A S S E T

S I X

(A LARA KING ESPIONAGE THRILLER—BOOK 6)

J A C K   M A R S

Jack Mars

Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising twelve books; of the TROY STARK thriller series, comprising eight books; of the SPY GAME thriller series, comprising ten books; of the JAKE MERCER thriller series, comprising twenty books (and counting); of the TYLER WOLF thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the LARA KING thriller series, comprising ten books (and counting); and of the new GRANT VALOR thriller series, comprising twelve books (and counting).

Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!

Copyright © 2025 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BOOKS BY JACK MARS

GRANT VALOR THRILLER SERIES

MAXIMUM DAMAGE (Book #1)

MAXIMUM FORCE (Book #2)

MAXIMUM FURY (Book #3)

MAXIMUM THREAT (Book #4)

MAXIMUM PERIL (Book #5)

MAXIMUM POWER (Book #6)

MAXIMUM IMPACT (Book #7)

MAXIMUM CARNAGE (Book #8)

MAXIMUM CHAOS (Book #9)

MAXIMUM PRESSURE (Book #10)

MAXIMUM HAVOC (Book #11)

MAXIMUM VENGEANCE (Book #12)

LARA KING THRILLER SERIES

ASSET ONE (Book #1)

ASSET TWO (Book #2)

ASSET THREE (Book #3)

ASSET FOUR (Book #4)

ASSET FIVE (Book #5)

ASSET SIX (Book #6)

ASSET SEVEN (Book #7)

ASSET EIGHT (Book #8)

ASSET NINE (Book #9)

ASSET TEN (Book #10)

TYLER WOLF THRILLER SERIES

DOUBLE AGENT (Book #1)

DOUBLE CROSS (Book #2)

DOUBLE ASSET (Book #3)

DOUBLE DOCTRINE (Book #4)

DOUBLE JEOPARDY (Book #5)

DOUBLE THREAT (Book #6)

DOUBLE TARGET (Book #7)

JAKE MERCER THRILLER SERIES

ABSOLUTE THREAT (Book #1)

ABSOLUTE DAMAGE (Book #2)

ABSOLUTE FORCE (Book #3)

ABSOLUTE PERIL (Book #4)

ABSOLUTE TREASON (Book #5)

ABSOLUTE VENGEANCE (Book #6)

ABSOLUTE TARGET (Book #7)

ABSOLUTE FURY (Book #8)

ABSOLUTE POWER (Book #9)

ABSOLUTE SHOCK (Book #10)

ABSOLUTE SIEGE (Book #11)

ABSOLUTE WAR (Book #12)

ABSOLUTE PREJUDICE (Book #13)

ABSOLUTE COMMAND (Book #14)

ABSOLUTE DECEPTION (Book #15)

ABSOLUTE TERROR (Book #16)

ABSOLUTE HAVOC (Book #17)

ABSOLUTE DANGER (Book #18)

ABSOLUTE GAMBIT (Book #19)

ABSOLUTE CARNAGE (Book #20)

THE SPY GAME

TARGET ONE (Book #1)

TARGET TWO (Book #2)

TARGET THREE (Book #3)

TARGET FOUR (Book #4)

TARGET FIVE (Book #5)

TARGET SIX (Book #6)

TARGET SEVEN (Book #7)

TARGET EIGHT (Book #8)

TARGET NINE (Book #9)

TARGET TEN (Book #10)

TROY STARK THRILLER SERIES

ROGUE FORCE (Book #1)

ROGUE COMMAND (Book #2)

ROGUE TARGET (Book #3)

ROGUE MISSION (Book #4)

ROGUE SHOT (Book #5)

ROGUE STRIKE (Book #6)

ROGUE ORDER (Book #7)

ROGUE ATTACK (Book #8)

LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES

ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)

OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)

SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)

OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)

PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)

OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)

HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)

FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES

PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)

PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)

PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)

PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)

PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)

PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)

AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES

AGENT ZERO (Book #1)

TARGET ZERO (Book #2)

HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)

TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)

FILE ZERO (Book #5)

RECALL ZERO (Book #6)

ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)

DECOY ZERO (Book #8)

CHASING ZERO (Book #9)

VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)

ZERO ZERO (Book #11)

ABSOLUTE ZERO (Book #12)

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Admiral James Richards walked through a nondescript corridor in one of the middle “rings” of the Pentagon. This corridor was significantly less heavily trafficked than other corridors in the twenty-nine-acre building that served as the headquarters of the Department of Defense. That meant fewer junior officers to see him, pale in fear and snap off a shaky salute that he would return with a reassuring smile he didn’t mean. Better, it meant fewer civilians to see him and try to engage him in conversation so they could tell their kids they talked to an actual admiral.

The reason this corridor was less heavily trafficked was because it contained multiple conference rooms and situation rooms used by actual Defense Department actors. While most of the Pentagon was an administrative building and not concerned with actual warfighting, this corridor was occupied by people who actually could press the "Big Red Buttons" that would either launch the United States into war or constitute an effective response to warlike actions by another nation. Not that there were actual oversized red buttons controlling anything. Big Red Button just rolled off the tongue better than Multiple Secure Landlines That Connect Combatant Commanders with Field Commanders Who Follow a Strict Set of Procedures to Gain Approval to Start the Process of Conducting Airstrikes and Other Prescribed Actions as Necessary.

It was the closest to real productivity Admiral Richards ever got anymore. When he declined a nomination to Chief of the Naval Staff and instead accepted an appointment to Commander, USNORTHCOM, he thought he could actually make a difference in the world. Instead, most of his time was spent doing what he was about to do: haggle over policy with the other combatant commanders.

God, he hated meetings.

Meetings with his fellow combatant commanders were even more bothersome. The Chiefs of Staff could be windbags and blowhards if they wanted. After all, their job was to save money, not protect the country. He was perfectly fine with it if they wanted to be ineffective.

But for God’s sake, these were the people in charge of the nation’s defense. Couldn’t they just please have a discussion that didn’t devolve into chest-beating and dick-waving?

He entered the room and went through the motions of greeting and making small talk with the other four-stars. That was another thing that made no sense to him. They were military officers. Did they have to treat every interaction like social hour?

He controlled his irritability and was in at least a decent mood when the bullshit was over and they got down to brass tacks. That lasted for about three minutes. Then General Charles Lautner—Commander, USINDOPACCOM—started waxing eloquent about the possibility of a Chinese blockade of Taipei. You know, the blockade they’d been promising for decades and had never actually put in place.

After ten minutes of doomsday predictions, the general finished with, “And with that being said, my conclusion is that the threat is significant and warrants our immediate attention.”

“And what sort of attention does it… does it…”

The speaker was General Annemarie Robert, Commander, USEUCOM. Her voice trailed off halfway through her sentence, and she winced and rubbed her temples. “God…”

“Attention?” Lautner replied. “It… Oh shit.”

He grabbed his own head. Richards frowned and opened his mouth to ask if everyone was okay when a searing pain shot through his head. It was like someone had driven an ice pick into his eyes. He balled his left hand into a fist and slammed it onto the table.

“Fuck ‘em,” General Taylor Wilson—Commander, USCENTCOM–snapped. “Blow the sons of bitches to hell. They’ve been asking for it for three-quarters of a century. I say give it to them.”

“Hell yeah,” Lautner agreed. “I… God damn. You know, that’s what the world needs. A United States that isn’t afraid to act like the most damned powerful nation on Earth.”

“You guys are stupid,” Richards said.

The words came out before he could stop them. He couldn’t stop the next words that escaped his mouth either. “You really want a full-scale war with China over a bit of posturing that they won’t even act on? They just want us to pay a percent or two for permission to travel through the South China Sea.”

“I’m not paying no damned Chinaman anything!” Annemarie thundered.

Something was wrong. General Robert never cursed. She was the most straitlaced of all of the combatant commanders. Richards was pretty sure he’d heard her apologize for saying the word heck once. And racism? That was definitely not like her.

Holy hell, where had this headache come from?

“Figures the Navy man wouldn’t have the balls to stand up to America’s enemies,” Wilson sneered. “What’s wrong, James? Afraid your ships might have something better to do than look pretty for the fourth of July parade?”

Richards got to his feet, a movement that sent molten lava into his temples. “You want to say that to my face, little man?”

This is wrong. Why are we doing this? What the hell is happening?

“Fuck it,” Annemarie said. “We’re talking about how we’re going to bomb China off the face of the map.” She reached for her desk phone. “Ten bucks says I call Elmendorf right now and have them carpet bomb Beijing with nukes. We’ve got those new… Those new…”

Richards believed that General Robert was referring to the newly operational B-21 Raider strategic bombers that were based at Eielson, but that suspicions wasn’t confirmed because General Robert dropped her phone, stared listlessly at it for a few seconds, then vomited all over it.

Richards felt another ice pick bury itself in his eyes. The pain turned immediately to nausea, and he added his bile to the Air Force general.

It took all of his strength to stumble to the emergency alarm button and slap his palm against it before another wave of pain sent him to the floor in agony.

CHAPTER ONE

CIA operative Lara King was highly experienced in infiltrating secret locations and finding information that people didn’t want her to have. It wasn’t normal for her to feel nervous about such a task.

Of course, those locations usually weren’t CIA headquarters and the information she was looking for usually wasn’t information the Company was hiding from her.

She smiled at the agent sitting behind the records desk, but wiped the smile from her face before the agent lifted her gaze. Smiles were good when she was undercover entering a non-CIA building. Here, everyone knew that Lara King’s smiles were reserved for very rare occasions and only for a handful of people. The desk agent at Records was not one of those people.

The desk agent—a round-faced woman of about forty with a shapeless body that Lara knew indicated a wrestler’s strength—lifted her eyes to Lara. “Agent King. What brings you here?”

“I need to pull some records for the doubles case.”

The agent’s eyes widened. “What for?”

“That’s classified.”

The agent blinked. “Right. Of course. Sorry, it’s just… I’m surprised they’re digging up records of that. I thought those would all remain buried to smooth things over with the politicos.”

The doubles case was a recent assignment where radicals replaced the Prime Minister of Great Britain with an impostor who had advocated radical foreign policy shifts, particularly toward China.

Lara, her partner, Agent Thomas Ridley, and her younger “brother”—fellow Project Phantasma protégé Kayden—had determined that security firms Global Force and Strategic Solutions were behind the replacement. Both firms were connected to Clark Bainbridge’s predecessor as director of the CIA, Mark Walsh, and his enigmatic and nationalistic Legacy Foundation. It hadn’t affected the U.S. or the CIA directly, but it was an understatement to say the case hit close to home.

“This isn’t for the politicos. This is for Agency leadership.”

The agent narrowed her eyes. “And they sent you to retrieve it?”

Shit. This agent was too good at her job. Lara fell back on the simplest explanation. “They did. Before you ask why, I’ll just tell you that it’s classified and save us both the trouble.”

The agent held Lara’s gaze for a long moment. Lara had to fight to keep her stoic expression, but she didn’t have to keep it for long. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who could meet her eyes for longer than a few seconds.

This agent wasn’t one of those people. Her gaze shifted away, and she sighed. “Well, when you speak to Deputy Director Carmichael, please inform her that all requests for records have to go through formal channels. I know you operations types don’t like following rules, but there’s a reason we have these ones.” She reached into the desk and handed Lara a keycard. “Use any terminal that’s free. It’s a slow day, so you should find several to choose from.”

Lara took the card without thanking the agent. She was getting better about her social skills and her Ps and Qs, but it would be better for her if the desk agent didn’t feel comfortable talking to her.

She walked past the desk agent, her heart pounding. What she was about to do qualified as treason.

It wouldn't be the first time I've stepped out of line.

She selected a terminal near the middle of the room. As the desk agent had said, it was a slow day. Lara could hear a few others at the records terminals, but none of them were close to her.

She took a deep breath, then leaned down to tie her shoe. While she tied it, she pressed a small magnetic device to the desktop tower. That device was one of Kayden’s. Kayden was a boy genius and technological wunderkind who—like her—was one of Project Phantasma’s greatest “success” stories. He assured her that it would replace her search history with something innocuous.

That was good because she wasn’t here to retrieve information on the doubles case at all.

A flash of anger coursed through her as she thought of CIA Director Clark Bainbridge. Bainbridge was responsible for the creation of Project Phantasma—the CIA program that had stolen her childhood and the childhoods of many others and turned them into nothing more than tools of the Agency. In Kayden’s case, he was a tech genius and walking information powerhouse. In Lara’s case, she was the most dangerous weapon the CIA had.

Bainbridge was also responsible for the deaths of Lara’s parents. Or if he wasn’t responsible, he knew a hell of a lot more about what had really happened to them than he let on. She was going to find answers about what had happened to them no matter how hard Bainbridge tried to hide it.

That’s what she was doing today. She was looking through CIA records to find a lead. She doubted like hell that the standard-issue keycard the desk agent had given her would give her access to the answers she needed. In fact, she doubted like hell that the main records office would even have those answers.

But maybe it would point her in the right direction, and she could learn those answers.

She typed her parents’ names into the search engine. As she expected, nothing came up.

She breathed a sigh and controlled the rush of frustration she felt. You expected this. You just need to be more clever.

She searched for Project Phantasma instead. Another blank result. Project Phantasma was a highly classified program. Only a few in the CIA knew about it. Even the agents responsible for keeping safehouses clean and tending to the subjects in the program didn’t know what they were actually involved in. Of course it wouldn’t be here.

She tried Project Pulse, the equally secretive weapons project her parents were officially a part of, the project that had supposedly gotten them killed when whatever they were working on exploded. Still nothing. She wondered if she should have tried to sneak into Bainbridge’s office instead. This was turning out to be a waste of time.

She tried Bainbridge’s name, but that brought up gigabytes of bullshit that she didn’t have time to wade through, so she deleted the search and leaned back in her chair.

Her parents worked on Project Pulse. They had died in an accident during the testing of one of those weapons. The best way to figure out what else they were involved with and why the CIA might have had them killed was to find out who else worked with them and then pay those individuals a visit.

But she wasn’t going to find out who to talk to the direct way.

Instead, she typed in Weapons Projects and narrowed the search to include only unfinished projects of the decade in which her parents died. It wasn’t likely, but maybe Records had missed an oblique reference to Project Pulse that could give her some real info.

That finally yielded something useful. A single entry dated for the year of her parents’ death. The entry was headed Project P201:I6656A. The CIA—like all U.S. agencies—loved its random strings of letters and numbers when archiving things.

She clicked on that entry, and her breath caught in her throat when she saw her parents’ names under the list of project personnel. There was only one other name on the list. A Dr. Ronald Hodges. She read through the entry, but there wasn’t much to read. Just the project number, the personnel list, and a date range of about ten months ending a few months before her parents died.

Not much, but something. She had a name now.

She heard footsteps behind her and quickly closed the search. She looked toward the sound of the footsteps to see an analyst moving down the row. The analyst gave her a brief smile that vanished when their eyes met, then scurried away.

When the analyst was no longer in sight, Lara reopened the search engine and typed in Dr. Ronald Hodges. Two entries showed up. One was the project entry she’d just looked at, the other a personnel file.

She clicked on the personnel file. There was a date of birth that—if accurate—made Dr. Hodges about seventy years old—and a job title.

She frowned when she read the title. Clinical behaviorist.

A psychologist? Why would a psychologist be involved with a weapons program? That’s what her parents did. They built weapons.

Unless Bainbridge was lying about that too.

Hodges. That name sounded familiar. Why did it sound familiar?

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and opened the search browser. The phone was encrypted by Kayden, and no one would be able to retrieve data from it. Not that she planned on losing her phone anytime soon.

She searched for Dr. Hodges and realized why the name sounded familiar. Ronald Hodges had been found dead in his home the week before, supposedly of natural causes. His death had made very few waves in the news but very big waves in the CIA. Now she had an idea why.

Her eyes narrowed. So the CIA had put Lara’s parents on a project with a psychologist and had apparently redacted almost every detail of the project and the people involved. Lara had started looking into her parents’ deaths recently. Bainbridge knew she was looking into her parents’ deaths and had warned her to stop digging. And now one of the people her parents had worked with and the only lead she had been able to find recently turned out to be recently deceased.

She tried not to let herself jump to conclusions, but it seemed pretty damned suspicious to her.

Still, killing a CIA agent? That seemed extreme, even for Bainbridge. Maybe she was overthinking this.

He’s lied to you about everything he hasn’t hidden from you when it comes to your parents. You’re not overthinking this. Something is fishy here.

She read about Dr. Hodges from her Google search. Civilian databases could reveal a lot more about a person than many agents realized. A lot of what people did in the shadows could be deduced from what went on behind closed doors.

But there was very little available about Ronald Hodges. No practice was listed anywhere. The article on his death noted that he had graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in psychology and that he had lived in upstate New York when he died, but it didn’t say anything else.

In practice, it was next to impossible to censor public data. That’s why the CIA’s typical strategy when manipulating public opinion was to create and distribute misinformation and wait for the wider world to absorb that misinformation as fact.

But could Bainbridge have somehow managed to erase all records of this Dr. Hodges from existence? And if so, what reason could he possibly have to do that other than to prevent her from learning the truth about what happened to her parents?

She was so lost in thought that when her phone rang, she jumped and nearly dropped it. She sighed heavily, then sighed again when she saw the number. It looked like her free time was about to come to an end.

She tapped the answer button. “Hello, Director Carmichael.”

“Hello, Lara. I need you to come to my office immediately. It’s urgent.”

When is it not? “Of course. I’m on my way.”

She hung up, exited the search and removed her keycard, then the scrambler Kayden had given her. She dropped the keycard on the Records agent’s desk and headed for her boss’s office.

As she navigated the crowded building, it occurred to her that Carmichael could prove an invaluable resource in her quest to discover what happened to her parents. Carmichael was loyal to the agency first and foremost. But she was also committed to doing the right thing. If Lara could convince her that the right thing was to help, then maybe Helen could help her find the information she needed.

It was a huge risk, but if Lara wanted answers, then she needed to be willing to take risks.

Her thoughts were troubled as she made the journey across headquarters. Like everything in intelligence, her parents’ mystery was turning out to be a very tangled web of intrigue and deceit.

And at the center of it all, like a bloated spider, sat Bainbridge.

CHAPTER TWO

Lara’s partner, Agent Thomas Ridley, was already in Carmichael’s office when she arrived. She felt a flash of irritation seeing him there before her. She had long since gotten over her irritation at having a partner, and had, in fact, come to value Thomas not just as a partner but as a friend. Still, it bugged her irrationally whenever he “beat” her at something.

Or maybe she was bugged by the flash of something else when she saw him, something that was very much not irritation.

A few weeks ago, while working together to stop radical Saudi terrorists from launching nuclear warheads into space, the two of them had shared their first kiss. It wasn’t much of a kiss. They had locked lips briefly to fool a few guards into thinking they had sneaked away to make out instead of sneaking around looking for what the faction was hiding.

But it was only the second kiss of Lara’s life, and the fact that it was Thomas who had kissed her made it mean something more than a brief distraction. It made it impossible for her to pretend there wasn’t anything between them, and that increased her irritation. She didn’t want to jeopardize things because of her feelings for him. She didn’t want to risk their partnership, or her quest to find justice for her parents.

But the way his lips had felt against hers, warm and soft and assertive…

“Agent King,” Carmichael snapped. “Please have a seat.”

Lara flinched and took a seat, reddening slightly. Her boss, Assistant Director Helen Carmichael, wore a particularly stern frown that Lara knew meant she was worried. When Carmichael was worried, it meant something very bad had happened.

Lara took her seat and asked, “What’s going on? Where’s Kayden?”

“What’s going on is that the Combatant Commanders collapsed two hours ago. As for Kayden, he’s… unavailable at the moment.”

Lara turned to Thomas, who informed her, “He’s locked Pavel out again. I was in the middle of trying to coax him into letting Pavel back inside when Helen called me into this meeting. I figured we could call and update him later.”

Lara sighed. Her own relationship with the CIA was tenuous, but Kayden’s was bordering on volatile. In the past, he’d threatened to go public with Project Phantasma, and for that reason, the CIA had increased the presence of minders at his Berlin safehouse. Kayden had reacted to this with predictable obstinacy.

Well, the CIA had done this to themselves. If they didn’t want to work with Kayden the way he needed to be worked with, that was their problem. Besides, like Thomas said, they could just update him later.

“Which combatant commanders?” she asked Helen.

“All of them.”

“What?” Thomas exclaimed. “Where? How?”

He sounded as shocked as Lara and as concerned as Carmichael. Lara could understand why. The Combatant Commanders were the leaders of America’s front-line military forces. The Chiefs of Staff ran the branches, and the President via Congress and the Secretary of Defense determined policy, but in the event of a war, the Combatant Commanders would be the ones directing the actual military forces involved.

“They were in an annual policy meeting at the Pentagon,” Carmichael replied. “From what they told us, they all began experiencing severe headaches at the same time. Then things became chaotic.”

“Chaotic how?” Lara asked.

“Well, the primary subject of this meeting was worsening Chinese rhetoric over the South China Sea. It seems that after the first symptoms of these headaches showed, a number of the Combatant Commanders suggested an immediate nuclear bombardment of Beijing.”

“Jesus,” Thomas whispered.

“Where are the combatant commanders now?” Lara asked.

“They’re in intensive care at Walter Reed Medical Center,” Carmichael replied. “Shortly after the argument over whether or not the United States should start World War Three, the headaches became intense enough that it caused all present to become prostrate with pain. One of the commanders managed to activate an emergency alarm intended for use in the event of a terrorist attack. The entire Pentagon was shut down and evacuated while a Tier One military police unit responded to the alarm and found the commanders prostrate on the floor.”

“Damn,” Thomas swore again. “Has the press got wind of it?”

“At the moment, the Pentagon is playing it off as a surprise emergency drill and explaining the commanders’ illness as food poisoning from the lunch they shared during the meeting. Obviously, this is something else entirely.”

“It sounds like an attempt to manipulate defense policy by controlling their minds,” Lara said. “Maybe through some sort of chemical suggestion.

“That’s why we’re concerned,” Carmichael said. “The Pentagon’s first reaction was chemical suggestion as well, but Walter Reed Medical Center couldn’t find any traces of toxins in their systems. What they did find was a sound signature.”

“A what?”

“A sound signature. The Pentagon, as you know, is covered in security cameras and audio recording devices. Those recording devices are trained to pick up frequencies both inside and outside of the normal range of human hearing.”

Thomas made the leap. “And one of those devices picked up a sound outside of the normal range of human hearing.”

“Yes. An ultrasonic frequency in the neighborhood of three hundred kilohertz.”

Lara’s eyes popped open. “Three hundred kilohertz? That’s fifteen times higher than the upper limit of human hearing.”

Lara had been exposed to sonic attacks as part of her training with Project Phantasma. Her own tolerance was close to three times human normal, but three hundred kilohertz was unsurvivable except at very low intensities.

“It’s double the upper limit of any animal’s hearing,” Carmichael replied.

“Well, no wonder it sent our friends into a tizzy,” Thomas opined. “That’s shriller than a nagging ex-wife.”

Carmichael frowned. “This is not an appropriate time for humor, Agent Ridley.”

“Believe me, I’m not laughing,” Thomas replied.

“So if I’m understanding this correctly,” Lara said, “There was an attempted sonic attack on the Combatant Commanders that nearly resulted in them precipitating a war with China. Instead, it overwhelmed them and put them in the hospital.”

Thomas folded his arms. “Again, I’m not trying to be funny, but this all sounds a little sci-fi. I’m sure that sound could theoretically have this sort of impact, but what kind of device could generate a sound wave of such high frequency without being seen?”

“And how could that device have been effectively hidden?” Lara added.

“That’s what you two are assigned to figure out,” Carmichal replied. “Figure out what the source of this sound was and who’s behind it. And to stop them from doing something like this again.”

Lara frowned. “Wait, the source of the sound wasn’t identified?”

“No. The sound was so intense that the audio recorder could only identify that it existed. It couldn’t determine a point of origin or even a direction.”

“Well, I guess we have a starting point,” Thomas said, getting to his feet. “Anything special we should know before we get started?”

“You now know as much as I know,” Carmichael replied. “Hopefully you will know more very soon. We would very much like to avoid a situation where the world’s military leaders start advocating for nuclear war.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Thomas said drily.

That attempt at humor also went unappreciated, and Thomas lifted his hands placatingly and left the office. At the doorway, he stopped and looked at Lara. “Are you coming?”

“In a moment,” Lara replied. “I’ll catch up to you.”

Thomas frowned, but he left and allowed the door to close behind him.

When the two of them were alone in the room, Lara said, “I need to ask you a favor, Helen.”

Carmichael’s eyes narrowed. The two of them had a decent working relationship, but it would have been a stretch to say that the two of them were friends. Lara rarely used Carmichael’s first name, and no doubt hearing that had put the Deputy Director on the defensive. “Yes, Lara?”

Lara took a deep breath. “I need you to look into a psychologist who used to work for the CIA as a clinical behaviorist. Dr. Ronald Hodges.”

Carmichael lifted an eyebrow. “A clinical behaviorist? I didn’t know the Company had any of those.”

“I didn’t either,” Lara replied. “But I discovered recently that Dr. Hodges might have worked with my parents on a project for the Company.”

Carmichael sighed. “Ah. I had a feeling that’s where this was headed.”

“Come on, Helen,” Lara pleaded. “I never knew them. I at least want to know what happened to them.”

She hated the whiny tone in her voice, hated the lump in her throat, hated the tears that welled in her eyes. “I j-j-just w-want to kn-know.”

She hated the stutter even more. It had gotten better recently, but in times of extreme stress, it still slipped out. It made her feel so weak. Her hands balled into fists, and she sat ramrod straight in her chair, refusing to cry and refusing to show any more vulnerability.

Carmichael took a deep breath and folded her hands on top of the desk. “Lara… You know the Director told you to leave this in the past.”

“And you kn-know that Bainbridge i-i-is a piece of sh-shit.”

Her lips were trembling now. God, she hated that too.

“Yes, I know,” Carmichael agreed. “But the problem is that I’ll be putting you at serious risk if I look into this. I’ll be putting myself at a little risk, but the reality is that I have enough connections in Washington that Bainbridge can’t do much more than reprimand me. You, however? He could end your career.”

“I d-don’t care about that.”

"Yes, you do," Carmichael said gently. "Because it's not just you who would suffer."

Lara’s blood chilled at that implication. She couldn’t handle it if anything happened to  Kayden. If she ever went too far, though, she would not only lose her career, but she would also lose the only family she’d ever known.

That might have been enough to change her mind, but Bainbridge was the mastermind behind Project Phantasma. He was responsible for stealing her childhood and everyone else’s. Lara had accepted her place in the Company and was proud to use her skills to protect the world, but that didn’t mean she was okay with Bainbridge hurting other children the way he’d hurt her and Kayden.

And if what she learned about her parents also confirmed her suspicions about the director, then she would be able to decide how she would address his crimes.

“Please,” she repeated. “I just want to know what happened to my parents.”

Carmichael held her gaze for a long moment. Then she sighed. “All right. I’ll do the best I can. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can find.”

Lara released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Thank you. Your best is good enough for me.”

Carmichael gave her an empathetic look, and before she could say something encouraging and make Lara feel even weaker, Lara got to her feet and left the office.

CHAPTER THREE

Director Clark Bainbridge had to hold his cigarette between his lips and steady his right hand with his left in order to light it. His breath was as shaky as his hands, and when he took a puff, the turbulence caused the smoke to fill his sinuses and water his eyes.

He coughed—something a cigarette hadn’t done to him in forty years—and stared pensively out of his office window. He almost expected to see her face leering at him.

This was bad. This was so very bad.

We should have killed her. We should have killed her the moment she lost her way. If not for Hodges’ bleeding heart, we would have.

He scoffed and took another drag of his cigarette. Well, look what Ronald Hodges’ bleeding heart got him—murdered by the same woman whose life he had fought to save all those years ago.

And if she’d gotten Hodges, she’d get him too. It was only a matter of time.

An alert came up on his laptop. He nearly dismissed it but stopped when he saw Agent King’s name. Agent King was the first real success to come out of Project Phantasma, and to this day the Company’s greatest asset. Well, perhaps Kayden was close, but that was neither here nor there.

The point was that Lara King didn’t believe the lies Bainbridge had fed her about her parents anymore, and she was getting closer and closer to the truth. This morning, she’d accessed the CIA’s only remaining records on Ronald Hodges. She’d tried to disguise her actions using a scrambler Kayden had given her, but she didn’t know that Bainbridge had informants everywhere in the Company. An analyst that morning had followed Lara to records and snooped on her while she looked for information on her parents.

That told him two things: first, he wasn’t as thorough as he thought he was in purging the records, and two, Lara was growing bolder in her pursuit of answers. He’d warned her before to stay out of it and mind her own business, but clearly she wasn’t going to stop looking until she found answers.

Or until she was stopped from looking.

He would have to figure that part out later, though. Right now, finding Experiment One was a far higher priority. She could strike at any time. He needed to make sure that the next time she showed her face, she was dealt with. The way she should have been dealt with before.

Bainbridge took another drag from his cigarette and noted with satisfaction that his shaking had stopped.

It would be all right. He would bait her, and when she leaped at the bait, he would have her put down.

He tried to convince himself that he was confident about that, but the shaking returned to his hands as he tamped his cigarette out in the ashtray.

CHAPTER FOUR

Thomas looked at his partner as he drove to Walter Reed Medical Center. Lara’s lips were pressed thinly together, her shoulders stiff. She stared out the window, a faraway look in her eyes. Thomas worried that she might be awkward with him after the kiss they shared during their last mission.

Of course, her aloofness might not have anything to do with him. The fact that someone was trying to use sound weapons to manipulate the combatant commanders into starting World War Three certainly justified a little anxiety on her part.

Equally unsurprising was Kayden’s reaction to the news. Kayden was one of the most valuable agents in the Company, but he was also a fourteen-year-old boy. The specifics of this case were sci-fi enough that any teenage boy would be excited by them.

“They used sound weapons? Cool!”

“Not the word I’d choose,” Thomas replied. “They used those weapons to attempt to start a nuclear war with China.”

"Oh, come on," Kayden scoffed. "It takes more than just the combatant commanders to start a nuclear war. The President has to authorize it, the Secretary of Defense has to authorize it, and then the actual captains of the nuke subs and land-based launch facilities have to arm and file the missiles. A lot of people would have stopped the process long before any missiles were launched."

“He’s got a point,” Lara said.

Thomas frowned at his partner’s smile, but inwardly, he was glad to see it.

“Even so,” Thomas said, “It’s a serious situation.”

Kayden scoffed again. “You sound like Carmichael.”

Lara giggled at that. Thomas was somewhat less glad to hear that.

“All right,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Fair enough. If this is so cool, then I’m sure you won’t mind helping us understand how such an attack is possible and what we might be able to do to defeat it next time.”

“On it!” Kayden said cheerfully. “I’d rather be there with you guys doing this, but I guess Carmichael’s punishing me by making me stay in my safehouse until I can learn to be nice to Pavel. It’s just that Pavel’s so annoying.”

“I get that,” Thomas said with a smile. “Don’t worry, when we’re finished, we’ll swing by Berlin to see you.”

“And maybe sneak me out?” Kayden asked hopefully.

Thomas shared a wry look with Lara.

“Maybe, kiddo,” Lara said. “We’ll have to see.”

Kayden sighed. “Fine. Well, I’ll get to work, and maybe I’ll do a good enough job to earn a crumb of your affection.”

Lara laughed and blew a kiss on the phone. "Mwah. There you go."

“Eww! Did you just blow me a kiss?”

“I’ll give you a real one when I see you,” Lara said. “On the cheek,” she quickly added.

“Still eww. Save that for Thomas.”

Lara flamed bright red, and judging by the heat in his cheeks, Thomas was roughly the same shade. He cleared his throat and said, “We’ll talk to you later, Kayden. Let us know as soon as you have answers.”

"Will do," Thomas said cheerfully. "Have fun, you two."

Thomas detected the teasing in his voice. He glanced briefly at Lara, not surprised to see her avoiding his eyes. At some point, they’d need to deal with whatever was going on between them, but now wasn’t the time.

They reached Walter Reed a few minutes later. Thomas felt a touch of disquiet as the two of them walked into the building. Hospitals had always bugged him a little, especially military hospitals. It always felt to Thomas like people became less important at hospitals. They weren’t people anymore, just case numbers and problems to solve. Granted, Walter Reed wasn’t a typical military hospital, but even here it felt to Thomas that the doctors had less say than the insurance claims adjustors who considered the financial cost of treatment more important than the human cost of denying treatment.

The medical staff had been told to expect them, and they were led directly to the floor where the Combatant Commanders were receiving medical care. The first thing Thomas noticed when they stepped off of the elevator were the guards. That was by design, of course. Seeing two powerfully muscled men armed with assault rifles was enough to dissuade a casual attacker without violence.

But it wasn’t just the two guards at the entrance to the ward. There were guards posted at each room and a patrol of more soldiers wandering the hallway. The guards examined his and Lara’s credentials thoroughly before informing them that at any time, any one of the other guards could do the same.

Well, it made sense they were paranoid. It wasn’t every day that someone nearly manipulated the combatant commanders into starting a war with the world’s other superpower.

He and Lara walked to the first room. After reassuring those guards of their good intentions, the two of them were allowed inside.

The room’s sole occupant was a middle-aged man with iron gray hair and a naval dress uniform. He looked at the two agents and nodded. “I had a feeling someone from the CIA would show up to talk to us.”

“I’m Agent Thomas Ridley,” Thomas replied, bowing slightly. “This is Agent Lara King. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Admiral James Richards,” the man replied. “Commander of USNORTHCOM.”

“Thank you for talking to us, Admiral.”

Richards chuckled, then grimaced and rubbed his head. “Yes. Not a problem.”

“Why don’t you start by telling us in your own words what happened,” Thomas began.

Richards nodded. "Well, we were in the meeting, and we were talking about how to react to China's threat to blockade Taipei. Then I felt a sudden pain in my head. It looked like everyone else did, too. They started wincing and stuttering and losing their train of thought. Then… Well, then General Wilson of CENTCOM suggested that we blow the Chinese sons of bitches to Hell."

“Was General Wilson in an altered state of mind when he made that statement?” Thomas asked.

“You better believe he was,” Richards replied. “We all were. General Robert bet us ten dollars that she was going to call Elmendorf Air Force base and authorize a nuclear strike by a squadron of B-21 Raiders. Her specific words were ‘Ten bucks says I call Elmendorf right now and have them carpet bomb Beijing with nukes.’”

Thomas frowned. “And did you all agree with her suggestion at the time?”

“Hell no,” Richards replied. “I called her and Walter stupid. Then I almost got into a fistfight with Wilson.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “And were you in your right mind when that conflict occurred?”

“No, I already told you. None of us were.”

Thomas turned to Lara and frowned when he saw her staring absently at a handwashing poster instead of listening to what Richards had to say. He cleared his throat, and Lara looked back at him, then at Richards. “So you realized you weren’t thinking clearly, but you couldn’t stop yourself?”

“We couldn’t,” Richards said in a hushed voice. “I could see it in the eyes of the others too. They knew that something was wrong, but it was just impossible to think with that damned headache. I just wanted to tear something apart.”

He winced and rubbed his temples again. “And you’re still experiencing symptoms?” Lara asked.

“Just… a bit of a headache,” Richards replied in between deep breaths. “No unseemly urges to assault anyone or authorize a nuclear strike on Beijing. Just grouchy and tired.”

“How long did the primary effect last?” Thomas asked.

Richards sighed. “I don’t know. To be honest, I passed out within three minutes. It seems like everyone else did either.”

“Was there anyone else in the room with you?

“No. Just the commanders.”

“And you didn’t notice anyone or anything suspicious at all that day?”

“No. Everything was just run of the mill up until the headaches.”

“What’s the first thing you were aware of after the symptoms stopped?”

“I was in the medevac helicopter. My head was sore like it is now, but it wasn’t the all-consuming pain it felt like before. I was still nauseous, but that was fading. Most importantly, I was in control of my faculties.” He shuddered. “I’ve been on thirteen combat deployments and authorized seventeen more during my years with the Navy, but I’ve never experienced anything as frightening as that. It’s truly awful to feel your mind stripped away from you. It was like the mental version of being skinned alive. I knew that something was wrong. I knew that I didn’t actually mean the things I was saying. I knew that, but it didn’t stop me.” He shook his head. “I just hate to think what would have happened if I agreed with Wilson and Robert and added my voice to theirs in the urge to start a nuclear war.”

Thomas noted that Admiral Richards didn’t seem as confident as Kayden was that the nuclear strike wouldn’t have occurred no matter what. The thought that they actually might have been on the cusp of nuclear war caused his stomach to lurch.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re feeling better, Admiral,” Thomas said. He handed the admiral a business card. “If you think of anything else, please call and let us know. Lara?”

No answer. He looked up to see Lara staring at the handwashing poster again. He frowned. “Lara!”

Lara flinched. “Yes. Sorry. Um… Goodbye, Admiral.”

A slightly amused Admiral Richards returned the sentiment, and the two agents moved on to interview the other survivors.

***

The other Combatant Commanders provided similar stories to the two of them. Robert and Wilson, in particular, seemed fixated on how much they really wanted to bomb China.

“I mean, I didn’t want to,” Robert said, “but I did. I really, really did. Why would I want that?”

When they finished interviewing everyone, the two of them sat in Thomas’s car and brainstormed.

“So we have the eight top-ranking combat professionals in the United States driven to temporary insanity by a sound wave,” Thomas summarized. “Shortly after, they are prostrate on the ground, severely ill from the complications of that sound wave. And… that’s it. That’s all we have.”

Lara bit her lip softly. She looked breathtaking when she did that, but Thomas decided this was the wrong time to point that out. Especially because aside from emphasizing her beauty, it also emphasized the fact that her head had been in the clouds since their meeting with Carmichael.

“Lara? Perhaps I could be allowed to share in whatever’s so important it’s taking all of your attention?”

She looked at him, and he braced himself for a scathing reply. Fortunately, her phone rang before she could voice that reply. “It’s Kayden.”

She answered the phone and Kayden’s exuberant voice said, “I have done some preliminary investigation into our little sound cannon problem, and I’ve come to the conclusion that what happened at the Pentagon was a test.”

Lara and Thomas exchanged a look. “A test?” Thomas asked.

“Yes. I mean, three hundred kilohertz is so far off the charts it’s insane. If the sound pressure was off by even the tiniest margin, it would have either been undetectable or fatal. We’re talking no effect at all or brains and internal organs turned to soup.”

“So they would have had to control the weapon precisely to avoid killing their targets whilst still achieving the desired effects,” Thomas summarized.

“And they were testing it on the most important military decision makers in the United States,” Lara added.”

“Yep,” Kayden confirmed.

“Hell of a high-profile target for a test.” Lara noted

“Which is odd,” Thomas replied. “The consequences of failure could be dire. If the attackers’ goal is to manipulate the decision-making process, then killing the decision makers is an unacceptable risk.”

Lara tapped her fingers on the armrest of her chair. “We need to figure out what their weapon is. That’s our best chance at a solid lead. And that’s your next task, Kayden. Figure out what kind of weapon could do this.”

“Well, the weapon is basically a souped-up loudspeaker,” Kayden said. “All sound amplification devices work the same way. You need something to generate sound, a transducer to convert sound into an electrical signal, a driver to amplify the sound, a baffle to make sure that extraneous environmental sounds don’t interfere with the signal you want reproduced, and a transmitter to deliver that sound.

“The thing is that the higher the sound frequency, the less stable it is. That’s why lower frequency sounds travel farther and can be heard at a greater distance than higher frequency sounds. In order to project a three hundred kilohertz audio signal, you’d need some serious power.”

“Who has access to that kind of equipment?”

“Aside from large governments and military think tanks? No idea.”

“Find out. As fast as you can.”

“I will. Hey, while we’re on the phone, my birthday’s coming up in a couple of weeks. So what’d you get me?”

Lara laughed. “Nothing yet, but I promise I’ll pick up a worthwhile souvenir.”

“You’d better. I don’t work for free. Not even for you.”

“It will be amazing, I promise.”

“As amazing as you coming to visit?” Kayden asked.

“Well, not that amazing, but Thomas and I will come to see you.”

“You’d better. I’m strongly considering doing something worse to Pavel than locking him outside.”

“Don’t do anything to Pavel,” Thomas said firmly. “We don’t need you in any more trouble than you already are.”

“I know, I know, relax. Sheesh. I’m just teasing.”

“You should let him back in, Kayden,” Lara said. “Please.”

Kayden must have noticed the fear in her voice. Kayden was the most important person in the world to Lara, and after the stunt he’d pulled threatening to expose the project, both of them worried that the CIA might rapidly lose patience with their boy genius. Thomas hated to think what might become of Kayden if that day ever came.

“All right,” Kayden said. “Just to make you happy, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon, kiddo.”

Lara hung up and sighed. “I think I need some coffee.”

“I know just the place,” Thomas replied.

CHAPTER FIVE

“So now that you’ve had your coffee, can I ask you what you talked to Carmichael about?” Thomas pressed.

Lara speared her waffle and twisted the fork so that a piece separated without her needing to use her knife. The two of them were at a breakfast diner that Thomas frequented whenever he was in Washington. Thomas had ordered steak and eggs. The diner had an English breakfast on their menu, but he hadn’t eaten an English breakfast anywhere outside of England that wasn’t embarrassing.

Lara had ordered a Belgian waffle. Thomas was going to point out that a bunch of carbs wasn’t a good start to her day, but she clearly wasn’t in a mood to hear that right now.

Lara’s sighed and stirred her cappuccino. The foam had dried out on top, and the little balsa wood stick left jagged grooves behind as it moved. “Did you hear about that guy Ronald Hodges who died in upstate New York?”

"A little," Thomas replied. "It appears he had some connection to the CIA. A lot of the higher-ups were concerned when the report came in that he had died. I believe the cause was age-related illness, though, wasn't it?"

“Supposedly, but I doubt it. I…” She lowered her voice and leaned closer. “I did some digging. He used to work with my parents.”

Thomas’s eyes widened. “He did?”

“Yes. I wasn’t able to get many details, but he and my parents were involved in Project Pulse together.”

“How did you find this out?”

Lara hesitated and shifted her eyes to the left. Thomas frowned. Was she about to lie to him? After all the work he’d put in proving himself to her?

She didn’t lie. Instead, she deflected the conversation, which hardly encouraged Thomas. “Forget it. We should be focused on the Pentagon attack.”

He frowned again. “Lara, you know you can talk to me.”

"I know. And I will. I just… I don't know anything else yet. Just that Hodges worked with my parents, and Bainbridge knows more about everything than he's letting on. I asked Helen to do some more digging for me and maybe get some details on Project Pulse and what Ronald's involvement might have been."

Thomas searched her eyes. That didn’t seem like something she’d be concerned about telling him. “All right. Is that all?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

He wanted to probe further, to figure out why she was so nervous, but for the moment, he decided to respect her wishes and leave further conversation on the subject for later. “Very well. What do you think we’re looking at with the Pentagon case? Do you think this is a foreign military, a rogue element in the U.S. military, or a terrorist cell?”

“This is going to sound surprising coming from me,” Lara said after she swallowed her bite, “but I think we should consider that maybe there was no attack.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You think they all just experienced mass hysteria?”

“I think it’s possible that they had food poisoning just like the Pentagon told the public.”

“But the doctors didn’t find any toxins in their systems.”

“The doctors said they didn’t find any toxins. They could have been told to say that. You’ve interacted with military leaders before. You know as well as I do that they have egos the size of Texas. Things could have just gotten heated. Things might have been said that embarrassed the Pentagon, and they wanted to find a reason for that that didn’t make them look like a bunch of warmongering kooks.”

“I feel as though food poisoning would be ample excuse.”

“Not for threatening to carpet bomb Beijing with nukes.”

“In a closed-door meeting? In a secret room in the Pentagon? I doubt that. “Besides, there’s the sound signature. A sound wave did reach that room. Maybe it was a DoD weapon that they don’t want to be public knowledge yet, and they’re hoping we follow the terrorist angle so they don’t have to admit to their screwup, but something hit the commanders when they were meeting.”

Lara nodded. “Yes. That’s a good point. And I wouldn’t put it past the DoD to do something like that. But let’s wait and see if Kayden figures anything out. I don’t want to start on a wild goose chase.”

“Well, we could do some digging. After all, it could be hours before—”

Lara’s phone buzzed. She gave Thomas a triumphant smile and showed him Kayden’s name on her caller ID. Thomas stuck his tongue out at her and was pleased when she laughed. Things weren’t awkward between them.

“Hey kid,” Lara said. “I’ll call you right back, okay? Thomas and I aren’t in a secure location.”

She hung up and got to her feet. “I’ll get the bill.”

“Already paid for,” Thomas said, pointing to a QR code on the napkin dispenser. “But you can buy me a bottle of wine and some scented massage oil later if you’d like.”

Lara scoffed, but her cheeks colored. "Yeah. Keep dreaming."

The two of them returned to the car. Like most CIA vehicles, the car was hardened against listening devices and EM attacks, so they could speak freely without fear of being heard by unwanted ears.

Lara called Kayden back. “All right. Tell us what you got.”

“Well, it’s a little interesting,” Kayden began.

Thomas frowned. “Good interesting or bad interesting.”

“There’s no such thing as bad interesting,” Kayden said. “Haven’t you learned that by now?”

I beg very much to differ. Out loud, he said, “Well, tell us what you’ve learned.”

“Do you always feel a need to repeat everything Lara says?”

“Yes,” Thomas quipped. “It’s part of my futile quest to be as cool as she is.”

“Yeah, I’d give up on that,” Kayden replied. “No one is as cool as us.”

“Damn straight,” Lara replied. “But seriously, tell us what you found out.”

“Well, sound weapons are all the rage right now, it seems,” Kayden said.

Thomas lifted an eyebrow. “Are they?”

“They are. You remember how lasers used to be the big thing? Well, sound cannons are the new ‘weapon of the future.’ The DoD has a total of six research grants out for sound-based weapons and we know of ten foreign projects researching the same thing. A lot of the research revolves around packaging: how to make devices more compact.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m lying to you for fun.”

Thomas rolled his eyes as Lara giggled. “Do any of these projects sound like what we encountered at the Pentagon?”

“No. That’s the interesting part. Sixteen different sound weapon projects, but none of them have the effects of that sound attack.”

“What effects do they have?” Lara asked.

“Disorientation, confusion, migraines, nausea, loss of consciousness, things like that.”

Thomas blinked. “I’m sure you’re about to tease me for being stupid, but are those not the same symptoms the Combatant Commanders experienced?”

“Those are some of the same symptoms,” Kayden said, speaking as though to a child. “And because you admitted it yourself, I won’t tease you for being stupid. But the altered mental state in the case of the combatant commanders is a little more sophisticated. They didn’t just get angry and confused. They got angry and confused and decided that now was the time to start a nuclear war.”

Thomas frowned. “Well, they were discussing Chinese aggression. Is it really that much of a leap to assume that their anger would be directed at China?”

“No, but it’s a bit of a leap that the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command could create a cohesive plan to accomplish the strike. Namely, to call Elmendorf Air Force Base and order a squadron of B-21 Raiders to bomb Beijing.”

“What exactly are you saying?” Lara asked.

“I’m saying that I don’t think this is a sound weapon designed to incapacitate. I think it’s a sound weapon designed to influence decision-making. Clearly, it has a long way to go after a truly awful first performance, but I think it’s promising that the signal was able to affect the combatant commanders while also not being so powerful their gray matter leaked through their noses.”

“Do you have a lead for us?” Thomas asked.

“I’m getting there,” Kayden replied with a touch of irritation. “See, that three hundred kilohertz wave? That was just the carrier wave. The armor piercing sabot, if you will. I think the real sound weapon is a series of infrasounds that are intended to stimulate certain portions of the brain. See, ultrasound—like the three hundred kilohertz wave—tends to have no effect on humans unless it’s delivered with enough intensity. If it is delivered with enough intensity, it tends to just cause severe physiological distress.

“On the other hand, infrasound—sound waves below twenty hertz—have been shown on occasion to put people in a suggestible state. There are some scientists who believe that particular infrasound frequencies can target certain parts of the brain and have an effect similar to hypnotic suggestion.”

Thomas was beginning to understand. The CIA had attempted similar things in the past using drugs, most notably the infamous MK Ultra program.

Then there was Project Phantasma, which indoctrinated vulnerable children until they were nothing more than tools.

“And now, at long last, the moment that Thomas has been unable to wait for,” Kayden continued. “Your lead. Doctor Miranda Waters.”

“Who’s that?” Lara asked.

“She is a neuroscientist at Georgetown University with a research grant into developing sound therapy. Full disclosure: without a full sound signature—which we don’t have because the carrier wave burned itself over everything else on the Pentagon’s recording device—I can’t tell you if the wave the attackers used was anything like what she’s working on, but I can tell you that the attackers essentially attempted to do the same thing Waters has been trying to do.”

Lara grinned. “Kayden, you’re a genius.”

“You’ve said that already. Remember, you’re going to get me something really cool for my birthday, and you’re going to visit me personally to give it to me.”

“I’ll remember,” Lara replied. “Bye, kiddo.”

“Goodbye, Kayden.”

“Bye, grumpy Gus,” Kayden replied.

Thomas rolled his eyes, and when Lara hung up, he said, “Well, I take it back. Kayden came through.”

“He always does.”

“Good point.”

He put the car in gear and sped off toward George Washington University and the first real lead of their investigation.

CHAPTER SIX

Lara looked Dr. Waters up on the way to Georgetown. Once more, she was impressed by Kayden’s information-gathering skills.

Dr. Miranda Waters was a board-certified psychologist and neuroscientist who had authored twelve papers on the human mind. She was one of the world’s leading authorities on mental health research, and her techniques were used by psychologists and neurologists worldwide.

The paper she’d written to secure her grant was entitled, Music to Their Minds: How Targeted Application of Infrasound Can Improve Clinical Outcomes in Neurodivergent Patients.

Much of the paper was medically dense and difficult for Lara to understand, but the pertinent points were clear fairly quickly. Dr. Waters believed that the brain could be “programmed” with infrasonic waves targeted at various neurological structures. Doing this, she argued, could “correct” divergent behavior and allow sufferers to escape the compulsions and mental traps that made normal life difficult.

The grant was obtained specifically to test the efficacy of infrasound on patients with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder, but Dr. Waters argued that sound therapy could be just as effective on people with personality disorders. Bipolar individuals could be helped to avoid mood swings and think rationally in stressful situations. Sufferers of Cluster B disorders could be programmed to overcome antisocial and depressive mindsets. Schizotypical patients could have their hallucinations and paranoias eliminated.

Lara scoffed when she read all of that.

“Snake oil saleswoman, you think?” Thomas asked.

“I mean… I’ll have to talk to her, but I think it’s possible that she might actually buy into the bullshit.”

“So you don’t think it’s possible that there could be something to her theory?”

Lara shrugged. “I mean, she’s making some bold claims. I can believe that listening to pleasant noises might relax someone, but stopping hallucinations? Curing antisocial behavior? I don’t think those things are as simple as someone being off in the head.”

“So you think this type of treatment wouldn’t be effective.”

“In the short-term, maybe. Like how if you have a lot of energy and you workout for two hours, you’ll be tired at the end. Or if you’re hungry and you eat, you’ll be full. But eventually, you need to eat again. You need to exercise again and burn off more energy. She’s presenting this treatment as a permanent solution here, and I don’t think there is one.”

“You don’t think there’s hope for people who suffer from mental illness?”

She considered her answer. “I think that people are impacted a lot more by the way they grow up than by the way they’re born.”

Thomas nodded. “Nurture, not nature.”

“I haven’t heard that term before, but it sounds right. I think if you take two babies who are identical in every way, and you put one baby in a loving home raised by two caring parents who do everything they can to raise that child in the best and most supportive way possible, then put the other baby in a government program that strips away their humanity and forces them to focus only on being the best tool that they can possibly be, then you’re going to wind up with two very different babies. I don’t think that playing some sub-bass noises is going to fix the damage done to baby two by growing up in a shitty environment like that.”

Thomas gave her a sympathetic look. Lara didn’t like it, but she couldn’t really blame him for it. She hadn’t been very vague with her analogy. “What if there was hope?” he asked quietly. “What if there really was a cure that could take all of that pain away and give baby two a chance at a normal life?”

Lara didn’t reply right away. That question wasn’t nearly as simple as it sounded. Yes, it would be nice not to have grown up trained to be the CIA’s greatest asset, but at the same time, if not for Lara, the world would have been destroyed several times over. And without the skills she’d learned, Lara might never be able to find out what actually happened to her parents or to bring the people responsible to justice.

“I think that we have very little control over who we are,” she finally said. “When we’re children, we have no choice but to rely on those around us to tell us everything about the world we live in and what our place in it is. When we become adults, we might be able to recognize all the crap we’ve been fed, but by then it’s too late. We’ve already been molded. The best we can do is live our lives as they are and be the best people we’re allowed to be.”

A rush of irritation flooded her. “And who says anyone else gets to tell us that the way we are is a ‘disorder’? Just because someone isn’t like other people, it means there’s something wrong with them?”

“Well, when it makes it difficult for them to live a normal life—”

“What’s a normal life? Working a nine-to-five? Marrying and raising three kids a dog and a goldfish in a two-story house with a fence and a minivan in the driveway? Going shopping or having beers and watching the ballgame on weekends? Not everyone wants that life.”

“Not everyone wants to be unable to form meaningful relationships or hold down jobs or face change without completely falling apart either,” Thomas countered.

Lara frowned and looked out of her window. “That’s not something a glorified dog whistle can fix.”

“You’re right,” Thomas replied. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that you’re broken, or…”

She turned her frown to him. “Is everything okay? You’re walking on eggshells around me. What’s going on?”

He glanced at her. “I feel like you’re hiding something from me. You’re avoiding talking about what you learned about your parents. It sounds like we’re really close to the answers we want about Project Phantasma.”

Lara bit her lip and started to fold her arms across her chest but stopped. “I told you everything. I’m just nervous because…”

Because I might need to do some of this on my own.

Thomas looked at her again. “All right. Just know that I’m here when you need me.”

A cool electric sensation moved through her body when he said that. It was almost identical to the way she felt when they kissed in Saudi Arabia. Was that what love was? Being there for someone when they needed you?

She inhaled deeply and pushed that thought away. Her life was complicated enough as it is without trying to figure out what her feelings for Thomas were. “Thank you.”

They reached Georgetown a few minutes later. The University—like many such institutions—was housed in opulent architecture. Lara appreciated the aesthetic beauty of the Gothic buildings with their ornate facades and gabled roofs. She especially liked the cultivated landscapes and the gorgeous flower gardens that added color and life to the distinguished grounds.

But she couldn’t help but feel a bit of snobbery emanating from the carefully sculpted environment, as though its very appearance were designed to remind students and visitors alike that this institution was greater and more important than they were.

She sighed. She was probably just worked up about what she had learned from her database search earlier. It wasn’t like she gave a damn what some stuffy academics thought about her.

“I’ve always thought Georgetown rather pretty,” Thomas remarked as they walked from the visitors’ lot to the Department of Psychology building. “It’s rather charming how American institutions attempt to mimic the grandeur of European schools.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. You were educated at a European school?”

“Why yes, thank you for asking.”

“Cambridge, right?” she quipped.

“Well, there’s no need to be rude,” Thomas replied in a hurt tone.

Lara chuckled and punched him lightly in the shoulder. Thomas was very proud of his Oxford education. Early on in their partnership, it had irritated Lara how much pride he took in his Oxford heritage, but now she saw it as one of his unique and wonderful qualities.

That made her feel things she didn’t want to feel right now, so she focused on the task at hand. “Do you think she has any idea that her ideas could have been manipulated for use as a weapon?”

“I think that governments for all of history have been looking for ways to indoctrinate people,” Thomas replied. “Just like they’ve been looking for ways to blow people up. So no, I don’t believe she is completely ignorant any more than I believe the physicists of the Manhattan Project were unaware of the U.S.’s intentions with the atomic bomb. That’s not to say she’s guilty, though. She could have the very best intentions and just have hoped that her knowledge wouldn’t slip into the wrong hands.”

“Well, either way, we need to know exactly how her therapy works and how it could be used to alter decision-making processes. So I think we should be direct when we interrogate her.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “We can’t tell her about the attack on the Pentagon. That’s classified information.”

Lara frowned. “I get that, but I’m more concerned about the consequences of another attack like this than I am about embarrassing the Pentagon. We need answers, and if we want answers, then we need to ask the right questions.”

“Hmm. Better let me do the talking.” She flashed him an irritated look, and he said, “You’re already on thin ice with Bainbridge. I don’t want you to burn bridges with Carmichael as well.”

He pushed open the door to the Psychology Building and hopped inside before she could reply. They approached the counter, and Lara tried to keep her expression professional. The receptionist—clearly a student based on the baby face and the vacuously happy look that all children blessed to have ordinary childhoods wore—smiled. “How can I help you two?”

“We’d like to speak with Dr. Miranda Waters,” Thomas said.

The receptionist’s smile vanished instantly. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry. I’m afraid you can’t.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed. “Let me explain. My partner and I are federal agents, and we need to speak to Dr. Waters regarding an important matter of national security.”

"Oh, that's not what I meant," the receptionist explained. "I mean, you can't speak to her because she's in the hospital. She tried to kill herself this morning."

CHAPTER SEVEN

The hospital was located on campus, so the two of them were able to walk to it. Lara’s face was set in a grim frown as they navigated the path to the hospital. Thomas had a feeling she was thinking the same thing he was.

“There’s no way she tried to kill herself,” he said aloud.

Lara shook her head. “No. I highly doubt it.”

“The timing is too convenient,” Thomas said. “There’s a sound weapon attack on the Pentagon this morning at the same time as a leading researcher into sound waves that can manipulate decision-making and mental state tries to commit suicide.”

“Yes. Far too convenient.”

“So the question is, was Dr. Waters a willing accomplice who had outlived her usefulness, an unwilling accomplice who had outlived her usefulness, or a liability whose expertise on the subject made her too dangerous to be left alive?”

“We’re about to find out.”

There were two police officers at the front desk. They stepped respectfully aside when the pair approached, but when Lara told the hospital receptionist—a tough middle-aged nurse who looked far more formidable than the student at the Psychology building—that they were there to see Miranda Waters, the officers stepped closer.

“I’m very sorry,” the nurse replied in a tone that indicated she was not at all sorry. “But Dr. Waters is not allowing visitors right now.”

“I’m afraid we’re not offering her a choice,” Lara said. “My partner and I are federal agents investigating a matter of national security. We need to see her now.”

The nurse pinched her eyebrows together. “I’m very sorry,” she repeated. “I’m afraid Dr. Waters is not allowing visitors right now.”

Thomas addressed the police officers. "Officers, please call your supervisor and let them know that Agents Thomas Ridley and Lara King of the Central Intelligence Agency need to speak to Dr. Waters. Tell them it's an urgent matter and that they are welcome to verify our credentials if they wish."

The nurse’s eyebrows pinched even closer together. “Dr. Waters healthcare team is responsible for her, not the police. We say that you can’t visit her right now.”

“I thought you said that Dr. Waters wasn’t allowing visitors,” Lara pointed out.

“She’s on suicide watch,” one of the officers pointed out helpfully. “She’s not legally allowed to make decisions for herself.”

The nurse flashed a venomous gaze to the officer, who blanched and mumbled an apology.

“Call your supervisor,” Thomas repeated to the other officer. “In the meantime, we’ll need her room number.”

"Agent Ridley?" the second officer interrupted. He was pale now, too. "Sergeant Rodney says you can go see her. It's room B147 on the second floor."

The nurse gave him a look that could melt dry ice. “Excuse me? You don’t get to make the rules here!”

“We’ll be gentle,” Thomas promised. “We’re very sorry. If this could wait, we would wait.”

The nurse glared at him. "Don't act like you give a shit. Your law enforcement types are all the same. People's health doesn't matter. It's all about solving your little cases. Not sure what the hell a psychologist could do to help you with a federal case either."

Thomas elected not to argue further with her. This was very much not a “little” case, but he understood that people in healthcare didn’t think outside of their boxes and typically for good reason. The nurse’s patients were her only concern.

He and Lara ascended the stairs to the second floor. Force of habit meant that they avoided elevators when they could. It was not a pleasant experience to be locked inside of one, and in their line of work, that sort of tragedy was far from unlikely.

B147 was guarded by two more officers. One of them was a burly, mustachioed man with the chevrons of a sergeant. He nodded at the two agents and met them outside of the door. “You’re the federal agents?”

“Yes,” Thomas confirmed.

“May we know what this national security concern is before we let you inside?”

“No, sorry,” Thomas replied. “I’m afraid it’s classified.”

The younger officer frowned, but Sergeant Rodney took the answer in stride. “Figured you’d say that. Worth a shot. Just to let you know, she’s been borderline hysterical since we’ve arrived. It might be difficult to get anything useful out of her.”

“We’ll do our best,” Thomas assured him.

The officers stepped aside, and Thomas and Lara entered the room.

Dr. Miranda Waters was sitting up in bed. She was a handsome older woman of around fifty with chestnut blonde hair, hazel eyes, and wrinkles at the corners of her mouth that suggested a lifetime of smiling.

She wasn’t smiling now. Her lips were trembling, and her eyes were red and puffy. A book lay open on her lap, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was staring at the wall and apparently trying to calm herself after a bout of crying. Her chest hitched, and her hands shook. When she saw the two federal agents, she asked hopefully, “I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me I’m free to go.”

“I’m afraid not,” Thomas replied. “We need to ask you some questions about what happened this morning.”

Dr. Waters released a heavy sigh. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed them with her fingertips. “It’s just so frustrating. Everyone tells me I’m in denial. Like I wouldn’t know if I had tried to kill myself or not.”

Thomas raised his eyebrow. “You’re saying you didn’t try to kill yourself?”

“No. I was attacked.”

“Who attacked you?” Lara asked.

She shook her head. "I have no idea. I felt something wrap around my neck, and the next thing I knew, I was coming to with one of my students holding my legs and lifting me up so the rope tied around my neck wouldn't strangle me."

“So the attackers tried to hang you?”

“Yes. They tied me to a jump rope and tied the rope to the ceiling fan in my office. They wrote a suicide note too. They made me say such horrible things!”

“What horrible things?”

“Oh, you know, how I’m worthless, and no one loves me, and I can’t take the pain anymore. How I… I…”

“That’s all right, Doctor,” Thomas said gently. “You don’t need to tell us.”

Lara frowned at him when he said that, though, so maybe she did need to tell them that? Thomas couldn’t figure out why for the life of him.

Dr. Waters shared anyway. “They said that I h… hoped that my daughter would find a better mother. Oh, I hope she doesn’t see that! I need to call her.” She gave them a desperate, pleading look. “Can I call my daughter, please?”

“We’ll make sure you get a chance when we’re done here,” Lara promised. “Did the note mention anything about an attack on the Pentagon?”

Dr. Waters blinked. “An attack on the Pentagon? No. Why would it? What happened at the Pentagon?”

Lara briefly explained the attack, leaving out the identities of the victims but mentioning that they suspected a form of infrasound was used to induce mind-altering effects. When she finished, Dr. Waters’ trembling grew worse. “Oh God. Oh my God.”

“We don’t blame you for any of this, Dr. Waters,” Thomas said quickly. “We just need to see if there’s anything you can tell us that might lead us to the people responsible.”

Lara frowned again. Thomas understood why. They really couldn’t know if Dr. Waters was or wasn’t responsible just yet. Thomas had a pretty strong hunch that the doctor was telling the truth, though. People reacted differently to trauma when it was a result of a poor decision gone wrong versus when it was something outside of their control.

“I can’t believe this.” Dr. Waters rubbed more tears from her eyes. “That explains everything.”

Thomas’s ears perked up. “Explains what, ma’am?”

“The person who attacked me stole my sound therapy device.”

Thomas and Lara shared a sober look. “You’re saying the device was stolen this morning?”

“Yes.”

“What time did the incident occur?” Thomas asked.

“Um… I always show up to work early so I can get everything organized. I showed up at the office around six, and I couldn’t have been there for more than half an hour before…” She took a ragged breath. “Before I was attacked.”

And the Pentagon attack occurred at eight a.m., roughly an hour and a half later. Not a long turnaround.

“How user-friendly would you say your device is?” Thomas asked.

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“How easy would it be for someone who’s never seen it before to figure out how to use it?” Lara clarified.

“Oh, impossible. It’s a very, very delicate technology. Sound is an incredibly powerful tool.” Her eyes lit up with passion. “When used carefully, it can repair neurological connections and even help people create brand-new ones. It can give people who suffer from mental disorders a path to wellness.” Her smile faded. “At least, that’s what I intended it for.”

“But it’s not something a typical technologically inclined individual could see and use with only a cursory inspection?” Thomas asked.

“No, it’s not. Most neuroscientists couldn’t even figure it out without detailed instructions.” Her lower lip trembled, and she looked down at her hands. “The person who stole it is a member of my team.”

Thomas suspected as much, but Dr. Waters wasn’t asking a question; she was making a statement. “You know this for sure?”

"It has to be. As I said, the technology is very delicate. I engineered the device precisely so that it would only target divergent brainwaves and stimulate the correction of those waves and the creation of beneficial waves. For it to have the kind of negative effects you've described, someone would have had to recalibrate it. That means it had to be someone on my research team."

Thomas tried not to show his excitement at this news. It would look odd to Dr. Waters if he showed excitement at the fact that one of her trusted colleagues had tried to kill her and stolen her property to use in a terrorist attack. Still, it was rare that they discovered such an important lead so early in the investigation. This might allow them to put a stop to whatever was going on before another, more serious attack took place.

“Can you give us a list of names?” Lara asked. “Anyone who would know how to recalibrate the device.”

Dr. Waters sighed. “Well, there’s me, obviously, but I guess I’ve got an alibi, don’t I?” She gave a bitter laugh at that. “There are my research assistants, Drs. Emma Knox and Porter Jackson. And my lab assistant, Bryan Mayhew.”

“That’s all of them?”

“That’s everyone. We were still very early on in the research stage but what we had seen already was promising. Our first trial group experienced profound relief of their ADHD symptoms. It’s too early to tell how lasting the treatment will be, but the difference was enormous.” Her lip trembled again. “I just can’t believe someone would take something I created to help people and turn it into… into… a weapon.”

She hissed the last word before burying her face in her hands and shaking with sobs. Thomas watched as Lara sat on the bed next to her and pulled her into a bear hug. She knew a thing or two about something innocent being twisted into something cruel and violent.

Thomas felt his hands closing into fists and forced them open with an effort. That was why he wanted to help Lara bring the people responsible for Project Phantasma to justice. She knew that.

But looking at her eyes as she comforted the weeping doctor, Thomas knew that he could never truly understand what Lara had gone through. He wanted to help, but without experiencing the same pain that Lara had experienced, could he really help her?

To a point, yes, but maybe she needed to take the final steps of that journey alone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Lara left Dr. Waters’ room, she strode directly toward Sergeant Rodney, The big police officer blanched. Lara was fairly tall and visibly athletic, but at a casual glance she didn’t look at all intimidating next to the burly sergeant.

But her stare spoke of pain unimaginable. It spoke of overcoming that pain and inflicting it on others. It spoke of a will greater than that of any other living person, and when Lara wanted to impose that will on another, there were very few who could resist it.

“Let her call her daughter,” she told the sergeant in a calm voice.

Sergeant Rodney swallowed. “Of course. I’ll do that right away.”

“Thank you.”

She walked past the sergeant without another word. Soft footfalls told her that Thomas was following her. He kept quiet as they left the hospital and made their way back to the Psychology building. Whether that was self-preservation or he truly understood that he needed to stay out of her way was up for debate.

No, it wasn’t self-preservation. He was her partner. He had been a loyal and steadfast friend to her. She was going through emotional turmoil as she struggled to find the truth about her parents, but that wasn’t a reason for her to isolate herself from him.

She took a deep breath and grabbed his hand. She didn’t look at him, but that was all right. Thomas gripped her hand with just enough strength and just the right amount of tenderness. The grip required nothing from her but promised again to be at her side whenever she needed. One day, she would find the courage to tell him exactly how much that meant.

But they had a job to do, and when that job was done, she had a job to do, one that she had to do on her own no matter how frightening it was. The only thing she could imagine that was worse than not learning the truth about her parents was losing Thomas in the search for that truth.

So she contented herself with holding his hand and drawing on some of his strength to settle her frayed nerves as she put the image of the broken doctor behind her and focused instead on the temporarily faceless image of the piece of shit who hurt Dr. Waters and corrupted her tool to use as a weapon.

The receptionist jumped when the two of them walked back into the room. She turned white as a sheet when she saw Lara, but Lara didn’t have time to protect her feelings right now. She released Thomas’s hand and leaned over the counter. “I need to know where Drs. Emma Knox, Porter Jackson, and Bryan Mayhew are.”

The receptionist swallowed. “Um… Well, Bryan’s not a doctor, but he’s probably on his lunch break right now.”

“What time does he get back?” Thomas asked.

“Um… I think one? Lunch breaks are usually an hour, so I’m guessing that’s when he’ll be back.”

“What about the others?” Lara demanded.

“Well, Dr. Jackson is assisting Dr. Hooper with another project today. And Dr. Knox hasn’t shown up for work today.”

Lara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure that Dr. Jackson and Mr. Mayhew have been here all day?”

“Yes. Bryan’s my boyfriend. He usually hangs out with me here when he’s not helping out in a lab. We do our homework together. Like I said, he’s on lunch break right now, but he’s been with me the rest of the time he’s not working. You can check the cameras.”

“And Dr. Jackson?”

“He’s been here too. He’s usually the second one in after Dr. Waters. He usually helps Dr. Hooper in the mornings and Dr. Waters after lunch.”

“But you’ve seen him?”

“Yes.”

“And no Dr. Knox?”

She shook her head.

“I want Dr. Knox’s phone number,” Lara said. “No, scratch that. I want every single piece of information you have on her.”

The receptionist swallowed. “Um… okay. I’ll have to talk to the Administration. They normally want a formal request for something like this, but maybe they’ll let me make an exception.”

“If they don’t, put me on the phone,” Lara said. “I’ll convince them.”

“I believe you.”

***

Twenty minutes later, the agents sat on a bench in the Alumni Square Courtyard. While Lara waited for the information on Emma Knox, Thomas had gone to the universities food court and ordered them sub sandwiches. Lara ate mechanically, needing the fuel but not needing to enjoy her meal.

The information gathered from the campus was fairly boilerplate. Emma Knox was a twenty-eight-year-old third-year psychology resident who split her time between clinical work and research projects. She’d joined Dr. Waters’ team four months ago when Dr. Waters first received her research grant. Her campus social media page was similarly unexciting. It contained the typical posts complaining about how difficult research work was, how demanding her project leaders were and how hard it was being a “forever student.”

One post gave Lara pause, though. It was an image of a 1930s-era bum with his pockets turned out and a comical frown on his face. The caption read, "How it feels to be buried in debt with no end in sight, lol."

“Look at this,” she said to Thomas. “Do you think this means something?”

Thomas swallowed the last bite of his sandwich. “Well, it means she hated student debt.” He met her eyes. “Do you think she might have taken a chance to be rid of that debt?”

“I think it’s worth looking into.”

Thomas pulled his laptop out of his bag. “Then let’s look into it. I have contacts in the financial world that can help me figure out exactly what was going on with Emma’s bank account. Why don’t you dig around social media—not the campus one—and see if Emma left a clue. Maybe posts about her fortunes changing soon or how she was lucky or blessed or—”

“Thomas,” Lara interrupted. “I have done this before.”

“Right.”

Lara pulled out her own laptop and looked Emma up on Facebook, X, and Instagram. Her social media presence on these platforms was also sparse but also very telling. Most of her X posts railed at politicians who opposed a controversial proposal to forgive all student loans that was currently circling several political lobbies. Instagram was a little tamer but still telling. It featured pictures of Emma enjoying such thrifty fare as a cup of coffee, a single-scoop ice cream cone and a pair of tacos. Invariably, the caption was “Living that broke life” or some variation.

There was no question. Emma was undergoing a lot of stress over money.

Facebook was more carefully managed. No mention was made of financial trouble. Lara understood that. Facebook these days was used less as a means to connect with friends than as a means to stay connected with families who lived outside of visiting distance. Few wanted to bother their families with concerns over their financial status.

But Facebook did offer something that the other two sites didn’t. A list of friends.

She soon landed on a name. Lisa Bennett. Miss Bennett commented on every single post Emma made. On several posts, she left comments admiring Emma for how strong she was and encouraging her to keep her head up because God would bless her for her hard work. “The struggle doesn’t last forever” was another common sentiment.

Money was never directly mentioned, but Lara was willing to bet that Lisa was aware of Emma’s financial problems. She looked up Lisa’s profile. Her personal information was private, of course, but among the many tricks Kayden had programmed into her laptop was an app that could find contact information for someone with nothing more than a social media profile.

Within five minutes, Lara was dialing Lisa Bennett’s number. She prayed silently that Lisa wasn’t the kind of person who let every call go to voicemail.

Fortunately, she answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Knox,” Lara said cheerfully in a slight Southern accent. “My name is Katy Harkness. I’m with Sunshine Debt Relief. I’ve reviewed your financial situation, and I believe we have a product that can help you take control of your debt. May I tell you a little bit about it?”

“Oh, um, I’m not Emma.”

Lara feigned surprise. “This isn’t Emma Knox?”

“No, I’m her friend, Lisa Bennett.”

"Oh. Well, I have no idea how I ended up with your number.” Lara laughed. “Would you mind giving me Miss Knox’s phone number? I have a product that I think could really benefit her.”

Lara didn’t really need Emma’s phone number. Kayden’s app could have found it just as easily as it found Lisa’s. She just needed to lend some color to her cover story of being a debt relief telemarketer.

“Oh, she’s actually all right.”

Lara smiled slightly. “She is? Are you sure? I know I sound like a scam caller, but I promise you—”

“No, I know you’re not a scam. I Googled Sunshine Debt Relief just now, so I know you guys are real.”

Damn. Lucky me. "Well, I can assure you, we only want to help Miss Knox get on a good track financially. If you can, please let her know we called—"

“No, she’s fine. She just told me yesterday that she was given a grant by a research foundation that’s going to cover all of her debts.”

Jackpot. “Really? That’s so wonderful! I’m so happy to hear that! And who are these knights in shining armor?”

“She called them the Architects. I’m not sure what their full name is.”

Something tickled the back of Lara’s brain. Architects. Why did that sound familiar?

“Well, they certainly sound like the architects of Miss Knox’s future. I’ll let you go now, Miss Bennett, but if you or anyone else you know ever finds themselves in need of a helping hand, just know that you can find one with Sunshine Debt Relief.”

“Thank you, Miss Harkness. I will.”

“You take care now.”

Lara hung up and looked at Thomas. He smiled slightly. “I’m guessing that Emma’s friend just told you that someone paid off all of her debt.”

“Yes. A research foundation called Architects or something like that. It sounds familiar, but I can’t quite figure out why.”

“Well, they did a lot more than pay off her debt. They deposited one-point-five million dollars into an offshore account in her name.”

Lara’s eyes widened. “Now that sounds like motive.”

“Yes, it does. By the way, the foundation’s name is the Architects of the Future.”

A vivid memory streaked across Lara’s mind of fierce blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and a deceptively mild voice escaping a sharklike grin.

“You will be the architect of our nation’s future. You and all of the others here at Project Phantasma will help usher the world into a bright and glorious golden age.”

“Crawford,” she whispered.

“What?” Thomas asked. “Who’s Crawford?”

“James Crawford.”

Thomas’s brow furrowed. “That sounds familiar.”

“He was with PsyOps,” Lara replied, using the common abbreviation for the CIA’s Psychological Operations Division. “He was one of the instructors for Project Phantasma too. I remember that he called us the architects of the future. Me and the other kids.”

“Ah yes,” Thomas said. “I remember now. He was shuttled out of the Company about fifteen years ago, shortly after I joined.”

“Wow. I would have thought that Mark Walsh would love someone like that on his team.”

“It seems that even our glorious former director had his limits. Apparently, Crawford harbored some extreme views on psychological warfare. Some of his projects were leaked to the public. They went into an uproar about it, and those views fell out of favor, so to speak. Quite a lot of the people involved chose to retire gracefully. Quite a few more retired less gracefully.”

“Well, I’ll bet you anything that James has found a new way to wage psychological warfare,” Lara replied. “And I’ll bet you he paid Emma Knox to help him.”

CHAPTER NINE

Emma Knox paced her hotel room nervously, expecting at any moment to have her door kicked in by men in black body armor carrying assault rifles.

Royce, her contact with the Architects of the Future, had told her to leave her personal cell phone behind after stealing the sound therapy device and to use only the prepaid cell phone he had given her. He had further instructed her to stay off of any device that could connect to the internet because she could be tracked through the internet. So she had no idea what had happened in the hours since she turned the device over to him this morning and boarded the flight to Brussels that Royce had purchased under the new name he had given her.

She didn’t know if Dr. Waters had survived the attack either. Emma hoped she was still alive. She was a nice woman and a good doctor. Emma would feel really bad if she’d actually managed to kill her.

She just didn’t have a choice. She was in a lot more debt than anyone knew about. In addition to the quarter million she owed in student loans, she had racked up another one-point-two million in gambling debt.

She couldn’t remember placing the bets that had put her so far in the hole. She couldn’t remember much about that Vegas trip at all. She only remembered hooking up with an insanely hot guy who was every bit as good in bed as she fantasized he would be, then waking up to find him gone and some receipts in her name for some sports bets. When she followed up with the betting agency, they were happy to show her camera footage of her showing up and signing for the bets with a big ‘ol stupid grin on her face.

She wasn’t particularly surprised when she ran into that insanely hot guy again and found out that his name was Royce and that he worked for a foundation called Architects of the Future that could help her get out of her gambling debt. She knew she had been conned, but she was stuck. She had no choice but to do what they said.

Well, it would pay off in the end. They came through with one-point-five million for the original device. That was enough to wipe out her debt and leave enough to keep her alive for a year if she spent frugally.

Not that she would need it. The three million they would pay her for her next task would set her up for the rest of her life. She couldn’t do any real research with no internet access, but she figured one million dollars would buy her a home, a car, furnishings, appliances, and all of the other odds and ends people needed to live. She could put one million in the bank and invest the other one million. As long as she didn’t get a big head and start living like a queen, she would be set for life. Depending on how her investments performed, she might even be able to travel from time to time.

Most importantly, she would no longer be on the verge of bankruptcy.

She sighed and leaned back in the easy chair in the cozy apartment Royce had rented for her. She still didn’t know what Royce needed from her next, but for three million dollars, she didn’t have to look too deep inside to know that she’d kill again if that’s what he wanted. She was horrified and deeply ashamed to know that she was capable of such evil, but when the alternative was complete financial ruin, it didn’t seem that she had the strength to avoid it.

Damn it, it wasn’t fair! The system did this to people! The fucked-up financial system in the United States was what pushed people to this place. It wasn’t her fault, really.

She tried to convince herself of that, but she was far from successful.

The door opened, and she jumped. “Royce! God, you scared me!”

Royce didn’t offer an apology. He was a tall man with dark brown hair, emerald eyes and full lips that were almost feminine, especially when compared to his trim, muscular physique.

“I could have been naked in here,” she said, putting just a bit of sultriness into her tone. That brought another rush of guilt, but he was still hot, and she was desperate to feel anything other than guilt and fear.

Royce showed no sign of interest. He set a large briefcase down on the coffee table and wordlessly undid the latches. The case opened to reveal the sound therapy device. It looked like a fairly standard microphone if the head of the microphone had been blown up to four times normal size and was made out of smooth, jet-black obsidian instead of… of… whatever microphones were usually made out of.

She stared blankly at it. “Um… Did it not work?”

“It worked well enough, but it requires adjustment. I have left a detailed explanation inside. We would like you to adjust this one.”

She blinked. “Well... I mean, I left you guys blueprints.”

“Yes, and we appreciate that, but you haven’t shown us how to adjust the devices, only how to make new ones. I will stay and watch you adjust this device. After that, your service to us will be considered complete.”

Emma’s heart leaped at the thought that this nightmare might soon be over. “All right. That sounds good.”

“Get started,” he said bluntly. “Finish this, and tomorrow, we’ll take you to receive the rest of your funds.”

Her brow furrowed. “Take me somewhere? You can’t just wire it?”

Royce looked coldly at her and didn’t answer the question. Her blood chilled, but she didn’t dare argue. “All right. I’ll get started. Do… do you want something to drink?”

“Do you?”

His eyes were emotionless—as hard and as dead as the gemstones their color evoked.

She blinked. “Umm… Maybe some coffee.”

“I’ll make it. Wait to start until I can observe you.”

. .

Emma watched Royce as he walked to the kitchen. His body was lithe and supple as he moved, but it no longer inspired lust in her. He moved sinuously, like a leopard or a snake.

He returned a few minutes later with a single cup of coffee.

“None for you?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. His bright, soulless eyes made her worry that he intended a far worse fate for her than financial security. But she didn’t have a choice. It was too late for her to back out now. She had to do what was asked of her and hope that her story didn’t end with the snake’s fangs piercing her neck and filling her with venom.

She thought of Dr. Waters struggling against the rope tied around her neck. Her stomach lurched as she realized that the Architects’ venom had already poisoned her.

CHAPTER TEN

“Boy, you are going to owe me so many souvenirs when this is over.”

“Trust me, Kayden, I’ll make them worth your while.”

Thomas packed their bags while Lara asked Kayden for help finding Crawford. Upon learning that Crawford was involved in this case, they had called Kayden immediately to get his help tracking him down.

As expected, the former PsyOps agent had fallen off the map after leaving the Agency. The CIA typically tried to keep tabs on all of its former agents—especially the ones who left on less than cordial terms—but their resources weren't limitless, and the bulk of those resources of necessity had to be dedicated to active agents and operations. So many former agents allowed a little time to pass, then used their knowledge to disappear. Nearly all of them ended up with new names and new faces, living modest, simple lives. They disappeared only out of a desire to be completely severed from the hellish life they once lived.

Thomas had a feeling James Crawford was one of the few who disappeared because they wanted to continue to use their talents without the Company’s knowledge. Well, he didn’t really have a feeling anymore, did he? It was all but proven.

“Ouch,” Kayden said. “I’m glad I never met him.”

Apparently while Thomas was musing, Lara had explained who Crawford was.

“You should be. Not that the people you have met are any better.”

“Well, none of them talked like that. Sheesh. Mad scientist vibes, much? And I thought Pavel was annoying.”

“I mean, he is,” Thomas said. “Wait, he’s not there right now, is he?”

“No, he left to get lunch. I talked him into grabbing burgers and milkshakes.”

“You live in Berlin, and you’re getting burgers and milkshakes for lunch?”

Lara had a different concern. “How did you convince him to do that?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Kayden protested.

Lara frowned. “Kayden? Don’t lie to me.”

He sighed. “I may have threatened to email his internet search history to his girlfriend.”

Thomas laughed. Lara smiled, but she seemed to feel more relief than humor at that admission. “Well, just be careful. You’re on thin enough ice already, pal.”

“When am I not careful? Don’t answer that. By the way, Thomas, hamburgers are named after Hamburg, Germany, so eating hamburgers in Berlin is a very German thing to do.”

Thomas laughed again. “If you say so.”

Lara sighed. “I hate to spoil the fun, but we are in the middle of an important investigation.”

“Okay, okay, relax,” Kayden said. ”Let’s see what we got here. You said his foundation is called Architects of the Future?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Give me a few minutes. I’ll be able to find something for you.”

“Thank you. You’re the best.”

"Yes, I am. Love you."

“Love you too.”

Lara hung up and turned to Thomas. “What did you pack?”

“Oh, crackers, chips, beef jerky, fruit snacks… the usual road trip fair.”

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously.”

“Seriously, I packed snacks. It’s something we rarely consider when we’re in the field, but I think it’s important that we ensure we’re properly fueled. I’ve also packed Sig P320 handguns, Cold Steel SRK combat knives, the standard issue sensory enhancement gear, high-mobility polymer body armor, the usual selection of passports and currencies, and changes of clothing and toiletries.”

“Thank you,” she replied drily. Her phone rang. Kayden again. Thomas still couldn’t understand how the kid managed to find information so fast. He wondered if Kayden’s IQ had ever been reliably measured. If it even could be measured.

Lara answered. “Hey, kiddo. Got something for me already?”

“That surprises you? Seriously, you need to come visit. You’re starting to forget who I am.”

Her smile widened. “It’s a date.”

Like before, though, a flash of guilt crossed her face. Thomas’s eyes narrowed. Kayden was the most important person in the world to Lara. There was no way she was going to blow him off.

Unless she had found out more than she let on about her parents and Project Phantasma.

“Your buddy James is in Brussels,” Kayden said, pulling Thomas’s attention back to the assignment.

“Brussels?” Lara replied. “Any idea what he’s doing there?”

“No, but he’s been there for eleven days. It looks like when the big PsyOps Shakeup happened and James and his homies were booted out of the Company, they stayed in contact with each other.”

“Oh yeah? Do you have names for me?”

“Sure do. Henry Trout, Pam Forster, Waylon Mickelson and Olivia Carp. Even more surprisingly, it appears to be a complete coincidence that two of those last names are also names of freshwater fish.”

“Any of those names with him in Brussels?” Thomas asked.

“Don’t know. Jimmy boy made the mistake of picking a favorite outdoor café that happens to sit underneath a traffic camera. Actually, his biggest mistake was not changing his physical appearance. Same with the others.”

“What about assumed names?”

“I assume they’re using names,” Kayden quipped, “but I still don’t know which ones. James, at least, is paying cash for everything, so there’s no electronic trail to say what his nom de guerre might be at the moment.”

“What about the payment?” Thomas replied. “From Architects of the Future?”

“Well, that payment was made from an account in Singapore owned by a holding company in South Korea whose assets are managed by an investment company in South Africa. None of those companies are actually owned by James Crawford, and none of them are related to any kind of research foundation. As for the name Architects of the Future, that doesn’t show up anywhere besides their text exchanges with Emma Knox.”

Thomas sighed. “I’m not surprised. That’s a highly sophisticated method of hiding money, but I didn’t expect we could trace him by following the money trail.

“That is a horrible method of hiding money,” Kayden countered. “Jesus, Thomas, really? Have you learned nothing?”

“Hey, be nice,” Lara scolded gently.

She grinned, though, and Thomas decided Kayden was just taking the piss out of him. "Well, if we can't follow it, then it's not that horrible, is it?"

“I mean, you could travel from D.C. to Lisbon by swimming, and if you made it there alive and in one piece, then it works, but it’s still stupid.”

“Fair enough,” Thomas allowed. “Can you give us the name of the café?”

“Look at you asking a question that isn’t utterly worthless,” Kayden said admiringly. “Good boy.”

Lara made a soft hissing noise. Thomas glanced at her to see her covering her mouth to stifle her laughter. “I do try so hard to make you proud, Kayden,” he said drily.

“For what you are, you do okay, I guess. The name of the café is Le Nid du Bouffon.”

“The Jester’s Nest,” Thomas repeated. “Interesting name.”

“Thank you, Kayden,” Lara said. “I’ll make sure to pick you up a souvenir when we visit.”

“Nice. Nothing stupid like a doily or a mug with a clown on it.”

“What about a mug with two clowns?”

Kayden giggled, a remarkably innocent, childish sound. Another reminder of how young Kayden really was. “If you can find one, I want it now just because you said it.”

“Done. Thanks again, kiddo.”

“Your wish is my command. By which I mean it occasionally occupies my free time when I’m bored enough.”

“I’ll take it. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

He hung up, and Lara looked at Thomas. “All right. I guess we’re flying to Brussels.”

***

“It looks like the Architects have been active before,” Lara said, keeping her voice down so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Have they?” Thomas replied. “I thought Kayden said there was no evidence of activity prior to their contact with Emma.

“Yes. I followed up on the names Kayden gave me. There’s a BND record of a woman matching Pam Forster’s description who stole personal data for members of the European Commission.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

“Mmhmm. The Commission’s database was hacked from a computer in an internet café in Madrid. Security camera footage shows a woman matching Forster’s description using the computer during the time the data was mined.”

“That could explain why Crawford is in Brussels,” Thomas mused.

The European Commission was the executive arm of the European Union. While it wasn’t a government, per se, its decisions were in practice followed by every member state of the Union.

And its headquarters were located in Brussels.

“It could be,” Lara agreed. “Forster was there six months ago. That’s recent enough that she could have been gathering data for an upcoming attack.”

“Does the BND file say which name she used?”

“Katya Nikolic. I doubt she’s still using that name, though.”

“To echo a question raised by our favorite boy supergenius, though, why is she still using that face?”

“It does seem a little clumsy,” Lara admitted. “But if they’re working through a proxy like Emma Knox, then they might not feel that their own identities are in danger. After all, you and I have never changed our faces, and we’ve broken the rules of a great many governments, including our own.”

“Fair enough,” Thomas admitted. “Have you found anything on anyone else?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing.”

“What about camera footage from Le Nid du Bouffon? Has Crawford met with anyone there?”

“I don’t know. Let me see if I can dig that up.”

She opened the NSA’s internal browser and logged in with credentials Kayden had created for her. While she looked for the footage from the café, Thomas studied her face. As always, he was struck by how youthful she seemed, and how stunningly beautiful. Delicate-seeming cheekbones curved toward soft, full lips. As she leaned forward, blonde hair framed blue eyes that from this angle appeared bright and inquisitive.

He knew, though, that when facing someone, those eyes would be as cold and emotionless as those of a shark. There was a human side of her that he had come to know well, and even a vulnerable part of her. She was not only the unfeeling killer robot he had thought her when they first met.

But she had been robbed of a childhood. She had been denied the chance to have a normal life, denied the chance to be a normal person. In some ways, Thomas had made the same sacrifices, but Thomas had chosen to make those sacrifices. He had bartered his soul with full awareness of the contract he was signing and the devil with whom he was doing business.

Lara had been forced into service as a child. Her only clear memories were of subterfuge and death. It made her the most dangerous weapon on Earth, but it was a choice made without her knowledge or her permission. By the time she understood fully what had been done to her, it was too late.

No, I refuse to accept that.

He reiterated to himself a promise that he’d made before, one he swore he would keep no matter the cost or the time it took to achieve it.

I will free you, Lara. You and everyone else that Project Phantasma has caged.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sandy looked through the passenger window of the 2013 Toyota Camry that was, at the moment, transporting her across the state of Iowa. The car was reasonably comfortable, if not particularly exciting. Its four-cylinder engine was just about powerful enough to reach the speed limit if you leaned on the throttle long enough, but it wasn't much to speak of besides that.

Not that Sandy gave much of a shit. The only reason she and Mitch were using this car was because according to Mitch, getting where they wanted to go without being noticed was more easily done in what he referred to as a “Jap piece of shit” instead of a “sturdy example of American engineering” like his truck.

She glanced over at Mitch. He looked thoroughly miserable piloting the “Jap piece of shit” instead of his burly V8 pickup.

He also looked… She didn’t know. She’d watched enough of his porn tapes to have an idea of what sex was and how to go about it, but she still didn’t know if she was attracted to Mitch because she was really attracted to him or because she was finally discovering what sexual attraction was and he happened to be the man close to him.

And he was helping her. He believed in her mission. She wasn’t alone anymore. The two of them were going to take down Bainbridge and the rest of those Project Phantasma assholes together.

“We’ll be in D.C. soon,” Mitch said. “Do you need to change your appearance before we enter the city?”

Sandy thought about that for a moment. No civilian would recognize her, but she didn’t know how many people besides Bainbridge would recognize the woman who until very recently had no name other than Experiment One. It might be wise to change her appearance a little.

But she wanted Bainbridge to recognize her. She wanted him to look at her and know immediately who had brought judgment to him.

“No,” she replied, turning her gaze back through the windshield. “That’s fine. I’m not planning on going sightseeing, and anyway, I don’t think anyone but Bainbridge will recognize me.”

“Well, we want him to recognize you. We want him to know exactly why he’s losing his life.”

She looked back at him and felt another thrill low down in her belly. Maybe when she was finished with what she needed to do, she’d explore sex with Mitch. Even if her feelings were nothing more than a physiological reaction to the presence of a man and the fact that she had the freedom to act on physical urges now, she might as well indulge herself.

But not yet. Not until she was finished making them pay.

Getting to Bainbridge wouldn’t be difficult. He only thought he was powerful because other people listened to what he said. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he realized how powerless he was when people didn’t listen to him.

“You want to stop for food somewhere, Sandy?” Mitch asked.

"No, I'm good. I ate a big breakfast. Do you?"

Mitch shrugged. “I could eat. Also, I think we should move on Bainbridge at night.”

Sandy frowned. “Won’t they be expecting us to do that?”

“Even if they are, it’s not likely Bainbridge’s neighbors know we’re coming. Most people are like cattle. They think nothing bad is ever going to happen to them. They sleep like babies blissfully unaware that wolves prowl at night.”

“We took Hodges out during the day.”

“Hodges lived in the middle of nowhere. Bainbridge lives in the middle of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. He’ll have neighbors, and during the day, they’ll be watching.”

Sandy frowned. She had waited over two decades to escape that CIA prison. Now that she was out, she didn’t want to wait any longer. But Mitch was right. If she was going to get her revenge, she had to be careful. That meant, among other things, being patient.”

“Fine. Somewhere that sells hot dogs.”

“Hot dogs it is.”

She looked back out of the passenger window at the forest outside. She was grateful for the sight. Before she escaped, she imagined vast forests, tall mountains, majestic rivers, crowded metropolises. She had seen all of those things, but to get to them, you had to cross hundreds of miles of flat grassland or equally flat desert. It turned out that most of the U.S. was flat and empty.

In one sense, the open space was fascinating. She could look all the way to the horizon and see no walls or gates to stop her.

Maybe when the revolution was over, she and Mitch would travel. She wanted the world to change, but she didn’t really need to be the one in charge of what came next. As long as whoever took over ran things better than the assholes before, she wouldn’t mind enjoying her freedom.

She’d have to change her appearance, probably. Find a doctor she could bribe to give her facial reconstruction surgery, get her hair cut and dyed, wear colored contacts, practice a different tone of voice… all of that. It was a fairly complex thing, adopting a permanent identity.

But eventually, she would have a history that had nothing to do with Experiment One or Project Phantasma or Clark Bainbridge. Then she and Mitch could go wherever they wanted. They could drive and drive and never stop. And if they reached an ocean and decided they wanted to cross that too, they would do that. They would go anywhere they wanted, and no one would ever imprison her again.

It hit her with a jolt that she had just imagined a future with Mitch and not just with herself. She colored slightly. That was silly. It was far too early to think about spending her life with Mitch. Wasn’t it?

Either way, she had work to do first. Clark Bainbridge needed to die, and he needed to suffer badly first. He needed to beg her for death and then howl in despair when she kept denying him that release and instead kept him alive and alert for as long as possible while she cut pieces off of him.

And he needed to tell her where to find the others. Kayden and Lara King. The others who would join her revolution and bring about a better world for herself and everyone else the CIA had wronged. Mitch pulled the car into the driveway of a restaurant with a long name that looked foreign. It depicted a smiling hot dog in a bun with a zigzag of mustard down its middle.

“Wienerschnitzel,” Mitch explained. “One of the few things the Krauts did right.”

Sandy didn’t know who the Krauts were, but the thought of a hot dog made her stomach rumble. She would eat her meal, then she and Mitch would find Bainbridge and plan their assault.

She smiled as the two of them walked into the restaurant. Each day brought her closer to the revolution. Soon, everything she ever wanted would be hers.

CHAPTER TWELVE

As soon as their plane touched down in Brussels, Lara’s phone rang again. Kayden. “Hey, kid, what’s up?”

“Got some bad news for you.”

She frowned. “Uh oh. What’s up?”

"Well, I got bored again, so I started tracking James Crawford from the café this morning. I found the apartment he was staying at, but I also caught street camera footage of him leaving that apartment. He got into a Renault sedan and drove out of the city, heading east. The last image I have of the car is of it exiting the Brussels Ring Road onto E40."

Lara nodded. That wasn't unexpected. By now, news would have reached Crawford that the CIA was investigating the attack on the Pentagon. He would know that staying in the same place and keeping the same habits would be too dangerous.

“Do you want me to keep looking for him?” Kayden asked.

“Yes, please,” she replied. “Hopefully he hasn’t gotten too far.”

“You got it.”

“You’re the best, Kayden.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t know. Bye.”

“Bye.”

When she hung up, Thomas asked, “Crawford’s done a runner, has he?”

“Looks that way.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes. “The way you said looks that way suggests to me that it looks a different way to you.”

“It does. Call it a hunch, but I think Crawford’s still in Brussels. Kayden saw him get into a car, and he saw that car leave the city, but there are plenty of blind spots that the traffic cameras don’t see where he could have gotten out.”

Thomas nodded. “I can see how it’s possible, but do you think it’s likely? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to leave now that there’s heat on him? I’m sure his associates can handle the assault without him. After all, he was a supervisor when he was with the Company, not an agent himself.”

“That’s why it’s a hunch and not an analysis,” she replied. “If this were a Company op, none of the managers would be anywhere near Brussels, but this isn’t a Company op. This is personal for Crawford. He’ll want to be close by.”

They reached the rental car agency and left talk of work behind. Thomas selected a Peugeot 508. Lara wasn’t a car person, but knowing Thomas, the sedan would be powerful, handle well, and be at least reasonably comfortable.

While she waited, she did a quick catalog of the information she had so far. Crawford and his former friends from PsyOps had put the band back together to wage psychological warfare against the western world. To do this, they had used a device that used sound to alter human brainwaves and recruited an asset who could manipulate that device and possibly instruct others in its use. They had tested the weapon against the Unified combatant Commanders and proven that while effective at altering mental states, it left its victims unstable and quickly incapacitated them. That made it a good tool for sabotaging diplomacy but not a very good tool for manipulating decision-making.

So it would need to be improved on. According to Dr. Waters, the only people who could do that were her and her lab assistants. More specifically, the lab assistant to whom Crawford’s organization had paid one-point-five million dollars.

“Shall we, my dear?” Thomas asked in French.

“Of course,” Lara said.

She followed Thomas to the car, and soon they were driving through the narrow brick streets of Brussels.

“You know, if you’re going to be undercover as my lover, you’ll have to smile at me when we’re in public.”

“No, I don’t. We’re French. French people rarely smile.”

He glanced sideways at her. “What a horrible generalization.”

“I didn’t say they never smiled. They just don’t feel a need to constantly reassure everyone around them that they’re happy.”

“Somewhat less horrible when you put it that way,” he said, “but still a generalization.”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a huge grin. “Better?”

“Maybe show a little more teeth?”

She stuck her tongue out at him instead.

The streets weren’t particularly crowded at this time of night. Europeans were less likely to spend their nights outside of their homes than Americans on average, although in larger cities, there would be a healthy nightlife where both tourists and locals—mostly younger—would gather to look for fun, alcohol, and sex, usually all three. Thomas took a route that skirted that nightlife, though, so they were able to maintain a respectable pace as they headed toward the center of the capital region.

“The café will be long closed by now,” Thomas informed her. “So we’ll find a room and visit in the morning.” She frowned, and he said, “Unless you think we can do something more productive than sleep right now.”

Instead of answering him directly, she said, “I think Emma’s here too.”

He frowned. “Really? Why? She’s been paid, and she’s given Crawford what he wants. She’s probably somewhere that isn’t the United States, but I doubt very much it’s here unless it’s an extreme coincidence. Or are you telling me you think she’s still involved?”

“I think she’s still involved,” Lara replied. “I was thinking through the case while you got the car. The device worked, but it didn’t work perfectly. The Combatant Commanders were incapacitated within five minutes. If your goal is to disrupt meetings, that’s fine, but if you’re trying to change decision-making, you want the effects of that device to be more subtle but longer lasting.”

“You think Crawford wants Emma to adjust the device again.”

“He needs her to. You know more about PsyOps than I do, so correct me if I’m wrong, but PsyOps wouldn’t be happy with the result in the Pentagon, would they?”

“No,” Thomas agreed. “They would want exactly the results you’ve described. They would want their weapon to manipulate people into making different decisions.”

“Exactly. Crawford can’t do that himself. His team can’t do that. He needs Emma. At least long enough to instruct him and the others in the machine’s use.”

"So, do we look for Emma, or do we look for Crawford?"

“Both. Where we find one, we’ll find the other.”

“There’s no way Crawford will meet her personally. That’s too much. He’s too smart for that.”

“Maybe. Either way, I think we look for both of them, and I think we find both of them here in Brussels.”

Thomas nodded. “Very well. Shall we give Kayden Emma’s number?”

“No, I want him focused on Crawford. We’ll look for Emma.”

“You don’t think he can help us do both?”

“Kayden’s tools are more sophisticated than ours,” Lara explained. “I’d rather he was focused on Crawford. I think Crawford is being cautious, but Emma probably isn’t. Well, she is, but not the right type of cautious. The authorities believe Dr. Waters attempted suicide, and no one in civilian law enforcement is going to make the connection between the sound therapy device and an attack on the Pentagon that the Pentagon has disguised as food poisoning. She’ll be here under a different name, and if the Architects are managing her, they’ll probably have her in a room somewhere, but I’ll bet she isn’t hiding her face.”

“All if which is a long-winded way to say that it will be easy for us to find Emma but we might struggle finding Crawford?” Thomas guessed.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Well, then,” Thomas said as he pulled the car into the parking lot of a hotel. “Let’s start looking.”

The hotel Thomas picked was in a nice enough location that it wasn’t likely they’d be accosted by local thieves or grifters, but the hotel itself was not so nice that the staff would feel a need to wait on them hand and foot. In other words, they were unlikely to be interrupted. He rented a room on the first floor and as soon as they were settled, he made coffee while Lara checked the room for listening devices and set up the CIA white noise generators and EM jammers.

Then they got to work.

The National Security Agency was to the CIA a little bit like what Kayden was to Lara. If the CIA was the most elite agency at interpreting and acting on intelligence, the NSA was by far the most elite information-gathering agency. They were tapped into every major communications network on Earth and probably most of the minor ones too. They processed petabytes of information on a daily basis, everything from phone calls to text messages to camera footage to radio transmissions. If it was transmitted electronically, the NSA would hear it or read it.

That made them an invaluable resource for intelligence agents, but it also left them with a literal ocean of information to wade through. Fortunately, thanks to Kayden and a few other more conventionally trained tech experts, the CIA had search engines whose algorithms could effectively cross-reference different data points and sift through the ocean of information to quickly find the specific answers agents needed. It wasn’t always as effective, and a capable target like Crawford was usually able to fool the system without much effort, but Lara was betting the Architects hadn’t thought to protect Emma the same way.

As they looked through the pertinent security footage from Brussels Airport, another memory flashed in Lara’s mind.

“Pain is a useful tool for enforcing compliance, but not for its own sake. When you inflict pain, you must do so in a way that frightens your subject. They must wonder how much worse it will get if they don’t comply. And they must see in your eyes that it will get worse. Unimaginably worse.”

Lara frowned and looked at Mr. Crawford. “Is this really PsyOps, though? This just feels like torture to me.”

Mr. Crawford flashed his sharklike grin once more. “Each agent will have different tools at their disposal. Your tool, Agent King, is pain. So”—he gestured to the man bound to the chair in front of her—“inflict it.”

“There she is.”

Lara stiffened and turned her attention to the computer. The screen showed footage from Zaventem Airport Security. She immediately spotted a dark-haired woman of medium build with thick glasses reaching for a rolling suitcase in baggage claim. She looked at the security camera, and Lara confirmed that it was indeed Emma Knox.

“She left the airport at three-thirty local time. That means she landed roughly the same time we took off. We’re close.”

“If you almost avoid getting shot, you still get shot,” Lara replied.

“What a joy you are to be around,” Thomas said drily.

Lara didn’t rise to the bait. She highlighted Emma’s image and instructed the search algorithm to find all other footage of her from that moment until now.

As she suspected, Emma was placed into a hotel room. She was visited at seven by a man in a black suit. The man carefully avoided revealing his features and entered her room without knocking. He carried a large leather briefcase.

“See if you can get an ID on that man,” Thomas said.

“Thank you. I would honestly have never thought about that if you hadn’t told me just now.”

“Sarcastic as always.”

Lara highlighted the man and started a secondary search for his identity while continuing to follow all footage of Emma. The algorithm cut to her next appearance, at ten o’clock. She left her hotel with the man who had arrived earlier. They took the briefcase with them.

“Where are they going?” Thomas muttered.

“They’re meeting someone with that briefcase,” Lara said. “I’ll bet anything it contains the weapon they used to attack the combatant commanders. They had her fix it, and now she’s returning it to Crawford.”

The monitor flashed to another image, this one from ten-twenty. It showed Emma and the suited man waiting underneath a floodlight in a storage yard next to a creek.

“That’s the Senne,” Thomas said. “That’s where the river leaves the underground canals. The camera is looking over the Rupelstraat Bridge.”

Lara glanced at the timestamp on the computer monitor. Ten-forty.

The computer beeped, giving them the identity of Emma’s visitor. Henry Trout.

She’d seen enough. She got to her feet and grabbed her gun. “All right. Let’s go.”

The two of them rushed down to their car. Lara could only hope that they would reach Emma before she and Trout completed their transaction.

The old rush filled her veins. She hated that feeling. She loved that feeling. She lived for that feeling.

She was on the hunt once more.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lara and Thomas reached the bridge at ten-fifty-five. Thomas parked the car in the lot of a scrap metal yard a quarter-mile from the bridge so the lights and engine noise wouldn’t alert Emma or Trout. The two of them sprinted the rest of the way to the bridge, keeping their flashlights off and their footsteps quiet.

They stopped just outside of the light of the single low-pressure sodium streetlamp that illuminated the Rue de Appel/Rupelstraat Bridge. Lara lifted her field glasses to her eyes and looked toward the yard where they had seen Emma and Trout on the security footage.

They were still there. Trout held the briefcase as he talked to Emma.

“How do you want to do this?” Thomas asked softly.

“Stay here,” she replied. “I’m going to get close and drive them toward you. I expect Emma to run and Trout to offer resistance. Stay out of sight and grab Emma when she gets close.”

“Understood.”

She started forward, but as soon as she moved, Trout’s eyes snapped toward her. She froze, hoping the darkness would hide her from view. It did hide her, because although Trout drew his weapon, he didn’t fire at her.

That didn't matter. Their plan fell apart an instant later when Trout turned and sprinted away, still holding the briefcase. Emma followed him for a few steps, but when it became clear that Trout wasn't going to wait, she turned around and ran into the scrapyard.

“New plan,” Lara said. “Go after Trout. See if you can find out where Crawford is. I’m going to find Emma and get her to tell me how to disable that device.”

Thomas vaulted the fence without hesitation. When he hit the ground, he rolled to his feet and into an immediate sprint. Lara followed right behind him but on the other side of the Senne, sprinting toward the scrapyard. She drew her handgun on the way. The Sig P320 was a good gun, and 9mm rounds were easier to replenish in Europe than .45s. More importantly, it was robust and could handle the rigors of combat.

She hoped she didn’t have to use it on Emma. She couldn’t imagine why she would, but she’d been surprised by people before.

She reached the scrapyard a minute later. She vaulted the fence, easily avoiding the razor wire on top, and slowed to a walk once she rolled to her feet.

“Emma Knox!” she called. “I don’t want to hurt you! Come out quietly and talk to me. I can help you get out of this.”

She listened carefully. Nothing yet. She didn’t think Emma had left the scrapyard. She was probably hiding and hoping Lara wouldn’t find her. The longer Lara kept looking, the more anxious Emma would become. That anxiety would work to Lara’s advantage. Eventually, Emma would reveal herself, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

“We know that you attacked Dr. Waters,” Emma said. “We know that you stole the sound therapy device and gave it to terrorists. They used that device to attack the Pentagon.”

That got a reaction. A soft gasp to Lara’s left. She whipped around and saw a cluster of twenty or so wire bales, massive objects ten feet high with thousands of pounds of copper wire coiled around thick spindles.

She approached the bales, a handgun held steadily in front of her. "Dr. Waters is alive, Emma. You didn't murder her. The combatant commanders are alive and well, too. No one's been hurt yet. If you come quietly and help me stop the Architects before someone does get hurt, then I can make sure that you don’t suffer lasting consequences. Everyone will understand. These are bad people, and they used you.”

She rounded one of the bales, quickly flicking her eyes left and right. No sign of Emma. She entered the jumbled maze of wire and called out again.

“Come on, Emma. Be honest with yourself. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Architects care about you. You’re just a tool to them. They need your help to operate that device, but any promises they’ve made you will only stand until they don’t need you anymore. At that point, you become a liability, and they will kill you. Please believe me. I’ve seen things like this happen many times before.”

A soft scraping noise pulled Lara’s eyes to the right. She saw a few pebbles rolling down a mound of dirt that was partially hidden by the bales of wire.

Bingo.

She headed that way and risked a touch more sternness. “Here’s the deal, Emma. If you surrender willingly and cooperate with my investigation, I can help you get out of trouble. If you don’t, and I have to chase you and force you to comply, then you’re going to be treated just like every other terrorist. Believe me, you don’t want that. What’s it gonna be?”

A soft rumbling sound behind Lara saved her life. She turned around just in time to see a stack of bales collapsing. The massive reams of wire barreled toward her.

She cursed and scrambled backwards. A huge bale of wire nearly collided with her but instead slammed into another bale. That bale shifted to the left, unbalancing another cluster of bales which rolled toward her from the other side.

Lara backpedaled, jumped, slid and ran from the bales as they pursued her like a copper tide. The rumbling sound became a deafening roar as more stacks joined the assault. As Lara evaded, she caught a glimpse of Emma carefully climbing the property fence.

“Emma! Stop now! Last chance!”

Emma looked back at her, then looked up at the razor wire above.

“Don’t do it!”

Emma tried to jump over the razor wire. She nearly made it, but her skirt caught on the wire and the right side of the fabric tore off from hip to ankle. Emma herself avoided injury though, and quickly got to her feet, rushing back toward the bridge.

Lara cursed and ran after her, weaving through the last of the moving bales and vaulting back over the fence. Emma was about eighty yards ahead of her. She was running fast, but not as fast as Lara could run.

Lara sprinted after her, rapidly closing the distance. Her quarry shrieked and broke left toward the river. Lara watched her dive into the water. A moment later, she popped up, crying out and holding her left arm to her chest.

Rough way to find out the water’s only a few feet deep.

That was only true of the edge of the river, though. Once Emma was assured that her arm wasn’t broken, she splashed into the middle of the river and dove under the water, slipping beneath the waves with barely a ripple.

“Damn it,” Lara cursed.

She drew her flashlight and shined it on the river. The Senne was a murky green-gray, and the flashlight beam only penetrated inches beneath the surface.

Emma couldn't hold her breath forever, though. Lara just needed to wait and see which direction she was swimming. Then, she could follow Emma until she grew too fatigued to swim anymore.

She wondered if Thomas had caught Trout yet. She couldn’t hear any gunfire. She didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign.

After about two minutes, Emma’s head popped out of the water where the Senne flowed under the bridge. She shouted in frustration and slammed her hand on the grate that covered the tunnel.

Lara fired a shot over Emma’s head. “It’s over, Emma. Give it up. This isn’t worth your life.”

Emma looked at Lara. For a moment, Lara thought the woman was finally going to give up. Instead, she sprinted toward shore, moving far faster than Lara would have thought possible. She had surprising reserves for a civilian.

Still, Lara was on solid ground and trained in combat from the time she was five years old. She easily outpaced Emma, catching the fleeing fugitive on top of the Rupelstratt Bridge. She planted a palm in between Emma’s shoulder blades and shoved her to the ground. Emma fell with a cry of pain but quickly rolled onto her back and scrambled on all fours until she reached the bridge’s retaining wall.

“Don’t make me be rougher with you,” Lara warned, leveling her handgun. “You are far out of your league.”

Emma’s lower lip trembled. She planted her hands on her knees, gasping for breath. “God… damn it... I just… wanted… to be safe. I just wanted… to be… okay.”

Lara thought about Dr. Waters, and her face hardened. “Thanks to you, a lot of other people came very close to not being okay. Get up. Now.”

Emma flinched. “All right. All right.”

She got to her feet, shaking a little. Her elbows and forearms were skinned, and her nose was bleeding, either from exertion or from impacting the ground when Lara hit her. She lifted her hands into the air, and Lara asked, “Where is James Crawford?”

“Who?”

It occurred to Lara that James would almost certainly not have given her his real name. “Besides the man who took the briefcase just now, who else have you talked to?”

“No one. Just him. He’s my… handler, I guess? I don’t know. I didn’t want to be a part of anything. I just wanted to be out of debt.”

“So you tried to kill your research lead and make it look like a suicide, then stole a therapy device and turned it into a weapon for terrorists,” Lara snapped. “You’re not the victim here. Tell me what else they’re planning.”

“I don’t know. They… They said they were going to build more.”

Lara frowned. “More? Why?”

“I don’t—”

Her head snapped back. Lara saw bone, blood, and brain spray from the back of her skull. She cursed and spun around just as the sound of the shot reached her ears. Behind her, she heard Emma’s body fall over the rail and into the Senne.

Lara sprinted out of the light, then immediately veered right, running until she was next to the retaining wall on the other side. She dropped to a crouch and pressed against the fence.

Where the hell had that shot come from? Judging by the two-second delay between the impact of the round and the report of the rifle, it had been fired from at least a thousand yards away.

Too far for her to reach before the sniper was long gone.

She cursed and rushed back towards the car, zigzagging and staying low to the ground just in case the sniper was still there and trying to eliminate her as well.

She hadn’t learned what Architects plans were, but she had learned something valuable. They were building more devices. That meant they planned more than one attack.

Lara hoped Thomas was having more luck with Trout than she had with Emma. The success of their assignment hinged on obtaining that device and figuring out how to stop it. If they couldn’t do that soon, then the little test the Architects had run against the combatant commanders would pale in comparison to whatever magnum opus they had planned next.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Henry Trout’s file had revealed little about the man, which was to be expected considering the circumstances of his dismissal. The CIA was an intelligence organization, but its leaders were politicians, like everyone else in Washington. Whenever anything started smelling rotten politically, it was excised from the Company as completely as possible.

Because of this Thomas didn’t know what Trout’s role was at Psyops and his only knowledge of Trout’s combat ability was a single note saying he had trained six weeks with the Special Operations Group—the CIA’s tier one paramilitary unit. Six weeks at SOG was either enough time to give someone brand new to fighting a good basic understanding of combat or enough time to give someone with experience a deadly skillset.

Thomas thought about this as he pursued Trout down the walking path that lined the Senne. The fleeing terrorist didn’t try to fire at him, but he ran very fast and didn’t seem to lose any stamina, even after what Thomas estimated was two miles at a full sprint so far.

Trout’s combat skill would affect how Thomas approached his capture. If he only had a basic understanding, then Thomas needed only to worry about gunfire. If he had a Special Forces background before training with SOG, then he would be deadly unarmed or armed with anything. Hell, Thomas had seen a SOG agent kill three men with a credit card when the two of them were jumped in a parking garage in Tel-Aviv.

Thomas had trained extensively with SOG himself, so even in the case of fighting a killer of that caliber, he felt he could handle the job. He just wasn’t sure if he could handle it well enough to leave his opponent alive.

Then there was the interrogation to consider. PsyOps agents were incredibly resistant to interrogation, and SOG-trained agents were even less likely to crack.

Trout spun around and fired with breakneck speed. Only Thomas’s own extraordinary reflexes saved him as he flinched to the right just in time, the bullet meant for his head whipping past his ear instead.

Maybe worry about the capture first, then the interrogation.

He lifted his own weapon and returned fire. Trout dove to the ground and rolled over his shoulder. Thomas waited until he got to his feet, then fired. The perfectly aimed shot impacted Trout in his knee. The terrorist cried out and stumbled but somehow managed to keep his feet. He looked over his shoulder, then stumbled off the path into an alley.

Thomas cursed and sprinted after him. Before he reached the alley, he stopped and pressed himself against the side of the building. Trout wasn’t going to be running anymore, so he was almost certainly lying in wait in the shadows.

Thomas listened carefully. He heard the thump of bass-heavy electronic music and the raucous laughter and conversation of club patrons in the distance.

Actually, not so distant. A glance upward showed a soft pastel glow shining through the roof of the building on the other side of the alley. Its color cycled through different shades of purple, green, blue, yellow, and red.

Underground clubs like this were popular throughout Western Europe. Thomas wondered if Trout would try to flee by hiding in the crowd. If so, then finding him would be next to impossible.

I’d almost rather he waited to try to shoot me.

He crept to the alley. When he reached the edge, he spun around, dropping to a crouch and leveling his handgun. He saw no one. About fifty feet down the alley, a door was open. The sound of music was louder now, and the sickening light show that people on drugs loved so much spilled out into the narrow alley.

Thomas cursed and ran to the door. He holstered his weapon and entered the club, saying a silent prayer that he would find Trout before Trout saw him.

From the outside, the converted warehouse was dilapidated, dirty and seemingly abandoned. Inside, it was decked out like a modern club. Thomas saw two different bars on the ground floor and a third on the mezzanine above. The floor was some sort of laminated tile, and the staircases were carpeted—an odd choice, but there was very little about these types of clubs that wasn’t odd to Thomas.

All around him, people raved. Their barely clad—and sometimes partially unclad—bodies twisted and gyrated. Women, men, and people of indeterminate sex rubbed against each other and against Thomas. Their bodies moved with the strange serpentine athleticism that people displayed in such a place, but their eyes were dead, their faces expressionless. Most of them showed the flushed faces and either pinpoint or dilated pupils that indicated they were on drugs. Hairstyles ranging from relatively conservative fades to exaggerated punk spikes and everything in between competed with accessories such as body paint, piercings, tattoos and leather bondage gear for attention.

Thomas waded through this crowd, keeping his eyes sharp for the one person he needed. He was blessed to be tall, so he was able to see over most of the crowd, but since Trout was of more average height, he might be able to blend in with the partiers and evade detection.

The lights here were even more sickening than the ones outside. They flashed like the throbs of a headache. It was no wonder that many people caught seizures when they experienced flashing lights like this. Thomas didn’t have epilepsy, but he could already feel a headache coming on.

He caught a flash of a dark suit about fifty feet ahead of him and moved toward the sight, being more aggressive as he pushed through people. Once, a man shouted at him in French, but his girlfriend pulled him away before he could start a fight with Thomas.

Mostly, though, the dancers didn’t care. They undulated on, unconcerned with the world around them, perhaps not even aware of it.

The dark suit flashed again, this time forty feet ahead. He was gaining on his quarry.

He planted his feet and moved through the crowd in earnest. A few more shouts came his way, but these also didn’t consider the interruption to their drug-induced dance worth more than a moment of indignation. Once, a girl of perhaps twenty wearing nothing but a leather thong and a truly impressive array of piercings collapsed into his arms and tried to kiss him. He passed her over to the man to his left, and she pulled that man into her kiss without missing a beat.

The dark suit man appeared again, and this time, there was no doubt it was Trout. He was thirty feet ahead now and flagging badly. His left calf was soaked in blood, and each step left a dark footprint behind him.

He didn’t have the briefcase.

Thomas cursed and drew his handgun, careful to conceal it against his pants leg. Trout was in no condition to flee, but he might still be able to fight. Thomas would need to do this carefully.

The crowd began to thin as Thomas approached the other side of the warehouse. He closed to within twenty feet of Trout but didn’t dare come closer for fear of being seen. Ten feet from the opposite door, Trout stumbled and nearly fell, but he managed to right himself and keep going toward the entrance.

Now it was time to act. Thomas strode forward quickly, reaching Trout just as he stepped through the door. He pressed his gun into the small of the man’s back, and at the same time clamped a hand over his mouth. Trout stiffened and reached for his vest pocket.

“Bad idea,” Thomas whispered. “Keep moving, and don’t try to run or fight. We’re going to turn left.”

Trout complied, wincing as he limped on his bad leg. Thomas walked them down this new alley toward the river. The sound of the club faded behind them.

When they reached the footpath, Thomas said, “Turn right.”

“I can’t walk much farther,” Trout replied in a deep baritone.

“You don’t need to,” Thomas promised. “We’re just going to move out of earshot of the club.”

When they had put about fifty yards between them and the club, Thomas stopped. “On your knees.”

“Are you serious?” Trout asked.

In response, Thomas kicked the back of Trout’s wounded knee. Trout gasped and dropped to the ground. He rolled onto his back, and Thomas cursed and held his gun. “Draw a weapon and die!” he hissed.

“I’m not drawing a weapon, damn it!” Trout said through gritted teeth. “I can’t go to my knees. You’ve shot one of them almost completely off. That’s why I hesitated.”

“I’ll do my best to drum up some sympathy for you,” Thomas replied, his voice dripping with contempt. “It’ll help your cause greatly if you’re honest with me right now. Where is the briefcase?”

“I don’t know.”

Thomas wanted nothing more than to shoot Trout in his other knee, but he was a good guy. Good guys didn’t torture people.

Trout didn’t know that, though. Thomas squatted down and pressed his handgun to Trout’s right knee. The terrorist’s eyes widened. “I really don’t know,” he insisted. “I handed it to someone else. I’m not sure where they’re taking it.”

“Who did you hand it to?”

“Someone else.”

Thomas pulled the hammer back. “Joke again. I dare you.”

Trout looked closely at Thomas. Then he scoffed. “You’re not going to torture me. I can see that in your eyes. So let’s have an honest conversation.”

“Please,” Thomas replied, his voice dripping with contempt.

Trout grinned. “You’re too late. My colleague is long gone by now. She has the device with her. You won’t catch her. We’ll succeed in our mission. The world will soon be plunged into war. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

Thomas lifted the gun so it pointed directly in between Trout’s eyes. “Names, Henry.”

Trout laughed. Then his face twisted into a snarl. “Go to hell.”

He began to convulse. Thomas frowned, and when he saw spittle bubbling at the corner of Trout’s mouth, he swore. The terrorist had taken a cyanide pill.

Trout opened his mouth and appeared to be trying to laugh, but the poison had gone too far. He fell onto his back, retched twice, then stilled.

Thomas sighed and holstered his gun. He dragged the body to the edge of the path and kicked it into the thick growth of the riverbank. That wouldn’t hide it for long, of course, but it would keep it off of the path long enough for Thomas to make his way back to Lara.

He hadn’t learned much, but what he had learned was valuable. The Architects were planning on starting a war.

But between whom?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Pam Forster pulled the jet-black Audi S8 to the curb. The rear passenger door opened, and Olivia Carp slid inside. The door closed, and Pam pulled the Audi smoothly back into traffic. Per Architect protocol, Olivia handed the briefcase she carried to Wayne Mickelson so that a second agent’s eyes could verify reacquisition of the device.

Wayne took the case without a word. He opened it just enough to confirm that the device was there, then closed it, locked it, and nodded once at the man in the front passenger seat.

James Crawford breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Henry’s lost?”

“Yes,” Olivia replied. “He remained behind to lure the CIA agent away and give us enough time to leave.”

James sighed again. “He was a good man. He’ll be remembered.”

“What about the woman?” Wayne asked. “Emma Knox. I understand why you had me kill her, but will we be able to use the device without her help?”

“Henry provided us with a great deal of information on this device,” James replied. “We’ll have to be more careful than we would have otherwise, but if we’re patient, I’m confident that we can use it effectively.”

“The summit begins tomorrow, though,” Olivia pointed out. “Without Emma, how will we make the devices quickly enough?”

“I’ve already made them. Tonight was only a ruse to lure Emma Knox to the river so she could be easily concealed when she was killed.

James lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror. His brilliant, frost-blue gaze caused the two agents in the back of the sedan to shift ever so slightly. James smiled. “You two worry too much. We’ll succeed. We have too many advantages.”

“Of course,” Olivia replied. “I didn’t mean to say I doubted you.”

“No offense taken,” James replied. “But I do need you to avoid pessimism. The next phase of our operation will require great precision. That comes with an acceptance of a certain amount of risk. If we can’t accept that risk, then what we risk instead is our success.” His smile vanished. “I will not risk that success. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” the two agents replied.

“Good.”

The sedan accelerated as it turned onto the Brussels Ring Road. James turned his gaze back to the road ahead. Next to him, Pam remained silent. She was the only one of the three who was still relaxed, the only one still focused and confident. James respected that. If only the CIA had found her when she was younger. She would have been a perfect candidate for Phantasma.

Speaking of Phantasma, Wayne had reported that Emma was being interrogated by an athletic blonde woman when he shot her. He had said that the agent appeared almost superhuman.

There were plenty of athletic blonde women in the CIA, but there was only one who could be considered superhuman.

He had known that particular agent when she was no more than a girl, but even at ten years old, Lara King was far more capable than most seasoned agents. Her potential was seemingly limitless. James had been looking forward to seeing her grow over the years, but the scandal that had plagued the Company when his Project Oracle paper was released to the public had ruined his chances.

His lips thinned. Mark Walsh, previously one of his staunchest supporters, had turned his back on him. He would pay, too. The Legacy Foundation had lofty goals, but they lacked the courage to do what was necessary to achieve them. James had that courage. He would succeed where Mark had failed.

Still, if that was Agent King, then they were in very serious trouble.

But they still had the advantage. Their attack would occur in seventeen hours. That wasn’t nearly enough time for King and her partner to stop them. Or for anyone to stop them. Success was inevitable.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lara’s phone buzzed. A text from Thomas. Found Trout. He passed the case along before I could retrieve it. He told me the Architects plan to start a war.

She replied. They’re making more devices too. Emma told me that before she was shot from at least a thousand yards.

She caught sight of movement in the distance and looked through the windshield. Thomas was approaching, staying well within view so Lara could see it was him. She gave him a thumbs up through the windshield and got an answering one in return.

When Thomas reached the car, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

He stepped into the driver’s seat, started the car, and pulled onto the road. The two of them remained silent until they left the quiet neighborhood behind. Lara checked the dash clock. It was after midnight now.

“Well, we know we’re on the right track now,” Thomas offered optimistically.

“We always knew that,” Lara reminded him.

“I know. I just needed a silver lining.”

 “Well, we know they’re starting a war,” she said, “now we need to figure out who they want to go to war with each other.”

“Could it be the U.S. and China?” Thomas mused. “The Combatant Commanders were very gung-ho about attacking China during the Pentagon attack.”

“They would have been gung-ho about attacking any enemy of the United States. If the Pentagon incident had occurred last week, all of those missiles would have been aimed at Iran. The week before that, North Korea. The week before that, Russia.”

“Yes, but they didn’t attack any of those weeks. They attacked this week.”

“They needed time to approach Emma and arrange for the theft of the device.”

“So you still think the attack on the Pentagon was just a test?”

“It has to be. Why else would they have fled immediately to Europe?”

“To avoid getting caught.”

“Then why bring Emma with them? Why have her modify the device now? Why make more?”

“It’s easier to operate out here. That doesn’t mean they won’t return to the United States to attack at a later date.”

They were near their hotel now, and traffic was a little more present. Still not thick at this time of night, but enough that Lara was concerned about their disheveled appearance.

“Let’s enter the hotel through the back door,” she told Thomas. “I would rather not be seen like this.”

Thomas smiled at her. “Yes, we do look as though we’ve indulged in a little hanky-panky.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “Or like we’ve both been in a fight.”

“Civilians are very unlikely to jump to that conclusion, and this body armor doesn’t look like body armor.”

She rolled her eyes again. “All right, Thomas. If it’ll make you feel better, it absolutely looks like we screwed.” She hoped he couldn’t see her blush as she said that.

Thomas parked the car, and the two of them fell silent until they were in their room again. They checked to ensure that no one else had been inside while they were gone, and after confirming that was the case, Lara returned to their conversation. “So you don’t think being in Brussels has anything to do with the European Commission anymore?”

“It could, but it’s not likely. They’re all Americans, and if they want to start a war, I feel it would be America they would attempt to manipulate.”

“Unless they want the fighting to occur somewhere other than their own backyard.”

“That’s possible,” he allowed.

“So let’s say they are planning to go after Europe. Why?”

“The most achievable outcome I can think of is the European Union taking a stronger stance against Russia,” Thomas replied. “Perhaps this is Crawford’s attempt to escalate the West’s response to the Ukrainian invasion.”

Lara shook her head. “Much as I’d like to believe they’re doing this for the greater good, I can’t see them being altruistic. I’m thinking they’re trying to destabilize Europe.”

“Again, why?” Thomas asked. “I mean, I suppose a weak Europe means a strong Russia and an even more thinly stretched U.S. to compensate for the power vacuum, but I don’t think a rift in the European Union would measurably impact global security. France, Germany, and Italy would still have their militaries. The United Kingdom hasn’t been a part of the European Union for years now. The smaller European nations would suffer, but the United States would at best be inconvenienced.”

“Are we certain the U.S. is a target?” Lara countered. “I get the whole revenge angle, but maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he has another motive for wanting Europe hurt.”

“But what motive?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that should be the next thing we look into.”

Thomas took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the bed. He wore a scowl that Lara thought made him look adorable. Not that she could dwell on that right now.

“The big smoking gun to me is that Pam Forster stole personal data on the members of the European Commission,” she said. “ I don’t know why she would do that if Europe wasn’t the target.”

He shook his head. “Yes. It just bothers me that we don’t know why. We can think of reasons why he would want to hurt the United States, but we can’t think of a good reason for him to target Europe.”

He got up and started pacing. Lara resisted the urge to join him and instead opened her laptop. She waited for the secure internet browser to chime, letting her know her session was protected, then searched for the next scheduled meeting of the European Commission.

“They’re meeting next month,” she said. “That’s not too far out, but it feels like it’s far enough out not to be the Architects’ focus.”

"Yes," Thomas agreed. "They've been rushing things. They must have another plan. Perhaps they're going to attack each member of the Commission one by one. They might have stolen personal data, so they know which pressure points to tickle. This commissioner kills his family, that one gets caught in bed with prostitutes, another wires himself a billion euros from Union money."

She scoffed. “So this is what, a scandal machine? No, I don’t think so. They’re not petty criminals.”

“If they scandalize Union leadership, it could cause serious political problems for the European Union. It would also be a much more subtle way of waging psychological warfare. We have to keep in mind that no one operates in a vacuum. If the European Commission loses their mind, there’s still the European Council and the individual governments of each nation.”

“Maybe that’s why they’re making copies,” Lara said. “Maybe they’re going to plant cells in a bunch of governments at once all around the world. They’re probably going to do something with the Commission—maybe another test to see if their second go around will work better—but maybe the endgame is global.”

Thomas nodded. “Yes. You might be…”

He stopped and stood stock still. Lara frowned. “What is it?”

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Lara pressed.

“What else is headquartered in Brussels besides the European Union?”

She frowned. Then she understood.

“NATO? You think they’re going to hit NATO?”

“I think it’s a possibility we should very strongly consider. The European Commission isn’t meeting for another month. When do NATO leaders convene next?”

Lara looked it up. “Today.”

Thomas whirled toward her. “Today?”

“Yes. There’s a summit that begins later this morning. NATO’s leaders are convening to discuss how NATO will react to increasing Chinese aggression.”

He frowned. “That must be their target, then. That’s why they’re moving so fast. China is already making the western world nervous. The Architects are just going to nudge them over onto the side of aggression instead of diplomacy. And with multiple devices, he can work his way down the chain of command and make sure that calls for war are acted on. He’s trying to plunge the world into chaos.”

Lara reached for her phone. “We need to tell Carmichael. She has connections with NATO. Their security needs to be made aware of the threat so they can secure the summit.”

She dialed her boss’s number. Helen answered on the third ring. “Agent King. Got good news for me?”

“Well, it’s news.”

“Tell me.”

“We’ve identified the conspirators as a group that calls themselves the Architects of the Future. They’re five former PsyOps agents led by a man named James Crawford. Thomas eliminated one of them, but the other four are still at large, and they have the device used to attack the Pentagon.”

Carminchael’s voice was a whisper when she replied. “James Crawford? Shit.” Louder, she said, “Do you know where they are right now?”

“No, but I know where they’ll be in a few hours.”

Carmichael paused a moment, then said. “The NATO summit.”

"Yes. We believed they were going to attack the European Commission. That might still be one of their targets, but considering the sense of urgency with which they're moving, we're now convinced that the NATO policy summit is the target."

“Crap. All right. Have you located the device?”

Lara’s shoulders stiffened slightly. “Unfortunately, it remains in enemy hands. And they’re going to build more.”

“More? Can they do that?”

“Yes. I managed to interrogate the woman who stole the device for the architects before she was killed. She told me that they’re making more.”

“Shit. And this weapon alters mental states? It’s not just a sound cannon?”

“Exactly.”

“Damn.” She fell silent for a long moment, then said. “All right. I’ll reach out to my connections and make sure NATO is prepared for the threat. I want you two to stay nearby. The best chance we have of preventing this war is to prevent that attack. As soon as the Architects sighted, you two are to jump in and stop them.”

“Agreed.”

“Call me back if you receive any more information.”

“Will do.”

Carmichael hung up, and Lara turned to Thomas. “Okay. She’s going to call in the big guns. In the meantime, she wants us on standby. If the Architects show up near the summit, we’ll swoop in.”

Thomas nodded. “Very well. In the meantime, I suggest you get some rest. It seems we have a long day ahead of us. I’ll take the first watch and alert you if we have an update from Helen or Kayden.”

Lara frowned. “You don’t think we should keep looking for the Architects?”

"No. Ordinarily, yes, but not when we're hours away from a potential terrorist action of this magnitude. Our best bet is to do exactly what Helen told us to do: stay nearby and be ready to pounce when the moment comes. Besides, Kayden's on the case. If he can't find them, I doubt very much we can."

Lara looked out of the hotel room window at the pitch-black sky. She didn’t like it. She was the type to pursue her enemies, not the type to let them come to her.

But Thomas was right. In this case, every other choice was the wrong one. Their enemies had planned well.

She took off her boots and her jacket, then lay in bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t feel tired, but she had trained herself to be able to sleep when she needed to. So, within five minutes, her breathing slowed, and she slipped into darkness.

***

Lara looked at the man. “Why?”

She received no answer from Mr. Crawford and decided he must have assumed she was talking to the prisoner rather than to him. She looked him in the eyes this time. “Why?”

Mr. Crawford’s grin faded a little. “You must get him to supply you with the information you need.”

“But I don’t need information.”

“You must get him to supply you with the information the CIA needs.”

“What information does the CIA need?”

“That’s classified.”

Lara frowned. “You’re lying to me.”

Crawford’s smile vanished completely. “Excuse me?”

“You’re lying. There’s no information. This man is not an enemy combatant or an enemy intelligence asset. You just brought him here to coerce me into torturing him so that I can be desensitized to the feeling.”

Crawford’s lower lip trembled. “It’s a skillset you must have.”

“Why? Torture will only make people say what they believe I want to hear. It won’t make them tell me the truth.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Agent. Get information from this man. He knows what he needs to tell me. Tell him that he must provide that information to me, or you will hurt him.”

Lara had had enough. “This isn’t PsyOps, Mr. Crawford. This is brutality. I don’t need you to teach me brutality. If my superiors brought you here, it was to teach me how to obtain compliance without the use of force.”

Mr. Crawford stared coldly at her. Then, he calmly drew his handgun and shot the prisoner through the skull. Lara stared in shock at the man's body. Blood trickled from the hole in his forehead, pooling on the ground below.

“You just murdered him!”

“Soon, you’ll understand why.”

She frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

But Crawford didn’t answer. He simply left the room. Lara waited for her handler to come get her. When ten minutes had passed, and the handler didn’t return, she walked to the door and tried the handle. Locked. She was stuck in the room with the dead man.

A ghost of an old emotion crossed her mind. Fear perhaps. Or guilt. Maybe frustration. Whatever it was, it didn’t last long. Lara took the room’s only seat across from the dead man and wondered if the time would ever come when she would obey an order like the one Crawford gave her. If that day ever came, she would no longer be a good person.

She laughed bitterly, a sound far too mature for a child of ten.

Who said she was a good person now?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Carmichael called them back at nine that morning. The two agents had eaten the hotel’s complimentary breakfast and showered quickly before dressing for work. They had touched base with Kayden too. Still no sign of their missing terrorists. Ridley chafed at lack of information needed to act, and if he was chafing, he could only imagine how difficult it was for Lara.

So when Lara’s phone rang, both agents leaped for it at the same time. Lara reached it first and pressed the speaker button. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

“Well, if you two wanted more proof that the world is run by morons, here it is. NATO has declined to alter their security plan for today’s summit.”

Thomas stared at the phone in shock, meaning Lara’s “What?” was the only one that escaped her mouth.

“Yep. They’ve also made it clear that they want us to stay away and that they don’t feel a need to sweep an area that they’ve already checked several times.”

“So they’re going to do nothing?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“That’s bullshit!” Thomas said, breaking his silence. “What on Earth are they thinking?”

“They’re thinking that we’re jumping to an unbelievable conclusion based on absolutely no evidence.”

“What?” they both exclaimed at once.

“The data isn’t there. Not the data NATO can see, anyway. The Pentagon is still maintaining the cover story of food poisoning.”

"Oh, come on, Helen," Thomas insisted. "They know we cover things up all the time. Of course, we're not telling the public, but that doesn't mean we're lying to them now."

“Yes, but the idea of a sonic weapon that can convince people to start nuclear war is a more far-fetched one than they want to buy into.”

“But I heard Emma Knox tell me exactly what that device can do!” Lara protested.

“Did you record that conversation?”

Lara’s jaw clenched. “No.”

“Call Dr. Miranda Waters at Georgetown University,” Thomas said. “She’ll corroborate our claims. She’s the one who invented the device.”

"Yes, I'm aware. That's part of the problem. Dr Waters is currently on suicide watch and saying a lot of things that make her sound crazy. Not saying she is, just saying that she sounds like it."

“She didn’t try to kill herself! She was attacked!”

“So she says. But there’s no proof. We have a woman on suicide watch and your claim that under duress, a civilian lab assistant told you that a device used to help calm manic people was modified to convince the Combatant Commanders to nuke China.”

“We have security footage,” Thomas pleaded. “The NSA has security footage. Crawford paid Emma Knox one-point-five million dollars to steal that device and give it to them.”

“You guys guessed that it was Crawford, but so far, all you’ve done that’s on the footage NATO’s scene is break up a drug deal.”

“A drug deal?” Lara said incredulously. “That’s what they thought the briefcase was?”

“They tell me it’s common on the Senne. Listen, I agree with you guys. I’m worried about this too. But NATO isn’t going to do anything to improve their own security.”

“Will they at least sweep for the devices?” Thomas begged. “At least send someone looking through the venue for the audio projectors. We’ll provide NATO with a description.”

Carmichael sighed. “I brought up all of these points to them on the phone. The conversation ended with them warning me to back off and not answering further calls.”

Thomas lifted his hands and put them on the top of his head. “Is there subtext I’m missing here? Is NATO angry with the CIA for some reason?”

“Look at it from an outside perspective. The combatant commanders experienced symptoms of headache and nausea for a few minutes. The CIA decided that it was a sound weapon that did it, and on the back of testimony from a woman who just tried to kill herself, they decided it must be a repurposed missing medical tool, and that the suicidal doctor’s assistant flew all the way to Europe to help the bad guys use it. The assistant, conveniently, is dead, as is the one terrorist you guys actually meet. He isn’t Crawford either, and neither of them have this mysterious briefcase when you finally get to them. And—this is the big one—the only part of anything I’ve just mentioned that is actual hard evidence of the existence of this sound weapon is the testimony of that aforementioned suicidal crazy woman.”

“So they think we’re lying,” Lara said.

"They think we're overreacting. They understand why, considering what we've dealt with recently, but they think… well, they think we're a little loose in the head ourselves."

“So it’s a waste of time trying to convince them is what you’re saying,” Thomas said, starting to see the point of Carmichael’s rant.

“Yes. It is.”

“So we should find another way to stop the terrorists instead.”

“Yes. Whatever else happens, they cannot be allowed to attack that summit.”

“Very well, ma’am. Keep working on NATO security. I’d feel a lot better if we had some support, but if we have to do it on our own, we’ll find a way.”

He hung up and turned to Lara. “All right. If I read in between the lines correctly, what she wants us to do is infiltrate the summit venue and disable those devices before the attack can begin.”

Lara nodded. “That’s what I heard.”

“Well then,” Thomas said. “I suppose we need to think of a way to infiltrate the most heavily guarded location in Europe.”

He took a seat next to Lara and pulled up a blueprint of the facility. The summit was being held at the central NATO campus in a large building recently built for the purposes of these kinds of gatherings. The building sat one hundred eighty yards northeast of the administration building, near the security office. Like all NATO buildings, it was hardened against EM attacks and espionage. Its windows were bulletproof and blast resistant, and its foundation was built to withstand all but a direct bomb strike.

None of which would help if a sound device small enough to fit into a briefcase was hidden somewhere inside. They needed to get into that building and find the device or devices before it was too late.

Doing that was not likely to be easy. No one who wasn’t on a preapproved identity list was ever allowed inside. The entire campus was guarded by NATO security officers. They would carry assault rifles and have armored vehicles on standby, along with machine gun emplacements and even antipersonnel rockets.

The security camera system was equally formidable. Optical, infrared, night-vision, radar, lidar, sonar, EMP detection, and probably a few other spectrums were gathered from every square inch of the campus and the surrounding area at all times. NATO was very well aware of the risk of attack and the danger to the world should an attack succeed.

Of course, this would pose a problem for the attackers as well. The distance of the building from the nearest vantage point outside of the campus was too great for a sonic weapon to work unless it had a transmission dish at least six feet wide. They would have to get inside to use their portable device.

But they seemed damned confident they could, so Thomas and Lara couldn’t trust that NATO’s admittedly impressive security would stop the disaster that was about to take place. They needed to find a way inside.

Getting in at ground level was a no-go. That left getting in from underneath.

“Well,” Thomas said drily. “There are the sewers, I suppose.”

Lara shook her head. “I’m not opposed to that if we need to get dirty, but the sewer pipes that lead into the buildings are going to be too small for us to navigate. We can get onto the campus, but if we pop our heads out in the middle of a company of security forces, they’ll be very quickly separated from our bodies.”

“Well, I don’t see another way in. Do you?”

Lara’s phone buzzed. Kayden.

She answered. “Hey, Kayden. Do you have Crawford’s location?”

“Not his exact location yet, but I think I know what he’s planning.”

“He’s going to attack the NATO summit.”

Kayden paused a moment, then said, “You know, it’s no fun when you know things before I can even tell you.”

Lara grinned. “Sorry, kiddo. I’ll make it up to you by letting you tell me how we can get into the campus without being detected.”

Kayden brightened. “Sure! I’m going to send a link to your computer.”

A moment later, Lara’s laptop screen changed. She stifled the chill she felt at that. If Kayden could so easily hack into her system, then she needed to be careful what she used it for. She didn’t want him figuring out about her investigation into Project Phantasma. She didn’t want to put him in that kind of danger.

“See those lines?” Kayden asked.

A moment later, five lines lit up green on her laptop screen. "Yeah, I see them."

“Those are emergency escape routes,” Kayden said. “They’re old routes and they’re not usually guarded. They’ll lead you right to each of the main buildings. This one”—one of the lines lit up red—“is the one that will lead you to the main building where the summit will take place.”

Lara grinned. “Kayden, you’re a genius.”

“You keep saying that like you’re surprised,” Kayden said. She could tell by his tone that he was pleased, though.

“I say it because it’s true. Thank you. This will help a lot.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Go on and save the world. Just don’t forget my souvenir.”

“I won’t.”

He hung up, and Lara turned to Thomas. "Well, you heard the kid. Let’s go save the world.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The two spies sat at a tram station and looked across the street at the heavily fortified NATO campus. Security forces in body armor sporting assault rifles milled around the campus. Armored vehicles sat at strategic places around the buildings armed with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and some with anti-aircraft weaponry.

“Looks like they beefed up security after all,” Lara observed.

“I wonder what the world leaders arriving will think?” Thomas mused.

“They’ll think they’re safe,” Lara replied.

Thomas nodded. “Well, let’s make sure they are safe.”

The agents proceeded toward the ingress point. The evacuation tunnels ended a mile past the campus, disguised as drainage ditches. The two agents walked nonchalantly past the ditch, holding hands and laughing as though they were a couple on a stroll. When they confirmed that there were no guards and no cameras watching them, they vaulted the low rail and slid down the side of the ditch to the tunnels.

The tunnels were closed with a simple chain link fence. Its gate was held closed with a padlock. Thomas hadn’t brought bolt cutters with them, an oversight he made a mental note not to make again. The wire-cutters on their multitools were strong enough to cut through the links, though, so they were soon able to cut an opening and enter the fence.

The tunnels were in poor condition. Dust, dirt and mold lay thick over everything. Patches of algae and moss grew over puddles of stagnant water, and more than once, Thomas caught a rat scurrying along the floor. Once, these tunnels had been considered the primary method by which world leaders and NATO employees would be evacuated in case of an attack. How times had changed.

“If I were the Architects,” Lara said, “I would hide the sound devices with the sound equipment.”

“That makes sense,” Thomas agreed. “They look like oversized microphones. Placed strategically, one or a few of them would be easily disregarded as cameras or as parts of the PA system.”

“Exactly. It’s also an easy place to obtain power for the devices.”

“But how did they get inside in the first place?”

“They either sneaked in like we did, or they have a contact inside NATO. I’m leaning toward one of them actually having a job with maintenance, and I’m leaning toward that one being Pam Forster. She’s been in Brussels for fifteen months. She’ll be the one in country long enough to have an established residency record.”

“So NATO let the attacker in through the front door meanwhile we have to sneak in through the rot,” Thomas said. “How lovely.”

“Well, it’s just a hypothesis right now,” Lara reminded him. “But yes, that’s my guess.”

“Do you think it’s possible that we might have beaten them here?” Thomas asked. “Do you think we might catch them in the act?”

“I doubt that,” Lara replied. “I think if they weren’t able to build more devices, they’d just use the one they have. Its effects should be strong enough to accomplish their objective, especially if they had Emma tune it before they killed her. Anyway, I don’t think the extra devices are for this attack. I think they’re for striking multiple targets at once. Probably the governments of each member nation after this initial attack. But they would have wanted to set the device before the attendees arrive.”

“Have the attendees arrived already?”

Lara checked her watch. “Yep. Twenty-five minutes ago.” She looked at Thomas. “Time to hurry.”

The two of them broke into a run. As they ran, Lara said, “The tunnel splits into different routes that lead to each building. We want the second one on the right.”

They came across that hallway a few minutes later. As Kayden predicted, there were no guards watching the emergency escape routes, a rare blessing for their line of work.

Soon, they found themselves inside of a maintenance closet in the summit building. Lara consulted her blueprints. “All right. We’re right here in the southwest quadrant. That puts us close to the bathrooms.”

"Ah, yes. For some reason, the human race has decided that restrooms, maintenance closets and cleaning closets must be placed next to each other."

She gave him a wondering look. “You find humor in the strangest things at the strangest moments.”

“I find humor everywhere,” he replied. “It helps me deal with the gravity of my job.”

She shrugged. “Can’t argue with that. In any case, we need to get to the sound equipment. There’s no real way to do that and stay hidden, so this is when we start acting like we belong here. Time to change into our new uniforms.”

They quickly stripped out of their soiled clothes and pulled their changes of clothing out of their bags: black slacks, a white button-down shirt, and over their body armor vests, coats with the word SECURITE printed on the back. They had brought NATO IDs with them. They were peacekeeping force IDs, but it was the best they could do in a pinch.

They stuffed their old clothes into their packs and tossed the packs back into the tunnel behind them. Thomas checked his handgun, just in case, then nodded at Lara. “All right. Let’s do this.”

The two of them left the maintenance closet and walked into the corridor beyond.

And straight into a half-dozen security officers pointing rifles at them. They stopped dead in their tracks. Thomas heard footsteps behind them and turned to see four more officers behind them.

“Hands in the air,” the lead officer barked. “Now!”

Lara and Thomas shared a look. If they wanted, they could extricate themselves from this situation, but they’d have to kill some of these guards to do it, and they weren’t going to kill friendly forces.

Thomas sighed and lifted his hands above his head. So much for their brilliant plan.

***

“What the hell were you two thinking?” Pierre Niems, the irate security captain, shouted. “You sneaked into NATO headquarters? Armed? In disguise? Like… you were spying on us?”

The two of them were in a security office located in another maintenance hallway on the other side of the building. Captain Niems had led them there through a system of maintenance corridors carefully constructed to allow access nearly anywhere without intruding on the building’s distinguished guests.

“We weren’t spying on you,” Thomas insisted. “We were trying to protect you.”

“From what? You’re the only danger here! Are you stupid? For God’s…” Pierre ran his hands through his hair, looked past them and sighed heavily. “This is about the report last night, isn’t it? From the CIA. About the sound weapon?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “I assure you, Captain, that threat is very real.”

Pierre rubbed his temples. “For the love of God. Sound cannons are real, yes. They can cause permanent hearing loss, disorientation, and—if powerful enough and close enough to their target—internal bleeding and death. Do you know what they can’t do, Agents King and Ridley? They can’t mind-control people. This is not a sci-fi movie. Our enemies are not mad scientists cackling and rubbing their hands as they snicker over their latest super invention that will bend the entire world to their will.”

Lara mumbled something under her breath. Pierre looked sharply at her, but she didn’t repeat it. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I just…” He lifted his hands and let them drop. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”

“You have verified our credentials, yes?” Thomas asked.

“Yes, I have.”

“Then you have verified that we are who we say we are.”

“That is what verifying someone’s credentials means,” Pierre replied testily.

"Then you are aware that Agent King and I have saved the world on more than one occasion. You are aware that we have faced some of the greatest threats in history. You are aware, as well, that our agency is the premier intelligence agency in the world."

“That is a matter of opinion,” Pierre replied thinly.

“What is not a matter of opinion is that the CIA does not risk its two most valuable agents over a fools’ rumor,” Thomas replied forcefully. Whatever you think of the CIA, you can’t tell me you believe us to be stupid.”

“Prior to today, I would not have said so.”

"So what changed today? Just because what we've claimed is so fanciful, it can't possibly be true?"

“It’s…” Pierre looked at the ceiling as though asking for help from Heaven. “Well, yes! Come on, a mind-control device that when activated will use a sound wave that will manipulate the minds of every leader of NATO—including, if I may remind you, the President of the United States of America—to declare immediate nuclear war on China. Then—according to you, Agent King—more of these devices will be deployed in the legislatures of every member nation, and those parliaments, senates and assemblies will all endorse this declaration of war. Then the military commanders of the United States, United Kingdom and France will all give the order to launch nuclear weapons at China, and the people responsible for programming the launch, executing the launch and confirming the deployment of the warheads will all follow those orders. And nowhere along the line will this process be stopped. Please think about how utterly fantastic that sounds.”

“We know what it sounds like,” Thomas insisted, “and we very much hope that you’re right and that it’s ludicrous to even think that this could possibly happen. But what will happen today if we don’t stop it is that the leaders of every NATO member nation will be attacked. At best, this attack will cause them to fly into a rage for a few minutes before collapsing to the floor. At worst, it will lead to some very serious decisions being made. Even if nothing comes from the conversations they have today, something will come of them eventually. It’s not as much of a stretch as you think to believe that this could spiral into armed conflict. Even if there isn’t a nuclear conflict, an armed conflict of any sort with China would be utterly devastating for both sides.”

“Just let us do a sweep of the building,” Lara pleaded. “Before the summit starts. You can come with us. We’ll show you exactly what you’re looking for.”

Pierre stared at her as though she had sprouted a leg from her nose and was now communicating by wiggling her new toes in his face. “No.”

Thomas frowned. "Oh, for God's sake. What harm could that do? Would you like to keep us bound and keep your rifles on us? Would that make you feel better?"

“No," Pierre repeated. "You are not going to be sweeping the building. You are going to be escorted to accommodations in the barracks and held there until after the summit, at which point you will be repatriated. As for your bonds, I would dearly love to remove them. I don't feel good about having CIA agents imprisoned. But you have to stop talking like this. It makes me think you might do something insane like—”

Thomas saw a blur out of the corner of his eye. An instant later, Lara’s fist slammed into Pierre’s temple. The security captain fell heavily to the floor. While the other security officers stared in shock, Lara sprinted out of the room and into the corridor beyond.

The security officers looked at Thomas, who smiled sweetly. “Yes, officers? Can I help you?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lara ran down the corridor, looking left and right for a way to avoid her pursuers. Janitors, food service workers, and other menial laborers assigned to support the summit exclaimed as she ran by. A few of them dove for cover to avoid her and the pursuing security officers.

“Stop!” one of them called. “Or we’ll… Damn it, can we shoot?”

“Non-lethals,” another said.

“I don’t have non-lethals.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

While the security officers argued over how to deal with a threat in the form of an allied intelligence agent, Lara spotted a chance to take that problem out of their hands. She veered left into a kitchen that was currently crowded with cooks preparing refreshments for the dignitaries who were scheduled to arrive at the summit building any minute.

The cooks cursed, cried out, and shouted all at once. She barreled through them, shoving past people and leaving a cacophony of dropped dishes, spilled food and shocked cooks behind her. The security guards had no chance. They were outnumbered badly, and since the irate cooks had no chance of catching the lightning-fast Lara, they took their anger out on security.

Lara ran through the other side of the kitchen and found herself in an outer maintenance corridor. Unlike the inner corridor, this one was floored with concrete. Lara guessed it led to loading docks on the outside, where shipments of food and other supplies were brought to the summit building.

That’s probably how the Architects got inside.

She slowed to a walk and held her head high, keeping her expression nonchalant as though she belonged there. She passed a bored food service worker pushing one trash can and pulling another and a janitor pushing a cleaning cart. She nodded at both of them and was ignored. Fine with me.

She left the corridor into a storage closet that held boxes of tableware. That room opened into the inner corridor again. She headed the other way down the corridor and considered her next move.

She needed to get to the conference room. The sound device wouldn’t be there, but from there, she could get a good idea of where the device would have to be in order to be effective. A three-hundred-kilohertz carrier wave was powerful enough to penetrate walls, but considering the precision the Architects needed to manipulate the leaders without killing them, the device would have to be close to the target .She found a door to the left and exited into the lobby of the summit building.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she recognized the President of the United States. He stood in a cluster of other world leaders talking and laughing about something as they sipped champagne and ate hors d’oeuvres.

The leaders had arrived. She was running out of time.

She walked slowly around the perimeter of the lobby, eyes flicking from left to right to identify threats as she made her way to the rear of the lobby. There were no NATO security forces visible among the world leaders, although several had personal bodyguards. There were, however, officers posted at the rear doors of the lobby. She turned away from those and looked down at her phone as though checking a text message.

She walked to the back of the lobby and tried to think of a way in. She needed to find an answer quickly. None of the people there paid her any attention now, but she couldn’t just wander around aimlessly and expect to be ignored forever.

She needed a distraction. One presented itself in the form of a young man in an immaculate white suit walking among the politicians with glasses of champagne.

Sorry kid.

She walked up behind him, and when no one was looking, shoved him hard in the back. He cried out and fell directly into the President of France, knocking the venerable woman to the ground and sending champagne and crystals flying all over the other leaders and their entourages.

While everyone’s eyes were on the mess, Lara quickly retreated to the side of the room. The security officers immediately left their posts, drawing handguns and barking commands at the confused, frightened young man. Lara had almost certainly gotten him fired. She didn’t feel great about that, but she had the fate of the world to think about. Besides, he was young. He’d bounce back. And he’d have one hell of a story to tell his kids one day.

She slipped through the doors into the conference room. A man was bent over a speaker, fiddling with some settings. Her heart skipped a beat. She reached for her gun, but when the man stood and turned around, she could see that he wasn't one of the Architects, and the speaker was a very normal speaker, not one of the weapons Crawford was using.

The man smiled at her and said in French. “I heard a commotion out there. Is everything all right, officer?”

“Fine,” she replied. “It looks like a serving boy tripped and knocked over the President of France.”

The man winced. “Oof. Poor boy. No chance he keeps his job after that.”

She shrugged. “The hard lessons of life.”

He shook his head. “Well, I suppose he’ll have a story to tell his children one day.”

She smiled at him. “Exactly what I was thinking. How are we looking in here?”

He nodded approvingly. “All set. The speakers kept wanting to whine, but I reduced the gain and softened the amplification a little. Should come through clear as a bell.”

“Wonderful.” She looked around for any sign of the device. “You can leave if you’re finished. “I just need to do a quick security sweep of the room, and then we’ll be good to bring the leaders in.”

“Of course, officer. Thank you for your service.”

You have no idea.

When he opened the door to leave, shouting and arguing drifted through. The great champagne disaster was still raging.

Lara looked carefully over the conference room. There were seventy seats in the room, arranged in staggered rows behind university-style desks that hid computer towers. Lara quickly looked in each tower but found no device.

That ate up four minutes already. Lara was beginning to get antsy. She looked at the speakers but found no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Ditto the lights.

So it wasn’t in here. Let’s see. If they were going to use a sound device to impact the conference room without putting it in the conference room, the best place for it would be…

Would be right behind her in the room she’d just left in turmoil. She kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier. The device had to be in the lobby.

She cracked open the door to the lobby. The President of France was shouting indignantly at a white-faced man in a suit who Lara guessed was the poor young man’s superior. As for the young man himself, he was in handcuffs, zealously guarded by four guards who kept their rifles trained steadily on him.

Good job, boys, she thought drily. You got him.

She looked around the room, eyes noting and cataloguing everything. None of those things was the device.

Then she saw it. It hung from the ceiling pointed so that the “microphone” head was aimed at the conference room. No attempt was made to camouflage or disguise it. It was just right there in plain view.

She supposed it did look a little like a camera. That might explain why no pains were taken to disguise it.

Okay, so she'd found it. Now, she needed to figure out how to reach it. It wasn't particularly high off of the ground, maybe ten feet or so, but she didn't think that taking a flying leap off of the floor and landing in the middle of a bunch of world leaders was a smart play right now.

“Hey!”

Her eyes snapped toward the voice to see Captain Niems glaring at her from the doorway through which she’d entered the lobby earlier. A huge welt rose from his left temple, and his eyes flamed with anger.

Well, smart or not, it was now the only play. She sprinted forward, ignoring the exclamations of shock and fear coming from the leaders ahead of her. Pierre’s eyes widened in surprise. He shouted for her to stop, and he and his team ran to intercept her.

They wouldn’t reach her in time. She leaped into the air at just the right moment, just getting her hands around the device. Her weight pulled it free of its mount, and she and the device crashed heavily to the floor.

She saw no timer on the device, but she saw a wire tied to a trigger on the device. The wire had sheared off when she pulled the device from the ceiling. Apparently, there was a mechanism which would pull that wire when Crawford was ready to deploy the device.

“Hey!” Pierre shouted.

He hauled her to her feet, but before he could arrest her, she twisted free and ran away again. She led the security officers back into the service corridor, leading them away from the world leaders. She didn’t want to demonstrate what she was about to demonstrate close enough to risk affecting them.

A rubber bullet slammed into her back. She stumbled and winced, and another one caught the back of her thigh. She rolled her eyes and decided this was far enough.

She turned around, planted her feet and aimed the device at them. The security officers came to a halt. Pierre looked at her, confused. “You’re aiming a camera at me?”

“Nope.”

She pulled the trigger. The guards reacted instantly. All of them gasped and pressed their hands to their temples. They breathed heavily, and their eyes grew wild.

“Oh, you bitch,” Pierre growled. “I can’t wait to get my hands on you. I’m going to rip your fucking eyeballs out of your head!”

“We should shoot her,” another officer said. “We should…” He winced and pressed his palms against his eyes. “Aaah! Fucking kill her! Slit her throat! Choke her!”

Lara switched the device off. The officers gasped and sank to their knees. Pierre stared ahead in shock, then lifted his eyes to Lara. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God. It’s real.”

“I told you,” she replied. “Now imagine the leaders of NATO as angry and violent as you just were.”

Pierre’s hands trembled. He reached for his radio and said in a wavery voice. “Cancel the Order Eight. I have one in… We’ll just say I have one in custody for now. I’ll update you more after… when I can.”

He put the radio away and said, “Okay, Agent King. I stand corrected. It looks like you’ve saved the world. Come with me. I’ll take you back to your partner, and then we’ll all go to the situation room. You two will be permitted to address this find as you see fit. I will have to focus on keeping the leaders safe, but… my God. I can’t believe it’s real.”

They headed back to the room where Thomas was still being held. When he saw Lara enter with the device, his eyes widened. “You found it! Good show! Bloody good show!”

She smiled. “Yep. I found it.”

As she said that, though, she felt a nagging doubt in her mind. She had found it, but was it really over? It seemed too easy. If there was one lesson experience had taught her, it was that assignments like this one were never easy.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Pam chuckled when she saw Agent King leap into the air and tear the device from the ceiling. “It’s like watching a cartoon.”

“She got it, thought,” Wayne said, clearly impressed. “I wouldn’t have given her a shot after security caught them.”

The Architects sat in a van parked three miles from the summit in a parking garage for the Independence Hotel. They would remain here until it was time to trigger the devices, then remain long enough to ensure that they worked. Then, they would leave Belgium and return to the United States for the third phase of their plan.

“She’s not like other agents,” James said. “Agent Ridley had no chance, and he knew it. That’s why he made no attempt to follow. But Agent King is special.”

The other three glanced at each other. Then Olivia asked. “Is she your daughter or something?”

James laughed heartily at that. It was a sound the others hadn’t heard before. They shared an uncomfortable look as James wiped a tear from his eye.

“No, she’s not my daughter. I knew her parents, though. Brilliant, both of them. Naïve too. It’s really fascinating how often brilliance and naivete coincide. Much like bravery and foolishness or cowardice and cunning. It’s as though every extreme trait must carry with it the shadow of its opposite. Perhaps Newton’s third law is applicable in spaces other than physics. In any case, Agent King is the culmination of the CIA’s greatest work. I had the privilege of taking part in a small amount of that work. This was back when I believed the CIA’s mission, of course.”

He tapped the monitor to show the leaders slowly filing into the conference room now. The other three looked relieved that he didn’t finish his story. Or maybe they were as excited as he was to finally tip the scale toward chaos.

The other devices were semi-recessed into the ceiling throughout the entire building, not left visible like the bait device in the lobby. Pam had obtained IDs for herself and Wayne, and they were able to install the devices the night before. No one would suspect them to be anything other than security cameras. Not until it was too late.

The world leaders took their seats in the conference room, and the meeting began.

“When do you want to trigger them?” Wayne asked.

"When NATO takes the vote on China," Crawford replied. "They have some ceremonial bullshit to get through. Then, they'll be talking about how to respond to China's threat to blockade Taipei. We want to trigger the device right when the President of the United States starts to speak."

The agents fell silent as the meeting came to order. The ceremonial introductions concluded, and the secretary read the minutes from the last meeting.

“Should we be worried about her?” Pam asked softly. “Agent King?”

“No. She’s a weapon, easily the most dangerous weapon in the CIA’s arsenal. But she’s not especially intelligent. That wasn’t her purpose. She was meant to be an assassin. Frankly, the fact that the CIA’s using her for this sort of assignment tells me they’ve become desperate.”

“They’ve always been desperate,” Wayne scoffed. “Anytime anyone frowns at leadership, they drop to their knees and beg for permission to lick the boots of the person who frowned at them. They’ve never had backbone.”

“Okay, Pastor Mickelson,” Olivia teased.

“Both of you, enough,” James scolded. “Focus. We’re on the verge of the most important act of our lives.”

The two of them fell silent, but Pam still looked worried. “If she’s as dangerous as you say she is, then she will pose a serious threat if she figures out who we are.”

“What are you asking?”

“I’m asking for permission to send Wayne after her.”

Absolutely not,” James replied. “We’re not going closer to that campus.”

“He wouldn’t have to get very close. Just close enough to use his rifle.”

“He’d half to be within one mile at the very extreme. More likely a half mile. From that distance, at least one camera or sensor will pick him up. If they follow him back to us, we might as well scrap the entire plan.”

“If she’s this dangerous, then we need to be proactive,” Pam insisted.

“Because she’s this dangerous, we can’t risk getting close,” James countered. “Relax. We have a good plan that’s working exactly the way we thought it would. We’ll be fine.”

Pam took a deep breath and didn’t bother with a reply. She had a tendency to think of every possible thing that could go wrong and want to plan a contingency for every one of those things. James valued her caution as well as her ability to find solutions, but this was one of those times where his experience outstripped hers. The best thing to do was to remain invisible.

The minutes were finished, and now the secretary was reading the agenda for the meeting. A hush fell over the crew when they heard, “address the evolving threat of China’s encroachment on international waters.”

That was item four on the list. There was no accurate way to predict how long it would take the egos of thirty-two world leaders to make it to item four, but they had a semi-official countdown now.

James took a deep breath to steady his nerves. This was it. If he could accomplish this, then he would have laid the groundwork for his revenge.

And when his revenge was assured, he could then accomplish the greatest feat in the history of humanity and unite the species under his rule.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

“Yes, ma’am,” Ridley said to Deputy Director Carmichael. “The meeting is taking place now. The leaders were told that the interruption was due to a disgruntled security guard who attempted to sabotage the meet to protest her pay. She’s been taken into custody, and the President of France has been assured that her suit will be replaced.”

They were in the main security office now. Lara sat at a desk with Captain Niems and a few other security officers watching the monitors. The central one depicted the conference room where the summit was now in full swing.

“They’re not canceling the meeting?”

Thomas sighed. “Captain Niems suggested that, but his superiors overruled them. After the recent unrest, they don’t want to risk news breaking out of another attempted terrorist attack.”

Carmichael sighed. “Jesus. What a bunch of idiots. At least you guys found the device.”

Thomas nodded. “That’s true.”

A nagging doubt tugged at his mind, though. They knew that James was building more devices. Thomas didn’t think that they could have built more quickly enough to use them today, but if he was wrong, then it was possible there were other weapons in the building that could pose a threat to the meeting. They had scoured the building for the devices and not seen anything, but if they had missed any of them somehow, then this would all be for nothing.

“So they hung the device in the lobby right in front of everyone, huh?” Carmichael asked.

“Yes,” Thomas confirmed. “And it nearly worked. Lara tells me she didn’t even find it right away.”

“Damn. I would never have suspected James Crawford of hiding in plain sight.”

“I suppose the old wolf still had some fangs.”

“Well, let’s be grateful he didn’t bite anyone too badly. For now, I want you two to stick around just in case Crawford realizes his ace in the hole didn’t work and he tries a more conventional attack.”

“Will do.”

He hung up and returned to Lara’s side. “Anything suspicious?”

She shook her head. “No, not yet.”

Her tone caught his attention. “Is everything all right?”

She took a deep breath and released it in a huff. "So far, yes. That's the problem."

“Finding the device and disarming it was too easy,” Lara said. “It should have been more difficult.”

Thomas met her eyes. “You think they planted more devices?”

She bit her lip. "I don't know. It just feels like they'd do better than suspending it from a cord and using a timer to pull a wire to activate the device."

“Well, they were on a tight schedule.”

“They were also building multiple devices. I know we decided it was more likely they would use them on multiple targets, but what if they made more already and they’re using all of them here?”

"It's possible," Thomas replied. "But I find it highly unlikely. We would have seen them if they were here. Besides, getting one device planted is hard enough. Getting multiple devices planted with the exceptionally short timeframe in which our terrorists were operating is a task that I believe is insurmountable. What I think we need to do is figure out every person who was inside of this facility early this morning. The Architects were probably able to obtain IDs somehow, and that's how they got inside. We might be able to find them by looking at those IDs and security footage."

Lara nodded again. Then she took a deep breath. “All right. You’re probably right. I just get nervous when there’s no jack-in-the-box waiting to pop up and surprise me.”

He laughed. “Well, considering the state of this jack-in-the-box, I’d say his popping up and surprising days are over.” He led Lara to the table where the sound therapy device turned terrorist weapon sat, stripped apart. “It’s really a quite sophisticated device,” he said. “It uses multiple magnets to fine tune and amplify sound, a diaphragm speaker to generate the sound, and an amplifier constructed of filaments of some exotic metal. I can’t tell which, but it looks very expensive. What’s truly impressive is the oscillator. It’s able to generate eleven thousand different sound frequencies per second. I wonder if they knew that? The terrorists, I mean.”

"I'm sure Emma walked them through the capability of the device," Lara said. "It is crazy to think though how one little piece of equipment like this could be so dangerous to the entire world."

“Well, in the scheme of things, a nuclear weapon isn’t so large either. W80 warheads only weigh about three hundred pounds, but they can generate a blast ten times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.”

“Gee, thank you for that comparison,” Lara said drily. “If there’s one thing I wanted to be reminded of now, it’s how easy it is to transport nuclear weapons.”

“Well, we’ve dealt with those already,” Thomas said. “I’m only pointing out how much I’d rather deal with sound devices than nuclear weapons.”

She met his eyes. “Did you forget that this sound device caused the Combatant Commanders to call for nuclear war on China?”

He frowned. “Right.”

She bit her lip again. “I just feel like we’re missing something. I know I sound paranoid, but it just feels too easy.”

Thomas weighed that response. He didn’t like the conclusion he came to.

“In my experience, Lara, you are rarely paranoid. If you believe we’re missing something—even if it’s only a hunch—then it’s likely that we are, in fact, missing something.”

She sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” She met his eyes. “But we looked everywhere. That’s another frustrating thing. I feel like we did everything we could do. If I’m right, and this was too easy, and we are missing something, then I’m very afraid that we won’t know what we’re missing until it’s too late.”

“There’s no such thing as too late,” Thomas replied. “As long as we’re alive, we can fight, and as long as we can fight, we can win.”

She rolled her eyes. “As inspiring as that is, I’d rather win before the nuclear war starts, not after.”

“What if we look for the frequency?” Thomas suggested. “We know what it looks like now. What if we scan for it and identify every location where we see it?”

“Then we won’t see any other devices until it’s too late.”

“But perhaps we can address the problem quickly when it occurs. As soon as we detect the signals, we send teams to disable the devices. Perhaps the meeting suffers for a few minutes but is quickly protected.”

Lara cocked her head. “That’s not a bad idea. All right. Let’s talk to security. Captain!”

Pierre turned away from the monitor. “Yes?”

“We want to scan for the sound device’s signature in case we missed some of the devices.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Pierre asked.

“Call it an overabundance of caution.”

Pierre sighed. “Merde. Why can’t they just fight us with guns and dirty bombs like self-respecting terrorists? All right. We have limited scanning ability for sound signatures. We won’t be able to pick up the lighter signals, but we should be able to detect the carrier wave.”

“That’s perfect,” Lara said. “How do we set that up?”

“Give me five minutes, and I’ll have everything in place.”

He got to his feet and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, presumably to call another security office. Lara and Thomas turned their attention to the monitor. The audio was soft but loud enough that they could understand what was being said within the room.

“We now come to the primary topic of today’s summit.” That was the U.S. President speaking. “It’s no surprise to anyone that China has become increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea.”

“Before we get too deeply into this discussion,” the President of Estonia interrupted, “I just have to ask: why is this a NATO concern?”

“Several member nations ship goods to and from the South China Sea,” the U.S. President replied.

“Yes, so do many nations worldwide. It’s my understanding, though, that China isn’t asking to restrict all trade. They’re merely imposing tariffs and asking that we not send military vessels through their waters.”

The President frowned. “The entire South China Sea is not Chinese waters.”

The President of Bulgaria chimed in. “True. And I’m not suggesting that they be allowed to bully the rest of the world, but is this really a NATO problem?”

The President of France offered her two cents. “NATO can no longer afford to wash her hands of things that aren’t ‘NATO’ problems. We have only to look at Ukraine to look at how damaging our choice to blind ourselves to the global political sphere has been. Ukraine is not a ‘NATO’ problem, but I think we would all agree that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very much a security problem for many of our members.”

The debate continued to rage, but in a very cordial fashion. Opinions were strong on both sides, but there was no anger, no violence, no sign that anything out of the ordinary was occurring. Thomas began to relax. He glanced at Lara and saw her own tension fading. She even gave him a nervous smile. “I guess I was just paranoid after all.”

“Happens to the best…”

Thomas’s voice trailed off as a stabbing pain shot through the backs of his eyes. He grimaced and rubbed his temples.

“Thomas?” Lara wasn’t smiling anymore. “Thomas, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I just… I must have hit my head when we were moving through those tunnels or…”

Another pain ripped through him. He cried out and pressed both palms to his eyes. When the pain receded, he felt a surge of irritation.

“Bloody wonderful. Now I’ve got a sodding concussion, and I’m going to be dealing with this bullshit pain until…”

The blood drained from his face. He looked at Lara and saw a similarly frightened expression. “Oh hell,” he whispered.

“Merde!”

Thomas turned toward the back of the room to see Pierre gritting his teeth and stumbling around the table where the device was held. With an oath, the captain flipped the table, sending pieces scattering. In French, he shouted, “Whoreson piece of crap!”

Thomas looked at the monitor and saw several world leaders rubbing their temples or rocking back and forth in their seats. The security guards watching the footage were groaning and cursing and shaking their heads.

Another chill ran through him. He looked at the other security monitors. All throughout the building, people were showing similar signs of distress.

He looked back at Lara and saw the same realization in her eyes.

They were attacking the whole building.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The President of the United States rubbed his temples and groaned as the President of Estonia once more asked, “Again, how is this a NATO problem?”

“Hey, Kaja. Is the U.S. in NATO?”

The Estonian President frowned. “We’re in NATO too, asshole. You don’t get to decide policy for the whole world.”

The U.S. President threw his hands into the air. “You’re right. My bad. That’s China.”

“Jesus Christ, why are you always so dramatic when it comes to China?” the Bulgarian President replied. “What the hell have they done? ‘Oh, they’re going to conquer Taiwan.’ Nope, never did that. ‘They’re threatening our shipping!’ Nope. You two are still in bed when it comes to trade, happily humping away.”

“They’re trying to move in on us!” the U.S. thundered.

“Oh no,” the British Prime Minister mocked. “You mean… you might not be the king of the hill anymore?”

“Yeah, try to think about a world run by China instead.” The U.S. President rubbed his temples again. “God, my head hurts.”

“My head hurts too,” the President of Italy said, also rubbing his temples. “You’re not special.”

“Look, you can be pissy at the U.S. for being bigger and stronger, or you could realize that China is a threat to more than just the U.S.,” the President of France said. “The U.S. President is a pompous asshole, but he’s right. We need to do something about China before they show up with a smile and a gun and say, ‘Guess what? You all speak Mandarin now. All hail the Supreme Leader.’”

“That’s North Korea, dumbkopf,” the German President said.

France flipped her hand. “Whatever. Same difference.”

The Prime Minister of Canada gasped. “You racist bitch!”

“Same politics, idiot!”

“Oh, so you’re just stupid?” Germany fired back.

This is wrong, the U.S. President thought. This is so wrong. We’re hurling playground insults like children. God, why does my head hurt so much?

The other leaders hurled insult after insult. Someone called the President of Bulgaria a “diva hired only for her tits and hips,” and the aforementioned lady got to her feet and offered to “show anyone who wants to try her what a real beating feels like.”

"You guys realize you all look stupid, right?" the U.S. President said. "Like, you all realize that, right? It's important to me that you all understand how completely idiotic you all look right now."

"Well, excuse us for not falling right in line!" Estonia snapped. "Should we be lining up to kiss your ass and begging for permission to be the first to remind the world how much better the United States is than all of us?"

U.S. grinned. “No need. We remind all of you every day.”

“Fuck it,” the President of Finland said. “Let’s just go to war.”

“Of course you would want to go to war,” the Prime Minister of Sweden said, rolling her eyes. “Because what better solution to unrest than to kill a bunch of people?”

“Of course not. Let’s just sit on our asses and do nothing,” the President of Finland retorted.

“He’s right,” the President of the U.S. said. “We need to go to war. China’s been getting away with acting like they’re the big dogs for far too long. They’re not. They’re the small pups. We’re the big dogs. Us. NATO. They can’t throw their weight around and expect to get away with it.”

“So what?” the Prime Minister of the U.K. retorted. “We just lob a few nukes at ‘em and wash our hands like Pontius bloody Pilate?”

“Sure,” the President of France said. “Why not? That would send a message. Maybe when we’re done with China, we send a few to Putin.”

“You’re insane!” the President of Estonia thundered. The effort caused him to moan and lift a shaking hand to his head. “You’ll kill us all!”

The U.S. President laughed. “Screw that. We’ll kill those Chinamen. Burn ‘em all up. Let’s see how they feel after that. Won’t be so high and mighty anymore.”

Deep inside, another voice screamed in his head to stop talking like this now. It was dangerous. It was wrong. It could… It could… Jesus, his head was killing him.

And here was the coward of cowards, the President of Estonia again. "You fools! You will cause the world to erupt in nuclear flames! You will doom all of us!"

“Oh for God’s sake,” the Prime Minister of Canada said, “Did you watch some TikTok video and decide peace and love was the only answer?”

“I’m pretty sure a nuclear holocaust isn’t the answer,” the President of Bulgaria retorted.

“Not for us,” the President of the U.S. insisted. “For them.”

“You sodding idiot,” the U.K. Prime Minister snapped. “You’ve gone stark mad. Listen to you. What’s next? Mexico imposes a tariff, and you send the Marines over the border.”

“I’d send the Air Force,” the U.S. President replied. “See how they feel after we finish what that earthquake started in Mexico City.”

***

James Crawford smiled as the meeting grew more and more heated and chaotic. The devices still weren’t perfect. There was too much physiological pain, and the subliminal messaging was having difficulty getting through to everyone as a result, but it was a much better showing than what they’d gotten at the Pentagon. There were arguments against war, but James could tell that once the conversation got going, those arguments would be overwhelmed.

His war was going to start. Chaos was going to take over. He was going to step into the power vacuum left behind and manipulate the figureheads to remake the world in his image.

“Seen enough?” Pam asked.

He shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

She frowned. “The sabotage is clearly working. We should leave before they search the area and discover us.”

“Just a while longer. Until they cast the vote.”

Pam pursed her lips but didn’t argue further. James watched the screen, his grin widening as the nations of NATO spiraled closer and closer to their doom.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Lara felt a dull ache in the back of her head, but when Thomas cried out and pressed his palms to her eyes, she realized that the sound waves weren’t affecting her the same way. She could feel them, and she could even feel a touch of irritability, but this wasn’t screwing with her the way it seemed to be screwing with the others. Maybe Project Phantasma had given her resistance to this kind of thing.

“You!” Pierre thundered. She turned to see him steadying himself with one hand on the table while pointing the other hand at her. “You brought this to us! You stupid fucking Americans! Always it’s you and your problems! Always it’s some American madman somewhere trying to… to throw us into chaos.”

“Will you shut your bloody trap?” Thomas snapped back. “We’ve been trying to stop this. You’re the ones who wouldn’t listen when we warned you and then trapped us in a room when we could have been looking for the other devices.”

“Listen!” Lara interjected. “The whole building is covered in them! We need to evacuate. We need to get everyone out of here now!”

“Bullshit!” Pierre snapped. “Look at where listening to you has got us.”

“You weren’t listening to us!” Thomas snapped. “That’s why we’re in this position!”

“Focus!” Lara shouted. “I know it’s hard, but we need to get the leaders out of here now!”

“No!” Pierre thundered. “You’re under arrest! Both of you. I should have known. I should have known that you… you… fools would. God.”

He swayed and ground his palms into his eyes. Lara looked at the security footage and saw fights breaking out in different rooms. In the conference room, the world leaders were shouting at each other. No blows had been thrown yet, but they looked like they were getting close to that point.

“Guys, please!” she cried. “We need to act quickly! They’re going to start fighting each other!”

“Let them fight,” Thomas said irritably. “They always act like they’re better than everyone else. Maybe this will show the world what happens when you let your leaders act like children. They can all go to hell. They can all go sod off straight to hell.”

“Thomas, focus,” she said sternly. “The device is affecting you.”

“It’s affecting everyone, you bloody idiot!” he snapped.

“It’s not affecting me. Not as much. I can stay in control for a while.”

“Well, good for you. The CIA’s nepo-baby. The girl wonder they turned into a superweapon. Let’s all just do what you say.”

“Arrest them!” Pierre shouted. “Get them!”

“Come try to arrest me,” Thomas said menacingly. “See what happens when I don’t play nice just because you’re an ‘ally.’”

“No!” Lara cried. “Listen. Please…”

One of the security guards approached Thomas. Thomas buried a vicious blow in the man’s midsection and cheered when the man dropped to the ground. “Whoo! Ha! I told you!”

Her heart sank. She wasn’t going to convince them. She wasn’t going to win any arguments. They were already too far gone.

She needed to leave and hope she could save them.

But how? She didn’t know where the devices were.

A fist sailed toward her face. She ducked instinctively and swept her attacker’s legs. Pierre fell heavily to the ground a moment later, crying out when he landed on his shoulder. “Oh, you bitch! You bloody bitch!”

Lara got to her feet just in time to see Thomas drop two more security guards. She couldn’t leave him here. If he drew his weapon or someone else drew theirs, this could become a far worse situation.

She needed to get him away from the influence of these devices. They were targeting the NATO summit building, but if they could get back into those evacuation tunnels and escape to the ditch, then they would be out of the way. She just needed him to follow her.

She went for a desperate tactic. Hell, every tactic she had right now was desperate. “Hey, Thomas. You want to stop acting like a little bitch and have a real challenge?”

Thomas turned toward her. His eyes rolled in his head, and his breath came in shallow gasps. He grinned and replied, “It would give me great pleasure to remind you that you don’t need to be born in a vat to have great power.”

She had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but Thomas charged her an instant later, which was actually the plan.

She ran from the room, Thomas hot on her heels. Behind them, she heard Pierre call out, “After them! Stop them! Kill them, God damn it!”

That was accentuated by gunfire. For a split second, the sound seemed close enough that she was afraid Thomas was shooting at her. When she looked around, though, his hands were empty.

“I won’t need a gun to hurt you!” he assured her. “Stop running, you bitch! Aaggh!”

He shook his head and stumbled slightly. Lara retraced their steps to the service corridor and looked for the entry to the evacuation tunnel. “What’s the matter?” she called back to Thomas. “You never learned how to run?”

A roar told her that her message had been well-received. She picked up the pace but made sure not to outrun her partner as she rushed into the maintenance closet that disguised the entrance to the evacuation tunnel.

She heard fabric tearing and looked over her shoulder to see Thomas wrestling with a yellow maintenance coverall that had fallen on him when he knocked into a shelf. “Bloody… sodding… Go to hell!”

He grabbed bunches of the fabric in his hands and, with a grunt, tore the uniform in half. That was actually pretty impressive. And concerning. Lara wondered if Crawford was aware that one of the side effects of the sound device was to increase adrenaline production. If an actual fight did break out, the world leaders might start assassinating each other.

Which would cause chaos too, actually. Any way you looked at it, this worked in Crawford’s favor.

Something sailed past her head. A chunk of the fabric.

“I’m coming for you!” Thomas growled.

Lara resisted the urge to laugh. This was a serious situation, of course, but when Thomas woke up and realized what he’d been doing, he’d be mortified. She would have to be careful not to tease him too much. Well, not until they were finished saving the world, at least.

She reached the main evacuation tunnel and looked back to confirm that Thomas was still following her. He was, and now he was frowning petulantly at her. “Why are you still running? I thought you wanted to fight me.”

“You have to catch me first,” she called back.

“Why? You arsehole.” He splashed into a puddle and cried out as the filthy water splashed over his pants. “Oh, bloody hell! Oh you whore! You bitch!”

That would have been comical enough if he’d been yelling at her, but her grown man partner was instead looking down at the water with his hands balled into fists and calling a stagnant puddle a whore and a bitch.

She suppressed another laugh as she came to a stop. “Hey, Thomas,” she called back. “Has anyone ever told you you’re slow as hell?”

“Piss off,” he said.

He rubbed his temples and groaned. “God. This is the worst headache.”

He didn’t seem so aggressive anymore. After his outburst to the puddle, he seemed more irritated than angry.

It was working. They were outside of the campus now.

“Thomas, follow me.”

“What?” He shook his head. “Can we walk, at least?”

“No. There’s an attack at NATO headquarters. We need to hurry. Please trust me.”

“Oh, go to hell!” he cried back.

“Make me.”

His eyes narrowed. He growled and ran after her. Apparently, he still had a little anger in the tank.

They kept that pace for another five hundred yards or so. Then Thomas called, “Stop! Hold on!”

She came to a halt and looked back at him. He stood still, blinking and flexing his fingers. “Why are we running?” he asked. “Am I chasing you?”

That was interesting. Amnesia hadn’t been a symptom before. Maybe that was a new side effect after adjusting the devices. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I remember we were in the security room. Then my head started hurting, and I just was so angry. Then Pierre sent officers after me, and I wanted to fight them. I wanted to fight you. And then you started taunting me…” His eyes widened. “I see what you did. You needed me to leave the sphere of influence of the sound devices, so you goaded me into following you.”

“Pretty much.”

He grinned at her. “That’s clever.”

“I’ve been known to be clever sometimes.”

He laughed. “Well done.” He groaned and rubbed his head.

“Still feeling it?”

“Just a mild headache. No urge to beat you up or tear maintenance uniforms in half. Are you all right? Were you unaffected?”

“A mild headache is as bad as it got for me.” She grinned. “One of my CIA nepo-baby powers.”

He groaned. “Did I actually say that?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He grimaced. “Well, don’t hold it against me, all right? I was under the influence.”

“I’ll be as gentle as I can when I hold this against you for the rest of your life,” she promised. “But we need to focus on putting a stop to this now. Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

They resumed their journey, jogging alongside each other. “Can we put a stop to this?” Thomas asked. “I feel like it’s already too late.”

“We have to try. We don’t know what the situation is in the conference room. We might still have time to keep things from going too far.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I was thinking about it as I was running,” Lara replied. “We couldn’t find the devices, and we couldn’t stop them. But something had to trigger them, right?”

“Yes, a remote signal from the Architects.”

“Exactly. If we can find the source of that signal and stop it or reverse it, then maybe we can shut the devices down remotely. You got to your senses pretty quickly after you were outside of the devices’ influence. Maybe we can bring NATO’s leaders back to their senses just as quickly and salvage these talks, or at least head off disaster.”

Thomas nodded. “Good idea. I’ll call Kayden.”

“Call him on the run. We’re running out of time.”

Kayden answered right away. “Thomas! Thank God. I tried calling you after I detected the signal, but the devices are interfering with communications.”

“You found the signal?” Lara said. “Can you tell us where it’s coming from?”

“There’s a hotel three miles west of the campus,” Kayden replied. “The command signal originated from a parking garage attached to that hotel.”

“That’s not too far away?” Thomas asked.

“Think, Thomas. I didn’t say the sound attack came from the hotel, just the command signal. The parking garage is too far away for the devices to work remotely, but not too far away for a weak triggering signal to reach the devices themselves. Hell, a handheld radio could send that signal from five miles away.”

“Kayden, I know I say it a lot, but you’re a genius,” Lara replied. “Thank you.”

“Thank me by stopping these assholes. Then thank me again by getting me something really nice for my birthday. Then maybe thank me even more by dropping Pavel over a cliff or something.”

“I can promise two out of three,” Lara said.

“Fine. At least tell him to stop glaring at me just because I locked him out of my apartment so I could eat dinner without hearing him chew.”

"You locked him out of your room again?"

“Perhaps we can save this conversation for later,” Thomas suggested.

Lara sighed. “Kayden, let him into your room. Enough of this. I don’t want you in any more trouble.”

“Ugh! Fine! God, why do you have to be on their side?”

“I’m not on their side! I’m on your side.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Lara!” Thomas interrupted.

Lara sighed again. “We’ll talk about this later. Just please behave, okay? For me.”

Kayden was quiet for a moment. “Fine. For you, I’ll behave.”

“Thank you. Love you, kiddo.”

“Love you too.”

Lara hung up just as she and Thomas reached the ditch and stepped out into sunlight. Their car waited at the top of the ditch, and the two of them scrambled up the side of the ditch and jumped inside.

“Okay,” Thomas said. “So we’re looking for a hotel.”

Lara looked west, and her eyes settled on a nearby high-rise hotel with an attached parking garage. “There!”

Thomas looked up and pumped his fist. “Wonderful.”

The two of them jumped into the Peugeot. Thomas gunned the motor, and the car leaped forward. “We’ll reach it in five minutes.”

“Make it three.”

“Roger that.”

The sedan accelerated, and the hotel approached with maddening slowness. Lara looked back toward the NATO campus and hoped they weren’t already too late.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“Call me sugar tits again!” the Bulgarian President thundered. “Do it!”

The Estonian President groaned and rubbed his temples with one hand while the other rubbed his jaw.

“Yeah! That’s what I thought.” The Bulgarian President moaned and rubbed her own temples before muttering something in her own language.

“Got that out of your system, dipshits?” the U.S. President said contemptuously. “Good. Then let’s take a vote. All in favor of blasting China back to the stone age, say ‘I have basic intelligence.’ All those opposed say, ‘I believe Communists should rule the world.’”

“Like you’re any less an imperialist than they are,” the Prime Minister of the U.K. retorted.

The President of France scoffed. “You’re one to talk. Tell me, which of the nations represented here once controlled a quarter of the world’s landmass?”

“Yes, you never were quite able to catch up, were you?” the Prime Minister quipped. “Enough!” the President of the U.S. thundered. “We’re forgetting who the enemy is! China is threatening the security of the planet. China is trying to bully us out of Pacific waters. China is threatening our allies. Their military is modernizing and expanding, and they’re going to become the worst thing since the U.S.S.R. if we let them. History lesson for all of you: we were warned about the U.S.S.R. too, and we didn’t listen. We were warned about the Third Reich, and we didn’t listen. Let’s break the cycle and kill this snake before it gets too big and too strong. All in favor of the obvious correct choice, say war. All in favor of cowering and covering our eyes and ears until their people get bombed by Beijing, say cowardice.”

The majority of those present called firmly, “War!”

A few nations still held out, though.

“So peace is cowardice now?” the Prime Minister of Sweden said. “Since when?”

“Since the U.S. wanted permission to wage its war on China,” the President of Estonia said irritably. “This has nothing to do with NATO. It has nothing to do with allies in the Pacific, either of NATO or of only the U.S. They just want to be the top dog forever, so they want to destroy China. That’s all. This is just the very thin excuse they’ve come up with. Don’t let them suck all of you into this. It’s their war. Let them fight it.”

“So Estonia chooses cowardice,” the President of Bulgaria sneered.

“I thought you were on my side!” the President of Estonia protested.

“I was until you called me sugar tits.”

“This is pointless,” the U.S. President interjected. “We have the votes. Mr. Secretary, certify them.”

The secretary slowly lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hands shook. He reached for his microphone and said in a hoarse voice, “We will now vote on the resolution to authorize military action against the People’s Republic of China.”

***

James leaned forward, his mouth spread in a grin. This was it. This was everything they’d been waiting for. In a few minutes, his ascent to power would finally be set in motion. The world would plunge into chaos, and he would be waiting to lift it from the ashes and create something new.

“All in favor of military action say… say… Merde. What the hell are we doing?”

James frowned. The NATO secretary was standing in front of his microphone, eyes wide in disbelief. He was no longer shaking.

“Jesus Christ,” the U.S. President said. “What the hell was that?”

“I believe we were about to start a war with China,” the Prime Minister of the U.K. said. His pale face belied his calm tone.

“What the hell is going on?” James said. “Why are they recovering? Did we lose the signal?”

“Shit,” Pam swore. Her fingers flew over the keyboard of the laptop from which she was monitoring the sound devices. “Yes, it looks like we did.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know,” Pam said. “My instruments picked up a power surge. It didn’t seem dangerous, but it looks like It shorted everything out.”

“Can you bring it back?”

“I’m trying, but… shit. It looks like everything’s fried.”

“How is everything fried? This makes no sense!”

James looked at the screen and watched in impotent rage as the NATO leaders apologized for their behavior and quickly agreed to end discussion for today and reconvene tomorrow pending clean physicals from their personal physicians.

“What happened? Who did this?”

“I’m trying to trace the signal,” Pam said, “but it looks like it was sent through a VPN.”

“A power surge was sent through a VPN?”

“Well, I don’t know, James!” Pam snapped. “I just said that’s what it looks like.”

“Fix it!” James shouted. “We can’t afford to—”

“James!” Wayne interrupted. “Look!”

Wayne was pointing at the entrance to the fifth floor of the parking garage. James followed his gesture.

And found himself staring into the face of the little girl he’d known all of those years ago.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Pierre groaned and passed a shaky hand over his eyes. He blinked and got back to his feet, trying to remember what had happened.

He was talking to the Americans about something. He couldn't remember what it was. Then, they had seen the meeting devolve into chaos. Leaders were rubbing their heads and shouting at each other. Then his own head had started throbbing, and he couldn't remember much after that. Had he started fighting?

He looked around the security office and saw his other officers in various stages of recovery. Some leaned against walls and desks, breathing heavily. A few sat in their chairs and stared at the monitors, confused.

It hit Pierre what had happened to them. The terrorists must have had more devices in the building, and they had attacked while their guards were let down.

He started to remember after that. He had yelled at the Americans and blamed them for the state of affairs. He had tried to arrest them, but then the man—the one who sometimes sounded American and sometimes sounded English—had fought them. He had knocked out two of Pierre’s officers. Pierre had tried to grab the woman, but then she kicked his feet out from under him. Then she had baited her partner into chasing her out of the room.

Probably to lead him away from the devices so they could work to stop the terrorists. Which they appear to have done.

He jumped when a voice sounded over the room’s public address. “Captain Pierre Niems. I have disabled the sound devices the Architects used to manipulate NATO’s leaders. That should be the end of this, but just in case the Architects have armed forces waiting as a backup, you should grab the bigwigs and skedaddle.”

Pierre blinked in confusion. The voice coming out of the speaker was altered to sound deep and robotic, but the words sounded like they came from the mouth of a child. And who were the Architects?

“Dude, seriously,” the voice said. “Move. Are you stupid?”

Pierre blinked again, then replied. “I’ll get right on that, uh… sir.”

He clapped his officers on the shoulders, shaking them gently and getting them to their feet. “Come on, everyone! Look alive! Come on!”

 He spoke into his radio. “We have a code red emergency. All security forces to the primary conference room. We need medical teams on standby.”

He led the officers well enough to follow him out of the security room toward the conference room. As they ran through the building, they passed groups of people sitting or leaning against walls, breathing heavily. A few more security officers fell in with them, but most of the people they passed were still far from recovered.

They reached the conference room a minute later. Soon after, they were escorting the disoriented and embarrassed leaders of the free world to a safe staging area where their personal security forces could take them off of the campus.

***

The U.S. President rubbed his temples with a shaking hand as the group left the conference room. Everyone was quiet and subdued as they were led outside to their waiting vehicles. Whether that was because of their injuries or because of embarrassment, he wasn’t sure. Probably a degree of both.

His memory of the summit was still somewhat foggy. He remembered the preliminary questions, mostly procedural stuff. It was when the conversation got to China that things got crazy. People were becoming belligerent, almost violent with each other. Hell, he had said some things he wasn’t proud of.

Then he remembered the worst thing he had done and passed another trembling hand over his forehead. Had he really demanded a vote in favor of nuclear war?

He turned to the security captain to his right, a serious-looking French Belgian named Captain Niems. “What happened in there?”

“You were attacked,” Niems replied. “I can’t share more than that right now. I’m sure you’ll be hearing some details soon, though.”

The next instant, Secret Service Agents swarmed him and dragged him away. “Wait,” he said, “I need…”

But Niems was gone, and the Secret Service interrupted, “Follow us, sir. Let’s get you safe, and we’ll worry about any questions you might have after that, all right?”

The agents ushered him into the back of an SUV, and soon, they were speeding toward the airport. The President thought about what to do next. The full answer was probably too complex for him to answer at that moment, but he knew what they could do immediately.

He called his Chief of Staff. "Wanda, issue a statement apologizing for what occurred at the NATO summit. Assure the world and especially our friends at NATO that we won't rest until the people responsible for this heinous attack are brought to justice."

Wanda replied, slightly confused and more than slightly concerned, “What happened, sir?”

“Just issue the apology. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”

“All right. Are you all right?”

The President sighed and looked out the window. “I’m… not sure. But I’m okay for now. That’s good enough.”

Wanda didn’t reply right away. When she did, it was only to offer a cautious, “All right. We’ll see you soon, sir.”

The President looked out the window and wondered what the long-term impacts of this would be. Probably nothing. They’d just reconvene the meeting somewhere else and come to actual decisions.

But if those people were still out there… if they could do something like this again.

He shivered and tried to put it from his mind. Today, they had been stopped. For now, he would focus on that.

***

Lara’s eyes narrowed when she saw Crawford. He was fatter than she remembered, and his hair was more gray than blonde now. His cheeks had filled out and started to sag. They weren’t quite jowls yet, but they would be soon.

His eyes, however, were the same brilliant, intense blue. They stared at her in shock right now, but she could just as vividly see the insane light they wore when they preached to her about the merits of torture.

She wanted nothing more than to beat Crawford into a pulp, but if she succumbed to that urge, she would be no better than he was. And she was better. Not just better than him but better than what he and the rest of Project Phantasma made her.

Besides, James Crawford once worked with her parents. He would have answers. She needed him alive.

She drew her handgun and commanded. “James Crawford, you’re under arrest!”

“The same goes for all of you!” Thomas added to the other three people visible.

They were all older, in their forties and fifties, but other than Crawford, they all looked fit and capable. The man must be Wayne Mickelson. Lara recognized Pam Forster from the surveillance footage the NSA had found of her. The other woman must be Olivia Carp.

The four of them looked at the two agents for a long moment. Then Olivia’s hand dropped to her pants in a blur. Thomas fired a single shot, catching her in the throat. She fell to the ground, gurgling her last breaths.

A lot of things happened at once, then. Pam grabbed Crawford and yanked him behind the vehicle while Wayne drew his own handgun and returned fire. Thomas dragged Lara to the ground just before bullets pierced their skulls.

The pair got to their feet quickly and ran for cover behind their own vehicle. Lara heard the driver's side door open and fired through the passenger door. A female voice cursed, and the driver's side door swung open, but no one entered the van.

“Call the police,” Lara told Thomas. “They can surround the building and keep the terrorists from escaping.”

Thomas pulled his cell phone out and talked with one hand while firing with the other. “Yes, I’m on the fourth floor of the parking garage of the Independence Hotel. I’m in the middle of a firefight with four terrorists who are responsible for attacking NATO headquarters. Can you send help?”

He looked over at Lara. “They seem skeptical. Can’t imagine why.”

“Now’s not the time, Thomas!” Lara said, ducking out of the way of a shot and returning one of her own.

She ran to a nearby column, diving behind it just before Wayne ventilated her skull. Her new vantage point allowed her to see Olivia on the ground with one hand clutched to her chest. She was apparently the one who had tried to enter the vehicle. Wayne was in front of her, returning fire to Thomas. Pam and Crawford were behind them near the engine block. Pam was fiddling with something she'd pulled out of her pocket. Lara wasn't sure what it was at first, but then Pam spun around, and Lara saw the spoon.

Shit. “Grenade!” she cried, pressing her back to the column. She heard Thomas swear, heard the clatter of the grenade bouncing, then heard and felt the boom as the grenade exploded, taking their car with it.

“Thomas!” she cried. “Thomas!”

A moment later, he dove behind her column. He was bleeding from a bullet groove in his arm, but otherwise, he looked none the worse for wear.

The van’s engine started, pulling Lara back to the fight. She peeked around the column to see James in the driver’s seat. He was nervously tapping the steering wheel while Pam and Wayne tried to lift Olivia up and bring her onto the van.

Lara spun around and fired at the three of them. Olivia jerked as more bullets entered her chest. The other two cried out and dropped her. Pam cursed and turned toward Lara, but then dove out of the way as Lara sent more bullets into the van’s cab.

Crawford cursed and aimed a handgun at Lara, forcing her to get behind cover again. She heard him shouting commands to the other two but couldn’t understand what was said. A moment later, she heard the engine roar and the tires squeal as the van accelerated away.

She looked around the corner to see Pam and Wayne rushing for cover. Pam was carrying an assault rifle, and Wayne was carrying a sniper rifle.

She looked back to the van, which was rapidly speeding off. She cursed and called to Thomas, “Stop the other two!”

She sprinted after the van, which was rounding the corner to descend the garage. Crawford’s eyes met hers briefly as he fled. She felt an irrationally powerful surge of joy at the fear she saw.

She picked up the pace and jumped, hoping to land on the van’s windshield and smash her way inside. Unfortunately, Crawford predicted her leap and slammed on the brakes. She sailed past him and hit the ground on the other side. As she rolled to her feet, she heard the van’s tires scream.

She spun around and fired at the rear passenger tire, but Crawford swerved just out of the line of fire and kept going down the garage. He was driving too fast for Lara to outrun him.

She thought quickly and made a new plan. She sprinted the other way toward the side of the garage that faced the street. On the other side, she could hear Thomas and the other two Architects exchanging gunfire.

She listened carefully to the sound of Crawford’s engine as it approached, then receded, then approached again. She estimated his speed and position, and at the precise moment, she jumped. The asphalt rushed up to meet her for two dizzying seconds. Then the van appeared underneath her, just in time for her to slam down onto its back.

The van lurched, then slammed on its brakes. Lara held on tightly, keeping perfectly still. Crawford poked his head out of his window, then jerked it back inside just ahead of Lara’s bullet.

The van started moving again, and Lara and Crawford moved out into the city of Brussels.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Thomas fired at Pam, but rather than duck behind cover, the experienced terrorist crouched low, keeping her rifle aimed at Thomas, and fired a burst at him. He swore and ducked behind the column again. Bits of concrete flaked off and dusted his face.

The rifle sounded like an FN SCAR-L. That was a good gun: highly reliable, highly accurate and not especially heavy.

Also, like most rifles, it was a much better choice for combat than a handgun. Thomas would need to outsmart Pam if he had any chance of beating her.

He looked around the corner just in time to curse and pull his head back behind the column when Pam fired another burst at him.

He took stock of his surroundings. It was a two-second run to the nearest column. That would give Pam more than enough time to see him, aim, and fire.

He looked toward the burning car. The heat would distort her vision somewhat, but it was still a second and a half of a run to reach it, and then he couldn’t get too close or the flame would hurt him too. Also, it would distort his vision as well as hers.

Okay, so not the car.

He heard feet scraping on concrete to his right. He looked out of the corner of his eye and saw Pam’s shadow approaching. It flickered and danced from the flame but slowly approached. He tensed and waited until the slow approach became a sprint. Then he ran around the other side of the column and fired.

Pam whirled around, but not in time to avoid taking a bullet to the midsection. She cursed and dropped to the ground but managed to keep her aim steady in spite of the wound. Thomas dove behind the column again. Pam’s feet scraped on the concrete as she scrambled back to cover. He dropped to the ground and army crawled to the other side but not in time to fire another round at Pam.

“This doesn’t have to happen like this!” he called after her. “You have valuable information that the Company would love to hear. You know about Crawford’s plans. You know how to construct and operate that sound device. Let’s make a deal.”

“Go to hell!”

Pam punctuated this by a burst of rifle fire at the column behind which Thomas held. That was three bursts so far. Nine rounds. She had a STANAG magazine in her rifle, which held thirty rounds, leaving her with twenty-one.

He had five rounds left in his own magazine, and two more double-stacked magazines with thirty-two rounds each. He could outlast her if he was careful, and if he could convince her to be less careful.

“The police are coming,” he called. “They’ll be here any second.”

Silence in return.

“I can tell them you’re cooperating, and I can arrange to have the Company extradite you to a comfortable suite in one of our facilities, or I can arrange to have them expedite you to a far less comfortable suite. Which is it to be, Pam?”

She cursed. “Damn it. This is bullshit! The Company abandoned us! You know that, right?”

“I know that your PsyOps team advocated for the creation of utterly loyal hitmen who would kill only at the CIA’s behest without hesitation and without moral qualms. I know that much of the idea of your proposal was eventually incorporated into Project Phantasma while you and some of the more extreme ideas Crawford and the rest of you espoused were forced out.”

“Then you know that we had the nation’s best interests in mind. We wanted to keep the United States safe in the face of evolving intelligence and paramilitary threats. What we proposed might have seemed brutal, but it was necessary.”

Thomas didn’t actually know exactly what they had proposed. That data had been purged from CIA records. He wanted to keep Pam talking, though.

“I can’t comment on what the Company will think is necessary or not,” he replied, “but I can tell you that they will be very interested in the weapon you and Crawford have in your possession. Come quietly, and I can help you. Keep fighting me, and… well, you get the picture.”

“Why the hell should I believe you? You just don’t want to die.”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “I very much do not want to die. And neither do you. So please do yourself a favor and put your weapon down. Come to me, and I will ensure that you are spared. I want your information far more than I want your life. You know the CIA well enough to know that they don’t hold grudges. You shouldn’t either. They released you before because you were no longer useful. You’re useful again.”

Pam was silent for a long time. It wasn’t until the sound of sirens drifted to them from the distance that she said, “All right. I’m coming to you.”

A moment later, he heard the SCAR clatter along the ground. He looked around the corner and saw the weapon on the ground. Pam had both hands up, fingers splayed. She came out from behind the column and approached slowly. Thomas took a deep breath and said, “All right. Come halfway, and when I tell you to stop—”

The crack of a sniper rifle cut through the air, and Pam dropped to the ground, a hole in her head.

Thomas cursed and dropped back to cover. Damn it. He thought Wayne had left the building and made good his escape.

Probably the only time I wish a bad guy had escaped.

“Wayne!” he called. “I know you can hear me! The same deal applies to you! You can hear those sirens. You know you won’t last long holed up here. They’ll bring more snipers and SWAT teams and possibly even soldiers. Don’t be a fool.”

He heard the soft click of a rifle bolt in the distance. On instinct, he threw himself to the floor. A bullet flew past his head, so close it ruffled his hair. He scrambled to the other side of the column, heart beating fast. Blasted sniper rifle! Where were the police?

He listened and heard the sirens getting closer. He figured four minutes before they arrived at the parking garage. “They’re here soon, Wayne. Give it up. You’ve had several chances. You’re not going to fight your way out of this.”

He listened carefully. The fire was dying down, but it still crackled enough that he couldn’t hear Wayne’s movements. He looked around, scanning swiftly but allowing his eyes time to register everything he saw. He caught a flash of sunlight off of metal at eight o’clock.

 With a curse, he rushed around to the other side of the column. A gunshot sounded as he moved, and a bullet zipped by his head and bored a hole into a column beyond him.

He looked in the direction of the shot and saw Wayne running toward new cover. He fired three shots. One of them landed home, impacting the terrorist in his left arm. The sniper cried out but kept moving, reaching the stairwell and starting down.

Thomas swore again, then rushed after Wayne. He had shot Wayne in the left arm. That would compromise his aim from distance, but in close quarters like this, he’d do just fine with his shooting arm intact.

Thomas dropped to a prone position when he reached the edge of the stairwell. The sirens were very close now, and he heard brakes as police vehicles squealed to a halt in front of the parking garage.

“It’s over, Wayne!” he called. “They’re going to be here any moment! Surrender yourself!”

When Wayne didn’t answer, Thomas took a deep breath and stuck his head briefly over the edge before pulling it back. As he feared, Wayne was waiting in a prone position himself, the rifle braced against the ground. Had Thomas not pulled his head back instantly, he would have been killed when Wayne fired again.

Thomas didn’t recognize the rifle model, but bolt action rifles typically carried five to seven rounds. Wayne had fired four shots. That left one to three.

“You’re running out of ammunition, Wayne.”

A moment later, a voice spoke in French over a megaphone. “Gunfighters. Surrender yourselves at once. You are surrounded. Please do not resist. Come quietly, and you will not be harmed.”

“That’s them, Wayne. Don’t be a fool. Tell me now that you’ll cooperate with the CIA, and I’ll arrange to have you transported home and incarcerated in comfort. You have secrets the Company will want to bargain for.”

“The Company’s not going to bargain for shit,” Wayne called contemptuously. “They’re going to torture me until I give up information because I can’t handle the pain anymore. Then they’re going to kill me. Don’t lie to me, Ridley. You’re a veteran yourself. You know better.”

“I know that the CIA isn’t the agency it used to be,” Thomas countered. “They don’t kill people indiscriminately anymore. They most certainly don’t torture for information. That doesn’t work. We’ve seen that it doesn’t work. That being said, they will imprison you somewhere dark and severe and empty for the rest of your life if you don’t give them a reason to care about your comfort. Please do the right thing and come talk to me.”

“Gunfighters. This is your last warning. We will fire tear gas canisters if you do not comply.”

“I’m not going to wait for that, Wayne.”

Thomas pulled a lighter from his pocket and scraped it along the slide of his gun. “What you just heard was the pin of a grenade being pulled. Tell me now that you will cooperate with me, or I will throw it down that stairwell.”

“Good luck to you, Thomas,” Wayne said in a toneless voice. “I hope you have more luck with your friends than I have.”

A gunshot rang out. Thomas cursed and carefully approached the edge of the stairwell. He looked over the stair and saw Wayne collapsed against the wall of the landing below. His rifle lay on the ground at his feet. The top of his head above his nose had been blown off.

Thomas sighed and raised his hands as footsteps pounded up the stairwell. When the Belgian police clamored up the steps toward him, he called out, “I am an American intelligence agent. This man is a terrorist. I was assigned to stop him.”

The police didn’t listen to him, of course. He hadn’t expected them to. He said it because later when he spoke to someone in charge, it would be helpful to have said from the beginning who he was. It would be worked out quickly once news of the events at NATO headquarters became common knowledge, but for the moment, he had to endure a little discomfort in the form of a police officer’s knee in his shoulder blades with his face pressed into the concrete while the frightened young officer yanked his wrists back far harder than was necessary to apply the handcuffs.

When he was yanked to his feet, he offered the next pertinent bit of information. “The leader of the terrorists is in a white panel van that fled east. My partner is in that van trying to stop him.”

“Sure he is,” the officer replied. “Don’t resist.”

“It’s a she,” Thomas replied. “And she is most definitely trying to stop him.”

My work is done, Lara, he thought. It’s up to you now.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The van weaved through the traffic of the N21. Lara heard sirens behind them, but apparently they didn’t see the van because they faded after a minute, continuing on their way to the Independence Hotel.

A gunshot poked a hole in the van inches from Lara’s head. She cursed and released her grip on the van, letting momentum carry her to the rear. She gripped the rear of the van just above the windows and slammed her knees into the rear glass. It shattered, and she swung her legs back in time to avoid two wild shots aimed that way.

Around them, traffic went crazy as drivers realized the threat and panicked. A compact sedan caromed off of the road and sent a crowd of diners at a café scattering for safety.

“You’re going to kill civilians now, James?” Lara called to him. “That’s how far you’ve fallen, huh?”

“Go to hell!” he snarled.

He fired another wild shot, but he couldn’t aim and drive at the same time. Lara didn’t even need to evade as the shot went wide. She swung into the van, and when he aimed at her again, she drew her own weapon and fired at his arm. The bullet struck his elbow, and the gun flew out of his hand. He cursed, then slammed a button on the dash with his good hand. A barrier came up between the passenger cab and the driver’s compartment. Lara tested it. It was strong. She didn’t need to shoot it to know it was bulletproof.

“What’s the plan now, James?” she said, looking for a weakness in the barrier. “You’re not going to be able to leave the country. The police are looking for you. The CIA is looking for you. NATO is looking for you. You’re the most wanted man on Earth. You won’t escape.”

James didn’t answer her. It occurred to her that he probably couldn’t hear her through the bulletproof barrier.

She gave up on trying to find a way through the bulkhead. She’d need to get to the front passenger seat from the outside instead. She tested the handle of the side door. It didn’t budge. She put more strength into it. It gave a little but wouldn’t open. So it was locked somehow. Probably doubly locked with a child safety mechanism or something similar that prevented the latch from opening.

She tapped along the door to get a sense of where the metal was thickest. It was an inexact way of determining where the door latch mechanism was, but it was better than nothing, and it worked most of the time with civilian vehicles that were designed for simplicity rather than redundancy and durability.

When she found the latch, she drew her handgun, braced herself against the other side of the van and fired twice. The first round punched a hole through the sheet metal of the door, and the second round shattered the locking mechanism. When Lara pulled on the handle, the door opened to show them in an industrial area of the city. It looked vaguely familiar.

She realized where they were. This was the same neighborhood where she and Thomas had found Emma Knox meeting with Henry Trout.

She turned around, grabbed the handle of the door in a reverse grip and backed out of the vehicle. Crawford turned as she released her feet, and her body swung wildly out. She grimaced as her right shoulder was nearly overextended from the force of the movement, but as the van steadied, she was able to brace her legs against either side of the open door and bring her hands outside to the roof rails.

She crabwalked to the front of the vehicle until she was hanging outside of the front passenger door. Crawford glanced at her, and his eyes widened. She waggled her fingers at him, then drew her fist back to punch through the glass.

Crawford swerved hard to the right. Lara looked ahead and saw a streetlamp approaching. She cursed and pushed off of the van to clear the post, then reached forward. Her fingers just barely caught the roof rail at the rear of the van. She grimaced again as her shoulder was wrenched once more, but she managed to pull herself onto the roof.

Crawford swerved again, nearly throwing her off, but she pulled herself forward and braced her feet against the roof rails. She started crawling forward, making it halfway before a bullet punched through the roof ahead of her. She was still too far away for him to be able to shoot her, but the message was clear. If she got close, he would make her pay for it.

This was proving more difficult than she thought. She needed to stop the van and deal with Crawford after.

She pulled herself to the passenger side and shot the rear tire, then the front tire. The van lurched, and sparks flew from the wheels as the shredded rubber separated from the vehicle.

Lara switched her magazine with her right hand while holding onto the van with her left. Crawford veered down a side street and accelerated as fast as the missing tires would allow.

He fired another round through the roof, but once more the distance protected Lara. She rolled to the left side and prepared to shoot the driver’s side tires, but when she looked up, she realized what Crawford was planning to do.

She didn’t have time to escape. She could only get to her knees just before the vehicle impacted the fence on the Rupelstraat Bridge and fell into the water. As the vehicle began its descent, Lara kicked off, launching herself into the air. She heard an explosion behind her a split second before she impacted the water.

The Senne was freezing, but it wasn’t the temperature that concerned her. She covered her face with her arms, hands pointed outward. She caught the concrete bottom of the channel and managed to soften the impact somewhat, but her head still slammed hard into the back of her arms, and her elbows, wrists, and shoulders screamed with pain.

To make matters worse, she rolled over her head, allowing water to rush into her nostrils. Her sinuses flamed, and she fought the urge to gasp or splutter.

She kicked to the surface and blew water out of her nose and mouth. She quickly pulled her handgun and aimed at the wreckage of the van, treading water with her legs.

Steam rose from the water, but any fire that had started when the van impacted the river had been put out. She couldn’t see if Crawford had escaped or not.

She made her way to the riverbank and sprinted back to the van, gun trained on the driver’s side. The murky water hid her view of what was underneath, so she hesitated to approach at first, but when a pair of broken glasses floated to the top, she holstered her weapon and dove underneath.

The water was too occluded for her to see anything, so she felt through the cabin and found Crawford. He was limp, moving only because of the flow of the water. She checked his pulse and felt none.

She reached for his seatbelt, unbuckling it after a momentary struggle. With an effort, she pulled Crawford from the van. His weight was too great for her to pull him to the surface, so she pulled him sideways and climbed the riverbank. A minute later, her head broke the surface. Most people instinctively sucked in air after holding their breath for a while, but Lara exhaled deeply first, expelling all of the carbon dioxide built up in her lungs and ensuring that when she drew in her first breath, she would receive the full benefit of the fresh oxygen.

Crawford’s head broke the surface an instant later. It lolled on his chest, flopping around like rubber. His neck had broken on impact.

“No!” she shouted. “Damn it! I need you alive! You need to tell me what happened to my parents! You need to tell me what Bainbridge did to them!”

Crawford’s head flopped backwards. His half-opened eyes stared sightlessly at her, the secrets they held vanished, lost forever.

“God damn it!” she cried again.

She was so close. She was so close to finding answers. If she had waited for him to stop instead of trying to take the vehicle, he might still be alive, and she might have convinced him to talk. Now it was too late. He was gone. Damn it,” she swore a final time.

Lara released him and watched his body slip under the water again. The current wasn’t strong enough to push it away. Not that it mattered if the body went missing. Crawford didn’t have a family. Like most CIA agents, he was alone in the world. He would disappear into obscurity. Just like Lara would one day.

No, that wasn’t true. Lara had a family. Not a conventional one, but she had one. She would be remembered.

She pulled herself out of the water and sat on the edge of the riverbank.

Her phone rang. Thomas. “Hey, Thomas.”

“Hey yourself. You answered, and you don’t sound like you’re in the middle of a fight. Is it over?”

Lara looked at the half-submerged van. The back of Crawford’s head bobbed gently in the water next to it. “Yes. It’s over. Crawford drove into the Senne. Right off of the Rupelstraat Bridge.”

“Really. Where we were last night?”

“Same exact place.”

“Wow. Didn’t figure him for the suicidal type.”

She shrugged. “Can you blame him? He wasn’t exactly in store for a warm welcome back home.”

“No, he wasn’t. None of them were.”

Were not are. “Your two took the easy way out also?”

“Wayne did. Pam was surrendering to me in exchange for information, but Wayne made sure she took the easy way out too.”

Lara sighed as the last bit of hope she had at gleaning information on her parents died. She managed to keep her frustration out of her voice when she replied, “All right. Where are you?”

“I’m in a waiting room at the police station. Helen was kind enough to call Brussels on my way over and inform them that I am who I say I am. I’m afraid she’s rather bent out of shape that I had to reveal my identity to the locals, but I’m sure when she receives a full report, she’ll understand.”

“This ended in our favor,” Lara said. “That’s what counts, right?”

“So I’m told.” His voice grew serious. “Are you all right, Lara? Truly?”

“I’m alive,” she said after a moment. “That’s good enough for now.”

Thomas didn’t answer right away. When he did, there was a touch of exhaustion and a touch of bitterness in his tone. “Yes. All we can expect, anyway. I’ll be out of here soon, so don’t worry about coming to get me. We’ll meet back at the hotel.”

Lara nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up and got to her feet. Sirens sounded in the distance. The police had heard about the crash and would soon be here to clean up the mess.

Lara looked at Crawford’s body bobbing in the water and wondered if he had once been a child. Did he have loving parents who told him he could be anything he wanted to be? Did he once dream of being a superhero or an astronaut or a firefighter? Had he gone astray somewhere along the line and found himself on a path that eventually led to failure and a violent death?

Or had he, like Lara, been pulled into this life against his will? Had he also been given no choice?

But then, there was always a choice. Lara made hers every day. She didn’t make her suffering the world’s problem.

She sighed and started down the road toward the main boulevard that would lead back to her hotel. She didn’t look back.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

“I said no, of course,” Lara told Thomas. “So he locked me in the room with the body for four days.”

“Wow,” Thomas replied. “How horrible.”

The two of them sat at breakfast in Le Nid du Bouffon. The summit had ended without a vote on China. NATO headquarters was under full lockdown, and the leaders had elected to resume the summit over conference call in a week’s time. Thomas and Lara had endured a stout lecture from Deputy Director Carmichael about the public nature of their takedown of Crawford and his men the night before. She had instructed them to return home immediately. Lara had informed Carmichael that they would be home in three days and simply hung up when Carmichael started yelling again. Even she couldn’t get away with that all the time, but considering the magnitude of the disaster the two of them had just prevented, they were allowed some leeway.

Lara shrugged. “By that time, I had already seen dozens of dead bodies. It didn’t bother me that much. Not that part of it, anyway.”

“Did they feed you, at least?”

“There was a pack of water bottles in the room.”

“My God. And this happened a lot when you were training?”

Lara had shared much of her childhood with Thomas, more than she’d shared with anyone else. So he was well aware of the suffering she’d endured. Every now and then, though, he would hear a story like this and be amazed anew.

“Not to that degree, no,” Lara replied. “Crawford was among the more… demonstrative of my instructors. I only had to deal with him for a few months, though. He was called back home shortly after that incident. I think Bainbridge believed he’d gone too far.”

Thomas smiled. “A rare bit of empathy from the old man.”

Lara scoffed. “Hardly. He just didn’t want me to develop a vendetta against the Company.”

She sipped her coffee and looked through the window at the waking crowd. Thomas studied her face and noticed as he often did the contrast between its soft, almost girlish features and the hardness in her eyes. She had suffered so much. It truly was a miracle that she had turned out to be such a good person. She could so easily have become such a dangerous enemy of the United States.

She took A deep breath. “Anyway, Crawford came back and they did the whole thing they always do. Let me take a nice shower, gave me a nice meal, acted all gentle and sweet to me. When I was eating, they told me that the man I was supposed to torture was a Yemeni terrorist who was masterminding a bomb plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Crawford told me that they had already obtained information from the Yemeni’s companion, so they were able to stop the attack. He told me that they had used torture to get that information and, as a result, saved hundreds of lives. He asked me why I wasn't willing to do whatever was necessary to save lives."

“What did you say?”

"I told him that he was a liar and that even if he wasn't, I didn't regret my choice. I think I understood even then that we had to be different. The good guys had to be different. We couldn't do things the way the bad guys did them. Otherwise, those lines blur very quickly."

Thomas nodded. “I wholeheartedly agree with you. What was his response?”

She shrugged. "I don't know. He didn't say anything to me, and that was the last I saw of him. I assumed that I failed whatever test he gave me, and he moved on to another candidate. I continued to train to be the Agency's greatest weapon and never heard from him again until a few days ago."

A shadow crossed over her face, but before Thomas could probe into her thoughts, she asked, “Speaking of something indirectly related, how’s Dr. Waters?”

“From what I understand, she’s home now. She’ll be taking some time off from research. Her project has been shuttered by the university. Can’t risk someone else turning it into a weapon, you know?”

Lara sighed. "You know, when I first heard about her project, I was a little offended by it. I didn't like the implication that people who are wired differently are somehow broken and need to be fixed. Now? Well, I still think it's a mistake, but I think Dr. Waters honestly wanted to help people. And who knows? Maybe she could have. Maybe people out there who are struggling could have found some benefit from her research. Now, thanks to some crazy old PsyOps agent who wanted to throw the world into chaos, it's all ruined."

Thomas tilted his head. “Maybe the lesson here is that people need to learn to cope with their own problems. They can’t expect a glorified musical number to rewrite their brain and give them all the answers. It’s not fair that some people struggle more than others, but we all struggle in one way or another. We all have to fight to make our own way.”

Lara returned a smile of her own, but there was no humor in her expression. “Not everyone gets the chance to make their own way.”

Thomas lowered his gaze. “No. Not everyone.”

They fell silent for a while. Lara broke the silence. “I’m going to grab one last thing before we leave. I promised a certain super genius a souvenir.”

She headed to the counter and made her purchase. She showed it to Thomas, and he laughed. “I think it’s perfect. He’ll love it.”

“Good. Then our work here is done, Agent Ridley.”

They left the café and headed to the airport. As Thomas suspected, Carmichael declined to force the issue on their return home, but they were on their own for transportation. They would be purchasing their own tickets to Berlin.

That was all right with Thomas. It was nice to pretend they were normal, if only for a little while.

***

Kayden’s eyes popped open. “Wow! An electromagnet! Where did you get it?”

“From one of the sound weapons,” Lara replied. “Do you like it?”

Kayden considered the magnet. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool. I can use it for my breakfast robot.”

Lara raised an eyebrow. “Breakfast robot?”

“Yeah. You guys want to see?”

“I would love to.”

“As would I,” Thomas echoed.

Kayden grinned and hopped off of the bed. He had hit his growth spurt and soon would look more the man he would become than the child Thomas knew, but at the moment, height and muscle tone didn’t take anything away from the boyish exuberance Thomas had first seen reserved only for Lara.

His emotional growth was even more miraculous. When Thomas first met Kayden, he almost refused to talk to anyone who wasn't Lara. When he did speak to others, he was either short with them or openly derisive. True, he had little patience for Carmichael or Bainbridge and he still gave Pavel and his other handlers grief from time to time, but he had come a long way from the boy with the eggshell thin ego Thomas had first met.

Actually, if he had a robot to cook for him now…

“Does this mean Pavel and the others have quit?”

Kayden stared at him incredulously, then looked at Lara. “This guy. I’m about to show him a robot that can make blueberry pancakes, and he’s worried about the cleaners.”

“I’m not worried,” Thomas protested. “I was just—”

“Hey,” Kayden interrupted. “You want to see the robot or not?”

Thomas lifted his hands. “By all means. Please. Let’s see the robot.”

Kayden grinned and pressed a button on the wall. A moment later, a small cabinet on one side of the sofa stirred. It unfolded, revealing a blocky automaton with round LED eyes, four narrow arms, and wheeled pod feet. It slid sideways and backward to the hallway, then approached the three of them, orienting towards Kayden as it moved.

“Pancakes for me and my two friends, please,” Kayden instructed.

The robot bowed slightly, then whisked itself to the kitchen.

“I’m still working on the speech pack,” Kayden told them. “I haven’t decided if I want an English butler or a French maid.”

“What about an American nanny?” Lara asked.

“Nah. Too motherly. I want him to have a little attitude. Or her.”

Thomas watched the robot deftly select ingredients and mix them in a bowl on the kitchen counter. “Can it make anything besides pancakes?”

“Yes, but I want pancakes.”

“Fair enough.”

“You still owe me something,” Kayden told Lara.

She crossed her arms and tilted her head. “Do I?” she asked innocently.

Kayden rolled his eyes. “Quit messing around. What did you get me?”

Lara grinned and pulled her second gift from her bag. Kayden unwrapped it, and his eyes bugged out. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh my God! I can’t believe you found one!”

“I told you. You underestimate the awesomeness of decorated coffee mugs.”

Kayden held up the ceramic mug, grinning at the image of two clowns in the classic French Clown Blanc and Auguste traditions. The Clown Blanc was staring into his coffee mug with an irritated frown, unaware that the Auguste had drilled a hole in the bottom of the cup and was happily drinking the coffee spilling through. “I love it. Thank you, Lara.”

“You’re welcome, kid,” Lara said, punching his shoulder playfully. “You’ve earned it.”

A griddle sizzled as the robot started cooking the first pancake. Lara closed her eyes and licked her lips. “I can’t remember the last time I had a pancake.”

“You’re going to love these pancakes,” Kayden promised. “I had the staff bring me fresh maple syrup from Canada, and the butter in Germany is light years better than anything you’d get from—”

Lara’s phone rang. Kayden’s smile faded. Lara looked at the phone, and her shoulders stiffened. She stepped away, lifting a finger for patience, and answered. Kayden frowned at Thomas, who shook his head.

“I see,” Lara said. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be home soon.”

Kayden frowned. "What is it? Who was that? You're not leaving, are you?"

Lara smiled, but it seemed forced to Thomas. “Are you kidding? Before pancakes?”

Kayden’s eyes narrowed. “And my birthday party. And the day out we were supposed to have in Berlin tomorrow.”

Lara sighed. “Something came up. I’ll finish the pancakes, but I have to head back to the U.S. after that. I’ll come see you again soon. I promise.”

Thomas frowned. It wasn’t like Lara to put anything the CIA wanted ahead of Kayden. He didn’t even expect her to answer her phone. And this was his birthday. “What’s going on, Lara?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed in an expression that very nearly matched Kayden’s. “It’s not nothing. You never blow Kayden off.”

“Hey! That’s not fair! I’m not blowing him off, I just… Look, this is important.”

“So important that you can’t tell us what it is?” Kayden added.

Lara frowned. “I have a job to do, okay? I can’t always control my time.”

“So that was a work call?” Kayden asked.

“Yes.”

“Since when do you let work get in the way of our time?” Kayden asked. “For that matter, since when do you listen when the CIA tells you I have to stay home instead of coming with you?”

“Since you say and do things that make the CIA wonder if you’re going to betray them,” Lara snapped. “I want you to be safe more than anything else. That little stunt you pulled threatening to go public means the CIA is now wondering whether they should… whether it’s worth keeping you.”

“You don’t have to hide the truth from me,” Kayden said. “I’m not a child. I know they were thinking about killing me. I can handle being in danger.”

“Well, I can’t handle you being in danger,” Lara retorted. She softened her voice and added, “I’ll come see you when I’m finished with this. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a minor personal thing I need to handle on my own.”

“On your own?” Thomas asked.

Lara avoided his eyes when she replied. “Yes. On my own.”

Thomas’s frown deepened into a scowl. This wasn’t how they were supposed to handle things. They were partners. They were supposed to do everything together, including find out about Lara’s parents and bring down Project Phantasma. This secretiveness was completely unlike Lara.

But Thomas didn’t want to argue in front of Thomas. Besides, he could see in the set of Lara’s jaw that she had made up her mind.

“Very well. I’ll stay here with Kayden and take him out tomorrow. I hope you accomplish everything you want to, Lara.”

She flinched when he said that, and stiffened when Kayden turned pointedly away from her and asked, “Where are you taking me, Thomas?”

Thomas sighed, then forced a smile for Kayden’s sake. “It’s a surprise.”

The truth was that he had no idea where he was taking Kayden yet, but it would be easy enough to figure something out a little later when he wasn’t dealing with the shock of Lara’s sudden aloofness.

They ate breakfast in a reasonably good mood. Kayden was short with Lara at first, but as the meal went on, he relaxed, and when she left, he hugged her goodbye.

Thomas watched her leave, his face set in a frown. He didn’t like watching her go off without him, possibly endangering herself when she had friends right here who could help her with anything she needed.

But she had made up her mind. Thomas had long since learned that when Lara King made up her mind, Heaven, Hell, and Earth combined wouldn’t sway her.

Whatever she was about to do, Thomas hoped it would fulfill her.

But he doubted that.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Sandy slipped through the gate of Clark Bainbridge’s house. The entry made no sound other than the brief cessation of the hum of the electric fence as she pressed the button on her interrupter, and the gentle return of that hum when she was through.

Her heart didn’t pound, and her adrenaline didn’t increase in anticipation. She had exceptional control over her physiological reactions, so she didn’t react to emotion the same way normal people did. Except when it came to her growing feelings for Mitch, but that was an exception.

Sandy was excited. She was about to find the person responsible for all of it—all of the pain and suffering she had endured—and she was going to make him suffer for his actions. She was going to take her time hurting him until he told her how to find Lara, Kayden, and everyone else responsible for Project Phantasma. Then she was going to hurt him some more. And then some more. And then some more.

She tested the lock of the back door. It was weak, so she forced the handle down with her hands and pushed the door open. Immediately, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

She identified the threat a split second later. A knife thrust toward her, moving so quickly that it was the whisper of the blade through the air that alerted her rather than the sight of it.

She moved just a touch faster. The blade of her hand caught her attacker’s wrist and sent the knife flying. The attacker caught the blade in her other hand and sliced at Sandy’s abdomen. Sandy rushed forward, checking the woman’s bicep and driving her shoulder into her.

That sent the attacker flying backward, but before Sandy could follow up and snap the woman’s neck, something struck the back of her knee. She cried out and fell to the ground, catching herself on all fours. Another object struck her in between the shoulder blades, driving her to the ground.

She rolled over and caught the boot descending to her neck just before it crushed her windpipe. A third attacker spun his baton around and lifted it high, intending to thrust it through her heart.

She twisted the foot she was holding, and the assailant cursed and stumbled into the man with the baton. They recovered quickly, but once again, Sandy was just faster. She crabwalked backwards and got to her feet, using her forearm to block another thrust from the knife wielder and grabbing the swinging baton in the air.

She was forced to release both when the would-be stomper threw a flurry of boxing blows at her. She backpedaled, blocking knife, fist, and baton deftly but not able to launch any attacks of her own.

She backed into a nightstand, stumbling and nearly losing her footing. Sensing an advantage, the knife fighter lunged forward. Sandy parried the blow so the blade cut a deep groove in her shoulder instead of piercing her throat.

She chopped viciously at the woman’s neck and heard a satisfying pop as the woman’s throat was crushed. The assailant fell back, coughing and choking, and Sandy ducked underneath the swinging baton and drove her knee forward at the boxer.

The boxer parried her knee down and threw an overhand right at her temple. She crouched low and drove her shoulder into the baton user, forcing him backward.

The boxer turned out to have some wrestling skills too. He pulled her off of the baton wielder and threw her over his shoulder through the kitchen window. She covered her head and rolled through the landing, wincing as glass sliced her back.

Anger flared through her. The coward had left bodyguards behind to kill her instead of facing her himself.

Well, this wouldn’t stop her. He could have left the whole CIA behind, and it wouldn’t stop her.

She would have to hurry, though. Mitch would have heard the breaking glass. He might panic and come to see if she was okay.

Sandy got to her feet, snarling, and this time when the baton wielder swung at her, she tucked her chin behind her shoulder and took the blow, reaching forward and raking at his eyes with her nails. She felt the soft pop as the right eye exploded. The baton wielder dropped his weapon and shrieked as pain struck him like lightning.

The boxer arrived then, launching powerful combinations and forcing Sandy backwards.

But he was alone now, and she was the most dangerous weapon the CIA ever created. She easily avoided the blows and returned lightning-fast strikes of her own. Within a minute, the boxer was wobbling, losing his steadiness and probably his consciousness.

When the boxer finally dropped his hands, she reached forward and pressed one hand against his chin and the other on the back of his head. She grunted with effort as she twisted. The man’s neck snapped with a sound like a wet branch breaking. He jumped, danced for a few seconds, then crumpled to the ground.

Sandy picked up the baton and approached its stumbling wielder. With another grunt of effort, she swung the weapon hard. It impacted the man’s head with the force of a baseball bat. She heard his skull crack.

He stopped screaming and fell to his knees. Before he could fall all the way to the ground, she swung again. His skull cracked again, and he fell to the ground, kicking and convulsing. She lifted the baton over her head and swung downwards with all of her might. He stiffened, his feet pivoting up and down. She hit him one more time and heard a sound like a watermelon exploding. The bodyguard slumped and lay still.

Sandy took a deep breath and calmly approached the woman, who was still struggling weakly for breath. She stood over her and aimed the point of the baton at the woman’s right eye. The orb bulged with fright. The woman lifted her hand in a silent plea for mercy.

Sandy drove the baton through her eye hard enough to crack the tile underneath her head. The woman’s hand fell to the ground.

Sandy heard sirens and knew that the neighbors had heard the fight and called the police. She and Mitch would have to leave before they could search the house and find more information.

Rage filled her, and her hands closed tightly enough that she felt her nails dig into her palms. She took the dead woman’s ID card, then ran back to the backyard.

She leaped the fence without touching it and landed in a dead run into the woods behind Bainbridge’s house.

Mitch, as she expected, was worried for her. He stood outside of the Camry, shifting his weight back and forth as he wrestled with whether or not he should come help her. When he saw her, he breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “Are you all right? Did you get hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she replied shortly.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Just get in the car,” she said, still short. “Bainbridge wasn’t here. We need to be gone before the cops arrive.”

Thankfully, Mitch didn’t argue anymore. He jumped into the driver’s seat and sped away from the house. The car bumped and jostled over the dirt but soon they were on the road and pulling smoothly away from the scene of Sandy’s latest crime.

Bainbridge had set a trap for her, and, like a fool, she had fallen right into it.

But that was all right. He had only bought himself a little more time. When she finally found him, she would make him suffer even more for this inconvenience.

She would still get her revenge.                                                                   

EPILOGUE

Lara felt bad about the way she left things with Kayden and Thomas.

She didn’t feel bad for long, though. She couldn’t. Helen had called and told her that she had answers about Ronald Hodges. She told Lara to meet her at her apartment in D.C. She was closer now to answers about what happened to her parents.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Thomas and Kayden. It was that she did trust them. She knew that both of them would sacrifice their lives for her if it came down to that.

And she couldn’t accept that. She couldn’t allow them to suffer. Kayden was already being watched, and Thomas…

The memory of his lips, warm and soft against hers, flitted across Lara’s mind. She wasn’t sure if she was really falling in love with him, but she was sure that if anything happened to him because of her, she’d never forgive herself. She had planned to stop Project Phantasma with both of them at her side, but now that she was finally close to that goal, she realized she couldn’t put them at the kind of risk that this mission entailed. She needed them to be safe, and that meant she needed to keep them on the outside, for now, at least.

So she entered her D.C. apartment feeling guilty but still firm in her decision.

As soon as she entered, she realized something was wrong. It was too quiet. If Carmichael were waiting for her, she wouldn’t be silent.

Lara drew her weapon and called, “Whoever’s in here, this is your only chance to reveal yourself without getting shot. I’m not going to play games.”

“All right,” a familiar, detestable voice replied. “I’m unarmed, and I’m alone. Please don’t hurt me.”

A moment later, Clark Bainbridge stepped into view. He looked terrible. His eyes were wide and staring, his hands were trembling, and his lips shook.

Lara's eyes narrowed, and she didn't lower her weapon. "What the hell is the meaning of this, Bainbridge? Why are you here? Where's Carmichael?"

“Helen’s not here. You wanted answers on Ronald Hodges? Well, I have them for you.”

Lara didn’t move. “How the hell do I know I can trust you.”

“When you hear what I have to say, I think you’ll understand. I know who murdered Ronald Hodges. And you need to know too.”

“So tell me,” Lara replied.

“Can you holster your weapon, please?”

“After you tell me.”

Bainbridge sighed. Then he met Lara’s eyes. “You weren’t the first agent to graduate Project Phantasma.”

Lara stared at him for a second. Then her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”

NOW AVAILABLE!

ASSET SEVEN

(A Lara King Espionage Thriller—Book #7)

“Thriller writing at its best.”

--Midwest Book Review (Any Means Necessary)

From the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author Jack Mars (with over 10,000 five-star reviews) comes a groundbreaking new spy thriller series: orphan Lara King has been raised and trained from a young girl to become one of the CIA’s deadliest and most effective agents.

In ASSET SEVEN (Book #7), when an underground arms dealer unveils an army of nano-enhanced shadow operatives, CIA Agent Lara King must confront her own agency's dark secrets to prevent a wave of invisible assassins from unleashing chaos on the world stage.

The Lara King series delivers a captivating spy thriller with twists you won’t see coming, hooking you from start to finish. Embark on a riveting adventure with this new and thrilling action protagonist that guarantees to keep you engrossed well past your bedtime. Fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Taylor, and Lee Child are sure to fall in love.

Future books in the series are also available!

“Thriller enthusiasts who relish the precise execution of an international thriller, but who seek the psychological depth and believability of a protagonist who simultaneously fields professional and personal life challenges, will find this a gripping story that's hard to put down.”

--Midwest Book Review, Diane Donovan (regarding Any Means Necessary)

“One of the best thrillers I have read this year. The plot is intelligent and will keep you hooked from the beginning. The author did a superb job creating a set of characters who are fully developed and very much enjoyable. I can hardly wait for the sequel.”

--Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Any Means Necessary)

ASSET SEVEN

(A Lara King Espionage Thriller—Book #7)

Jack Mars

Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising twelve books; of the TROY STARK thriller series, comprising eight books; of the SPY GAME thriller series, comprising ten books; of the JAKE MERCER thriller series, comprising twenty books (and counting); of the TYLER WOLF thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the LARA KING thriller series, comprising ten books (and counting); and of the new GRANT VALOR thriller series, comprising twelve books (and counting).

Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!

BOOKS BY JACK MARS

GRANT VALOR THRILLER SERIES

MAXIMUM DAMAGE (Book #1)

MAXIMUM FORCE (Book #2)

MAXIMUM FURY (Book #3)

MAXIMUM THREAT (Book #4)

MAXIMUM PERIL (Book #5)

MAXIMUM POWER (Book #6)

MAXIMUM IMPACT (Book #7)

MAXIMUM CARNAGE (Book #8)

MAXIMUM CHAOS (Book #9)

MAXIMUM PRESSURE (Book #10)

MAXIMUM HAVOC (Book #11)

MAXIMUM VENGEANCE (Book #12)

LARA KING THRILLER SERIES

ASSET ONE (Book #1)

ASSET TWO (Book #2)

ASSET THREE (Book #3)

ASSET FOUR (Book #4)

ASSET FIVE (Book #5)

ASSET SIX (Book #6)

ASSET SEVEN (Book #7)

ASSET EIGHT (Book #8)

ASSET NINE (Book #9)

ASSET TEN (Book #10)

TYLER WOLF THRILLER SERIES

DOUBLE AGENT (Book #1)

DOUBLE CROSS (Book #2)

DOUBLE ASSET (Book #3)

DOUBLE DOCTRINE (Book #4)

DOUBLE JEOPARDY (Book #5)

DOUBLE THREAT (Book #6)

DOUBLE TARGET (Book #7)

JAKE MERCER THRILLER SERIES

ABSOLUTE THREAT (Book #1)

ABSOLUTE DAMAGE (Book #2)

ABSOLUTE FORCE (Book #3)

ABSOLUTE PERIL (Book #4)

ABSOLUTE TREASON (Book #5)

ABSOLUTE VENGEANCE (Book #6)

ABSOLUTE TARGET (Book #7)

ABSOLUTE FURY (Book #8)

ABSOLUTE POWER (Book #9)

ABSOLUTE SHOCK (Book #10)

ABSOLUTE SIEGE (Book #11)

ABSOLUTE WAR (Book #12)

ABSOLUTE PREJUDICE (Book #13)

ABSOLUTE COMMAND (Book #14)

ABSOLUTE DECEPTION (Book #15)

ABSOLUTE TERROR (Book #16)

ABSOLUTE HAVOC (Book #17)

ABSOLUTE DANGER (Book #18)

ABSOLUTE GAMBIT (Book #19)

ABSOLUTE CARNAGE (Book #20)

THE SPY GAME

TARGET ONE (Book #1)

TARGET TWO (Book #2)

TARGET THREE (Book #3)

TARGET FOUR (Book #4)

TARGET FIVE (Book #5)

TARGET SIX (Book #6)

TARGET SEVEN (Book #7)

TARGET EIGHT (Book #8)

TARGET NINE (Book #9)

TARGET TEN (Book #10)

TROY STARK THRILLER SERIES

ROGUE FORCE (Book #1)

ROGUE COMMAND (Book #2)

ROGUE TARGET (Book #3)

ROGUE MISSION (Book #4)

ROGUE SHOT (Book #5)

ROGUE STRIKE (Book #6)

ROGUE ORDER (Book #7)

ROGUE ATTACK (Book #8)

LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES

ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)

OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)

SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)

OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)

PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)

OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)

HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)

FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES

PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)

PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)

PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)

PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)

PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)

PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)

AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES

AGENT ZERO (Book #1)

TARGET ZERO (Book #2)

HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)

TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)

FILE ZERO (Book #5)

RECALL ZERO (Book #6)

ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)

DECOY ZERO (Book #8)

CHASING ZERO (Book #9)

VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)

ZERO ZERO (Book #11)

ABSOLUTE ZERO (Book #12)