Page 19 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Jonas Faukman blew in his cupped hands as he walked east along Fifty-Second Street, which was deserted at this hour. The night was bitingly cold, and the manuscript felt heavy in his backpack. Thankfully, the twenty-four-hour FedEx office was just a block ahead, across Seventh Avenue.

Faukman was still struggling to make sense of why anyone would target only Katherine’s book.

The PRH database contained countless other more obvious targets—guaranteed blockbusters by big-name authors on whom the PRH bottom line depended.

It made no sense. Faukman was starting to wonder if maybe this hack was not book piracy at all, but rather… something else.

Twenty yards ahead of Faukman, a black van had pulled to the curb and stopped, idling.

Faukman instinctively slowed, feeling uneasy on the empty street at this hour.

A moment later, however, he realized his paranoia was misplaced; the van’s driver hopped out, whistling happily and reading a clipboard.

Without so much as a glance at Faukman, he strode off in the opposite direction.

Faukman relaxed and continued past the van.

Up ahead, the departing driver stopped and looked up at the building numbers, checked the clipboard again, and turned around, walking back the way he had come. “Johnny!” he called toward the van. “What was the address on that email? I don’t see any souvlaki restaurant here!”

“It’s one block farther,” Faukman offered, pointing. “Just past Seventh—”

From behind him, a fist collided with Faukman’s right kidney, and a black bag swooped down over his head.

Before Faukman could even process what was happening, two sets of powerful hands lifted him off his feet and heaved him into the van.

He landed roughly on the hard floor, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

The door slammed shut, and within seconds, he felt the van accelerating rapidly.

Gasping and unable to see, the terrified editor tried to catch his breath and take stock of his situation. Faukman had edited enough thrillers to know what happened when a character was blindfolded and thrown into the back of a van.

It was never good.

Three blocks away, in Random House Tower, Alex Conan had now dialed all of Faukman’s contact numbers—office, home, cell—but had failed to get an answer anywhere.

Where the hell did he go?!

We’re in the middle of a crisis!

Faukman, it seemed, had simply turned off his phone and wandered out into the night—perhaps to On the Rocks, a nearby whiskey bar frequented by neurotic editors trying to calm their nerves at all hours of the night.

So far, Alex had made no headway identifying the hackers.

He had combed through the wreckage but had dislodged nothing of interest. I need a finer-toothed comb, he knew.

His next pass would require a proprietary forensic algorithm tooled to scan for specific artifacts unique to the missing manuscript—keywords, concepts, names—but to do that, he needed to talk to Faukman.

Or… he realized. I could call Katherine Solomon directly?

PRH protocol prohibited that call, requiring all communication with authors to flow exclusively through each author’s editor—the trusted soul who had learned how to navigate the writer’s quirks, eccentricities, and insecurities.

Screw it, Alex thought. Not only was it critical that he learn more about Katherine’s book, but he believed Katherine had a right to know that someone had targeted her manuscript, especially if it meant she might be in personal danger herself.

With that in mind, Alex accessed Katherine Solomon’s author file, located her cell-phone number, and dialed. Faukman had mentioned Katherine was in Europe at the moment, meaning it was early morning for her, but if Alex woke her up, she’d understand this was an emergency.

Katherine’s cell phone rang four times and went to voicemail. Damn. He left her a brief message, introducing himself and asking if she would please call him immediately.

He hung up and tried Faukman’s cell phone again.

Nothing.

It was then that he recalled Faukman mentioning that Solomon was traveling with another of his authors—Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Also in the PRH database, Alex thought, deciding it was worth a try.

He accessed Langdon’s file and called that cell-phone number as well.

Langdon’s line didn’t even ring—it went straight to voicemail.

Alex hung up, feeling suddenly very alone.

Where the hell is everyone?!