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“Wish I could stick around and chat,” Delamarre said, “but it's time to go.”

As Evans clutched again at Delamarre, the man simply disappeared.

CHAPTER 54

Mundie said to Evans and Moore, “We broke every rule in the book, and now we're paying the price.”

Moore shook his head. “We didn't have time to pull together a bigger operation. The review board will see it that way. It was a sound plan considering the restraints we faced.”

Mundie closed his eyes. “Wrong. There's a Feeb here in Seattle who is going to love to hear that I'm ending my career in Kansas. Our only hope was getting Delamarre, not the handwritten sign in a cabin in the Cascades.”

Mundie and Moore had just joined King and Evans in the conference room. The plan had been to use King to distract Delamarre and buy time to use CIA technology to track down the transmissions of the bugs planted in room 1010.

“Sign?” Evans said.

“Yeah.” Mundie rubbed his face with both hands. “The lead guy on our chopper team snapped a photo and emailed it to me. You can see for yourself.”

Mundie held out his phone, and Evans took it and shared it with King. They saw a whiteboard on an easel with a message written in blue letters.

You should have wondered why I used primitive bugs that even kids could find. And why I made it so easy for you to track the transmissions. But then, I built a billion-dollar software company, and you wear suits and work for the government.

It would have been funny to King, but they were no closer to rescuing Amanda or his friends and family.

Mundie looked at Evans and at the empty conference room. “And obviously Delamarre faked us out on setting up a meeting here too.”

“Well,” Evans said, “funny thing about that. I'm still not sure I can believe what happened.”

“Try me,” Mundie said. “How much worse could our day get?”

King's phone buzzed. Incoming FaceTime call. From MJ.

“Got something here,” King told the agents. “MJ is calling. Or his phone is calling. I should accept the invite, right?”

“Yes,” Mundie said. “Absolutely. Like I said, how much worse can it get?”

CHAPTER 55

King wasn't surprised to see Delamarre's face appear on the screen of his iPhone. The man was wearing a pink polo shirt, just like the digital image of the man who had just shot him and disappeared.

“King,” Delamarre said, a warm grin on his face. “Good to see you again. Still checking for bullet holes?”

King's first impulse was to snap an insult, but Delamarre's good humor was infectious, and King found himself liking the guy.

“Nope,” King said. “I had to move on and change my diapers.”

“Realistic, wasn't it. I felt bad doing it but didn't see any other way.”

Mundie tapped King, motioning for the phone. King handed it to Mundie, who gave Delamarre a stone-faced look. “Whatever game you're playing—”

The phone went dark.

Mundie was stunned, and it showed on his face.

The phone buzzed again. Incoming FaceTime invitation from MJ.

King accepted the phone from Mundie and answered. Delamarre's face appeared. “Would you mind telling Mr. Grumpy Pants that he's going to spoil a good party if he keeps going all government official on me? It's pretty easy to hang up halfway through any threat he makes,
and then he'll never find out what his too-low clearance level is keeping him from learning about the classified software.”

Mundie took the phone from King. “See this smile?”

Mundie smiled at the phone. An obviously fake smile.

“Beautiful,” Delamarre said. “And see how much easier it is when people are nice to each other? Can I have the kid back?”

King took the phone back.

“Kinger,” Delamarre said, “you can relax. All is good. I don't need any files from you. The video from the conference room should protect me at this point. If I go public with it, the CIA is going to have to admit that the suit who tried jumping my intellitar is one of theirs. And that's going to lead to a whole bunch more stuff that will prove my innocence in the social media world, which is all that matters these days.”

“All is good?” King said. “What about a girl that is hours away from drowning?”

“This girl?” Delamarre said. He switched MJ's iPhone from the front camera to the rear camera.

There she was. Amanda. Blonde hair moving in the breeze. Close up, framed just head and shoulders. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sipping through a straw from a glass with purple fruit punch and a little umbrella.

“Hey, Kinger,” she said. “That's been so sweet of you and your friends to worry about me and help my Paps. It will be great to see you in person—even though I don't believe half of what MJ says about you. Also, can you tell Paps that I feel horrible that he was worried about me? Mom and I came here because she was offered a great job, and part of the condition was that we didn't tell anybody where we were. We had no idea what was happening while we were here.”

“Kinger,” came MJs voice. His face appeared behind hers. He too was holding a drink with a little umbrella. “You've got to see this place to believe it.”

King felt as confused as when he'd believed that Delamarre was firing a revolver at him.

“Who are we working for?” King asked MJ.

MJ answered. “Ron Delamarre. And loving it.”

King felt his gut tighten. Wrong answer. Delamarre must have made some kind of threat about the others for Amanda and MJ to pretend everything was okay.

“We used to be working for Mr. Pajamas,” MJ said. “But then I learned he was just an intellitar too, so I'm cool for telling a fake president that I would always be ready for briefs that come from him.”

Amanda pushed MJ aside. “I saw the whole video. Hilarious.”

Now King was even more confused. The code word was there, and Amanda and MJ were bantering as if they were relaxing at a party. But what if Delamarre had forced them to reveal the “Mr. Pajamas” code phrase?

The iPhone switched from rear camera to front camera again, and Delamarre said, “Kinger. Go back to your hotel. I've already got a pilot and my own private chopper waiting on the roof. He'll take you and the suits with you, and we can continue this conversation in person. I've got a couple of lunch baskets on the chopper, but you might want to wait for the buffet I've got set up here. We're poolside. My chef, I will immodestly say, is the best that money can buy.”

“No,” King said. “Not until I talk to my father.”

Delamarre shrugged and turned his face away from the iPhone and shouted. “Mack! You were right. He wants to talk to you.”

There was a delay of a few seconds, and then Mack appeared.

“King,” Mack said.

“Mack,” King said. “I've got a question for you. Answer it right if everything is good.”

Mack smiled. “Thanks. I just won my bet with the billionaire big shot.”

A twenty-dollar bill appeared in front of Mack's face. Mack was obviously speaking to Delamarre when he said, “That wasn't the deal. You're supposed to donate the money, in person, to a food-bank organization. And it was twenty if I lost to you, and your donation was supposed to be two thousand if you lost to me.”

Mack turned back to the iPhone. “Ask. We all want you out here as soon as possible. It's a nice setup. Really nice.”

“Blake and the dead man's switch,” King said. “What was the last thing you said to me on the cliff the night we escaped?”

Mack grinned. “I hope you will always remember the ‘more than life' part, because that's what I asked you to always remember, but technically, the last thing I said was ‘go.' ”

King would never forget his father's choked words coming at him through the darkness. “
I love you, son. More than life. Always remember that.
”

King grinned back at Mack. “I forgot the ‘go,' but technically, you're right. That's all I needed.”

Delamarre came back to the screen. “It'll be about fifty-five minutes out here by air. You're good now to catch a ride on the chopper?”

Without hesitation, King answered with one word. “Yes.”

“Ta-ta,” Delamarre said, wiggling his fingers goodbye. The screen went dark again.

Mundie said to King, “This could still be a trap. You're going to trust Delamarre?”

“No,” King said. “I'm going to trust my dad.”

CHAPTER 56

On the helicopter, King had tried to stay involved in the conversation of the three CIA agents. They all had headsets, and as promised, lunch baskets were provided.

The inside of the chopper wasn't Spartan, like the ones used by the CIA, but plush with padded leather seats and a minibar and even framed prints on the walls as if it were a tour bus.

But as the chopper headed north and west from Seattle over Puget Sound, King's exhaustion caught up to him. The relief of knowing that his friends and families were safe had drained him completely, and he fell asleep, too tired to even struggle to stay awake as Mundie speculated about intellitars. Weren't they going to find out soon anyway?

King didn't wake until he felt a tapping on his shoulders.

Evans waited until he saw that King was awake.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Evans said to King through the headphones. “We just crossed over Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We've been tracking our route on a maps app on the iPhone. Check out this estate.”

Evans pointed out the window. They might have been five hundred feet high, and the chopper was slowly settling.

To the west, vivid in bright sunshine, was ocean water and other
islands on the horizon. Below was a cluster of buildings surrounded by high stone walls that made it look like a small kingdom. In the center was a large swimming pool with turquoise water. A group of people were staring upward at the chopper and waving.

“Cool,” King said. He looked at Evans and Moore and Mundie in their suits. “A bit overdressed for a pool party, aren't you?”

Delamarre refused to talk business until everyone had eaten lunch. And until Evans and Moore and Mundie had accepted and changed into the shorts and shirts and sandals that Delamarre kept in the pool house as spares for guests.

Now King sat with those four beneath sun umbrellas, overlooking the pool. The five of them. All the others were enjoying pool activities—Amanda and Blake and MJ, along with the parents.

“Let's get this over with,” Delamarre said. “I'm in a good mood, and I want to enjoy the sunshine. Then I need to get back to work. Once you clear me, my shares are going to skyrocket. I need to talk to my stockbroker and pick up some big chunks of low-priced stock.”

“Don't be so sure,” Mundie said.

Delamarre grinned his disarming grin. “Even in shorts and sandals, you still can't get away from that suit, can you.”

“My job—”

Delamarre interrupted Mundie. “Your job means doing what is right for America. Mine too. So hear me out, okay?”

“I'm good with that,” Moore said. “And I'm the one who should be the maddest. Delamarre was the one who squeezed me by faking a kidnapping of my granddaughter.”

Mundie seemed to relax. “Okay. It's a nice day at the pool. I'll listen like a guy wearing shorts and sandals. For now.”

“And golf after,” Delamarre said. “Great course, just down the road. I'll bet you play to a low handicap, right? Actually, it would be an unfair bet. I did some intel work on you. Your index is 2.3. Got a soft high draw?”

“Doubt I'll have time for golf. I'll need to put together a report and then get ready to resign for messing up.”

“In that case,” Delamarre said, “why not play golf first? You can't get in any more trouble than what you're facing now.”

Oddly, that really seemed to settle Mundie, whose smile this time was genuine. “Tell us about intellitars.”