For a moment, he caught a glance from Rachel in the rearview mirror, her eyes shaded by her glasses. Still, he knew she was studying him. Too conscious of the scrutiny, he glanced away.
He balled a fist on a knee at his reaction.
Gray had never met a woman who so confounded him. He’d had girlfriends before but nothing that lasted more than six months, and even that relationship had been in high school. He’d been too hotheaded in his youth, then too devoted to his career in the military, first in the Army, then in the Rangers. He never called one place home for longer than six months, so romance was usually no more than a long weekend leave. But in all his dalliances, he had never met a woman who was as frustrating as she was intriguing: a woman who laughed easily over lunch, but who could turn hard as a polished diamond.
He leaned back as the countryside flashed past. They left behind the lake country of Northern Italy and descended the foothills of the Alps. The journey was a short one. Milan lay only a forty-minute drive away.
Gray knew enough about himself to understand part of his attraction to Rachel. He was never fascinated by the middle of the road, the mundane, the undecided. But neither was he a fan of extremes: the brash, the strident, the discordant. He had preferred harmony, a merging of extremes where balance was achieved but uniqueness was not lost.
Basically the Taoist yin-and-yang view of the cosmos.
Even his own career reflected this—the scientist and the soldier. His field of disciplines sought to incorporate biology and physics. He had once described this choice to Painter Crowe. “All chemistry, biology, mathematics boil down to the positive and the negative, the zero and the one, the light and the dark.”
Gray found his attention drifting back to Rachel. Here was this same philosophy in shapely flesh.
He watched Rachel lift a hand and knead a kink from her neck. Her lips were slightly parted as she found the sweet spot and rubbed. He wondered what those lips would taste like.
Before he let this thought drift further, she whipped the Mercedes around a tight curve, throwing Gray against the door frame. She dropped her hand, downshifted, gassed the engine, and took the turn even faster.
Gray hung on. Monk groaned.
Rachel merely wore a ghost of a smile.
Who wouldn’t be fascinated by this woman?
6:07 A.M.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
EIGHT HOURS and no word.
Painter paced the length of his office. He had been here since ten o’clock the prior night—as soon as the news reached him about the explosion at the Cologne Cathedral. Since then, information had been filtering in slowly.
Too slowly.
The source of the incineration: bombs filled with black powder, white phosphorus, and the incendiary oil LA-60. It had taken three hours until the fire was contained enough to attempt entry. But the interior was a smoky, toxic shell, burned down to the stone walls and floors. Charred skeletal remains were discovered.
Was it his team?
Another two hours passed until a report came in that the slag remains of weapons had been found with two of the bodies. Unidentified assault rifles. No such weapons had been deployed with his team. So at least some of the bodies had been unknown assailants.
But what about the others?
Satellite surveillance out of NRO proved useless. No eyes in the skies had been sampling the area at that hour. On the ground, business and municipal cameras in the vicinity were still being canvassed. Eyewitnesses were few. One homeless man, sleeping near Cathedral Hill, reported seeing a handful of people fleeing the burning cathedral. But his blood alcohol level was over .15. Stumbling drunk.
All else was quiet. The safe house in Cologne hadn’t been breeched. And so far, not a word from the field.
Nothing.
Painter could not help but fear the worst.
A knock at his half-open door interrupted him.
He turned and waved Logan Gregory into the office. His second-in-command had reams of paper tucked under his arm and dark circles under his eyes. Logan had refused to go home, sticking at his side all night long.
Painter looked on expectantly, hoping for a good word.
Logan shook his head. “Still no hits on their aliases.” They had been checking hourly at airports, train stations, and bus lines.
“Border crossings?”
“Nothing. But the EU is pretty much an open sieve. They could have crossed out of Germany any number of ways.”
“And the Vatican still hasn’t heard anything?”
Another shake of his head. “I spoke to Cardinal Spera just ten minutes ago.”
A chime sounded from his computer. He strode around his desk and tabbed the key to initiate the video-conferencing feature. He faced the plasma screen hanging on the left wall. A pixilating image appeared of his boss, the head of DARPA.
Dr. Sean McKnight was at his office in Arlington. He had abandoned his usual suit jacket and had the cuffs on his shirt rolled up. No tie. He ran a hand through his graying red hair, a familiar tired gesture.
“I got your request,” his boss started.
Painter straightened from where he had been leaning on his desk. Logan had retreated to the door, staying out of camera view. He made a move to step out, to offer privacy, but Painter motioned him to stay. His request wasn’t a matter of security.
Sean shook his head. “I can’t grant it.”
Painter frowned. He had asked for an emergency pass to go to the site himself. To be on hand in Germany during the investigation. There might be clues others missed. His fingers curled into a fist in frustration.
“Logan can oversee things here,” Painter argued. “I can be in constant communication with command.”
Sean’s demeanor hardened. “Painter, you are command now.”
“But—”
“You’re no longer a field operative.”
The pain must have been evident in his expression.
Sean sighed. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat in my office waiting to hear from you? How about your last operation in Oman? I thought you were dead.”
Painter glanced down to his desk. Binders and papers were piled everywhere. There was no relief to be found among them. He had never suspected how agonizing this job had been for his boss. Painter shook his head.
“There is only one way of handling matters like this,” his boss said. “And believe me, they’ll happen on a regular basis.”
Painter faced the screen. An ache had settled behind his breastbone, throbbing and hot.
“You have to trust your agents. You put them into the field, but once they’re let loose, you have to have confidence. You picked the team leader for this op and his support. Do you trust they are capable of handling a hostile situation?”