“Okay,” Jabba accepted and turned away.
They motored on for a mile or so, then Matt said, “Get us another lock on Maddox’s car, will you?”
“Okay, but we really shouldn’t be using this,” Jabba cautioned as he pulled out his iPhone.
“Just don’t stay on any longer than you think is safe. You can be in and out in less than your forty seconds, right?”
“Let’s make it thirty,” Jabba said and nodded reluctantly. He pulled up the tracker’s website. He didn’t need to key in the tracker’s number—it was now stored on a cookie. He waited a couple of seconds for the ping to echo back, then zoomed in on the map.
“He’s stationary. Somewhere by the name of Hanscom Field,” he told Matt. “Hang on.” He pulled up another website. Punched in his query. Waited a couple of seconds for it to upload. “It’s a small airport between Bedford and Concord. And I’m logging off before they track us.” He killed the phone, checked his watch—twenty-six seconds total—and turned to Matt.
Matt chewed it over quickly. A small airfield. He wondered what Maddox was doing there. He also liked the idea of maybe being able to surprise Maddox and get up close and personal with him outside the man’s comfort zone.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It wasn’t far, even with the holiday traffic building up. A half hour, forty minutes maybe. “That’s just outside the ninety-five, isn’t it?”
Jabba’s face sank. “Yep,” he shrugged.
“Check it again in fifteen minutes or so, will ya? Keep making sure he’s still there.”
Jabba nodded grimly and sagged into his seat, sucking in a deep breath and anticipating the worst.
MADDOX HUNG UP with his contact at the NSA and scowled. He scanned the skies instinctively for the incoming jet, but his mind was now preoccupied elsewhere.
He’d received three consecutive calls. The first one was innocuous enough: The learning software had delivered on its promise, and the targets were just north of the city, heading into town. The second call told him the targets had changed direction and were now heading west on the Concord Turnpike, which, with hindsight, should have raised an eyebrow, but hadn’t. The third call, though, was seriously troubling. The targets had turned north once they’d hit I-95, and were now less than five miles away from the airfield.
Which was, again, seriously troubling. For the simple reason that Maddox didn’t believe in blind luck any more than he believed in coincidences. And it was the second time Matt had managed to track him down that day. Which meant he was either psychic, or he had an advantage Maddox wasn’t aware of.
Yet.
His mind did a one-eighty and ran a full-spectrum sweep of everything that had happened since he’d first come across Matt Sherwood. He shelved details he thought extraneous and focused on establishing causal links between that first encounter and the present moment and running them against the background skills he knew Matt possessed.
All of which colluded to draw his attention across to his car.
He took a half step closer to it, his eyes scrutinizing it as his operational instincts assessed what the likely culprit could be.
And frowned at the realization.
He wouldn’t have time to have the car checked out. Which meant there was a chance he’d have to leave it there for now. Which pissed him off even more. He really liked that car. He checked his watch. The jet’s arrival was imminent.
He looked around. The airfield was quiet, as it normally was. Which was good. He decided it was time to put an end to Matt Sherwood’s unexpected intrusions—permanently—and waved over two of his men who were waiting nearby.
“I think we’re about to have some company,” he told them.
Then he told them what he wanted to do about it.
Chapter 51
Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
“Finch!” Gracie’s cry shook the walls of the monastery as she dropped to the ground at his side. She was shaking. The blood drained from her face, and her hands shot up to her open mouth. Finch’s body just lay there, in front of her, flat against the desert sand. He was on his front, motionless, the puff of dust that he’d kicked up when he’d slammed into the ground drifting back down and settling around him.
Slowly, her hands came down and hovered over him, not daring to touch him. The others, led by Dalton, all rushed to her side.
“Is he . . . ?” Dalton couldn’t say it.
There were no visible open wounds, no blood seeping out. It didn’t make the sight any less horrific. His head, which must have hit the ground first, was twisted sideways at an impossible angle. He had one arm bent backward, and his eyes were staring lifelessly at the parched soil.
“Oh my God. Finch,” Gracie sobbed as she stared at him, not sure what to do. Her hands finally dropped down onto his body, her fingers pressing softly against his neck, searching for a pulse or for any sign of life she knew she wasn’t going to find.
She looked at Dalton through teary eyes and shook her head.
Dalton was shaking. He put his arms around Gracie, his eyes also locked on his fallen friend’s body. The monks, waiting hesitantly behind Father Jerome and the abbot, started murmuring some prayers. After a moment, Gracie pulled her hand back, then gently brushed a few errant strands of hair off Finch’s forehead and gave his cheek a gentle caress, staring at him, wanting to slide his eyelids shut but not daring to touch them. She sensed movement behind her, turned, and saw Father Jerome advance hesitantly, his gaze locked on Finch. The holy man took a few more steps until he was standing right next to her, then he knelt down beside her, softly, his concentration still focused on Finch’s dead body.
A shiver of anticipation rolled through her. What is he doing? She watched with rapt attention as he leaned in closer, held out his hands over Finch, and shut his eyes in silent prayer. For a fleeting moment, a wild notion rose within her, an impossible, absurd notion—that she was about to witness something miraculous, that Father Jerome was actually going to intervene with the heavens and bring her friend back from the dead. Her heart leapt into her mouth as she sat there, crippled with fear and hope, and she tried to hold onto that crazy possibility as long as she could, flashing to all the other impossible things she’d witnessed over the last few days and trying to convince herself that anything was now possible, clutching at it with raging desperation even as it slipped away as quickly as it had arisen, driven out by the sight of Finch’s mangled, still-dead body and the cold logic that had always guided her. A devastating sense of grief soon came rolling back in and numbed every nerve in her body.
She looked over at Father Jerome, who opened his eyes and made a cross over Finch’s head. He turned to face her with a look of profound sadness, and took her hands in his.
“I’m so sorry,” he said simply.
His expression, Gracie saw, was also riven with guilt. She nodded, but said nothing. He rose and shuffled back to join his brethren. The abbot and Brother Ameen were standing a few steps back, and as Father Jerome reached them, the abbot put a consoling hand on his shoulder, and he and the younger monk murmured some words to him. Gracie turned to Dalton, then glanced up at the top of the keep. Its sand-colored edge contrasted sharply against the backdrop of clear blue sky. It looked like a close-up one would find on a hip postcard or coffee table book, disconcertingly perfect with its striking pastel colors—too perfect to have hosted such an ugly death.
“How . . . ,” she muttered. “How could he fall like that?”