Harvath and Lawlor rode back to the hospital in silence. Harvath didn’t like being hamstrung, especially when they were facing a problem he was more than qualified to handle.

Lawlor didn’t push him to talk. He’d known before they even got to the White House how the meeting was going to unfold. The president had made it absolutely clear that he didn’t want Harvath or anyone else poking around in this investigation. What he didn’t say was why.

Though Lawlor wasn’t happy with the president’s decision either, he had to give Rutledge credit for telling Scot in person. He was right-it was the very least he owed him.

At the hospital’s entrance, the driver pulled the car to the curb and Harvath climbed out. There were a million things Lawlor wanted to say to him, but none of them seemed appropriate at this point. Instead, it was Harvath who broke their silence. “He has put together a special team to hunt Tracy ’s shooter, yet I can’t have anything to do with it? That doesn’t make any sense. There’s a lot more to this than he’s telling us, Gary, and it pisses me off.”

Lawlor knew he was right, but there was nothing either of them could do about it. The president had given them a direct order. Though he was just as bewildered as Scot was, Lawlor only nodded and replied, “Let me know if anything changes with Tracy.”

Disgusted, Harvath closed the car door and walked into the hospital.

Upstairs in Tracy ’s room, her parents were eating lunch. As he entered the room, Bill Hastings asked, “Any news on the investigation?”

Harvath had no desire to burden Tracy ’s parents with his problems, so told them a half truth. “They’re working it from all sides. The president has taken a personal interest in the investigation and is doing everything he can.”

The ventilator continued its rhythmic hiss, pop, hiss, pop, and Harvath tried to ignore it. Pulling a chair up alongside the bed, he took Tracy ’s hand and whispered in her ear that he was back.

If only the president could see her like this, he might not be so quick to pull him off the investigation. All the way back to the hospital, Harvath had tried to figure out why Rutledge was doing this. No matter how many angles he came at it from, none of them made any sense.

The president knew better than anyone else what an asset Scot could be in a case like this. For a moment, he thought maybe Rutledge was concerned about the task being too emotional for him, but Harvath had more than proven himself capable of separating his work from his emotions.

The more Harvath thought about it, the more he realized he actually took everything about his job personally, and that was one of the things that made him so good at what he did.

No, the fact that he had a personal stake in the outcome of this investigation didn’t have anything to do with why the president was boxing him out. It had to be something else.

Harvath gently stroked his fingers up and down Tracy ’s arm as his mind ran through yet more possibilities. The more scenarios he constructed, the further away he felt he was getting from the truth. He thought he knew the president pretty well, but this time he couldn’t figure him out.

Harvath replayed the meeting in his mind’s eye. He’d been taught through vigorous Secret Service training how to spot microexpressions, the subtle subconscious clues a subject gives out when he is lying or preparing to do something dishonest. Even the best of Washington ’s doublespeak politicians couldn’t hide their intentions or the truth from a seasoned Secret Service agent who knew what to look for. And Scot Harvath knew what to look for.

For whatever reason, President Jack Rutledge had been lying to him. Harvath was certain of it.

He was still deliberating this when his BlackBerry rang. He ignored the call and let it go to voicemail. Nothing was more important than being with Tracy right now.

When the phone rang two more times, Harvath figured it might be urgent and pulled the device from the holster clipped at his hip. The Caller ID showed a Colorado area code.

He depressed the button to answer the call, raised the device to his ear, and said, “Harvath.”

“Are you alone?” came a voice from the other end.

Harvath glanced at Bill Hastings, who was reading a copy of the New York Times as he ate his lunch. Turning his attention back to his phone he said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Are you still interested in midget wrestling?”

Harvath sat up straighter in his chair. “You’ve got something?”

“Affirmative,” said the voice.

“What is it?”

“Not over the phone. I’ve got a plane waiting for you. Don’t bother packing a bag. You need to get out here ASAP.”

Harvath looked at Tracy and was silent.

“ASAP,” repeated the voice.

Though Harvath was certain he must have imagined it, he thought for a moment he had felt Tracy return his grasp.

“Are you still there?” asked the voice after several seconds of silence.

Harvath snapped himself out of it. “Yeah, I’m still here,” he replied.

“Reagan National, now,” ordered the voice. Then the line went dead.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Mark Sheppard was a big fan of zombie movies. Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later-you name it and chances were that Sheppard had not only seen it, but owned it. There was something about death that had always fascinated him.

It was a strange preoccupation, but one that had served the tall, sandy-haired twenty-seven-year-old reporter well. He had begun his career at the Baltimore Sun writing obituaries. It was a probationary assignment designed to allow editors to evaluate the writing and copyediting skills of their cub reporters. Most young journalists hated their time on the obit desk, but Sheppard had reveled in it.

From there he moved to the crime beat. Legendary crime reporter Edna Buchanan had once said that the crime beat “has it all: greed, sex, violence, comedy, and tragedy,” and she was right. Though it was a high-turnover, sink-or-swim position where editors continued to test their journalists’ mettle before promoting them to more glamorous beats, Sheppard fell in love with it and made it known that he had no intention of ever doing any other sort of reporting.

To his credit, Sheppard was an exceptional crime reporter. He had an eye for detail and a propensity for sourcing, and he knew how to tell one hell of a story. Over his years on the beat he had developed a wide array of contacts-on both sides of the law. Both police captains and mob captains respected him for his integrity. His sources always knew that he never went to press unless he had gotten all of his facts straight.

Because of his reputation for being a straight shooter and always protecting the anonymity of his sources, news tips flowed in Sheppard’s direction on a regular basis. They rarely proved newsworthy. The key was to know which ones were worth running down. Hemingway had once said that a writer needs to have a “shockproof bullshit detector,” and Sheppard couldn’t have agreed with him more. He found that the amount of energy he put into investigating a tip was often commensurate with how solid its source was. Of course, for every rule there was always an exception.

For Sheppard, the more outrageous the claim, the more his interest was piqued. At the moment, his interest was quite high.

Driving toward the Thomas J. Gosse funeral home on the outskirts of the city, headlines were already forming in his mind. There was no question he was putting the cart way before the horse, but Sheppard’s gut told him that if this story panned out, it was going to be huge.

That meant the headline had to be huge as well. And it had to be sensational. This had the potential to be a front-page story. Hell, it might even be an explosive investigative series.