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But Drummond—he was the safest bet. Had he seen the coordinates to the sub Adam had sent his dad? If he had, well, there was nothing he could do about it now. At least if he had the coordinates, Adam wasn’t alone. He didn’t hesitate; he memorized the coordinates to the sub, and erased them from his hard drive.

Adam realized he’d taken on his father’s role, the protector, the guardian of the Order’s secrets. Adam knew them all, and now it was his job to protect the Order.

He reread the e-mail, the line of code. If Drummond was as much of a hotshot programmer as people said, he’d figure it out. This was the only thing to do. As much as he hated to even think it, Adam couldn’t trust anyone in the Order, not now that Mr. Stanford was dead.

He hit send.

The e-mail scrambled through Adam’s system, then shot off with a whoosh, bounced off fifty servers around the world, and was gone.

He started to close the lid of the laptop, but something caught his eye. The screen began to flash. As he watched, horrified, the corners of the screen shattered, like a piece of glass, and began to fold in on themselves, getting smaller and smaller and smaller, until all he could see was a tiny brown three-dimensional box superimposed on the black background, spi

Adam couldn’t believe this, didn’t have a clue how it could have happened—he himself had been hacked. Who could have done this? The FBI? No, there was no way. They were good, but not good enough to get into his system, not that quickly. And they wouldn’t play games, either. They’d just shut the whole thing down and track him to his nearest location.

Reality hit him. He was too late. Dear God in heaven, he was too late. The Order was already compromised. Havelock was already in control. Had he really destroyed Havelock’s assets? He didn’t know.

With shaking hands, he clicked on the box.

The screen went black, then a message began scrolling across the empty screen and Adam felt all the blood leave his head.

We Have Your Sister. Come to London. Now.

42

Nicholas’s House

Midnight

The ambulance had been prompt, the EMTs thorough, and as Nicholas watched Nigel sitting up, an ice pack on his neck, arguing with the EMTs, he counted his blessings.

They wanted to cart Nigel off to Lenox Hill Hospital for overnight observation, but Nigel was having none of it. Nicholas wasn’t sure he agreed. Even though Nigel had regained consciousness quickly, he seemed a bit loopy.

But he refused to go and that was that.

The EMTs reluctantly agreed not to haul him in. The injection contained some sort of mild sedative, and it clearly wasn’t long-lasting. As a precaution, they gave him a shot of Narcan, an overdose medication that would knock whatever drug he’d been injected with out of his system, and he’d be good as new in the morning.

Nigel insisted Nicholas continue working on the case, that all he needed was a lovely night’s rest.

One of the EMTs said, “He’ll be okay. Make sure he gets plenty of fluids. If he decompensates unexpectedly—he’s not go

The ambulance pulled away, the neighbors shuffled inside, and the night became quiet again. The spring evening had grown chilly, and combined with the sudden silence, the air seemed oddly clear and easily breakable. Like glass.

Oh, yes, this was definitely how he wanted to introduce himself to the neighborhood, as the victim of a home invasion in his first month on the street. At least his FBI badge had calmed some of them down and no one had called the police.



Waving jauntily to one last staring woman in a thick spa bathrobe, Nicholas stepped back inside the house. They all needed some rest, some time to recharge.

Nicholas knew in his heart Grossman was long gone. He recognized a fellow operative when he saw one. Grossman had been formally trained in countersurveillance, like Nicholas. He’d slipped in, taken what he needed, and gotten out again in under five minutes. He’d only maimed, not killed; he clearly understood the level to which he could go without creating a serious problem for himself. Breaking into an FBI agent’s home was one thing. If he’d killed Nigel, or Mike, that would be a whole different story.

If Nicholas weren’t so pissed off, he’d admire the man.

Where did the Pearces fit into all of this? Adam Pearce, especially, the young hacker with clear abilities to gain access to very private information. The kid was another ghost. Where was he? How did a nineteen-year-old evade a city-wide dragnet?

By getting out of the city, obviously, right under their noses.

He walked into the house to see Mike sitting on a small loveseat inside the front door, lightly rubbing her jaw. She was still spitting mad; he was pretty sure her anger was the only thing keeping her upright.

“How are you feeling?”

“The EMTs said I had a purple bruise which would fade to a lovely lavender, my pride is pretty well trampled, but other than that, I’m fine. Do you know Nigel wanted to make me a cup of tea? I told him to make himself some tea and go to bed.”

“Perhaps you should have let him. I hate to tell you this, but you look like you need a bit of a lie-down.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and got to her feet, held her hands up in front of her. They didn’t waver. She opened her eyes. “See? Solid as a rock.”

He was dubious, but said, “Okay, then, if you’re up for it, Gray’s sent what he had of Pearce’s files to my server. Let’s go back to the library. I can access everything Grossman stole from us and maybe we’ll see exactly what’s going on here. I don’t suppose you recall what I told you when you entered the library at gunpoint?”

“No, the hit to my jaw knocked it right out.”

“Pearce and Adam were looking for a German U-boat, Victoria. It was lost at sea—on eternal patrol—in September of 1917. Adam’s been breaking into the satellite imagery from various defense contractors’ very secret LEO-synchronous satellites for the past six months, ever since the technology was developed to allow the satellites to look through land to the water beneath. It’s similar technology to Thales’s Sentinel-Two satellite—very high-resolution imaging. The files show he’d narrowed the search to the North Sea, on the northern coast of Scotland.”

“So why is this submarine so important? I mean, 1917, that’s World War One. A lot of U-boats went down, right? What did Victoria have on board that was so special, even after nearly one hundred years?”

“You may be onto something there. According to Pearce’s files, the sub was stolen from the Germans, and went down with some sort of key on board, and, of all things, some of the kaiser’s gold, though I wouldn’t count on that being accurate. No, what’s vital to everyone is this key. That’s as far as I’d gotten in the files when you showed up with our friend Mr. Grossman, and he liberated my laptop. And my Tardis, I’ll bet I never see it again. I loved that thumb drive. At least Grossman doesn’t actually have anything, either.”

“You really managed to wipe everything before he got his hands on any of Pearce’s data?”

He nodded. They reached the library, and Mike didn’t fight him when he pointed at the couch. She knew she was okay, but Nicholas seemed to like nursing her, and she couldn’t say having him hover over her was the worst thing that had ever happened in her life.

Nicholas took the beat-up leather chair opposite her. She noticed he fit into it like it had been built around him. He pulled out another laptop.

“How many computers do you have?”

“Oh, a few. You never know when an operative is going to break in and steal one.”