11

WHEN JACK’S EYES OPENED, his first coherent thought was that he couldn’t have been out long; his ears were still ringing from whatever had sent him flying. His second thought, the one that got him moving again, was to wonder what had happened to his wife.

He forced himself off the ground, rolling to his knees despite a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down at himself, struggling to see. He blinked a few times and his vision cleared a little. He saw that there was no blood, no torn clothing. The word grenade came to mind, except that a real grenade would have shredded him.

He looked around for Espy, not seeing her anywhere, and was amazed to find how far the explosion had lifted him from the dig site. He felt a wave of panic that he couldn’t locate his wife, but he knew he had to keep it together, because whoever had attacked them was still out there.

As if on cue, Jack’s vision returned enough for him to see movement among the gravestones beyond where he’d been digging—two figures coming toward him, moving fast. He couldn’t see any details beyond dark clothing.

They were still a ways off. Jack thought he saw raised weapons. Yet he didn’t budge. Instead he ripped his focus away from the dark figures and tried to spot Espy, looking for a prone form on the flat ground or someone running toward the tree lines on either side of the cemetery. But he didn’t see anything, which meant she must have been able to get away. It only took one glance back at the ones striding toward him, and the now clearly discernible guns, to compel Jack to move.

As he scrambled through and around the bushes and trees separating one part of the cemetery from the next, his knee screamed in protest. With each step he could feel it on the verge of giving out. Still, he kept on, unable to tell if anyone was in pursuit. As he rounded a thick cluster of the ubiquitous rosebay willow herb, the tall stems and large purple blooms obscured his view of what was ahead, so he was unprepared for the ivy that rose up and grabbed his legs. He went down hard, a sharp pain shooting up his leg. He clamped his teeth together to keep from crying out. Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself up and pulled away the ivy wrapped around his ankle. He scrambled behind the rosebay willow, and froze.

His breath came in ragged gasps, and for a time it was all he heard, the night gone silent around him. As his breathing slowed, he strained to listen for any sounds of pursuit, anything to let him know the proximity of the men with the guns. He heard nothing but the tentative chirps of insects.

He spared a moment to sit on the ground and inspect his leg. The left pant leg was torn, and he could see the place where something sharp—maybe a rock—had sliced open the flesh. It hurt but it wasn’t deep; he could ignore it for the time being. He took a deep breath and considered his next move. Then, as he sat immobile in the quiet cemetery, something struck him—something unsettling enough that he almost bolted to his feet, his impulse to run back to the dig site.

He no longer had the book.

A sick feeling overtook him as he thought about what he’d held in his hands, what he’d now lost. He took another deep breath, forcing himself to relax, to set aside the emotion. He must have dropped the book during the assault, when the stun grenade, or whatever it was, sent him flying. But just because he’d dropped it didn’t mean someone else had found it. It was possible it was still back at the site.

After listening for a while longer, Jack began to move again, staying low and following the rosebay around to the right. With a bit of luck, he thought he might be able to slip out of the cemetery unnoticed—once he found Espy. Even if he was alone, though, without knowing if the ones after him had anyone posted along the perimeter, leaving the cemetery was a risky proposition. Which meant the only course of action available to him, one that dovetailed with his need to recover the book, was to find his way back to the dig site.

Jack went to a knee and listened. After two minutes of not hearing anything, he started off. He picked his way as quietly as he could, watching his footfalls, trying to avoid fallen branches. He had a good idea of where he was in relation to the dig site, but he realized how easy it was to get turned around. So it was with some relief that he stepped around a tree and saw the unearthed grave twenty yards away. Nothing was moving in the area, yet the men who’d attacked them were wearing black, which meant Jack would have a hard time seeing them in the night.

While he was considering that, a figure stepped out of the darkness, causing him to nearly jump out of his shoes. He was caught in the middle of the fight-or-flight response, either a launch at the threat or a run on a bum knee, when something clicked in his brain: a recognition of the feminine form.

Without a word, Jack stepped forward and took her arm, pulling her back into the shadows from which she’d emerged. Once there, he told Espy everything he needed to tell her in a single look—one she reciprocated—before proceeding to give her as thorough a once-over as he could considering their circumstances. He didn’t see any obvious injuries and breathed a prayer of thanks for that.

She was still holding her shovel, and she switched it to her other hand as she leaned in, her lips touching his ear.

“I counted at least three,” she whispered. “Two went after you. A third circled back the way we came.”

He nodded and turned to peer out at the dig site. The big question Jack had was whether or not their attackers knew the importance of this place, if they had any inkling about the book. If so, then they would have kept someone here, suspecting their quarry would have to come back. That meant someone could be out there waiting for Jack and Espy to step out.

As he looked around for the armed men, he also scanned the ground for their lost prize. The small brown book. But the grass was thick, and it was the middle of the night. The daunting prospect drew from him a heavy sigh. He leaned in close to Espy.

“I lost it,” he whispered.

“Lost what?”

“The book. I must have dropped it.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected to hear in response, but it wasn’t what Espy supplied. Where he’d anticipated surprise or disappointment, there was calm.

Espy slipped a hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out the book. “You mean this?”

The only thing that kept Jack from laughing out loud was the prospect of being shot. The fact that Espy had the book changed things. Now the only objective was escape. He was about to motion for Espy to follow him when a voice called out of the darkness.

“Dr. Hawthorne, I’m Special Agent Bowers. I work for the American government.”

The voice itself was enough to freeze Jack where he stood, but the identity of the man behind it was wholly unexpected. He frowned, wondering how McKeller’s man had tracked him to this place. The man’s voice had echoed, so Jack was unable to get a fix on his location. He looked to Espy, who shook her head.

“Dr. Hawthorne, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. You’re not in any kind of trouble. You have information critical to national security, and we need you to come in so we can ask you a few questions.”

And I’ve got a bridge to sell you, Jack said to himself.

He didn’t answer Bowers, knowing the man would use the response as a way to locate him. At the same time, he was trying his best to reconcile the man’s presence in the cemetery. Jack knew he’d taken a chance booking flights in his own name, as well as using his credit card while in London. He’d accepted the possibility that McKeller’s people would find him. But this—the coordinated assault by what looked like a paramilitary team—was difficult to accept.

When Jack didn’t reply, Agent Bowers tried again. “Dr. Hawthorne, we have a perimeter established around the cemetery. You can’t get out. So all we have to do is wait for daylight. But where’s the sense in that? The sooner you come in, the sooner we can all be drinking coffee and getting this thing taken care of.”

Jack had doubts about the comprehensiveness of the agent’s perimeter, knowing that he couldn’t have more than a handful of people with him. It was more likely that his team was in the immediate area, waiting to close in should Jack make a mistake.

Espy moved in close and took his arm. “There’s something wrong,” she whispered.

“You’re telling me,” he said.

“I mean with Bowers. I don’t think he’s really with McKeller.”

Jack looked at his wife, wondering how she could know that. But in all their years together, he’d learned not to doubt her hunches. “What makes you think that?”

“His accent.”

Jack didn’t remember the man having an accent; he sounded quintessentially American.

“It’s slight,” Espy said, “but I’m certain he’s not native. Maybe French.”

Jack parsed that, wondering what it meant. He knew it wasn’t uncommon for the Company to use foreign nationals as agents. Except that he kept coming back to Duckey’s small-team theory—and Jack would have bet that every member of that team was as American as apple pie.

“If they’re not with McKeller, then this doesn’t make sense,” he whispered back. Except that it did. With the obvious choice removed, the next logical one presented itself. He didn’t even pause to consider how the Priests of Osiris knew about McKeller’s interest in the bones, or about the ransacking of his home. They knew everything about him; they had for a long time.

He checked the shudder that went up his spine. While the man calling himself Bowers had been trying to get Jack to reveal himself, he’d only succeeded in allowing Jack to do the same. If he was right, Bowers was past the dig site, about twenty yards beyond it and off the path. But his team wouldn’t be with him. They had either established or were in the process of establishing a gauntlet of some kind, hoping to flush Jack and Espy into running.

Jack put a hand on Espy’s arm, and her eyes found his. He motioned for her to stay where she was and then reached for the shovel that she’d carried with her the entire time. She gave him a questioning look, but he didn’t have the time to explain. Shovel in hand, he got his feet under him, shared one more look with his wife, and then did something stupid.

“As much as I want to believe you, Agent Bowers,” he said, “it’s hard to take the word of a man who walked into my house uninvited and probably went through my underwear drawer.”

Then he was moving. As he started off, heading to his right around more of the rosebay, Espy was caught by surprise. She rose to follow, and again he gestured for her to stay put. He saw resistance on her face, but she didn’t move. As he circled around the rosebay, he was careful to keep quiet. He’d attracted attention; now he just needed to see what it got him.

He found a spot about thirty feet away from Espy and crouched behind the rosebay at a place from which he could still see her. She was looking in his direction, and he could tell she was irritated. She had to understand she was being used as bait.

“Believe me, Dr. Hawthorne,” Bowers called out, “it wasn’t my intention to enter your home like we did. Like I said, it was a big misunderstanding.”

Jack smirked at that. He decided that if the man calling himself Agent Bowers was with the CIA, he would be better at this sort of thing.

He didn’t respond, but instead waited. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long. There was movement behind Espy. She didn’t see it; her back was to the person stepping out from behind the trees. The figure stopped and regarded her for a few seconds, no doubt wondering where Jack was. But before long, the agent started to advance.

Shovel in hand, Jack left the cover of the rosebay willow and headed in Espy’s direction, his steps faster now, gambling everything on surprise.

The agent didn’t see Jack coming. He was almost on top of Espy when Jack hit him, the shovel striking him in the back of the head with a clang that was much too loud—loud enough for every fake CIA agent within a block’s radius to know from where the sound originated.

When the shovel came down on the man’s head, Espy, who’d been oblivious to the events playing out behind her, jumped up and gasped. Jack dropped the shovel and knelt at the side of the downed agent, only to discover it was a woman. He checked to see that she was breathing before, as quickly as he could, going through her pockets. Just as he expected, there was no identification. But she did have a phone. Jack made sure the power was off before slipping it into his pocket. The last thing he did was scoop her gun off the grass. He considered the weapon for roughly half a second before settling it in his hand and motioning for Espy to follow him.

They moved in a direction away from Bowers, and Jack was hoping that by taking out one of the man’s agents, he’d created a hole in their gauntlet. In removing the agent, even if he hadn’t killed her, Jack had altered the dynamics of the game. The Priests of Osiris had left him alone for years, and up to this point, Jack had clung to the hope that he and Espy could end this most recent encounter in some sort of détente. He doubted that end was possible any longer. The people to whom Bowers was beholden would want something more, perhaps even blood.

They’d been so long on the cemetery grounds that it came as a surprise when he and Espy reached the edge of it as quickly as they did. He supposed spending a few hours in the dark, surrounded by a forest, while being hunted by armed men, served to make the place seem larger, more foreboding. So when he saw the first streetlight, it almost seemed surreal.

In spite of his relief at having made it out, caution slowed him. Espy was next to him and was doing the same thing, looking out past the last few trees, hoping their gamble had paid off, that there was no perimeter. At first glance there didn’t seem to be. What there was, though, was a new vehicle parked behind their rental. It was a dark sedan with tinted windows. They’d probably already been through the rental.

After one more look around, Jack ran toward the cars, his knee screaming in pain. They reached the sedan first, and its windows were dark enough that there was no way to tell if anyone was sitting in it.

Reaching the rental car, Jack put his hand on the door handle, but then stopped. It occurred to him that he had no idea how much time Bowers and his team had spent going through the car. Perhaps long enough to place a tracker in it. There was no way to tell, which meant he couldn’t take the chance. He let go another heavy sigh.

“We have to walk,” he said.

So they started off on foot, heading away from the main road. But before they got more than a dozen steps, Espy stopped him.

“Wait,” she said. She turned and ran back to the dark sedan. Standing at the driver’s side, she hesitated for just a second before trying the handle. Jack was surprised when the door swung open, and even more surprised when Espy slipped into the driver’s seat. He started to head that way as Espy searched the car. It was also a rental, so there wouldn’t be anything in the glove box or in any of the other areas that normally accumulated junk. Espy didn’t check a one of them. Instead he saw her feeling around on the floor. Finding nothing, she leaned over and checked the passenger side as well. When that returned nothing, she turned her attention to the dashboard. She leaned in close, her eyes moving to the lower left. She extended a finger, and he heard the trunk pop open. Then Espy was out of the car, but rather than going right to the trunk, she opened the rear door and bent in. When she emerged, she had something in her hand: a manila folder. She turned to Jack and smiled before moving to the trunk.

Soon she was hurrying toward him, the manila folder in one hand and what looked like a duffel bag in the other. She handed the bag to him, and then the two of them disappeared into the night.