Chapter 1

Hear and pay attention,
do not be arrogant,
for the LORD has spoken.
Give glory to the LORD your God
before he brings the darkness,
before your feet stumble
on the darkening hills.
(Jeremiah 13: 15-16)

* * *
A city in ruins.

Nine people dead, more than thirty gravely injured, a terrorist on the loose and the best lead Jason Logan could come up with was a punk named Ty Rondo. And the kid was in no mood to talk.

Logan grabbed him by the hair. “Give me a name. Someone who might have seen Cannon doing business with the bomber.”

“Hey, man. I got my lawyer on speed-dial. Hands off or I’ll own your house, your woman, and your firstborn.”

The kid drove a Lexus, wore fifty-thousand bucks worth of bling, and had a crew as savvy as any in the Flats—but no way was he dialing his lawyer today, Logan knew.

“Logan. We gotta move this along.” Stefan Pappas pointed to the four thugs who had come out of the alley. Despite the heat, they wore bulky jackets and plenty of attitude. The click of Pappas’ M4 carbine that meant he’d switched from semi-automatic to burst capacity. Better in urban combat, he had said when he exchanged it for his rifle.

Urban combat. How had it come to this?

Six hours ago, if someone had told Logan that he would drag Ty Rondo down the middle of University Avenue, he’d have laughed at the absurdity of it. If that someone pressed him and said, no, it has to be done, he would have said it was as insane as racing into hell on ice skates.

Six hours was a lifetime ago. Before bombs and murders and chaos had wracked Barcester. Before an impassable mist had trapped them in a mile-long swath of city. Before he knew that no one was coming in to help. Not his fellow cops or firefighters. Not the state police or paramedics. ot FEMA or the feds.

No one.

“Let’s go, Rondo,” Logan said. “We’re going for a walk.”

“I ain’t walkin’ anywhere with you. Not unless you got yourself a warrant.”

“Fine. Don’t walk.” Logan yanked the kid off the ground by his hair, ignoring the pain in his lower back. The first blast had ruptured a disk, and Luther’s grenade attack had burned his shoulders.
All the more reason to shake information out of this punk.

“No, wait! Check it out, Logan—”

He tightened his grip in Rondo’s cornrows. “That’s Sergeant Logan to you.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll go with you, Sergeant Logan. Just put me down, man. You’re ripping out my weave.” Rondo glanced at Pappas. “Who’s your peep here? If I’m traveling, I want to know who’s coming.”

“Special Agent Stefan Pappas. United States Secret Service,” Pappas said.

Keep believing that, Logan thought. Keep believing that the United States means anything to those of us who are trapped under this mist

People sat on stoops or the curb and watched as they walked Rondo toward the blast site. With no cell phones or cable television to provide news, Logan and Pappas were the only show in town. Every hundred feet or so, someone shouted out a variation on the same question—when is help coming?

Logan nodded acknowledgement, said nothing. Disabled cars and trucks had been pushed to the side to make room for emergency vehicles that never came. Store fronts were scorched, windows blown out, small buildings like sheds upended, and shutters ripped off houses.

Thankfully, the blaze from the explosion remained confined to the Circle, the tiny park where the two legs of the bike path met in a rotary. Luther’s attack was aimed at Quanta Corporation’s high-speed train lines that ran deep under the ground. Allegedly terrorist-proof, there was no way to know if the MagLev trains had disrupted.

Logan couldn’t worry about that right now. They had to find Luther before he struck again—which meant they had to shake information out of Ty Rondo any way they could.

A crowd gathered in front of Grace Community Church, five hundred feet from ground zero. Logan couldn’t bear the hopeful gaze of a white-haired lady leaning on her cane, nor the two mothers with their toddlers.

Vic Byrd, an over-the-hill hippie, charged out of the crowd. “Was this guy in on it?”

“Mr. Rondo is not a suspect,” Logan said, gritting his teeth. “He’s assisting the investigation. Which you’re impeding, so step aside.”

“Why you got a gun on him then?”

“Would you rather I turned this weapon on you?” Pappas snarled.

Like a hyena with a carcass, the fool wouldn’t let it go. “Is this a drug war or something? Wouldn’t put it past this scum to blow up someone. Everyone knows this kid’s a dirt bag.”

Rondo gave Byrd a chilling smile. “You think you know me now, fool? I can make sure you know me more’n you ever wanted.”

Byrd spit, dissolved into the crowd. Pappas stifled a laugh.

Logan steered Rondo up the grassy slope that bordered the bike path.

“Now why we goin’ up here? I ain’t been on a bike since third gr—” Rondo caught sight of the fire in the Circle.

Raging steadily since the bomb blew at ten that morning, the massive spurt of flame shot high into the mist. With only shrubbery for fuel, it should have exhausted itself by now. But it burned on, throwing light but impossibly, no heat.

The mist blossomed out from the fire, enclosing University Avenue and the surrounding blocks. Initially Logan thought it was smoke until he had gotten close enough to touch it—and experience its insanity. The memory made him shiver, even now.

The mist hung before him, a veil draped from the sky, close enough so he could stretch out his arm and see his hand disappear into it. It was translucent, like one of his mother’s sheer curtains, but it refracted light in some odd way. If he stared hard enough, he could see an endless stretch of trees and skies.

Just a mirage, some trick of light. Nothing to fear here—Logan knew exactly what lay on the other side.

It turned out he hadn’t.

“What’re we doing here?” Rondo tipped his head back, an attitude undermined by the constant flicking of his eyes toward the fire.

“You need an attitude adjustment,” Logan said.

“You’re the one chasing flies, man. Ain’t nothing I can do about any of this.”

He prodded Rondo down the far side of the slope. A couple of hours ago, they had given up trying to preserve the crime scene—bodies flung all over—and had moved the fatalities here to spare the survivors the burden of seeing them.

Rondo sniffed, as if imposed upon. “I’m asking you once more. Why’re you wasting my time here?”

“And I asked you about Elvin Sheffield.”

“Who?”

“Street name Cannon,” Logan said. “He arranged the transport of the bomb. Thought it was a simple drug drop.”

“What can I say? The boy is stupid.”

“Was. The terrorist took him down, a knife through the throat. You already know that, Rondo. Just like you know his little sister is missing. So drop the stupid act.”

“Hey man, I ain’t the one acting stupid here. You taking me against my will like you wrote the Patriot Act with your own pen. And for what? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“All I’m asking for is a name,” Logan said. “Someone who might know Cannon’s business.”

Rondo’s gaze darkened. “I don’t snitch and I know how to deal with those that do.”

“Come on, Logan,” Pappas said. “Just shoot him and put me out of my misery.”

Rondo snorted. “Like that good cop, bad cop routine is supposed to put the fear in me?”

“No,” Logan said. “But this should.” He lifted the edge of the tarp covering the bodies and revealed the first victim. The young woman in a yellow sun dress had with no obvious injuries because her terrible skull fracture was hidden by her hair. The only identification they could find was on the inside of her wedding ring. Pam and Ronnie, love forever.

“You think you’re showing me something I ain’t ever seen?” Rondo said. “The Flats ain’t no Disney cartoon.”

Pappas spun him around. “Someone called Homeland Security with a tip. Said this Luther was looking to hire a courier. We need to know who might have dropped that dime.”

“Jasmine Ramirez was Cannon’s go-to girl. You ask her?”

“She spooked and ran straight into the bomb,” Logan said. “That’s why we don’t have her under this tarp.”

Rondo blinked hard. “If I was you, I’d be rousting Tripp Sheffield.”

“Who?” Pappas said.

“Cannon’s younger brother,” Logan said. “He’s fourteen or fifteen. Quiet kid.”

“That boy thinks he’s better’n the rest of us. Thinks he’s gonna be a accountant or something weak like that,” Rondo said. “If anyone gonna snitch to the feds, it would’ve been that fool.”

“He’s not at the apartment. You know where he might be?”

“I did my civic duty.” Rondo turned to leave. “I’m out.”

Logan yanked him back. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“What gives you the right?”

“You want to see what gives me the right? This is what gives me the right.” He flung the tarp all the way off. The jumble of bodies was hellish—crushed chests, twisted spines, horrific burns.
Rondo staggered back, hands raised to shield his eyes. “This is sick, puttin’ this in my face like this.”

“We’ve got two more dead on the other side of the fire and more dying inside the church,” Logan said. “And we’ve got many badly injured, including a little girl who is paralyzed. No one wants to tell her that her mother’s dead. You’re the man, Rondo. You want to tell Natasha Perkins that her mommy’s dead?”

“Trina Perkins? The bomb got her?”

“Broke her near in half.”

“Oh, man. She used to baby-sit me. I gotta sit, man. Let me sit.”

Logan locked his hands on Rondo’s shoulders, kept in his face. “Natasha is in the church, taped to a backboard because it’s safer for her than a mattress. She couldn’t feel a mattress anyway. Poor baby can’t even wipe her own tears.”

Pappas pushed in on Rondo from the side. “Cannon’s little sister saw this guy up close. Eight years old and we can’t find her. So if you know something more, now’s the time to say.”

“No, no. I can’t. If something like this came back on me—” Wild-eyed, Rondo ripped out of Logan’s grasp.

“No, don’t! Not that way!” he shouted, but it was too late.

Rondo disappeared into the mist.