TWENTY

•   •   •

Jack Calloway stood in front of his office window and watched over fields and open ground as the light of the rising sun behind him reflected off a bank of clouds in the west.

He’d heard about the break-in at Tiffany’s apartment complex earlier. They were calling it a cat burglary. The woman —young, single —shot the intruder multiple times by her account before he escaped. The news anchor didn’t give names or any other details, but Jack knew instinctively that it was Tiffany. They’d tracked her activity and found her. Which meant they must know she’d given him a copy of the printouts. Her movements in the office would be all over the video from the security cameras. They could watch her leave her father’s office, walk through each wing, each department, then make photocopies, enter Jack’s office with the manila folder, then leave empty-handed.

He’d be next; he knew he would. It didn’t matter that he’d served his country well, faithfully, and with distinction. It didn’t matter that he’d saved multiple lives in Iraq, including Tiffany’s father’s. It didn’t matter that he showed up at work every day and did his duties with integrity and honor. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that he had information he shouldn’t have. What mattered was the political survival of others, regardless of the damage it caused or lives it cost. Tiffany had no idea when she gave him those documents how much she had put both their lives in danger.

He’d tried calling her this morning, tried her cell and apartment landline, but both went to voice mail. He didn’t bother leaving a message. She’d see that he called and know what it was about. Of course, they’d be tracking both their cell activity by now. Who they were, now that was the question. Jack had spent most of the night in his office poring over the documents. He knew that if he’d gone home, he would have been a target too. At this point, the safest place was right in the CIA building, in his office, with all kinds of cameras pointed at him.

The information he’d read last night made him sick. The brains and brawn behind the Centralia Project went all the way to the White House. He had names, departments, offices, everything. It was all there. It would rock the government, the nation, the world. But even more heinous than what they had done was what they were planning to do. If what he read was correct —and he had no reason to believe or think it wasn’t —they were planning to use a former Ranger named Jedidiah Patrick to assassinate Vice President Michael Connelly. And how they were going to get him to do their dirty deed was especially vile. They were sick men, evil.

Jack turned and sat at his desk. He’d slept only a few hours on the floor of his office, and his back was now stiff, his muscles sore.

His desk phone rang. It was Tiffany. Jack picked it up on the second ring. “Where are you?”

“Did my dad ever tell you where he proposed to my mom?”

Jack thought back. He knew what she was getting at. “Yes.”

“Did he tell you what time of day it was?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

The line went dead.

•   •   •

Like the rising of the sun and the almost-imperceptible lightening of day, light dispelled the darkness and pushed back the shadows. Jed’s eyes fluttered open, then shut, opened again and squinted against the glare in the room. It was dim but still stung his eyes. He tried to focus, but the room and everything in it was a blur. It was quiet as well. He was alone. He made an effort to lift a hand but was scolded by a thumping in his head, like a tiny man was in there with a jackhammer pounding away on his skull.

Jed tried to turn his head, but the pain was there again along the right side of his skull, just above the ear. If he lay still, it wasn’t so bad, no more than a dull ache, but any movement intensified the throbbing.

A door opened and closed. Footsteps approached. Soft shoes, rubber-soled. Jed rolled his eyes to the right as the blurred form of a man came into view. His face was nothing more than a smudge, but Jed could make out his large head and dark glasses.

The man placed a hand on Jed’s shoulder. “Wakey, wakey, Sergeant Patrick. Welcome back.” His voice was high-pitched and effeminate.

Jed opened his lips, but no words came. His mouth and throat were too parched, as dry as old bone, and his tongue lolled around like a writhing worm.

“Don’t try to speak just yet. You need your rest. I am Dr. Dragov. The procedure was a success, and we’ll begin testing as soon as you recover.” The man squeezed Jed’s arm and leaned closer. His face came into focus enough to see that he was smiling. His breath smelled of antiseptic. “How are you feeling?”

Jed didn’t attempt to answer. Something about the man was wrong. Maybe it was the anesthesia playing with his mind, slowing his ability to process information.

“No matter,” Dragov said. He patted Jed’s arm and smiled. “You will be fine. I think because you are strong, you will recover quickly.”

The man straightened and faded from view. Jed followed the sound of his light footsteps to the door and out of the room. The door closed behind him.

Jed tried to remember where he was, how he’d gotten off the mountain in Idaho. He’d dreamed of Karen in the woods telling him Lilly was gone.

Lilly was gone. They took her. Memories began to return but slowly, like the dripping of a leaky faucet. He sent Karen off to Pennsylvania. He went looking for Lilly. And wound up in Alcatraz. The basement, the dungeon. The man he’d fought. The valve was thrown open and all that had happened in the past few days came rushing back with such force that Jed had to shut his eyes.

The last thing he remembered was that he’d been gassed by Murphy. But the man with the glasses said the procedure had been successful? What procedure? Had he dreamed the entire encounter with Murphy? Had the whole ordeal from the moment he found Karen alone in the cabin to now been an elaborate nightmare?

Jed lifted a hand, pushed past the puncturing pain in his head, and rubbed his eyes. There was some kind of salve in them that caused his vision to blur. He grabbed a corner of the hospital gown and wiped the salve away. With his vision now clear, he looked around the room. It was no dream or nightmare that he’d had. All four walls, floor, and ceiling were concrete. Two fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. From what he could tell, he was still under Alcatraz.

Jed swung his legs around and forced himself to sit on the edge of the gurney. The room spun; his vision went dark with spots and streaks, but it eventually cleared and his surroundings stood still. The pain along the right side of his head was so intense he was sure there was something physical stabbing him. He reached and felt the area. A patch of hair the size of a quarter had been shaved, and there was a small incision with a few stitches at the center of the site. What had they done to him? The pain was in no way superficial; the incision was not the origin of it. The piercing penetrated deep, through layers of muscle, through skull, to his brain.

Jed thought about slipping off the gurney and approaching the door. He wanted answers. He deserved answers. Anger bloomed in his chest. Someone had done some kind of surgical procedure on him without his consent. His legs felt rubbery, though, and he doubted they would hold him. Whatever anesthesia they’d used was still in his system and affecting him in strange ways.

Across the room, in a corner where walls met ceiling, dangled a small camera. Jed stared at it for a long time, glaring at whatever unseen voyeur was watching him. “What did you do to me?”

The room remained filled with silence. Jed tore the IV from the back of his hand and threw it on the floor. “Where is my daughter?”

Still no answer came. The camera peered at him with deadpan apathy.

Suddenly Jed was overcome by a powerful fatigue. He hadn’t heard the hissing of any ventilation system, so he doubted he was being gassed again. The fact was, he’d had surgery and his body needed to recover. He tried to stand; he wanted to make it to the door, see if it was unlocked before he slipped back into a deep sleep. But as his feet hit the floor, his legs gave out and his reflexes were much too slow to catch himself on the gurney. He slumped to the floor, hitting his head on the concrete. Pain exploded along the side of his skull and the room went dark.

•   •   •

He awoke in the dark with a pounding headache, his mind splashing and flailing in a soupy mix of confusion and panic. He was on a concrete floor, cool, smooth. He groped around him, probing his hand deeper and deeper into the darkness, but found nothing. Slowly, inching against the pain in his head that lashed him with every move, every contraction of even the smallest muscles, Jed pulled himself up to sit and scooted back until he felt the solid mass of a wall. He shut his eyes, but it didn’t matter. Sheer darkness surrounded him, enveloped him like a blanket smothering the life from him.

He was alone. Again. He thought of his days in Centralia’s subterranean bunker, the devastation and isolation, the hopelessness he’d experienced there. They’d broken him and he had been ready to give up and end it all. But God met him there. God knew exactly where he was; he always did. Even in the deepest pit, pulled down by the thickest mire, his soul crushed, his hope demolished, God was there. Mire and sorrow and ashes and agony were no match for the Father of Lights. And he showed Jed the way out.

But where was God now? Was he with Lilly? Was he with Karen? Was he here? Jed didn’t feel the presence he once felt. If God could reach him in his hollow pit before, why wasn’t he here now, in this place?

Jed shifted his weight and was rewarded with a stabbing pain along the right side of his skull. Again, he felt the area and the small, tender incision.

“We need to talk, Patrick.” It was a man’s voice. Murphy. There, in the room with him.

Jed lowered his hand and pulled his knees to his chest. The pain in his head intensified.

“I know you’re in pain, but try to concentrate for a moment. The pain will subside in time.”

“What did you do to me?”

“We need to talk about Karen. I know she has the drive.”

Jed did not respond. He wouldn’t give Murphy the pleasure of having him capitulate.

“We know she has it. You need to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you. This is a matter of national security. That drive contains information that could be very dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. Devastating to our entire country and our allies worldwide. We need your help. There are those in our country, our government, who are still very much involved in the Centralia Project. It’s a dangerous thing, Patrick. It goes so much deeper than just experimenting on a few soldiers and kids. These people want to take over the country, create a new America, and their influence goes all the way to the top. If they get their way, if they win, this country —your country, the one you fought for —will cease to exist. Is that what you want?”

He paused, waiting for an answer that Jed never gave.

“I don’t think it is what you want. We need your help to stop them.”

“You’re part of the government,” Jed finally said. “How do I know I can trust you?”

Murphy sighed. “If I was against you, I could have had you killed many times over already. Instead, I took great care to get you here safely and lost some good men in doing so. We need you, Patrick. Your country needs you.”

“Needs me how? Haven’t I given enough already?”

“For starters, you can tell us where Karen is so we can get the drive from her. I don’t know what you two planned to do with it, but the safest place for it is with us. Lilly is here with us, but Karen is on her own out there, and when Centralia discovers she has the information that could destroy them, she’ll be in real danger.”

Jed shut his eyes again and clenched his jaw. Pain wrapped around his head now like a band ever tightening. His thoughts were jumbled and disordered. He didn’t want to tell Murphy where Karen was headed. He didn’t trust Murphy. He didn’t trust anyone. He’d been lied to too many times.

“Patrick, listen to me. I am your only hope now. Those involved in Centralia want you and your entire family dead. I’ve learned that they have a special task force set up just for taking you out. Let us help.”

“How can you help?”

“By offering you and Karen and Lilly safety. By taking out Centralia once and for all. By exposing the corrupt weed that grows through our government, right to the highest offices.”

“Why do they want to kill us? We just want to be left alone.”

“They’re afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“Because they can’t control you. In case you didn’t notice, the Centralia Project is all about control and manipulation. And you are someone —something —they can’t control. They’ve tried but failed.”

As if Murphy could peer into Jed’s mind and watch the gears clumsily turning, churning out one disconnected thought after another, he said, “You can’t hide from them, Patrick. Karen can’t either. Lilly is safe with us. She’s safe. I promise you that. But not Karen. She’ll be found eventually. You can bet on that.”

Jed thought of how difficult it had been to remain invisible when he was on the run before. Security cameras, traffic cameras, monitoring systems, eyewitnesses, electronic records . . . Big Brother had a broad field of vision.

“Patrick, Centralia’s reach goes right to the top. Michael Connelly has taken direct leadership of the project. Don’t think for one moment that the vice president of the United States can’t have any resource he wants. All he has to do is pick up the phone.”

Jed was quiet for a few long beats. His head throbbed steadily with the even rhythm of his heart. He couldn’t trust Murphy. As much as he wanted to protect Karen and as much as his muddled brain told him to give Murphy the information the man wanted, he couldn’t do it.

“Where’s Karen headed?”

“She doesn’t have the drive.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. They think she does and they will find her and kill her. Is that what you want?”

Of course it wasn’t. But he wasn’t about to give up on her that easily. He wasn’t about to give up on God that easily.

“Very well,” Murphy said. “We’ll talk later.”

Silence crept into the room and filled every space around him. No door opened and closed. No footsteps faded into the distance. Had Murphy’s voice been piped into the room through a speaker? Again, it bothered him that the voice seemed to have no origin, no point of reference. It had loomed and floated everywhere in the room, yet nowhere at all.

Jed carefully scooted sideways until he reached a corner. He leaned his head against the hard concrete wall and shut his eyes.

Sleep came quickly.