"Baby, no!" Elena heard her own voice break across the church before she felt her feet moving.

The drive north on Route 28 was a study in subterranean dread.

The Hudson Valley was suffocating beneath an unseasonal, freezing mountain fog that rolled down from the peaks of the Catskills like a slow-motion avalanche of cold cotton. The wipers on the dark blue Ford sedan swept back and forth with a rhythmic, hypnotic squeak, clearing away the freezing mist that coated the windshield in a greasy film.

Elena sat in the passenger seat, her hands resting comfortably on the Glock concealed beneath her heavy wool sweater. On her lap lay an ancient, hand-drawn topographical map of Ulster County, annotated in faded red ink by her father thirty years ago.

"Two miles past Mount Tremper, the state highway crosses a concrete culvert," Elena said, her finger tracing a faint dotted line through a dense green quadrant. "There’s an abandoned logging trail that cuts behind the old bluestone quarry. It’s washed out in three places, but a vehicle with four-wheel drive and a low center of gravity can crawl through. It brings us out two hundred yards above the cabin’s ridge, completely hidden from the main access road."

Dr. Vance nodded, her hands steady on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, her eyes scanning the rearview mirrors every thirty seconds. "Corbin’s team has at least six men on site. My tactical contacts in Albany intercepted an encrypted satellite dispatch from Julian’s phone forty minutes ago. The team leader is a former private military contractor named Paul Sterling. He was dishonorably discharged from the private security sector in Iraq for unauthorized kinetic operations."

"A mercenary," Elena said flatly.

"A cleaner," Vance corrected. "Men like Sterling don't leave witnesses, and they don't leave digital footprints. If he finds that drive, he will incinerate the cabin, dump two gallons of accelerant across the floorboards, and the state police will write it off as a faulty propane heater explosion."

"He won't find it," Elena said.

Vance glanced sideways at the woman sitting beside her. Elena was thirty-eight, with high cheekbones, dark hair pulled tight behind her ears, and a calm, terrifying stillness that reminded Vance of the seasoned field agents she had worked with in counter-narcotics.

"You're remarkably calm for a woman whose husband just climbed out of a coffin four hours ago," Vance remarked, downshifting as the Ford began to climb the steep, winding grade toward Phoenicia.

"I’m not calm, Sarah," Elena whispered, her eyes never leaving the gray wall of fog ahead. "I am empty. When I stood over that casket this morning, believing my daughter was an orphan and my life was over, every ounce of fear I possessed burned away. There is nothing they can do to me that is worse than what I already survived between seven AM and nine AM today. If Julian Cross wants to take my husband’s life again... he will have to kill me first."

"Fair enough," Vance muttered, easing the sedan off the asphalt onto a narrow, gravel shoulder half-hidden by overgrown hemlocks.

The Ford dipped violently as its tires entered the rutted logging road. Branches scraped against the doors with a continuous, metallic shriek, and the heavy smell of damp earth, rotted oak leaves, and sulfur filled the cabin through the defroster vents.

Vance killed the headlights.

They crawled through the gloom at five miles an hour, navigating by the faint outline of the ridge against the slate sky.

Half a mile up the trail, Elena raised her hand. "Stop here."

Vance touched the brakes, shifting into park.

Through the mist, two hundred yards below them in a shallow hollow surrounded by ancient white pines, sat the cabin.

It was a rustic, pitch-roofed structure built of hand-hewn cedar logs, its stone chimney cold and dark. But the peaceful mountain sanctuary was currently violated by three black Chevrolet Tahoes parked haphazardly across the front lawn, their engines ticking as they cooled in the damp air.

Four men in black tactical jackets, tactical boots, and low-profile headsets were methodically searching the perimeter.

Through the cabin's front windows, the flickering beams of high-powered searchlights danced across the interior walls. The sound of splintering wood—drawers being ripped from dressers, cabinetry being smashed off its hinges—drifted up the mountain hollow like the sound of distant gunfire.

"They're tearing the interior apart," Vance whispered, pulling a compact pair of image-stabilized binoculars from her coat. "They haven't found it yet. Sterling is standing on the front porch with a satellite phone. He’s agitated. He’s checking his watch."

Elena didn't look through the binoculars. She looked at the chimney.

"The woodbox is adjacent to the master hearth on the western wall," Elena said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper. "There is an old root cellar hatch built into the stone foundation beneath the kitchen pantry. My father installed it in the seventies during the blizzard of '78. It connects to the old drainage ditch behind the woodshed."

Vance lowered the glass, looking at Elena with sharp calculation. "Can you get into that ditch without being seen from the porch?"

"If you give me three minutes of distraction," Elena said, unzipping her jacket, checking the slide on the Glock 43X.

"I can do better than a distraction," Vance replied, reaching into the backseat and pulling out a heavy, sound-suppressed Daniel Defense MK18 short-barreled rifle. She snapped a thirty-round magazine into the well, her eyes cold as winter ice. "I can give you thirty seconds of absolute chaos. The moment the first smoke canister pops on the eastern tree line, you move. You get the drive, you get through that cellar hatch, and you get back to this ridge. If anyone steps between you and the woodbox... you do not hesitate."

Elena looked down at the weapon in her hands.

She thought of Maya’s small, wet face pressed against Daniel’s waxy cheek in the church. She thought of Daniel’s trembling breath inside the van.