“Quick escape from this mess he caused with the bikers.”

“Seems like he’d want to get farther away. He’s certainly had enough time. What do you think?”

“About what?” Cole asks.

“I’m just saying, you know him a lot better than I do. What’s your guess?”

More bait. Again he doesn’t bite.

He needs Ed. Badly. And if Ed wants to take this moment to express some disapproval of the tortured path Cole and Dylan have walked together, the man’s allowed. There are only a few of Graydon’s dark secrets Ed doesn’t know, and the ones he doesn’t, Dylan knows all too well. Cole can’t afford to make an enemy out of Ed or anyone else. Not now, not today.

“Symbolism,” he answers.

“Symbolism?”

“The location’s going to have some kind of symbolism. That’s all I can figure.”

“Symbolism related to what?” Ed asks.

“His beliefs.”

“Beliefs? The guy’s a scientist and a soldier, not a preacher.”

“Actually he manages to combine the worst of all three,” he says.

“I see,” Ed says. “Well, you’d know.”

“Ed?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know?”

“Fine. Is there some kind of involvement between you two that might be clouding your judgment here? If that video’s real, a meeting like this . . . We’re talking a week of prep, negotiations. At least. This could be an ambush, Cole, and we’re flying right into it.”

“My involvement with Dylan’s work is exactly why I’m obligated to take this meeting.”

“You know what I’m asking.”

“You want to know if he took me out to the Hotel del Coronado and did things to me that made me forget my own name? Is that it?”

Ed just stares at him. The man’s no homophobe. His reticence probably has more to do with an aversion to discussing his employer’s personal life. If Cole’s mother were in this seat, Ed would be just as demure on the topic. But can Ed hear what he’s really asking? If Cole’s judgment around Dylan is warped by libido now, that means it was warped by libido two years ago. And two years ago, he did a lot worse than rush into an ill-advised, last-minute meeting in the middle of Arizona with a man who might be capable of bending steel with his bare hands.

Ed seems to realize this. He slouches back and turns his attention to the view.

The Airbus H155 is supposed to be one of the quietest helicopters millions can buy, but Cole can feel every thump of its rotary blades in his bones. From this altitude the desert looks like a vast sea whose sandy bottom has been churned up by a global apocalypse. A place without borders or habitation, even though they crossed the California state line only minutes ago. It’s not hard to imagine Dylan living out here like some hermit.

Correction. It’s easy to imagine Dylan living out here like some hermit.

Easier than accepting Cole should have been keeping better tabs on the guy. And that he didn’t because the mere thought of Dylan hurt him in ways that suggest Ed Baker’s right; his judgment when it comes to Dylan has been clouded.

It wasn’t the Hotel del Coronado.

It was the Montage in Laguna. Not as historic, but just as luxurious.

And, yes, on more than one occasion during their visits there, Dylan did make him forget his own name. But Cole had been foolish enough to think theirs was a passion bred by the secrecy of what they’d embarked on together, a fleeting, if white-hot, intimacy their special project had produced in them both. If it had occurred to him that Dylan was, quite literally, playing him like an instrument, such thoughts took a back seat to the shared intensity of their ambitions. Or that’s where he tried to shove them so he could justify letting Dylan shatter him in the bedroom.

And the great, miserable irony is that Cole’s never been one for relationships.

He still balks at his mother’s insistence that he find some handsome young banker or lawyer to marry. When he was in college, before gay marriage became the law of the land, he’d delighted in his freedom from the conventions and rituals that seemed poised to doom the ambitions of his fellow Stanford overachievers; his freedom from the reality of some wife’s biological clock or her bewildering emotional needs weighing down his potential life’s work. Back then the road ahead had seemed clear of obstructions, an endless stream of professional accomplishment and occasional release at the hands of gorgeous, skilled professionals who made regular appearances on his favorite porn websites.

But now he’s thinking of that journal his father left for him, the one that mentioned Dylan.

To hear his mother tell it, stories of departing presidents leaving behind private letters in the Oval Office for their successors had inspired Cole’s father to leave him a series of journals that were essentially long letters addressed to him, solely about the running of his company. Today they fill several thick, leather-bound books Cole keeps in a locked cabinet in his home office. It was in those journals, just days after Dylan’s disappearance, that he found a description of Dylan Cody that couldn’t have been more accurate.

He is as well versed in the chemical reactions that govern the mind as he is in how the mind can be shaped and manipulated by external factors. He sees the brain not as a flawed, damage-prone instrument, meant to be healed, but as something to be maximized, the first phase of a computer application desperately in need of overdue updates.

After he finished reading those words, Cole blamed exhaustion and Project Bluebird’s humiliating end for the tears he’d shed.

Now he’s not so sure.

19

His face pressed to the cabin’s window, Cole watches the abandoned restaurant grow in size as they come in for a landing. Thanks to the Internet, Cole knows that the rest stop formerly known as Jackie’s is popular now with outdoor explorers, the kind of people who love to take GoPro videos inside empty missile silos flooded with rainwater and post them to YouTube.

The old sign must be fifty feet tall. It rises out of the sand like a monolith, as if it’s still desperately trying to grab the attention of motorists on a freeway that ended up moving miles to the east, too far away to supply the place with enough customers to survive. A few of the old neon letters are visible—J A C—but most of the sign’s been gnawed away by the unobstructed winds.

The chopper’s runners extend from either side of the fuselage with a slight whine. Meanwhile, the strike team pulls into place; four shiny black SUVs moving Secret Service–like over the expanse of brown. They kick up rooster tails of dust before fanning out on either side of the restaurant. Three in front, one in back. Although given the place’s state of disrepair, the terms front and back seem relative. Only one SUV parked behind the place. That tells Cole the back wall’s still largely intact, offering limited means of escape.

What strikes Cole the most as they land is the absence of any other vehicle. Which means Dylan got here on foot. Which is a reminder of all the things Dylan’s been trained to do. Imagining those skills married to Dylan’s wonder drug makes Cole’s stomach lurch.

Yeah, now that you’re not sleeping with him anymore, it doesn’t seem like such a great idea, does it?

Once they’ve touched down, Ed slides the passenger compartment door open and goes to step out first. Cole stops him with one hand.

When his feet hit the concrete of the old parking lot, he counts the black-clad members of his security team who’ve drawn their weapons and aimed them across the hoods of the SUVs. Six in all, each brandishing a fully loaded Glock. It’s the show of force he asked for.

Now he plans to offset it a little.

Gripping his phone in one hand, he walks in front of them toward the shattered windows and crumbling facade. If the team takes a shot, they’ll probably end up hitting Cole first.

Dylan emerges from the whale’s mouth that used to be the restaurant’s front door. He’s assembled some ordinary civilian clothes into an effective if more monochromatic version of desert camouflage. His shirt and pants are sand lashed, but he’s wiped down his face and hair.

Technically they’re out of the security team’s earshot, but the recording device under Cole’s shirt is also transmitting to a tiny earpiece in Ed’s left ear.

Cole braces himself.

Dylan sinks to his knees and laces his fingers behind his head, as if preparing to be arrested. Cole’s fine with the pose. For now.

“Where is she?” Cole asks.

“Not here.”

“Who is she?”

“You don’t already know?”

“I know everything about her seems like an alias. What’s her background? Is she one of your old Special Forces friends?”

“There’re no women SEALs. Yet.” The implication is clear: his drug could change all that; Project Bluebird could have changed all that, if Cole hadn’t pulled the plug.

“Who is she, Dylan?”

“Keep digging. You’ll get to it. It’s more obvious than you think.”

“Where is she now?”