Leslie turned, stared at him. Her face was strained but her eyes radiated an intensity Thorn remembered from long ago—the day she caught her first fish and began to imagine a future brighter than the grim existence she was trapped in—a look of hope. Then she turned her gaze back to the road ahead and the distant glow of the guard gate. “Julie is your granddaughter.”
Thorn looked out his open window, at the shadows of trees, the moon half-concealed by ragged clouds, the glimmer of water in the roadside ditch. “That’s not possible.”
“Flynn made it possible.”
“He couldn’t.”
“Why? Because he’s gay?”
Pauly turned and shifted his gaze between Leslie, Thorn, and the road.
“He made a donation,” Leslie said. “As a favor to me.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“I’m asking you, Leslie. Why?”
“For me, simple. I wanted a child. Time was running out.”
Thorn could feel Prince and Sheffield staring at the side of his face. He touched a thumb against the bloody gauze, found the center of the wound, and pressed hard, making the fogginess in his head vanish.
“You wanted a child,” Thorn said.
“All right, goddamn it.” Leslie turned in her seat. In the green glow of the dashboard lights her eyes seemed to fizz with energy as if hundreds of wild emotions were colliding within them. “I wanted a child who’d grow up strong and decisive, who would never knuckle under or give up on the people and things he loved. Last year when I came to see you that day, you were so distant and out of reach, I decided Flynn was my best chance of having that child.”
Thorn squeezed the bridge of his nose and settled back against the seat.
“She’s a cute kid,” Sheffield said. “Got your eyes, Thorn. Blue as a January sky.”
FORTY
THE GUARDHOUSE RESEMBLED AN AIRPORT control tower at some rural outpost. A square pod maybe twenty by twenty mounted atop a concrete column. A dozen tinted windows gave its occupants a commanding view in every direction.
Along the roof, spotlights illuminated at least an acre of the surrounding grounds and glittered against the heavy chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Their approach along the entrance road was brightly lit by overhead lamps, and Thorn saw surveillance cameras posted conspicuously, starting a half mile away from the steel barrier that blocked the road.
Stationed behind the blockade were four guards, and he guessed at least that many more were manning the watchtower. Two of the four behind the barrier wore the red reflective armbands of the opposing team. They were armed with lightweight machine pistols with folding shoulder stocks.
“Here’s your story, Sheffield,” Leslie said, swinging around to face him. “The force-on-force drill was canceled. You don’t know why. Orders came from DC an hour ago. It’s rescheduled for two weeks. You need to enter the plant, speak to Claude Sellers face-to-face, confirm the new arrangement. The NRC rep will be on the speaker and will expect to hear your voice. Cameron, it’s your job to make sure Agent Sheffield stays on script.”
Leslie handed her revolver to Prince. He smiled and jammed the barrel into Frank’s ribs.
“So my buddy Claude,” Frank said, “he’s your double agent.”
Leslie turned back to the road ahead. Silent.
“And you think you can trust Sellers?”
“Where did this come from?” Pauly said, glancing over at her. “This wasn’t the plan, taking this fed along.”
“Special request,” she said. “From Claude.”
“Oh, that’s sweet,” Frank said. “You people, man, you need to ask yourselves why the head of security is letting you inside his facility. You consider that? What his angle is?”
“Keep quiet,” Pauly said. “I’m not telling you again.”
They were a few hundred feet from the guardhouse, slowing down. The two containment domes and cooling towers loomed a half mile deeper in, and a ten-story building sheathed in elaborate scaffolding and pipes and stairways and an array of exterior ductwork. Transmission lines crisscrossed the grounds in every direction. What looked like fuel-storage silos flanked the guardhouse.
“What I think,” Frank said, “the woman you killed back there, Agent Nicole McIvey, she and Claude cooked up this scam. They’re a team.”
“Team of losers,” Pauly said.
“Hear him out,” said Thorn.
“They worked together to set you guys up. Nicole had her reasons, Claude his. But Nicole was double-crossing Claude, trying to grab the glory herself for taking you terrorists down.”