“And your guy is positive about this?” Atlas barked into the phone. “Okay, okay, yeah, thanks. Keep me in the loop. In the tightest loop you’ve got.”

Odin looked to his brother for an explanation. Every Titan in the condo sat in the living room, Mickey Mouse keeping Lea entertained while Abner II lay next to the twin Rock-N-Plays that hosted, swung, and vibrated the twins.

Atlas hung up and addressed his brother, sister-in-law, and wife.

“Oleg’s guy, the Romanian ex-KGB guy, saw them all. They’re in Elenite, a Bulgarian resort town on the Black Sea, like we thought.

“He said they look okay, he ate dinner near Annalise and Nolan. He said Canaan wasn’t with them, but that he’d seen him earlier with a redhead. She must be the one he met at the auction; the one who was e-mailing me earlier. They’re all around that place, the Royal Sands, so whatever you told them apparently worked.

“There is a problem, though. A huge one. Annalise and Nolan are with a man they called Carlton. No idea how he fits into the puzzle, or why they’re with him.”

“Okay, maybe he’s a friend, or helping them somehow?” Piper asked.

“Almost certainly not,” Atlas responded. “The KGB guy claims he recognized the guy. Are you ready for this? He said he’s QB’s son.”

“What. The. Fuck,” Odin said, slowly. “That monster has a son?”

“Maybe more than one. The KGB guy says he was part of a task force way back that was looking into QB, working quietly, and illegally, alongside Interpol, to investigate QB and his organization.”

“You worked for the guy for years, didn’t you?” Odin asked. “And you never heard about kids?”

“Odin, I never even knew the guy’s name. He was only ever QB. I got hooked up with him through a SEAL. The money was always right, and for a good, long while, we got good explanations for the work we did. After a while, though, things changed. More money, but the ‘work’ was different. That’s when I got out.

“Anyway, the KGB guy was on a small task force assigned to QB. He’s going to send some stuff to Oleg, and he’ll forward it to me, anything that seems pertinent.”

Clara wiped away a tear and scooted closer to Odin, who wrapped his arms around her. “How can this be happening again? He’s gone. Why the vendetta against this family? And how can we help Canaan?”

Atlas spoke up. “The vendetta is because of me. I left QB’s team, and he didn’t like that. Thought I knew too much, was an asset he wanted working for him, or for nobody. He tried to strong-arm me into coming back to him, and when I refused, he wanted to eliminate me.

“There was more to it than that, Dad’s businesses and stuff with Richard Hunt were also nuisances to QB, I guess, and he had some sort of long-term plan that we Titans interfered with. Or that he thought we interfered with.”

Atlas pulled Lea up onto his lap and the four adults in the room sat quietly, staring at the three little ones, wondering what their futures looked like, and if they’d forever be looking over their shoulders.

The phone on the sectional next to Atlas buzzed with an e-mail.

Atlas opened an encrypted file in Cyrillic, which an app on his phone took a moment to translate to English.

“It’s a file on QB…they have his picture here and everything. Quite a bit of it is redacted, but there’s some information here. Okay, yeah, they have a section on his personal life. He had, it looks like… four children. No, make that five. By four different women. Shit, I don’t think even our intelligence knew that.

“QB’s real name was Quentin Brentford. He—”

Odin jumped in. “Did you say Brentford?”

Atlas nodded in confirmation. “That’s what it says here.”

“Brentford was the name of the family auctioning the Gutenberg Bible and the First Folio. The whole thing was a setup. The books were real, I trust the people who did the authentications, I mean who knows how QB got his hands on them, they weren’t even in the records. They must have been in his family for generations, or he acquired them from somebody who’d kept them secret, potentially for centuries.

“I wondered how Canaan had found out about them, about the whole thing, but it’s obvious now. The whole thing was a lure, to get me—us— over there on their turf. They grabbed who they could and figured we’d come to the rescue. But Nolan or Annalise—”

“Or Canaan,” Atlas interrupted.

“True,” Odin replied. “One of them, maybe Canaan, somehow forged an escape. I can’t explain the whole Raven thing, or the e-mails about Bulgaria, but… what else does it say there? Five kids?”

“The oldest is Quentin Jr. His mother was British; it says she was a model. Her name is blacked out. Apparently she’s deceased anyway. There are hospital records here for Quentin Jr. He must have—or had— some health problems.

“His second was also a son, named Quincy. He’s dead as well, there are big parts blacked out, but it looks like he was killed. His mother was…Wow. She was a Miss Namibia. It looks like junior and Quincy were born just a few months apart.”

“That may explain why QB was never married,” Piper replied.

“Number three’s name is redacted,” Atlas said.

“Wild guess—I bet it begins with a Q,” Piper said, drawing a laugh.

“I think that’s practically a guarantee,” Odin added. “What else does it say?”

“The nameless third…this just gets more wild. His mother was the daughter of a Saudi sultan. She’s not named, either.

“Four and five share the same mother, she’s Welsh, but her name is blacked out. A girl and a boy. The girl is named Quinn and the boy is Quintus.”

“Pop quiz. Can anybody tell me what the Latin word ‘Quintus’ means?” Odin asked the group. When they all shook their heads, he answered, proudly: “Fifth. Seriously.”

“Well, I’m going to need a quintus of whiskey if this shit gets any deeper,” Piper grumbled.

“The girl, Quinn…They don’t have a picture of her, do they?” Odin asked.

“Actually, yeah, it’s not a glamour shot or anything, but there are actually two, both from a distance. One on a yacht and the other is coming out of a café.”

“Red hair?” Odin asked.

“Yes,” Atlas said, resignedly. “She’s got to be who Canaan met at the auction.”

“And who he’s with now at the Royal Sands,” Atlas concluded.

“Fuck,” Odin spat. “Call Oleg, right now. We have to abort everything. His guy has to bring them in. I don’t care if that whole resort is crawling with QB’s soldiers, we have to at least give them a chance. Let them know what they’re up against.”

Atlas nodded and called Oleg. Odin and Clara reached for their twins, bringing them close. Odin holding Emmie, Clara rocking Callum.

Abner II struggled to get up, as he always did, and he shuffled over to his water dish. After lapping at the bowl and getting twice as much all over the kitchen floor as went into his mouth, he lifted his nose to the sky and gave a mournful, doleful howl.