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Two United States Secret Service agents and President Walker were lost.
We only have two sets of remains. Two blackened skeletons.
I need to call Ahn. I need to know what Marshall knows. I turn my back on Sheridan and pull out my BlackBerry.
Anatoly has stepped away and is speaking into his phone in Russian. I don’t know if he’s trying to get a snatch-and-grab team out to collect me or if he’s just talking to his wife. Anything is possible right now.
Ahn answers after the fourth ring, while I’m chewing on my thumbnail and pacing the length of the SUV. “Hi, Mom,” Ahn says. “Let me get somewhere I can talk.”
Shit. I wait, and I listen to her breathing and the sound of a door shutting and locking.
“I saw the press conference,” she says. “Right before, I was ordered to box up everything related to the crash and turn it over to the White House and the vice president. His chief of staff is here, and he won’t leave my side. I have maybe a minute to talk before he comes and finds me.”
“Does Marshall know something I don’t? He implied there were three sets of remains. Have you—”
“No. I don’t know why he said that. We still only have the two.”
I collapse against the side of the SUV. There’s still hope, however microscopic. I can’t, won’t, let go of that hope.
“And the facial recognition program?”
“I need another hour. I had to transfer it off my laptop. It’s on a virtual server off-site now. You’re the only one who knows it’s even running.”
And I never told Sheridan.
“Are you going to tell Marshall?”
“No.”
Which means this is our one remaining bullet. “Thank you.”
“Shit.” I hear banging over the line, a fist pounding on a heavy door. “I have to go.” The line cuts out. She’s hung up on me.
I tip my head back. Diesel fumes and garbage assail me, wafting from the overflowing dumpster and the gas station on the other side of a chain-link fence.
Brennan is out there. I know it. That skull does not belong to him. Wouldn’t I know if he were dead? He is the love of my life. This can’t be a world that Brennan isn’t a part of. The sun wouldn’t shine, and the sky wouldn’t be the same color as his eyes.
“Reese.” Anatoly leans in beside me. “We need to get you off the street. My people say the FBI is hunting for you right now.”
“But not the Secret Service?”
“How much do you trust them?”
My gaze drifts to Sheridan. If Anatoly had asked me this twenty-four hours ago, I would have said, “With my life.” No, with more than that. With Brennan’s life.
He takes my silence as his answer. “I have somewhere we can go where you will not be found.”
“Where?”
“One of our safe houses, one your people have not uncovered yet. You and I, we have work to do. We need to find your traitor.”
I snort and scrub my hands over my face. Am I really going to follow Anatoly? Throw in my lot with the FSB? Go on the run from my own government and into the arms of the Russians?
Marshall is setting me up to take the fall for this whole catastrophe. If I run away with Anatoly, am I playing into the vice president’s hands?
“We do not have much time, Reese.”
“Okay, okay.”
