“Thankfully not mine. Keep me posted.” She turned to go, and Louisa said in a hard, flat voice, “She didn’t have a chance, Mike, you know that. She was only a kid, against very well-trained professionals. I’m very glad Nicholas killed one of them. As for the other, I hope he rots forever in Attica.”

“He will.”

“This has gotten to you, Mike, I can see that. You’ve got to try to keep some distance, some altitude. It will all come together. It always does.”

And with that, Louisa kneeled back down next to the body of a young girl who should have been at school when those men came looking for Adam, looking for something to show them where he was.

Don’t blame yourself. But she did, because she’d failed to get the information about this apartment and Allie McGee from Sophie Pearce in time. She felt a raw burst of anger toward Sophie Pearce, but remembered Lia telling her about all her phone calls, trying to locate him. So she didn’t know where her brother rested his head when he was in the city. Still, if she’d only told them sooner, they’d have been able to get here faster, and Allie McGee wouldn’t be dead.

There were pictures of Allie all around the apartment, some of her alone, some with her family—she had a younger sister and an older brother and two blond smiling parents whose lives were about to be ruined—but the majority were photographs of her with Adam Pearce.

She crossed the room to sit on the arm of Nicholas’s chair.

“How’s it coming?”

A few more clicks. “This computer is shot to hell,” Nicholas said. “The hard drive’s been wiped, and I can’t get it back. Maybe Gray can harvest something off the chip, but from everything I can see, there’s bugger all there.”

“Adam Pearce is a hacker, so he has backups, right?”

“Yes, but we need to get our hands on him first. Bloody hell, Mike.”

“My thought exactly. At least we know Adam is still alive.”

“We think he’s alive. We hope he’s alive. And all he’s left behind is his dead girlfriend and a broken computer.”

“And he didn’t kill her. I find that comforting.”

“Nor did he crash his hard drive. You’re right, he had nothing to do with this.”

Nicholas closed the lid on the ruined computer. “There is something, we’ve got one extra power cord here, to a Sony Vaio. That means there’s a laptop missing.”

She felt a spurt of energy, or hope. “It had to be Adam’s. He was here, but then he left.”

Nicholas’s cop eyes got cold and hard. “Whatever he knows, whatever happened, he’s now out in the cold, no friends, no father, no girlfriend. Only his sister, and we’re watching her, and he’s got to know that, and so she’s off-limits. Which means there’s no one to help him, and no way to predict exactly what he might do next.”

Nicholas’s mobile rang, and the screen showed Zachery’s number. And he knew what it was about. He’d left another dead body. On his first day.

It was Maryann, Zachery’s assistant, who was a longtime fixture in the New York Criminal Investigative Division. She’d seen it all, heard it all. And her voice said it all.

“Agent Drummond, the SAC would like to see you in his office.”

“Would you please tell him I’ll be back downtown as soon as we’re through here? I am not involved, I am only observing.”

“I’m sorry, Agent Drummond, but he’s requested you return to Federal Plaza immediately. With Agent Caine. We’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

That was official. He was in trouble.

31

What’s wrong now?” Mike asked.

“Zachery wants us back now.”

She sighed. “I was afraid of that. He finds out everything so quickly. You know we’re breaking protocol as it is by even being here. Don’t worry, though, maybe he only wants to hear what happened firsthand.”

“Three dead bodies, Mike.” He glanced over at Allie McGee. “Make that four.”

“Not your fault. It will be all right, you’ll see. You did nothing wrong. Let me tell Louisa we’re leaving. The traffic will be a nightmare, we’ll put the siren on. Drive real fast. That should make you feel better.”

He didn’t think speed would help anything. He nodded. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”

He took the elevator down, replaying the fight, the shooting. He didn’t see he’d had any other choice in the matter; another moment and the second thug would have shot Mike through the temple. He made a quick decision, pulled out his mobile, and punched in a number he knew by heart.

“Nick, good to hear from you. I was hoping you’d call and check in. How’s the first day treating you? I wish I could have been there to see you walk through the doors.”

“I wish you had too, Uncle Bo. Because you might have been happier to see me this afternoon than Milo Zachery is about to be.”

Instant flatline. “Tell me what happened.”

Nicholas gave him a quick rundown of the day. Bo whistled, long and low. “You do manage to step in it, don’t you, Nick?”

“I wonder where I may have learned that. Do you have any advice?”

“Tell Milo the absolute truth. You already knew there was going to be a lot of interest in you, and with the deaths, and the shooting, there will have to be a formal inquiry. But you’ve done nothing wrong. Every action has been according to policy. So go in with your head high, my boy, and don’t worry.”

Nicholas saw Mike come out of the elevator. Her hair was falling out of the ponytail, her sleeve was torn, and there was all that damned blood on her shirt. He swallowed. “Thank you, Uncle Bo. I’ll let you know what they say.”

“You do that. And come for dinner this weekend. Bring Mike. We’d love to catch up.”

“I will, and I’ll extend the invitation, thank you.” He hung up, and stuck his mobile in his pocket.

“Ready?” Mike asked.

“To face the executioner, you mean? As I’ll ever be.”

26 Federal Plaza

6:30 p.m.

Zachery was standing by the window, looking out onto the New Jersey skyline.

“Sit,” he said brusquely when they came in. He didn’t turn around.

They sat. Finally, he turned to face them, hands in the pockets of his suit pants. “We’ve identified the man who killed Jonathan Pearce this morning, as well as the two men you brought down on Avenue A an hour ago. All three are German nationals, all three have lengthy criminal records.”

He nodded to the file folders on the coffee table, waited for them to open the files, then said, “You’ll see the first man, Mr. Olympic you called him, is Jochen Foer. As you know, he had the brain implant—his sheet is long and varied, but almost all his warrants are for murder. The man you shot in the head in the alley is Siegmund Brasch, and Heiner Veblen is the one you managed not to kill but arrest. Both are wanted by Interpol for trafficking and murder.”

“Hired assassins, then?”

“Seem to be. And Heiner Veblen, the gentleman you beat to a pulp, is currently in a coma at Bellevue Hospital. Ben is there, in case he comes to and decides he wants to have a come-to-Jesus talk. Though the doctors don’t think that’s likely, since he suffered a brain bleed.”

Zachery met Nicholas’s eye. “Did you have to put the man in a coma, Drummond?”

“One look at me and you’ll see he was a vicious fighter, and tried to kill me. Fortunately, I’m a good fighter as well. I didn’t hit his head, sir, everywhere else, but not his head. He fell down hard on that last kick, and his head smacked hard against the asphalt.”

Zachery studied Nicholas’s battered face, the swelling, the blood splatter on his shirt. He looked at Mike, imagined her with a gun to her head, and saw the aftermath, the man’s blood speckled on her white shirt. He’d chew their butts tomorrow about having a team with them at all times, even if they were visiting an old man in a nursing home. They’d believed they were going to pick up a boy, nothing more. Well, so much for that fine analysis. It had been too close. Would a team have made a difference? He didn’t know. He said, “Drummond, you do realize this is an all-time record for a junior agent?”