In the fading sunlight she noticed the sides of the box were close to an inch thick and lined in velvet. She reached in to remove a thick cloth, and then sat down on the open door’s ledge, dangling her legs over the side.

After setting the box on the floor next to her, she unfolded the cloth to reveal a tiny computer flash drive and a full syringe.

“Great,” she grumbled. “Just great.”

Whatever these were, Bobby was murdered for them. So that made these two objects the most important objects in the world. If Bobby had faith in her to know what to do with them, then by golly, she’d figure it out.

Harper smiled. Maybe Bobby did know what he was doing. Although she trained as much as possible, swimming didn’t pay the bills. But programming part-time at a video-game company did. She knew computers inside and out. If this drive had as many convoluted layers of coding as she suspected Bobby had dumped in there, she’d probably be the only one in the world able to read this thing. Maybe he was counting on that. Maybe it held the answers. It had to.

She picked up the syringe in her other hand, watching the syrupy amber liquid glisten in the clear tube.

What did it do? Bobby was a scientific genius, having graduated at the top of his molecular biology class. He had landed a coveted government research job right away. Harper knew he worked on highly confidential projects, but she really had no idea exactly what he did. They never actually talked much about it. Now they never would.

Shaking off that haunting thought, she focused on the syringe. She had a job to do. She had to find answers and strike back.

“Freeze,” a cold voice said, startling her.

Harper’s gaze shot up to see ten burly men, covered head to toe in jungle camouflage, standing in a semicircle about thirty feet away from the train car. Carrying massive guns. All pointed at her. They looked just like the guys who’d chased her. And the ones who’d killed Bobby. Her blood boiled as she sat rigid.

“Hands up,” the brute ordered. “Slowly,” he added.

No way. There was absolutely no way she was doing anything these guys told her. She kept her hands closed in her lap and her mouth shut.

The guy fired a shot right past her head. It clanged off the back wall of the car. Though it made her flinch, she still wasn’t going to give in to them.

“Do it now,” came the command. “We just want to talk.”

Right. Talk. That’s why they tracked her down and brought so many guns.

But maybe they did just want to talk. Maybe that’s why they hadn’t shot her on sight. They thought she knew something.

She couldn’t get justice for Bobby if she was dead, so she made a choice. “Okay,” Harper answered steadily.

“Open your hands flat.” Another stern order.

Her fingers closed tight around the small flash drive and snapped it apart. “Here you go,” she said with a cool smile and threw the broken pieces at them. The plastic bits scattered in the dirt and rubble that covered the ground.

“That was a big mistake.” The leader sneered. “Now open your other hand,” he demanded tersely.

Harper did as he said, revealing the syringe in her palm. She watched their faces intently as she did so. Several of them, including Mr. Bossy, gasped in surprise and then quickly tried to hide it. So the syringe was completely unexpected and extremely important.

“Drop the needle.” The demand was spoken deliberately and carefully.

“Let’s just shoot her,” the thug to his left piped in.

O-kay. Really, he was right. They could just kill her and take it.

But she couldn’t let them have it.

The men took a few menacing steps forward. She stood and held up her free palm in a nonthreatening gesture, clutching the syringe warily in the other as her brain whirled to come up with some kind of solution.

More steps closer. And then they lunged, tackling her.

She hit the floor hard and tried to squirm away from their grabbing hands. But they were all over her. At least three, maybe four of the men clutched at her hand, trying to pry the needle away. She grasped the syringe as tightly as she could, her knuckles white with the strain. Using her powerful swimmer’s legs, she began kicking at any surface she could manage. Grunts were her only reward.

As strong as she was, the brawny men were wearing her down. One of her fingers loosened. Then another. One more tug and she’d probably lose the syringe. Back and forth she waved her arm, but her attackers were relentless.

Harper pulled against the firm grip on her arm, twisting her body away as a bigger body pounced onto her shoulder. Momentum jerked her left arm across her body, forcing her grip on the syringe to waver, jabbing the needle into her right forearm. The plunger depressed in reflex, hard and fast, emptying every drop of the tawny liquid into her bloodstream.

The attack halted. The men gawked at her in stunned silence and backed away warily. She stared back.

What the heck had been in that vial?

Her body jerked involuntarily. She twisted her forearm around to look at the spot where the syringe had stabbed her. The mark was rosy red. Her arm began to prickle as though a hundred needles were piercing the tender flesh.

Harper cried out. As quickly as the sensation came, it left. Only to be replaced by a freezing rush through her entire being, like jagged ice fighting to escape her unyielding skin.

An uncontrollable shudder overtook her body. Terror seized her mind. What was happening to her?

The cold disappeared in an instant. She gasped and hunched over, crossing her arms over her abdomen as if her insides were being violently ripped apart and then pasted back together. The pain was so severe, she was sure she’d pass out. She wheezed in a deep breath.

And then it started again. But this round was a brutal heat, searing every fiber and sparking every ounce of blood she had like fireworks.

Facing her brother’s killers, she felt hate simmer deep inside her gut, melding with the heat that was already roiling and blazing white-hot. Her mind seized the wild emotion with an iron fist, bonding it with the roaring inner flames.

Energy fumed inside her head, clawing to come out. She let it surface, unable to fight the intense force anymore. Unwilling to fight it.

Harper summoned the hatred, the need for vengeance, and the grief for her brother, harnessing all of it with her psyche into a resounding dynamo. She then spread her arms and willed the raging force out of her mind.

Her flesh seared as though every fiber underneath were pulling away from the bone. Molten heat swept through her, as if she’d been turned inside out under a volcano. The power flowed from her mind, down her arms, and into her hands.

She let herself go, giving in to the furious rapture. A deafening hum rippled through her ears, and her body lurched backward as powerful energy shot from her open palms. The near-invisible wave flowed toward the dazed men standing before her, stirring the air and space between them. The energy engulfed her enemies and ravaged their bodies like a tidal wave.

A heartbeat later, the raging heat was gone. Harper blinked to settle her shimmering vision. She felt lightheaded, as if she’d just swum a nonstop relay. After a moment, her gaze cleared to an unthinkable scene. Sheer destruction lay before her. The bodies of the men looked as though a whirlwind had swept them up and spit them out. Mere rag dolls in a gale-force wind. Dead. They were all dead. And she’d killed them.

“What’s happening to me?” she managed to howl before she passed out.