Barbara was unable to measure speed or distance in the landscape of vast grassy plains and distant snow-capped mountains. The white SUV she was in barreled down a country road without any sense of progress. A toy boat adrift on a great sea. The agents who took her had only told her that they were going to "The Ranch." Licence plates from the rare other car told her they were in Montana.

Maybe it was all the traveling, maybe it was not knowing where they were going or what form of incarceration or death was waiting for her there, but Barbara Gracie was lost in thoughts about the Major.

The last few days with him unwound themselves, tormenting her with the world she had lost when he was taken away from her. Regret was for the weak and cowardly. If you lived your life without fear there should be no regrets cluttering the path behind you. But how could she not have regrets? There were so many missed opportunities in those precious hours before happiness disappeared.

Barbara had spent the whole of that final night—ten completely wasted hours—alone down in the Observation Center, while Carlos worked on the floor above her. What did it matter that those floors were a half mile apart. It would have been one elevator ride and they could have been together—they should have been together. If she had but known the future, Barbara would not have squandered those moments. She would have spent them locked in his embrace.

If she tried very hard, Barbara could almost fool herself into remembering the exact smell of him, that scent born from the merging of his aftershave and pomade. It was a unique musky blend with a sharp burn from eucalyptus and alcohol. The Major didn't go in for any of those delicate, all natural creams and lotions so many men used today and which were almost indistinguishable from those used by women. No, everything in his medicine chest came from the drugstore and was no different than what her father had bought in his day.

But it was fading. Just ls the feeling of the contours of his biceps or the lats along of his back were disappearing from the memory of her fingers. Or the sound of his guttural moans as he pounded his body against hers. It was all vanishing, like a great city slipping beneath the sea. Atlantis crumbling in ruins with only the tops of spires and towers still above the surf to remind her that there once had been something wonderful there.

Her world had ended the day The Music Box was attacked and she never saw it coming. Of course, no one could see the future.

What was awaiting her at the end of this day? An execution or a cell?

Since leaving the military airbase, the roads kept getting more rural. The lanes dwindled from six, to four, to two, and now one. It wasn't even paved and seemed to consist of nothing but compressed dust.

"So are you going to tell me what this place is?" She asked the agent at her side.

He and the driver were the same agents that had picked her up at her house in Phoenix just before noon. The timing was worrisome since she had only just stepped through the door minutes before. But if they had knew she was in New York that morning they didn't let on. They informed her she was being moved. What about her things? They would be sent after her, they said.

It was never a good sign when they didn't let you pack.

"I'm sorry." The agent on the backseat with her was an older man with a graying mustache and short, tight afro. He pretended to be friendly, even gracious, but his hand lingered by his hip never too far from his sidearm. "I'm not at liberty to divulge that."

"Come on. We must be almost there—unless after this, we have to hop on horses and ride to this ranch. What difference would it make to tell me? No one's going to overhear you."

"I wish I could." The words were flat and officious. The agent's genial smile was gone along with his pretense of friendliness. "But my orders are—"

"Oh, I get it. You don't know, do you? You two are just delivery men." He didn't answer but his eyes said it all: he was only marginally less in the dark than she was. And it bothered him. "Can you at least tell me how much longer I have to be bumped around on these shitty roads?"

The driver answered. He was young, blond, and never took off his aviator glasses. "ETA is twelve minutes. Just hold tight. It's almost over."

Her mistake had been going home from the airport instead of running. She might not have been able to get far but it was her last chance to get away. No escape had presented itself to her since she was picked up. Part of her wanted to believe Walt wouldn't have sent her back to Phoenix if any harm was planned. But maybe he didn't know about it. Or maybe he did know and welcomed the DTAA cleaning up his mess. At some point she'd have to make a move but jumping from a moving vehicle and getting a bullet in the back wasn't going to improve her circumstances any.

More memories from that final day came back to her.

Another car in another deserted patch of America, only Barbara had been armed and there had only been one DTAA agent. That rat, Grierson.

After the attack, Barbara had tracked down Palmer and he had given up the plant in the Agency. Walt might have been ultimately responsible but Grierson was the one who set them all up. Barbara had always planned to make Walt pay for his part in it, but at least his actions were born from a cause he believed in, with Grierson it was only ever about money.

The scum had actually seemed smug when she confronted him. "How lovely you look this morning," he had said. She had just dragged herself through hell to get there. She had killed, maimed, and torture to find her way to this waste of protein and she was covered in the blood of the bodies she had climbed over to get to him. Barbara knew there was nothing about her on that morning that should elicit anything but disgust and fear. But here was this smarmy ass making jokes.

She put a bullet straight into his right shoulder. He cried out and there was a thud as something hit the floor at his feet. It was felt more than heard. In the small confines of the car, the gun's blast lingered in her ears.

Grierson winced from surprise as well as pain. "That was unsportsmanlike."

Glancing over the headrest, she spotted the pistol he'd dropped. The second shot went into his knee.

The Glock Barbara had taken off the dead mercenary in the Aira lobby held fifteen rounds. By the time the clip was empty Grierson was still breathing but not nearly so smug. She dragged him out and laid him in the sun wondering if there were vultures in this part of the country. She left him to bleed out and for Palmer to dispose of the body, if the birds didn't get to him first.

Their destination finally came into view. The sign by the side of the drive identified it as the Double O Ranch.

Barbara asked Agent Friendly, "Is that supposed to be some lame joke?" He just shrugged.

A couple of barns and a long narrow building that looked like a residence or an office formed a compound.  They parked in front of it and the two of them led her up the stairs to the gallery and to the front door. The whole place was in a state of Disney World distressed—new made to look old. The wooden boards cladding the exterior were painted a faded gray and sanded at the edges. The door looked like it had been beaten with a chain.

Agent Friendly knocked and stood back. "Go on in. You're expected. This is as far as we go."

It took a moment for Barbara's eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. A minor tingle of relief passed through her as she tested the firmness of the floorboards beneath her feet. She had half expected a grated kill-floor for expedient blood clean up. She seemed to be in an open office with three desks and a number of sofas spread around the large space. A man in jeans and a plaid shirt, looking like an old cowpoke from a movie stood behind a desk facing the door.  He had the thin, fake grin of a hotel concierge fixed on his face.

"Dr. Gracie, I presume. We are so happy to have you with us. Please stow all electronics and weapons. I'll scan you and you can go inside and get started." He put a metal lockbox down on the desk in front of him.

She went through a process that was oddly similar to the one she used to have to go through to get into The Music Box and questioned the guard. "What is this place? Why am I here? Why won't anyone tell me anything?"

Before the guard could answer, a familiar voice with a heavy French accent came out of the shadows. "They are a tight-lipped bunch, are they not?"

"Dr. Proulx?"

"So pleased to see you." The little bald man stepped out of the back room and into the light with a gouty limp. A wide smile showed the stumps of yellow teeth through the hairs of his white beard. "There is so much to tell you. But not here. Somewhere with less eager ears, eh?" He gave a sidelong glance at the guard like he was an imbecile who wouldn't catch on he was being talked about. "It will be better to catch up inside."

Barbara was cleared. And she let the little goblin lead her into the back. The small room was filled with an open carriage elevator. Unlike the massive vault, big enough to hold two trucks, back at The Music Box, this was just a platform with a non-slip pattern in the steel and metal bars forming a railing.

"Can you tell me why the hell I'm here?"

"I requested you. The moment they transferred Marjorie and I here, I knew I must simply have you with us." Barbara tried to ignore his rather obvious leer. "So I worked my magic and had you reassigned."

Pierre Proulx deftly handled the controls which consisted of three buttons and a lever stuck in a box no bigger than a brick. What the different controls actually did was anyone's guess. The old man pressed random buttons then wiggled the lever back and forth in a way which made her feel it was absolutely useless and he was just putting on a show.

"So what's this? Another bunker?"

"Not exactly. The lab is merely underground and not subterranean. If you understand the distinction?"

"So it is a lab. Is it DTAA?"

"No, the Department of Fish and Wildlife?"

"Is that a joke?"

"Oh my dear, I have such wonderful things to tell you. I thought the military was foxy." Barbara figured he meant that in terms of sly not sexy. At least, she hoped that's what he meant. "Then I was delighted with all of Domestic Threat Assessment's cloak and dagger. But I tell you, when it comes to secrecy these Wildlife people take the cake. You wouldn't believe what's going on."

"And what is going on?"

"They have another specimen. Un autre loup-garou. We are back in business."

For the space of a breath, Barbara didn't believe him but too much genuine excitement danced around his cataracts to be false.

Another werewolf.

She could almost kiss his wrinkly, gelatinous mug.

She had lost Amy. But now, oh yes, she was back in business. Destiny had put her in place and she wouldn't fail it. 

She had lost the most important part of her world. Soon she would bring an end to the rest of it.