Painter dropped back. He let out a shuddering breath. He searched the grounds. Where were Gray and the others?

Monk crossed toward him down the walkway. His rifle still smoked. His expression remained grim, worried for his friends.

The only warning was a shift of shadows. A woman rolled into view at a narrow doorway to Painter's right. From a foot away, she had a pistol pointed at Painter's chest.

She fired four times.

The blasts cracked like thunderclaps.

Only one shot grazed Painter's shoulder. At the same time she fired, he was tackled to the side.

He landed hard on a knee and twisted around.

He watched the impact of the bullets pound John Creed out into the garden. The man toppled onto his back.

The woman screamed and came at Painter, bringing her gun to his face. He lunged up at her. He'd freed the blade from his boot and stabbed it deep into her belly.

Well trained, she ignored the pain and got the gun under his chin. Her eyes said it all. The blade could not stop her before she killed him.

"Think this is yours," Painter said savagely and pressed the button on the WASP dagger's hilt.

The explosion of compressed gas ripped into her belly. It pulverized and flash-froze her internal organs. Shock and pain burst through her, paralyzing her.

He shoved her away with both arms. She flew and crashed onto her back. Her mouth stretched into a silent scream of agony-then her body went limp. Dead.

Monk rushed past Painter into the garden. "Creed!"

Painter leaped to his feet and followed.

Creed lay on his back. Blood flowed from his lips, bubbled from the three shots to the chest. His eyes were huge, knowing what was coming.

Monk fell to his knees next to him. He tore off his jacket and bunched it up, readying a compression. "Hang on!"

All of them knew there was nothing to be done. Blood had pooled and spread over the hard-packed ground. The rounds must have been hollow-points, shredding on impact.

Creed fumbled blindly for Monk's hand and gripped it tight. Monk covered it with his other palm.

"John..."

One last breath escaped. Creed's hand slipped away. Monk tried to grab it back, as if that might help, but the man's eyes went glassy.

"No," Monk moaned.

Painter leaned down to offer what could only be cold comfort-but a new noise intruded. He swung around, dropping low. It came from the smoky hole.

He watched a group crawl into sight, climbing out of the hole, coughing and staggering.

One figure searched around, then stumbled out into the garden. "Gray..."

4:22 P.M.

They'd only had seconds.

Gray had known the woman would blow the incendiary charge as soon as she was outside. So as the last soldier vanished up the tunnel, he had sprinted over to the Celtic cross and spun its wheel. The monks would have engineered some mechanism for sending the tombs back into hiding.

It was a natural enough guess.

Spin the wheel, spin the floors.

He had been right.

Turning the wheel flipped the tombs back below and rolled the spiral designs up.

As the floors rotated, Gray yelled for Kowalski to toss the suitcase bomb down into the cavity below. He wasn't sure if it would be enough protection, but they had no other option. Afterward, they fled to the walls and dropped to their stomachs.

When the explosion blew, the circular plates of the floor jumped up, dancing on flames-then crashed back down. The heat seared like a blast furnace. Smoke choked, but most of it got sucked up the tunnel as up a chimney flue.

It was the conflagration below that remained the danger.

The fires baked the stones under them. Off to the side, the bronze spiral began to glow through the smoky pall.

Gray called for them to retreat to the tunnel.

Crouched there, Gray heard a firefight echoing down from above-then the gunfire suddenly ended.

He didn't know what was happening. He heard a few more shots and then someone yelled. He knew that voice. He almost shook with relief.

Monk.

As the heat grew worse, Gray had led the others up the tunnel and back out into the open. Bodies lay everywhere. French soldiers surrounded them. He stumbled into the garden.

"They're with us!" Painter shouted, pushing forward.

Gray struggled to understand what his boss was doing here, how he could be here. But explanations would have to wait. Searching around, Gray spotted a familiar stone-and-gold object rolled up against a bush.

The canopic jar.

Relieved, he rushed over, dropped to his knees, and collected it up.

The lid was still in place.

Painter joined him.

"It's the Doomsday key," Gray explained.

"Keep it safe." Painter turned as Seichan joined them. Gray's boss seemed unsurprised at her being there.

Seichan faced Painter and shook her head.

"We had to attempt it," he told her cryptically.

"It still failed. I warned you from the start that the Guild would never trust me fully again." Seichan turned her back and stared into the garden toward the one victim who hadn't truly escaped. "And I shouldn't have trusted the Guild."

Rachel stood numbly, her face turned up to the sky. They were all free, but she was still trapped.

Even now, as Gray watched, her legs trembled.

The heat, the stress, it had worn her body past endurance.

With her face still in the sun, she went boneless and collapsed.

10:32 P.M.

Troyes, France

Hours later, Gray sat on a bench in the corridor outside Rachel's hospital room. Monk and a French internist were inside. Rachel had been hooked to an intravenous drip and pumped full of a cocktail of antibiotics. Though she was out of danger, it had been a close call. She'd had to be evacuated by helicopter to the medical facility in Troyes.

But at least she was awake again.

Gray picked at the bandage around his hand. His wounds had been debrided, stitched up, and wrapped. But he knew he was far from healed.

A door opened down the hall. He watched Seichan step out of her room. She wore a hospital gown and carried a pack of cigarettes. She glanced down the hall, clearly wondering where she could smoke in a hospital. She turned in his direction and suddenly froze.

She didn't seem to know what to do with herself. He suspected she would have to get accustomed to that state. The Guild would be hunting for her. The United States still had orders to capture her. It had taken all of Painter's skill to keep her presence secret. He was still off putting out a thousand fires, holding the world at bay.

But they couldn't hide forever.

None of them.

Gray patted the seat next to him.

For half a minute, Seichan remained standing, then finally walked over. Half her face was in a bandage. She didn't sit. She stood with her arms crossed. Her eyes were slightly glazed by morphine. She stared toward Rachel's door.

"I didn't poison her," she said in a hoarse whisper. So soon after surgery, it wasn't good for her to talk. But Gray knew she had to.

"I know," Gray said. "She's got double pneumonia. Too long in the rain, too much stress, a low-grade viral infection."

Seichan sank to the bench.

Painter had already explained most of the story. A month ago he had approached Seichan, tracked her down using the implant. She hadn't discovered the bug on her own. In fact, according to Painter, she'd been shocked, angry, and hurt by the betrayal when he finally told her. But he offered her a chance, convinced her to work for him, to attempt one last time to infiltrate the Guild. Painter had caught wind of the pending order to haul her in for interrogation. He knew she still offered the best chance to discover who ran the Guild.