“What’s your hurry?” Shane says.

Taunting Vash. Daring him to fire. Which doesn’t make sense, with Shane more or less helpless on the floor and Vash holding the Taser. I know enough from what I’ve seen on TV that getting hit with a Taser may not be fatal, but it does turn you into a nonfunctioning slab of twitching muscle.

Is he planning to sacrifice himself while Noah and I get away? But where can we go that Vash can’t find us? It doesn’t make sense.

“Is the place going to blow up?” Shane asks him, pushing. “Is that why you’re in a hurry to get away? Like you blew up the school?”

“Stupid penny man blows up school, not me.”

“So you knew Roland Penny. I’ll bet it was you that filled his head full of nonsense about ruling the world, and then pointed him in the right direction. Is that how you did it?”

“Never mind the penny man,” Vash says dismissively, no longer smiling. All business, and in a hurry, too. “You lie down! Everybody lie down! I put plastic ties on wrists, not too tight. Then I give myself up to FBI, okay? I explain everything. You be fine, don’t worry.”

Irene whimpers and collapses to her knees, holding out her wrists like a child who knows she deserves to be punished. With one hand, cocky Vash whips a tie around her wrist, cinches it tight. “Good girl,” he says. “Lie facedown. Nothing bad happens, I promise.”

Eyes streaming, she obeys. Obviously convinced she’s about to be executed, but too frightened to resist.

Meanwhile Shane is staring at me with great intensity, as if trying to communicate something, though for the life of me I don’t know what. Has he changed his mind, does he want me to make a move, distract the man with the mustache? No, that’s not it. He wants me to stay where I am, he’ll make the first move. So we’re back to sacrificing himself to help us get away. Or else he has something else in mind entirely, something I can’t quite fathom, and I’m hoping that’s it, because I’ve run out of ideas.

“Out the front door, huh?” he says, sneering at Vash. “Give yourself up? Might work, if there’s nobody left to testify against you. What happened, did you and Evangeline break up? Did you decide to sacrifice her before she sacrifices you?”

“Facedown,” Vash insists, taking aim with the Taser. “Now.”

“Now would be good,” Shane says, standing up.

Vash’s eyes widen in surprise, but before Shane can reach for the pistol wedged into his belt, he fires the Taser.

It all happens so fast I can’t be sure what I’m seeing, but it looks like a couple of little wires attach themselves to Shane’s chest, and then his whole body begins to twitch and convulse in the most awful way.

I instinctively turn so Noah can’t see what’s going on, and then a truly astonishing thing happens.

Shane’s face is horribly distorted by the twitching muscles, but somehow he’s grinning like a maniac. His eyes, alive in the midst of quivering facial muscles, are triumphant. As if this is exactly what he planned.

Shane, through sheer force of will, does the impossible. The supposedly impossible. He regains enough control over his flailing limbs to tear the wires out of his chest. He then yanks the Taser out of his assailant’s hands, and with a roar takes the stunned security chief by the neck and smashes him into the wall like a rag doll, wham, wham, wham.

It’s all over in a few seconds. A moment later the semiconscious Vash is being cuffed with his own plastic ties, trussed up like a calf at a rodeo and pushed to the side of the closet.

Irene, staring with bugged-out eyes, says, “Wow.”

Wow is right. He’s amazing. Magnificent, really. The only reason I don’t applaud is because my son is squirming around, getting an eyeful.

“Who is the big man, Mommy?”

“He’s our new friend, sweetie.”

“I’m glad,” says Noah.

Me, too, I’m thinking. Me, too.

Shane isn’t done. He pops open the escape hatch, gives me a grin. “We better get a move on. Time’s a wasting.”

“He said he blew up the tunnel.”

“The man is a liar-it looks okay from here. We’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

He holds out his hand. I take it.

A temporary helicopter landing site has been set up in the parking lot of the Conklin Institute, and that’s where Maggie Drew lands, amidst a cloud of fine snow kicked up by the blades of the McDonnell Douglas 530, affectionately known as a ‘Little Bird.’

The affection is not shared by Maggie. She hates helicopters, and they hate her. It was a two-barf-bag trip from Denver International, and the crew is glad to see her go. They keep their snarky comments to themselves, however, when they realize Assistant Director Monica Bevins, the on-site commander herself, is waiting to personally assist the lame little puker out of the aircraft.

“Any news?” Maggie shouts over the whirr of the turbines.

“Lots of news,” Monica says, holding out an arm for her limping friend. “None of it good.”

“He hasn’t made contact?”

“Not since that call to you.”

Maggie hugs the much taller woman’s arm as they approach the black Suburban that will take them up the mountain, to the forward offensive position. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” she admits. “I’ve been working up a profile for Arthur Conklin’s wife, Evangeline-she’s the leader of the more radical faction.”

“I know who she is, Mags. I downloaded your file on my BlackBerry.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know if you had time to read it.”

“I’m a multitasker. You know that.”

The doors lock as the driver accelerates out of the parking lot.

“So what’s the new angle?” Monica prompts.

“Oh! Sorry!” Maggie says, staring out the tinted window. “I’ve seen this place in photographs, but they don’t do it justice. Really spectacular.” She gives a worried sigh, makes a brave smile for her friend. “Okay. Back to Evangeline. Eva the Diva. The psych data is not exactly encouraging. Taking prior behavior patterns into account, and similar cults that depend on a single, charismatic individual, I think there’s a pretty good chance she’ll go off the deep end. She may trend into an apocalyptic scenario and not be able to see a way out.”

Monica nods. “With their leader dying and the factions struggling for power, we’ve been assuming the worst. Unfortunately it’s taking a lot longer to break their defenses than we anticipated. Can you believe they have weapons-grade blast shutters? Acetylene won’t cut the stuff. Had to send for a hi-temp plasma torch and even that’s slow as hell.”

“So we’ve no idea what’s happening in the Pinnacle.”

Monica nods. “Or the other building, the one they call the Bunker. Unfortunate name. Can’t help but think of Hitler. Speaking of apocalyptic scenarios.”

“What about the tunnel Shane mentioned?”

“Yeah, well, that’s part of the bad news, I’m afraid. We finally located the entrance, but somebody rolled an explosive device into the lower part of the tunnel-we’re thinking modified RPGs-and blew it up. Collapsed at least a hundred yards of the tunnel, which is just your basic six-foot diameter fiberglass conduit, and not capable of withstanding any sort of explosion. We can dig it out, but it will take time. Days, not hours.”

Maggie looks sick, and not from the helicopter ride. “They blew the tunnel? Who, exactly, do you know? Which faction?”

“All I know, it was probably somebody with the security service. We found a van nearby with traces of the explosive.”

“Eva’s people,” Maggie says.

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s all bad,” Maggie says. “But Eva is worse. She isn’t just keeping us from getting in. She’s keeping them from getting out.”

The Suburban slows to a stop. The women step out into the frigid air and look up to the massive structures built into the mountain.

“It’s so quiet,” Maggie marvels. “I hadn’t expected that.”