To say they were unhappy with me being suspended would be putting it mildly.Mom went ballistic when I had walked in the door after I had walked home. ...Normally, I would have either called her or called a taxicab to take me home. But I wanted time to think things through, before having to explain what had happened to my parents. Funny thing was, she was probably more annoyed about me walking home than about the suspension. After all, this wasn’t the first time. I’d had good reason before, she was. ‘Fucking hell!’ yelled Hunter at the shrill beeps of the alarm. He alt-tabbed out of the game. A text terminal showed that the last command: ‘4,096,000 permutations computed.’ ‘Rootkit is installed on the phone.’ Hunter pulled the USB stick and threw it into his Crumpler messenger back along with the bulky black phone that had the case cracked open, wires running out of it, and top secret stamped in red letters on all sides. Deep underground in a bunker at Fort Meade, Michael had watched the. He was a criminal who traded in slaves, drugs, and weapons, and had been my sister’s lover, yet I enjoyed his company, and given different circumstances would have welcomed him as a friend.Until now I had maintained the pretence of me merely being a rich man on the Grand Tour, not asking any questions of him relating to Becky, or Becca, as he would know her. Francesco Caracciolo knew of my interest in Becca, but neither he nor Giuseppe knew my true identity, or the real reason for me being in. In the distance, the widows walk of a long abandoned light house rose above the greenness. Sunlight flashed briefly on the tin roof.The soft grassy meadow dropped gently away to the soft sand of the beach. A long abandoned dock stretched out into the rolling sea. Farther offshore, the rusting hulk of an ancient ship adorned the rocks, attesting to the need for the light. Silence filled the air, broken only by the flutter of the Monarchs wings... and her soft breathing. "Let’s explore," she.