Plan: Achieved.

I reached for my car keys and slipped the right one into the ignition. The moment before I turned it, a sleek black car with government plates went sliding around the corner with all the perfect quietness and glide of a UFO. If that thing had an engine in it, I couldn't hear it-but there's always the possibility that I'd become totally unhinged with fear.

I backpedaled for a second, trying to rationalize and justify a means whereby that car was absolutely not not cruising my neighborhood because its driver knew where I lived, but within moments that car was joined by a second vehicle, rolling smoothly down the perpendicular road and vanishing around the side of an Indian restaurant that had been closed for hours. The sneaky black sedans moved with preternatural slickness, like they were touring the town on frictionless tires. cruising my neighborhood because its driver knew where I lived, but within moments that car was joined by a second vehicle, rolling smoothly down the perpendicular road and vanishing around the side of an Indian restaurant that had been closed for hours. The sneaky black sedans moved with preternatural slickness, like they were touring the town on frictionless tires.

I sank down low in the driver's seat until, it was to be fervently prayed, anyone driving past couldn't see me. Carefully but quickly, I fired my hand up to the rearview mirror-tilting it so that I could see the street outside without revealing my oh-so-clever hiding place...in the front seat of my car.

The first car oozed past and turned down the street I'd walked along mere minutes earlier; the second car was out of sight. Both of them had government plates, which I noted with a G.o.d-awful sinking feeling. I didn't see anything else and I didn't hear anything else, but once I couldn't see either one of them anymore, I took a chance and started the Thunderbird. It came to life almost cheerfully, and far too loudly for my comfort-but at least it started. I'd been half afraid that the engine would pull a horror-movie cliche on me and refuse to turn over.

I eased the car forward toward the stop sign and pretended to mind my own business all the way into the main drag, where I took excellent care to obey every d.a.m.n traffic law I could think of, to such maniacal excess that it no doubt looked far more suspicious than if I'd just gunned the car and shot down the hill.

n.o.body stopped me. No flashing red lights or crow-black cars with tinted windows came stalking up to my b.u.mper. And eventually I was away. I was out of my neighborhood and instinctively heading toward the interstate again, but I stopped myself downtown, pulling into an all-night parking garage to regroup and make some more distinct plans than "solve Ian's problem and bill him an arm and a leg."

I parked in a back corner of the bottom floor, in a half-empty row of other vehicles that had been abandoned over the evening by third-shift workers or drunks. I pulled Ian's file out of my bag and examined it again, hunting for direction or inspiration under the lemon-yellow and sickly orange security lights of the garage.

Cal's atrocious handwriting stood out from the margins of the first thing I grabbed.

"Holtzer Point, St. Paul."

But whatever Holtzer Point had once held, it was long gone-stolen by Mr. 887-something-or-another, and relocated to parts unknown.

I reached up to click on the car's dome light so I could read a little better, then turned it off again when I realized it made me more visible. Such indecision. I was plagued with it.

This guy. Mr. 887...forget it. In my head I nicknamed him The Other Thief.

Whoever he was, I needed him.

And I had no idea where to find him, but it didn't sound like Uncle Sam knew, either. This was a problem. I couldn't just poke my way into government files and turn up his name and address.

However...

I tapped my knuckles against the steering wheel. I always fidget when I'm thinking. Can't help it.

However, Uncle Sam knew The Other Thief's ident.i.ty. The serial number told me that much, and I wondered if there was some good way to take that number and turn it into a name. It'd be nice to know who I was looking for.

If I could pin down his ident.i.ty, I could pin down other things. Family members, friends. Former service buddies. Co-workers.

I might even be able to get my hands on his old phone records or credit card statements; it's amazing what you can find with the right phone calls and law enforcement clearance...not that I have law enforcement clearance. I don't. But my fellow freelancer the Red Queen does, or if she doesn't, she knows how to fake it.

Bad Hatter's info might have burned me, but I believed him when he said it wasn't deliberate. And even if Red Queen knew about my personal meltdown over here, it likely wouldn't mean anything to her. She owes me one. About three years ago she needed architectural schematics for a large, unmarked building belonging to some Italian cardinal...but located in St. Petersburg, Florida. I got them for her. And no, I never asked what she needed them for.

At any rate, my number one priority was to track down The Other Thief's name and then backtrack him clear to the cradle. The more I could learn about him, the better my chances of predicting where he'd run and hide. The fact is, very few people actually disappear with the kind of thoroughness required to stay disappeared. The odds were strong that someone, somewhere, knew where he'd gone.

But first things first. How to pry his personal information away from the government? I glared back down at Ian's folder and I wondered: Could I find it at Holtzer Point?

Maybe. After all, one unauthorized downloading of the Bloodshot PDF had been serious enough to warrant a platoon of Men in Black. Surely the government hadn't just let hard copies detailing the nitty-gritty details vanish-not without looking into it? There would've been an investigation. There would've been sensitive paperwork. And where did sensitive paperwork of this stripe wind up?

Holtzer Point.

But if the military or the feds were looking for me, did I really want to run straight into one of their most private facilities? For the moment, I'd given them the slip. A very narrow, very uncertain slip-but my fragile liberty was liberty nonetheless, and they hadn't caught me yet.

At best, it wasn't exactly a cunning strategy to impress the ages and achieve the status of tactical legend, but it was better than nothing. And otherwise, all I had was nothing apart from "run that guy's serial number through the Internet and hope to strike gold."

I had every intention of doing that, by the way. I'm not an idiot.

But since I'm not an idiot-and knowing what had happened when Duncan had nabbed that PDF-I decided to do it on the way out of town.

And I definitely needed to get out of town. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Seattle as possible, in order to regroup and see if I couldn't brainstorm my way to some better idea once I achieved some breathing room and could calm the f.u.c.k back down.

With luck, I might even cough up some less stupid plan.

I squeezed the brittle old papers and made my resolution. Then I stuffed them back into the envelope, took a deep breath, and started my car again.

I'd never been to Minnesota before. But there's a first time for everything.

So I'd begin my withdrawal and regrouping at St. Paul, but I wouldn't leave from SeaTac-the Seattle-Tacoma airport. It was probably crawling with leftover feds from the Mean Bean, if my ruse had worked. The only way to find out was to try and fly out, and I couldn't see taking that kind of risk. It wasn't like me, and it wasn't healthy, and I wasn't in the mood for one of those plans where you let yourself get captured in order to escape with information.

No, the Thunderbird's tank was full and I was feeling like a road trip instead.

About three hours to the south, Portland, Oregon, has an airport, too-and by sunrise I was nervously ensconced in a Marriott hotel immediately outside it. I closed all the curtains, plugged all the cracks, and turned off all the cell phones. I rigged the door with a cheap alarm that would give me time to...I don't know, panic and cry, if anyone tried to bust in.

And shortly after sundown the next day, I had a plane ticket that would bring me to the MinneapolisSt. Paul International Airport. I also had the entire contents of my Thunderbird packed into the suitcase from the trunk, which I checked in order to keep my very sharp little tools and whatnot. I left the car in long-term parking. Maybe I'd be back for it, maybe I wouldn't. For all I knew, it might sit there for weeks before anyone thought to tow it. There was always the chance this would blow over and I could just go back home, picking up where I'd left off.

Optimism! Okay, forced optimism. But it was all I had.

I checked the Internet to see if The Other Thief's serial number turned up anything via Google magic, but no. Nothing.

And then I ran, not even sticking around to see if anyone was going to chase me down for running that search. Call me a coward if you like, but it didn't really matter if they were following me or not.

I was headed to the airport.

I don't typically enjoy flying. There are too many variables, and I'm on a narrow kind of time frame-I simply must must be indoors in the dark when the sun rises, unless I want to wind up a steaming, wibbling pulp-so the red-eye is fine by me. But any delays or reroutes can be downright deadly. be indoors in the dark when the sun rises, unless I want to wind up a steaming, wibbling pulp-so the red-eye is fine by me. But any delays or reroutes can be downright deadly.

I made my connection in Denver and skidded into Minnesota with an hour or two to spare before morning.

I won't bore you with the particulars of what came next, except to say that I found another hotel (a Hyatt, this time), burrowed in for the day, and then went looking for some slightly more solid accommodations downtown. I wasn't 100 percent certain of where Holtzer Point was located, and I'd need some time to lie low and do some research. This sort of research is hard to accomplish when you're stuck in an airport hotel, and much easier (and less eyebrow-raising) to manage when you're in a very posh establishment nearer to the center of everything.

Eventually I paid up for a full week at a four-star establishment on the other side of the river, hunkered down, and spent a couple of days scavenging for paperwork, rumors, and hints. It was mostly boring-which is to say, I didn't learn anything new or exciting about Ian's incarceration and n.o.body kicked down my door. But I did eventually locate the storage facility and learn a bit about its security protocols.

At a glance they were pretty pathetic, but that might be meaningless. Even the s.h.i.ttiest schematics can be made troublesome by enough manpower on guard duty.

I inferred from the diagrams that Uncle Sam simply didn't believe there was any good reason that anyone, anywhere, would want inside...even if anyone could find it. (Conspiracy nuts on the Internet be d.a.m.ned.) And yet a token effort at security was undertaken as a matter of general principle.

It reminded me of a story I'd stumbled across years ago about a bank vault full of Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars that n.o.body wanted. Thousands and thousands of dollars, just sitting there-and the bank couldn't give them away, not for trying. But out of a sense of duty or whatever, they kept the coins locked up in the bas.e.m.e.nt behind a barred cage frame.

At the time, I wondered why anyone would bother.

But as I sat in my very posh hotel, wearing a fluffy white robe with the hotel logo on the right breast, staring down at a bedspread sprinkled with marginally informative files stamped CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL, I concluded that guarding Holtzer Point was even sillier. The only people who wanted to get inside it were sitting at home eating Cheetos from their beanbags, filing Freedom of Information Act pet.i.tions and coding way-too-much Flash into their alarmist webpages. They were armchair wingnuts. They weren't nosy vampires with a skill set like mine, and nothing better to do than go check the place out.

Then a lightbulb popped brightly over my head. Metaphorically, you know.

The only people who knew about Holzter Point were the folks involved in the military projects that were doc.u.mented and destroyed there. Somebody Somebody has to sign off on all that stuff, and the military is nothing if not fond of its paper trails. It might shred all the paper in the end, but everything gets written down has to sign off on all that stuff, and the military is nothing if not fond of its paper trails. It might shred all the paper in the end, but everything gets written down someplace someplace.

By someone.

Therefore it struck me as a strong chance that The Other Thief was someone who'd been party to the experiments at Jordan Roe in Florida.

I jotted this thought down in my trusty notebook, reminding myself that I was looking for a wayward military man...but military men come in many flavors. Maybe he wasn't a soldier. Call it a hunch, but something told me I was looking for a former researcher or scientist collaborator-maybe someone with a conscience, or someone with an ax to grind.

The prospect of a grinding ax gave me another option that hadn't dawned on me yet: The Other Thief could have a connection to a victim of the program, maybe one of the other vampires (or other creatures) who were held and tested. I already knew that the military's suspect wasn't a victim of the program because of his serial number. But he could've been a friend or lover.

Lots of possibilities there.

I gathered the paperwork together. There wasn't much to hold, and there was even less to call important or helpful. But I had enough to find my way inside a place that was every bit as secretive as the spot where Top Government Officials told Indiana Jones they were "examining" the Ark of the Covenant.

I didn't know what I'd find when I got inside-maybe nothing-but I didn't have any better ideas and I didn't dare try to contact Ian for further brainstorming. Not yet.

I checked my email, though, on the off chance he might've sent me something. I didn't recall having ever sent him my digital address, but then again I never sent him my bricks-and-mortar address either, and he'd turned that up no problem. A girl can dream, can't she?

A girl can be disappointed, too. Nothing new or important.

Then I remembered I had a Hotmail address, and I'd even handed it out recently. I hopped online and went to my inbox, where lo and behold I had an email from EABruner via gmail. That struck me as funny. I had to a.s.sume the guy had an official email through a work account, but he shoots me a note from something as fake as the addy I'd given him. Nice.

It read: All right, kid. You want to come out and play? Let's talk. You've caught me at a disadvantage here since you know my name and I don't know yours, but Trevor said he had friends who might be interested, so here's how it works.This is not a military operation. It's a civilian operation operated and financed by civilians, which I can say with a straight face because I'm no longer on active duty. So don't get any big commando ideas in your head. This isn't like that, and if it was, I sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't bother to write a girl about it.We're looking into some properties around the country, including Seattle. We want people who can get inside, maybe take some pictures, maybe just report back about what's inside. We need people who aren't afraid of a little trouble. If you get picked up by the cops you're on your own. We aren't bailing you out. But I've attached a doc.u.ment to this email. Look it over. It'll tell you about King County's laws with regards to trespa.s.sing and breaking-and-entering. You'd be surprised what you can get away with when you know your rights.Just so we're clear, not everyplace we want investigated is abandoned. You might run into people, guard dogs, surveillance systems...G.o.d knows what. If you're not afraid of spending a night in the clink, or if you think you're good enough that you won't get caught, read over that doc.u.ment and write me back.~EBPS: How well do you know Trevor? I haven't heard a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing from him in several days. Tell that a.s.shole to call me, if you see him.

Boy. The charm just never stopped with that guy, but I couldn't pretend the email wasn't useful. It didn't tell me much, but I'm good at reading between the lines, and what I saw between the lines told me I really, really didn't like this douchebag.

It also told me that "Major" was more of a nickname than a t.i.tle, if he was retired. I wasn't sure what to make of that, except that plenty of people retire from the military and go on to other careers-and just because my new client had been a victim of military manipulation and mutilation, that didn't mean anything. Could be a perfectly meaningless coincidence.

Only I hate coincidences. So I wrote him back: My name is Abigail, in case you care. I don't have a problem poking around in other people's stuff, believe me. I'm not really worried about this danger of which you speak, but I'd like a little more info. Are we talking crazed drug dealers here? Because if you want me to spy on the Mafia or organized meth-heads or anything, you're out of your f.u.c.king mind.Other than that, I might be interested. Should I meet you someplace? Do you have an office in Seattle, or are you somewhere else? Trevor didn't say. And I haven't seen that a.s.shole either, or I'd just ask him. I'll call his roommate and leave him a message that way. Maybe he'll get back to one of us, one of these days.Abbie My mother's name was Abigail. Perhaps I'm desecrating her memory or something, but I doubt she would've cared.

If I was lucky, he'd respond in an open, honest fashion-informing me of what his precise plans were, where exactly he was located, and freely volunteering the ident.i.ty of his financial backers. I didn't ask any of this stuff because I couldn't think of a credible way to work it in without giving myself away as someone with a way-too-personal interest.

I closed the laptop and settled in for the evening.

The next night was supposed to be clear and cold and moonless, so that made it as good a night as any to take my life and sanity into my own hands. And G.o.d help me, but they weren't kidding about the cold. What amounted to a chilly, damp mid-fall in Seattle was more like a deep freeze in Minnesota. Maybe I ought to have expected it, but I'd never been there before and the shock of the air outside was enough to stun me. It was like breathing liquid nitrogen; it went straight down my throat and chilled me from the inside out.

I shook it off as I kept moving, down to the car I'd bought off a used lot an afternoon or two previously. Yes, I can go out in the afternoons, if I stay in the northern lat.i.tudes. I love it when the sun sets at three thirty-everything is still open for a while after I wake up, and I can go shopping for anything I need. Summers are more of a trick, I admit. But most of the year the night is long, and it belongs to me me.

My new vehicle was a very shiny Nissan with fully a hundred thousand miles on it, but somebody loved it once, and it was in good shape. I think its original color was white, but it'd been painted over with a dark green that looked like pond slime at midnight, so I liked it, and I bought it, and voila. New wheels.

I rolled these new wheels out through the maze of neighborhoods and across roads that had been sc.r.a.ped so clean of ice, they couldn't have chilled a can of Diet c.o.ke.

I gave three quiet cheers for Minnesota. In Seattle a dusty inch of anything white and chilly means the city lapses into full-on panic mode, as if each falling flake crashes to earth with its own individual baggie of used hypodermic needles. It's ridiculous.

But the city before me was shiny and dark, hard-frozen around its edges and glinting from the ice that coated the corners of buildings like cake frosting made of crushed gla.s.s. The streets were empty since the wee hours were approaching and hey, for all that I'd cheered, St. Paul was no Seattle, and there didn't appear to be much in the way of nightlife-at least not through the places where I was driving.

I had a printout of directions from the Internet sitting on the pa.s.senger seat beside me. They weren't directions to Holtzer Point exactly, but they were maps of the rough location where I figured Holtzer Point could be found. I already knew I was going to be relegated to foot patrol at some point, so I didn't mind playing it a little fuzzy.

Soon the bare but civilized streets of St. Paul gave way to emptier places with shorter buildings and fewer streetlights...and then no buildings, and no streetlights, and after a few turns I was urging the Nissan along a two-lane road in the middle of what could best be described as the geographic center of G.o.dforsaken, b.u.mblef.u.c.k. The roads out there in b.u.mblef.u.c.k weren't quite as pristine as the ones in town, and the Nissan struggled with the curves. I should've put new tires on it before taking it out. I'm sure I had some good reason for not doing so at the time, but I kicked myself about it as the back wheels spun and I clenched my teeth. I wasn't desperately worried about getting stuck; I'm strong enough to shove my own car out of a mushy ditch. I just didn't want to do it if I didn't have to.

At the tail end of my flippant prayer to the G.o.ds of winter, the car lurched forward and carried me another mile before any farther distance would be an ill-advised pressing of luck. I pulled the car as far off the road as I dared and backed into an improvised spot between two trees. Then I took all my paperwork pertaining to Holtzer Point and stuck it into my Useful Things Bag, which I slung over my shoulder. There was no sense in leaving a treasure map to my intended location lying out in the open, in case anyone did did find the car and deem it suspicious enough to open. find the car and deem it suspicious enough to open.

I got out, wished that the car had still been painted white so it'd be harder to see, and made sure my boots were laced tightly. I didn't want any snow down my ankles and I didn't want to stop and tie anything at a crucial moment of reconnaissance.

As I stood there, already half frozen solid and breathing pale puffs of air across the hood of my car, I hated myself for thinking of that word again.

Reconnaissance. Then I thought of the major and his audible sneer, and I told myself that turnabout was fair play.

I stomped off alongside the two-lane road, following it rather than walking it because I didn't know if it was being watched-but I might as well a.s.sume the worst. The snow made progress an exhausting sort of slog, and no amount of lacing could keep all the icy slush out of my socks. I wished for rooftops to jump between, but didn't get anything for my wishing except for a knee-deep drop through a crackling crust. I hoisted my legs up, one after another, and forced myself to remember that I was making noise, and that I was on dangerous ground. But it was a hard job to convince myself, out there in the astonishing no-place-ness of the frigid forest.

Until I hit the fence.

Chain link all around with razor wire at the top, the fence was maybe nine feet high. I didn't see any signs right away, but as I trudged along its length I eventually encountered an admonition to KEEP OUT. PROPERTY MONITORED AND MAINTAINED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE SHOT KEEP OUT. PROPERTY MONITORED AND MAINTAINED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE SHOT.

It might as well have said, WELCOME, RAYLENE. LET YOURSELF INSIDE, BUT KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN, M'KAY? WELCOME, RAYLENE. LET YOURSELF INSIDE, BUT KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN, M'KAY?

That's how I read it anyway, and that's what I did. I figured if the military really wanted to keep people out, it could spring for something more off-putting than a chain-link fence because, seriously-any idiot with a bolt cutter could slink on through in under a minute. I'm no idiot, and I had a bolt cutter. I made myself a pet door, bent the clipped oval up, and slid underneath. Then I drew it down behind me for appearance's sake, on the off chance that the property really was was being monitored. being monitored.

Again I found it peculiar how little security had been detailed or visible. I'd made my excuses, but surely following a break-in tighter measures might be inst.i.tuted? Or was I just overestimating the commitment of the armed forces to keeping its secrets?

I didn't have a map of Holtzer Point because the place practically doesn't exist, except in tinfoil-hat-land. Even my handydandy PDF of useful stuff didn't give me any good idea about the joint's layout, so I was going to have to wing it.

I was wearing white, of course. I even had a white hat to cover my dark hair. No sense in taking chances. And while the fence's perimeter was handy, it probably wasn't the best thing to follow in the long term. People don't put buildings on fences. They put fences around buildings, and often they aim cameras at fences. Ergo, I'd have to venture out into the semi-open.

Inside the fence there were still plenty of trees, and inside those trees I could not spy any hint of hardware. If I was being watched, I was being watched discreetly. No matter how hard I sniffed, I couldn't pick up even the faintest traces of warmth from small lights or the funny ozone and metal stink of electronics.

I kept low and kept to the largest trunks I could find, and trusted them to hide me. And eventually, after an a.s.s-numbing hour of swearing my way through the snow, I found five buildings cl.u.s.tered together, as if for warmth. One was quite large-easily the size of a big barn-and the others were much smaller. In the tiniest of the five, an ill yellow light was burning within, and the one lone window marked a pitiful square of occupancy.

I felt sorry for whoever was home. I'd been in cemeteries that saw more action.

By my best guess, the tiny shack with the square yellow window was a guard's hut or something. One of the other small buildings looked like a storage shed, perhaps, and the big barn must be where pay dirt was housed. The other two structures were inscrutable. If there were windows, I couldn't see them, and if there was any sign of life inside, it didn't leak out into the open where I could detect it.

I could've just bopped into the guard's hut and cold-c.o.c.ked the occupant, sure; but if I could possibly manage it, I wanted to get in and out without anyone knowing I'd ever been there.

I sidled around to the back of the nearest building first, just trying to get the lay of the land. And anyway, it was less visible from the guard's hut. While I was there, I may as well be thorough, and may as well tackle the easiest targets first.

On the side opposite the guard's hut I found a row of windows that were small enough to be merely ornamental-if the military ever did anything for the sake of aesthetics. They latched from within, of course, but a quick zip of my gla.s.s cutter gave me enough access to open them. I replaced the cork of gla.s.s when I was finished. It wasn't perfect, but unless you were looking for signs of an entry-I mean seriously seriously looking-you'd never notice I'd done anything. looking-you'd never notice I'd done anything.

I took a deep breath. Since this inflated my chest and made it bigger, I let the breath out again and then, with my temporarily leaner physique, wormed my way through the ridiculously narrow slot. I nearly lost a boot on my way inside, and if my pants had been even half a size bigger I would've gotten stuck. But all went well and I slipped on through, slicker than whale s.h.i.t through an ice floe.

I caught myself with my hands, and landed with nothing more noteworthy than a m.u.f.fled thud thud.

As I'd originally suspected, I'd deposited myself into a garden toolshed, though it was almost too big to call a shed. If I'd been bold enough to shine a light in first I'd have known that for certain. But if the place was occupied at all-even if it was by a slumbering old coot with a Barney Fife complex-then discretion must remain the better part of valor.

I tiptoed around the riding lawn mower and perused the shelves as a matter of principle, but I found only bug spray, WD-40, paint thinner, and bundles of greasy rags. It could've been anybody's dad's garage. And if being undead hadn't taken care of my allergies, I would've been sneezing my brains out. A thick coat of dust covered everything, and I'd disturbed it, which disturbed me. But spring was months away and maybe whatever I'd kicked up would settle back down before anything needed mowing or weeding, or that's what I told myself as I squirmed my way back out into the open air.

The big barn, then. That's where I'd try next.