She doesn’t like being sidelined like this, but I finally convince her that I don’t have any other plans on how to move forward, so it’s not like she’s missing out on anything.

I’ve got a vague idea about going after this psychologist Talyssa has identified, but in the short term it doesn’t sound that promising. Even though we didn’t see her tonight, we can be sure she is aware that I am here, and that makes it pretty unlikely she’ll just be sitting around the house waiting for me to show up.

Sooner or later, yeah, Dr. Riesling might show herself, but I don’t have that kind of time. Hanley is going to send Travers and his boys to LA the minute he hears about the battle in the San Fernando Valley, and I’m going to get yanked back into service for the CIA.

Whatever I’m going to do on this op, I figure I have about twelve hours to get it done before I’ll be ducking Ground Branch.

The two Escalades drive on through the early morning: me, two other men, and nine women, with not one of us knowing what the hell happens next.

* * *

• • •

Ken Cage sat in the back of the Mercedes SUV, his heart sending sharp pains through his chest as he worried about everything that was falling apart around him.

He held a phone to his ear and it rang and rang. Cage cursed at the delay, until finally a sleepy woman’s voice answered.

“Ken?”

“Listen to me, Heather. I need you to wake up.”

“Wha—what time is it?”

“Don’t ask any questions, please. I need you to get the kids and get out of the house. Now. There’s a little mix-up and it won’t be for long, but Sean feels it’s safer if—”

“What’s going on?”

Cage looked across the vehicle at Maja, who just stared back at him with blank eyes. He wanted to move to her and choke the life from her, but Jaco had stopped him from doing so once already, insisting that she was important leverage to use against the Gray Man.

So Cage refocused his attention on his wife. “Heather,” he continued. “I’ll have to explain everything later, but—”

“What have you done?”

“Done? I haven’t done—”

Heather was fully awake now, and she screamed—in anger, not in panic. “What . . . have . . . you . . . done?”

He answered her in a meek voice. “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t know what you do and I don’t know who you do it with, and I really don’t care. But you and I have built something, and you are not going to fuck it up!”

“It’s just work, babe. It’s not—”

“Bullshit!” Cage’s wife screamed. “You are a criminal, and I’m not talking about cooking the books. You’ve been doing that for twenty years. But whatever you’re into now, it’s changed you. Look, you can be gone as long as you want, you can fuck whoever or whatever you want while you’re gone, I can’t stop you. But you keep that shit away from me and the kids, and you keep us in the life you’ve given us. You are not going to take that away. Nobody is going to take that away from us. Do you understand me?”

Cage bit his lower lip, thought about his next words carefully. “I am doing my best to keep you out of any danger. Sean wants you to leave the house, just for a day or two, while he and Jaco take care of things. Please do this for me, honey.”

Heather Cage breathed into the phone for a few seconds, and Ken sat there listening, his eyes closed. “Charlotte isn’t here. She’s up in Arrowhead at the Ambertons’ lake house.”

“Call her. Tell her to stay right there.”

“She’s not going to answer her phone in the middle of the night, Ken.”

“Call her anyway. Do that, then take Justin and Juliet, and go.”

“Go where? The beach house?”

“No! Don’t go to one of our properties.” He thought a moment. “It’s almost one in the morning. Just go get a hotel. I don’t care where, but text me when you know where you’ll be. This will all be over and I’ll come—”

Heather hung up the phone.

Cage handed the device back to Sean. “They’re leaving.”

Sean had been listening in to the conversation. “Charlotte’s in Arrowhead, right?”

“Yeah. She’s fine.”

Cage then looked again to the girl he first met a month ago in a nightclub in Bucharest. He said, “So . . . all this is about you. Doesn’t that make you feel special?”

She turned away from him, gazed out the window.

His voice turned both sinister and sexual. “You thought things were tough before? Now I’m really going to punish you, and I’m going to love every second of it.” He smiled. “Jaco says we have to keep you alive. Anything else that happens to you is at my discretion, and you’ll pay dearly for this shit.”

The Romanian woman said nothing.

Cage leaned forward, close to her face. “I will fuck you up, and I’ll start today. By the time I’m finished with you, you won’t want to go home. You’ll want Jaco to fucking kill you to make the nightmares stop.”

“You are the devil,” Maja said.

“You bet I am, little girl.” Cage reached out, took her by the throat, and squeezed.

Sean Hall sat in the row in front of Cage and Maja, but he was still turned back in their direction. He grabbed his employer’s arm and pulled it away. “Keep your head in the game, Ken. We have to leave her in one piece to use her as insurance. She’s important.”

Cage shrugged away from his bodyguard’s grip, but he kept his malevolent eyes on the kidnapped woman, a cruel sneer of a smile on his face. “You just wait, bitch. You just wait.”

FIFTY-ONE

   Carl and A.J. land, refuel, and patch up the helicopter on a darkened tarmac at Bakersfield Municipal Airport. They roll Shep Duvall’s corpse into a couple of thick contractor bags and tape them together, creating a poor man’s body bag, and then A.J. takes a cab back to the house to retrieve his truck. He returns with it, loads Shep’s lifeless body into the back, and then drives it to the parking lot of a hospital. Here he gently lays it under a tree at the edge of the lot, in sight of the emergency room.

After a prayer over his fallen friend, he drives back to the airport, where he and Carl drink coffee and wait, hoping like hell for another chance to go after the Director.

The rest of us make it back to Rodney’s place in Bakersfield at three thirty a.m.; we’ve treated Kareem’s shoulder, and he’s doing okay but bitching constantly about letting the mastermind of the entire Consortium get away.