Throwing the van into gear, I pulled onto the highway, passed a dusty sign that read Las Vegas 64 Miles and sped off into the sun.

Dante

“Mr. Hill. Do you have a moment?”

I looked up from my desk. Mist stood in the doorway, manila folder in hand, looking poised and calm and expectant at the same time. Her silver hair was pulled into a ponytail today, and it made her look younger, not quite so severe. It was hard to believe Mist was my age; she acted so composed and mature, I wondered if she’d had a normal upbringing. Or whatever was considered normal for us, anyway.

I sighed and put down my pen, where I’d been scribbling notes on a yellow sheet of paper. “Mist,” I said, smiling as I beckoned her into the office. “How many times have I asked you to call me Dante?”

“Counting today, exactly five times.” As always, there was a subtle note of challenge beneath the polite tone. “And I predict you will ask me at least twice more in the future. But that is irrelevant at this point.” She stepped back into the hall, looking suddenly anxious. “If you would come with me, Mr. Hill, I think you should see this.”

* * *

Back in the operations room, I gazed up at one of the enormous screens, watching a satellite map blip into view, showing a swath of dusty brown, with patches of green interspersed throughout. Mist stood beside me, also watching the screen, while the two human workers sat at their keyboards, typing furiously.

“This,” Mist explained, leaning back against a desk, “is the eastern Mojave Desert, close to the Arizona/Utah line. When you told us to look for the Order’s western chapterhouse, we began directing our satellite feeds to the areas close to and around Crescent Beach.”

“Hold on,” I said, holding up a hand. “We have satellites?”

Mist gave a short nod. “We own one of the largest satellite communication networks in the world,” she said coolly. “It isn’t difficult to put in a few extras.

“Regardless,” she continued, as if that was unimportant, “when we started searching, we found…this.”

The feed zoomed in, focused and showed a bird’s-eye view of a facility smack in the middle of nowhere. Even from this height, it didn’t look very impressive. I could see a fence with two gates, several long rectangular buildings and the road that cut through the vast, empty desert surrounding it.

“That,” Mist announced, as if she could feel my skepticism, “is St. George’s western chapterhouse.”

I frowned. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look like much. Certainly not a heavily armed military base.”

She gave me a look of veiled annoyance. “That’s what they want you to see, Mr. Hill,” she said. “The Order uses a combination of security and complete isolation to hide their chapterhouses. Some of them, like the main headquarters in London, are too heavily armed for us to do anything about. Some of them, like this one, rely on isolation to keep them secure. Talon knows of several large Order facilities around the world, but the smaller chapterhouses are good at concealing themselves and hiding in plain sight. The only reason we found this one was because we were actively searching for St. George movement in the region. At your request, Mr. Hill, and this took us all night.”

I held up my hands. “Point taken. No need to bite my head off. I believe you.” She sniffed, looking mollified, and I glanced back at the screen. “So, this is their western chapterhouse,” I mused, crossing my arms. “I’m sure Talon will want to know about this. Have you informed Mr. Roth?”

“No,” Mist replied gravely. “I figured you deserved that honor. After all, you were the one who pointed us in the right direction. But that’s not all we found,” she continued, before I could feel smug that I had been right. “Look at this.”

The screen went dark as the scene faded to night, only a few points of light glimmering in a sea of black. Then one of the humans clicked a key, and the image switched to a grainy green color. I could see the buildings, blurry and indistinct, through the emerald haze, and the fence surrounding the base as the camera zoomed in. The time on the bottom left of the screen read 3:26 a.m., dated two days ago.

I blinked. Two small black dots were moving across the desert from the east, looking like tiny crawling insects from this height but definitely making a beeline toward the fence. They weren’t coming in from the road; in fact, it looked like they were actively avoiding the gates, heading toward the most isolated corner of the compound. As I stared, amazed, they paused at the fence a few seconds, slipped through a hole they must’ve cut out and began creeping across the yard toward the main headquarters.

“What in the world?” I whispered, baffled as I watched their progress. “That can’t be…”

“We believe it is Ember, Mr. Hill,” Mist finished solemnly. “And Cobalt. None of our agents have received orders to move on a St. George facility in several months. Cobalt has the knowledge and the skills for this type of work, and he is bold enough to infiltrate even an Order chapterhouse. It’s one of the reasons he is so dangerous to the organization.”

“But why is Ember with him?” I asked, unable to tear my gaze from the two tiny figures, darting through shadows and around corners, avoiding the light. Anger and fear caught in my throat. She was inside a St. George base! What was she thinking? If anyone spotted her, she was dead. Get out of there, I wanted to shout, knowing it was futile. Ember, you stubborn idiot, why are you doing this? Get out of there before you’re killed.