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  Matt grinned, his smile as dazzling as the day he'd first sat next to her in the middle school cafeteria, his face now more rugged, more handsome than she deserved. Muscles rippling under a tight T-shirt, black with the White Spruce Volunteer Fire Department shield on the breast, he flashed his eyebrows at her and tiptoed to the door. He slipped inside and slid the door closed, turning the lock after it shut.

  "He just went down." Monica kept her whisper just above silence. Their son had taken his first tentative steps the week before, and the days since ricocheted between chaos and silence with no predictable pattern.

  He kissed her, and she folded into his arms. They held the embrace in the doorway, and she breathed him in, Old Spice and gun oil, rugged masculinity.

  "You didn't tell me it'd be on TV."

  He tightened, as she knew he would. "I couldn't. Operational secrecy."

  She tried to understand, tried to let it go. His job as a police officer had barely paid the bills, and validated him as the hero only on some small scale. He'd needed more, and signed up for augmentation. She understood. Monica just wished it wasn't so damned dangerous. She ran a hand through her hair, dislodging a chestnut curl.

  He swept her off her feet and kissed her nose. "Nobody can do what I do, babe. Anyone else they sent in wouldn't have come out."

  "I know. But I saw you on the ground—I mean, I couldn't see your face or anything, but I knew it was you on the TV, with your leg all broke up like that, and I couldn't take it."

  He set her down. She stepped back and chided herself. They'd had this conversation before, a dozen times, and it all came down to the same thing. She'd support him, and he'd try to be safe, and she'd complain about it anyway because she couldn't help but worry. Not that they had much of a choice. As the last augmented human on the planet, the tattered remains of ICAP still owned Matt for another eight years. Minimum.

  He shifted from leg to leg and bounced, an almost comical slow-motion dance, one eyebrow lifted in a "See?"

  She sighed. A crippling injury for anyone else, an inconvenience for her superhero husband. She turned and walked inside. He followed her into the kitchen, the nook more used than their dining room.

  "Coffee? Tea?"

  He shook his head. "I'm good. Where's Ted?"

  "Out back, sleeping in the sun. Been there an hour, easy. I'm not sure he can handle the strain of such an intense life." Lazy and lovable, their Basset Hound liked to bark at everything and nothing, and loved Adam with both his brain cells.

  "Best not wake him, then."

  She looked at the clock on the wall, a mail-order internet thing that chimed bird calls on the hour. "Amy's coming in twenty minutes. I should be back around four."

  He appraised her sweat pants, tank top, and sports bra. "Kung fu?"

  "Sifu's got another batch of prospectives, wants me to put them in their places." Nineteen adults from eighteen to eighty, each out to prove they're too good for the "Beginners" class, waiting their turn to get manhandled by a hundred-and-thirty-pound ass-kicking machine. If past experience held any indication, two or three of them might be right. "Not my fault their egos outmatch their ability."

  Matt picked up the phone; spotty service in the Appalachian wilderness made a landline necessary, even in this day and age, even with a priority government job.

  "Who are you calling?" Monica asked.

  "Amy. No need to have her come this way if I'm home."

  Monica chuckled, plucked the phone from his hand and hung up, invading his personal space so that her lips lay inches from his. "Don't be silly. You cancel on her too much and she'll stop saying 'yes' when we really need her." She set the phone on the counter and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  "This is why I leave the important thinking to you, babe." He kissed her, a smooch, then something more. His hands wandered to her ass and she spun away.

  "No time for that."

  He glanced at the clock.

  She followed his gaze, then grinned. "Can you be quiet and fast?"

  "Fast I can do. Can you be quiet?" He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom without the slightest sign of effort.

  "Let's find out."

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang. Matt winced and glanced at the nursery, but Adam didn't stir. Very little upset that boy, but he woke like his daddy, groggy and ungrateful. Monica answered the door, her hair a touch messier than when he'd walked up the deck stairs. Amy rounded the corner into the living room, a bottle-blonde knockout at sixteen, too young and too cute.

  Your daddy's got to get a shotgun, and quick.

  "Hi, Mr. Rowley!" She'd figured out how to beam with enthusiasm and whisper at the same time, something Matt had yet to master.

  "Hi, Amy. How's school?"

  "Good!" She prattled on about trigonometry and US history with far too many mentions of a boy named "Frank," then excused herself to peek in on Adam.

  Monica leaned in from behind and pecked him on the cheek, her breath hot in his ear. "Bye. Back in a few."

  She bit his earlobe a little too hard.

  "Bye, babe. Drive safe, and watch for deer."

  He watched her go, and part of him lamented the moral downfall of western civilization while the rest admired her ass in the too-tight sweat pants with JUICY scrawled in block letters across them. She caught him looking, blew him a kiss and slapped her right cheek, then disappeared out the door.

  "Love to, baby," he muttered.

  Amy came back in and sat on the loveseat, laptop in hand. He smiled inwardly at the lack of ear-buds—wearing them a strict no-no while babysitting—and watched her shuffle a stack of textbooks, an e-reader, and her computer into the optimum working arrangement.

  She smiled, almost shy. "Are you going to be here long?"

  He didn't have anywhere to go, but felt awkward staying home with the babysitter. "I've got a few errands to get to, so I'll be in and out."

  * * *

  His phone rang halfway to the grocery store, a number he didn't know with a Washington, D.C. area code. He pulled over, killed the truck's engine, and hit "Talk."

  "Rowley. Go ahead."

  "Sergeant Rowley, this is Lieutenant-Commander Roger Smith, SACLANT's office, authorization eight-two-seven-one-five-five-one. Got a minute?"

  The daily code checked out, and Matt had all kinds of minutes, but he didn't much want to talk to NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic's office a half-hour after he'd gotten home from six weeks abroad. He had no idea how formal Smith might be, but Matt hadn't been a sergeant for more years than he had been, and the tired formality rubbed him wrong. "What's up, Roger?"

  A pregnant pause told him everything he needed to know: Roger wasn't too keen on being "Roger" rather than "Lieutenant-Commander Smith." With ICAP's disintegration, Matt found himself without rank, command, or superiors. His reassignment to the Department of Homeland Security's newly created Special Threats Bureau came with no mission and no directives, but a shiny new ID badge that might get him out of speeding tickets. As the only Aug left in the world, the UN, NATO, and the United States never ran out of things "only he" could do.

  "Mister Rowley, we have some disturbing news coming from an oil rig off-coast. I need you to report to NSA Mid-South for immediate deployment to the Gulf of Mexico. Your chopper leaves at eighteen-hundred, so get driving."

  How quickly "sergeant" had become "mister." Even with lights and sirens, White Spruce to Millington, Tennessee would be a three hour drive, maybe more.

  Screw this.

  Matt rolled down the window to let in the late October air. "Monday work for you?"

  Another pause, then, "Excuse me?"

  "I just got home, and haven't seen much of my wife or boy these past weeks, so I'm thinking I'll take the weekend and go ahead show up in Millington say, eight a.m. Monday?"

  "That's unacceptable."

  "Tuesday, then." Matt listened to Smith about gag on his phone a moment, then continued. "Last I check
ed, UMS Operations Division didn't take orders from SACLANT, and my former division is in shambles. With no one on top of ICAP that ain't dead or behind bars, even with the STB designation I'm pretty sure we didn't just become a division of the Navy, or the Coast Guard. So while you figure out if you've got the authority to give me orders, send on over the files and I'll read up on whatever's got you so bent out of shape."

  A pregnant pause, then, "Monday, Mr. Rowley. Eight hundred hours."

  He hung up and pulled out onto the road, a content whistle on his lips.

  His phone blipped eight minutes later, just as he loaded a jumbo package of diapers into his shopping cart, next to five pounds of crab meat, and a pork loin bigger than his arm. He committed the operation's credentials to memory and deleted the message, then headed for the checkout.

  * * *

  Monica pushed her way inside past Ted, who didn't quite get out of the way. Matt sat at the computer, brow furrowed in concentration, scrolling the mouse with his middle finger. Amy read on the loveseat, Adam in a dark blue onesie at her feet. He dropped his toy and grinned wide, just like his daddy.

  "Hey there, little man."

  He reached up as she approached, and she scooped him into her arms. "He good?"

  Amy shrugged. "Sure. No problems at all, Mrs. Rowley."

  She nodded toward her husband. "How about him? Any big diaper changes necessary?"

  "Nah." Amy shook her head. "He ran out to the store for a bit, came back and got right on the computer. Ain't moved since. I'm pretty sure I could have had a string of cute boys over and he'd never have noticed."

  Monica frowned. The only things that occupied that much space in her husband's mind were house repairs and mission parameters, the former coming in a distant second.

  She handed Matt their son, whom he took without looking up, peeled a pair of twenties out of her purse, and handed them over. "Thanks, Amy. Same time next Saturday?"

  "I'll have to check. I have cheerleading but it might be later in the afternoon . . . ."

  Monica tuned her out and showed her to the door, distracted by Matt's distraction.

  She turned and watched him, Ted now asleep at his feet, Adam drooling on his shoulder, eyes closed. In the months since she'd given birth, Matt had spent three months in the hospital, and a miraculous six in physical therapy before they'd called him back to work to destroy a fallen angel named Arakiel. Two months later his scars had disappeared, he'd doubled his muscle mass, and while he couldn't bench press a car anymore, he'd still obliterate your average NFL player in a fight. Your average ninja NFL player. And his NFL ninja friends.

  During his recovery he'd done little things here and there, nothing too serious until Ramiel. With three defeated egregoroi under his belt, Matt had become the worldwide expert on dealing with weird shit crawling out of the woodwork—even though he didn't know much more than anyone else. Add to that his augmentations, and left to the government's whim he'd be out of the country every week until it killed him and left her a widow.

  He worked, oblivious to her presence, and she let him. Instead she plucked Adam from his shoulder, set him back on the floor, and turned on the TV. Downton Abbey. Perfect.

  * * *

  Blossom Sakura waited at her sleeping daughter's side and tried to ignore the chemicals pumping death into Kazuko's frail body. Other drugs waited nearby, plus a bag of blood to fight the marrow-killing effects of the chemotherapy. Only nine years old, and the Mayo Clinic used poison and radiation to combat her illness.

  Kazuko had been fine. Her daughter dying at six, Sakura had given her second-generation regenerates with ICAP approval. At seven, Kazuko had shown full remission, and an utter fearlessness borne from being her mother's daughter and from the power of near-instantaneous healing from anything that wouldn't kill her outright. Then Matt Rowley had destroyed Gerstner, and within weeks Sakura's daughter had become an eight-year-old girl doomed to die in pain and misery instead of up and playing with the other children, working at her studies, drawing and painting and—

  She glared at her ringing phone and answered it.

  "Sakura Tsuji."

  "Miss Sakura?" The pleasant male voice recited the day's verification codes, then prattled too long before getting to the point, a new mission for the Special Threats Bureau.

  "Yes. I will meet him Monday at eight a.m. Thank you. Goodbye."

  Kazuko murmured, and Blossom ran a hand gently over the hairless dome of her head. Kazuko's eyes fluttered open, a dark brown mirror of her own. "Are we done soon?"

  "Yes, my Kazuko. Soon."

  * * *

  After a fantastic dinner—pork chops, baked risotto cakes, and a huge salad—they made love in the bedroom and then Matt let Monica nap on the couch. Once sure she'd fallen asleep for good, he pulled up the video that had come with the mission files and popped on his headphones.

  Black waves glinted under a cloudy night sky. Salt crusted the ship's railing, painted some dark color Matt couldn't make out.

  Men babbled in the background.

  "I don't hear nothing," a man said, his accent Texas coast.

  More waves, more silence.

  "D'you hear that?" Another man, more frantic.

  Someone cried out in the distance, high-pitched and desperate.

  "There it is! There it is!"

  "I heard it that time," the first man said. He raised his voice. "Are you okay?"

  "Starboard, Ricky. Fuck!"

  The camera swung and focused on a pale dot amidst the choppy waves, black water topped with white froth. "I got it!"

  The image rocked in time with the boat, losing and regaining the object in the water, haphazardly spotlit from off to the left. They approached at low speed, and a girl's piercing voice rang out.

  "HELP ME!"

  "We're here!" one of the men hollered. "Just hold on!"

  The camera dropped to the deck but kept recording.

  "Josh, rope."

  "Knot it?"

  "Yes, put a fucking knot in it! Honda, with a stopper."

  The girl yelled again. "HELP!"

  "Ricky, man the fucking camera."

  The camera swung back up. The shape resolved itself into a chunk of yellow raft, half-shredded foam sticking out from shredded rubber. A Caucasian girl, maybe ten years old, clung to it, her dark hair plastered across her face.

  Someone threw the rope past her, then dragged it back with a casual expertise so that it fell right into her hands. She clutched it with white knuckles, muscles straining in near panic.

  "Now climb in the loop and grab that ball."

  She did as told, sputtering desperately as she lost her grip on the remains of the raft, but they pulled it taut as she put it around her thighs like a swing. She grabbed the stopper knot with both hands. They hauled her fifteen feet up, over the rail and onto the deck.

  "Are . . . are you okay?"

  She squirmed out of the rope to her hands and knees, coughing. Her white dress hung in wet curtains from her body. A man in overalls kneeled next to her and put a hand on her back. She coughed again and again.

  "Ricky, get her a glass of—"

  Vomit erupted from her mouth in a bright red river that splattered the deck and the man's legs. He scrambled back with a cry and she vomited in a continuous stream, far too much bloody fluid for a little girl. Too much for an adult. She looked up into the light, revealing black eyes, not just the pupils and irises, but everything.

  "Holy shit!" The cameraman—Ricky—stepped back.

  She grinned and opened her mouth and more blood dribbled out, leaking down her chin and soaking her dress. Her lips moved and words formed, every language and none, a thousand voices making an incomprehensible one. She spread her arms in defiant confrontation, black eyes blazing with un-light, and she rose from the deck, first one foot, then the other, hovering inches from the wooden boards.

  "Join us." Her child's voice reverberated with a thousand more.

  A metal object slammed into her
head, and she tumbled to the deck.

  The camera zoomed in to the crumpled form, a little girl covered in bright arterial blood, a huge bruise already forming on her temple.

  "Holy shit, guys. Holy SHIT."

  "Turn that off, Ricky."

  She twitched, and more blood leaked from her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.

  "I SAID TURN THAT FUCKING THING OFF."

  The screen went blank.

  "What was that?"

  Matt whirled around, the movement tearing the headphones from the computer. He stared wide-eyed at his wife, who stood behind his desk in one of his VFD T-shirts, her face raw with worry.

  "We don't know. Yet. I've got to head out Monday for an eight a.m. briefing."

  "Oh." She took a step back, hand to her mouth. "That's not . . . not a movie?"

  He blinked, at a loss for words, and shook his head. "No, Mon. It's real."

  "My God, Matt. You have to help that girl."

  He cleared his throat. "I know."

  * * *

  Matt kissed his wife and son goodbye, scratched Ted on the bridge of his nose, and stepped out into chilly darkness. At four a.m. in mid-October the Appalachian Plateau frosted his breath and sent goose bumps up his naked arms. He almost turned back for a jacket but had already faced one worried goodbye too many. As far as deployment timelines went, "I don't know" sucked more than any other.

  He fired up the sedan—he'd leave the truck for Monica in case the weather went south—and pulled out onto the winding country road. Fresh gravel pinged off the wheel wells, and the frozen air didn't quite smother the petrochemical stench of oil and tar. He turned on the radio, dialed in KIX 106, and cranked the country music as loud as the speakers could handle.

  He analyzed the mission while his tires ate up the road. Eighteen men had quit their jobs and moved to a mobile home park in Cuevas, Mississippi within six months of each other. Upon arrival, every one had been hired to work on the same drillship. Twelve had abandoned their families without so much as a note. The other six had no families to speak of. The mechanics and plumbers made some level of sense, but the IT guy, the accountant, the two waiters, and the three in retail had no skills related to the job. Thirteen white, three Hispanic, two black, none with criminal records. The intel weenies hadn't uncovered anything they had in common.