“Vous êtes qui?” he asked the man.
It was a question he desperately wanted to answer.
Who are you?
12:22 A.M.
From the passenger seat of the SUV, Painter watched the lights of Provo vanish into the distance in the rearview mirror. Only now did he let his guard down.
Slightly.
Against his better judgment, Kowalski was again behind the wheel of their rental, in this case, a white Toyota Land Cruiser. Where they were going, a four-wheel-drive vehicle would be needed. Painter wasn’t up for the long drive himself. His upper arm still throbbed from the bullet graze, and his head ached from the concussive explosion.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this . . .
He flashed back to his couch at home, Lisa fingering the white lock in his dark hair, noting the gray notes elsewhere. What was he doing out in the field? This was a younger man’s game.
Proving this, Kowalski seemed little fazed, nursing a thermos of coffee to keep him alert for the overnight drive. A glance to the backseat revealed Kai leaning on Professor Kanosh, with one hand resting on the old man’s dog. Both were asleep, but a pair of canine eyes—one brown, one blue—stared up at him, wary, guarded.
He gave the dog a nod. Keep an eye on her.
This earned a weak thump of a tail.
He turned back around, still heavy-hearted. After their escape across campus, he’d had to break the news about the murder of Professor Denton. Kanosh had looked crushed, aging in seconds. He’d lost too many close friends in the span of a day. Only the need to put some distance between them and the hunters had blunted the anguish. So after a quick stop at a CVS pharmacy for first-aid supplies for his wound, they set out of town.
They were headed to some friends of Kanosh, a group of Native Americans who were living off the grid. Painter wanted to get Kai somewhere safe. Plus he needed answers to his questions about what was really going on out here.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Frowning, he fished it out, checked the caller ID, and raised it to his ear. “Commander Pierce?” He was surprised by the call at this late hour, especially from the East Coast, where it was two hours later. He kept his voice low so as not to disturb the others.
“Director Crowe,” Gray said, “I’m glad you’re okay. I heard from Kat about the attack. She asked me to give you a call.”
“Concerning what?”
Painter had already reached out to Sigma Command. He’d briefed Kathryn Bryant on the events in Utah. She was helping with the aftermath of the blast at the university, while using her resources in both federal law enforcement and various intelligence communities to help identify the team who invaded the physics lab.
Gray explained, “I believe I might have some insight on the attack.”
The words sharpened Painter’s attention. The last he knew Gray was investigating some lead about the Guild. He had a bad feeling about this.
“What sort of insight?” he asked.
“It’s still preliminary. We’ve barely scratched the surface, but I think some information Seichan obtained is tied to events out in Utah.”
Painter listened as Gray told a story of Benjamin Franklin, French scientists, and the pursuit of some threat tied to pale Indians, to use Franklin’s term for them. He leaned forward as the history unfolded, especially concerning a shadowy enemy of the Founding Fathers, one who used as their trademark the same symbol as the modern Guild.
“I believe the discovery of that cave ignited the Guild’s attention,” Gray said. “Clearly something important got lost long ago or was hidden from them.”
“And now it’s resurfaced,” Painter added.
It was an intriguing thought, and from the sophistication and brutality of the night’s assault, the attack definitely had all the earmarks of the Guild.
“I’ll keep working the angle out here,” Gray said. “See what I can dig up.”
“Do that.”
“But Kat wanted me to call you for another reason, too.”
“What’s that?”
“To pass on news of an anomaly that’s reverberating throughout the global scientific community. It seems a group of Japanese physicists have reported a strange spike in neutrino activity. It’s off the scales, from what I understand.”
“Neutrinos? As in the subatomic particles?”
“That’s right. Apparently it takes violent forces to generate a neutrino burst of this magnitude—solar fusion, nuclear explosions, sunspot flares. So this monstrous spike has got the physicists all worked up.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with us?”
“That’s just it. The Japanese scientists were able to pinpoint the source of the neutrino spike. They know where the burst came from.”
Painter extrapolated the answer. Why else would Gray be calling? “From the blast site in the mountains,” he concluded.
“Exactly.”
Painter let the shock wash through him. What did this news mean? He questioned Gray until they were talking in circles, getting no further. He finally signed off and sank back into his seat.
“What was that about?” Kowalski asked.
Painter shook his head, causing the dull ache behind his eyes to flare. He needed time to think things through.
Earlier, he’d talked to Ron Chin, who had been monitoring the blast site. He reported a strange volatility there, described how the zone remained active, spreading deeper and wider, eating away anything that it came in contact with, possibly denaturing matter at the atomic level.
Which brought Painter’s thoughts back to the source of the explosion.
Kanosh suspected something hidden inside the golden skull, something volatile enough that just removing it from the cave had caused it to explode. He’d also found evidence that the mummified Indians—if they were Indians—possessed artifacts that indicated some sophisticated knowledge of nanotechnology, or at least some ancient recipe for manufacturing that allowed them to manipulate matter at the atomic level.
And now this news of a spike in neutrinos—particles produced by catastrophic events at the atomic level.
It all seemed to circle back to nanotechnology, to a mystery hidden amid the smallest particles of the universe. But what did it all mean? If his head wasn’t pounding like a snare drum, he might be able to figure it out.
But for the moment he had only one firm sense, a jangling warning.
That the true danger was only starting.
Part II
Firestorm
Chapter 14
May 31, 3:30 P.M.