“We’re not leaving anyone behind,” Stark said to Viv. “As soon as Ms. Powell is evacuated, we’ll have other agents in here to cover you and Nash.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Blair said when her phone signaled and incoming message. She held out her phone to Vivian. “Do you know this man?”

Viv took the phone, her brow furrowed. “Should I?”

“Cam thinks this man is part of the attack, and she needs to find him.”

“She thinks he’s on the train?” Viv asked. “But why would I know him?”

“He might be in the press car.”

“You’re not saying he’s one of us?” Viv stared at the image. She didn’t know him. “He could be one of half a dozen guys. Is there anything else she knows about him?”

Blair shook her head. “They think whoever is behind the attack on the train is a woman, and this man is probably her brother.”

Viv shook her head, unable to make sense of the information. “How can it be? Every one of us is vetted and background checked.”

“Backgrounds can be fabricated. Some members of sleeper cells are undercover for decades.”

Viv worked to absorb the news. She understood the idea of a sleeper cell in theory, but trying to imagine that someone she knew, someone she talked to on a daily basis…her mind shied away from the reality. She thought back over the faces of the people she greeted in the morning, said good night to long after the sun had set, traveled with, ate with. She couldn’t put a face to an enemy. “I don’t know him.”

“Don’t look at it for a minute,” Blair said.

Viv turned the phone away, happy to oblige. She wanted to know him, if it meant possibly saving them all. But she couldn’t point a finger at an innocent man.

“Think about the last few days,” Blair said. “Has anyone seemed off to you—excessively nervous, maybe disappearing unaccountably, off their game in some way?”

“I don’t know,” Viv said, frustration a bitter taste in her throat. “We’re cooped up on a train and the only time we leave is to cover an event. I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Something you heard, then?”

“No! I—”

You know what security is like. We might as well be trying to breach the White House.

That couldn’t mean anything, could it?

“What is it?” Blair said.

“I’m not sure. Just something—probably nothing.”

“Look at the picture, Viv,” Blair said sharply. “Who is he?”

*

Cam’s com clicked and she switched to Stark’s frequency. “Tell me she’s refusing to go.”

“No, Commander,” Stark said. “Egret is perfectly cooperative.”

Cam marveled at Stark’s ability to lie with such absolute confidence. “What—”

“We might have an ID from the photo.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Gary Williams.”

“Stand by for evac.” Cam closed the link and signaled for body armor.

*

Jane dialed the president’s number for the last time.

“In three minutes, I’ll detonate the second drone. It will take out your command center and half a dozen other cars.”

“You never told me your name,” the president said.

“My name doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. Right now, though, I’d like you to fly the drones to the following coordinates.” The president calmly read out a series of numbers. “You’re to leave them there so we can defuse them.”

Jane laughed. “I’m afraid you aren’t giving the orders, Mr. Powell.”

“If you would look at the command car,” the president said quietly, “I think you’ll change your mind.”

Jane sighted through her rifle scope at the center of the train. Her drone sat atop it, and she could clearly see its payload. “What—?”

A tall, dark-haired woman and a man stepped down from the car into the snow. Robbie’s hands were cuffed in front of him. Ice stole through her blood. She knew the woman. Cameron Roberts. She’d held Roberts captive for twelve hours, and then Roberts had killed her father. She focused on the center of Roberts’s forehead.

“We have your brother,” the president said. “You can’t detonate that drone unless you want him to die with a lot of other innocent people.”

“We are prepared to die for the cause,” Jane said, but the words were acid in her mouth.

“No one has to die. Remove the drones and surrender. You and your family will be safe.”

Jane cut the connection. Lies. She didn’t need to hear his lies. If she killed Roberts right now, they’d still have Robbie. If she detonated the second drone, Robbie would die, but so would Roberts. Then the president would know she was not bluffing and she wouldn’t bargain. He would have to set Jennifer free. Robbie would die but Jennifer would live.

Her father’s words sounded loudly in her head.

We all must be prepared to sacrifice. Even those we love.

Robbie stared up toward the hillside, his eyes searching for her. He couldn’t possibly see her from that distance, but she felt as if he did. Could she trade Jennifer for him?

A brother for a sister? She had only seconds to make the choice.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Go, go, go!” Stark shouted.

The door at the rear of the car slid open and a blast of icy wind struck Blair in the face. Tears welled in her eyes, blinding her for an instant. A hand gripped her jacket in the center of her back, half guiding, half propelling her forward. She focused on the ground a few feet below and jumped down from the platform into knee-deep snow. Her body was instantly numb. Brock charged ahead, forging a path, and she followed him on autopilot, thinking of nothing except placing one foot in front of the other. The body armor encasing her chest was a lead fist constricting her heart. Was Cam somewhere close by, safe? Or on her way to face another madman?

The helicopter emerged from the thick soup of fog, a prehistoric beast rising out of the underworld. The rotors kicked up sheets of swirling ice, and she stumbled forward with one arm shielding her face. The side doors slid open and figures in armor, bristling with weapons, appeared in the doorway. Then they were reaching down and she up to them. Her feet left the ground, and her body flew the few yards into the helicopter. When she got her balance on the ice-slick floor, she wiped moisture from her eyes and peered around frantically. The ball of terror in her midsection loosened a fraction. Her father was beside her. “Where is everyone else? Dad, where is Luce?”

“There,” he shouted, and she looked where he pointed.

Two agents lifted Luce into the helicopter as the floor tilted and the helicopter rose. Blair gripped Stark’s arm for balance and leaned forward into the open doorway. The train rapidly grew smaller as they picked up speed. The drones perched atop the train cars, the one she’d been in and another one a few cars down, looking like primeval predators from a science fiction movie. Her heart seized. She braced for the explosion, the fireball erupting, the train engulfed in flames. The end of her world.

“It’s going to be all right,” her father shouted, his arm coming around her shoulders. His words were nearly lost in the whir of the rotors and the clatter of the engines.

The door rolled shut and she pulled away, needing to see out the small portholes, unable to breathe, unable to think of anything except Cam. And so many others. The train looked like an abandoned toy in a sea of white.

And then they were over the top of a mountain and the train disappeared. She kept watching, waiting for the flare of red to rise above the purple crests. Sensation returned to her fingers and toes, and her mind started working again.

“What about the others?” she shouted to Stark. “What’s happening on the train?”

“No word yet,” Stark said.

Frustration choked her. She was more a captive here than when she’d been trapped in the train car with a bomb over her head. She knew she was supposed to be safe now, but all she wanted was to escape. She recognized the feeling, she’d had it all her life. But she knew better now. She took a deep breath, searched for what she could do until she had word from Cam.

Lucinda sat on a jump seat, her arms wrapped around her torso, her face pale but composed. Her father was huddled with Evyn Daniels, who had a headset pressed to one ear. Evyn was relaying something to the president that Blair, isolated in a roaring tunnel of silence, couldn’t hear. She crouched next to Lucinda and took her hand.

“All right?” she shouted.

Lucinda nodded and leaned close. “Pissed off.”

“Me too.”

Lucinda squeezed her fingers. “We will get them.”

“I know.”

“And Cam will be fine. She’s the best there is.”

Blair swallowed hard. Cam was everything. “I know.”

Ten minutes later the helicopter circled in a wide arc and set down behind a sprawling log cabin in the foothills, surrounded by evergreens and ringed with familiar black SUVs. The door opened and agents poured toward the helicopter like a black tide, weapons in hand. Stark helped her out of the helicopter and jumped down beside her.

“Where are we?” Blair called as she raced toward the house in the middle of a scrum of agents.

“Safe house,” Stark yelled back.

“What about the train?”

“Command center is inside. Come on.” Stark pushed open a set of french doors and sprinted toward a wide hallway on the far side of a rough-stone-floored foyer.

Blair scarcely noticed her surroundings. All that mattered now was the train.

*

Cam heard the helicopter lift away. Blair and the president were safe. The play was in motion. All that remained was to see it through. No second guesses, no second chances. If she’d misjudged Jane Doe, a lot of people would die.

“Come on,” she said to Gary Williams. “Back up. We’re getting back into the train. She’s seen you now.”

“It won’t matter,” he said dully. “She won’t give up.”

“No,” Cam said. “I don’t think she will. But the game is over for today. She won’t sacrifice you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re family.” Cam gripped his collar and pushed him ahead of her into the command car. “And that’s her Achilles heel.”

He snorted. “You really think you understand what makes her tick?”

Cam thought of Blair and Andrew Powell and Lucinda Washburn and Paula Stark. Of what she would do, what she would give, to keep them safe. “I know I do.”

*

Jane watched through the high-powered scope as Robbie climbed back into the train. He looked frightened and younger than she remembered. He looked resigned too, as if he knew she would not back down. She had never relented when they were growing up and he’d lagged behind in training, always pushing him to try harder, practice more, be stronger. She’d never had to push Jenn—she’d had to struggle to keep up with her sister. Robbie had always believed she and her father had loved Jenn more than him. Maybe he’d been right. None of that mattered now.

Robbie disappeared, and Jane knew she’d seen him for the last time. She set the rifle aside and picked up the remote.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Jane kept the rocky outcroppings rising from the pristine white slopes like bad teeth between her and the train in the valley below. The rifle slung across her back was a comforting weight. She’d set the delays on the drones for forty-five minutes and left her backpack and the rest of her supplies behind. She could cover a lot of distance in forty-five minutes, and if she didn’t make it out of the canyon before the feds descended in force, she wouldn’t need food. All she’d need was ammo, and she had plenty of that.

She’d been training all her life for action like this, and within minutes she was over the ridge and out of sight of the train. They’d follow her, once they realized she’d left before the drones were activated. But they wouldn’t send a team out immediately. They’d think she was debating what to do, probably expecting her to take time to choose between her brother and her sister. They didn’t know her. They didn’t know the way the three of them had been raised. But then, she hadn’t really known herself until Roberts had forced her to declare who she really was. She angled upward to the road, barely discernable now under the accumulated snow, and took a calculated risk. The chance of a vehicle traveling along this road was slight, but there was always a chance. If she could commandeer a vehicle she might still get away.

She hadn’t heard another helicopter since one had dropped from the sky a hundred yards from the train. They must have evacuated the president when they’d made the play with Robbie, but they weren’t chancing an all-out assault with the drones still in play. Her window was shrinking fast, though. Before long, the only vehicles traveling this stretch would be in pursuit of her, but for now, she had a clear path. She kept close to the cover of the trees along the shoulder and ran on through the gathering storm.