The judge glared at Hunter, but he was too busy examining the photo to notice. "It's his older brother. He's the leader of my youngest grandson's unit in Afghanistan."

Hunter straightened, a calculating look on his face. Elizabeth knew that look, knew it well. It was his bold move look.

Do it, she urged silently. Ask the judge to recuse himself. It's exactly what Hunter would do back in Philly where there were a dozen family court judges to take one's place. But here in Smithfield County? Implying that a judge couldn't remain impartial? She doubted that would go over very well.

"Before you say anything, counselor," the judge faced Hunter head on. "You should know that there have been Stillwaters leading the men of this area to war for generations, so you'll be hard pressed to find anyone around here who hasn't had family serve with them."

Hunter paused, then nodded, heeding the judge's warning. "I'll keep your grandson in my thoughts, Judge."

Disappointment washed over Elizabeth, but she could tell from the judge's expression that Hunter hadn't won any points.

"That's all," he said, making a shooing motion with his hands. "I'll see you all in court tomorrow."

David couldn't believe that after escaping Mr. Masterson, driving all day and night, fighting a hurricane-well, not quite a hurricane, but the radio said it would be here soon, said no one should be out on the roads-after all that, they'd missed his mom and were now stuck here until the hurricane passed. He didn't even want to think about his mom out there on the roads, could only hope that she'd gotten enough of a head start that she'd be out of the danger area before Hermes made landfall.

Although, he had to admit, if he was going to be stuck anywhere, being stuck here in a nuclear power plant was pretty darn cool.

Ty didn't seem to agree. Instead he wore that worried face that he usually tried to hide. The same one he got whenever Mom was in trouble.

David helped him feed and water Nikki and then, while Ty let the younger kids who were scared of the storm pet Nikki, he went to ask some of the folks who worked at Colleton Landing about their jobs.

He'd just finished talking to a guy about radiation exposures from animals and their contaminated droppings-apparently the plant had had an incident with a radioactive alligator, how cool was that? He wondered if his mom had gotten to see it-when there was a crash from the front of the building.

Ty and Nikki were caught at the back of the room where the kids were gathered, but from where David sat on the steps beside the physicist from the NRC, he saw Ty tense. The parents with the kids shepherded them back into the corner while Ty and Nikki made their way to the front of the building. They'd just taken up a position behind one of the steel pillars when the doors burst open.

David looked over. His stomach catapulted past his toes as his body went numb with shock.

It was his mom. And there was a strange man with her. Holding a shotgun to her back.

THIRTY.

Paul propelled me toward the plant's front doors. No one inside seemed to have noticed anything, but it was hard to tell with so many people crowded in the lobby. My doing, I couldn't help but think. Delivering all these innocent targets into the hands of a madman.

"Paul, you really don't want to do this," I tried to reason with him. Hard to do with the muzzle of a shotgun nudging your spine.

"It's God's will," he said. "Nothing I tried worked, but then today He gave me the means to bring forth His glory." He wagged Morris's Kermit. "He has anointed me and I shall not disappoint Him. Now, open the door."

I did as he instructed, and he pushed me inside. The crowd was buzzing with conversation. I raised my hands over my head in the universal sign of surrender. Slowly people began to shut up and back away, their faces confused-like this was some kind of strange, strange joke.

I glanced over the crowd, hoping that if Morris saw Paul with his Kermit he could figure out a way to disable it or block it or something. Even better would be a security guard ready to tackle him-preferably without getting me blown in two.

Instead my eyes came to rest on the one person I most did not want to see.

David.

I pulled up short, my feet unable to move, cemented to the floor with horror. Paul rammed into me. Then someone screamed.

Riotous noise bounced from the steel and glass surrounding us. I pivoted to face Paul. If David was here, there was no way in hell I was going to let this man take one step closer to him. I didn't care if I had to tackle him myself.

"What are you doing?" he said, a puzzled expression on his face. "You must obey me."

The sounds of the people around him grew shrill. He waved the shotgun in the air, pulling the trigger. The noise so close to my ears was deafening.

But the next instant was silence. Followed by the sound of buckshot pinging from the glass and steel above us.

Before anyone could blink, a blur of brown appeared to my side. Then Paul was down, pinned to the floor by 110 pounds of pure canine muscle. Ty kicked the shotgun to one side. I was more interested in Morris's Kermit. Paul's left hand was closest to me and he still hung on to the small computer.

I threw myself at him, clawing at his fingers. He resisted at first, then relaxed. His face was turned toward me and he smiled. "Too late."

David pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his crutches. Some security guys came and restrained the man with the gun while the people below pushed back away from the scene. Ty released Nikki and praised her, then Ty and his mom were talking. It must have been something important because his mom's whole body was bouncing like she needed to go somewhere fast. She glanced up at David once, but her face was angry-although not at him, he hoped. Looked like she was upset with Ty.

David made his way down the steps, not ashamed about using his crutches to push through the crowd. By the time he'd reached the spot where he'd last seen her, she was gone.

Ty and Nikki were following a security guard hauling the man with the gun-now in handcuffs, the shotgun safely in Ty's hands-into a small room behind the security desk.

"It's our designated holding area," the guard was saying, "but we use it as a coat room. Honestly, things around here are always boring, nothing going on. At least not until Ms. Palladino arrived."

"Yeah, that happens," Ty said.

The guard left to join his comrades who were now weaving through the crowd, directing people out into the storm. What was up with that?

David went into the room that held Ty and the man. Ty had cleared a spot on the floor where there were no potential weapons the man could reach and sat him there. He stood over him, the shotgun resting in his hands, Nikki at full alert at his side.

"Where's my mom?" David asked. "What were you two talking about?"

Ty didn't take his eyes off the prisoner. "David, you need to leave. One of the security guards will give you a ride."

"I'm not going anywhere without my mom." David planted his crutches and prepared to make a stand.

The man on the floor smiled like he had just gotten his birthday wish or something. "AJ Palladino is your mother?"

"Yes. What did you do to her?"

"Not me, child. The will of God."

David wanted to hit the man, kick him in the balls, anything to wipe that smile off his face and get him to tell the truth. Ty lay a heavy hand on his shoulder before David even realized that he'd gathered his body, ready to lunge.

"Shut up," Ty told the man in a calm voice-so calm that it infuriated David further. Why wasn't anyone taking this seriously?

"No, I want to hear what happened to my mom," David insisted.

"No need to worry anymore, child." The man inhaled deeply, then exhaled and smiled wider. "It's begun."

"What?"

"The Rapture."

"I don't understand."

The man looked at David with pity. "You wouldn't; you haven't been saved. I'm ready to sit at my father's right hand. I'm one of the chosen."

"Chosen to do what?" Ty asked.

"Bring forth Armageddon."

David inched back, suddenly frightened for more than just his mother's safety. The man was so certain, so matter of fact. Talking about the end of the world.

"How?" Ty asked, matching the man's tone.

The man's smile widened-his mom called that kind of smile a smirk, and now David understood why she was always telling him to wipe it off his face. It wasn't a pleasant smile. Instead it was ugly, ugly, ugly.

"I used Satan's own hell fire against him. Their own technology-they think they're so smart. But they weren't smarter than me."

"Of course not," Ty nodded in agreement. "So you-"

"I took over their computer systems and used it to start Armageddon and no one can stop it."

"Armageddon?" David blurted out.

"You mean the reactor?" Ty said, somehow his voice still calm. "You're going to blow up the reactor?"

"No," the man said, his voice almost dreamlike. "It's going to blow us up. Everyone. The world ends today. And I started it. The Rapture begins here and now with me." He raised his face to look at the ceiling. "I'm ready, Lord! Ready to be bathed in your glory!"

As if in answer, alarms began to shriek, and everything went black.

THIRTY-ONE.

I reached Morris's office just as the lights went out and alarms began to blare. Low-level emergency lighting came on, enough for me to see Morris and Owen arguing. Morris stood beside his control chair, turning in a circle. His face looked haggard.

"It's all my fault," he was saying.

Owen pounced on that. "You? You did this? Coddling those damn protestors. Were you working with him? Did you give him the security codes, Morris? Are you trying to kill us all?"

"No," Morris stammered. "Of course not. I-I never-it's not my fault! I only wanted-" Tears choked his words and he turned away.

"He just wanted you to stay," I interceded.

Owen spun toward me and stared for a long, hard moment. Then he lunged for Morris, slapping him so hard that Morris's body snapped back a step.

"You stupid sack of shit!" Owen slapped him again, sending him reeling against the wall. "All my life you've held me back and now I finally get a chance and you-"

"Stop it!" I pushed myself between them. Morris was cowering, arms held over his head, trying to protect himself, refusing to fight back. "You stole everything from him-his designs, his chance at a career. You used him all your life."

"Like hell I did. He'd be nothing without me, nothing! No one would have ever seen his fancy designs because he'd be too scared to let them. This place would have never been built without me, and you know it!" He aimed another blow at Morris, who scurried sideways along the wall, dropping to a crouch, whimpering, but still not defending himself. "To hell with you! All of you!"

"Wait, you can't go. Who's going to fix this?" I gestured at the darkened computer screens.

"He broke it, he can fix it." He stormed out.

I ran after him. The claxon's alarm changed to a more ominous pitch. "You can't be serious. Grandel, there are lives at stake here-"

He shook me free so hard it wrenched my arm. "Yeah, my life. And I'm not hanging around to let it get fucked up any more than it already has been."

He pushed through the door. It slammed shut behind him. I ran to Morris, who had staggered to his feet. "Are you okay? What's going on? How do we stop this?"

I followed him from his office into the control room. Dozens of different-pitched alarms sounded, adding to the confusion and sense of chaos.

The controllers were all scrambling, some futilely punching their computer keyboards in the dim light, others working manual instruments. Morris ignored them, running from work station to work station, taking in the analog readings.

Finally, he hit a button, silencing all the alarms, and stood in the middle of the room. Everyone around him stopped, looking to him, hope shadowing their faces.

"It's no good," he said. "He knew what he was doing-the one combination that could never happen. I underestimated one thing when planning: how devious a human mind could be."

"Morris, stop beating yourself up and tell us what to do," I said, yanking on his arm, guiding him to a work station.

"We've lost secondary and tertiary backups," his voice held a hint of amazement. "He's shut down the pumps, closed all the coolant system valves."

"Can't you open them from here?"

"No. He's circumvented all the overrides."

"What about those control rods-the ones you said could shut down a reactor? Scram it?"

"They're locked into place. He put them in maintenance mode before he killed the power." His face focused on one last indicator. This one was now lit up in red, making his face look like it was covered in blood. "We'll have to manually lower them as well."

"Just show me what to do."

His face cleared as determination crowded out his guilt and confusion. "Not you, me."

He clapped his hands. "I need everyone working on the same page. We'll be working protocol eighteen-this guy pulled the ultimate Stuxnet on us, so remember you can't trust any of your readings. Every valve must be checked and if need be, opened manually."

"Do you have any idea how many miles of pipe we're talking?" someone called out.

"Twenty-six," Morris answered. "And nine hundred twenty-eight valves." A groan went up but no one stopped working. "We don't need all of them, though. Just the emergency coolant lines."

A few workers were handing out walkie-talkies. "We have the turbine and coolant crews," one operator said, listening to his radio.