Smoke and dust rolled across the room, billowing deeply into the facility.
Dazed, he felt his body lifted off the floor. Kowalski had him under one arm, hauling Kai with the other. Ears still ringing, he struggled to get his legs under him. Ahead, slabs of broken debris blocked the doorway, cutting off the hunters. Painter craned up. In the smoke-choked darkness, light flowed down through the roof.
Moonlight, achingly bright.
They’d done it.
Rafe stood before the desk that held his laptop. He folded his fingers atop his head, staring at the ruins of a hallway as his team retreated. He finally let out the long breath he’d been holding.
He lowered his arms, balling both hands into fists.
He glanced to Ashanda, as if silently asking her if she’d witnessed what had happened on the screen. She still sat with the small boy, who looked half comatose from shock.
Rafe could relate.
His heart pounded, firing his blood. While he was certainly angry, a part of him could not help but be impressed.
So our quarry found some help… a bodyguard with some skill.
If nothing else, Bern had gotten a good picture of the wily culprit from his helmet-mounted camera, just before the explosion dropped the roof. While the photo was grainy, the camera managed to capture a full view of his face. The new enhancing software and facial-recognition program developed by a Saint Germaine family subsidiary for Europol should make short shrift of identifying the man.
Over the radio, Bern’s voice came garbled with digital dropouts. “… escaped on foot. Local law enforcement and emergency response teams are already arriving on-site. What… orders?”
Rafe sighed, damping down the fire in his blood. It was a shame. With the limits of his body, it wasn’t often he got to enjoy such a heady rush of adrenaline. He spoke into his throat mike. “Clear out. The targets won’t remain in the area. We’ll pick up their trail again.”
It sounded like Bern wanted to argue, furious at the loss of his teammates. It must be his Aryan blood, fueling that Germanic desire for immediate revenge. But Bern would have to learn patience. If there was one true source behind the wealth and power of the Saint Germaine family, it came from their knowledge of, appreciation for, and skill in le long jeu.
The long game.
And with his unique mind, there was no better player than Rafael Saint Germaine. For others this might be a mere boast, but he’d proven himself time and again. It was why he stood here now, assigned by the family to chase after a treasure going back millennia.
Was there any longer game?
After Bern signed off, Rafe crossed back to his laptop and brought up the image of the shadowy intruder into their affairs. Many primitive cultures put great stock in names, believing that to obtain such details granted special powers over others. Rafe believed this down to his crumbling bones.
He leaned on his fists atop the desk and stared at his adversary.
“Vous êtes qui?” he asked the man.
It was a question he desperately wanted to answer.
Who are you?
From the passenger seat of the SUV, Painter watched the lights of Provo vanish into the distance in the rearview mirror. Only now did he let his guard down.
Slightly.
Against his better judgment, Kowalski was again behind the wheel of their rental, in this case, a white Toyota Land Cruiser. Where they were going, a four-wheel-drive vehicle would be needed. Painter wasn’t up for the long drive himself. His upper arm still throbbed from the bullet graze, and his head ached from the concussive explosion.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this…
He flashed back to his couch at home, Lisa fingering the white lock in his dark hair, noting the gray notes elsewhere. What was he doing out in the field? This was a younger man’s game.
Proving this, Kowalski seemed little fazed, nursing a thermos of coffee to keep him alert for the overnight drive. A glance to the backseat revealed Kai leaning on Professor Kanosh, with one hand resting on the old man’s dog. Both were asleep, but a pair of canine eyes — one brown, one blue — stared up at him, wary, guarded.
He gave the dog a nod. Keep an eye on her.
This earned a weak thump of a tail.
He turned back around, still heavy-hearted. After their escape across campus, he’d had to break the news about the murder of Professor Denton. Kanosh had looked crushed, aging in seconds. He’d lost too many close friends in the span of a day. Only the need to put some distance between them and the hunters had blunted the anguish. So after a quick stop at a CVS pharmacy for first-aid supplies for his wound, they set out of town.
They were headed to some friends of Kanosh, a group of Native Americans who were living off the grid. Painter wanted to get Kai somewhere safe. Plus he needed answers to his questions about what was really going on out here.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Frowning, he fished it out, checked the caller ID, and raised it to his ear. “Commander Pierce?” He was surprised by the call at this late hour, especially from the East Coast, where it was two hours later. He kept his voice low so as not to disturb the others.
“Director Crowe,” Gray said, “I’m glad you’re okay. I heard from Kat about the attack. She asked me to give you a call.”
“Concerning what?”
Painter had already reached out to Sigma Command. He’d briefed Kathryn Bryant on the events in Utah. She was helping with the aftermath of the blast at the university, while using her resources in both federal law enforcement and various intelligence communities to help identify the team who invaded the physics lab.
Gray explained, “I believe I might have some insight on the attack.”
The words sharpened Painter’s attention. The last he knew Gray was investigating some lead about the Guild. He had a bad feeling about this.
“What sort of insight?” he asked.
“It’s still preliminary. We’ve barely scratched the surface, but I think some information Seichan obtained is tied to events out in Utah.”
Painter listened as Gray told a story of Benjamin Franklin, French scientists, and the pursuit of some threat tied to pale Indians, to use Franklin’s term for them. He leaned forward as the history unfolded, especially concerning a shadowy enemy of the Founding Fathers, one who used as their trademark the same symbol as the modern Guild.
“I believe the discovery of that cave ignited the Guild’s attention,” Gray said. “Clearly something important got lost long ago or was hidden from them.”
“And now it’s resurfaced,” Painter added.
It was an intriguing thought, and from the sophistication and brutality of the night’s assault, the attack definitely had all the earmarks of the Guild.
“I’ll keep working the angle out here,” Gray said. “See what I can dig up.”
“Do that.”
“But Kat wanted me to call you for another reason, too.”
“What’s that?”
“To pass on news of an anomaly that’s reverberating throughout the global scientific community. It seems a group of Japanese physicists have reported a strange spike in neutrino activity. It’s off the scales, from what I understand.”
“Neutrinos? As in the subatomic particles?”
“That’s right. Apparently it takes violent forces to generate a neutrino burst of this magnitude — solar fusion, nuclear explosions, sunspot flares. So this monstrous spike has got the physicists all worked up.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with us?”