Faith said, “They’re not that kind of group. She’s not being held for ransom.”

“Then what do they want?” Tessa asked. “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense to me. A group took her, but why? Is it connected to the bombing? What about that other missing doctor? She worked at the CDC. The Emory campus is right down the street from there.”

“I want to acknowledge your questions, but I can’t answer them.” Faith tried to get on top of this. Tessa was just as clever as her sister. “None of this information I’m giving you is public knowledge. It’s very important that it stays that way. You don’t want to hear the questions you’re asking on the news.”

Eddie said, “They’ll dig a grave with all of their useless speculation.”

“Please,” Cathy said, her voice low. “Let’s not talk of graves.”

Tessa looked out the window. Tears fell from her eyes.

Faith tried again. “All that I’m authorized to tell you is that we’re developing a plan to locate her.”

“A plan.” Tessa rolled the words around in her mouth. She was looking at Will now. The way he was dressed. The beard. Sara didn’t seem to hold back much from her sister. She would’ve told Tessa that Will often went undercover. That he risked his life to save other people. That he came home with cuts and bruises and the next morning, he went out and did it all over again.

Tessa asked. “Is it dangerous, the plan?”

Faith said, “Everything we do—”

“No,” Tessa interrupted. “I’m asking Will. Is it dangerous?”

Will said, “No. It’s not dangerous.”

Tessa was not fooled. “I don’t think Sara would want anyone risking—risking anything. Do you understand what I’m saying? It wouldn’t be worth it to her.”

Will ignored the observation. He scratched Betty’s ears, taking himself out of the equation.

Eddie asked, “When do we find out if the plan worked?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Faith had already said too much. “I don’t want to mislead you. None of this is guaranteed. I just want you to understand that we’re doing everything we can. Sara means a lot to us. As a colleague. As a friend.” She ended the list there. “We all want her back.”

“We do,” Tessa said. “But we don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

Faith nodded, but not in agreement. Sara’s involvement made this deeply personal, but this was the job that they had signed up for. Faith was keenly aware of the risks she took every time she put on her badge.

“Okay. Thank you.” Cathy held on to her husband’s hand. She told Faith, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to pray with my family.”

“Of course.” Faith stood up. She lifted her bag onto her shoulder.

Will couldn’t move as quickly. He hugged Betty to his chest. He slid to the edge of the couch. He gave an uncomfortable laugh to acknowledge his slow pace.

“Will?” Cathy was reaching out for his hand. “Stay.”

15

Tuesday, August 6, 12:40 p.m.

Sara kept her toga dress hiked up, doing lunges across the cabin while “Baby Got Back” endlessly pounded away inside her skull. Back was the one thing she had never had, but she thought Will appreciated it, so she had started adding an extra ten minutes of glutes to her gym routine in a vain attempt to turn water into wine.

His ex-wife was full of back. And hips. And everything else. Angie was J. Lo “Ain’t Your Mama” curvy, though she had never worked out a day in her life. Her genes were those blessed kind that thrived on potato chips and cheap wine. Collagen would eventually be her downfall. Literally. That kind of skin looked great until it started slipping. Objectively, Sara could say that she had better breasts than Angie, but that was like saying that two Hershey’s Kisses looked better on an ironing board.

“Crap.” Sara gave up on self-improvement.

Her hamstrings buzzed like a swarm of bees. She had no sense of time. Her growling stomach was no indication of lunchtime. Her vegetarian breakfast had consisted of a hard roll and an even harder piece of cheese. Dysentery was not going to be a problem in the foreseeable future. She could feel the temperature rising outside. Inside, the cabin was shrinking to the circumference of the sun’s asshole. Sara was sweating on top of sweat.

Worst of all, the children inside the bunkhouse needed her.

The antibiotics and ointments had arrived yesterday evening. The pills were in Ziploc bags instead of sealed bottles, but Gwen had assured Sara that they were the real thing.

Sara was not convinced.

This morning, she had expected to find that some if not most of the children had either stabilized or at least started to turn a corner. Her rounds had revealed otherwise. Benjamin was getting sicker. The oldest patient, a twelve-year-old girl, was showing new symptoms. The two four-year-olds were about the same. Only the two ten-year-olds and the one eleven-year-old were stabilized.

Was Gwen behind this?

At the Structure yesterday, the woman had proven that she would not waste her medical supplies if she felt the patient had no chance of recovery. Sara had stood helplessly by while Gwen had murdered a young man with her bare hands. The memory of the woman’s shoulders shaking as she pressed her weight into Tommy’s nose and mouth was etched into Sara’s brain. Her own hands could recall the coldness of his fingers when the life had finally, brutally, been pushed from his body.

But Adriel, Gwen’s youngest, was one of the sicker children. The infection in her left retina had spread to her right. The sound of her double pneumonia had taken on the quality of dried leaves. Sara could not think that Gwen would let her own daughter, no more than a baby, suffocate.

Then again, she had borne seven children with Dash. She knew everything that went on inside the Camp, seemed to be directing the cooking ladies and controlling the children and she certainly had made her disapproval of Sara well known.

Which meant that Sara should probably be more careful around her. Dash was a horrible person, but men tended to be horrible in predictable ways. A furious woman was capable of inflicting immense psychological damage, the kind that stuck around long after the wounds healed.

There was a loud click outside the door.

Not the key turning in the padlock. The greenhouse generator had cycled back on. Sara listened to muffled exhaust huffing out of the engine. The noise had lasted throughout the night. The amount of heat that thing gave off would not be easy to hide from a helicopter. Sara had to think that whatever was going on inside the greenhouse was reaching its conclusion.

She had to get inside that greenhouse.

Her thoughts fell into a familiar track as she considered all of the possible bad things that were taking place inside. This high up in the mountains, there were sure to be marijuana farms. The river provided enough water for hydroponic farming, but the generator would have been running non-stop for the grow lights, fans and humidity controllers. Besides, the greenhouse was on the small side. Given the amount of risk involved, there was not enough reward at that scale.

The more obvious explanation for the cloak and dagger was some kind of bomb-making factory. The Structure Tommy had fallen from was clearly meant to represent a building. What type of building was unknown. Two stories, at least. A balcony with a set of stairs running up the middle and splitting off to the left and right. Sara knew the men were running drills inside the Structure, that they were training for a mission and that they thought they were at war. So maybe Dash was planning a covert operation where they would sneak into this unknown building, plant several bombs, then sneak out and wait for the moment of destruction.

Which could possibly explain the Structure, but not the greenhouse and thermal tent, because you didn’t need a secluded, shielded glass house to process explosives. You hardly needed more than ten square feet. There were probably handfuls of people all over the world right now assembling suicide vests and building IEDs inside garages and apartments.

Michelle was the outlier. She was an infectious disease specialist. Dash had not kidnapped her at random. At the CDC, they studied the worst bugs known to man. And probably some bugs that were known only to a few men.

Or known to Michelle Spivey.

Plenty of nasty biological agents could be synthesized by an amateur chemist, but using them was a different matter. Storage, transportation, delivery—these were all logistical problems that made biological terrorism arduous if not impossible for nongovernmental groups to successfully pull off. It was much cheaper to build a bomb or store up a supply of ammunition.

Dash had already proven that he knew how to build and detonate bombs. He had killed people at the hospital. Sara had seen his pleased reaction when the numbers came rolling in on the news.

Pleased, but not ecstatic.