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Cope was in the tent before Ogden even finished the second sentence. He must have been waiting right outside, just in case he was needed. You didn’t get guys like Cope all that often.

“Sir?”

“Where the h.e.l.l are my updates on the air search?”

“Nothing so far,” Cope said. “All recon flights came up negative. Satellite squints say the same thing. Doesn’t look like there’s a construct within at least fifty miles.”

d.a.m.n it. It had to be out there. Bernadette Smith had tried to escape. So had Ryan Roznowski. How many infected had slipped out, either between the roadblocks or before Ogden arrived? No maps this time: none in Smith’s car or at her house. Same for Roznowski, and the Jewell place was a cinder. No clues.

If they were going to find the gate’s location, once again it was all up to Perry Dawsey.

APB ON CLAN JEWELL

Dew Phillips sat in the MargoMobile’s computer room. He and Perry had the room to themselves. Gitsh, Marcus, Margaret and Clarence were all in the Trailer B containment cell, locking down a feisty Bernadette Smith.

Dew wanted to hit a certain chief of staff, then rub her face in broken gla.s.s and finish up with a nice salt.w.a.ter spritz on the fresh cuts.

“Dew, you okay?” Perry asked. “You’ve got veins pulsing in the top of your big bald head.”

“I’m not okay,” Dew said. “f.u.c.k, we had them.”

Vanessa Colburn was the reason the Jewells had escaped. If she’d just let Murray do his thing, Dew would have that family in custody right now.

“We almost had who?” Perry said.

“The Jewells. Those bodies we found in the fire? Not the Jewell family. We don’t know who the woman is. The man was Wallace Beckett. Identified from dental records. They’re guessing the dead kid is his son, Beck. They searched the Beckett house, found Nicole Beckett chopped up and stuffed into a laundry hamper.”

“But Margaret said the man had triangles.”

“That’s what’s f.u.c.ked up,” Dew said. “Wallace Beckett did have triangles. The Jewell family was a man, a woman and a kid. We found the bodies of a man, a woman and a kid, and the man had triangles. Sounds familiar, right? Man gets triangles, goes gonzo, whacks his family.”

“Wait a minute,” Perry said. “You’re saying the Jewells killed three people, including a host, so we would think it was a nice neat package while they skipped town?”

“Try to keep up, college boy,” Dew said. “Clan Jewell pulled the switcheroo on us. We didn’t even bother to search the f.u.c.king area.”

“Then who is the woman?”

Dew shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not Candice Jewell, though. They know that from dental records, too. So we have three bodies, none of which belong to the Jewells. The Jewells, who are nowhere to be found. If they took off right when they started the fire, we’re talking a fifteen-hour head start. They could be f.u.c.king anywhere.”

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