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  “Perhaps I’ll have that cup of tea after all.” Krone reached for the pot of steaming water and poured some into a cup before adding a teabag and a bit of cream. “You know, it’s rather odd,” he said, voice calm, face devoid of emotion. “I mean, here we’ve worked together for, what is it now . . . nearly a decade? Yet we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting before today. If you don’t mind my asking, why now?”

  Lobo sat at the edge of the couch, leaning forward. His forearms rested on his knees and his fingers were interlocked as he looked directly at Krone. “I need to know that I can trust you,” he said. “And the only way to know if you can trust a man is to look him in the eyes.”

  “I see,” Krone said, unflinching under the scrutiny. “Have I given you a reason to question my loyalty?”

  “I’ve never been the trusting sort,” Lobo said. “It’s not terribly prudent in our line of work, as I’m sure you would agree.”

  Krone bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of the statement.

  “I’ll be frank,” Lobo said. “There is an entire planet filled with monsters like you, and they’re all chomping at the bit to turn Earth into their new home. It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen, and that alone is enough for me to doubt your loyalties.”

  “So I’m a monster, am I?” Krone asked, looking relaxed as he sipped his tea. Lobo started to clarify his point, but Krone raised his hand to cut him off. “I understand what you’re saying, and it’s a perfectly fair point.”

  “So why should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  Lobo narrowed his eyes.

  “Look, I could give you a litany of reasons why I won’t betray our pact,” Krone said. “I could start with the fact that I was born here on Earth and have very little love for my home world. I could tell you that you’ve paid me handsomely over the years, affording me a lifestyle I might never have known. But we both know none of that matters.”

  He set his cup back on the saucer. “There are other important people besides Senator Bishop who would like to see you replaced. Who’s to say I won’t align myself with them should your downfall become imminent? Or if they simply offer more money?”

  “And your response?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Krone said after a lengthy pause. “You need me, and I always deliver. Trust has nothing to do with it. Besides, my record stands for itself. Once I accept a contract, I don’t break it.”

  Lobo sat with jaw clenched and brows furrowed. With a single word, his agents could eliminate Krone if it came to that, but the assassin was right. Trust was impossible. Even foolish. “Then I take it you’ll accept the job under our current terms?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Krone said. “I’ll need double the usual number, half wired to my account within the hour and the other half payable once the job is complete.”

  “Then it needs to happen tonight,” Lobo said. “Senator Bishop is set to speak at a fund-raiser for a congressional candidate in Tucson. Your flight leaves in an hour.”

  :: CHAPTER 6 ::

  Lobo arranged for a private jet to fly Krone from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Tucson, where a driver took him to the Ventana Canyon Resort. Though it was late October, the sun was shining in the vast blue sky. It was perfect weather for golf, and Senator Bishop was about to tee off on the third hole of the Mountain Course. He was there with Jeff Wilson, the Republican nominee for the 8th Congressional District, along with a Secret Service agent and two influential donors who had organized the thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser for Wilson’s campaign.

  The Republicans hoped to regain control of the United States Congress, and this was one of the races they were banking on to get their majority. Polls showed that Wilson trailed the Democratic incumbent, Alicia Alvarez, by six points. The hope was that an endorsement from Senator Bishop—not to mention the contributions from that evening—would be enough to push Wilson past Alvarez.

  Krone tipped the driver handsomely and walked into the lobby, which was filled with middle-aged men in golf shirts and khaki pants, as well as beautiful women wearing designer clothes and expensive jewelry. It was no doubt a gathering of Tucson’s elite—doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, as well as a television anchor whom Krone recognized from one of the twenty-four-hour cable news stations.

  “So much for the impartiality of the press,” he said under his breath.

  Krone thought about posing as one of the housekeepers, or even as a waiter delivering room service, but with the Secret Service agents hovering around the senator’s room, there were too many eyes. Better, he thought, to wait for the dinner, where things could be more discreet.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon at the bar, where he watched television and enjoyed a grilled portabella mushroom sandwich with avocados and sprouts. The news was focused on the reactor leak in Iowa. All across the Midwest, churches, homeless shelters, and even a chain of health clubs had opened their doors to take in displaced families.

  As the afternoon lingered, the bar started to empty. People went back to their rooms to get ready for dinner, leaving Krone alone with the bartender. He looked down at his watch. The wait-staff was set to meet in the Grand Ballroom in ten minutes, so he finished off his bottle of sparkling water and paid for his tab in cash.

  As Krone walked across the grounds back toward the main building, he pulled out his phone and opened an image of the employee he was going to impersonate. Israel Sandoval was a twenty-three-year-old college graduate who had recently been accepted to the University of Arizona medical school. He was handsome, like a Latin pop star, but more important he had just moved to town. That meant he hadn’t been on the job long enough for anyone to grow accustomed to the nuances of his inflection or body movement.

  That afternoon the real Israel received a call from his supervisor. According to the Secret Service, employees who hadn’t been at the resort for at least three months weren’t allowed to work the event. But the person on the other end of the call wasn’t his supervisor at all. It was Krone.

  Krone walked through a service door and into a winding labyrinth of hallways. His skin started to bubble, and for a moment it looked like it was melting. Bone cracked and cartilage shifted, his blue eyes faded to brown, and his hair grew longer. In the blink of an eye, Krone became a living replica of Israel Sandoval. And short of a blood test, no one other than his mother would know the difference.

  He removed his watch, cuff links, jacket, and tie, then placed them all in his briefcase, which he hid behind a bin of white tablecloths. Then he rolled up his sleeves and walked into the employee locker room.

  A heavyset man in his early twenties greeted him as though they knew each other. He had a mass of red hair and he was trying to fasten a cummerbund around the girth of his stomach. He wasn’t having much luck. Krone forced a smile as he nodded and waved. It was best to avoid talking whenever possible. Mimicking other voices had always been the most difficult part of the job, and even though he had listened to tapes of Israel talking during his flight, Krone wasn’t sure he could pull it off on such short notice.

  He walked over to the rack of uniforms hanging across the back wall and found the one with Israel’s name pinned to the jacket. He changed into a tuxedo with a black bow tie and matching cummerbund and listened to the banquet manager, who was flanked by two Secret Service agents.

  “Can you believe this?”

  Krone turned to see the man with the red hair standing next to him, smiling.

  “I mean, Senator Bishop is the first presidential candidate I ever voted for. Do you think they’ll fire me if I try and get a picture with him?”

  :: CHAPTER 7 ::

  It didn’t take long for the tables in the dining hall to fill up. Krone was assigned to a section in the back of the room that included a table for local media, but somehow the guy with the red hair, whose name was Harry, was up front serving Senator Bishop’s table.

  Once everyone was seated, salads were serv
ed and the program began. The emcee for the evening welcomed the guests and thanked them for their generous contributions before saying a few words about Jeff Wilson.

  “How’s it going over there?” Krone asked as Harry walked over to the bar with a tray of empty glassware.

  “Terrible.” Harry took a stack of napkins and dabbed at the perspiration that beaded on his forehead.

  “Is he a jerk or something?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Harry said as he tossed the napkins into the trash.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “I kind of spilled a pitcher of water on his wife.”

  Krone started to laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” Harry said. “I’m going to get fired.”

  “Why don’t you let me bring them another round of drinks? That way you can compose yourself before you head back over.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Harry’s voice trailed off as he looked back at the senator’s table. “What if the Secret Service guys think I’m up to something?”

  “After the stunt you just pulled, I’m pretty sure your name is already on a terrorist watch list.” Krone smiled, trying to put Harry at ease.

  “Okay, but just this round. I want to go put on more deodorant and get a new shirt. I’m sweating like a pig.”

  With Harry out of sight and the bartender distracted with another order, Krone reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a vial filled with a clear liquid called tetrodotoxin. The lethal neurotoxin is found in the liver of puffer fish, and there is no known antidote. He removed the lid with his thumb and poured the contents into Senator Bishop’s vodka martini, which he quickly stirred before adding two olives.

  Krone carried the tray of drinks on his fingertips like a seasoned professional, weaving through the tables. He was about to serve the senator’s wife when one of the Secret Service agents grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Who are you?” He was short, but he had broad shoulders and a thick neck, not to mention an FN Five-Seven semiautomatic pistol that he carried under his jacket.

  “Harry asked me to deliver these,” Krone said. “He’s kind of flustered after what happened. I’m just helping him out.”

  “If you’re going to pat him down, hurry up,” Senator Bishop said from his seat at the table. “But let the man serve the drinks, Rusty.”

  The Secret Service agent bit the inside of his cheek as he looked from Krone to the drinks and then to the senator. Krone could tell that he was considering breaking protocol. With a sigh, Rusty waved him on.

  “There’s a good man,” Senator Bishop said as he took a last bite of his salad.

  “We’re terribly sorry about the mishap,” Krone said. “If there’s anything we can do—”

  “You’re halfway there.” The senator accepted the martini. “Now if you can make sure that everyone stays awake during my speech, we’ll call it even.” Everyone at the table laughed as Krone watched the senator take a sip of his drink.

  A few minutes later Harry was back in a fresh shirt, smelling like a mixture of aerosol deodorant and drugstore aftershave. “How did it go?”

  “Everything is going according to plan.” Krone patted Harry on the back. “But you might want to see if Senator Bishop wants another martini. I think he already finished the last one.”

  Harry brought the senator another martini, returning a few minutes later with the dirty glass that held the evidence of the neurotoxin. Krone watched as it was placed on a tray before it was brought back to the kitchen.

  The rest of the servers started to clear the dinner plates as the lights dimmed and the emcee returned to the stage. “So that’s what a thousand-dollar filet mignon tastes like,” he said, earning perfunctory laughter as he patted his stomach and smacked his lips. “Well, as long as it helps us regain Congress, it was well worth it!”

  That time the crowd erupted, and the emcee basked in their applause before he raised his hands to quiet everyone down. “Now, without further ado, it is my distinguished honor to introduce the esteemed five-term senator from this great state of Arizona, the honorable Samuel Bishop.”

  The crowd rose in thunderous applause, and Krone watched as the senator wiped his mouth and then his brow before steadying himself against the table. His wife leaned over, concern on her face, but he patted her hand and smiled before he stood. The ovation continued as he walked to the stage, where he shook hands with the emcee. His face was pale, his brow covered in sweat as he turned to wave to the audience. Then he fell, unconscious.

  A collective gasp rose from the audience as the emcee knelt next to him, confused. Secret Service agents rushed to the stage, and Krone slipped out the door and into the service corridor. His face morphed back to the way it had looked when he first arrived as he removed his tuxedo jacket and dumped it in the trash. He grabbed his briefcase and pulled out his phone to send a simple text.

  It’s done.

  Moments later his phone beeped with a return message. It was the address of a home in Chandler, Arizona, along with a picture of a teenaged boy with blond hair that hung over his blue eyes.

  :: CHAPTER 8 ::

  A couple months ago life had been perfect. Colt had been living in San Diego, surfing and hanging out with his friends. Aliens and monsters were nothing more than fictional creatures, and if there was such a thing as a federal curfew, nobody enforced it. His family lived in a big house near the beach, his parents were alive and together, and they actually showed interest in his life.

  The past felt like it belonged to someone else, something he could have read about or watched on television. It was too perfect, too pristine. And it was gone. His parents had been murdered, he’d moved to Arizona to live with his grandfather, and those aliens and monsters? It turned out they were real.

  Law enforcement across the globe had been overrun with calls from people who had seen strange creatures from myth and legend, and now policemen patrolled the streets in riot gear carry ing automatic weapons. Everyone under the age of eighteen had to be inside by ten o’clock, and in less than a week Colt was moving again—this time to a top secret military school in Virginia where they were going to train him to save the world.

  The debate was finally over. There were at least eleven other planets that supported complex life forms, and for all Colt knew there could be thousands more. One of those life forms—a race of six-armed walking reptiles called the Thule—had picked Earth to be their next home, and they weren’t interested in sharing it with the current residents.

  It was just past nine o’clock on Tuesday night when Colt walked through the kitchen door and threw his keys on the countertop. He’d spent the last few hours at the shooting range with Oz, working on his marksmanship with a Jericho 941 semiautomatic pistol and a Dragunov SVD sniper rifle. It was a lot easier than flying through the air at eighty miles per hour and trying to hit holograms with a laser gun, but it would be years until he was as good as Oz.

  He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bucket of leftover chicken, but he didn’t bother warming it up or even sitting down at the table. The television was on in the living room, tuned in to one of the news stations that Grandpa watched. The volume was all the way down, so Colt couldn’t hear what the anchor was saying, but there was an image of Senator Bishop on the screen just over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Grandpa said as he walked out of his office, startling Colt. His eyes were rimmed with red and his voice was heavy with emotion.

  Looking at Grandpa was like looking at his own father. Sure, Grandpa was a few years older, but they had the same face, right down to the intense eyes. Both were tall and thin, but strong, with broad shoulders and ridiculously perfect posture, like they were always standing at attention. If Colt hadn’t known better, he would have thought Dad was Grandpa’s clone, not his son. It was eerie and comforting at the same time.

  Grandpa walked over to the coffeepot and poured a fresh cup. He was a man of few words, and when he spoke it could be g
ruff. But Colt knew the real man—the man who had sat at his wife’s bedside for months, reading Scripture or simply holding her hand as the cancer coursed through her body. He was a tireless advocate for military veterans, giving both his time and money. And he took Colt in when Colt felt like he had nowhere else to go. Sure, he could have stayed with one of his seven brothers, but they had lives of their own. They didn’t need him underfoot, and since Grandpa was alone it seemed like a good enough fit.

  “Are you okay?” Colt asked.

  “You remember Senator Bishop?”

  Colt nodded.

  “He passed away tonight.”

  Colt frowned as he turned his attention to the television where they were showing footage of the senator and his wife at a political rally. Grandpa had been a friend of Senator Bishop’s since they served together during the Korean War. The families remained close over the years, so Colt knew that news of the senator’s death had to be hard on Grandpa.

  “What happened?”

  “According to the reports, he had a heart attack.”

  Something in his tone made Colt think that there was more to it. “You don’t think it was an accident, do you?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  “But who . . . ?”

  “That’s the question now, isn’t it?” He walked over to the living room and turned the volume up on the television just as the news shifted from Senator Bishop to the reactor leak in Iowa. Crews had been working around the clock to bring everything under control, but three of the contaminated workers had already passed away.

  “Any more news about the virus?” Colt asked.

  “Not much.” Grandpa took a sip of his coffee. He had been one of the first recruits in the history of the CHAOS program, and even though he was retired, he still served as an advisor from time to time. That meant he had clearance to information that was off limits to most politicians and heads of state.