September 9th, 2027

David woke up to a jolt, a sickly feeling that made him think he’d awoken in midair. Adrenaline had already begun pumping through his veins and he reached out in every direction with each of his limbs, searching for something to hang on to. He tried to twist his body parallel to the ground, but found his chest was restricted.

His hands hit cold metal and his feet thumped on what sounded like an aluminum floor. His eyes snapped open. Immediately he felt foolish for his hasty reaction.

They were in a helicopter—he, Miri, and Juliet—flying toward the White House. In fact, they were already at the White House, touching down for a landing. That must have been what had woken him.

How he’d managed to sleep during the three minutes it took to get from Reagan Washington National Airport to the front lawn of the White House escaped him. The two days of little sleep due to insomnia and being a wanted man had finally caught up to him, apparently.

Miranda sat next to him, strapped into the same kind of harness all three of them were subjected to. Juliet sat across from them in a single seat, hands folded neatly in her lap. Both of them were snickering at his surprised reaction.

The adrenaline eased out of his veins and blood rushed to his face.

“I don’t like flying,” he said. It only deepened the smiles on their faces and Miri laughed out loud.

“Out of everything we’ve been through so far flying is what’s giving you nightmares?”

“Well look at that!” David yelled, motioning to his left where the chopper revealed most of D.C. They were coming in for a landing, but still a good hundred feet in the air. “Take one wrong step and you’ll never step again.”

Miri chuckled at the energy with which he displayed his fear. He probably hadn’t been so vibrant the past few days. That nap during the flight, even if the plane had been as crowded and germ-infested as a group of Johnny-On-The-Spots at a NASCAR race, had been one of the best he’d ever had.

The chopper came to a slow descent and then a full stop, at which point it simply started falling. To David, it felt like being in a roller coaster that was doomed to fly off the tracks and to oblivion.

But oblivion never greeted him. The helicopter set down softly on the verdant grass and David grappled with the harness they’d strapped him into. He managed to shake the thing free while the pilot eyed him as if he’d never seen a stranger sight.

Two large men in suits and red ties were approaching from the White House’s entrance by the time David stepped out of the chopper and onto firm ground. The chopper blades swirled around about three feet above, but David ducked anyway. He must have seemed a bit faint-hearted to the two bodyguards directly in front of him, who stood tall despite being so close to decapitation.

“Mister Penner?” one of them boomed. David nodded and checked to make sure Miri and Juliet were by his side. They were. “Our orders are to take you to the situation room.”

“Let’s go then,” David returned.

“Of course. This way, sir.”

The two turned as one and headed back in through the front door. David followed them and, close behind him, so did Miri and Juliet. The guards held the doors open for them and David stepped inside the White House.

It dawned on him then. There he was, a twenty-three-year-old college punk, standing in the lobby of the White House because he’d been summoned there on the president’s personal request. For a brief moment, David allowed himself to set aside the graveness of the circumstance and focus on how astounding it was to simply be there.

Miri stepped up to his left and gave him a knowing smile. The awe had gotten to her, too.

Then the guards were ushering them forward once more, and David had to put aside the thought for now. He tailed them closely until they reached a closed steel door that looked as if it could withstand the unleashing of hell itself. This was the situation room.

One of the suits flashed an ID card in front of a panel on the wall and the door clicked open. He shoved it wide, but didn’t go in. Instead he gestured David inside.

“Thank you,” he said as he stepped in.

Three men stood in the room, two wearing expensive-looking suits and one wearing merely a white button-up shirt and tan slacks.

The man standing next to the cherrywood desk was President Frank Thomas; David recognized him immediately, of course. The one standing from the lounger against the adjacent wall took longer to recognize, but eventually David made out the long nose and bushy brows to be Arthur Slogan.

The third man was completely unfamiliar. Odd, considering that David’s mind prevented him from forgetting a face. He knew most of the important politicians and this man wasn’t one of them.

“David,” Slogan said, walking to greet him, hand extended.

David took his hand. “Mister Slogan. Nice to meet you in person.” He then motioned for Miri. “This is my sister, Miranda.”

Introductions between David, Juliet and Miri to President Thomas and his most trusted advisor, John Walker, ensued. David thought it odd that the president would involve his spiritual advisor in their predicament, but he was the president after all. He could involve his eight-year-old son, for all David cared.

And he liked John. The man had a certain quality about him, somewhat like The Mentalist, only about fifteen years older and more mature. A definitely intriguing man.

When introductions were over, the real meat of the situation began. The president offered them seats. Miri and Juliet took them, but David preferred to stand. It helped him think when he was on his feet.

“So I suppose the real question is,” David started. Let out a bottled breath. “What are we going to do about Darrow?”

Everyone aside from he and John Walker had taken a seat. The man was pacing, like David, stroking his chin. It was only then that he realized his psychology professor back at the University had the same last name. What a hilarious coincidence it would be if they were actually related. It was a common name, though. Nothing more.

The president leaned forward in his chair situated behind the desk and put his elbows on the wood, clasping his hands. “We have reason to believe he’s headed for a friend’s residence. A Russian. We don’t know who.”

They’d suspected already? Then why hadn’t they moved?

“He’s going to Moscow?” David asked, more than a little surprise playing in his voice. He’d expected it because of Mark’s affinity for Russia, but he’d thought it too obvious.

“Why do you say that?” John asked. He stopped pacing and held his hand steadily on his jaw.

“His machine; he calls it the Kremlin. Not to mention that he loves Moscow more than any place in the world. He’s got plenty of friends there who would gladly harbor him from the big bad United States.”

“You know about his personal life?” Slogan asked. The man leaned forward, interested in this new tidbit he hadn’t anticipated.

“Mark and I were friends once, and I mean that very lightly. Before we learned each others’ theories regarding the origins of life he was a perfectly nice person. We even did a few research experiments together.”

Everyone’s faces creased, including Miri’s and Juliet’s, each one startled by his admission.

“So you drank tea with the same guy who’s ready to kill us all,” Miri said. “How quaint.”

David shrugged off her remark. “What matters is he’s probably going to Moscow, assuming your information is good. Wasn’t the federal communications grid tapped?”

“It’s good,” John interjected. “Trust me. This little nugget wasn’t received on any communications network. Darrow’s headed for a Russian associate of his.”

David nodded, deferring to the man. He got the sense that this presidential advisor was much more than just a source of religious guidance. Something about the man screamed that he was extraordinarily smart, far beyond his years. For whatever reason, he’d been brought into their situation too, and they could use all the help they could get.

“Okay,” David said. “Then check his friends in Moscow. That ought to help your search quite a bit. In the meantime, I think you mentioned wanting me to look over Darrow’s schematics?” He directed the question to the president because Slogan was already on his phone, no doubt working on narrowing down their suspect list.

“Indeed we did,” the president replied. “Though I’m certain that right now our analysts can get by just fine. I need your help determining the best way to bring Darrow in peacefully. I’ve called in all favors; every last IOU and political pool I had, I’ve used to get everyone I can on our side. The British and French have already agreed to help us in whatever way they can, along with several other nations. But I don’t want things to get out of hand. I want to get Darrow back here without alerting anyone who doesn’t need to know. Our allies have already agreed not to alert the press. Neither will we. Most importantly, I want Darrow back without having him detonate a warhead somewhere.”

David nodded and began pacing again, trying to get the president what he wanted. Ideas flashed through his mind like flies around a picnic, and each one was shot down by either lack of time or being unrealistic.

“I can’t think of anything,” he had to confess. “I’m sure I will eventually, but right now nothing sounds reasonable.”

The president nodded and Slogan finished his phone call. He immediately faced David, flipped through something on his phone, and began reading a message while simultaneously speaking to the room.

“We’ve got four names,” he explained. “All of them close associates of Darrow based in Moscow. We’re working on singling them out further as we speak.”

“Let me have a crack at it,” David said. It wasn’t likely that he could pick anyone out just by knowing that they existed, but it couldn’t hurt for future reference.

Slogan nodded. “Nikola Potemkin, entrepreneur; Dmitri Radzlov, member of the Council of the Federation; Peter Yaroslav, another businessman; and Yared Krseca, owner of the Moscow Shipping Company. As you can imagine, these are all quite powerful men in Russia.”

David wandered off into his mind, deep in thought. Surprising that Darrow had made friends with a Russian legislator. Could he be the one? Possibly, but he doubted Darrow had that much influence to corrupt a government official. Besides, it would be too obvious.

The others were no more convincing. It could easily be any or none of them.

“Nothing, sorry,” he admitted.

“You’ve never heard of them before?”

David shook his head and frowned. They were getting nowhere.

“Well, it was a long shot at best,” the president said. “Nothing the CIA and NSA can’t figure out in due time.”

“Assuming they aren’t compromised,” Miranda said, her first addition to the conversation aside from the earlier sarcastic remark. “I wasn’t privy to the specifics of the Secretary’s call to David yesterday, but from what we could understand it sounds like Darrow may even have agents in the government. I was handed my assignment from Frederickson himself and based on what I heard, he shouldn’t have known anything about the situation.”

“You’re not wrong,” Slogan said, staring at a random section of the floor. His and the president’s faces both darkened considerably. “Before my call to David there should have been only three people who knew anything about this . . . at the time all we could consider it was a fantasy. Now it seems there are several more we didn’t know about. Likely the mole here in the White House sent out the information to Darrow’s agents.”

“Assuming they are Darrow’s,” John stated. “I’m still convinced he doesn’t know a thing about this.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” David said, knowing he was anything but sorry given the direness of their predicament, “but did you say there’s a mole in the White House?”

“There was,” the president corrected. “It’s been handled.”

“They didn’t give up any information, did they?” Juliet asked, and David realized she had been mostly quiet up until this point as well.

“Only that whoever is scheming with Darrow—or using him—” the president said, looking to John to give credence to his theory, “is based in Russia. She didn’t seem to know much.”

“Of course. Terrorist cells are highly compartmentalized. If one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing it’s harder for their enemy to see the entire plan.”

Slogan tipped his head to Juliet. “Which is why we’ve begun treating this matter with the utmost severity. Given the events of the last twenty-four hours, we can’t afford to treat this as a ghost story any longer. Darrow has plans for a device that could potentially wreak havoc on half the world. Whether he intends to use it in this fashion or not, he fled the country to seek shelter in the arms of an ally who sent an assassin after David and Miranda. Regardless of his motives, he and whoever he’s working with have to be stopped at all costs.”

A grave solemnity filled the room. David only then understood the severity that came with a declaration of war; that’s essentially what they were doing, after all. Claiming war on Darrow, doing everything within their power to stop him because he hadn’t stopped to listen. David imagined this was how it felt to the war council when they’d decided to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. If ever there were a time to be conflicted about a certain course of action, now was that time.

Suddenly a buzzing sound filled the room. It was distant, like it was coming from outside, but it packed the room full of a dull succession of beats. No one dared to speak for the sake of trying to determine the source.

The president turned to Slogan, who looked just as surprised as David felt. “I wasn’t aware there was anyone else arriving by chopper.”

That was it, a chopper was coming in for a landing. The spinning of its wings was what was causing the dull thudding to permeate the room.

“Neither was I,” Slogan said.

He didn’t have the chance to investigate via his phone or explain, because several holes exploded in the wall behind David followed by an enormous rattling and continuous booming. He jerked to the side instinctually and flung himself against the adjacent wall as more and more of the wall containing the door shot apart, piece by piece flying into the air followed by dust.

“Chopper fire!” Juliet yelled over the sound of the enormous rounds being pumped out of the chopper turrets. David couldn’t see them—in fact, he hardly dared to look away from Miri crouching beside him, cradling her gun—but he could hear. The cacophony of the explosions sending the bullets on their way was head-splitting.

The door flung open and one of the suits that had escorted David inside earlier stepped through, gun in hand.

“Mister President! We have to get you to—”

His body jerked when four holes pounded through him from behind. Maroon blood spurted from his chest in the same four places and the man’s leg was shot out from beneath him. He dropped to the floor when a fifth shot emerged from his sternum, severing his spinal cord.

David watched in horror. Time ceased to exist. He heard voices screaming faintly, but in his mind he had already drowned them out along with the nerve-racking sound of gunshots.

He stared at the guard who had slumped to the ground, lifeless. Eyes still open.

Staring directly at David. Cold and dead.

“David?” he heard from somewhere. It didn’t matter. He zoned it out and continued looking into those numb, unresponsive hazel eyes. No one had ever looked at him from beyond the grave.

“David!”

Miranda slapped David back to reality. Time became real again and the deafening sounds of destruction came back, along with the sight of half the room being gone. Not destroyed, not lacerated by the succession of bullets, simply gone. Whatever ammunition their attackers were using, it was bigger than the kind of ammo they used in regular guns. Big enough to cause half of the room to split apart and fall down to the grass outside.

Then he realized they were completely exposed. He could see half of D.C. out the emptiness.

“We have to go!” Miranda screamed. Her voice barely carried over the din of war.

David nodded and tried to shake off those dead eyes.

“Mister President!” Juliet yelled. She was pressed up against the wall where the bodyguard had emerged through the door. In fact, she was only a foot or so from the door itself. “We have to get you out of here!”

The President crossed over to her from David’s left, followed by Slogan and then John Walker. The enemy chopper had either fled or moved to a different section of the White House, because the shots being fired were now only those of rifles and pistols.

That didn’t make David feel any easier. The pistols were undoubtedly those of the White House guards, but the rifles had to belong to enemy foot soldiers. The attack force was much larger than they’d originally thought.

“Come on,” Juliet said, back to a normal tone. She shoved the door wide, checking the hallway first from the security of their room, then she swept out and cleared the other side. The president followed her closely, as did the other two.

“Follow them,” Miri whispered, grabbing David by the arm and shoving him to his feet. “I’ll be right behind you.”

David started for the door, smelling the smoke rising from somewhere else nearby. Then he remembered the guard’s gun.

He reached for it quickly as he passed the body, forcing himself not to look in the man’s eyes. His hand found the cold steel despite him not truly focusing on what he was doing. His mind was more on the body than the gun.

It didn’t seem right taking a dead man’s gun.

He’d approve, David told himself. Anything to protect the president.

“What are you doing?” Miri asked him, shoving him through the door. Juliet had already started down the hall, moving slowly to check for enemies.

“I’m helping,” David replied. He pulled the top of the gun back, chambering a round.

Miri sighed, not having the time for an argument in the middle of the chaos. “Hold it like this,” she said, straightening her arms out and holding her own pistol with one hand on the grip and the other firmly cupped under it.

David straightened his arms in the same manner and gripped the gun tightly, tilting his head slightly to be able to see down the sights.

“Good. Just don’t bend your arms and you’ll be fine.”

They caught up with Juliet and her followers, who had almost reached the end of the hall. David kept his eyes shifting about the room, walking backwards to watch out for anyone who might come up behind them. Miri stood next to him, holding her weapon with much more confidence.

He admired her for that. They were in the middle of the most danger David had ever faced in his life, sure, but he had to find something positive to think about. That came in the form of Miri’s bravery. They were being attacked at the White House, supposedly one of the most secure locations in the country, and she stood there with a gun in hand ready to deal with whatever threat presented itself.

David, on the other hand, was fighting terror with every part of his being. Fear clawed at his mind, trying to get him to break down right in the middle of that hallway. But he was determined to stay calm, no matter how impossible it seemed. The Penner stubbornness, their mother had once said, was as dangerous as any idiot in a car. She’d made the remark a day after David’s father had been killed.

Odd that he was thinking about his parents during such a time.

Miri stooped over another guard and grabbed his gun, ejecting the magazine from it. Did she really think they would run into that much opposition? Apparently. She searched his body to David’s revulsion and tossed him a spare magazine as well. She should be giving them to Juliet, instead.

David glanced back at her and found that she had two extra clips stuffed between her jeans and belt. She certainly didn’t look the part of a soldier, dressed in a red silk blouse, jeans, and high-heels. Miri, on the other hand, could very well be a notorious assassin in her business suit and stone face. They hadn’t had the opportunity to change.

The light disappeared from the hallway. David shifted his gaze to the headlights above.

Dead. Every light in the White House had gone completely dead. They’d cut the power.

David glanced back down the hallway and saw the light of mid-evening pouring through the conference room. Daylight was the only light left in the building.

Unfortunately, the only light coming in from the outside was the light in what was left of the conference room. The rest of the White House would be as dark as the hall they were cautiously ambling down unless their attackers had destroyed the outer wall of the building.

They edged through the hallway carefully, the president and his trusted advisors creeping along carefully behind Juliet. It struck David that they didn’t really know where they were going, just that they were leaving the vulnerability of the president’s conference room.

And heading toward the gunshots.

Juliet reached the lobby and pulled up, motioning for them to stop. She headed out a bit further and glanced down to her left, where the entrance was.

A streak of ambient light slapped against the floor and wall in front of her, then began to thicken. Juliet hurried backward quickly, commanding the three men in her protection to get behind her.

Footsteps came to David’s ears. The dull, muted kind that indicated thick boots with rubber soles. These feet belonged to soldiers.

The question was: friend or foe?

Juliet and Miri crouched low to the ground and David thought he should do the same. He held his gun steady, like Miri showed him, aimed down the hall at the lobby. As soon as they walked around that corner, they’d be taken by three separate bullets. Probably more, if Miri’s killing of Darrow’s murderous driver was any indication.

The gunfire had died down severely, and the chopper hadn’t returned yet. That meant that their attackers had killed everyone aside from them or the White House had received reinforcements and driven out the enemy. David so hoped it was the latter.

His hope was shattered when two men entered the lobby holding rifles and wearing civilian clothes.

“Da,” one said to the other. “Ya dumayu, chto vse mertvo.”

Russian? Alarm shot through David’s body and he had to use every last reserve of strength in his fingers to keep from pulling the trigger right then and there. Russian mercenaries had attacked the White House!

They’d been right. Whatever information John had received was definitely from a trustworthy source. Whoever Darrow had run off to must have been preparing for this day for months, possibly longer.

An idea crawled inside David’s mind and filled it with so much conspiracy it was hard to contain. Darrow had never intended to use the Kremlin as a weapon, right? That’s what Juliet had said. What if Darrow’s backer had found out about his device’s possible use as a weapon and merely pulled strings that had been in place for years? Everything that was happening now could only be the result of decades of planning; the only reason they’d just noticed it was because the Russians had finally found the last piece of their plan: the massive yet covert weapon they needed to pull everything off.

David nearly shouted this realization out to his five companions, but quickly remembered where he was and that two Russian mercenaries with guns were directly in front of him.

The soldiers hadn’t noticed Juliet until they were practically on top of her. They didn’t even have a chance to lift their rifles in her direction.

Both Juliet’s and Miri’s pistols fired when shock began to dawn on one soldier’s face. Smoke filled the room as did the deathly booms from the guns. David lifted his pistol and pulled the trigger.

The two soldiers slumped down to their knees, then fell facedown into the ground.

“They’re still alive!” a voice shouted from beyond the entrance. Russian accent.

“Miranda!” Juliet yelled. She slipped around the corner and darted ahead, toward the door, David assumed. Miri ran right behind her.

Gunfire erupted, multiple crescendos of hideous violence, smoke, fire, and steel screaming out in rage.

David darted past the three men still crouching low to the ground and ran with all the strength in his legs to the front door of the White House. Miri and Juliet flanked the door on both sides, returning fire from about two dozen men on the front lawn outside.

A chopper’s remains were gutted and strewn about the grass. The same chopper David, Miri, and Juliet had come in on. It was all David saw before Miri shouted at him to go back, then pulled him to safety next to her. Bullets whizzed past them through the front door and David could hear them thudding into the wall they’d stuck their backs to.

“You have to get the president to safety!” Miri yelled. She threw her arm through the door and fired off three rounds blindly. “We’ll stay here and hold them off.”

“You’re gonna get yourself shot!” David yelled in protest. “This isn’t one guy with a Tahoe in Saint Louis—this is twenty Russian terrorists with rifles and a chopper! I’m not leaving without you!”

“You don’t have a choice! You’re the one tied with Darrow, David, I’m just your sister who happens to have a badge and a gun. You have to get the president out of here and stop him!”

“I can’t just leave you!”

Miri’s jaw clenched tightly. He knew she was just trying to protect him, but he wasn’t about to leave her after they’d finally started building a real relationship. She was all he had.

She stared right into his eyes, and he returned it, letting her know he wasn’t going anywhere without her.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Juliet said. She leaned out of cover and fired a few rounds, then popped out her magazine. “But we are fighting an army here and they’re gaining on us.”

Miri poked her head out just far enough to see the opposition and barely pulled it back in time to avoid automatic rifle fire.

Then the unexpected happened. Reinforcements.

Well, not technically. Back in the main lobby where they’d left the president and his assistants, three men in suits and three more in full combat gear emerged from the hall opposite the one Juliet had led them through. David saw the president say something to one of them and glance in David’s direction, but he couldn’t hear it.

The suits began to lead the president down the hall they’d come from, and the soldiers started approaching them. One was shot in the chest and fell, then got back up. Kevlar armor. They took cover, two by Juliet and one by David.

“The president needs you, son,” the soldier said. An older man, perhaps in his forties, who carried himself like a war-hardened veteran.

“Not without these two,” David told him.

“You’re a critical part of stopping all this,” the man insisted. The president must have told him. “We’ll keep them busy here. You need to get out of here now.”

The battle had increased in intensity with the arrival of three new soldiers. The two who had gone to Juliet’s side of the door rushed outside, taking cover behind the large white pillars. Miri followed them before David could stop her and he took her place by the door, firing his first few shots of the battle.

He pulled himself back in and stared at the soldier. “I’m not leaving these women here just because three soldiers show up and tell me I have to. That’s my sister out there! I’m not moving an inch unless she comes with me.”

“There’s no arguing with a captain of the Marine Corps!” the man shouted. “We can’t sneak six people out of here, boy. They’ve got this building surrounded on all sides with more men than the National Guard knows how to handle. They’ve got at least twelve light combat vehicles and already took down three of our birds. The only chance of getting out of here alive is to meet with the president’s group and get out quick and quiet.”

“Then I won’t make it out of here alive. If they can’t go, neither can I.”

One of the soldiers outside toppled over backwards, grasping at a crimson hole in his gut. This one didn’t make it back up.

The mercenaries were advancing, coming up the left and right using their Jeeps and the trees as cover. They’d even set up sandbag barricades and some were lying flat behind them.

He would die here, in the White House. There was nothing he could do but go down fighting and hope that the president and Slogan could carry on without him.

Death didn’t scare David, even as he saw it in the form of at least twenty advancing Russians shooting wildly at him. It should have, he thought, because he wasn’t sure what would happen after death, but it didn’t.

Miranda’s death, however, did scare him. As did Juliet’s. He couldn’t possibly let either of them die. He had to think of something. Anything to get them all out of there alive.

If they simply turned around and left, the Russians would swarm after them and they’d be lucky to escape with their lives. If they stayed there and continued shooting, same outcome. Those were really the only two options.

The second soldier was kneeling when they shot him. Four times, in the leg, the chest twice, and the throat once. The blood and adrenaline pounded through David so hard he could actually feel it pulsating underneath his skin.

A mercenary ran up the steps in an attempt to get close to Miri, but David raised his gun faster than he would have thought he could and plugged the man twice. This boldness brought on a whole wave of suicidal attackers, seven or eight men who rushed the steps in an attempt to get to Miri. Each of them was felled either by Miri or Juliet or David. The captain began firing at opponents in the distance.

David ran out of ammo. He fumbled to get his spare clip, ejected the spent one, and slid the new one in hastily. Juliet did the same; they were both down to their last magazine.

There was no way they could hold out much longer. The captain cursed violently over David’s stubbornness and the loss of his men, but they were stuck whether he liked it or not.

David ran out of ammo quickly; mercenaries were swarming the steps to the White House now that there was so little resistance, and the ones wearing body armor took two or three shots to fell. Not to mention that David wasn’t exactly the best marksman in the group.

His gun ran dry. The captain handed him a spare pistol, but then Juliet ran out. He only had so many weapons on him.

David threw the pistol to Juliet, seeing as she was the better aim.

Then Miri’s gun emptied.

Weaponless and exposed, she posed absolutely no threat to the horde of men leaping up the steps to assault her. The captain fired away and Juliet spent her entire clip gunning down the multitude of Russians attempting to swarm Miri.

There were just too many.

A bullet struck the captain. Then another. And another.

Their last fully loaded gun went down with their sole hope. Russians swarmed them. Miri was overtaken easily.

One of them struck her in the back of the head with his rifle.

Time stopped.

Miri slumped over, falling into the arms of a mercenary. He retreated.

David screamed.

He picked up the captain’s rifle and smacked the nearest Russian in the skull, then proceeded to unload a torrent of lead on the attackers. Rage flooded his veins, boiling his blood.

The clip ran dry.

They still had Miri.

David swung the rifle at a Russian, then again and again until the hunk of metal collided with a similar one and David lost his grip on it entirely.

“David!” he heard Juliet yell. She was trying to get him to reclaim his sanity and follow her on an escape path. But there was no escape David could take. He wouldn’t leave without Miri.

She disappeared beyond his view entirely, hidden by the swarm of twenty or so mercenaries watching with amusement as David was struck in the gut with a rifle. He reeled back in pain, then sucked in a lungful of air and lunged at the man.

The mercenary’s head exploded, red blood spraying into the air. Juliet had found ammo enough and decided to go down fighting with him.

Shots tore through the crowd of Russians, killing at least four of them before Juliet grunted. David turned around and saw her shoulder dotted with red.

But Miri . . .

Was gone.

He couldn’t save her, no matter how hard he fought the army before him. He may not be able to save Juliet, either.

But her chances were far better. She deserved to live just as much as Miri.

David spun backward, grabbing the spent pistol on the floor and flinging it straight into a mercenary’s face. The man collapsed backward, toppling into the crowd behind him and giving David just enough time to pull Juliet to her feet. He retreated into the lobby of the White House and slammed the door shut behind him. He locked it, for all the good that would do.

The pitch of battle muted, though it was still audible. Bullets scarred the opposite side of the door where two dozen Russians were trying to shoot their way in.

“It’s over,” Juliet said, grasping her shoulder with one hand and hanging onto David with the other. “I’m sorry, David, I can’t even—”

“Don’t,” he said flatly. The fight in his soul was just as heavy as the fight outside. A cold anger washed over him.

Juliet understood and dropped it immediately.

David collected himself physically and guided Juliet to the left, down the hall the president and the others had disappeared down. If they had any sense, they were long gone. Any hope of getting out alive was falsely founded.

Not that it mattered. Darrow had Miri, and David’s imagination of what he would do to her was worse than death.

He had to get Juliet to safety, though. It was the one thing that kept playing in David’s mind. She’d been hurt defending he and Miri and the very least she deserved was to be taken care of.

They made a right into yet another hall and David nearly had a heart attack when he saw a figure crouching there in the shadows. Here was their doom.

No, here was their salvation.

John Walker emerged from the darkness with a grave look David hadn’t expected could come from such a man.

“You okay?” he whispered.

The front door exploded behind them. It was only a matter of seconds before the Russians reached them.

“Come on,” John said. “If you’re up for a bumpy ride, I have a military transport waiting outside.”

David hesitated, but there was no other option.

So they left the White House one person short.