“We’ve got to keep meeting like this.”

Faith didn’t bother to turn around. The sound of Aiden Van Zandt’s voice had drilled into her brain like an earwig.

He sat down beside her. He was cleaning his glasses with his tie. “Good morning, Agent Mitchell.”

She got to the point. “Why are you here?”

“There’s a lot of us here.”

Faith took a closer look at the passengers inside of the terminal. Not all of these things were the same. Two businessmen stood with rolling suitcases at the top of the stairs. To the right, a woman leaned over the balcony railing reading her texts. To the left, another businessman paced down the corridor as he talked into his phone. On the ground floor, two women were having breakfast at the bookstore cafe. Another man stood in a TSA uniform by the exit for security.

The fact that Faith had only been here for fifteen minutes was no excuse for not noticing that they were all wearing the springy earbuds that FBI agents favored. Her brain quickly jumped to a conclusion. The chatter from the hate groups must have picked up. Michelle Spivey had been at the airport last Sunday, so the FBI was at the airport.

Just like Faith was at the airport.

She thought about calling Amanda at the Capitol, but she didn’t want to get her head bitten off for telling her boss something that she likely already knew. Whatever information exchange Amanda had going on with the FBI was not something she was choosing to share.

Faith told Van, “You’ve got a lot of agents here.”

“I like to think of them as my posse.”

Faith knew better than to ask a direct question. She leaned back against the bench. She asked him, “When did the right to hate become conditional?”

“I’ll need more context.”

“I’ve been reading about these militias and anti-government groups.”

“Ah.”

Faith said, “At the Bundy standoff, militiamen pointed guns at federal agents, and they were allowed to walk away. At Standing Rock, a bunch of Native American protesters were shouting and holding up signs, and they got attacked by dogs and shot with water cannons.”

“Both of those things are true.”

“It reminds me of my son when he was a little boy. All kids do this, really. They get to this point in their lives where they realize that things are unfair. It pisses them the hell off. They can’t bend their little minds around it. They whine about it constantly—it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”

Van nodded. “That is a familiar whine.”

Faith didn’t ask how it was familiar. She was more concerned with her brown-skinned daughter and how armed groups like the IPA might get away with hurting her. “I’ve put up with a lot of shit in my life, but I’ve never gotten shit because of the color of my skin. I’m sick of things only being fair for some people. It’s not right. It’s not American.”

Van seemed to think about what she’d said. “That’s a fairly provocative statement for a law enforcement officer.”

She shrugged. “Provocateur’s gonna provocotate.”

Faith watched a kid begging his mother for a pack of cookies. The two female agents in the bookstore were studiously avoiding the conflict.

She silently returned to her original question, the one that Van wasn’t going to answer.

Why was he talking to her?

The FBI had taken Beau into custody two days ago. Faith assumed that because Beau had flipped for one agency, he would flip for the other. Which meant that Van knew about the plan for Will to infiltrate the IPA. Either Kate Murphy had sent him here for information or he was trying to hone his way in.

Faith tested her theories. “This is the part where you tell me how Michelle met Beau, and what you’ve gotten out of him since you snatched him out from under us.”

“I thought this was the part where I asked if I could buy you a cup of coffee.”

Faith had to nip this in the bud. “Listen, I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life raising children. There is not one item of clothing in my closet or in a drawer that isn’t stained with some kind of fluid. I cheat at Chutes and Ladders. I have sacrificed my own son’s life to win at Fortnite. I will destroy any stupid moron who claims that Jodie Whittaker isn’t the best Doctor Who, and I will quote every single line from Frozen until your eyes start to bleed.”

He asked, “Do you really expect me to believe that you hang up and fold your clothes?”

“Let it go.”

Van laughed. “All right, Mitchell. Follow me.”

Faith picked up her messenger bag and looped it over her shoulder. She looked up at the balcony as they walked toward the gates. The agent talking into the phone was tracking their progress. The businessmen had started rolling their bags.

Van took a right, leading her down a long, anonymous hallway. His badge worked on the door because his badge apparently worked on every door in every secure building. Faith heard a loud buzz, then they were inside a darkened room with dozens of large, color monitors and rows of tiered desks with people intently studying their screens.

She bit her lip. She was going to end up blowing this guy just for his access to secret government control rooms.

Van said, “This is the nerve center for F concourse. The ones for T and A through E are even more amazing than this. Then there’s the north and south terminals, the Plane Train, the parking areas. Holy Moses, don’t get me started on parking. It’s like Frogger over there.”

Faith was more interested in what was right in front of her. Every gate, every restaurant, every entrance to a toilet had at least two cameras pointing at it. Even the outside grounds were covered, down to the service roads.

Van stopped at an empty desk and tapped on a keyboard. The monitor showed a second-story view outside the international terminal. Van toggled out until the shot widened to the adjacent buildings. He pointed to a street.

Faith said, “The Maynard H. Jackson Service Road.” She watched a silver Chevy Malibu drive slowly up the road. The windows were tinted, but she could make out two people up front, two in back. Faith looked at the time stamp. “This is from Sunday morning, five hours before the bombs went off.”

The Malibu came to a slow stop. The camera was high resolution, but it wasn’t a magnifying glass. Faith could only guess by the platinum blonde hair and slim build that the woman who got out of the car was Michelle Spivey.

Michelle took four steps, then started to fall forward onto the grass.

Van paused the image. “She got sick earlier. This is the second time he pulled over for her.”

Faith nodded, but that wasn’t exactly how she saw it. She’d been behind the wheel of a car when someone was about to blow. You didn’t glide to a stop. You stood on the brakes and pushed the person out the door.

Van said, “We think Spivey’s appendix must’ve been hurting for some time. She passes out from the pain, and then—”

He tapped another key and the driver was running to Michelle. Tall and wide, most likely Robert Hurley. He lifted up her unconscious body. He placed her in the front seat of the car. He ran to the other side and drove away.

Van said, “That’s it.”

“Hm,” Faith said. That wasn’t really it. The video had been edited.

This is what Faith had been shown: The car had stopped. Michelle had gotten out. Walked four paces. Collapsed. In the frame where she was dropping, Hurley was already climbing out of the car. He was holding something in his hands.

Then the image skipped ahead 1.13 seconds.

Michelle was already lying on the ground.

Hurley was twisting back toward the car, placing something on the seat that was heavy enough for him to have to use both of his hands.

That was the part that Van did not want Faith to see—that Hurley had started to get out of the car to join Michelle. That he was carrying something heavy or cumbersome, like bolt-cutters that could be used to cut a hole in the fence.

Faith asked Van, “Is that fence electrified?”

He shook his head.

She pointed at the building that Michelle had been walking toward. “What’s this?”

“Air Chef, where they make all of the food for the planes. Alleged-food.” He jabbed around the screen, identifying the white squares. “Cleaning and janitorial services for the planes. Concourse maintenance. Sign shop. Machine shop. Delta Operations.”

He was a regular Mapquest. She pointed to the only square he’d left out. “What’s this?”

“Government building.”

Faith looked at him. “A CDC government building?”

He squinted at the monitor. “Is it?”

Faith reached down and tapped the keys to zoom in on the door. There was no sign, no indication of what was inside, but there was a hell of a lot of security. She pointed it out for him. “That’s a camera. That’s a card reader. That’s a handprint scanner.”

“You don’t say?”

“The day Michelle was abducted, she left work early, picked up her daughter from school, then went to the store. Her purse was never located at the scene. Her CDC badge would’ve been inside.”