“Dr. Earnshaw.” Dash had taken off his sling so he could climb up to the floor. “If you could—”

Sara slammed the door closed behind her. She stepped over Joy’s mess and headed straight for the outdoor shower. The latch wouldn’t cooperate. She cursed until her shaking fingers managed to close it. She draped the clean sheet over the stall. She wrenched the cap off the rubbing alcohol and poured it straight into her mouth.

The bunkhouse door opened. Dash stood at the top of the stairs.

“Oh, sorry.” He turned away from her, covering his eyes. “I was hoping—”

The rest of his sentence was lost to Sara swishing the alcohol between her teeth, trying to kill whatever bacteria she had picked up from Michelle’s decaying flesh. She splashed the cool liquid onto her face, neck and hands.

“Dr. Earnshaw?” Dash tried for the hundredth time. “If we could just discuss—”

“Leave me alone.” Sara struggled with her toga, cursing at the knot, the wadded-up material, the pain of getting out of the damn stupid thing.

Dash tried again. “I really must—”

“I said leave me the fuck alone!”

Sara turned on the water. She grabbed the soap.

Dash scampered down the stairs. So much for his white male pride when a woman was ready to rip his fucking head off.

Gwen opened the bunkhouse door. She glanced at Sara, then rushed after her husband.

Sara got the water as hot as she could stand it. She tried to generate lather with the lye soap. The grit felt like a million pieces of sand.

She waited for Lance to make an appearance, but he chose to stay inside with the children. Or with the air conditioning. Sara had caught sight of him as she’d jogged toward the bunkhouse. Lance had stared at her through heavy eyelids. His skin was pale. He had probably caught Joy’s stomach bug. Unless there was something else going around the Camp.

Something that Michelle had been working on in the greenhouse.

Sara spat onto the floor of the shower. The rubbing alcohol still burned her gums. She opened her mouth and let the water hit the back of her throat. Her skin felt scalded. She was literally sweating underneath the spray of the shower.

Michelle Spivey had survived unspeakable horrors. She had been raped and beaten. She had been pressed into labor inside of the greenhouse. She had been left to rot to death in the heat. The infectious disease expert would have been intimately familiar with sepsis, the most common cause of death in people who have been hospitalized. Sara imagined the doctor had monitored her qSOFA score up until the end. The quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment was a point system that rated blood pressure, respiration and mentation. The higher the score, the higher the risk of mortality. While Michelle probably hadn’t had access to a blood pressure cuff, she could’ve monitored her own respiration and neurological symptoms. She would have known not only that death was coming, but what it would look like.

One of her last acts had been to find a black marker and write a message on the inside of her hand.

Two words.

Several possible meanings.

A coffin? A device to defeat telephone toll charges? A TV show or film? A type of experimental theater? An FDA warning? The briefcase that carried the nuclear codes?

Sara turned around, letting the sharp spray of water needle her scalp.

In computing, the term could be used to describe the transfer characteristics of a device whose inner workings are unknown. Or a type of software. Or a type of software engineer.

She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to break the knots.

In aviation, it referred to the recorder that was used to document the flight path data and the pilot’s voices. The device was painted bright orange, but the common name was exactly the same two words that Michelle had written on her hand.

BLACK BOX.

Sara rubbed her face with her hands. What did Michelle mean? Why had she chosen those specific words? Sara had blown her chance to run, had risked her life, her safety, and for what? She was plagued by the same maddening question from before. Except now, there was a clock winding down on her search for the answer. Dash had told her as much himself.

The Message would be delivered tomorrow.

16

Tuesday, August 6, 2:50 p.m.

Will leaned his head against the car door as Interstate 85 rolled by. The hour-long taxi ride to exit 129 had brought on a wave of exhaustion. With every passing mile, he’d slumped farther down in the seat. His knees pressed into the partition between the front and rear seats of the car. His skull vibrated against the glass in the door. Before Sara, Will had never been in the back of a taxi. She had wanted to leave a party early. Their ride wasn’t ready to go. She had called a cab. Will had climbed inside and nearly had a heart attack when he saw that the meter already had five dollars on it.

Which was why he had never been in a taxi before Sara.

Will made himself sit up straight. He scratched his jaw. The Brillo pad of his beard pricked at his fingertips. The unfamiliar roughness was a reminder that he had to slice himself off. The man who loved Sara could not save her. Jack Phineas Wolfe, disillusioned ex-soldier, pissed off at the world, was the man he would have to be for that job.

Will looked down at his hands. He pressed his thumb into his knuckle until a trickle of fresh blood came out.

Gerald would be Wolfe’s first obstacle. If he could not persuade Dash’s second-in-command that Wolfe was all in, then Gerald would probably point a gun at his face and pull the trigger.

Will didn’t think it would go down like that. He’d banked some credit with Gerald during the warehouse mission. The fact that Wolfe had been willing to stab a security guard to death for fifteen grand was enough proof of concept.

Dash was going to be the real challenge. This close to pulling off whatever he was planning, the leader of the IPA would be highly paranoid, especially about a new recruit. Dash was a racist pedophile and a mass murderer. He had also inspired men as different as Robert Hurley and Adam Humphrey Carter. Will assumed that Dash was a classic con man, always looking for a weakness to exploit.

Will puzzled out Wolfe’s vulnerabilities.

Pedophilia seemed like the most obvious way in, but the language of pedophiles was as intricate and arcane as Army lingo. The people who raped children were constantly evolving. They coordinated on the dark web. They were extremely careful in public. It wasn’t as easy as saying that a child looked mature for her age.

Will gladly discarded the approach.

He thought about Faith’s information on the IPA. They revered the military. Wolfe was a trained fighter with no more battles to wage. Maybe he felt beaten down by the system. He was desperate for money. Couldn’t find a job, couldn’t keep a woman. He was angry that his life had fallen into shit. Eager for a fight. Maybe he was a gambler who’d lost his life savings. He would be blaming everybody but himself.

Will silently shook his head.

A money-motivation was too easy. Dash would never trust a hired gun. He would want a warrior for the cause.

Beau Ragnersen was a man in search of a cause. That was why he had capitulated to Amanda, to Will, to Kevin, to anyone who shoved him in a direction. Beau hadn’t really relaxed until Gerald had locked them inside the van. His shoulder pressed against Will’s, four armed, anxious kids across from him. Everyone else had been wired, but Beau had fallen soundly asleep. His fidgeting and his sighing and his Charlie Brown shuffle were gone. Will had interpreted Beau’s erratic behavior as a sign that the man was going to betray him. The truth was that Beau Ragnersen only felt whole when he was part of a unit. Like a lot of ex-soldiers, he was desperately looking for something to fill the hole that war had punched into his chest.

That was the same kind of desperation that would be key to Jack Wolfe infiltrating the IPA. Dash would want to fill the hole in Wolfe’s chest. He would use racism or religion or whatever it took to bring Wolfe around to his side. With guys like that, it was never about what you believed. It was about who you believed.

Will looked down at his hands again. He rubbed his thumb along his bare ring finger. The pieces of Jack Wolfe that he had so carefully stitched together started to pull apart.

Will would do whatever it took to get Sara back. If that meant shooting more people, killing more people, then he was going to do it. He wasn’t just fighting for himself. Sara’s whole family was waiting for Will to bring her home. They were counting on him. Asking God to help him. Praying that Sara was unharmed.

Will had never prayed before. When he was a boy, the local church had sent a bus to the children’s home every Sunday morning. Most of the kids jumped at the chance to get out of the house. Will had always stayed behind. The opportunity to be alone, even for a few hours, was more important to him than getting to drink purple Kool-Aid from tiny glasses and eat thin wafers.