Threat Warning

frozen hands and brought himself to his

blue jeans. The mother wore a nondescript black-on-black outfit that looked

adding strategy and tactics to religion an

Yep, it was official now. Everybody needed a good night’s sleep.

“Can we be done for a while? I need rest.”

Jonathan stacked his pillows just so against the leather headboard, lay back, and closed his eyes.
Three minutes later, Jonathan realized that while exhausted, he was too spun up to sleep, so he lifted the television remote from the nightstand and thumbed the ON button. The thirty-inch TV mounted on the opposite wall jumped to life immediately, set, as always on his favorite cable news station.

After a scalding shower and a shave, Jonathan felt mostly human again. He missed the long-gone days when occasional ten-minute naps could keep him functioning for days on end. Today he’d been up for a mere thirty-six hours and he felt like milled concrete.

Boxers gave him an impatient glare. “You know, Dig, sometimes I think you spend nights awake just thinkin’ up more creative ways to get me killed.” That was Boxers-speak for Whatever you say. He rose.

Gail and Venice sat at the teak table in the War Room, looking like rewarmed corpses. Jonathan hadn’t given them much time to respond to his call—in fact, the order was “Meet me at the War Room right by-God now.”

Jonathan snatched up his receiver and brought it to his head. “Yeah.” At this hour—Jesus, one-thirty-seven—one syllable was the best he could muster.