He slapped an explosive, complete with a timer, on his computer tower and keyed it to detonate in five minutes. He didn’t want anybody getting their hands on the contents of his hard drive, especially if he and Mary managed to make it off the island alive.

The explosive was designed to do maximum damage in a five-yard radius. When it went off, it would ignite other items in the armory. He straightened and swept the room to make sure he had everything he wanted, because they weren’t coming back. He turned his attention to Mary.

Worried blue eyes blinked at him from two lopsided holes in a black mask. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her through the darkened cabin. She asked, “Why would she just leave?”

“She didn’t see fit to inform us.” He forced his voice to remain calm and even, to keep his rage contained. He paused in the doorway to scan the clearing. “But I think we’re bait. We have to make our decisions based on what we know, and I’ve f**king had it. I’m voting us off this island. I don’t see any reason why we should die without knowing why. Do you?”

“Hell no. Let’s get out of here.”

“They’re going to have night-vision equipment,” he whispered. Precious seconds trickled away so he spoke fast. “But the equipment has to be monitored by human minds, and we can fool those. I’m going to cloak us. Stay right with me and as quiet as possible. You can help me avert their attention if you focus on something inconsequential and natural. Pretend you’re a mouse, or a squirrel, and keep that image fixed in your mind. All right?”

“Does it help you to know what I’m pretending?”

Pleased, he squeezed her tight. “Yes.”

“I’m a mouse.”

“Good. No talking and no telepathy,” he warned. “Remember, mice don’t talk.” He paused to think of his hawk friends and the pack of wolves that had been guarding Mary when he had found her. “Much.”

She shook a little. Incredibly, it was a chuckle. “Got it.”

He took a few more seconds to fix the null space around them. Then he pulled her out the door. He thought through their options. One of their boats had been moored in the small bay, so taking the path to the pier was impossible. Within the next few moments, the path would become the setting for an ambush, or at the very least, they would have disabled—or sabotaged—the boat.

The island was shaped like a human foot without the toes. West and south would take them to wetlands that covered the heel of the foot. Not ideal, but then again, it wouldn’t be ideal for their enemies either.

He steered Mary across the open area of the clearing, grateful she responded without question to his silent prompting, her small, compact body moving in concert with his.

They reached the forest. He let his arm fall from her shoulders and took her hand. Then he continued at a slower pace, picking a path through the dark.

Mary gripped his hand so tight the tips of his fingers throbbed. She tried to move with his stealth but couldn’t quite manage it. He slowed further to help her pick her way more quietly.

The cluster of pines bordering the clearing gave way to deciduous trees. They reached a large tangle of underbrush and fallen tree limbs. They would have to circumvent it. A couple of stealthy figures approached and were sneaking around one side of the tangle. He touched Mary’s mouth with a light warning finger and pulled her in the opposite direction.

He thought ahead to their next challenge. The men came to the island on boats, and they could no longer use theirs. They would have to commandeer one from their uninvited guests. There would be one or two guards left on the boats for just this kind of eventuality.

The cabin exploded. The night roared with a concussion of heat and light.

He had accounted for the explosion and had dismissed it. It had already become a part of his past, so he didn’t react other than to note that it blew right on schedule.

But what he hadn’t accounted for was Mary’s untrained reaction. He had forgotten to warn her.

She gasped and stumbled.

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.

Michael had loved that old fourteenth-century poem as a small boy. He had discovered it when he had written a school report on Ben Franklin, who had quoted it.

For want of the shoe, the horse was lost, and so on, in an escalating series of catastrophic events, from horse to rider, to message, to battle, to the war being lost, and all for the want of a nail.

Just like the poem, Mary’s stumble was really a small thing. But what she stumbled over had deeper connections in the pile of rotted tree limbs, ivy and sticker bushes. Something rolled and shifted. An entire four-foot section of ivy jerked in a way that was not at all natural or mouse-like, and suddenly where they were standing became the subject of intense scrutiny.

One man straightened. As he brought up his assault rifle Michael flung a throwing knife that embedded in his eye.

The second man had stayed crouched behind cover. That was unfortunate.

Michael dropped Mary’s hand and launched toward him. Even as he broke the man’s neck with a perfectly executed kick, he knew he was too late.

Because if they had night-vision equipment and too many men surrounding the island, then they probably had . . . He bent to grope at the dead man’s blackened face and found what he was looking for, a small wire and earpiece now mangled by his kick.

Shit. Shit.

They had a comm link. With so many in their group, they would have a centralized communication point, one person to coordinate maneuvers and relay orders, often nicknamed “God.” That person would be tucked safe away from any fighting, probably on one of the nearby boats.

Shit.

As he spun back toward Mary, he caught sight of something streaking through the air toward her. He thought, I can’t believe it. Did she just get shot again?

He was both right and wrong. Even as he took comfort in her bulletproof vest, the something unfurled into a nylon net that settled over Mary’s head and shoulders, and she reacted in the most natural way in the world. She fought to get it off of her. The net had been designed to tighten more as the captive struggled.

He threw himself forward as another net streaked through the air. In that flash of an instant, he knew he couldn’t get to her in time. He would risk them both getting tangled in the nets.

He had to stay free to maneuver. He switched course and dove. The weighted edge of the second net brushed his thigh as he rolled.

A third net shot through the air. It wrapped python-tight around Mary’s staggering figure. She groaned, lost her balance and fell to the ground.

Michael’s attention snapped to the person who shot the nets. He shot the man twice in the neck.

He loped over to the dying man. After reaching down to carefully remove the man’s slender headset, Michael shot him in the temple to give him a cleaner death.

From twenty feet away Mary said in a quiet, flat voice, “I am not okay with this turn of events.”

He kept his reply easygoing and reassuring, the quality of which alone should win him an Oscar. “Don’t worry. At some point we would have had to stop sneaking around and fight.”

He slid the headset on and adjusted the earpiece.

A strange young man said, “She’ll have something to worry about soon enough. Hello, Michael. If I can hear you, I’ll bet that you can hear me.”

Michael knew who was at the centralized communication point. Well, who else would it be? How it must amuse him to play God.

“Hello, Lucifer,” he said.

At the same time, he thought, if I get my hands on Astra, I’m going to kick her ass. Why the f**k couldn’t she have warned us?

For want of the message, the battle was lost.

Chapter Twenty-eight

ASTRA LIKED SOME of Earth’s modern vernacular.

The sixties and seventies had been a great time for slogans.

Give peace a chance. Make love not war.

That tall chick with the great nose and long, dark hair and her short, goofy-looking husband with the mustache—they had come up with some of the silliest ones she’d ever heard.

The beat goes on. What the hell did that mean? What was another one? Oh, yeah. I got you, babe.

Jerry had a slogan that she really liked. Don’t push the river. There was a lot of sense in that one. How, in God’s name, could you possibly push a river? You couldn’t. A river flowed where it would. It was an act of insanity to even try.

Her translation of that? The universe was an easier place to live in when you stopped kicking against how things were going, and you made use of what you were given.

Or in other words: go with the flow. She liked saying it. It made her feel hip and snappy. Groovy, as it were. Never mind how Michael would laugh himself sick at her when he was a boy. She sniffed.

For instance she had known exactly the moment her cloak had slipped. The Deceiver had not just been waiting for it to happen. He had been pushing to make it happen. She had sensed him sneak past her guard like the thief that he was.

Instead of lashing out to drive him back, instinct stayed her hand. Just for a moment. Not for too long. She had to make it look good.

When she resumed cloaking the island, she had known he had gained information about their location. So she went with the flow.

Long ago, she had chosen an island as her sanctuary for a lot of reasons, and all of them involved its remote location. She could cloak the area and make it difficult to locate. If men forgot the island was there, they couldn’t draw it on any map.

Also, it was a perfect place to do battle. The only victims would be the various species that lived on the island and, of course, the land itself. She and the island had several good, long talks about that. She had wanted to be certain it understood the danger before she took up residence.

So Astra had waited until Michael and Mary went to bed. Then she got to work. For the first time in years, she went into Michael’s armory/office to gather the materials she would need. She wasn’t as strong as she used to be, and she had to make several trips down to a secluded area.

The only safe place to dock a boat was the little bay with the pier. The water around the rest of the island’s shoreline covered an uneven rocky terrain. She particularly liked the area of shore that she chose for that night. For a good fifty yards out from land, half-submerged boulders made the water treacherous to any boat larger than her small, handmade bark canoe.

After she had gathered what she needed and carried her canoe down to the water’s edge, she sat waiting in the shadow of an outcrop of rock.

The fox she had healed some time ago joined her. She allowed his companionship. He was a sensible little fellow and knew the value of hiding in silence. He curled around her ankles. She stroked his fur while she drew the tightest, most impenetrable part of her cloak around them.

Several hours after nightfall, large, dark boats surrounded the island. Men, dressed in black wet suits and armed with water-protected assault rifles, slithered over the sides of the boats and swam to shore.

One man passed by so close to Astra’s hiding place she could hear his breathing. The fox trembled under her stroking fingertips, but he remained silent and stationary.

The battle at the cabin erupted. She sat unmoving. Neither Michael’s shock and outrage nor Mary’s hurt and fear caused her to shift. She did nothing as fire destroyed her home. She waited while Mary was netted, and by virtue of Mary’s immobility, their attackers had Michael trapped.

I am a stone by the water, she thought at the night. Astra is hiding inland.

She stirred only when a sleek, dark powerboat purred into the small bay and the Deceiver stepped onto her island.

Then she lowered her canoe into the water and stacked her supplies into it. She picked up the fox and deposited him in the canoe as well. If he had stayed with her this far, he could come along for the rest of the journey.

Mary and Michael might die. She experienced a pang that faded almost as soon as it had come. If they died, they died. At least she would be done with all the drama. She no longer had room for anything else but the one task she had waited her entire existence on this earth to complete.

She was tired of being scared. She was tired of living with guilt and heartache and loneliness. She had called in all her favors. She had to go on trust that help would be available when she needed it. If she failed and the Deceiver destroyed her, well, somebody else would just have to take up the intolerable burden of this fight.

She bent over until her mouth hovered just above the gentle lapping water, and she whispered in a voice so soft even the mosquito hovering near her ear couldn’t overhear.

“Hi, Lake? He’s here. Can you swallow any more swimmers that try to get to land?”

The Lake radiated placid innocence but a small finger of water plopped up to kiss her lips.

Astra breathed, “One last thing. It’s important. Would you mind taking me real quiet-like to all the other boats around the island so I don’t have to use my paddle? I’ve got to stick these newfangled explosive things to their sides.”

There was a certain peace to be found in finality. The only people getting off this island would be the victors, and possibly one or two extraordinarily lucky innocents. She kept her spine straight as she sat in her bark canoe and rested her paddle across her lap. Her little fox friend sat at the prow with his bushy tail curled around his feet. His large ears swiveled and twitched at the sound of nearby gunfire.

Their patience was rewarded as a curl of intention rose underneath the canoe. They began to slide through the water in the dark.

Like she had yelled at that damn Deceiver so many times.

Ask, don’t take.

Chapter Twenty-nine

MARY SPRAWLED ON the ground, trussed like someone’s holiday dinner. She listened to the sounds of battle surrounding her. Her mask had skewed when she tried to free herself from the net. Her nose still poked out of a hole but she could no longer see.