All of this, every bit of it, had been accomplished under the nose of Department Thirty and Director Yorkton. Somehow Smith had found a willing vehicle in Daryn McDermott, though she had no doubt that Daryn had been manipulated as well.

“I should have killed him,” Faith said, not realizing she’d spoken aloud.

“Oh?” Sean said.

“On a beach at Galveston, a year ago, I had the chance and the justification. He’d already shot at civilians, and with everything else he’d done, if I’d been a little quicker, none of this would have happened. You, Daryn, Scott…it was all an elaborate plan to get at me, somehow. There are still holes in it, but he was after me all this time.”

Sean was silent for a long time. “You still didn’t tell me about the name Sanborn, about how you figured it out.”

“The first time I heard the name, I knew I recognized it, but I didn’t know from where. After I saw the book on the floor, I picked it up and looked at it, read the dust jacket. The use of that name was a message to me. Smith wanted to me to figure it out, to know who was doing this. Franklin Sanborn was one of the ‘Secret Six,’ this small group of Northern abolitionists who funded and supported John Brown in the revolt he wanted to start. The real Sanborn was an educator, a professor. He was even a friend of Emerson and Thoreau.”

“A professor,” Sean said. “He used that cover with the Coalition, too.”

“More of Smith’s sense of irony.” Faith kicked the ground with the toe of her boot. “Son of a bitch! He wanted me to know it was him. He wanted me to see what he was doing to me, that even though he was exiled and relocated, he could get to me. He must have been planning this almost from the moment he went under with the department. Son of a bitch!”

Sean moved away from the fence post and looked down at his sister. His eyes had changed. Ever since he’d arrived at her house two weeks ago, Faith had seen little but an alcoholic haze, a dullness, in her brother. Now his blue-green eyes flashed anger.

His voice, when he finally spoke again, was tightly controlled. “So this was all about you?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Think about something, Faith. Just a few minutes ago you accused me of not being able to think of anything except about how it affected me. Turn that around. Why would someone go to these lengths to get to you? Are you that important, Faith?”

Faith stared at him, unable to speak. The words had been swept out of her, as if a desert wind had blown them off toward the distant mountains.

“Are you that big a deal now, just because you’re working for Department Thirty? Because you can play around with people’s lives and create new people, just because you think it’s in the ‘national interest,’ are you that important? Huh? You’ve been trying to prove something your entire life. Did you prove it? Did you finally prove you were a big deal? Do you think you’d finally get Joe Kelly’s approval?”

“Stop it, Sean.”

“Except…oh, wait a minute, you can’t tell anyone you work for Thirty, so no, Dad can’t approve, can he? So maybe all this is in your own mind, Faith. Maybe I’m a boozer, but maybe you’re just fucking delusional!”

“Sean, you have to understand. Smith-Sanborn-is a master manipulator. He can-”

“Make people commit murder and not even know why they’re doing it? Come on, think, Faith! Think about how idiotic that is!”

“This is what he wants. This is part of what Smith was trying to do. He’s destroying us. He wants me to pay-”

“Oh, bullshit!” Sean shouted. “Spare me your goddamn conspiracy theories! You’ve lived with that Department Thirty crap for so long that now you’re believing it yourself, that it’s in your own life. Somehow you’ve figured that your own brother is a cold-blooded killer.” Sean tapped his chest with his fist. “I didn’t kill Daryn, obsession or not. I don’t care what the fucking evidence says, and I don’t care what you say. Not anymore.”

Faith’s cell phone rang.

“Better get that,” Sean said, the bitterness thick in his voice. “You know how important you are.”

The phone rang again.

Sean turned and walked down the hill, toward the border.

“Sean!” Faith shouted.

Sean kept walking, closer and closer to the port of entry.

Faith took a step, willing her mind to clear. I can’t think, I can’t think…

Only a handful of people had the number of the Kimberly Diamond cell phone. Finally, she pulled the phone out of her fanny pack and looked at the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number right away, but it was area code 405. Oklahoma.

Sean drew closer to the border. He was leaving her, leaving everything, walking away.

She knew he would have been defenseless in the face of Isaac Smith’s machinations and Daryn McDermott’s seductive powers. She’d tried to tell him she understood. Had she actually said the words? Suddenly Faith couldn’t remember, and suddenly it seemed very important.

She flipped open the phone, watching her brother grow smaller. “Yes?”

“Faith? It’s Rob Cain.”

“Yes, Rob?”

“Scott was found dead in his condo last night.” A long pause. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

Faith said nothing.

“Your message,” Cain said. “I didn’t understand it, until-”

“What do you have?”

“Where are you, Faith?”

Faith was silent for a long moment, then said again, “What do you have?”

“The autopsy results from Daryn McDermott. Now I know why it took so long to get the report. They had to be one hundred percent certain of what they were looking at.”

“Yes?”

She listened to him for two minutes, to his crisp, professional explanation. When he finished, her hands were shaking as she put the phone away. The last pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Ahead of her, Sean stepped across the border and into Mexico.

“No!” she shouted. “Sean!”

Faith broke into a run. As she ran down the hill, she realized she was still carrying a gun in her fanny pack, and she knew that if she carried it into Mexico, she might never see the U.S. again. She had nothing identifying her as an employee of the Department of Justice, nothing to justify carrying a firearm across the border.

Without breaking stride, she unsnapped the fanny pack and flung it to the side of the road.

“Sean, wait!”

Sean was a few steps beyond the border now. On the Mexico side, the road wasn’t paved but loose gravel. He was heading up a small hill toward a building that presumably served as the Mexican mirror of the port of entry.

He turned back to look at her. “Go back, Faith! You don’t have any jurisdiction over here!”

Faith ran. The door to the building on the American side opened. The guard named Mike stepped out. On the other side of the road, from the booth on the northbound side, a female officer was watching her.

“Hey!” Mike shouted.

“Go back!” Sean said.

American citizens didn’t have to show any kind of documentation to enter Mexico. They didn’t have to stop, didn’t have to answer questions, could simply walk or drive across the border and enter the other country. Faith pounded down the pavement, cursing the stiff boots and wishing she had her Reeboks instead.

A few more steps and she would be there.

“Hold it!” Mike shouted. “I want to talk to you! Hey, woman! Stop!”

Ten more steps. Sean had stopped and was staring at her in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe his sister was crazy enough to follow him into a foreign country.

Five steps.

She heard Mike unsnapping his holster again.

You can’t shoot me, Faith thought absurdly. I work for Department Thirty.

Then she realized: Sean was right. This job has changed me into something I don’t even recognize.

She stepped into Mexico, felt the ground change from blacktop to gravel.

“Are you out of your mind?” Sean said.