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"Will you be all right while I go out?" Jamie asked.

"If the assault team knew where we were, they'd have broken in by now." A sheet and blanket over him, Cavanaugh propped himself up on pillows. "Put the do not disturb sign on the knob outside, and hand me my pistol."

"You wouldn't think you needed the gun if you didn't suspect there might still be a threat."

"Force of habit."

"Right," she said skeptically.

"I can't wait for that chicken."

"Right," she added more skeptically, then left.

Hearing her test the door to make sure it was locked, Cavanaugh glanced at the bedside clock, which read 4:58. There was something he needed to know. He reached stiffly for the television's remote control on the bedside table and pointed it beyond the foot of the bed, switching on the television and looking for a local station.

On Channel 6, the Live at 5 news was starting. As Cavanaugh had expected, the fire was one of the initial stories. He concentrated on what the reporter said while watching shots of exhausted-looking firefighters working with chain saws, shovels, and hoses to keep flames away from the first town he'd reached the previous afternoon. Swooping through smoke, a helicopter dropped fire-retardant chemicals on the blaze.

"The fire was ninety percent contained by midafternoon," one of the local news anchors assured her audience, and then switched to a story about a political scandal in Albany involving a state senator who'd been arrested for driving drunk and hitting a teenaged bicyclist, breaking her legs.

Baffled, Cavanaugh stared at the television and then moved up through the channels, stopping at Channel 10, where a story about the fire was just ending. Stunned, he listened to a male reporter tell him that by late afternoon the fire had been fully contained. He went back to Channel 6, so troubled that he barely paid attention to the images on the screen. At 5:30, another edition of the local news came on, and now the story about the allegedly drunk-driving senator got most of the attention. The fire-"fully contained"-got only a half minute of attention. He switched to Channel 10, where the story about the contained fire came on just before the weather report.

He frowned.

At six o'clock, as yet another edition of the local news started, Cavanaugh heard a rap on the door, then a triple rap, followed by a key in the lock. Just in case Jamie had an unwelcome companion, Cavanaugh put his handgun under the covers and aimed it toward the door.

Jamie entered, carrying paper bags marked kentucky fried chicken.

Cavanaugh loosened his grip on his pistol.

"Any trouble?" she asked.

"Just something I saw on television."

Jamie locked the door and removed cardboard cartons from the bags. "What did you see that bothered you?"

"It's what I didn't see."

She shook her head, puzzled.

"Take a look," Cavanaugh said.

She sat next to him while the local news continued.

The political scandal was again the top story, followed by a report about a series of gas-station holdups. As on Channel 10, the story about the contained fire came just before the weather report; there were just a few shots of firefighters.

"See what I mean?" Cavanaugh asked.

"I hardly saw anything. If I'd blinked, I'd have missed the story." Jamie turned from the television and frowned at him.

"Four people killed? A secret bunker? Helicopters with rockets? And all we see on the news are some firefighters with axes in their hands and dirt on their faces?"

"The earlier reports were longer but basically the same," Ca-vanaugh said.

"Maybe the fire crews haven't been able to get to where it started, so they haven't found the bodies."

"Maybe," he said. "But the area where the fire started would have been the first to stop burning, due to the lack of fuel. Spotter planes would be able to see the destroyed helicopter and the two destroyed Jeeps. Chad and Tracy were blown apart." Anger made his voice hoarse. "But Roberto's body was intact. Even burned, it would still look like a body. And surely somebody in a nearby town heard the three helicopters and the explosions."

"I bought the Albany Times Union." Jamie went over to the bureau. "It's this morning's newspaper, so it won't have up-to-the-minute developments. But maybe it'll tell us something."

She took the paper from next to the bags and brought it to the bed.

The story about the fire was at the bottom of the first page. It had a photograph of a haggard firefighter partially enveloped by smoke. The story carried over to page eight, where it was again at the bottom.

"There." Jamie pointed toward a paragraph at the end. "Somebody in a nearby town heard explosions."

"From propane tanks?" Cavanaugh couldn't believe what he read.

She quoted the passage. "'Authorities theorize that the fire detonated propane storage tanks when it reached cabins higher on the mountainside.'"

"There aren't any cabins near the bunker."

"So they're just guessing about what caused the explosions," Jamie said.

"Or somebody's lying. Did you notice that bit about a special team being brought in to investigate what caused the fire?"

"You're thinking of a cover-up?"

"It wouldn't be impossible," Cavanaugh said. "Somebody with influence puts pressure on the local authorities and arranges for the firefighters to keep a distance while a special team goes to where the fire started. The site's remote enough that it could be easily sanitized. No one would see helicopters coming in to remove bodies and wreckage."

"Somebody with influence? You're talking about the government?"

"I don't know who else would be powerful enough to keep everybody away from the site," Cavanaugh said.

"But what on earth did Prescott have to do with the government?"

When Cavanaugh shrugged, he wished he hadn't, the motion causing pain in his wounded shoulder. "His lab was hired by the DEA to do research on ways of stopping addiction."

"That doesn't explain why a special ops military team would be involved," Jamie said, "or why anybody would want your team dead. At the warehouse, the attackers wanted Prescott alive?"

"It certainly looked that way. They had several chances to kill the two of us. Instead, they tried to trap us."

"But at the bunker, they suddenly wanted to kill everybody."

Cavanaugh nodded again. "What made them change their mind? Or was the protection team the real target and Prescott was bait, tricking us to go with him to the bunker, where he arranged for us to be trapped?"

"But why would anybody want to kill your team? Can you think of anything you learned on a past assignment that would make you and the rest of the group targets?"

"As far as I know, I've never seen or heard anything so serious that a former client would feel threatened because I'd learned about it,"Cavanaugh said. "Anyway, Chad, Tracy, and Roberto hadn't worked on the same assignment with Duncan and me in the past six months. Even if they had, there wasn't any way for the attackers to know who'd be on this assignment. Duncan didn't know until the last minute."

"This is just an idea, but…" Jamie hesitated.

He waited.

"While you were sleeping, I had a lot of time to think about this. Suppose the assault teams were not, in fact, related to each other?"

"Keep talking."

"Suppose the first group wanted to capture Prescott, just as their tactics indicated," Jamie said. "And the second group-"

"Wanted to kill him, exactly as it seemed?" Cavanaugh asked.

"Kill Prescott. You and your team were only secondary targets. You were simply in the way."

"But that doesn't explain why Prescott wanted to kill us all. His behavior doesn't make sense if he wasn't working for the guys in the choppers."