McDermott took off his glasses. His wife laid her hand on his forearm. “She wrote:

I’m scared, Daddy. Really, really scared. You know I’ve always had an agenda to promote, and I met some other people that felt the same way I do. We formed a group, and we were planning to travel around the country, doing demonstrations and helping people understand our agenda. I was out here in Oklahoma when I met them, so that’s been our headquarters. But Dad, after I was around these people for a few weeks, I realized they didn’t want the same things I did. These people are violent! They want to destroy banks to show how money corrupts our political and social system. I agree with the idea, but they’re talking about terrorism, Dad!

McDermott stopped. His voice had cracked the last time he read the word Dad.

He waited a moment. Faith stared at the screen. She thought the veneer of the politician had just melted a little, and she was finally seeing the Edward McDermott who’d lost his daughter. He may have been a terrible father, but in the final analysis, he was still a father and his daughter had been taken from him in a horrible manner.

McDermott cleared his throat. His wife’s hand moved from his forearm to his shoulder. He looked at her as if drawing strength. “She goes on:

I couldn’t go through with being a part of terrorism. That’s not what my ideas are all about. On the way to the first target, a bank in Oklahoma City, I called the FBI. The other leader of the group threatened me. He said he’d have me killed, Dad. He said he’d come after me and kill me.

McDermott lost all semblance of control, bowing his head and turning at an angle away from most of the cameras. Faith saw tears rolling down the man’s cheeks.

“Jesus,” said someone in the room with Faith. A man’s voice, but she couldn’t tell whose. She felt eyes on her.

Suzanne McDermott gently took the papers from her husband’s hands and stepped to the microphone. She looked poised and confident. “Let me,” she said to her husband, then looked at the cameras. “I’ll read you the rest of what the senator wanted to share with you from my stepdaughter’s e-mail. She says:

I knew I shouldn’t have been with that group, but I really believed we agreed on things. I knew I was guilty of conspiracy to commit terrorism. But I thought I could still stop them if I told someone. I knew the government would want this information. Maybe even you don’t know about this, Dad, but there’s a part of the government that will give protection and new identities to people who’ve committed crimes, even terrorism-related crimes, if you have information for them.

“Oh my God,” Mark Raines said. Faith had never seen his composure slip before.

I went to them. I asked them to protect me. This government agency is called Department Thirty.

Faith’s cell phone began to ring.

Suzanne McDermott kept reading.

A woman named Faith Kelly was assigned to be my case officer. She asked me all kinds of questions and said she’d investigate my information. Then she came back and said she couldn’t find any evidence. No evidence! I was all the evidence they should have needed!

Faith felt a chill crawl down her spine. Her phone stopped ringing, then started again.

This Kelly woman told me they couldn’t protect me, since my information didn’t check out. She just sent me on my way, and here I am, Dad. I’m very, very frightened. These people I was with-I think they’ll kill me. I just wanted you to know, in case something happens. I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry I disappointed you so much. I never meant to hurt anyone, and I tried to do the right thing.

Now Suzanne was crying as well. She stepped away from the microphone. Her husband had composed himself and stepped back in front of the cameras.

“My daughter, my only child, wrote this to me a few hours before she was murdered. By the time I checked my e-mail in the morning, she was hanging dead in a tree in Oklahoma City.” The glasses went on, then came off again. He pointed them straight toward the cameras. “Department Thirty. Remember that name. You’re going to be hearing it more and more, because I’m going to find out what happened. If they could have protected my daughter from these terrorists, and they didn’t, because this case officer, this Faith Kelly, could find no evidence, and then my daughter was killed…” He put the glasses back on and used his index finger to jab the podium. He spoke slowly, precisely. “There will be hell to pay. Hell to pay.”

Reporters started shouting questions.

“Faith?” said Deputy Derek Mayfield, the first person who’d befriended her when she was assigned to the Oklahoma City Marshals Service office.

Faith’s phone was ringing again. She barely registered that Mayfield and others were talking to her.

Faith watched the screen, even as the cameras pulled back to show a long shot of the Capitol steps, then cut back to the news anchors in Atlanta.

But I couldn’t, she thought. I couldn’t protect her. There was nothing to support her story. Nothing!

Only Sean. Only her brother supported Daryn McDermott’s story, and he was gone.

I should have protected her anyway.

She remembered Daryn hanging in the tree.

Faith shook her head and backed away from the TV set. They were all watching her.

“Faith, what can we do to help you?” Raines asked.

Faith shook her head.

“I have to go,” she said.

She turned and ran from the office.

She finally anwered her phone when she was alone in her office.

“Go to ground,” Yorkton said. “I’m already transferring our funds into emergency accounts. Do you have your own emergency identity in place?”

Every Department Thirty employee was required to have two sets of identity papers, ready for emergencies, that would allow them to travel and move freely without being associated with the department. Faith’s primary emergency identity was Kimberly Diamond, with an address in Independence, Missouri.

She nodded numbly. “Yes.” She checked the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet. Her small travel bag was there and packed, as it always was.

“Don’t go home,” Yorkton said. “Leave your office and don’t go back. All your case files are on disks, yes?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. Take them with you and go to a hotel. Stay in cell phone contact.” Yorkton sighed. “I never thought this day would come. Our existence is now public knowledge, but I may be able to fix it.”

“Fix it? How in the hell could you fix it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I don’t know Ted McDermott. He’s a social issues crusader, hasn’t ever served on the Judiciary Committee, so I’ve never had dealings with him. I’ll think of something.”

“I don’t see how-”

“You don’t have to see how. That’s my job.” Yorkton’s voice sounded far away. “The attorney general’s already called me. The president’s already called him. I know the president likes you, Officer Kelly, but I don’t know if that’s enough. He understands political reality, and the political reality has just changed, quite dramatically.”

“What about my cases?”

“Let them know they’re all right, they’re still secure, and that they will stay that way. They shouldn’t be compromised by this. Call them, then go to ground. I’ll talk to the other case officers. Where’s Simon?”

“He’s with Bankston, the new case, in Kansas.”

“Call him too. He’ll need to go to his emergency identity as well.” There was a long pause. “Go to ground,” Yorkton said for the third time, then hung up.

“My God,” Faith said, still holding the phone. Just a little while ago, she’d kissed Hendler good-bye in her shower. They’d acted like normal people. They’d been sure of their own reality, even if everything about them was shifting. Now not even that was safe.