This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1—Dirty Deeds
Right Now—Halfway Across the World
The truck came to an abrupt stop in a trackless expanse of nowhere. The driver cut the engine and climbed out of the cab. He surveyed the landscape. It was a moonless night, and that was a good thing. He could scarcely see his hand in front of his face, but it didn’t matter much. This terrain was so familiar to him that he didn’t need to. He switched on a flashlight and walked to the back of the truck. Opening the canvas flap, he motioned for the occupants to come out. Two men jumped down, each one carrying a shovel.
The driver walked several yards away from the vehicle. Taking a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing was moving out there in the dark, he pointed his flashlight at the ground. “Here,” he commanded. “Dig here.”
The two others complied. The driver stood motionless, pointing his flashlight at the bottom of an ever-increasing hole in the ground. None of them spoke. The only sound was the relentless scoop and swish as dirt fell into a pile beside the depression in the earth.
“Wait!” the driver hissed. He thought he’d heard a car engine. He flipped his light off—turning his head this way and that to catch the faintest sound in the distance.
His companions leaned on their shovel handles and waited too.
After a few minutes, the driver switched his light back on. “Just the wind,” he muttered.
The others resumed their task. The hole grew bigger—a rectangular shadow even darker than the night sky. When the pit was about five feet deep, one of the workers paused.
“Is this enough?” He peered up at the driver for confirmation.
The man with the flashlight nodded.
Needing no further instruction, the other two crawled out of the trench and walked to the back of the truck. One clambered inside and shoved a heavy wooden crate toward the edge. It was bound with thick strands of knotted rope.
Both men heaved and strained to slide the object off the truck bed. Staggering under the full weight of the box, they carried it to the hole. The driver threw them two more coils of rope which they slipped around the box to carefully lower it into the ground.
“Good,” said the driver with satisfaction. “Close it up. It will be dawn soon. We need to get out of here.”
It took far less time to fill in the hole than it had taken to dig it. The two men pounded down the hill of dirt with their shovels to make it less conspicuous.
“A fair night’s work,” the driver thought to himself as he stepped inside the cab and started the motor. He was an expert at hiding things out here where nobody ever came—objects that weren’t meant to be found. He would wait a while until things cooled down and then he and his friends would return. In the meantime, he doubted anybody in the world would ever think to look here for what they’d just buried.
Chapter 2—A Naming Convention
Cassie Forsythe stood back at the edge of the clearing, so she could better observe the collection of oddly-dressed people filing up the front steps of the old schoolhouse. The evening air was frosty, and steam issued from their mouths as they spoke to one another. It had been a long time since she’d attended an official meeting of the Concordance—the Arkana’s governing council. The late-winter sun was just sinking behind the pine trees that surrounded this little gap in the woods. It all looked so peaceful and harmless. A country schoolhouse in a forest glade—just like a Currier & Ives print. Cassie smiled wryly at the thought of the vault beneath the school that housed the global records of the secret organization for which she worked. This job had taught her how deceptive appearances could be.
Someone tugged playfully at her coat sleeve. She turned quickly. “Oh, it’s you, Griffin.”
“You needn’t sound so disappointed,” the lanky brown-haired young man teased.
Cassie appraised her companion suspiciously. “What are you so happy about? You’re practically grinning from ear to ear.”
“I’m smiling because this afternoon I had my last check-up with the vault physician. Though technically I haven’t needed it for the past month, she told me to discard my wheelchair. I’m officially fit for active duty.”
“Oh, my goddess, Griffin, that’s great news!” She gave him a swift hug. “Congratulations.”
The Brit smiled and blushed with pleasure. “Now that I’m ambulatory again, we can start planning our next field mission.”
“Yo, what’s up,” a laconic voice joined the conversation.
“Hello, Erik, we were just about to step inside,” Griffin offered. He added pointedly, “You’ll notice I said ‘step.’”
The security coordinator sized the Brit up. “Right, I heard you left the land of the lame today.”
“At least he’s left the land of the lame, dude.” Cassie emphasized the word “left.” “That’s your permanent address.”
“My ankle healed up weeks ago,” Erik protested.
“I wasn’t talking about your ankle.”
“You two have begun rather early.” Griffin made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Less than five minutes and you’re already at one another’s throats.”
“Oh we’ve been at each other’s throats since this afternoon,” Cassie replied, glaring at Erik. “We spent the last four hours at the shooting range. I nailed every target. Every single one and he still won’t let me carry a gun on our next trip.”
“He won’t let me carry a gun either,” Griffin countered.
Cassie gave her colleague a pitying look. “That’s because you couldn’t hit the side of a
