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headquarters in D.C. She was years and many pay grades away from field work.
    Instinct guided his next words. “I have no interest in Wallace, ma’am,” he lied. “Just Prejean. But why are you here?”
    “You can drop the ‘ ma’am, ’ Rutgers will do. I’ve resigned and I’m here as a private citizen.”
    Gillespie stared at the black wrought iron gate in front of him, stunned. Resigned? When had that happened, and why?
    “But it seems that you’re right, Chief Gillespie. We do have something in common, after all.”
    “That is?”
    “We both want Prejean dead,” Rutgers said.
    Gillespie’s pulse picked up speed. “We might have a better chance of accomplishing that together.”
    “Perhaps. What’s he doing in the cemetery?”
    Gillespie started to shake his head, but the painful scrape of the gun barrel against his scalp aborted the movement. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “He and Wallace seem to be looking for someone or something.”
    “Well, then, put those binoculars to use, Chief, and let’s see if they’ve found what they’re looking for.”
    The gun barrel’s pressure vanished from the back of his head and Gillespie exhaled in relief. He glanced at the woman as she stepped up beside him.
    The former Bureau ADIC wore a belted tan trench and black slacks and stood a pear-shaped five-six or five-seven, compared to his six-one. Dark brown curls threaded through with gray cupped her angular face. He knew she was in her fifties, but beneath the oak’s shadows, she looked younger. She met his regard with calm brown eyes.
    Gillespie had never met Rutgers, had only spoken to her over the phone during times when SB and FBI interests intersected. Like with motherfucking Bad Seed. And with the mysterious events outside Damascus at the Wells/Lyons compound.
    A dark cave stretches across the ground where the main house had once stood, a cave ringed with a Stonehenge of white stone angels. And sitting quietly in the SB’s watchful custody, the FBI agent Rutgers sent to tail Prejean and Wallace, his sanity on permanent vacation.
    Mysterious events and Dante Prejean seemed to go hand-in-hand, like a high school couple going steady.
    Returning his attention to the cemetery, Gillespie lifted the binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the area he’d last seen Prejean and Wallace. He spotted them still beside the crypt, but now the bloodsucker stood with both blue-flames-flickering palms against its white stone, Wallace right behind him—and it looked like she had looped a hand through the back of his belt.
    Prejean drew back his left fist. Then punched it into the crypt.
    Gillespie frowned. What the hell —Before he could finish his thought, a blinding flash of blue light exploded from the cemetery. Sudden pressure jabbed his ears, then he felt the air sucked from his lungs.
    Whoomph!
    A heated rush of air slammed into him, lifting him off his feet and hurling him like a Frisbee—a flesh and bone Frisbee—across the sidewalk and against a parked car. Blue stars flickered through his vision as his head cracked into a fender. He bit his tongue. The old nickel taste of blood filled his mouth.
    Gillespie tumbled into the street, landing face-first on the pavement. More flickering stars. Another mouthful of old nickels. Curling into a ball to protect himself as debris tink ed and clunk ed to the ground beside him, Gillespie folded his arms over his head.
    The ground quaked and shuddered beneath him for a moment, then went still once more. But he knew what he’d felt had been the aftereffects of an explosive shock wave and not an earthquake. He smelled ozone thick in the air, but no smoke. Through the painful ringing in his ears he heard car alarms beeping and whooping, heard stones crashing against concrete and pavement, heard the clang of iron, heard the high-pressure gush of a broken water main and the panicked shouts of people.
    “Holy Jesus, did you see that?”
    “An explosion in the