Singer nodded slowly and reached into his jacket pocket. He produced a photograph, which he showed us. It was a picture of himself with a young woman and two children.

  “Mr. Morgan, I don’t want a team. I don’t want the second best. I want the best.” He handed Justine the photograph. “That’s my daughter, Ms. Smith. Her name is Elizabeth. Those are my grandkids, Danny and Maria. I think they’re in trouble and I believe Mr. Morgan can find them and bring them back to me.”

  I glanced at Justine and saw her resolve wavering. It was one thing to have abstract conversations about which cases to take, but when a father pleaded desperation in the face of loss, it was hard to refuse.

  “I’m prepared to pay any price.” Singer thought for a moment. “Two hundred and fifty thousand, with a half-million-dollar bonus when you find them. How’s that sound?”

  “That’s a very generous offer, Mr. Singer,” I replied. “But I can’t do it. I have obligations here. And, as I said, we have a highly skilled and experienced team in New York who I trust implicitly. They have the time and the resources to give your case the attention it deserves.”

  “I understand,” Singer replied sadly.

  Justine handed him back the photograph. He looked at it fondly before returning it to his breast pocket. There was moment of awkward silence.

  “Well, thank you for your time,” Singer said, getting to his feet. He looked like a broken man.

  Justine shot me a look that communicated exasperation and defeat. I smiled.

  “Mr. Singer,” she said, “I think I might be able to cover Jack’s duties here.”

  He turned to face me, his expression hopeful.

  “You mean…”

  I nodded. “I’ll take the investigation and do my best to find your daughter and grandchildren.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” Singer responded gratefully, and for a moment I thought he might cry with relief. “You’re a good man. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 6

  JOSHUA FLOYD HAD spent the night and most of the following day hunkered down in a small cave about two miles from the crash site. He was higher up, on the side of a mountain, at the start of an expansive cedar forest. It was cold, but his flight suit and jacket kept him insulated from the worst of the chill. He’d heard voices around midday and had peered out of the cave mouth to see men creeping through the trees, searching for him. He’d spent the afternoon cleaning the AK-47 until he was certain every component was in the best possible shape. He tried to do the same with his personal locator, but the beacon had been damaged beyond repair, either during the crash or the ensuing escape.

  As he looked at the wrecked locator in the dim light of the cave, he thought of Nat and Elmore, and the last time he’d seen them. He couldn’t help but picture their families back home, broken by the news of their deaths. Floyd was determined that his own family would never receive such a heartbreaking message.

  Exhausted, he had finally fallen asleep in the late afternoon and woke when the light inside the cave was deep purple. He got to his feet, grabbed the machine gun, and crept outside. He paused to scan the area. The air was infused with the scent of cedarwood, and the spicy aroma reminded him of Sunday mornings spent in church at his grandmother’s side. Floyd invoked her protection with a brief, silent prayer. Satisfied the men hunting him were not close, he set off, tracking south, retracing the path he’d taken the night of the attack.

  He believed his pursuers had gone west, and the border with Pakistan was to the north, but he wasn’t about to leave Afghanistan without something to show for all the lives that had been lost. And if any of his comrades had survived, his plan might facilitate a rescue. Floyd hurried through the trees, descending the steep slope to the bottom of the mountain, which would take him back to the crash site and the compound that had been their original target.

  Floyd fought gravity for half a mile, and by the time he reached the rocky foot of the mountain, he was breathless and sweaty. The smell of cedar was much fainter here, and there was a smoky hint of distant fire, but when he scanned the rocky horizon, he saw no telltale lights. He continued onward.

  In the distance, he heard a dog bark; it was swiftly answered by the cry of a fox. Twenty minutes after he’d left the cave, Floyd slowed and climbed the steep rise near where he’d killed two men the previous night. Their bodies were gone, but Floyd’s memory of their anguished expressions haunted him as he dropped to his belly and crawled across the granite slab.

  He saw the burned-out wreckage of his Osprey, and to its right the compound that had been their target. There was no sign of any bodies, and the buildings looked to be completely deserted. There were no lights, no vehicles, and the only sound to break the still night was the distant barking of the dog.

  Floyd got to his feet and ran toward the nearest structure, which stood to the east of the compound. He skirted the blackened wreckage of the Osprey, trying to avoid looking at pieces of body armor and charred fragments of clothing as he closed the gap to the building.

  He pressed himself against the cold concrete wall and crept around the structure. He craned his neck to peer around the corner, but saw no sign of life. He hurried on, staying close to the building. The noise of his boots on frozen rocks sounded like crunching thunder, and he scanned the horizon nervously in case there was anyone around to hear.

  The building had a few small windows. When he came to the first, he peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. The same was true of the second window, and when he reached the steel double doors that formed the main entrance, he found them open.

  Floyd pushed one wide and immediately recognized the smell that met him: the sweet, acrid stench of death. He stepped into a large hallway to see the bodies of his comrades laid out in rows. They’d been stripped of their uniforms and gear, and were positioned on their backs in their underwear. Floyd gagged and couldn’t hold back his tears as he registered so many faces he recognized. Elmore, Nat, and at the back of the hallway, caught by the moonlight coming through a small window, in a more advanced state of decomposition, Said Masry, the CIA spy they had been sent to rescue.

  An Al-Qaeda cell had said they were holding him for ransom, but it looked as though he’d been killed long before they’d arrived. Floyd couldn’t understand why they would execute such a high-value asset, but inquisitiveness took second place to anger and he hurried from the building. There was nothing for him here.

  He ran outside and turned north, heading back up the mountain, the way he’d just come. Shock and grief were quickly giving way to fury. He had to avenge the fallen, and the best way of doing that was to get home and tell people the truth about what had happened here. America would make the perpetrators answer for their crimes.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’M SO TIRED, Mom,” Danny said as they trudged along the single-lane road.

  The sun was falling and night’s chill nipped at Beth’s cheeks.

  “We’re nearly there,” she replied. “You OK?” she asked Maria, who was a few yards behind them.

  The girl had withdrawn into her own world. It took a moment for her to register her mom had spoken, but finally she nodded.

  After they’d fled the cabin, they’d made their way through the forest toward the edge of Oscawana Lake. It had been night by the time they were within sight of the placid water. By then the temperature had dropped rapidly, so they’d needed to find shelter quickly. Beth had surveyed the properties that edged the lake, and found a huge mansion being built on the east shore. She’d helped the children over the wire fence, and found some shards of metal, which she’d used to pick the padlock on the foreman’s office. It had been years since she’d been taught how to roll a tumbler, but it came back to her soon enough. Inside, they’d found a couple of couches, some snacks, water, and a coffee machine. More importantly there was a heater, which had kept them warm as they’d slept.

  In the morning, Beth had risen before the children and spent a few calm moments considering her options. Local motels were out; their pursuers would be looking for any recent arrivals. They could go to the few friends she had in Garrison, but she wasn’t sufficiently close to any of them and her presence might put them in harm’s way. So she’d settled on the only man she felt she could trust who lived within reasonable walking distance. Once the kids had woken and feasted on a terrible breakfast of Cheetos and Hershey bars, they’d set out for Pleasant Valley, which was about a ten-hour walk cross-country.

  The kids hadn’t complained much in the morning, but after a lunch made up of the remains of the snacks Beth had taken from the site office, hunger had frayed tempers, and there had been a couple of difficult hours marching along quiet rural roads, bickering in the freezing cold. Beth had thought about hitching a ride, but every contact was a potential lead for their would-be abductors, and the level of sophistication they’d demonstrated in tracking her to the cabin suggested she was dealing with professionals. Finally, late in the afternoon, the kids had stopped arguing and lapsed into exhausted silence.

  As they finally approached the outskirts of Pleasant Valley, a car roared by at speed and the driver sounded his horn. Was it a warning? Or a loud question: What the hell are you doing walking out here? The car disappeared around a bend, and Beth and the children followed at a slow, steady, and fairly miserable pace. A few minutes later, she caught sight of what she was looking for: a narrow driveway that ran north off Freedom Road.

  “That’s it,” she told her children, and saw a glimmer of hope light up both faces.

  They turned right and followed the trail through rough scrubland that had been seasoned with a scattering of icy snow. The trail bent right before straightening up, and there at the end, Beth saw the single-story home of an old friend.

  He emerged from the house as they approached. Beth glanced around to see if she could spot the motion sensors that were likely to have announced their arrival. She wasn’t surprised not to see anything; he’d be too conscientious to leave such things anywhere they could be seen. Apart from grayer hair, wrinkles, and the fact he wasn’t in uniform, her former instructor, Ted Eisner, looked the same. He still had that ramrod posture that made him seem even taller than his six feet two inches. He was broad with a barrel chest, and wore a US Army branded T-shirt and green cargo pants.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, stepping off the porch in front of the house. “Elizabeth Singer. And these must be your kids.”

  “Sergeant Eisner,” Beth responded.

  “It’s just Ted now,” he said, stopping near the children. “And you are?”

  “Danny and Maria,” Beth replied.

  “Pleased to meet you, Danny and Maria. I used to work with your mom, until she decided she had better things to do with her life.”

  The remark was delivered with a smile, but it was clearly intended to hurt. He was obviously still smarting.

  “Not better,” Beth replied. “Just different.”

  “I guess you could say that,” Ted said, looking her up and down. “So what brings you here, on foot and all bedraggled?”

  Beth took a moment to think about how best to answer.

  “Never mind,” he said, before she could. “It’s too cold to wait out here for you to figure out a lie. You’d better come inside and do it.”

  He started back toward the house, and Maria and Danny looked at their mother uncertainly.

  “You know Mom doesn’t lie,” Beth said. “He’s just being grumpy because we had an argument a while back.”

  Ted glanced over his shoulder. “Come on, Singer. I might not feel the light of forgiveness much longer.”

  Beth nodded at her children and the three of them followed the old man inside.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’D SPENT THE day learning everything I could about Elizabeth Singer. Public records and internet research told me very little, other than that she was the daughter of Donald and Mary Singer. Donald had filled in the rest for me. Mary had died twenty years ago, and he’d dealt with his grief by devoting himself to his property empire. Elizabeth, or Beth, as Singer told me she preferred to be called, lived outside Garrison, New York, and had two young children, who attended the local elementary school. I couldn’t find anything about their father, and Singer had said that he wasn’t in the picture. Beth didn’t have any social media presence, and her finances were unremarkable, except for one thing; as far as I could tell, she had no sources of income. Singer said he didn’t support her. He offered to regularly, but she always turned him down.

  It was a little after six when I wandered down to Maureen Roth’s computer lab on the fourth floor. I’d recognized the importance of computer crime early on, and had ensured Private had the very best people and technology at its disposal. Maureen Roth, known to everyone at Private as Mo-bot, was a computer geek extraordinaire. Fifty-something, she was a salutary lesson in the unexpected. Her tattoos and spiky hair suggested a cold, hard rebel, but she had the warmest heart and was thought of by many at Private as their second mom, someone they could go to with any problems. The only thing that hinted at a softer side, and spoke to her age, were the bifocals she wore, which I always said looked as though she’d lifted them from a Boca Raton grandmother. She managed a team of six tech specialists in the LA office, and oversaw dozens of others in Private’s international units.

  When I stepped into the super-cooled lab, I found her with Private’s chief criminalist, Seymour Kloppenberg, nicknamed Dr. Science—or Sci for short. He ran a team of twelve forensic scientists who worked out of a lab in the basement of the building. He was an international expert on criminology, and when time allowed, would consult for law enforcement agencies all over the world, ensuring Private stayed current with the very latest scientific thinking. A slight, bookish man, Sci dressed like a Hells Angel, which was where I think his heart lay because he was always restoring old muscle bikes.

  These two had been with me since the early days of Private, and were often the first people in the office and the last to leave. Diligent and brilliant, I’d known them long enough to consider them good friends.

  “Better stand up straight. The boss is here,” Mo-bot joked. She nudged Sci, who was leaning against her desk.

  I smiled as I walked deeper into her lair. Computer servers, routers, and black boxes whose purpose I didn’t know filled the racks that lined the walls. I could not help but imagine them as her minions, watching me. Judging me.

  “I hear someone got you out of retirement,” Sci said.

  “Time you stopped moping around like an old geezer,” Mo-bot added.

  “That hurt,” I replied. “It’s true that I’m working a case, though, and I need your team to run a full background, but since they’ve clocked off for the day, you’ll have to do it.”

  Sci laughed and Mo-bot pursed her lips. She was about to reply when my phone rang.

  “Elizabeth Singer. These are her details.” I handed her a piece of paper, and answered my phone.

  “Where are you?”

  It was Justine calling me.

  “In the reprobate’s lair,” I replied, and earned myself a withering look from Mo-bot.

  “Which one—Sci or Mo?” Justine asked.

  “The digital enchantress,” I said.

  “You still want that ride to the airport?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten.”

  “How are you both?” I asked Mo-bot and Sci as I hung up.

  “Hurt and offended,” Mo-bot replied. “Reprobate?”

  “Pretty good,” Sci chimed in.

  “Staff satisfaction at fifty percent,” I responded. “I’ll take it.”

  “I don’t know why I put up with you,” Mo-bot said.

  “Because you love me. Give me a call if you find anything on Beth Singer,” I replied.

  “Will do,” Mo-bot said. “Have a safe flight.”

  I headed back upstairs to my office to grab my ready bag, an emergency carryall I kept for just such unexpected trips, and then down to the basement parking garage. Justine was in her black Mercedes S65, and the engine was running. I was greeted by a blast of warm air when I opened the passenger door and slid my bag onto the tiny back seat. I got in and kissed her.

  “You sure you want to do this?” she asked as she put the car in drive and we started our journey.

  “This isn’t just about Donald Singer,” I confessed. “I need to get back out there.” We hadn’t discussed it much, but she knew recent events in Moscow had taken their toll on me. “And this feels like a good case to ease me back in.”

  Justine nodded. “I just don’t want to lose what we’ve built over the past few months.”

  I squeezed her leg reassuringly. “Nor do I, believe me. I’ll find this woman and her kids and be back before you know it. You probably won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  “Now that’s impossible,” she replied as she pulled onto Wilshire Boulevard and joined the rush-hour traffic heading west.

  CHAPTER 9

  “YOU GONNA TELL me what’s going on?” Ted asked as Beth returned to the living room.

  The place was a museum. The Edward Eisner Museum of Military Excellence, Beth thought, and couldn’t help but smile. There were medals on display and photos of him with senior brass, one with President Obama, others on deployment, and about a dozen of him giving instruction. There was a glass case that contained fragments of shrapnel taken from his leg, along with trophies he’d plundered from Afghan and Iraqi enemies—shell casings, medals, watches with photos of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and other strange keepsakes.

  The furniture was old but well cared for, but the television was new and enormous, and Beth guessed it was a source of company. Ted Eisner was a naturally abrasive man. People often thought a heart of gold lay beneath the rough exterior, but she knew his heart was made of steel and was locked away in an icebox. He had been a great instructor, but eventually he fell out with everyone who crossed his path, including Beth. She hadn’t spoken to him for more than ten years, despite living less than fifty miles away.