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He walked into the living room and Summer followed. “He’ll have a safe somewhere. This was his hideaway and he’d want cash and other stuff. I’m hoping he’d also keep some intel in the safe. Where do you think he’d keep it?”

Summer frowned, thinking. She turned and walked slowly around the perimeter of the apartment, observing carefully. Jack let her do it. Something was going to trigger a memory or she’d find something out of place. Summer was smart. Just let her do her job.

“There’s another bedroom.” She disappeared into the second bedroom as Jack turned slowly in a circle. He thought he knew Blake. He’d grown up with him. All the Delvaux kids had called him “uncle.”

And he’d had the Delvaux family massacred.

Rage rose up, uncontrollable, a hot heavy mass like magma from the earth, too hot to handle. He’d been mourning his family for six months but only recently his suspicions that Blake had been responsible were confirmed. And Blake had had Hugh killed, too. Though the fucker was dead, the Delvauxes and Hugh cried out for justice. One day they’d have it. One day, the truth would?—

“Jack.” Summer called from the bedroom. “Come here.”

He shot into the bedroom, alarmed, looked around. No obvious threats. No obvious leads, either.

“What do you see?” Summer asked.

“What do I see?” Jack focused. “We already know about the Den of Pain. So okay, super big bed because clearly Hector liked playing around. Two bedside tables with nothing on them but brass lamps. Big chest of drawers—I’m assuming you checked inside?”

Summer nodded.

“Okay. So big chest of drawers with nothing interesting inside. Walk in closet.” Jack opened the closet door and blinked at the Fifty Shades of Grey style array of suits running the gamut from dark gray to light gray, at least thirty identical white shirts, several sports jackets and colored sports shirts. To the left were open shelves with sweaters arranged by color—Jesus! Who did that?—and to the right a shoe shelf with maybe fifty pairs of shoes.

Jack spent a few minutes tapping the walls, systematically and thoroughly, and got sore knuckles for his pains.

He walked out, dusting his hands. “Nothing in the closet.”

“I didn’t find anything, either.”

Jack bit back the obvious response. Then why the fuck did you make me knock on those fucking walls?

“What else do you see?” Summer asked.

Was this a trick question?

“Okay. No bookshelves in this room. Presumably he didn’t need to impress his bed partners with his erudition. Turkish carpet. Looks antique. Expensive.”

“And on the walls?”

Jack glanced around. “Couple of lithographs. Probably brought in by the decorator. Glory wall. Hector with three presidents. Hector and the president of Harvard. Hector with the Director of the FBI and the CIA. Hector with two Nobel Prize winners.”

“And?”

“And a big oil painting. A portrait.”

“A portrait of?—”

“Of Aunt Vanessa.” Light was beginning to dawn as Summer looked at him steadily.

“Aunt Vanessa whom he?—”

“Hated.” Jack sprang to the wall and lifted the big heavily-framed oil portrait from the wall. Tried to, anyway. It wasn’t moving.

“Try running your hand along the bottom of the frame.”

Jack did and felt something. A tiny lever. He shifted it from left to right and felt a mechanism disengage. A pull and the frame came away from the wall, on hidden hinges, opening right to left.

And there it was—a keypad.

“There we have it,” Summer said. “Keypads don’t scare us. You have your magic doodad, right?”

Jack didn’t answer. He brought his backpack into the bedroom, set it on the floor, and took out some equipment. “I’ve got two things here. Let’s try this one first. Hit the lights, will you?”

Summer dimmed the ceiling light to dark and Jack lifted his UV light flashlight and shone it on the keypad. So, it was going to be the easy way.

“Wow.” Summer peered closer. “Even I can tell that the code is some combination of 2, 4, 6 and 7.”

“Most likely 4627,” Jack said absently, punching the numbers in. Blake definitely did not take his security seriously in this flat. It was clearly not set up for him by pros. He obviously thought the place would never be searched. “DNA samples show up in different concentrations. Usually when keying in a code, you hit the first number hardest and the last number lightly.”

With a click, the safe door opened.

“If that hadn’t worked, I have the electronic keypad cracker we used to get in the side door. Can crack most anything in under four seconds.”

“Is that what you used on my apartment?”

Jack felt inside the safe and started hauling things out. “Bingo.”

“I need better security.”

“Told you.”

“So, what do we have here?”

“First of all, money.” Jack pulled out bricks of $100 bills and started filling his backpack. He peered into the safe and made a rough calculation. “I figure there’s upward of two hundred thousand dollars in cash here.”

“Whoa.” Summer watched him then placed her hand over his. “What are you doing?”

Jack straightened. “First, Hector had no heirs and his ex-wives are total bitches who are doing just fine. Second, Hector was party to wiping my family and over seven hundred souls out and this money is going to help find his backers and maybe stop another attack. Why? Do you want it?”

Summer’s gray eyes went wide and she put her hands behind her back. “God no! That’s tainted money.”

“Yeah. It’s tainted and it’s going to be put to good use.” He finished stacking the bricks and unzipped the sides of the backpack, making it more capacious. “And even better than the money, we have some flash drives. Three, to be exact. Felicity is going to have a field day. And, last—” Jack pulled out four US passports, two French and British passports, an Australian passport with a silver crown, a New Zealand passport with a silver royal coat of arms, New Zealand in Maori and a leafy plant along the right hand side. A light blue Republic of the Fiji Islands passport and most interesting of all, a burgundy Chinese passport.

Jack showed it to Summer, opened it to the passport photo. A definitely recognizable Hector Blake.

“Treason,” Summer breathed. “Was he going to run to China? What could he possibly want with a fake Chinese passport?”

“Maybe absconding to China. Or anywhere in the Commonwealth. Or the Fiji Islands. He has—had—over a billion dollars squirrelled away.”

Summer huffed out a breath. Her face was pale, set in angry lines. Anger came off her in waves. She was stiff with it.

Yeah. Hector Blake had been a terrorist and a traitor. If it was the last thing Jack did, he was going to unearth and expose everything Blake had done.

“I want him,” Summer said crisply. “I want this story. I want to take down everyone who has ever worked with Hector, I want to unmask what he’s done, how he has betrayed his country. I want to expose every step of this. With details. I’m going to kick ass and name names.”

Jack’s neck hairs rose. He knew Summer was smart and dedicated. She’d attended Harvard on full scholarships even though her education had been sketchy because of her hippie parents dragging her around the world. Area 8 was one of the best known political blogs around and she’d built it from the ground up. So. Smart, dedicated and tenacious. If she said she wanted to expose all this shit to the public, she was deathly serious, and he had no doubt she would do just that. She was like a dog with a bone.

The other thing he knew was that the people involved in this conspiracy were vicious and ruthless. They had not stopped at assassinating his father, the next President of the United States, together with over seven hundred people, they hadn’t stopped at murdering the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. They sure wouldn’t stop at killing Summer.

Whatever was going on was very big, run by powerful, ruthless people. The idea of Summer in their crosshairs made fear skitter along his skin, made his heart give a huge painful thump in his chest, made him break out in a sweat.

Because they would swat her away like a fly, without thought or remorse. Bullets were cheap and triggermen who would shoot a woman were cheap, too. The bullet would come flying to her head from a sniper’s nest and by the time the medics came, the sniper would be far away, the fatal weapon disassembled and placed neatly into its foam packing. The gun and the bullet would be clean of any markers and any DNA. Summer would be a broken doll on the sidewalk, another tragic victim of senseless violence in a year that had seen so many.

That beautiful woman, dead on the ground, brains and blood and bone spattered everywhere.

He couldn’t even go there. Now that he’d found her again, he realized suddenly, he wasn’t letting go.

He’d dedicated his adult life to his country, his family had been decimated, he’d lived in hiding for six months, putting himself in a dark deep hole, isolated and alone—and then he’d found Summer again.

She made him feel alive after a long time feeling like he’d been buried in the stone cold ground. She made his heart beat again.

No one was going to touch her.

However, saying no, no way are you coming near this fucking story was not going to cut it. He had no say over her life, though he’d like to. He’d like to have the right to tell her to do whatever she wanted as long as she stayed far away from Blake and whatever fuckheads he’d been conspiring with.

If he had a staple, he’d have stapled his mouth shut because that was what it was going to take.

“Um, we’ll see. Ah, I’ll make sure Nick feeds you intel as soon as we’ve verified it. So don’t worry that you’ll, ah, miss out on this story. It’s, um—” He licked suddenly dry lips. Fifteen years lying for a living, lying for his country, and he sounded like a moron whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar and was lying his way out of it. “It’s a big story, I know?—”

Summer’s eyes widened with every stuttering word. She crossed her arms and tightened her lips and everything in her body language told him she was rejecting him and what he was saying.

“Jack Delvaux.” Her nostrils flared. Damn, she was pretty when she was angry. Color high in that pale rose skin, light gray eyes flashing like lightning. He shouldn’t be thinking this. He should be marshaling his facts, preparing a counter argument, preparing to convince her that this story was like grasping a third rail. Instant death.

Instead, like a crazy fuck, he savored the feel of the air around her heating up, watched her eyes flash and thought about her mouth that very recently had been touching his.

Focus, you fuck! he told himself. But he was AWOL.

He tried on a smile. “That’s my name, don’t use it up.” The old childhood response when his mom reprimanded him for something he’d done.

“That’s not funny. This is serious.”

He nodded. Yes, it was. And she seriously was not going after this story until it was over and all the bad guys were in jail. And even then…

“You have that look.”

“That look?” He feigned innocence, though it was hard. He looked every minute of his thirty-six years and then some. And on his face it was clear that he hadn’t spent all that time reading in the library and helping little old ladies cross the street.

“That look of someone who wants to keep information secret. I encounter that look every single day of my working life, and let me tell you I make my living—a very good living at that—by getting past people who don’t want me to know anything.”

Shit. She thought this was about keeping secrets? Fuck no. This was about keeping her safe .

Jack no longer had a smile lurking in his voice. “These are very dangerous people, Summer. You know that. I’m just trying to keep you alive.”

Summer stepped closer to him, until she was almost touching him. Which was fine, fine. Except she hadn’t stepped closer to him because she wanted to give him another one of those amazing kisses. No, this was pure aggression, stepping into his personal space, up in his face.

Her expression was all business, sober and serious. “I have never run away from a story I felt to be in the public interest. Ever. And I have no intention of running away now. So you can take your fake concern and stick it?—”

Jack kissed her. He couldn’t help himself. It was wrong wrong wrong. He told himself that even as he reached out to pull her toward him and crushed his mouth on hers. And yes, it was just as magical as the last time, and he was expecting the magic so it was real. It wasn’t just him being starved for a woman, any woman. He was starved for this woman, who felt so perfect in his arms. Mouth so soft, skin so warm…

Summer wrenched herself out of his arms and slapped him, hard, across the face. It was a real slap, too. Not a slap for form’s sake. His skin tingled.

He’d been tortured once. For eight hours before Hugh sent backup. It had been totally dispassionate and he’d survived.

This… hurt . Seeing Summer so angry at him hurt. She was absolutely right of course. You don’t shut a woman up by kissing her. Even Jack knew that. He’d been out of touch with women for a while, and over the past six months women had been like an alien species to him, but he knew that.

The thing was, he had absolutely not been able to resist her. Even now he was looking for a way to do it again. How could he say he was sorry when he wasn’t? Saying he was sorry for kissing her was absurd. It was the best thing to happen to him since the Massacre.

But—he had to take a stab at making amends because he saw coldness beyond the anger in Summer’s eyes and that scared him more than the anger.

He hadn’t thought it through. Jack Delvaux, ace super secret agent for fifteen years, hadn’t thought it through.

It was entirely possible that a lot of men had tried to get her to shut up by trying to kiss her. That just now occurred to him. She lived in a man’s world and men were pricks. Jack should know—he was one of them.

So he opened his mouth to give an apology when he didn’t feel in the least apologetic and he was saved by the bell. Or at least a ring tone. Sinnerman , Nick’s ringtone. Nick had programmed it in himself.

Jack held up a finger and watched as her jaws flexed. Just a minute , he mouthed then answered with the fervor of a man who’d been saved from annihilation.

“Nick. My man. Wassup?”

“Where are you?” Nick usually started off with howzzit hangin’? so his deep sober tone made Jack stand straighter and shoot a glance at Summer. Whatever this was about it wasn’t about Summer because she was standing right in front of him, glaring.

Except it was about Summer.

“I set up—or rather Felicity set up—a surveillance bot for Summer. Felicity’s a big fan of the blog and she wants to keep Summer safe. So she checked the cameras across the street from Summer’s place and got this?—”

“What?” Summer asked Jack. “What is it?”

Grimly, Jack angled his screen so she could see and put it on speakerphone.

Summer cocked her head as she stared at the screen. A night view of a suburban street, greenery, an old jalopy parked on the street. His.

“I don’t see what?—”

And then she could see what it was because it was a view of her apartment building. It was static, from a security camera. Not much appeared to be happening.

“There!” Jack said, and checked the timeline. Half an hour ago. He moved the slider from right to left and pointed to a spot on the screen.

Summer frowned, leaned closer. “What is it?”

Jack watched it again. “The head of someone, moving against the blinds. While we were here.” He met her eyes. “Someone’s been in your place, Summer.”

Blood drained from her face. “An intruder?” she breathed.

“An intruder.” Jack nodded. “Not me. So he didn’t mean you any good.” He addressed the screen. “Tell Felicity good catch.” She’d done superb work.

“That isn’t all that we caught tonight,” Nick’s voice was grim. “There’s more. Two agents I trust were nearby and I asked them to go into Summer’s place, see if we could get fingerprints, DNA, something. Summer’s triggered some kind of trip wire and if we can get the identity of the intruder we’ll have a trail to follow. Or we thought we’d have a trail to follow.”

This wasn’t sounding good. “And?”

“These two guys are good, and discreet. Don’t worry about any leaks. One of them had the presence of mind to take out a sniffer and wand the door.”

Fear pumped a sudden icy jet in Jack’s veins. His voice turned hoarse. “There was a bomb?”

“No,” Nick said and Jack’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Something worse.”

Summer’s face was icy white. Her hands were clenched, knuckles pale. “Worse than a bomb?” she whispered. “What’s worse than a bomb?”

The screen changed and Jack could see Nick’s face, narrow-eyed and tense. “It was a new type of sensor we’re testing and it picks up about twenty types of explosives and four major bioweapons. Sarin, ricin, anthrax and botulinum.”

Summer swallowed, that long white neck bobbing. “And—and which was it?”

“Sarin,” Nick said. “They left a booby trap. The next time you opened your door, you’d have received a blast of sarin in your face. You’d have been dead inside the hour, Summer, and a sarin death is not pretty. They’re evacuating the building now.”

“That’s it,” Jack said, decisively. That was it for him. He couldn’t continue investigating in DC, not with Summer. And he wasn’t willing to leave her for a second. So he was done. “I’m taking Summer to my safe house and tomorrow we’re flying to Portland. Tell ASI to send a plane.”

San Francisco

The house was perfect. In the Mission, but enough on the edge of the fast growing and gentrifying tech sector to make it plausible for four young tech slackers to share the rent.

Drunks and addicts to the left of them, Google to the right, they set up shop. It was an old building, practically with a sell by date on its facade. It would fall to the tech giants soon. If not this year, then the next. As inevitable as looking at an old dog and knowing that it would die sooner or later.

Ostensibly the four young men were renting but actually the building and the two neighboring buildings were owned by a shell company that, if you wanted to spend about six months digging, was ultimately owned by the PLA. No one was interested enough to spend those six months and if they were, by the time the six months were up, the PLA would own most of California anyway.

The four young men operated very discreetly. They had a satellite uplink disguised as an HVAC on the roof, which was a weak spot. It was the only HVAC on the block, but the rooflines were changing monthly. No one would notice.

They had reinforced internet connections via a thick cable that snaked out of the building.

That was for the primary mission.

They were ready for the post-mission period, too. The basements of their building and the two adjacent buildings contained brand new powerful generators that could keep electricity running in their buildings for months. Special films had been put over all the windows. They were invisible from the outside but they acted as light filters. The time would come when there were no lights in the city and their building would be a beacon.

Thanks to the film, no light would escape. No one would know they were the only ones with power.

The three buildings were four stories tall. The team operated out of the first floor of the central building. That was where they worked, ate and slept. The other rooms on the other floors were filled floor to ceiling with supplies. Food, water, arms. They could live twenty years on what was in the buildings.

Twenty years wouldn’t be necessary, of course, but it was good to be prepared.

The generators and supplies had been brought in by stealth, at night, unloading vans from the alleyway in back. Supplies had been purchased from valid credit cards in fake names within a radius of a hundred miles, no purchase so big it would raise eyebrows.

Two of them had studied in the US and could easily pass for American. They made a point of hanging out in the local coffee shops and noodle shops, until they became a familiar sight. There were plenty of twenty something slackers dressed in torn jeans and tees. One of them had a favorite tee with KEEP CALM AND CODE on it. That got him knowing smiles from the baristas.

Finally, the preparations were over. They were fully stocked. Their use of power from the grid was perfectly normal—no billing anomalies would be noted. They used the grid for light and for the monitor they used for entertainment. The rest came from the monster generators in the basement.

The leader—lean and handsome, straight black hair down to his shoulders, wearing a Daft Punk T-shirt—was about to send an encrypted message in the secure uplink, directly to the overhead satellite and it was then bounced down to a secure receiver in Pudong. It was a message that could not be intercepted by the NSA.

The leader could just see the general receiving the message. General Chen Yi’s office was on the twelfth floor of an anonymous-looking building in the Pudong District of Shanghai. The General had come up with the plan, a brilliant one, for taking over the most powerful country on earth without firing a shot. Funded by the billions and billions of dollars siphoned off the American economy after the Massacre. An audacious plan, using America’s strength against it.

General Chen Yi knew that a fighting war was unthinkable. America had a million and a half active military personnel, eight thousand tanks, fourteen thousand military aircraft, twenty aircraft carriers and seventy submarines, backed by a military budget of over eight hundred billion dollars.

A huge, powerful dragon standing guard over the hoard of treasure that was the United States of America.

An enormous fortress, sky high and incredibly wide, almost invincible.

And the back door was wide open.

They were ready.

The leader, who blended right in with the other slackers in the coffee shops of the Mission, was actually a lieutenant in the PLA and hand-picked by Chen Li to lead the mission. In San Francisco he was known as Jason Lee, his private joke, as a huge fan of vintage Bruce Lee films. He passed as a third generation Chinese-American, fully blended in.

In truth he was Zhang Wei, handpicked by Chen Yi when he was twelve and a computer prodigy.

Zhang Wei was very aware of what he was doing and of the upheaval to come, orchestrated by him and his team. The plan was excellent. And necessary.

He sat in his chair and opened up the satellite link for the first time.

Mission-ready, he keyed in, sending his message to General Chen Yi in person.

Excellent. Everything on schedule, the reply came immediately.