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holding something back, but he decided not to push it, remembering her earlier words: the less you know, the better .
    “Why come to me?” Tucker asked.
    She looked down at her hands. “At this point, I don’t know whom to trust, but I trust you more than anyone else in the world. And you’re . . . you’re . . .” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Resourceful. And someone outside of all of this.”
    “Someone no one would suspect of helping you,” he mumbled.
    “And a new set of eyes. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how good you are at looking past appearances to see the truth. I need that. I need you .”
    He stared at her, knowing there were depths to her last words that were too dangerous to plumb at the moment. If it had been anyone else, he would have slammed the door behind them and made sure he erased his trail from here. Instead, he leaned over and gripped her fingers, feeling the slight tremble in her hand.
    “You’ve got me . . . and Kane.”
    She smiled up at him, stirring those depths. “Together again.”

3
    October 11, 7:22 A . M . EDT
    Smith Island, Maryland
    Pruitt Kellerman stood before the panoramic windows of his penthouse office. The view overlooked the expanse of Chesapeake Bay, but if he turned slightly, the view extended to the skyline of Washington, DC.
    At this early hour, morning fog still shrouded the country’s capital. It softened the city’s marble-hard edges, erasing its monuments and domes. He imagined the mist eroding DC down to its shadowy heart, exposing the cancerous flow of ambitions that truly fueled the city, aspirations both petty and grand.
    He smiled at his own reflection that overlay the distant capital, knowing he was the master of all he surveyed.
    In a little over two decades, he had taken that city’s dreams of power, its hopes and fears, and turned them into hard cash. Horizon Media Corp had become the dominant outlet for all those crying for attention, those weeping for redemption, those clawing for the top. His media empire controlled countless means of communication: television, radio, print, online. Over the years, he had learned how easy it was to control that flow of information. It was as simple as strangling some channels, while opening others more freely.
    What few truly understood was that the old axiom information is power no longer held water. The true engine of power today was the framing and delivery of that information. In this era of sound bites and short attention spans, perception was everything, and Pruitt was a master at creating it, earning him the keys to that shining castle on the hill.
    There wasn’t a politician or a government servant beyond his reach. An election was coming up and already figures on both sides of the aisle were coming to him, hat in hand, recognizing who truly controlled their ambitions.
    To maintain some distance, he had built the headquarters of Horizon Media on an island in Chesapeake Bay. Smith Island rested between Maryland and Virginia, and while it was mostly a national wildlife refuge, he had used his power to bend a recalcitrant zoning board to his will. He had picked one of the outer islands, the one closest to the coast, a sliver of eroding salt marsh that he expanded by dredging and filling, hiring a crew out of Hong Kong to fortify the foundations. He even had a private bridge built, along with employing a fleet of hydrofoils to ferry visitors back and forth.
    A knock at the door drew his attention around. He checked his reflection, as he always did.
    In his midfifties, he remained straight-backed and broad shouldered. He kept his head shaved, both to intimidate and as a matter of vanity, hiding a hairline that steadily receded. To further mask any signs of aging, he had begun to take injections of human growth hormone, a supposed fountain of youth. He also kept his body lean. Many had come to believe he was decades younger than his true age.
    He straightened his silk tie.
    Perception is everything