“Get your safety harness fastened!” Malone yelled.

Sienna fumbled to snap it into place. Adrenaline and the roar through the open hatches made her shout. “I was afraid we were going to crash!”

“Everything’s fine! There’s nothing to -”

“Watch out! We’re -”

Speeding toward the château at a height of about twenty feet, Malone urged the helicopter into a steep ascent that pressed his stomach against his spine.

Sienna moaned.

Fighting for altitude, Malone saw the château’s upper stories seem to rush toward him. Then only the third story. Then only the hazy sky was before him as he felt a jolt that made the helicopter shudder.

“What was -”

“Something hit the rudder!”

“Something?”

“They’re shooting!”

Another impact shook the controls. As the chopper twisted to the left and tilted, Sienna was thrust halfway out the open hatch, dangling, her harness straining to hold her.

“Shut the hatch!” Malone yelled.

“… Trying!”

Despite his fear for her, he couldn’t risk looking at her; he was too busy fighting the controls. “Can you reach it?”

“Think I… got it!”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the desperate effort she put into tugging the hatch shut. The noise suddenly lessened. With equal suddenness, he brought the helicopter back to a level position. Slamming his own hatch shut, he took a momentary delight in the relative silence, the roar from the engines muffled enough that he and Sienna didn’t need to shout anymore.

He studied the panel of unfamiliar switches that had puzzled him when he’d been flown to Bellasar’s estate. The pilot hadn’t used them, so Malone had no idea what purpose they served, but this wasn’t the time to experiment – the chopper was close to stalling. As it passed over fields and stone fences, Malone felt the controls buck. Ahead, a cypress-studded hill blocked the way. He urged the chopper higher, but the response was sluggish.

“What’s wrong?”

Malone glanced urgently toward the control panel. “The oil pressure’s dropping. A bullet must have hit -” He angled toward the lowest section of the hill. Barely cresting it, he winced from another jolt as one of the landing skids brushed a cypress top.

“Are we going to -” Sienna sounded terrified.

“No! If I think we’re even close to crashing, I’ll set us down first!”

“But we won’t get far enough away! We’re still over Derek’s property! He’ll -” She stared out the hatch. “Smoke!”

Black clouds of it spewed from the engine.

“If we can just stay in the air a little longer…” Malone checked the compass on the control panel. “There’s a small airfield ahead of us.”

“Where? I don’t see it.”

“In the next valley.”

“How do you know?”

Back on Cozumel, when Malone had agreed to work with Jeb, they had calculated several rescue plans if Malone had a chance to get Sienna away from Bellasar. One had involved reaching a café in Nice, where the proprietor was on the CIA’s payroll and would hide Malone and Sienna until Jeb’s team arrived. Another plan had involved going to Cannes and contacting a pleasure-boat operator who sometimes worked for the Agency. But those areas were in the opposite direction. Malone was heading inland, not toward the sea, and that left him with a remaining option, an airfield that Jeb had told him about, the compass bearings for which Malone had memorized. Jeb had promised to have a pilot and a small plane waiting for them. “If you can reach that airfield,” Jeb had said, “you’re as good as out of the country.”

“I don’t understand,” Sienna said. “How do you know about the airfield?”

“I don’t have time to explain.”

“You knew about the portraits of Derek’s other wives.” The chopper dipped, making her gasp. “How did you learn so much about -”

Malone struggled with the controls. “I’ll tell you the first chance I -”

“My God, are you a -”

“What?”

“A spy?”

As an engineer aimed another missile at a tank in the weapons-testing area, Bellasar tensed at the sound of shots from the château. He grabbed a pistol from one of the guards and raced along a hedge-lined path toward the Cloister. Assuring himself that the area wasn’t under attack, he charged down another path, this one toward the château, and stopped abruptly, surprised to see the helicopter veer over the building, its landing skids barely missing the roof, guards firing at it.

“What the hell happened?”

Seeing Potter to his right, he rushed toward him.

Potter’s face was livid as he stared toward the retreating helicopter. “They stole it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Malone and your wife! They’re in that helicopter!”

“Sienna?”

“They waited for me to land! Before the pilot shut off the engine, they tricked a guard into believing they needed to talk to me! The next thing, they took off!”

Bellasar was so stunned, he couldn’t speak.

“I warned you!” Potter said. “I told you he couldn’t be trusted!”

Briefly, the helicopter was out of sight behind the château. It reappeared on the right, receding into the distance. It sputtered and lurched. Black smoke trailed from it.

“We hit it!” a guard said.

“He made a fool of you!” Potter said. “What do you suppose has been going on all the time they’ve been together?”

“Don’t call me a fool!” Bellasar drove a fist into Potter’s stomach, doubling him over, sending him to his knees.

Gasping for air, Potter peered up, his spectacles askew, his features contorted with pain. “Maybe you’d better figure out” – he managed a breath – “who’s your friend and who’s your enemy.”

In the distance, the helicopter kept sputtering.

Bellasar pivoted toward the guards. The second chopper was due to return with a load of lab equipment in thirty minutes. Until then, the only way to go after Malone and Sienna was in vehicles. Bellasar shouted orders.

As the guards rushed to obey, Potter groaned. Holding his stomach, he tried to straighten. “If I’m right” – he squeezed the words out – “this isn’t just about Malone and your wife. It’s about what he might have seen at the Cloister last night.”

Bellasar squinted toward the smoke trailing from the receding helicopter. The damage to it reduced its speed enough that the vehicles wouldn’t be outdistanced. The smoke would make it easy to follow. “Help me catch them!”

The controls had become so stiff that Malone could hardly move them. The chopper twisted sickeningly. At once, it dropped ten feet, with such force that Malone’s lungs seemed to soar into his throat. He needed all his strength to stop it from plummeting farther. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep it steady. For a moment, he was back in Panama, struggling to control his gunship after it had been shot. “Brace yourself! Find a place that’s flat where we can land!”

“I don’t see any!”

Staring down, Malone didn’t see any, either. They were over a rocky, shrub-dotted slope. There was no way the chopper would ever clear the top. The controls shuddered violently. If he didn’t land now, the chopper was going to make the decision for him. Using every skill he could remember, he forced the chopper out of a dizzying spiral, wobbled along the side of the slope, glimpsed a space between boulders, gave one last determined command to the resisting controls, and slammed down.

The impact rammed his teeth together. Ignoring the pain that shot along his jaw, he shut off the engines, unsnapped his safety harness, and spun toward Sienna. Her head was drooped. My God, is she -

But before the thought could be completed, she raised her hand toward the back of her neck and rubbed it, shaking her head in a daze.