She didn’t talk much and he didn’t press her. Something crappy had happened to her—he recognized the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d seen bad shit. The bad shit had gone down fairly recently, too. Once, the sleeve of her sweater rode up and he saw a big scar where something had sliced her. He knew scars. That couldn’t have been more than six months old.

Also—it looked a lot like a knife scar and he’d stopped what he was doing as a fit of rage overtook him.

Someone had knifed her?

Some fuckhead had taken a knife and sliced her? He knew knives, was good with knives. Knew what knives could do to the human body. In many ways, a knife could be more devastating than a bullet.

Isabel had caught his look, quietly pulled her sweater down over her forearm and turned away. It couldn’t have been more plain if she had shouted the words. I don’t want to talk about it.

She was clearly traumatized. She couldn’t talk about it? Fine. He knew all he really needed to know, anyway. Amazingly beautiful, really sad, incredible cook.

Messed with his head and his gonads.

The rest would come later, whenever she felt like talking.

And if someone had done this to her and he found out who that fuckhead was? The fucker was a dead man walking.

So Joe had resigned himself to waiting it out until she felt comfortable enough with him to talk about it.

God knew he had time on his hands. He wasn’t going anywhere. The doctors wouldn’t let him go to work for another month, though he was itching to.

His rehab was hard but he was on the mend and it was a steadily upward trajectory. Metal wouldn’t let it be anything else. Sometimes Jacko showed up, too, at the gym, to spot him. Metal knew everything there was to know about physiology and Jacko was a world-class gym rat so between the two of them he was putting himself back together again in record time.

He had friends, he had the full support of his company, ASI.

Who did she have?

Nobody. Except him.

She wasn’t looking well at all today. The ground had frozen overnight and there were unexpected pockets of ice.

Joe had good balance but Isabel didn’t.

Isabel might need him.

Joe headed out.

* * *

“I think it might be time to pass on to phase two,” the voice on the phone said.

“All right,” Hector Blake answered and there was a faint click and then silence.

The voice, as always, had been put through an anonymizer and was a metallic tenor. It could be anyone—man, woman or child—there was no way to tell. The software program was created to disguise any identifying characteristics. Though Blake would bet good money it was a man.

Blake could bet good money because the voice at the other end of the line had made him several billion dollars overnight, and so he could be an alien from Aldeberan for all Blake cared.

Still, he had a mental image of the man, sitting at a desk somewhere.

The office would be ordered and plush, full of comforts. There was something prissy about the voice. The anonymizer changed the timbre and tone of the voice but couldn’t change the syntax, the small pauses, the vocabulary.

So, Blake had built up this image of an elegantly dressed, fussy man sitting in an elegant office, dispensing orders like God. Just about as powerful as God, actually, because the man was planning on bringing down the most powerful country on earth in several stages.

Phase one had been a resounding success. So he supposed it didn’t really matter who the voice belonged to.

He remembered clearly the day the voice had called. First of all, he’d called on Blake’s personal cell, which was interesting in and of itself. Very few people had his personal number and Blake took care to keep that number low. He had a very busy, highly successful law practice. His office had ten lines and he had two—one for internal calls and one for outside calls. His staff answered his phone at home and very few were forwarded on to him. He had two cells for business and one for personal calls, which he rarely used. The person who’d called that day had called him on his personal cell.

It had been clear immediately that the voice was altered. Right away, Blake had been both intrigued and irritated. He was a busy man and silly games bored him.

Until the caller told him what the call was about and Blake sat up straight, electrified.

This was—this was illegal and treasonous and immoral.

And yet highly profitable. Almost unimaginably so.

When Blake had asked who was talking, the voice answered, “Call me M.”

Blake had hummed the Bond tune but nobody laughed on the other end.

Blake would never have believed that someone would approach him with a plan this terrifying, this audacious. But M had, and over the course of an hour’s conversation a day for several weeks, his reaction shifted from never to maybe to yes.

And then they’d started talking details.

It had come at a moment in Blake’s life in which he was becoming a shade depressed and a little bored. He’d been born for great things and, yes, he’d accomplished his fair share. He’d turned his family’s small estate into a big one. He’d founded a successful law firm specializing in international law and he’d published so many articles in the field he was considered an expert. He’d advised the State Department and the European Union and the United Nations on aspects of treaties.

He’d been an ambassador for two years. To Andorra, it was true, but it was enough to be called ambassador for the rest of his days.

He’d run twice for the senate and won both times, but his time there had been boring and the experience soon grew stale.

However, in spite of all his success, marriage one had broken down—so many years ago he could hardly remember her face—as had marriages two and three. He had no children except an out-of-wedlock girl in Southeast Asia he occasionally sent money to.

None of his ex-wives spoke to him, though they cashed his checks readily enough.

Blake had made his mark, but it wasn’t enough.

What M proposed was enough. God, yes. More than enough. It would put Blake right up there in the history books with Alexander, with Charlemagne, with Napoleon. One of the most powerful men ever to have lived.

Viceroy of the Americas.

Every time he said that title to himself, he smiled secretly. It was becoming so real to him, his own manifest destiny, that current reality was starting to fade. And yet—it was reality that somehow seemed a veiled scrim, almost invisible.

He found himself caught up in plans for the After, completely taken up by what the world would be after the plan came to fruition, completely forgetting that the plan hadn’t been implemented in full yet.

It had begun, though.

He was wealthy beyond belief and soon he would be powerful beyond belief.

Viceroy of the Americas.

The Washington Massacre had been phase one and that had been a resounding success.

One extra special fillip to the Massacre was that it had taken out the Delvauxes, the whole brood. Simply swatted them away, like you would with pernicious flies.

Officious pricks, every single one of them.

The Blakes and Delvauxes had been friends for three generations.

Everyone thought Blake and Alex Delvaux were friends when the truth was Blake despised Alex, always had. Hated all the Delvauxes, actually, with their shock of blondish hair, athleticism and charisma. Kennedys for the twenty-first century. Seemingly destined for greatness when there had been no greatness there, just mediocrity and good cheekbones.

It had been his distinct pleasure to arrange for the Massacre to be at a campaign party announcing Alex’s candidacy for the presidential nomination.

Wiped almost all of them out.

All in all, over fifty Delvauxes killed. Every single one, actually, except for one.