have to wait. Searching around, Gray spotted a familiar stone-and-gold object rolled up against a bush.
The canopic jar.
Relieved, he rushed over, dropped to his knees, and collected it up.
The lid was still in place.
Painter joined him.
'It's the Doomsday key,' Gray explained.
'Keep it safe.' Painter turned as Seichan joined them. Gray's boss seemed unsurprised at her being there.
Seichan faced Painter and shook her head.
'We had to attempt it,' he told her cryptically.
'It still failed. I warned you from the start that the Guild would never trust me fully again.' Seichan turned her back and stared into the garden toward the one victim who hadn't truly escaped. 'And I shouldn't have trusted the Guild.'
Rachel stood numbly, her face turned up to the sky. They were all free, but she was still trapped.
Even now, as Gray watched, her legs trembled.
The heat, the stress, it had worn her body past endurance.
With her face still in the sun, she went boneless and collapsed.
10:32 P.M.
Troyes, France
Hours later, Gray sat on a bench in the corridor outside Rachel's hospital room. Monk and a French internist were inside. Rachel had been hooked to an intravenous drip and pumped full of a cocktail of antibiotics. Though she was out of danger, it had been a close call. She'd had to be evacuated by helicopter to the medical facility in Troyes.
But at least she was awake again.
Gray picked at the bandage around his hand. His wounds had been debrided, stitched up, and wrapped. But he knew he was far from healed.
A door opened down the hall. He watched Seichan step out of her room. She wore a hospital gown and carried a pack of cigarettes. She glanced down the hall, clearly wondering where she could smoke in a hospital. She turned in his direction and suddenly froze.
She didn't seem to know what to do with herself. He suspected she would have to get accustomed to that state. The Guild would be hunting for her. The United States still had orders to capture her. It had taken all of Painter's skill to keep her presence secret. He was still off putting out a thousand fires, holding the world at bay.
But they couldn't hide forever.
None of them.
Gray patted the seat next to him.
For half a minute, Seichan remained standing, then finally walked over. Half her face was in a bandage. She didn't sit. She stood with her arms crossed. Her eyes were slightly glazed by morphine. She stared toward Rachel's door.
'I didn't poison her,' she said in a hoarse whisper. So soon after surgery, it wasn't good for her to talk. But Gray knew she had to.
'I know,' Gray said. 'She's got double pneumonia. Too long in the rain, too much stress, a low-grade viral infection.'
Seichan sank to the bench.
Painter had already explained most of the story. A month ago he had approached Seichan, tracked her down using the implant. She hadn't discovered the bug on her own. In fact, according to Painter, she'd been shocked, angry, and hurt by the betrayal when he finally told her. But he offered her a chance, convinced her to work for him, to attempt one last time to infiltrate the Guild. Painter had caught wind of the pending order to haul her in for interrogation. He knew she still offered the best chance to discover who ran the Guild.
She had agreed and waited for the right mission to arise to prove herself to the Guild, to try to insinuate her way back into their fold. She never suspected it would drive her into conflict with Gray. But once committed, there was no turning back.
'I had to maintain the ruse,' Seichan said, referring to both the poisoning and her overall subterfuge. 'I switched thermoses in Hawkshead. I pretended to dose Rachel, but then afterward I destroyed the biotoxin. I knew there were spotters watching our every move. My phone was being monitored. Plus I already had suspicions about Wallace Boyle.'
Gray imagined that those suspicions had less to do with any insight about the professor and more to do with her usual state of constant paranoia, but in this particular case, they were well placed.
'It was only when we reached France, when we all split up, that I had a chance to get away from Wallace, to steal a disposable phone. After I killed the assassins in the woods-'
'You called Painter. You knew then the mission was a bust and let him know it.'
She nodded. 'I had no choice but to break cover. We needed help.'
That they did.
During the same phone conversation, Painter had asked her to continue her charade. With Wallace still an unknown and the death count climbing in the Midwest, the world needed that key. Even if it meant staying in bed with the devil.
A long stretch of silence rose between them. It was awkward and tense. She fingered her pack of cigarettes and looked ready to bolt.
Gray finally broached a subject he'd brought up before.
He turned to her. 'You told me long ago that you were one of the good guys, that you were really working against the Guild as a double agent. Was that true?'
She stared at the floor for a long time, then glanced sidelong at him. A hardness crept into her voice and her eyes. 'Does it matter now?'
Gray studied her, matching her gaze. He tried to read her, but she was a wall. In the past, during missions where their paths had crossed, she had ultimately helped him. Her methods were brutal-like murdering the Venetian curator-but who was he to judge? He had not walked in her shoes. He sensed a well of loneliness, of hard survival, of abuse that was beyond his world.
He was saved from responding by the creak of a door. Monk pushed out into the hall, followed by the hospital's internist. Monk's gaze swept between Gray and Seichan. The residual tension must have felt like a cold front.
Monk waved to the internist as he departed, then pointed to the door. 'She's tired, but you can visit for a few minutes...but only a few minutes. And I don't know if you've heard, but her uncle is out of his coma. Vigor woke up this morning. And won't shut up, I hear. Anyway, I think the good news went a long way toward perking her up.'
Gray stood.
Seichan rose, too, but she turned toward her hospital room.
Gray stopped her with a touch on her arm. She visibly flinched. 'Why don't you come inside, too?'
She just continued to stare down the hall.
Gray's fingers tightened on her arm. 'You owe her. You put her through hell. Just speak to her.'
She sighed, responding to the necessity and taking the offer as a punishment. She allowed herself to be led to the door. Gray hadn't meant the invitation as a chastisement, but at least it got her moving.
Seichan had been standing outside long enough.
Inside the room, Rachel was sitting up in bed. She smiled when she recognized Gray, but a flash of anger lit her eyes when she saw who followed him inside. Her smile faded.
'How are you feeling?' he asked.
'Well, I'm not poisoned.'
Seichan knew the barb was directed at her. But she took it without comment. She walked past Gray and took the seat next to the bed.
Rachel leaned away.
