EPILOGUE

COROLLA, NORTH CAROLINA

Marcus looked out over the Atlantic and the children playing on the shore.

From behind a pair of Ray-Bans, he was enjoying the monotony of the waves lapping on the shore. And watching an old couple feeding the seagulls. And a young couple strolling down the beach, hand in hand, splashing their feet in the surf.

Nearly three weeks had passed since the events in Chicago. Now here he was, recovering at Annie’s beach house, sitting on her porch in an Adirondack chair, wearing shorts and a polo shirt, sipping a freshly brewed cup of coffee. His hands and arms were still wrapped in gauze. So was his left knee, which had been more badly damaged than he’d first realized. And his stomach, of course. The stitches were still in. He still found himself wincing in pain when he got up or sat down. But he was finally on the mend and enjoying the company of his nurse.

The team had called twice to check in on him. The president had called once. Commander Gianetti had even called to express his gratitude and that of his boss. The pope was recovering nicely, and the public had never even been told about the heart attack. “Why give Abu Nakba, wherever he is, the satisfaction?” the pope had quipped. And though it had hurt to do so, Marcus had laughed, enjoying the man’s courage under fire and overall joie de vivre.

Beyond this, however—and a few calls with his mom and sisters—Annie had shielded him from the deluge of calls and emails and from the news and from the congressional investigations into how Chicago had happened, as well as from coverage of the confirmation hearings for the country’s new vice president, secretary of state, and director of the CIA.

She had certainly shielded Marcus from the ongoing hunt for Abu Nakba. The founder of Kairos had once again vanished into thin air. The last known sighting of him had been in the mountains of Kandahar. After that, the trail had once again gone cold.

And yet, what really was left of Kairos? Every member of the Troika was dead. Three cells of the group’s most senior and experienced operatives were dead. The Kremlin was actively helping hunt down and uproot the terrorist network, the price Hernandez had imposed on Petrovsky for not exposing the fact that the SA-7s had carried radioactive material that had come, originally, from Moscow.

The damage in Chicago had been extensive. But by the grace of God, the death toll had not. The stadium and its surrounding areas were not a nuclear hot zone. The warheads had not contained as much uranium as originally feared. And the Willis Tower was still standing. It would remain empty for many months to come. But air crews had extinguished the fire rather quickly, and given that the plane had been a 737 and not a 757 or 767—and had been mostly destroyed by the SA-7 and thus hadn’t plunged into the tower intact—the attack hadn’t proven anywhere near as devastating as 9/11.

There was much to be thankful for. But the truth was Marcus had not had the time or energy to focus on almost any of these matters. Not in any depth, anyway. For the two weeks he had spent in the hospital under the watchful eye of a dozen federal agents—including Pete, Jenny, Geoff, and Donny Callaghan—he had mostly been sedated. After his release, Annie had asked that they be flown to her home in South Carolina. Then somehow she had persuaded Hernandez and Dell that she and Marcus wouldn’t need armed protection any longer. She was going to take him to a “secure and undisclosed location” to rest and recover. Far from Kairos. Far from the Iranians. Far from Washington. And his friends. And even his family.

And for this Marcus was most grateful.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Annie said as she stepped out onto the porch in a sundress, kissed him, and sat down next to him with a cup of tea. “How are you feeling today?”

“Happy,” he said, taking off his sunglasses. “Really happy. And I haven’t been this happy in a long, long time.”

“I’m glad,” she said with that beautiful smile and those emerald eyes. “So am I.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” she asked. “Saving your mom? Your friends? Whisking you away to paradise? That pretty darn good French roast I just made?”

He laughed, though it hurt.

“For waiting for me till I was ready,” he said, more serious than she’d expected.

“I was starting to think you’d never come around.”

“Well, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” he conceded. “But I’m in love with you, Annie Stewart. Utterly, completely, head over heels in love with you. And even though there’s no way I can get down on my knees right now, I’d really like to ask you: would you marry me?”

The question completely blindsided her.

As did the diamond ring he produced from his pocket.

She could barely speak.

“What? How? But where . . . ?”

“I bought it after our second date,” he confessed. “That’s when I knew. Last week, just before I was discharged, when Mr. Garcia came by to see me, you stepped out to take a call. I told him about it and asked him to have it sent from my house. And he did. He told me if I had any brains at all, I would propose to you the first chance I had. And then he said he hoped we would invite him and his family to our wedding.”

Annie’s eyes filled with tears.

“So please say yes, Annie—it’s already been a week, and Mr. Garcia is waiting for an answer.”

“Then yes, Marcus Johannes Ryker, I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to be your wife, crippled or not,” she replied. “I love you so much.”

“I know,” Marcus said, slipping the ring on her finger. “And I couldn’t be more grateful.”

As he was nearly immobile, Annie got up out of her seat, wiped her eyes, and knelt beside him. Then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him until he could barely breathe.