Danny and Maria had taken ages to settle in the strange house, but were now asleep in Ted’s spare room, Danny on the floor because he didn’t want to share the queen bed with his “stinky” sister.

  “Is it your husband?” Ted pressed. Even now, Ted refused to say his name. To begin with, Beth had suspected there was a racial element to Ted’s dislike of her husband, but she came to realize the animosity wasn’t motivated by the fact he was Black; Ted simply resented the choices she had made after getting married.

  Beth had tried not to think about her husband too much since the men posing as cops had pulled her over. Getting her kids to safety was her primary focus; she didn’t have time to worry about him at the moment. And she definitely couldn’t allow Maria and Danny to see she that she was worried—they wouldn’t be able to cope if they thought anything had happened to their father. But what else could it be? Beth hadn’t been in the field for more than ten years, and the chances of an old enemy targeting her after all this time were remote.

  “I think so,” she conceded, taking a seat on a brown leather couch.

  Ted was in an easy chair, nursing a bottle of beer.

  “I told you he’d be trouble.”

  That was Ted. No empathy, just a dogged belief he was always right. If she hadn’t been so worn down by events, Beth might have risen to the provocation, but instead she stayed silent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a moment of uncharacteristic reflection, “but you were one of my best. If you hadn’t been a damned woman, and fallen in love, you could have gone all the way. Pentagon material, dammit.”

  “Even your apologies stink, Sarge,” Beth replied.

  “It wasn’t a real apology. I still think you were a damned fool letting yourself get trapped by life’s baggage. Kids? Damned kids? You were a warrior. You had a great thing going, and you ruined it.”

  “Thanks. Raking over my perceived failings is exactly what I need right now.”

  “Face the truth, soldier,” he snapped. “If you had anywhere else to go, you’d already be there.”

  Beth got to her feet. “You’re as exhausting as ever. I’m going to crash.” She was furious with the old man, but she didn’t want a fight. She wouldn’t put it past him to kick them out if things turned sour.

  “I’m sorry for my bluntness,” he said at last. “And that’s a genuine apology. Sometimes, I… well… this damned mouth of mine has killed far too many friendships. You threw it away, Beth. All of it. I find it frustrating, that’s all.”

  “I get that,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  She left the room quickly, keen not to give him a chance to reply. Within minutes, she was in bed beside Maria. She lay listening to her children, who breathed deeply in a peaceful sleep, something Beth knew she wouldn’t get tonight while her mind fizzed with anxiety and anger.

  CHAPTER 10

  I WAS IN the frozen landscape north of Moscow with Dinara Orlova and Leonid Boykov, studying the ancient wreckage of an accident. Two cars protruded from a thick drift of pristine snow, their twisted shells mangled together, jagged shards of rusted metal spearing the night. Behind them, a snow-covered forest faded into darkness. As I looked at the shadows between distant trees, I felt a primeval fear building within me. There was something stalking me. Something merciless…

  “Mr. Morgan?” A voice roused me from my dream, and I woke to see one of the flight attendants at my shoulder. “We’re starting our descent.”

  I rubbed my eyes and looked around the cabin to see my fellow passengers stretching and preparing for landing. Bright sunlight flooded the compartment as blinds were raised.

  The plane touched down at JFK, and I grabbed my bag from the overhead bin. After a short delay waiting for the jetway, I disembarked and hurried through the terminal. Red-eye flights from all along the West Coast were arriving. The building was full of sleepy people grasping cups of coffee. I went into the arrivals hall and was about to head for the cab stand when I saw a face I recognized.

  “Justine gave me your flight number,” Jessie Fleming said as she approached.

  Jessie was the head of Private New York. Now in her mid-thirties, she was a former FBI agent I’d hired straight out of the New York field office’s Counterintelligence Unit. It was one of my very best decisions.

  “You come to my town without telling me?” she asked mockingly.

  “I didn’t want to distract you,” I said. “It’s just a missing persons case. Something I can handle alone.”

  “OK. Well, even if you don’t need a partner, the very least I can do is give my boss a ride.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “Thanks, Jessie.”

  “Where we heading?” she asked.

  “Garrison. Upstate. I’ll give you the details on the way.”

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. “In person, I mean.”

  We had a video conference call every week, something I did with all the managers of our offices.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you’d gotten stuck behind your desk,” she went on.

  “Not stuck,” I replied. “Just comfortable.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that.” She flashed a smile. “My car’s this way.”

  I followed her outside and ice-cold air stung my lungs. We crossed the street and went into the terminal garage. She led me to her car, one of Private’s staff vehicles—a black Nissan Rogue SUV. We got in, and started our journey north.

  CHAPTER 11

  DANNY WAS SNORING gently when Beth put her hand over his mouth. His eyes opened instantly and filled with a wild look of fear. Beth rubbed his arm to soothe him, and signaled for him to be quiet. Maria was already up and putting on her shoes.

  “We need to go,” Beth whispered.

  Danny nodded.

  Ted’s spare room was much like his living room, full of old furniture and military memorabilia. His life in the Army was all he had, and he clung to it like a desperate lover who refused to move on from a broken relationship. Beth had been glad to leave her old life behind, but then she had her family. Ted had no one.

  “I need the bathroom,” Danny said as Beth helped him on with his shoes.

  “We’ll stop on the way,” she told him. “Come on.”

  She gently ushered the children out of the room and they crept along the corridor through to the kitchen, which was a small, sad place. There was no stove, just a two-hob countertop camping cooker, a small table with a single chair, and some ancient cabinets that had been transplanted from the seventies. Beth pictured Ted eating here alone, suddenly feeling a pang of pity for the difficult old man.

  She unlocked the door to the garage and led Maria and Danny inside. She eased the door shut behind them and switched on the light, illuminating Ted’s ten-year-old black Buick Enclave. He might not have been a government employee anymore, but he certainly bought cars like one. It was the kind of sensible SUV favored by G-men all over the country, and Beth wondered whether her former instructor had purchased it at a federal auction.

  She found the keys hanging in a tiny cabinet by the kitchen door, and unlocked the car.

  “Is this stealing?” Danny asked as Beth opened the back door.

  “No, honey,” she replied. “We’re just borrowing it.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, but Maria gave her mother a skeptical look as the kids climbed in the back. Beth slid into the driver’s seat. She found the remote for the garage door in a cubby in the center console and pushed the button. The door started rising and Beth put the key in the ignition, but when she tried the engine, she was greeted with silence. She tried it again. Nothing happened.

  “Mom,” Maria said, and Beth turned to see Ted standing in the kitchen doorway, a look of disappointment clouding his face.

  There was a time when Beth would have been afraid of the man, but now, dressed in yellow and black pajamas that made him look like an angry bee, she was only annoyed at having been caught.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, shuffling through the obsessively tidy garage in a pair of open-back slippers. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a family of thieves.”

  Beth glanced back at her children. Danny seemed on the verge of tears, but Maria was defiant.

  “It’s going to be OK,” she assured them.

  Ted opened the passenger door and sat down next to Beth. He stared directly ahead, and for a moment she watched him in silence.

  “I can’t believe you were just going to steal my car,” he said at last, and she felt the children hold their breath, ready for a scolding. “Without even saying goodbye,” he added, and turned to face Beth with a palpable expression of hurt.

  He hesitated. Beth sensed he had more to say, but his mouth snapped shut, and he leaned forward and opened the glove compartment to reveal a bundle of crisp twenties and a holstered pistol.

  “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but it’s rare that money can’t help,” he said. “And I’ll trade you this pistol for that Kalashnikov you brought with you. This is more discreet.”

  Beth smiled, overcome by his generosity. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Thank you, Sarge.”

  “Don’t go getting soft on me,” Ted said. “I thought I drilled that kind of nonsense out of you.”

  He leaned under the dash and signaled for Beth to bend down. She did so and saw his finger against a tiny lever.

  “Immobilizer,” he said. “Just flip it.”

  He pressed the switch and, when Beth tried the ignition, the engine came to life.

  “Ted, I can’t say what this means to me. To my family.”

  “That’s Sarge to you, grunt,” he responded, heaving himself out of the car. When he turned to face her, he sported a heavy frown. “I warned you about that soppy stuff. Just make sure you stay alive so you can come visit again,” he said without any change of expression.

  Beth smiled and put the gearshift in reverse.

  “Yes, Sarge,” she said as she backed the Buick out of the garage.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT TOOK US a little over an hour and a half to reach Elizabeth Singer’s house on Avery Road in Garrison. I used the time to bring Jessie up to speed, and she asked many of the searching questions I’d put to Donald Singer: Did Beth have any connections to organized crime? Strange new friendships? Had there been any ransom requests? The answers to these questions were no, and neither Jessie nor I could figure out why a seemingly law-abiding mother of two would simply disappear with her children.

  Three missing persons reports had been filed, and Jessie suggested we check in with the local police as a courtesy, but first I wanted to visit Elizabeth’s house.

  Avery Road was located in a quiet residential area north of Garrison. The street cut through a thick forest, and houses nestled in large lots between long runs of densely packed pine trees. Mounds of blackened snow were piled everywhere, and ice crystals sparkled on roofs and treetops.

  “This is it,” Jessie said, indicating number 1085, Beth’s address.

  Jessie swung the Nissan onto a graveled driveway and took us up to a single-story, red-brick bungalow. Elizabeth’s house stood at the heart of a one-acre garden. The brickwork was pristine, the slate roof covered in a thick layer of snow. An ice-crusted swing set and slide formed a play area near the trees.

  I grabbed my Arc’teryx winter coat from the back seat while Jessie parked in front of the house. We both got out and approached the front door. She rang the bell and I searched the plant pots for any sign of a spare key but found nothing. Jessie produced a set of lock-picking tools and opened the door in under sixty seconds.

  “Hello?” I said, as we went inside, but the place was as still as a museum.

  “You take the bedrooms,” I suggested, indicating a corridor that led off to the left.

  Jessie nodded and headed that way. I pressed along the entrance hall and went through a doorway on my right, into the living room. There was nothing immediately remarkable about the house. A few toys were scattered here and there, and the living room was clearly set up for a young family. A handful of Lego models were clustered in one corner, near a Captain America beanbag. A fabric-covered sofa faced a large TV and the bookshelf beside it was packed with children’s books. Framed photos of Elizabeth and her two children, Daniel and Marianne, covered every surface, and larger pictures of the children hung on the walls. There was no doubt about Elizabeth’s priorities in life—their smiles could be seen everywhere I looked.

  I checked the drawers in the TV stand and found spare batteries for the remote, a couple of kids’ card games.

  I moved into the kitchen, which was a large open-plan space at the back of the house, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the backyard and the forest beyond. The fridge was covered in magnets that secured reminders and school papers against its surface. The magnets looked like a historical trail of places the family had visited: the Empire State Building, Disney World, Busch Gardens. There were dozens, but a couple of odd ones popped out at me—Kabul Bird Market and the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq. Not the sort of places I imagined this family touring. I searched the cupboards and drawers, but found nothing else out of the ordinary.

  “You got anything?” Jessie asked as she entered.

  I shook my head. “You?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “They’re vanilla.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I said, pointing out the unusual fridge magnets.

  “Might be from friends,” Jessie suggested.

  I pulled open the only drawer I hadn’t searched and found it full of spatulas, large serving spoons, and an assortment of odd kitchen tools. I rifled through, and near the bottom discovered a bottle opener with an emblem on the handle. I recognized it immediately—the three lightning strikes crossing a raised gladius sword, the emblem of Third Special Forces Group, a Green Beret unit.

  “She might have a military connection,” I said, showing it to Jessie. “They don’t sell these in gift shops. It’s a trophy given to members of the unit who’ve seen action.”

  “Boyfriend? Family member?” Jessie asked.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “I’ll ask Mo-bot to run a contact check. See if Beth Singer has a connection to anyone who served in this unit. It’s not much of a lead, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  CHAPTER 13

  FLOYD FELT AS though a rodent was gnawing his innards. This was a deep and profound hunger, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since his escape and interrogation course, when he’d had to survive in the Rockies for ten days as part of his training for Third Group. And even that had not been as bad. He’d been climbing into the Hindu Kush mountains for hours, using the map in his flight suit to guide him toward the border with Pakistan. It was cold, and the snow-covered cedar forests yielded no sign of food. It was February, and any animals were either hibernating or had the good sense to keep well away from the desperate American pilot. He’d managed to find a stream with clear water, and had purified it using one of the tablets from his emergency kit, but the chill liquid only served to make his stomach feel even emptier.

  Floyd pulled his flight jacket tight and pressed forward, following a rutted track that wound up the steep mountainside. As he walked around the bend, he spotted some marks in the snow in the center of the trail. They looked like the tracks of a small, cloven-hoofed animal—perhaps a goat? The thought of such a creature set Floyd’s mouth watering, but he pushed images of hot stew from his mind and focused on the task at hand. According to the map, he wasn’t far from Kamdesh, a town located on the slopes of the Bashgal Valley. The CIA briefing he’d read before the mission said the village was the ancestral home of the Kom people. It had seen heavy fighting when the War on Terror had been at its peak. There would be food, and possibly even a phone, when he reached it.

  Floyd followed the rutted track east. After a short while the forest to his right thinned and then fell away to be replaced by a sheer drop. It was too dark to see the valley floor, and when Floyd threw a stone over the edge, he didn’t hear it hit the bottom. The track turned west, and as he followed it, he saw lights dotting the mountainside ahead. Some of the closest were flickering—fires, Floyd assumed—and he immediately began walking faster, drawn instinctively to their warmth.

  The town was built on the steep mountainside. Its two-story homes were clustered in tiered terraces, arranged so that the roof of one house would act as a prop to its higher neighbor. Made of cedarwood and red and brown mud bricks, with concrete supports, the houses were simple and functional. Floyd guessed there were perhaps two or three thousand homes ranged across the mountain, and most of them were in darkness.

  He hugged the treeline to his left as he approached the foot of the settlement. Narrow paths ran through the town, cleared of snow to reveal rough stone or gravel beneath. Not great surfaces for moving silently, but Floyd hoped the sound of televisions coming from some of the homes would cover his approach. His plan was simple: break into one of the homes, grab some food and any useful supplies, and move on as quickly as possible.

  He was twenty yards from the first house, which was completely dark. It looked a little more run-down than some of its brightly lit neighbors, and as Floyd got closer, he noticed some of the brickwork was missing and had been replaced with matted straw. He heard the movement of animals and the lowing and calling of goats as he approached the building. He pushed through one of the straw in-fills and saw that the first floor was a stable.

  He glanced up at the terrace that was built on the roof of the first floor, and spied irregularities in the brickwork that would make good hand- and footholds. As he reached for the first hold, Floyd sensed movement behind him and turned to see a figure in a heavy Russian Army issue winter coat. The figure stepped forward out of shadow and Floyd saw it was a wide-eyed teenage boy.