Every single step fell with the mechanical, heavy cadence of a naval battery firing across an enclosed harbor.
I walked through the drifting nitrogen dust into the blinding halogen searchlights, holding that four-inch antique solid-titanium surveyor's compass transit key firmly in my right hand.
Beside me walked Nathan Brooks, his trench coat unbuttoned, his eyes cold as flint.
Marcus Hale saw me.
His knees seemed to liquefy completely.
He crawled forward three feet across the wet gravel, his hands clawing at the mud, his voice tearing into a broken, weeping wail of pure, un-calibrated ruin:
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“Natalie…?” Marcus sobbed, his breath whistling past his lips in ragged micro-tremors:
“Natalie, my God… you’re alive… you came here under your own name…”
I stopped six feet from where my husband knelt in the mud.
I did not look down at his tears.
I looked at Arthur Sterling-Vance and Vivian Cross where they stood frozen beneath the drill mast:
