The Alarmists (25 page)

December 22, 2012, 10:10 A.M.

Brent had already received more than his share of visitors, but he wouldn’t have turned any of them away, especially the one who came in on crutches. Maddy was covered in bruises but mostly intact. She had been the human baggage between two of Van Camp’s security personnel, and all it had taken was Brent’s one shot, which hit nothing, to cause both of them to drop her and run. Brent wished he’d been awake when the team found her on the street; he would have liked to have been there for her.

He would have liked to have seen a lot of things, including the team’s recovery of the detonator from a motel room near the Mexican border. But a chemically induced sleep stretching into two days had robbed him of the opportunity to witness some of the loose threads drawn up.

According to Richards, Alan Canfield’s body had been found in the same room. In fact, that was the only reason the team had been able to locate the detonator. When local police had sent Canfield’s name through the national database, they’d found the link to the NIIU investigation. The team had torn the room apart looking for the detonator, and Rawlings offered Brent a crooked smile when he recounted how close he’d come to using the thing to turn on the television. Had Snyder not snatched it away from him . . .

“We’ve got a dozen drill teams pulling up the octanitrocubane,” Snyder said. “But it’ll be at least a month before they’re finished.”

Brent simply nodded, too spent to comment. He had a passing thought about the possibility of someone somewhere on the planet—maybe someone with a malfunctioning garage door opener—accidentally detonating the explosives, but he had sufficient trust that the team of exceptional men and women had that covered.

A few minutes later found all of the others gone except for Maddy, who lingered, and Brent was glad she had. Despite the fact that his stomach hurt, and that he felt woozy from the medicine they were pumping into him, he wanted nothing more than to spend time with this woman. And at some point, if he hadn’t already burned that bridge, he wanted to share his dying epiphany with her.

Acknowledgments

As always, there are many people to thank for helping to get this book into print. The staff at Bethany House—Luke Hinrichs, Dave Long, Debra Larsen, Noelle Buss, Jim Hart, and a whole host of others—have once again guided me through the process, and I am grateful for their dedication and patience.

Thanks to Eric Humphrey for sharing his knowledge of all things military.

My ongoing appreciation for all that Les Stobbe does on my behalf.

And, of course, thanks to you for buying this book.

About the Author

DON HOESEL, the acclaimed author of
Elisha’s Bones
and
Hunter’s Moon
, lives in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with his wife and two children. Don holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Taylor University. When not writing novels, he spends his days working in the communications department of a large company.