull the trigger and kill him, and there was nothing he could do.

Then Beck noticed something. The barrel of the gun was bent slightly where he’d hit it with the frying pan.

He wondered, stupidly, what that would do to the gun.

He found out a split second later as the blind assassin pulled the trigger—and the gun exploded in her hand.

Beck went completely deaf in that one ear again, but he could still hear the woman’s wail of pain as she pulled back her mangled hand. The bullet had caught in the chamber and backfired. She screamed louder and louder, clutching her bloodied fist to her chest.

Beck tried, again, to attack. He was clumsy and off-balance, but he knew this was the best chance he had to stop her, to subdue her before she could recover.

But she’d been trained, and he had not.

She intercepted him as he tried to tackle her, rolled with his momentum, and threw him painfully through the kitchen doorway into the living room.

Beck hit the floor hard, feeling the concrete under the thin carpet. He realized she was still screaming, an unholy wail of pain and rage. He tried to stand, and she was immediately on top of him again. She was like some demon dragging him down. They both landed on the floor.

She scrambled over his body, searching with her undamaged hand, looking for any vulnerable spot. He tried to kick her away. She landed another punch, this one deep in his stomach, and for a second, all the air left his lungs. A second later, her right foot swung around and clobbered Beck in the head.

He saw stars. His limbs stopped working for a moment. When he got control of his body again, she’d already put her feet on either side of his neck. Then she had a leg-lock around his throat, just like he’d seen in some mixed-martial-arts bout on TV once.

Except this was really happening to him. And he couldn’t pull her away. Couldn’t get her off. He tried to get to his knees, and she yanked him back down again.

She would not stop screaming.

Beck’s vision started to go dim around the edges. He couldn’t sit up anymore. She somehow managed to ratchet her lock even tighter on his neck. He felt like bones were about to break. Oxygen came into his lungs in a thin trickle.

He was going to die. The tumor wasn’t going to get him after all.

And the woman’s scream sounded like a cry of triumph now. She sounded almost happy.

Beck couldn’t breathe at all. He couldn’t even see anymore. He started to go limp.…

And then abruptly, the screaming stopped as Beck heard a hollow thud. It sounded like a pumpkin being dropped on concrete.

The pressure on his neck vanished. Air streamed back into his lungs and the feeling returned to his arms and legs. He choked and coughed, and rolled over and looked up again.

Susan stood there with the frying pan. She’d knocked the blind assassin out cold with it. She was battered and bruised, but on her feet.

“Come on,” she said, reaching down and hauling Beck off the floor. “We have to get out of here.”

She helped him toward the front door. Then he stopped and staggered back toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Susan demanded.

Beck couldn’t talk yet. His throat was still on fire. He wondered if he’d ever talk again.

But he managed to stumble into the living room and picked up the laptop.

Whatever was inside it, the woman had wanted it. And that meant Beck wanted it, too.

Then Beck went back to the assassin, lying on the floor.

“You’re not really going to help her, are you?” Susan asked him.

No. Beck was not going to help her. He’d just decided the Hippocratic Oath didn’t apply to anyone trying to kill him.

He searched her pockets, clumsily. He found a wallet, a convenience-store cell phone, and a car key.

He took it all.

Beck carried the laptop. Susan carried him. The woman was still on the floor. Maybe not even breathing now. Beck couldn’t tell.

They left as fast as they could.

Chapter 17

The assassin’s car key was for a Dodge. Beck and Susan didn’t have to search far to find it. They walked around the block, pressing the Alarm button over and over until a plain sedan—the kind federal agencies bought and used—began honking and flashing its lights.

Beck clicked off the alarm and unlocked the car. He opened the driver’s-side door and began searching.

Susan opened the passenger door and sat down next to him. “I still think we should get you to the hospital. And then call the police.”

Beck checked behind the sun shades and inside the glove compartment. Nothing. “The police let those agents take me before. I’m not going to trust them again,” he said.

“That’s a little paranoid, Randall.”

“You saw what just happened. It’s not paranoia if they’re really trying to kill you.”

“Then we should at least get you to a hospital.”

“I don’t need one. I feel fine.”

Surprisingly, he was telling the truth. He felt better than he had in weeks. His strength seemed to have come back, despite all the punishment he’d taken and the stress he was putting on his body.

Beck realized he wanted to solve this, to find a solution to the problem. He was charged full of adrenaline, and it was fueling him, pushing him past his limits.

He felt more alive than he had since he’d been diagnosed.

Another minute of searching confirmed what was obvious. The car was empty. There were no clues. No paperwork, no registration. Nothing but that new-car smell.

Beck sat in the driver’s seat, stumped for a moment.

Susan looked at him. “Then what do you want to do?”

Beck could only think of one other move now.

He took out the assassin’s phone. He pressed the Redial button.

The phone rang twice. Then someone picked up.

A woman said, “Is it done?”

“Not quite,” Beck answered.

He was speaking to the person who wanted him dead.

Chapter 18

“You must be Dr. Beck,” the woman said. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”

Her voice was muffled and difficult to make out. Beck thought it sounded slightly familiar, but he wouldn’t have been able to swear to it. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to identify it if he heard it in person.

He looked at Susan, who looked back, bewildered. What exactly were you supposed to say to the person who was trying to kill you? They didn’t teach this in any of their psychology courses.

But therapy is mainly talking: asking questions, and getting answers out of people, even when they don’t want to face them. Beck figured he could come up with something.

“Yes,” Beck said, “I imagine you are. Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to kill me?”

Beck didn’t think he’d get a real answer. But he definitely wasn’t expecting the burst of laughter, either.

“Oh, God, you really are a shrink, aren’t you? You don’t ask me who I am. No, you want to know why. It makes me so glad I quit going to therapy.”

“You probably should have stuck with it,” Beck said. “You don’t strike me as the sanest person I’ve ever met.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough, Doctor.”

Beck wasn’t sure he was, either. It probably wasn’t a good idea to insult an obvious sociopath. But on the other hand, what did he have to lose? He was already dying, and there was clearly no way he could talk her out of whatever she had planned for him. He wasn’t going to make any mental-health breakthrough with her.

So he might as well be honest.

“You’ve tried to kill me twice. And I’m still here. I don’t think you’re taking me seriously enough. You’ve sent a couple of mouth breathers and an incompetent killer after me. Whatever your master plan is, I’m not too worried. You can’t threaten me, you idiot. You’ve already done your worst.”

Susan stared at him, wide-eyed. What are you doing? she mouthed.

Beck tried not to grin. Not real smart, he had to admit. But it felt good.

Then the woman on the other end of the line said something that put a halt to his little victory dance.

“How’s Susan?”

Beck felt himself go cold.

“Nothing to say, Doctor?” the woman asked, her tone mocking now. “I know you’re already dying, Dr. Beck. I’ve seen your medical records. You’re right. I can’t threaten you. But I can make Dr. Carpenter’s life much more unpleasant—at least, for as long as it lasts.”

Beck found his voice again. “If you try to hurt her, if you even come anywhere close to her—”

“Don’t be pathetic. You can’t threaten me, either, Dr. Beck. So we have a standoff. Here’s what I’m offering you. Stay quiet. Go hide somewhere. Don’t go to the police, or the media, or anyone else. And if you’re a good little boy for the next twelve hours, then your friend Susan won’t get hurt.”

“And if I’m not?”

“Then she pays for your mistakes. I’m sure you can imagine what that will be like. You’re such a smart guy, after all.”

Beck’s mind raced. He needed to talk to her; he could find a way out of this, if he just had more information. “Listen—”

“No,” she said. “This is not a negotiation. Do as you’re told. Or Susan dies.”

She hung up. Beck looked at the phone, and then at Susan.

She looked back, worried. But not about herself. She’d only caught his side of the conversation. She looked concerned because she was worried about him.

She cared about him, and he hadn’t thought of her for a second. Of course they knew she was with him. They’d known everything else so far.

He’d screwed up. He’d been stupid.

And now Susan was in danger—even more danger than he was—because of him.

Beck dropped the phone. It was useless now.

He got out of the car, feeling dizzy. He heard Susan get out of the other side. She said his name. “Randall?”

But it seemed to be coming from very far away. He was having trouble breathing. His pulse hammered behind his ears.

He hit the ground hard as his legs went weak.

And all he could think was that he’d put a target on Susan’s head. It was all his fault.

Chapter 19

Susan dragged him to his feet. He managed to walk almost a block toward her car before he nearly fell again. Fortunately, there was a bus shelter nearby. Susan set him on the bench.

Beck breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He taught his patients relaxation techniques for moments like this.

Funny how useless they seemed to him now.

But after a moment, his pulse returned to normal. The world stopped spinning. He’d screwed up. That was done. The question now was how to fix it.

“Susan,” he said, opening his eyes. “You have to get away from me. Find a place to hide. I will deal with this on my own. But you have to go. Now.”

She stared at him for a moment. Then swore, quietly, under her breath. Then she asked, “Are you completely out of your mind?”

“It’s not safe to be around me—”

“Shut up,” she said, her voice like a door being slammed. “Do you really expect me to run away just because you tell me to? You think I didn’t know this was dangerous? I am trying to keep you alive. I will not let you run off and commit suicide now.”

“I am dying anyway—”

“So you’re just going to give up? Really? You? You never give up. Never. Remember? Not on your patients. Not when you think you’re right. So don’t ask me to do it, either.”

Beck shrugged. He was too tired to argue with her. And it didn’t help that she was right. “Fine,” he said. “What do you suggest?”

“I know you’re frightened. But I really believe our best chance is to go to the police. Whoever is behind this, they cannot control everything. That’s the problem with conspiracy theories. No one has that much power. There are still people we can trust. They cannot possibly control all the cops—”

The sound of sirens and screeching tires drowned out whatever Susan was going to say next.

They both looked up the street and saw several squad cars barreling around the corner, lights flashing, zeroing in on the bus shelter.

Beck watched, helplessly. He should have known. The woman kept him on the phone to trace his location. It was so obvious.

Now the police were headed right for them.

Chapter 20

The Metro PD’s squad cars raced toward them on the street. Beck hunched back inside the bus shelter, as if that would protect them.

Then the cars skidded to a halt a block away.

They surrounded the assassin’s car.

Where Beck had dropped the phone.

The cops were out of their cars, guns up, almost before their tires had stopped spinning. One officer grabbed his mike from the dashboard and began shouting into it.

“You! In the car! Come out with your hands up! Now!”

Beck realized they couldn’t see inside the car. The windows were tinted, and the glare from the sun made it impossible.

“I said, come out now or we—”

Whatever the officer said was lost in a sudden hail of gunfire.

Someone decided not to wait for the order to fire, and the rear windshield exploded. The other cops, afraid that someone inside the car was shooting at them, unloaded their weapons as well. The entire street echoed with staccato pops and cracks as the bullets slammed into the car. The windows disintegrated first. The door panels deformed and crumpled as they were hit by ammo from both the pistols and shotguns of the police.

It seemed to take forever before the shooting stopped, as the officer in charge bellowed, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” over and over through his car’s PA system.

A moment later, the car sat in the street like a wounded, dying animal. It had been torn apart by the shots.

It was clear that if anyone had been inside the vehicle, they would have been dead many times over.

A police officer carefully moved toward the shot-up car. He swung the passenger door open. Then he looked at the other cops. He shook his head.

The officer in charge dropped his mike and yelled at the other cops. “All right! Who shot first? I want to know! Who shot first?!”

No one spoke up.

Beck and Susan sat in the bus shelter, hardly breathing. No one had seen them. No one had even glanced in their direction.

The police were arguing among themselves now. Beck, carefully and quietly, stood up, and Susan followed.

They walked away.

The entire time, Beck felt an itching between his shoulder blades, just waiting for someone to shout for him to stop.

Or a bullet.

But they made it around the corner to Susan’s car and got inside without getting caught or shot.

Beck collapsed into the passenger seat and sighed deeply.

Susan did the same. “They knew where we were,” she said numbly. “It’s like they were tracking down terrorists or something.”

“For all we know, that’s what they were told,” Beck said.

“I take back anything I told you about being paranoid.”

Beck chuckled a little at that. Then he sat straight up as he remembered.

“The laptop!” he said.

Susan put a hand on his arm. She opened her bag. The laptop was inside.

Beck sighed again, in relief. She’d remembered it. Thank God.

“I can’t believe I forgot it.”

“You’ve got a few other things on your mind,” Susan said.

“Including a tumor,” he muttered. He took the laptop from her bag and opened it. Maybe there were some answers in here. If he could only get to them.

There was the log-in screen. Beck thought hard. What would Kevin Scott use as a password? What mattered to him?

He’d barely met the man. But he was an Army Ranger. He valued duty. Loyalty. Honor.

Beck entered the Latin motto of the Rangers: Sua Sponte, which meant “Of Their Own Accord.” It symbolized the Rangers’ willingness to volunteer for the toughest missions.

And it didn’t work. The screen blurred and shook, and then reset itself.

TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING.

“Still looking for clues?” Susan asked.

“I’m out of ideas.”

The screen saver kicked in again. Kevin Scott’s photos began to roll across the laptop once more.

Beck was only halfway paying attention. Then he saw something that made him stare.

He looked at the picture on the screen. It showed Kevin Scott with a bunch of other men and women, all in business attire, in front of a big corporate logo. Beck remembered that from the case history. Scott had been working as a contractor with a private security firm, like a lot of ex–Special Forces who’d come back home. The pay was decent, and it was usually nothing more strenuous than looking after a CEO or billionaire with delusions of importance.

The case history didn’t include the name of his employer. It wasn’t relevant to Scott’s problems.

Except that it was.

Beck looked at the logo on the screen. It was a sword hanging over a stylized graphic of the globe. And across the globe was the name of the company:

THE DAMOCLES GROUP

“Randall?” Susan said. “Randall, are you all right?”

Beck didn’t seem to hear her. He looked at the picture and the logo.

Then he nodded, making a decision.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “We should go to the police.”

Not for the first time that day, Susan looked at him like he was insane.

Chapter 21

Sergeant Todd Graham of the Metro PD wasn’t expecting to see his psychiatrist show up at his home. That much was obvious from the look on his face when he opened the door.

But Graham didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Beck and Susan and hustled them inside. “Get in here, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “before someone sees you.”

It confirmed Beck’s intuition about Graham: he was a good cop, and he could be trusted.

It also confirmed something else: Beck was a wanted man.

But Graham was still willing to help him.

Graham slammed the door behind them, then turned and faced Beck and Susan. “What are you doing here? Do you have any idea the shitstorm you could bring down on my head?”

Beck decided to be honest. “No,” he said. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”

For a moment, Graham looked like he was going to hit Beck. Then he shook it off. “You really don’t know?”

“All I know is that people are out to kill me. And I need help. That’s why I came to you.”

Graham scowled and crossed his arms. He turned away from Beck, clearly thinking. He knew what his duty was, but he was obviously conflicted.

Susan chose that moment to speak up.

“I’m Susan,” she said. “We haven’t met.”

It was just the right oasis of normalcy in the desert of insanity all around them. Graham was forced to turn to her and acknowledge her. It took some of the anger out of him.

“Yeah. I know. You’re on the warrant, too.”

“What warrant?” Beck asked.

“The arrest warrant. The one issued by the Secret Service.” Graham smiled, as if he were joking, but there was no real humor in it.

“Congratulations, Dr. Beck. Apparently you’re plotting to kill the president of the United States.”

Chapter 22

“That’s crazy,” Susan said. Shock was etched on her face.

“I know,” Graham replied. “You think I’d even be talking to you if I believed it?” He looked back at Beck. “You’re crazy, but you’re not that crazy. Nobody who’d work that hard with me would do something like that. I know.”

Beck stayed quiet. For the first time, he was beginning to figure out what was going on. Things were starting to come together. He just had to think.

“What are they saying?” Susan asked.

“I don’t have a lot of detail, but there’s an APB out for you both. The Service says you’ve been implicated in a homegrown terrorist plot to kill President Martin. You’re the highest priority in the Washington, DC, area. They thought they had you in a car an hour ago, but that turned out to be a false alarm. They’re keeping it quiet for now, but if they don’t find you soon, they’re going to go public. You’ll be the most wanted people in America.”

“That’s insane,” Susan said. “We’ve done nothing wrong. People have tried to kill us, and we have no idea why. And now you tell us we’re supposed to be assassins? It’s unbelievable!”

But Beck shook his head. “No,” he said. “It makes sense.”

That stopped both Susan and Graham in their tracks. “You’re going to have to explain that,” Graham finally said, his voice very serious.

“Sorry,” Beck said, dragging himself back from his thoughts. He could see it very clearly, like a chain, one link after another. But he needed some confirmation. “I mean, I think I have an idea of what’s going on. Can we please sit down and I’ll explain?”

Graham made a face, but he led them further inside his house to a breakfast nook that he’d also set up as a workspace. Beck took Scott’s laptop from Susan’s bag and opened it, showing the display to Graham.

The screen saver kicked on again. “Look,” Beck said.

Graham watched the pictures of Kevin Scott scroll past. “Who’s that?”

“That’s the man who was killed in front of my office today.”

Graham grunted. “Yeah. I heard something about that. That’s supposed to be what tipped the feds off to you.”

You ever done anything really bad, Dr. Beck? Kevin Scott had asked him.

“No,” Beck said. “He was killed by the people working with him. They were afraid he’d had a change of heart, or a guilty conscience. They murdered him. But they were too late to stop him from talking to me, and they wanted to know what he’d said. So they arrested me.”

“Who? Who are you talking about?” Graham demanded.

The group photo came up on the screen saver again. Kevin Scott with his co-workers.

“Them,” Beck said. “That was all he said to me. He said the word, ‘Damocles.’ I didn’t know what it meant. But now I do. He was naming his killers.”

“Damocles?” Graham said. “Dr. Beck, do you know who you’re dealing with here?”

“I do,” Susan said. “They’re a security company.”

Graham snorted. “The guy who installs your burglar alarm is a security company. This isn’t some rent-a-cop operation. Damocles is one of the biggest private military contractors in the world. They do billions of dollars’ worth of business with the government. They’re basically a small army.”

Susan reached over to Graham’s computer and typed the name “Damocles” into a search engine. A list of articles popped up.

“And they’re in trouble,” she said. “I was listening to this on NPR just the other day. The Senate is investigating them for cost overruns, corruption, and even torture and murder. They’ve got a lot of friends in high places, but they’ve been getting hammered in the hearings. Do you really not know this, Randall?”

“If these are the people after you, then you picked a hell of a fight here, Dr. Beck,” Graham said.

Beck looked at some of the headlines. Susan was right: he hadn’t been paying attention to any of this.

“I’ve had other things on my mind,” he said. But he wasn’t completely oblivious.

There it was. There was the connection he was looking for.

He pointed at one of the articles on the screen.

The headline read:

SENATOR ELIZABETH PIERCE DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM DAMOCLES

“That’s who’s leading the hearings,” he said.

Senator Elizabeth Pierce. Ranking member of the Senate Committee on Intelligence. And currently, the leading challenger in the upcoming election against the president of the United States.

Twelve hours.

The woman’s voice on the phone. She’d told Beck to be quiet for twelve hours.

What’s happening in twelve hours?

Then Beck remembered. At Georgetown tonight. He wasn’t as out-of-touch as Susan thought.

“The presidential debate,” he said.

“What?” Graham asked.

“The presidential debate. That’s why she told me to stay out of the way for twelve hours. Senator Pierce is debating the president tonight. She’s beating Martin in the primaries. And if she wins, Damocles could lose billions of dollars when they lose their military contracts.”

It all made sense to Beck now.

“There’s an assassination plot,” Beck said. “But it’s against her. Damocles is going to kill Senator Pierce.”

Chapter 23

“You’d better be damn sure about this, Dr. Beck,” Graham said for what seemed like the tenth time. Beck had lost count.

They were in Graham’s unmarked sedan, driving through the thick downtown traffic, heading toward Senator Pierce’s campaign headquarters.

Beck had explained it to Graham and Susan several times. Susan believed it made sense. Graham took more time to convince.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Graham asked Beck. “You’re accusing President Sharon Martin of plotting to kill her opponent in the primary elections. Because there is no way that the Secret Service cooperates with Damocles without her knowing about it.”

“I don’t know,” Beck admitted. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know where the president fits in. All I know is that these people are killers, and we have to stop them.”

Beck knew this was probably an abuse of the doctor–patient relationship. Graham never would have bought this story if it was coming from some perp he’d arrested on the street. But Graham decided to put aside his skepticism and believe in Beck mainly because Beck had believed in him. Beck had refused to give up on him when he was at his lowest point. And that got Beck a lot of credit with the cop.

So Graham made a few calls to some friends on the force, who’d given him the names of some people he could trust inside the Secret Service. Good people, he promised Beck.

Beck was nervous about that, but Susan had taken him aside and whispered to him, “He trusted you. It’s time for you to trust him.”

So Beck did.

After an excruciating hour of waiting and muttered conversations on the phone, Graham had put on a suit jacket and tie and put his Glock 19 into his shoulder holster.

They were going straight to Senator Pierce. With any luck, they would get to her in time.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Beck asked.

Graham, next to him in the driver’s seat, honked his horn impatiently and squawked his siren at a driver who was too slow to move at a green light. “I’m sure,” he said. “Even if the Service is corrupt, the men and women next to the senator—the ones on her personal detail—they will not be in on this. You have to agree to take a bullet for the people you protect. You don’t betray that on a whim. Trust me. I know some of these guys. They become like family. There’s a real loyalty there.”

“I hope you’re right,” Susan said from the backseat. She was looking at the laptop again, staring hard at the log-in screen, as if she could see inside the machine’s circuits to unlock the password.

“Susan, we’re not going to figure it out,” Beck told her, again. “Scott was in covert ops. It’s probably a string of random characters.”

“You’re probably right,” Susan said, but she kept staring at the laptop, ignoring the traffic around them.

Beck sagged in the front seat. He checked his own pulse. Neither Graham nor Susan noticed. It was thready. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and tried to force himself to be calm.

Just let me live long enough to do this, he thought. He wasn’t sure whom the thought was directed to, really. But he thought it again anyway. Just let me live long enough.

The car slammed to a halt. Beck opened his eyes. They were outside the offices of Senator Pierce. The front of the building was covered with her campaign logo, and posters of her face smiled from every window.

Graham hopped out. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go ride to the rescue.”

Beck looked back at Susan, who nodded, and they both got out of the car.

Let me live long enough to do this, Beck thought again, then followed the cop inside.

Chapter 24

Senator Pierce’s campaign headquarters was controlled chaos. Every manner of electronic device was beeping and pinging, demanding attention. Multiple screens showed every news channel, each one with a constantly scrolling stream of information. Volunteers ran from one cubicle to the next, as a dozen other people talked urgently into their phones. Dozens of pizza boxes layered a long table, and empty coffee cups overflowed the wastebaskets.

They were united in a cause. Beck could almost see the excitement and purpose binding them all together, like a warm glow in the air despite the cheap fluorescent lighting.

Then someone shouted, “QUIET!” as the latest poll numbers hit the screens. A blond, tanned anchorwoman on CNN announced, “And the latest polls show upstart challenger Senator Elizabeth Pierce within striking distance of President Sharon Martin, with just a few days to go before the crucial Super Tuesday primaries.…”

The cheers drowned out the rest of her words. People were hugging and high-fiving, before returning to their work with renewed purpose.

Beck overheard someone say, in a tone of disbelief, “Holy crap, man, we could actually win this thing!”

Only if the candidate survives, Beck thought bitterly. He once believed that assassination plots and conspiracy theories were just for his patients and bad TV. That was this morning.

Now he knew better.

Graham pulled him through the packed room.

“The senator and her detail are willing to meet with you,” he said, keeping his voice low. Beck had to strain to hear. They stopped in front of an office. Graham turned to Susan, looking slightly sheepish. “Sorry, can you wait in here? The agents are a little nervous about too many strangers getting close to the senator right now.”

Beck began to protest, but Susan cut him off. “I don’t blame them,” she said. “It’s fine. I’ll wait.”

“You sure?” Beck asked. He would not have made it this far without her. It seemed somehow ungrateful to put her in a waiting room right now.

“Randall, I am ready to be done with this,” Susan said. “I promise. Do what you have to do. Go.”

Graham nodded, grateful, and pointed her to a chair in the room. Susan sat down. She opened her bag and took out the laptop and offered it to Beck. “You’ll need this,” she said.

Beck hesitated. Some instinct told him not to take it. After all, he thought, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.…

“You hold on to it,” Beck said.

“Hey, they need that,” Graham said.

“Probably,” Beck agreed. “But I’ll feel better if Susan holds on to it.”

Graham scowled but didn’t argue.

“Fine. Whatever. Just don’t try to open it again,” he said. “The Secret Service has people that can crack it. They’ll take care of it.”

If Susan resented being talked down to, she didn’t show it. “I understand,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

She slid Scott’s laptop back into her bag.

Graham turned and led Beck out of the office again, closing the door behind him.

He went down the hall to a solid-steel door at the end of the corridor. Beck followed. A plainclothes Secret Service agent—dark suit, earpiece—stood on guard.

Graham flipped his badge. “Todd Graham, MPD. They’re expecting us.”

The agent nodded. Beck watched him carefully. He would never really trust people in dark suits again. Probably not for the rest of his life.

Of course, that’s not going to be very long, he thought.

The agent rapped on the door. A heavy bolt clunked and the door swung inward.

Almost over now, Beck thought. He was glad. Susan was right. It was time for the professionals to handle this. It was time for this to become someone else’s problem.

Chapter 25

Susan watched Beck follow the cop out of the room, and immediately took out the laptop again.

Randall was safe. They were both safe. She finally had a moment to think, without guns going off or someone trying to kill her. Now she could actually solve this.

She cared about Randall Beck a great deal. If one of her friends took her out for drinks, off the record, she would admit that she probably cared about him more than was strictly professional. She thought he was one of the smartest people she’d ever met. She knew he cared about people, and had constructed his impatient manner to hide just how vulnerable that made him. And she knew he was like a pit bull clamped on to a steak when it came to figuring out a problem.

But he had blind spots a mile wide.

That was the thing about being a therapist. She could see his blind spots, even when the patient—even though he was also a psychiatrist—couldn’t.

Randall, for instance, had almost nothing in his life except his work. The same applied to most of his patients. They believed in duty, in a higher calling.

So of course he thought that Scott’s password would be the Ranger motto. It was the only possibility in Randall’s mind. He believed that Kevin Scott was like all his other patients, focused more on saving the world than anything else.

It was a noble way to look at the world, but it left a few things out.

Like family. Friends. Love.

But Kevin Scott wasn’t like Randall’s other patients. Susan could see it from the pictures that were now scrolling across the laptop screen again. Sure, there was the one picture of him at work, and a couple of him in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq—but these were not pictures of him doing a job. They were pictures of him with his friends.

Most of the rest of the pictures were with his wife, Jennifer. (Susan did not want to think about what must have happened to her. Poor woman.) In each picture, Kevin Scott looked at her like she was the center of the universe.

Randall also thought the password would be some high-security code. Susan knew most people didn’t think like that. Even the ones who have been in top-secret jobs. Especially those people. At home, they just want to be normal.

And normal people don’t put a lot of effort into the passwords on their laptops.

Susan typed the name JENNIFER into the password space.

The computer immediately opened to the desktop.

Scott hadn’t gone to any trouble to hide what she was looking for.

There was only one file folder on the screen, marked DAMOCLES.

Susan opened it and began reading the first document she found.

Within moments, she knew they’d made a terrible mistake.

But she would have known that anyway when the door opened, and a man with a gun walked in on her.

Chapter 26

Graham went through the door into Senator Pierce’s inner office, and Beck followed.

Two things happened, so fast that Beck would swear they were simultaneous.

First, the door swung shut, the heavy bolt locking again.

Then Agent Howard stepped forward, his face masked behind bandages and a splint for his nose. He was smiling like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

He hit Beck across the face with the barrel of his gun.

Beck reeled from the blow.

He looked up at Graham. He’d trusted the cop. He couldn’t believe he’d been so wrong.

But Graham looked just as surprised. He was clearly taken off-guard, just like Beck was.

That moment of disbelief cost him his life.

He was still reaching for his Glock in its holster when Agent Howard shot him in the face.

Graham’s body dropped to the floor, landing right next to Beck.

Beck had a moment of pure horror as he saw the wet, red wound in the middle of Graham’s forehead, the cop’s eyes already empty and staring.

Then he felt nothing but rage.

He prepared himself to leap at Howard, but the agent was ready. He hit Beck with the barrel of the pistol again—Beck realized it was longer than it should have been, a suppressor attached to the end—and spots danced before Beck’s eyes as his body failed underneath him.

It took him a long moment just to keep from vomiting.

When he was finally breathing normally, he looked up.

Agent Morrison stood above him now, with his right hand on his gun and his left hand holding Susan by the arm. Agent Howard was still grinning at him.

“I know you don’t care if you live or die,” Howard said. “But I bet you feel differently about her.”

Beck wanted nothing more than to wipe that smirk from Howard’s face. “I swear to God—” he began.

A woman’s voice cut him off before he could say anything more. It was the voice of the woman on the phone.

“Oh, please, Dr. Beck, don’t say anything stupid.”

Beck turned and saw Senator Elizabeth Pierce standing beside a heavy, slab-like desk. Sergeant Graham’s dead body lay on the floor less than five feet from her brand-new Ferragamo pumps.

“I think we’ve had enough empty threats and promises, don’t you?” she said. “Now it’s time to get down to business.”

Chapter 27

Beck didn’t think that the bad guys really explained their plans to their victims. Not in real life. He thought he’d get a bullet in the head, just like Graham did.

But as it turned out, Senator Pierce needed him to understand.

Howard pulled Beck up from the floor, then sat him down in a chair next to Susan so the senator would have an audience. He bound their hands and feet with zip-ties, and then dragged Graham’s body into another room while the senator waited patiently.

She looked at them for a moment.

“Scott didn’t have a chance to tell you anything, did he?” she said.

“He told me enough,” Beck said. He decided to try to bluff his way out of this. It had to be worth a shot. “And we told Graham. His superiors know he was coming here. The police will be here any moment—”

“No, they won’t,” Pierce said. “Really, Dr. Beck. We know they’re still looking for you. Your friend was willing to hide you, to try to keep you safe. And look what you did to him in return. You got his brains blown out the back of his skull. Now. Can we please try again?”

Beck shut up. Bluffing didn’t work. There didn’t seem to be any point in pretending he knew what was going on anymore. So he asked an honest question.

“Why are you working with Damocles? Why are you doing any of this?”

Pierce looked at him like he was an idiot. “Because I want to be the president, of course.”

Susan couldn’t restrain herself, either, apparently. “But you’re winning,” she said.

Pierce smiled. “No,” she said. “At the moment, I’m the distraction. I’m the challenger who’s interesting. Who brings up some issues, and makes the race competitive. I make the ratings go up, and I give the TV people something new to talk about. But none of the big donors have broken my way. The overall machinery is still firmly on Martin’s side. And when I’m not fresh or entertaining, I’ll be written out of the script. It happens almost every election. It’s just my turn.”

Beck was starting to put it together now. “And Damocles came to you with a proposal.”

Pierce snorted. “No. I had to go to them. Repeatedly. For a company that kills people on a daily basis, they were surprisingly squeamish about getting their hands dirty. But after I pressured them a bit with those hearings, they came around. You’d be surprised how many former Damocles employees there are in the Secret Service.”

Beck couldn’t help looking up at Morrison when she said that. Morrison caught his eye and shrugged, as if to say, Hey, it’s a job.

“Kevin Scott was supposed to be the distraction tonight. He was going to trigger an explosion. And while everyone panicked, a sniper would open fire on the debate stage, wounding both of us.” Pierce allowed herself a smile. “Tragically, only one of us would survive.”

“And you’d ride that wave of sympathy right into the White House,” Beck said.

Pierce nodded. “We’ll blame some Middle Eastern country, and Damocles will have a new war to fight. Everybody wins.”

“But Scott wouldn’t go along with it,” Beck said.

Morrison spoke up. “He had an attack of conscience,” the agent said. “He wanted his wife to be proud of him.” His tone was scornful.

“And you were worried he’d told me about the whole thing.”

“You know, if you’d just cooperated with my agents and told them that Scott didn’t say anything to you, none of this would have happened. You could be at home, waiting for that tumor to kill you. That’s right—I know you’re dying. I know everything about you. You might have helped a few more patients.”

Beck had to admit, she had a point.

“So you lost your bomber,” Beck said. “And you had me running around loose.”

“It could have gotten really ugly,” Pierce said. “Fortunately, you showed up just in time. You really thought you were going to protect me, didn’t you?”

Beck shrugged. He wasn’t usually this wrong about people. He wondered, if he’d had a chance to meet Pierce in person before this, would he have known she was a sociopath?

“Well, you can still help me, Dr. Beck,” she said. “And you can help Dr. Carpenter as well. Even if it is the last thing you’ll ever do.”

That was why she’d explained everything to him. And that was why Morrison and Howard strapped a vest with twenty small bricks of C-4 to his chest.

Because he was a part of the plan now. Now he was one of the bad guys, too.

Chapter 28

Beck waited in line and wondered if he had the guts to sentence Susan to death.

He was outside the auditorium on the Georgetown campus, along with a few hundred other people waiting to go through the metal detectors at the entrance. Like everything else in the contest between the president and Senator Pierce, the location of the debate had been argued back and forth for weeks. Pierce’s people wanted it in New York or Miami, one of the bigger media markets with more primary votes. President Martin’s people had argued that the president was too busy actually running the country to make the trip—and they didn’t want to raise Pierce’s profile any more than necessary. They both backed out of the debate several times before finally agreeing on Georgetown. It was a small space, which limited the candidates’ exposure to the public. Tickets were given to only select lucky citizens, including Beck.

Beck had seen the bickering in the media. He never thought it would mean anything in his life.

Now it looked like they were choosing the place he was going to die.

The question was, how many people was he willing to take with him?

A small radio inside Beck’s ear—almost invisible to anyone else—began speaking to him. “You’re doing fine, Doc,” Agent Howard said. “Remember, we can see everything you’re doing. Just stay calm, and it will be over before you know it.”

Beck wondered where the cameras were, or if Morrison and Howard had agents following him. Probably both. He had no doubt they could see him.

Back at campaign headquarters, they’d cleaned him up as best they could before they sent him out. They gave him a fresh shirt out of a box kept inside one of the staffer’s desks. They put his suit jacket back on him, over the suicide vest. To cover the bulk, they wrapped him in one of the special oversize raincoats that the Secret Service used while they were carrying shotguns and automatic weapons in public. It made him look normal, at least at first glance.

Then they clipped an all-access pass to his coat. It had the senator’s campaign credentials stamped on it, along with a photo they’d snapped of him and printed onto the badge.

He had a trigger for the vest inside the pocket of his suit, but Howard had disconnected it—it was just a piece of plastic now. The real trigger was a code that could be sent at any time from Morrison’s or Howard’s phone.

And for leverage, they had Susan.

“Remember, Doc,” Howard told him in the car as he was dropped off. “You deviate from our instructions in any way—talk to anyone, try to warn the president, go anywhere near a cop—and you will end your girlfriend’s life, as well as your own. It will be quick for you, but not for her. Understand?”

Beck understood. He just had to decide if he could do it anyway.

He saw uniformed security at the metal detectors. They were checking everyone. Campaign staffers had to surrender their phones. Big-name donors had to put their $20,000 Rolexes and Fendi purses into little buckets and send them through the X-ray machine. Beck even saw the secretary of state being patted down. As usual, they were taking no chances when it came to the safety of the candidates.

Beck knew he could stop the plan right there. He could tell the nearest security man he had a bomb, and they would immediately take him down. With luck, it would start a panic and people would scramble to get away from him. Even if Howard detonated the vest remotely, fewer people would die out here than inside the auditorium.

And Damocles’s sniper would never have a chance to kill the president. Pierce’s twisted scheme would fail. On balance, more lives would be saved than lost.

But it would mean Susan died. Probably in the most horrible way possible. Beck didn’t fool himself about Howard or Morrison. They would do their worst, if only for revenge against him, even if he were dead.

Beck was willing to die. But he wasn’t sure he could live with sentencing Susan to torture and slow death.

The line moved forward, one agonizingly slow step at a time. The people around him were smiling like they were heading into a football game. This was the playoffs for political junkies. Pierce had been right about that, at least. She’d made the race more exciting.

Beck had to decide. Who was going to live, and who was going to die?

No one should have to make this choice, he thought desperately.

But here he was.

He was two places away from the metal detector now. He wondered if it would pick up on the wiring in the vest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to make a choice at all. If they pulled him out of the line and patted him down, would Howard trigger the bomb just to keep him from talking?

“You’re looking a little nervous there, Doc,” Howard said. “Just take a deep breath and try to enjoy it.” There was a chuckle in Beck’s ear as the agent laughed at his own little joke. Beck truly loathed the man.

Then Beck was at the metal detector.

He made his choice.

Susan, forgive me, he thought.

He turned to the man in the uniform and opened his mouth to speak.

Chapter 29

At that moment, Susan was looking at Agent Howard’s gun.

She and the agent were parked in the alleyway behind the university’s performing arts center, which was where the debate was being held. Morrison had gone off with Pierce back at campaign headquarters, while Howard had taken Beck and Susan. He didn’t even have to threaten them with the gun—one look at the vest strapped to Beck had been enough to keep them compliant.

Howard had bundled her inside the car with Beck, and then kept her as a hostage after dropping him off at the front of the building. Since then, he had been running the operation from the rear of the car.

The interior of the limo was outfitted like the cockpit of a high-tech fighter jet: screens showed multiple angles from security cameras inside and outside the auditorium. Howard’s microphone connected to radios carried by a half-dozen Damocles operatives who were involved in the plot—Susan had heard him giving orders over a secure channel—and he also monitored the Secret Service and police frequencies as well.

The limo itself was bombproof and bulletproof. Heavy ceramic armor plates were concealed under its panels, and it had a specially designed chassis that could shrug off anything short of a rocket launcher. It was one of the alternate limos used to carry the president and other high-ranking dignitaries. Howard had bragged about it when he put Beck and Susan inside. Like he was a tour guide.

Now Howard’s gun rested within easy reach of his right hand, on a small tray-table next to the command console.

Susan stared at it for what felt like a long time. She wondered if she’d be able to shoot him if she had the chance.

When she looked up, she saw Howard grinning at her, his eyes and nose swollen behind the bandages.

“Try it,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and I’d love to have an excuse.”

Susan lifted her hands, and sat back in her seat in the limo as far away from him as she could. She knew better than to antagonize a psychopath. Howard would act on impulse and worry about the consequences later.

Howard grunted. “Smart. A lot smarter than your boyfriend. Now just sit there and stay quiet.”

He turned his attention back to the tiny screens. She could see Beck at an odd angle, looking down on his head from above. Susan realized that she must be seeing him through a security camera at the entrance. He looked tense and nervous, but nobody else would really notice. You’d have to know him to realize that expression on his face wasn’t his usual way of looking at the world.

So Beck was going to make it inside the debate, unless he did something to change that.

He would try something, however. He wouldn’t take this quietly, and he would not allow anyone to use him as a weapon. Part of it was his need to do the right thing—that Superman complex she was always telling him about—and part of it was just his innate stubbornness. Randall was a fighter. He had to do something, even if it got them both killed.

She looked at Howard’s briefcase, sitting by his feet. That was where the agent had stashed the laptop after Morrison took it from her, and he’d brought it with them in the limo. She supposed they still wanted to know what was on the hard drive and make sure it was disposed of properly.

It was dangerous to them. They were afraid of it.

So Susan made sure she kept her eye on it.

When Beck made his move, she would make hers.

They might both get killed, but at least they weren’t going to surrender.

Chapter 30

Beck prepared to tell the security guard at the gate about the bomb under his jacket. He took a deep breath, and wondered if there was going to be time for pain, or if it would all happen too fast to feel anything.

Then he saw the logo on the man’s uniform.

It was the globe and sword of Damocles.

The man smiled at Beck and waved him through the metal detector.

Beck didn’t move.

The man’s smile froze into something more like a grimace. He stepped forward and put his hand on Beck’s shoulder.

“Come on now, Doctor,” he said quietly. “You’re holding things up.”

He guided Beck forward and pushed him through the metal detector with a not-so-gentle shove.

Beck braced himself for a buzzing noise, for people to notice him, for the code that would blow him—and all these people around him—into pieces.

The metal detector didn’t make a sound.

A second later, Beck was through, and in the lobby outside the auditorium before he knew it.

Damocles had a man at the door. Of course they did. They were an elite security outfit, just the type of company contracted for events like this.

“See, Doc?” said Howard’s voice. “Told you we’d handle everything. Now all you have to do is wait.”

Howard was right. They were handling everything. He was surrounded by dignitaries and party officials and young campaign staffers. Not one of them expected to die tonight.

Beck would have to think harder. He would have to find a better way.

The doors opened behind him, and Senator Elizabeth Pierce entered the lobby, flanked by her Secret Service detail and her campaign staff.

Some of the people in the lobby broke out into applause and cheers.

“You can do it, Liz!” one of them shouted.

“You’re going to win!”

“Take her down, Senator!”

There was laughter and more clapping at that.

Beck barely heard it.

It was too late now. He had no more time to think. No more plans. No more last-minute, buzzer-beating, Hail Mary plays.

Any minute now, the president would arrive as well, and Morrison would trigger the bomb.

Beck was out of time.

Chapter 31

Agent Morrison took his position in the catwalk above the seats and the control booth of the auditorium. The Secret Service had already blocked off access to this section of the building.

It was, after all, the perfect spot for an assassin.

Morrison carried an H&K MP5 machine pistol. With its extendable stock, and set to single-shot fire, he could easily put a bullet into the head of President Sharon Martin. He was less than a hundred feet from her podium on the stage, standing above the seats, and backlit by all the lights.

No one would see him.

He’d wait until the candidates were both on the stage, and then he’d hit the button on his phone that would trigger Beck’s vest.

People would be distracted, looking back at the lobby. That’s when he’d kill the president.

Then he would fire another burst along the floor of the stage. Senator Pierce might get hit, or she might not. At that point, his colleagues—some of them people he’d known for years—would already be pulling both the women offstage and to the ambulances waiting in the back.

They’d also be shooting at him, but he was prepared for that. He would fire randomly into the crowd. He had a description all ready of a man of Middle Eastern descent as the shooter. Everyone would start looking for the suspect.

And no one would seriously believe Morrison had been involved. He was, after all, a Secret Service agent.

He and Howard had already picked out a patsy, a local college student who spent too much time on jihadi websites in between playing video games. They would hide the H&K in his dorm room and send in an anonymous tip to the police.

If the kid got killed while resisting arrest—well, so much the better. Damocles had friends in the FBI and the police department as well.

Morrison had been worried for a while today. First Scott had his attack of conscience, and then it looked like that smartass Beck was going to cause some real problems.

But it all worked out. And he was about to have a multibillion-dollar defense contractor and the future president of the United States deeply in his debt.

Howard’s voice suddenly began speaking through his radio earpiece.

“Morrison. The senator just entered the building. You good?”

Morrison smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m perfect.”

Chapter 32

In the limo, Susan watched Howard carefully.

The agent pressed a button on his console and spoke into his mike. “Morrison. The senator just entered the building. You good?”

“Yeah,” came the reply. “I’m perfect.”

“All right,” Howard said. “We’re almost there. Just a couple more minutes.”

He looked at a digital clock in the console. The debate was due to start at 9:00 p.m. The clock read 8:56.

Howard pressed another button on the console and switched channels again. Now the feed from the Secret Service’s radios came over the limo’s speakers.

“This is Howard,” he said. “Senator Pierce is in the lobby, on her way to the stage. We’re cutting it a little close. Do we have an ETA on Minerva?”

Minerva. Like most people in DC, Susan knew that President Martin’s Secret Service code-name was Minerva, after the ancient goddess of wisdom—the Washington Post had done a whole feature on it.

Howard was checking to see when she would arrive. Susan realized that he and Morrison and all the other Damocles operatives would all know, down to the second, where to find their target.

“Minerva is two minutes out,” an agent replied over the radio. “Onstage in five.”

“Roger that,” Howard said.

Howard watched the screens carefully, then glanced over at Susan.

“Might want to stick your fingers in your ears, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re about to have a very big bang.”

Chapter 33

Senator Pierce made her way across the crowded lobby, smiling and shaking hands. Beck watched her carefully.

No one paid any attention to him. Their eyes were all on the senator.

Beck didn’t know what to do. He was completely out of ideas.

And he was sweating, and his head was killing him.

Senator Pierce moved forward, her protective detail clearing the way respectfully and carefully. It was more stagecraft. Nobody here would do anything against her. They were all vetted beforehand to get a seat at the debate.

Beck was the only truly dangerous man in the room.

Pierce drew even with Beck in the crowd now. She turned and saw him. They locked eyes. And Pierce gave him a radiant politician’s smile. She looked happy.

Because she was going to get away with it. Beck could see that, almost written on her face.

She was barely five feet away from him. If the trigger in his pocket actually worked, he’d be tempted to squeeze it.

He reached into his pocket, and found not the trigger, but the handcuffs that Howard had used on him that morning. It seemed a million years ago to him now.

Useless. Just like him.

Beck was still sweating. His head throbbed, and his pulse pounded behind his ears.

He took a deep breath. This would be the absolute worst time for one of his episodes. But all this stress, the sudden spike in his blood pressure, the adrenaline. All of that, on top of his exhaustion and the punishment he’d already taken today…it would make sense if his body couldn’t take any more, if the pressure inside his skull was too great.

It would make sense.

Beck began gasping for air.

The people closest to him in the crowd looked at him.

“You okay?” a young man who looked barely out of high school asked him. He looked like a kid wearing his dad’s jacket and tie.

“I’m fine,” Beck choked out, and bent over, hyperventilating now.

Other people began to notice. Including Howard, who spoke through the radio.

“What’s going on, Beck?” he said, a warning in his tone. “You’d better pull it together.”

Beck didn’t answer, just kept breathing hard.

“Sir, are you all right?” someone else asked. “Do you need help?”

“Someone get a doctor. Is anyone here a doctor?”

Beck would have laughed at that if he could.

“I’m fine,” he said again. It came out in a wheeze. Beck sounded weak even to his own ears.

Howard’s voice spoke in the radio again. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Can’t breathe,” he said. He stumbled to one side and bumped into several people. “My head—”

Now people were beginning to grab for him, trying to keep him upright. Pierce was stuck in the crowd as everyone froze in place, wondering what was going on.

Now Pierce’s protective detail was moving away from her, and toward Beck.

“We need a doctor over here!” someone shouted. “Call 911!”

“Get yourself together, Beck,” Howard snapped. “Do I have to remind you—”

Whatever he was going to say next was lost in the shouts of the crowd as Beck fell forward and lay face-down on the carpet.

Chapter 34

“Get up, Beck! Get up!” Howard screamed into his mike.

“That won’t work,” Susan told him. “You can’t bully a cancer patient into getting up. He needs medical attention.”

Howard turned to her and snarled, “Shut up or I will shut you up.”

He turned back to the console, his eyes searching the screens, listening to the multiple radio channels, where chaos reigned.

But for all that data, he still had no idea what was happening right in front of his eyes.

“What’s going on?” the driver asked from the front seat. “Should I call Morrison?”

“Shut the hell up and let me think!” Howard shouted back. He was unraveling right in front of Susan’s eyes.

The sound of a 911 dispatcher suddenly broke through one of the speakers: “We’ve got a call for a paramedic at the Georgetown University debate. Is the Secret Service aware of the problem? Do they require assistance?”

Howard pressed a button on his console and switched channels. Then, in a surprisingly calm voice, he said, “Metro Dispatch, this is Secret Service. We are aware of the problem and have a medical unit onsite. We have no need for assistance.”

“Are you sure?” the dispatcher asked. “We have a unit on the way.”

In a slightly tighter voice, Howard answered, “We have it under control, Metro Dispatch. Please let us do our job, and you do yours.”

There was a pause. Then: “Copy that, Secret Service. Call if you need help.”

The dispatcher broke the connection.

“You have to get him help,” Susan said. “He needs an ambulance. He could be bleeding into his brain, he could be going into cardiac arrest—”

Howard pointed his gun at her and cocked the hammer back.

“Not. Another. Word,” he said, biting off every syllable. Then he switched the channel on his console again.

An urgent voice broke through all the other chatter. It was the same Secret Service agent that Howard had spoken to before about President Martin. “Base, what’s going on? You have a man down? Should Minerva abort?”

Susan understood immediately that the president’s Secret Service agents were asking if it was safe for her to come to the debate.

Howard clicked onto that channel and answered in the calmest voice possible. “No need for that,” he said. “It looks like a medical issue. All clear here. Minerva is okay to proceed.”

“Copy that, base. See you in one minute.”

“See you here,” Howard said. Then he switched back to his other radio channels, stabbing the buttons frantically.

“Dammit, is there anyone who’s got eyes on Beck?” he barked into his mike.

“I’m at the door,” a voice said through the speaker. “I can get to him, but it will mean leaving my post—”

“Then leave your damned post!” Howard shouted. “Move it!”

Susan knew that if Beck had collapsed, he might well be dying on the floor. Or maybe even already dead. She had no idea how his body was holding up after everything they had been through today. He could already be gone.

The thought nearly broke her heart. If she stopped to think about it, she knew it would paralyze her.

So she pushed it aside.

Randall would want her to live. And more importantly, he would want her to beat these bastards.

Howard was distracted. He was staring at the screens, watching a uniformed Damocles guard shove his way through the crowd around Beck.

She leaned all her weight back in her seat in the limo and pulled her knees to her chin.

Howard caught the movement from the corner of his eye and turned to face her.

“What do you think you’re—”

Susan snapped her legs straight in a double-footed kick that caught him full in the face, bouncing his skull off the roof of the limo.

He screamed in pain and dropped the gun. He used both hands to clutch at his broken nose, now gushing blood again.

Susan thought for a second that her Krav Maga instructor would be proud.

She snatched the case from the floor of the limo and popped open her door, and ran as fast as she could as soon as her feet touched the ground. She heard the driver’s door open behind her, heard him yelling at her to stop. She risked a look back and saw him draw his gun, but she knew he wouldn’t start shooting out here with so many non-compromised cops and Secret Service agents. She sprinted away to find somewhere to hide and think.

Randall, forgive me, she thought. But you’re on your own.

Chapter 35

The Damocles guard—his name was David Cook—shoved and bullied his way from the metal detectors and the screening station to the center of the lobby. He knew the other guards—the ones who weren’t in on the plot, and who weren’t on the secure channel—were probably wondering why he’d abandoned his post, but screw them. The only instructions he cared about now were from Howard. He had to get to Beck. If anyone else should reach him first, they might open his shirt and jacket and see the vest. And then the whole plan would be ruined. There was no way the presidential detail would allow the president anywhere near the building if there was a bomb inside.

One of Pierce’s Secret Service agents—not a Damocles plant, unfortunately—was almost to Beck.

Cook yelled at him, “Protect the senator! I’ve got this!”

The woman nodded and stepped back to flank the senator again.

Cook grabbed and pulled the idiots surrounding Beck out of his way. “Move!” he yelled. “Come on, move it!”

Beck was on the floor, looking like he was hours away from his own autopsy.

Damn it, Cook thought. We’ve come so far, we can’t have it all go to pieces now.

He just had to get Beck on his feet. That was all. Then he had to get out of the lobby himself before the bomb was triggered. It could all still work. The plan could be salvaged.

Cook pulled on Beck’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. Beck’s face was pale. Cook couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

Cook leaned down and brought his face close to Beck’s. He felt around the man’s neck for a pulse.

He was surprised to find that Beck’s pulse was strong and steady and fast.

Then he was even more surprised to feel Beck’s hand at his belt as the doctor grabbed Cook’s gun and yanked it from his holster.

Cook looked into Beck’s eyes, which were wide open now.

“Change in plans,” Beck said.

Then he put the gun against Cook’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 36

The sound of the gunshot worked like a starter pistol. Everyone began running, even if they had no idea where to go.

Beck knew he only had a few seconds before he would lose the element of surprise. He’d managed to fake a seizure and fool everyone, but he didn’t think their shock at seeing him rise from the dead would last long.

He was right. Pierce’s Secret Service detail was already moving between him and the senator, trying to block him as he stepped toward her.

But he was too close, and he already had a gun drawn. They were hampered by the panicking crowd, and they were really not expecting any trouble. The best they could do was shield her.

Which was precisely what Beck expected them to do.

He stepped up to each of the agents guarding Pierce, who was looking at him with shock and horror as—too late, they scrambled to draw their guns.

Beck fired the gun three more times, putting a bullet each into the body armor that the agents wore on their chests.

He looked over to the Damocles guard he’d shot first, who was yelling and cursing on the ground, clutching his chest.

Even with a bulletproof Kevlar vest, a point-blank round to the chest could break ribs. More importantly, it really, really hurt.

Beck had learned that from listening to his patients’ stories in therapy. He was happy to see that it worked in practice, too.

The Secret Service agents were now all on the ground, the breath knocked out of their lungs. Only Pierce was left standing. She turned to run from him.

But there was nowhere to go.

Beck could have shot her. He could have ended her life right there.

But he was not, despite everything that had happened today, a killer. He could not make himself cross that line.

And he wanted the world to see her for what she really was. He didn’t want revenge.

He wanted the truth. For Kevin Scott. For Susan. For Todd Graham. For Jennifer Scott, who he now assumed had been murdered by the woman in her house. And even for Louis, who Beck had a terrible gut feeling had also felt the wrath of Damocles. And for himself, too.

So he grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her close. He jabbed the gun in her side.

Then he used his free hand to snap the handcuff around her left wrist.

The other cuff was already locked around his right wrist.

Pierce tried to pull away from him. Couldn’t. “What did you just do?” she shrieked.

Beck ignored her.

He pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired a round into the air.

The crowd moved like it had a single mind, everyone trying to get away from the madman with the gun. Beck found himself at the center of the lobby with no one but Pierce by his side.

She tried to pull away again. Beck tugged her back, the metal of the cuffs biting into both their wrists. He thought they wouldn’t risk taking a shot at him, for fear they would miss and explode the vest, killing Pierce. But he also knew, as long as he didn’t come anywhere close to President Martin, they wouldn’t detonate the vest remotely.

Pierce wasn’t going anywhere. They were locked together. Their fates were now inextricable.

Chapter 37

Susan decided to risk it. She snuck out from between the two news vans where she’d been hiding, and forced herself to walk slowly, to try to look normal, like she was supposed to be there, the laptop tucked under one arm.

She had no idea where she was going. She was behind the performing arts center, trapped inside the security cordon for the event. There were temporary barriers and police tape strung all around the building. The street was blocked by heavy, military-style Humvees. And every few feet, there were police and Secret Service and private security all wearing the Damocles uniform and logo.

Any one of these people could be an enemy; any one of them might grab her or shoot her or turn her back over to Howard.

Susan wasn’t sure what to do. The only person she could trust was wearing a suicide vest and was stuck inside the center. She had to figure this out on her own.

If she went to the police barriers, she was going to have to face the Secret Service and the Damocles guards. They might be in on the plot, or they might not. She was already getting suspicious looks.

But she had to do something fast. She heard a bellow of anger a block behind her. “Somebody stop that woman!”

She turned in time to see Agent Howard stumbling from the limo, clutching at his face with one hand, blood spilling down his shirt. She took satisfaction in that. She’d hurt him. Good.

Unfortunately, now people were really gawking at her. A pair of police officers moved away from their posts at the barriers. One began walking toward her; another toward Howard.

“Get her!” Howard screamed, his voice clogged like someone suffering a bad cold.

Susan turned and walked away, as calmly as she could. The media had been set up in their own holding pen, TV news vans and mobile satellite trucks, all parked together. The reporters clustered together near the front of the pen. They all seemed agitated about something.

If Susan could just reach them, forty feet away, she might be able to blend into the crowd.

“Excuse me, miss? Miss?” It was the police officer behind her. He was polite. Still confused, still unsure of what was going on. Which meant he wasn’t a part of the plot. But he would detain her, still ask questions. And there was no way he would take her word over Howard’s. In his mind, she’d just be some crazy person who had assaulted a Secret Service agent.

She kept walking, forcing herself to go at a normal pace, as if she hadn’t heard. Just another reporter, just another random woman in the crowd.

“Miss, please stop right there,” the cop said, and his voice was louder and harder now. Not being polite anymore.

She kept walking. He wouldn’t shoot her in the back.

Would he?

She was almost at the media pen. None of the reporters or technicians were looking at her. Their eyes were all glued to the front doors of the building.

She sprinted through the crowd of reporters, then ducked the police barrier, and—she hoped—blended into the crowd there. She didn’t risk a look back to see if the cop was able to stay on her tail.

The big black car known as the Beast—the presidential limo—glided to a halt at the front steps.

Secret Service agents jumped from their cars to open the door for the president.

Susan realized that the president was about to walk right into the lobby, and within range of the bomb strapped to Randall.

They would kill her. They’d trigger the bomb and kill her, and Randall, and everyone close to him.

They were all about to die, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Then Susan heard someone say, “What the hell is going on in there?”

Susan finally risked a look over her shoulder. She saw Howard half-running, half-staggering toward her. The police officer spotted her when she turned around and began running toward her, his hand on his holster.

She turned away quickly and picked up the pace.

She pushed her way through the huge crowd that had shown up to try to glimpse the president, or to just cheer her on or boo her.

Susan had almost made it. They wouldn’t try anything in front of so many witnesses.

Would they?

Then she heard gunshots, and flinched, expecting to feel a bullet between her shoulder blades.

But the shots came from inside the building.

And then she and the crowd and the reporters and the cops were engulfed in a flood of people running from the exits of the building, all of them fleeing in panic. It was chaos, like opposing tidal waves crashing into each other.

She heard someone shout, “Run! He’s got a gun!”

Everyone was now trying to get away from the building.

But not Susan. She pushed her way closer, fighting against the tide.

Randall, she thought. Whatever you’re pulling, I hope it works.

Chapter 38

“Would someone please just shoot this man?” Senator Pierce screamed as Beck yanked her closer. She kept trying to pull away, and it caused the metal cuff to dig even deeper into his flesh.

They were surrounded by a circle of Secret Service agents, police officers, and Damocles guards. A half-dozen laser sights danced over Beck’s face and body as they searched for an angle that would not also harm the senator, or explode the bomb. Beck looped his non-handcuffed arm through her free arm, so that they were back to back. He started turning them in circles, at different rates of speed and changing direction without notice. Getting a clean shot at him in this position and with this movement would be nearly impossible.

A few yards away, Beck could see the people he had already shot, still writhing on the ground in agony. They were all going to be very sore, and as furious as he was at them for what they were, and for putting him in this situation, he was glad they weren’t dead.

Which was more than Beck could expect when this was over. He and Susan would probably be killed.

Pierce tried to pull away. Beck tightened his grip, using her as a shield. He kept his gun pointed out toward the officers and Secret Service men surrounding him. He wasn’t sure he could hit anyone, shooting from this angle and being jostled by Pierce, but he tried to look confident and hoped the threat would be enough.

“Shoot him!” she screamed again. She sounded more outraged than scared, as if some barista at the coffee shop had just given her the wrong flavor of latte.

Beck jabbed her with his elbow. She squawked in pain and shut up.

Beck looked around frantically. He just had to stall them for long enough. The president had to get away. That was the best he could hope for.

Through the big glass panels of the lobby, he noticed the big limousine. The Beast. It slowed down, rolling to a stop. A Secret Service agent went to the back door, ready to open it—

No, Beck thought.

And then, suddenly, the limo picked up speed again. The agent was left standing as the Beast accelerated, and made a smoking-tire exit from the front of the building, out of Beck’s view.

Beck almost couldn’t believe it. The president was safe now. He’d actually done it.

Despite everything, he allowed himself a small moment of satisfaction.

“Looks like the debate is canceled, Senator,” he said, over his shoulder.

“You idiot,” she hissed back. “You are never going to get out of here alive.”

Sadly, Beck knew she was right. He’d managed to save the president, but this was as far as he’d gotten in his master plan.

Now he was out of ideas, and he was just waiting for someone to shoot him.

For the first time, he noticed the big screens on the walls of the lobby, all tuned to CNN. They were supposed to show the debate to the overflow crowd, Beck supposed. Now, they showed the panicked crowds outside the center with the chyron scrolling across the bottom of the screens:

BREAKING NEWS…TERRORIST HAS TAKEN SENATOR PIERCE HOSTAGE…

Beck had seen headlines like this before. He knew how these stories always ended.

It looked like the cancer wasn’t going to kill him after all.

Chapter 39

On the catwalk, Morrison heard the gunshots from the lobby. Then the screams. He spoke quietly into his throat mike. “Howard. What’s going on?”

No response.

He tried again. “Howard. Do you hear me?”

Nothing.

Damn it, he knew he shouldn’t have let Howard run things from the limo. That idiot couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

But they’d needed thugs to pull this off, and Howard loved to hurt people. Unfortunately, most thugs weren’t that bright. Howard would have been bounced out of the Service long ago if Morrison hadn’t found him useful.

Morrison got out of his sniper position and began to crawl. He needed to get to higher ground, where he could scope out the entire situation.

His arm hurt and the H&K rifle jabbed him painfully in the ribs when he began climbing a ladder upward at the back of the auditorium.

Morrison was already planning on killing at least one more person today. Not like he’d been looking forward to it or anything. He wasn’t a psychopath like Howard. It was a part of the job, that was all.

But if Randall Beck had somehow managed to screw them, then it was going to be a pleasure to put a bullet through his brain.

Chapter 40

Beck used to have a patient named Gregory Lucas who was an FBI hostage negotiator. The stress was eating him alive by the time he came to Beck for treatment. Together, they worked through his anxiety—though it’s tough to tell someone to relax when lives are literally at stake every time he goes to work.

However, Beck taught him to live with the fact that he couldn’t control everything.

And in the process, he taught Beck all about how hostage negotiation worked.

Which came in handy for Beck right about now.

“All right, back off,” Beck shouted. “Put those guns away!”

The agents didn’t move. They kept their guns trained on him, their faces grim and frozen.

Which was keeping with what Lucas had told him. You never walk away from a live situation, he said. Never put down your guns unless you absolutely have to.

Beck figured it was time to put all his cards on the table.

“I’ve got a bomb!” he shouted, using his gun hand to open the raincoat and his jacket as best he could.

Now everyone could see the vest with its wires and plastic explosives.

Again, the agents did not move back. But Beck could see their faces grow even more tense.

“You shoot me, and the bomb goes off!” he shouted.

This was not precisely true, of course, unless the bullet hit the explosives. He had no control over the bomb. He wondered why it hadn’t been detonated already. Howard’s voice had stopped yammering in his ear a few moments earlier, and he didn’t miss it.

Beck knew that this bought him just a little time. Eventually, someone was going to take a shot.

That would kill everyone in the room. Beck decided to remind the agents of that fact. “If anyone takes a shot, this bomb will explode!” he shouted. “Put away your guns or I’ll detonate!”

Now he had some leverage. He could see it in their eyes.

At first, Lucas had told Beck, you have to agree to everything. Never say no. We do whatever the wackjob wants until we can get control of the situation. A plane to Cuba? No problem. Luxury box at the Redskins game? You got it. Pizza with anchovies? It’s on its way. Whatever you want.

So Beck was not surprised—relieved, but not surprised—as one by one, the laser-sights dotting his chest winked off, and the armed men and women surrounding agreed with his wish and put away their guns.

Senator Pierce, however, was shocked. And not at all happy about it.

“What are you doing, you idiots?” she shrieked. “Shoot him!”

“They can’t risk it,” Beck said to her, over his shoulder. “A stray bullet might trigger the bomb. Wouldn’t look good on the news if they accidentally blew up a presidential candidate because of an itchy trigger finger.”

Pierce didn’t say anything. Good. At least she’d be quiet for a while.

Then Beck noticed something. He got a weird sense of seeing a mirror in the corner of his eye. He looked up at the big TV screens again, and there he was. Holding a gun on the senator with a bomb strapped to his chest. Bruised and hollow-eyed. He looked very much like the stereotypical lone gunman. For a brief, idiotic moment, he noticed his hair looked terrible.

The footage was going out live over the networks.

He scanned the room and saw that one of the TV news crews covering the debate had not fled with all the other people in the lobby. They’d stuck around to get the story of the year.

The Secret Service noticed at just about the same time. “Get those people out of here,” one of the agents snarled.

That wouldn’t help Beck at all. He needed as many witnesses as possible.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I want them to stay!”

The more people watching, the less likely it was that he’d be shot. He knew Morrison and Howard and Pierce—and whoever else Damocles had here—wanted him dead. But they’d think twice before executing him live on TV.

The agents hesitated. They seemed to be trying to judge how serious Beck was. He decided to amp up the crazy for a moment.

“I mean it!” he yelled. “They can transmit my demands to the American people! I want the truth to come out! Or I pull the trigger!” He shoved his handcuffed hand in his pocket and came out with the useless plastic trigger, still connected to the vest via several wires.

“No way!” shouted one of the Damocles personnel. But two of the Secret Service agents—a man and a woman—exchanged a glance. Beck realized they must be the senior agents on the scene. They were the ones really in charge.

So he held the trigger up as high as its tether would allow, as close to Pierce’s head as possible. “You’ve got five seconds to decide!”

Again, he was following Lucas’s advice. We always try to slow things down whenever possible, Lucas had told Beck. Drag it out. Suck the momentum out of the room. If they start pushing us to do things quickly, make snap decisions, we’ve lost control.

The Secret Service agents nodded. “All right,” the woman said. “They can stay. Now just tell us what you want. Nobody else has to get hurt. What do you want?”

Good question. Beck wanted to get this bomb off him. He wanted a cure for cancer. World peace. Maybe a pony.

He wanted Susan to be safe.

In other words, nothing the agents could supply.

But then, he finally had an idea.

“I want a limo!” he shouted.

Pierce twisted in his grip. “What?” she said.

Nobody else heard her. “We can do that,” the lead agent said, her hands up, her voice soothing.

Beck had to keep them off-balance. “Not just any limo! Senator Pierce’s limo! Bring it out front! Right now!”

The female agent made a face. She was confused. “Okay, we can certainly look into that—”

Beck couldn’t let her waste any time. He had to keep things moving. Keep Damocles—and everyone else—guessing.

“Now!” he said. “Right now!”

“All right, all right,” she said, trying to placate Beck again. “We can do that.”

She spoke rapidly into her radio.

Beck waited. Pierce hissed at him, “What do you think you’re doing?”

He ignored her. He felt the sweat slide down his ribs, under the suicide vest. He could feel his heart beating under the C-4. It could go off at any second.

There was nothing he could do but wait.

Another few minutes ticked by like an eternity.

Then he saw the limo crawl slowly to the front steps, visible through the lobby windows. Just like the president’s car.

“Let me see inside that car!” Beck demanded. “Open all those doors!”

The agent frowned, but she spoke into her radio again. Outside, Beck saw an agent get out of the driver’s seat, and then open all the limo doors. Another agent reluctantly got out of the back. Beck could see the whole interior now.

There were all the screens and radios that Howard had been using. It was the same car.

But no sign of him, or Susan.

Where were they?

Chapter 41

Susan was trapped in the mob. She couldn’t move. The crowd of people trying to escape from the performing arts center had come up against the people from the media trying to get in for a better look and the other cops, causing the mass of bodies to become gridlocked.

The police and security were doing their best to manage the mess, but they weren’t helped by the sudden cry of alarm from someone near the front door: “He’s got a bomb! Run!”

Susan was jostled back and forth as the panicked crowd surged for the security barriers. The media still wasn’t moving, despite the shouts and threats of the authorities.

The only good news in all of this was that she hadn’t seen Howard or Morrison. At least, not yet. But she felt exposed, like she had a target on her head for a high-flying drone strike.

She didn’t know what Randall was doing in there, but she had to find a way to help him. He was alone, and risking his life. So she’d have to figure out a way to help save them both.

She had the laptop. It could prove everything. But there was no way to get it to the right people, not right now—

Then Susan wanted to hit herself in the forehead. She was surrounded by the right people. They were pushing her from every direction.

Susan looked around for the closest person with a video camera.

While she was scanning the crowd, she saw two eyes burning behind a mask of bandages, a scowling face painted with drying blood.

Howard.

He locked eyes with her at the same moment, and began shoving his way through the mass of people, holding his badge over his head. “Secret Service,” he bellowed, loud enough for her to hear despite the distance and the noise of the mob.

She started moving in the other direction, sliding between people as best she could.

Then she couldn’t move any farther. She was pinned against a news van.

She looked over her shoulder and saw Howard coming for her, moving through the crowd like a shark through the water, eyes fixed on her.

She tried the van’s door handle and pulled.

It opened.

A woman wearing heavy makeup turned and stared at her. So did a man with a scruffy beard, and a producer sitting in front of a board of equipment.

The woman spoke first. “What the hell are you doing?”

Susan stepped up into the news van, and slammed the door behind her.

She recognized the woman. Danielle Crain, one of the field reporters for CNN. She smiled a lot more on TV. Right now, she was glaring at Susan.

“The guy in there with a bomb?” Susan said. “I know him. And I can tell you everything about him.”

Danielle was suddenly all smiles. “Sit down,” she said. “Start talking.”

Chapter 42

Beck decided he didn’t have time to worry about where Susan and Howard were now. He had to move. Keep the momentum going. Keep anyone else from stopping him.

He rushed out the door, pushing Pierce ahead of him. He had her arm pinned behind her like a perp, his gun aimed at her head. He tried to stay crouched behind her, walking as low as he could, continuing to use her as a shield.

Then he pushed her into the limo.

From the backseat, he slammed all the rear doors and pressed the button to close the screen between them and the front seat.

Then he sat back in the plush leather.

For a second, he simply took in a deep breath.

Pierce stared at him.

“Now what?” she asked. She sounded truly baffled. “Do you think you’re going to drive out of here?”

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” Beck replied.

“There’s nothing here that can help you, Beck! The whole world saw you! They think you’re a terrorist! The whole world saw you take me hostage and bring me into this car—”

“That’s right,” Beck said, cutting her off. “Into this car. This car that your friend Howard was so proud of. Just like the president’s, he said. Bulletproof. And bombproof. If your men trigger the bomb now, the explosion will be contained in here.”

Pierce looked at him with wide eyes. “But we’ll both still die!”

“I’m dying anyway, Senator,” Beck said. “Remember?”

She glared at him with pure hate. “You’re crazy,” she said.

For some reason, that just made Beck grin.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I get that a lot.”

Chapter 43

“That’s the most insane story I’ve ever heard,” Danielle told Susan. “You sound more like a mental patient than a doctor.”

Susan had only had time to give Danielle Crain, her producer, and her cameraman the highlights of everything that had happened today. She knew Howard was outside the news van, and the clock was ticking on Randall’s life.

From inside the van, they’d all watched on one of the small TV monitors as Randall forced the senator out of the lobby and down the steps into the waiting limo.

And then they had waited, along with everyone else in America, glued to their screens.

Nothing was happening right now. The police were trying to get the crowd and the news media away from the building. Nobody wanted to move. Nobody wanted to miss it when the crazy man was finally killed.

Every camera was locked on to the limo, waiting for the moment they could broadcast Randall’s messy death to millions of viewers. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read:

LIVE FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE—ARMED MAN HAS TAKEN SENATOR PIERCE HOSTAGE.

That left Danielle Crain outside and off the air during the biggest story of the year. She was annoyed, Susan could tell. Susan had to give her a way to get back into the action.

All she had to do was convince her.

Susan opened the laptop and quickly typed in Kevin Scott’s password. The Damocles e-mails and documents popped up immediately, still onscreen from when Susan had found them before.

“Look,” Susan said. “Look at all of this. It will show you that I’m telling the truth. Randall is telling the truth. This is all part of an attempt to kill President Martin.”

She turned the screen toward Danielle. There were e-mails laying out the plot in meticulous detail. There were schedules and maps and step-by-step instructions for assembling the bomb. Damocles, like so many other corporations, believed in proper paperwork. And any conspiracy is a complicated machine—it requires a lot of planning to pull off properly.

Scott had documented all of it. There was even a video Scott had recorded using a hidden camera. It showed him meeting with Pierce and Morrison and Howard.

But before the newswoman could go through the evidence, there was a heavy pounding on the door of the van.

“Open up!” a clogged, nasal voice demanded. “This is the Secret Service! You’ve got a wanted criminal in there!”

Danielle looked at Susan. “That’s you, I guess?”

“Don’t open that door,” Susan said desperately. “Do not listen to him. He’s got a badge, but he’s a murderer. I swear, he will kill me if you open that door—”

Danielle made a face. She reached past Susan, grabbed the handle, and yanked open the door of the van.

Howard stood there, shocked for a moment.

Then he saw Susan and smiled.

Chapter 44

Beck struggled to get out of the suicide vest. He knew it didn’t really change anything. If Morrison triggered the bomb, he’d still die. But at least he wouldn’t actually be wearing the thing.

But it wasn’t as easy as just taking it off. He was still locked to Pierce, and he had to get his arm out of the raincoat and his jacket.

Pierce wasn’t exactly being cooperative, either.

She pulled against him, reaching for the door handle, as if she could drag him outside of the limo.

He engaged in a useless tug-of-war with her for a few moments before Beck remembered he had a gun. He showed it to her. She stopped struggling.

They both sat back in the limo’s seat, staring daggers at each other.

Then Beck remembered something.

He reached into his pocket. There it was.

The shim, the metal strip that Louis had given him when he’d opened the cuffs before.

It seemed like a lifetime ago. He hadn’t seen the YouTube video that Louis mentioned. But Louis had told him how it worked. He tried to remember the mechanic’s instructions. Louis. He was sure now that they had killed him. He just knew it. And it was all Beck’s fault.

He put the strip of metal into the ratcheting mechanism of the cuffs. Then tightened. It hurt his wrist.

And then, the cuffs slipped on the metal and popped open. Just like magic.

Even Pierce looked impressed.

“What did you just do?” she said.

“Quiet,” Beck snapped. Now for the really tricky part. Taking off the vest.

“Did they booby-trap this?” he asked Pierce.

She just looked at him coldly.

“If they did, you’re going to be the second person who hears the bang,” he reminded her.

“I don’t know,” she spat. “I left the details to them.”

“Right,” Beck said, suddenly even more disgusted. “You don’t get your hands dirty. You let other people do that. You just step over the bodies when they’re done.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

“And people like Kevin Scott and Todd Graham are the ones who make them,” Beck snapped. “And Jennifer Scott and Louis. They were good people.”

Pierce smirked at him. “No such thing, Doctor.”

She didn’t deny that they had killed Jennifer and Louis. So it was true. Beck was suddenly enraged again. He didn’t care what happened next. He just wanted to wipe that smirk off her face.

He tore open the Velcro straps of the vest.

Both he and Pierce froze, waiting for the explosion.

Chapter 45

Susan couldn’t move. Looking like something from a horror movie, Howard began to reach inside the van for her.

No. Not for her. For the laptop.

But before he could put his hands on it, Danielle grabbed it and pulled it back.

Howard wasn’t pleased. “You’re interfering with a federal investigation,” he growled.

“And you’re interfering with my interview,” Danielle shot back.

Howard looked like he’d been slapped. “That woman is a fugitive from justice—” he began.

But Danielle cut him off. “Really? On what charge?”

“That’s classified,” Howard said.

Suddenly he winced and stepped back out of the van as lights blazed in his face. Danielle’s cameraman had turned on his camera, and the light was pointed right at Howard.

“Classified?” Danielle said with a snort of contempt. “Secret charges? Really?” She was thrusting a microphone at him. “That’s even crazier than what she was telling me. Do you want to try again for the viewers at home, sir? What is your name? Who is your superior? Do you have a warrant?”

Howard stepped back, looking like each question was another blow to the head. His hand began to drift toward his holster.

Susan froze. She’d seen Howard kill. She knew he would do it again.

But Danielle had not. She was behind the camera, and she thought it made her invulnerable.

“Why won’t you answer these questions, sir? May I see your badge?”

Howard took another step back. His hand was under his jacket now.

Susan held her breath.

“Again, sir, who are you, and what do you want with this woman? Is it related to the hostage situation inside? You’re live, sir. Please speak up.”

Howard glared at the newswoman, then dropped his hand from under his jacket. He turned, and walked back into the crowd.

Susan let out a deep sigh of relief. Apparently not even Howard was crazy enough to shoot a reporter live on camera.

Danielle leaned forward and slammed the van’s door again, shutting out the noise of the crowd. “Asshole,” she said, not even remotely aware of how close she had just come to getting shot.

She turned back to Susan. “All right,” she said. “That was interesting. Let’s get you on the air.”

Susan thought, for a moment, she hadn’t heard the other woman properly. “You believe me?” she asked.

“Oh, God, who knows?” Danielle said. “But you’ve got a hell of a story, and that’s enough for me.”

Chapter 46

Inside the limo, nothing happened.

The bomb did not go off.

Beck and Pierce both let out a huge sigh of relief.

Beck stashed the vest behind the front seats, as far away as he could manage. Again, it wouldn’t make a difference. But it made him feel better.

Small comforts. Like a kid hiding under a blanket to get away from the monsters. Even psychiatrists aren’t immune from that kind of thinking, Beck realized.

He began to put his jacket and the raincoat back on. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, but it would probably be smart if people outside the limo thought he was still wired to explode.

But he wasn’t paying attention to Pierce. He turned his head for a moment, and heard the clunk of the limo’s door opening.

He’d forgotten they were no longer cuffed together. She was trying to get away.

She was his only shield. Without her in the car, Morrison or Howard would be happy to activate the bomb.

Beck couldn’t let that happen.

Pierce was almost out the door when he grabbed her. He got a handful of her suit jacket. His fingers slipped. He snagged her foot. She kicked him, losing one of her expensive shoes.

But she tripped and fell.

Beck scrambled after her. She kicked him again, in the face. It hurt.

They were both wedged in the car door when he got his arm around her throat again. He hauled her to her feet and put the gun at her head once more. She elbowed him viciously in the ribs once, but he managed to hold on.

When he looked up, once again, he was facing a firing squad. And this time, they had reinforcements.

It seemed like an entire army battalion had surrounded the limo while he was inside.

Beck looked around wildly. He saw the same federal agent who’d spoken to him before. She’d apparently taken charge of the whole situation. Again, she looked at him from behind a gun.

“Let her go!” she screamed.

Beck shook his head. He needed the truth to come out.

“I want to talk!” he shouted. “To the president!”

The agent scowled back at him.

“That’s going to take a little time. She’s on her way to a secure location now because of this little stunt you pulled.”

Good, Beck thought. Maybe that will keep her safe from Damocles. But he had to get the whole truth out. That was the only way to make sure this ended.

Then he realized he was speaking live to an audience of millions. He looked at the cameras, just beyond the police barriers.

He could tell the whole world what was really happening right here and right now.

“I want to talk to her on the phone!” Beck shouted. “She needs to know that Senator Pierce and Damocles—”

That’s when Pierce began shrieking at the top of her lungs, drowning him out.

“Oh, God, oh, God, don’t let him kill me, please! You have to do something!” She kept screaming as loud as she could.

Beck tried to bellow to be heard above her, but it was no use.

No one could hear a thing he said.

Beck wanted to scream in frustration. He knew he was much more vulnerable. Any second, a sniper could shoot him.

He was out in the open now.

An easy target.

Chapter 47

Morrison turned on his laser sight. Ordinarily he never needed the damned thing, but this would be a tricky shot even for him.

He looked over the edge of the roof at the back of Beck’s head.

He’d found the entrance to the roof and got here as quickly as he could, once he’d heard over the radio that Beck demanded a limo.

Now he was half-hidden by the air-conditioning unit, his rifle propped on the roof’s edge, trying to get a clear angle on Beck without also killing his boss. With all the chaos down on the street, no one was even looking up at the roof.

Beck kept bobbing in and out of his line of sight, however.

It would help a lot if Pierce would just stop screaming, too. Morrison understood that it was meant to keep anyone from hearing Beck. But it was giving him a migraine.

He tried to focus down the barrel. Pierce kept screaming. Beck kept moving. And there were a half-dozen other armed men and women who might open fire at any moment.

He reached for his phone in his jacket pocket. All it would take was the tap of a few numbers on the screen. Then the bomb would go off.

The problem was, that would kill Pierce, too. And he was pretty sure that would mean the end of his meal ticket.

Morrison clicked his radio back to the secure channel.

He needed some backup. And Howard was in just as deep as he was, which made him almost trustworthy.

“Howard.”

Nothing.

“Howard, come on, are you there?”

Still nothing.

“Dammit, Howard, I know you can hear me—”

Finally, with a small snap of static, Howard’s voice returned through his earpiece. “Shut up.”

“What? I’m in position. I need to know—”

“Shut up, Morrison,” Howard said. “It’s over. Believe me.”

What? That couldn’t be right. Howard was like a pit bull chomping on a bone. He never gave up.

“What are you talking about?”

“The woman. Carpenter. She’s with a reporter now. I’m out.”

Morrison was not a coward. He’d fought in Iraq. Walked into rooms where people were waiting to kill him. Stood next to presidents and presidential candidates in the middle of thousands of people, knowing that any one of them could be aiming a gun at his head.

But now he felt his stomach clench and his head spin. Somehow Susan Carpenter had made it to the media.

They were screwed. Even if no one believed her. Even if she was completely discredited, he was going to be investigated. The clues would start to add up.

It didn’t take him long to do that math. He was about to become a liability to Damocles. And he knew what the company did with liabilities. He’d done some of that wet work himself.

“Jesus,” he said quietly. “Howard, what are we going to do?”

“What’s this ‘we’ shit, Morrison?” came the reply. It sounded like Howard was laughing now. “You never thought I was that bright, but I know when it’s time to cut my losses. Good luck, pal.”

The channel went dead.

Morrison was on his own. Even if he got out of here and started running, his life expectancy could be measured in days now. Weeks at the outside.

Unless he could somehow prove his loyalty. Show the company that he would not talk. No matter what. If he could show them that he still had value.

He still had his rifle. He could do Damocles a big favor right now by removing the main witness against the company.

Beck had given him a death sentence.

Morrison put his eye back to the sight and squinted.

Maybe he could return the favor.

Chapter 48

Beck knew that Pierce was a politician, and that politicians were nothing if not long-winded. But he still couldn’t believe how long she could go on screaming.

She had been yowling at the top of her lungs nonstop, making it impossible for him to say a single thing. The FBI, the police, even some of the Damocles guards had all tried to speak above her. They were trying to open negotiations, to get Beck to let her go.

She wouldn’t let them. She was using the last tactic she had left. She wouldn’t allow anyone to talk to Beck, for fear of what he might say.

But sooner or later, it had to end. Beck hoped he could wait it out. Unfortunately, he really was at the end of his endurance. His head felt like someone was crushing it in a vise, and the pressure only kept ratcheting up. His vision would go blank for seconds at a time, and despite all the guns pointed at him, his attention kept wandering. His body felt like it belonged to someone else. He almost felt like he was floating in the ocean.

A calm, clinical part of his mind made the diagnosis. Detachment. Exhaustion. Fatigue. Drowsiness. Altered perception.

Any first-year med student would be able to recognize the signs. He was going to lose consciousness soon. He wondered if they’d still shoot him.

Or if Morrison or Howard would take the opportunity to trigger the bomb.

His whole life, he’d believed he could control everything. That if he just worked hard enough, thought quickly enough, he could save people from the demons inside their heads.

Now he had to face it. This was all out of his control. And he couldn’t save himself.

Something was different. It took Beck a full second to realize what it was.

The reporters, the media—there was something different going on behind their lines.

Most of the cameras were still pointed in his direction. But some had turned. Some were clustered around a reporter at the back of the mob.

Their lights shone down, and the crowd parted, and he saw her.

Susan.

Despite everything she’d been through since this morning, she looked magnificent. She was talking to a reporter, and there were a dozen other microphones shoved toward her face.

Senator Pierce stopped screaming. Beck realized she could see the whole scene unfolding right in front of them, too.

She was watching all her lies unravel, right before her eyes.

In the sudden silence, Beck could hear Susan clearly. She was in the middle of a sentence. “Yes, I am saying I watched them kill a police officer—”

Beck could just imagine what was scrolling on CNN right now:

SENATOR ACCUSED OF MURDER AND COVER-UP BY MAN HOLDING HER HOSTAGE.

Beck realized it didn’t matter what happened to him anymore. Susan was safe. It was out of his hands now.

So he dropped the gun. Raised his hands, as high as he could.

“I surrender,” he said as loud as he could.

Pierce looked at him, trying to comprehend what had just happened, the horror only growing on her face. Beck smiled at her.

“I surrender,” Beck said again. “I will tell you whatever you want to know.”

The police and the other gunmen began moving forward, cautiously. Beck had put the jacket back on so that they would think he was still wearing the vest. He hoped his ploy was going to work.

Then Pierce screamed again. But now it was a completely different message coming from her mouth.

“It wasn’t me!” she said. “It wasn’t me! It was Damocles! They forced me to—”

Beck was distracted from what she said next. A red dot struck him in the eye, and he blinked and staggered back.

He realized that it was a laser sight. Someone had just turned him into a target again.

A microsecond later, he heard the gunshot.

Chapter 49

Morrison had Beck lined up perfectly. The senator was clear. One squeeze of his finger, and Beck was going to disappear in a puff of red mist. That would show Damocles. That would prove Morrison was still loyal.

Then he heard what was coming out of Pierce’s mouth.

She was spilling everything. The word “Damocles” over and over. All on live, national TV.

Morrison sighed. He knew, in the back of his head, that Howard had done the right thing. Morrison should have run while he had the chance. There was no way anything he did now would make a difference.

But it was still worth a shot.

He pulled the trigger.

Chapter 50

Beck felt blood hit his face.

But he didn’t fall.

Pierce did.

She looked stunned. Her mouth was still open, even though blood was pouring out of it now, as she tried to draw breath into lungs that had just been punctured by a bullet.

People screamed. The police shouted at Beck. Confusion reigned. Nobody knew where the bullet came from.

Then the red dot struck Beck in the eye again.

Susan was telling her story again, as clearly as she could with all the interruptions—and then every head in the crowd turned.

They all heard the gunshot. First from the limo, and then, after a microsecond delay, from their screens that were carrying the live feed.

For a second, Susan thought her heart would stop.

“Holy shit,” someone said. “They just shot the senator.”

Relief flooded into Susan. Her legs went weak. Surely that would be the end of it. Surely this was where the insanity had to stop.

Then they heard the next shot.

Morrison looked at Beck, standing like an idiot as Pierce lay there, blood already pooling on the asphalt.

It didn’t seem right that he should get out of this. That he should be the one to walk away, after screwing up all their plans.

Morrison thought about waking up in prison every day. Eating that industrial slop. Sleeping on a cot in a concrete room. Watching for the knife in his back.

Knowing that Beck won.

Revenge was all Morrison had left, really.

Might as well take it.

He pulled the trigger.

Beck knew what the red dot meant. He thought about running, but he knew he wouldn’t have made it two steps.

And he was tired. The pain in his head was the only thing he felt anymore. His legs were already failing him. His vision had narrowed to a black tunnel.

He said, “Susan.”

He didn’t hear the second gunshot.

Didn’t feel his body hit the ground.

Chapter 51

Morrison smiled to himself as he went down the stairs from the roof.

Everything around him was pure pandemonium. His badge got him past the cops in the lobby with little more than a glance.

A dozen yards away, there were paramedics clustered around two bodies. Beck and Pierce. The paramedics had put them on stretchers. A bomb squad tech was standing by. Every eye, every camera, was focused on the drama as the emergency crews worked desperately to save them.

There was Beck’s girlfriend, held back by a Secret Service agent, sobbing.

And there was the limo, completely forgotten. Totally unattended.

Morrison got into the driver’s seat.

The crowds had cleared, clustered around the latest spectacle, leaving the road open to the exit.

He started the engine. Pulled forward so quietly he could hear the crunching of gravel under the tires.

One of the cops gave him a look, but Morrison just flipped his credentials and his badge out the window, and the cop moved on. More important things than a Secret Service agent moving a car out of the way.

He hit the road. It was empty. All traffic was blocked coming into the university. But not going out.

Morrison started grinning. He could barely believe it. He was not only going to get away, he was going to do it in style.

Maybe he wouldn’t get paid, but at least he wasn’t going to die in prison. That would have to be enough.

There was just one last thing.

He needed to cover his tracks completely. He needed one last big distraction.

And if there was any chance that Beck or his girlfriend was going to live—well, Morrison needed to take care of that, too.

He took out his phone. He entered the code for the vest, and paused before he hit the Send button.

Morrison wondered, for a moment, if he’d hear the explosion.

He hit Send.

He heard a beep from the seat right behind him.

And then nothing else, ever again.

SIX MONTHS LATER

Chapter 52

Beck opened his eyes.

The room was dark. He didn’t bother to check the clock. He’d been waking at 3:00 a.m. for a month now. Sometimes he would look at the ceiling until his alarm went off.

But usually, he got out of bed, like he did now. He’d been on his back long enough in the hospital, after the surgery to remove the bullet that struck him in the upper chest when Morrison shot him.

Either Morrison was a lousy shot, or Beck slipping into unconsciousness and falling backward the moment the trigger was pulled had caused Morrison to miss. He certainly would have been aiming at his head.

Beck had been arrested in the ICU. He woke up to find that someone had put another pair of handcuffs on him, locking him to the bed.

Eventually, however, the police sorted it out. He was hailed as a national hero. Or an assassin who’d gotten away with it, depending on which cable news channel you watched.

Beck looked out the window of his new condo. Bulletproof glass. One of the upgrades he’d installed when they moved.

The information on Kevin Scott’s laptop had led to the first indictments within a couple of weeks, and now, the fallout was still coming down all over Washington, DC. At first, it seemed as if the damage would be contained to just Pierce and Morrison—whatever they’d managed to scrape off the sidewalk—and Howard, and a few of their fellow conspirators. Damocles issued a statement that blamed everything on a small number of rogue employees, and then the board and executives hid behind their lawyers.

But it’s never a good idea to take a shot at the president and miss. Damocles was now the subject of no less than five congressional inquiries, not to mention the FBI investigation, the Department of Defense probe, and the ongoing housecleaning in the Secret Service. All the company’s contracts had been suspended. There were new arrests almost daily. High-ranking officials were cutting deals.

President Martin was grateful, at least. She’d arranged for Beck to be bumped to the head of the line of an FDA trial for a new cancer-fighting treatment. It used genetically altered cells to target inoperable tumors.

It seemed to be working. His cancer, miraculously, was in remission. His fingers no longer went numb. He was hitting the gym every day to rebuild muscle that had atrophied during his recovery. He had an MRI every week, and his tumor just kept shrinking.

It looked like he was going to live.

At least until he testified.

The first trial, of the former Secret Service agent Howard—he’d been captured before he boarded a flight to Rio—began in a few weeks. Then Beck would appear before a joint House–Senate commission. And he would also go on TV, and tell his story as many times as it took.

He was putting a target on his head again.

Beck heard something behind him, and turned to see Susan sitting up, the sheet pulled around her waist.

“Come back to bed,” she said. “You can’t keep brooding about it.”

She always seemed to know what he was thinking. It made sense. She’d been his shrink, after all.

“They’re not going to let me testify,” he said. “Damocles. They’ll try again. At me. And you.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But we survived before. And we will again.”

Beck smiled at that. “What makes you so sure?”

“Experience. Six months ago, you were a terminal case.”

Beck shrugged. “We’re all terminal cases. Everybody dies eventually.”

“But not yet,” she reminded him.

“No,” he had to admit. “Not yet.”

“Then come back to bed.” She threw the sheet back.

Beck went to her. As usual, she was right.

He wasn’t dead yet.

So there was nothing else to do but go on living. As long as he could.

About the Authors

James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

Christopher Farnsworth is the author of the President’s Vampire books and The Eternal World. He worked as an investigative and business reporter before selling his first screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

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Table of Contents

Letter from James Patterson

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

SIX MONTHS LATER

Chapter 52

About the Authors

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