“Is Church here?” I asked Grace as we pushed through the security door to the Warehouse.

“Yes,” Church said. I nearly walked into him. He was standing just inside, looking like he just walked out of a board meeting. He offered his hand and we shook. “Glad to have you back safe and sound, Captain.”

“Glad to be safe and sound. What’s the latest on Big Bob?”

“Stable.”

“Look, about that… I met Brick and I know he lost his leg in the line of duty. If Big Bob pulls through this I know he won’t ever work the field again, but I don’t want to hear about him getting kicked to the curb. That shit happens with Delta Force and-”

“Let me head you off at the pass, Captain,” said Church. “This is the DMS. I’m not in the habit of abandoning my people.”

“Fair enough. On the flight I had a chance to think this through, and I have about a million questions.”

“Glad to hear it, but first things first. I want to take a look at the material you recovered in Denver, Captain. Dr. Hu is preparing a point-by-point presentation of everything we have. We’ll meet for a briefing in one hour. Until then I suggest you spruce up and then get some rest.”

Without another word he headed out to the landing area.

I glanced at Grace, who was frowning. She saw my look and shook her head. “That’s about all he’s said to me, too. I’ve tried a dozen ways to open him up, but he’s been playing things pretty close to the vest.”

“This meeting should be pretty interesting. It’s going to be real interesting to compare notes… but first I have to find a shower and some fresh clothes.”

There were a lot of people around, so she gave me a curt nod and we went our separate ways.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The Residence of the Vice President, Washington, D.C.

Sunday, August 29, 4:11 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 79 hours, 49 minutes

Vice President Bill Collins sat alone in his study looking out at the trees in the garden. His fist was wrapped tightly around his fifth neat scotch. His wife was upstairs asleep, as if nothing was wrong in their world.

After leaving the Walter Reed, he kept expecting a knock at the door. Secret Service agents. Or, if the universe was in a perverse mood, the NSA.

Maybe he had dodged the bullet. Maybe the President had swallowed the whole can of lies. There was no way to tell, especially with this President. All the talk in the press about how calm and unflappable he was did not begin to scratch the surface of the man’s calm control and his cold ruthlessness when he held the moral high ground in a conflict.

Unless this thing blew over Collins without leaving so much as a whiff of illegality, Collins knew that the President would quietly, neatly, and ruthlessly tear him to pieces.

He gulped more of the scotch, wishing that it could burn away everything to do with Sunderland, the Jakobys, or any of their biotech get-rich-quick schemes. Everything that had seemed so smart and well-planned before now felt like pratfalls and slapstick.

The bottle of McCallum had been full when he’d come home, now it was half gone. But Vice President Collins felt totally empty. He poured himself another drink.

He sat in his chair and waited for the knock on the door.

Chapter Fifty-Five

The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, August 29, 4:14 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 79 hours, 46 minutes

My quarters were an office that had been remodeled into an efficiency apartment. There was a bed, stand-up closet-I didn’t have enough personal effects to call it an armoire-and a work desk with a secure laptop. A small bathroom with a tiny shower was built into what had once been a storage closet. Cobbler met me at the door and entwined himself sinuously around my ankles as I entered. He’s a great cat with a purr that sounds like an industrial buzz saw.

I squatted down and scratched his fur for a few minutes while I took stock of my life. Two months ago I was a police detective with aspirations of going to the FBI academy. Sure I’d worked on the Homeland task force, but I never thought that I’d be playing secret agent. It still felt unreal and vaguely absurd. After all, who was I? Just another working schlub from Baltimore with a few jujutsu tricks and a steady gun hand. Big deal. How did that qualify me to do this sort of thing?

Cobbler gave my hand a playful nip and dialed up the volume on his purr.

I got to my feet and the room suddenly did a little Irish jig as if some internal hand had thrown a switch to dump the last of the adrenaline from my system. Exhaustion hit me like a truck and I tottered into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and adjusted the temperature to “boiled lobster.” I was still dressed in the soiled clothes I’d worn since my escape from the NSA at the cemetery. A lot had happened since then, and none of it made me smell like a rose. I stripped down and turned the shower to broil, but as I was about to step under the spray I heard a knock on the door.

Cursing under my breath, I grabbed a towel and knotted it around my waist and then jerked open the door, expecting to have to tell Rudy or one of my guys from Echo Team to piss off, but my growl turned into a smile.

Grace Courtland stood there.

Her green eyes met mine and then did a theatrical up-and-down evaluation of my state of near undress.

“I was just about to take a shower,” I said. “And believe me I need one.”

“I don’t care if you’re filthy,” she said with a wicked smile, “because I’ve got a seriously dirty mind.”

She looked quickly up and down the hall to make sure it was empty, then pushed me inside and kicked the door closed behind her. I pulled her to me and we kissed with such heat that the air around us seemed to catch fire. With one hand she helped me with the buttons of her uniform blouse; with the other she pulled apart the knot on my towel. We left a trail of clothes from the door to the middle of the bathroom floor. I popped the hooks of her bra and she shrugged out of it as she slammed me back against the wall.

“I couldn’t really tell you earlier, not properly,” I said as she kissed my throat and chest, “but I missed you.”

“I missed you, too, you big bloody Yank,” she said in a fierce whisper, and her breath was hot on my skin. A minute later we were in the cramped confines of my shower stall. We lathered each other up and rinsed off together and never stopped kissing. When she was aroused her green eyes took on a smoky haze that I found irresistibly erotic. I lifted one of her legs and pulled it around me and then hooked my right hand under her thigh and hoisted her up so that I entered her as she leaned back against the tiled wall of the shower. That moment was a scalding perfection of animal heat that made us both cry out. The day had been filled with stress and death and heartbreak and tension, and here amid the wet steam we reaffirmed the vitality and reality of our lives by connecting with the life force of each other.

When she came she bit down on my shoulder hard enough to break the skin, but I didn’t care because I was tumbling into that same deep abyss.

After that it all became slow and soft. We stood together for a long time under the spray, our foreheads touching as the water sluiced down our naked limbs, washing away the stress and loneliness that defined us and what we did. We toweled each other off and then lay down naked on my bed.

“I’m knackered,” she whispered. “Let me sleep for a few minutes.”

I kissed her lips and her forehead and propped myself on one elbow. She was asleep almost at once. Her dark hair was still damp and it clung to her fine skull and feathered along the edges of her lovely face. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes brushing smooth cheeks. Grace’s body was slim, strong, curvy, and fit. She looked more like a ballet dancer than a soldier. But she had a lot of little scars that told the truth. A knife, a bullet, teeth, shrapnel. I loved those scars. I knew each and every one of them with an intimacy I know few others had shared. Her scars-amid the otherwise flawless perfection of her-somehow humanized her in a way that I’m not articulate enough to describe. They made her more fully human, more potently female, more of a fully realized woman than any misdirection of fashion or cosmetics could ever hope to achieve. This was a person who was equal in power and beauty and grace to anyone and in my experience second to none. I loved that about her. I loved her.