Free Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set by Eric Van Lustbader

on the TV screen. Or, mused Jack, maybe he was in war mode, all the knives at his disposal being out.
    He was sitting at the table, a Bible open to the New Testament. His forefinger hooked at a section of the text, he began to recite from Matthew chapter seven. “‘For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?’”
    Edward Carson stood up, came around the side of the table. “Jack.” He pumped Jack’s hand. “Good of you to come. I have best wishes and Godspeed for you from Reverend Taske.” He kept a firm grip on Jack’s hand. “We’ve all come a long way, haven’t we?”
    “Yes, sir, we have, indeed.”
    “Jack, I never got a chance to thank you properly for your help when we needed to evacuate my office during the anthrax attack in 2001.”
    “I was just doing my job, sir.”
    Carson’s eyes rested on him warmly. “You and I know that isn’t true. Don’t be modest, Jack. Those were dark days, indeed, marked by an unknown American terrorist who we never found. Frankly, I don’t know how we would have gotten through it without the ATF’s help.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    Now the president-elect’s other hand closed over Jack’s and the familiar voice lowered a notch. “You’ll bring her back to us, Jack, won’t you?”
    The president-elect stared into Jack’s eyes with the intensity of a convert. Despite his big-city upbringing, there was something of the rural preacher in him, a magnetic flux that made you want to reach out and touch him, a call to arms that made your pulse race, rushed at you like a freight train. Above all, you longed to believe what he told you—like a father communicating with his son, or at any rate what in Jack’s mind was how a father ought to communicate with his son. But that was all idealistic claptrap, a pasteboard cutout, a larger-than-life image from the silver screen, where happy endings were manufactured for captive audiences. Unlike reality, which had never been happy for Jack and, he suspected, never would be.
    “I’ll do my best,” Jack said. “I’m honored you asked for me, sir.”
    “In all honesty, who better, Jack?”
    “I appreciate that. Sir, in my opinion the first order of business is to create a plausible cover story.” Jack’s gaze swung to the woman by the window, who was holding herself together by a supreme force of will. He recalled Sharon in a similar pose, as Emma’s coffin was slowly lowered into the ground. He’d heard a whispering then, just as he’d heard in the main building. Sharon said it was the wind in the treetops. He’d believed her, then.
    He inclined his head slightly. “Mrs. Carson.”
    Hearing her name, she started, summoned back into this time, this place. She seemed thin, as if she’d lost her taste for food. For a momentshe stared bleakly into Jack’s face; then she came away from the window, stood in front of him.
    “Ma’am, do your parents still have that olive farm in Umbria?”
    “Why, yes, they do.”
    He looked at Edward Carson. “It seems to me that would be a good place for Alli to be ‘spending the holidays,’ don’t you think?”
    “Why, yes, I do.” The president-elect put his cell phone to his ear. “I’ll have my press secretary get right on it.”
    Lyn Carson moved toward Jack. “Now I know what you must have gone through, Mr. McClure. Your daughter …” She faltered, tears gleaming at the corners of her eyes. She bit her lip, seemed to be mentally counting to ten. When she had herself under control, she said, “You must miss Emma terribly.”
    “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
    Finished with his call, the president-elect signaled to his wife and she stepped away, turned her back on them to once again contemplate the world outside, forever changed.
    “Jack, I have something to tell you. You’ve been briefed, no doubt, given the theories, the evidence, et cetera.”
    “About