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Ahn interrupts me as I’m staring at the center of Sheridan’s back, trying to line up the pieces on this chessboard. “Agent Theriot? I’ve got something for you.”
I follow her and leave Sheridan on the phone.
Has Ahn identified the corpse? Does the body belong to Henry or Brennan? My best friend or the love of my life?
“Two things,” she says. “First, I was able to dry out the paper you recovered from your suspect’s apartment. It’s a receipt from a gun range outside Baltimore. Your suspect spent three hours at target practice two days ago.”
There’s the overt act I was looking for. Clint was taking steps to turn his hatred into action. Did Konstantin give him the nudge? Was he at the range with Clint? Were the Russians supplying fuel to his fire, trying to false-flag him? “What was he shooting?”
“The receipt doesn’t say. It only gives the date, time, and what range lane he was on. I can tell you it was an indoor range fifty meters in length.”
“A handgun, then. I’ll need to question the range master.” She gives me the address, and I punch it into my BlackBerry. It’s thirty minutes away. “What else?” I brace myself, nails digging into my palm.
“I don’t have a positive ID on the second set of remains. I’m running a digital reconstruction program.”
She spins her laptop toward me. A skull rotates on the screen, at least a hundred markers rising from the cheekbone and jaw and the curve of the browbone. “It will take some time, but it will give us a rendering of what our John Doe looked like.”
“How much time?”
“A couple more hours.”
I watch the skull spin, a micro-thin layer of muscle and tissue appearing over the markers.
In hours, I’ll know.
I want to scream. I want to rewind time. I want to stop everything before it began.
But the only way I’ll know for sure that Brennan isn’t lying on that gurney is if I find him.
I have to find him.
Sheridan is still on the phone. He’s pacing, his expression locked in a hard scowl. I can see the flex of his forearm as he makes a fist and releases it.
It doesn’t look like he’s hanging up anytime soon. Good.
“I need to read what’s on this memory card,” I tell Ahn, palming it for her. “Do you have something I can use?”
“You can pop one into anything these days.”
“I need something nonnetworked. I don’t know what I’m going to find.”
“We have a few tablets we keep purposely blanked out for evidence review. I’ll get one.”
Sheridan turns and catches my eye through the lab’s window. His scowl shifts. He tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite hold up.
“Hurry.”
Ahn hands me a tablet and doesn’t ask any questions.
It takes a few seconds for the tablet to read the memory card. What are you hiding from me, Sheridan? There’s one folder on the card, and I tap it open.
Photos.
Twenty-six of them. They load as thumbnails, and even without clicking on them, I can already pick out features of the White House. Damn it, Sheridan.
I tap on the first photo, enlarging it—
It’s me.
