The Sign

there were a lot of other possible explanations for it. They’d expected people to claim the sign all along. They knew that crazies in every dark corner of the planet would be coming out of their rabbit holes and making all kinds of nonsensical declarations. But this was no nutcase. This was Father Jerome. The Father Jerome.

No, he was sure of it. Something was very, very wrong.

He’d misjudged them again.

And that possibility—that certainty—sent a bracing shot of ice rushing through his veins.

He did all he could to keep his anger in check as he picked up the phone and punched the speed-dial key for Drucker.

SEATED COMFORTABLY IN HIS OFFICE on Connecticut Avenue, Keenan Drucker watched his TV monitor with avid interest. He marveled at how quickly the media pounced on any development and whipped it around the planet. The content beast needed to be fed, and ever since the first appearance of the sign, it was positively feasting.

He felt a deeply rooted satisfaction at how things were unfolding, and his gaze ratcheted back from the plasma screen on his wall and dropped down to a framed picture on his desk. Jackson, his son—his dead son— beamed back at him from behind its thin glass plate. Drucker felt the same stab of grief he suffered every time he glanced at the picture. He tried to keep that image of Jackson in his mind—alive, vibrant, handsome, proudly turned out in his crisp officer’s dress uniform, the young man’s eyes blazing with a sense of pride and purpose—and not let the horrific images from the mortuary seep in and overpower it. But he never could. The images from that visit to the base, when he and his wife were presented with what was left of their son, were permanently chiseled into his hardened soul.

I’ll make things right, he thought to Jackson. I’ll make sure it never happens again.

He tore his eyes off his son’s face and looked up at the screen. He surfed away from the mainstream news networks and trawled the Christian channels instead. The sound bites coming through were promising. The footage from the caves was whipping up a storm of excitement, that much was clear. The people in the street were lapping it up. The preachers, however, were being more cautious. He watched as one televangelist after another gave cagey responses about what was going on, clearly unsure about how to handle this unexpected intrusion into their cosseted worlds.

Typical, he thought, knowing they had to be seriously threatened—but also aware that they’d be watching each other, waiting to see who’d be the first to jump into the pool.

“If he’s the real deal,” he heard one pundit remark on air, “these preachers will soon be falling over themselves to embrace him and claim him as their own.”

They’ll get there, he mused. They just need some encouragement.

Covert encouragement, to be precise.

Which, as it happened, was something Keenan Drucker excelled at.

His BlackBerry pinged. He dragged his concentration away from the monitor and glanced at the phone. It was Rydell.

As expected.

He inhaled a long, calming breath, then picked it up. Rydell’s voice was—also, as expected—agitated.

“Keenan, what the hell’s going on?”

Time for damage control. Something else he excelled at.

“Not on the phone,” he replied curtly.

“I need to know this isn’t what I think it is.”

“We need to talk,” Drucker just repeated, his words slow, emphatic. “In person.”

A beat later, Rydell came back. “I’ll fly down first thing in the morning. Meet me at Reagan. Eight o’clock.” And he was gone.

Drucker nodded slowly to himself. Anticipating Rydell’s reaction, and his call, hadn’t exactly taken an act of supernatural-level divination. It was simple cause and effect. But it meant he needed to initiate an effect of his own.

Maddox picked up his call within two rings.

“Where are you?” Drucker asked him. “Where are we with Sherwood’s brother?”

“It’s under control,” Maddox said. “I’m dealing with it myself.”

Drucker frowned. He didn’t expect the Bullet to dive in himself unless things were getting out of hand. He decided now was not the time to delve further on that front. He had a more pressing message to convey, in the form of three short words.

“Get the girl” was all he said. Then he hung up.

ALMOST TWO THOUSAND MILES EAST, Rebecca Rydell was still in bed and enjoying a late lie-in. By conventional standards, it was past lunchtime, but Costa Careyes was far from conventional. And at the Rydells’ sprawling Casa Diva, moreover, as in the other villas and casitas on the sun-kissed Mexican coast for that matter, life was unfettered by such mundane limitations.

She’d been up most of the night, with her friends. They’d watched the latest sighting on the big screen in the open-air living room before adjourning to the beach and wondering about it over ceviche, grilled shrimp, margaritas, and a big bonfire under a pearlescent moon.

Vague recollections of the evening drifted into her mind as she stirred, half-awake, her senses tickled to life by the delicate scents of bougainvillea and copa de oro that wafted through the house. She usually liked to sleep with the French doors open, preferring the sound of the ocean’s waves and the salty taste of the air to the clinical hum of the air conditioner, but it had been a particularly hot week, hotter than she could ever remember. Still drowsy, she realized something else had nudged her awake. A faint noise outside her bedroom. Footsteps, getting closer.

The door to her room swung open, and Rebecca almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of the two men who hurried in. She knew them, of course. Ben and Jon. The bodyguards her father had insisted should accompany her whenever she left the country. Especially when she was in Mexico. They were normally very discreet and stayed well out of sight, particularly here, in the sleepy, remote playground of Careyes, far removed from kidnap-central Mexico City and the drug warzones farther north. She’d known the two men for over a year now, and she liked and trusted them—which is why she sat up briskly, a sudden ripple of fear rushing through her. For them to be barging into her bedroom like this, without so much as a knock, meant that something very, very bad had happened.

“Get dressed,” Ben told her bluntly. “We have to get you out of here.”

She pulled the sheet right up against her chest and shrank back against the headboard, her breath coming short and fast. “What’s going on?”

Ben’s eyes fell on a light, floral-patterned dress that was strewn across a bench at the foot of her bed. He picked it up and flung it at her.

“We have to get you out here now. Let’s go,” he ordered.

Something about the way he said it, something about the way Jon’s eyes were dancing back and forth warily, made her uneasy. Her hand fumbled to the night table and she grabbed her cell phone. “Where’s my dad? Is he okay?” she asked as she hit the keypad.

Ben took a couple of quick strides to her bedside and snatched the phone out of her hand. “He’s fine. You can talk to him later. We have to go now.” He slipped her phone into his pocket and looked at her pointedly.

The finality of his words pummeled her into submission.

She nodded hesitantly and reached for her dress. The two men half-turned to give her some privacy as she pulled it on. She tried to calm herself, to placate the terror that was coursing through her. The two men were professionals. They knew what they were doing. This was what they were trained to do. She shouldn’t be asking