Chapter 2
"How long?"
Yates hesitated.
"Lawson."
"How long?"
"If the progression continues at this rate, maybe ten days."
Something inside me went silent.
I had been shot once in Bucharest when I was twenty nine.
I had survived a plane landing without landing gear outside Denver.
I had watched men threaten me across polished tables while their hands rested beneath their jackets.
Fear had always been a practical thing to me.
You identified it.
You measured it.
You found the source.
Then you destroyed the source.
But there was nothing to destroy now.
There was no man standing between my children and tomorrow.
There was only their own blood.
Later that evening, Jonah opened his eyes.
"Dad?"
I moved immediately to his bedside.
"I'm here."
His voice was so weak I had to bend close.
"Did you bring my robot?"
I swallowed.
The robot was an ugly metal toy he had carried everywhere since his fourth birthday.
One arm had been missing for six months.
Genevieve had bought it for him at a museum gift shop.
"It's at home."
"You forgot."
"I'll bring it tomorrow."
He considered that.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Blythe stirred beside him.
The doctors had moved their beds together because neither child slept well when separated.
Her thin fingers searched beneath the blanket until I took her hand.
"Daddy?"
"Right here."
She stared at me with Genevieve's eyes.
Same gray blue color.
Same slight narrowing when she was thinking about something she was afraid to say.
"If I go first, can Jonah come with me?"
I stopped breathing.
Jonah turned his head toward her.
"Blythe."
She ignored him.
"Because Mommy went by herself."
I've heard men beg for their lives.
I've watched powerful people realize in real time that their entire futures had disappeared.
Nothing had ever frightened me like my daughter's question.
"Nobody's going anywhere."
She looked toward the empty chair near the window.
For two years, I had refused to remove that chair.
Genevieve had sat there during Jonah's tonsil surgery.
She had sat there when Blythe broke her wrist falling from a garden wall.
After she died, the chair became an object nobody discussed.
"Mommy went," Blythe whispered.
I squeezed her hand.
"I'm still here."
She closed her eyes.
That night, I returned to my estate outside Chicago because Prescott Hale had insisted I needed three hours of sleep.
Prescott had worked for me for fourteen years.