The Skeleton Key: A Short Story Exclusive by James Rollins

had leaned on an elbow and traced a finger down his face. “You’re keeping your tan longer, and these sun crinkles are deepening. You’re getting to look a lot like that old photo of your father.”
    Not exactly something you wanted to hear when lounging in bed with your girlfriend .
    She had reached and fingered the single lock of white hair behind his ear, tucked like a snowy feather against the field of black. “Or maybe it’s just that you’re letting your hair grow out. I could almost tie this into a warrior’s braid.”
    In fact, he hadn’t been growing his hair out. He just hadn’t had a chance to get it cut for a couple of months. He’d been spending more and more time at Sigma Command. The covert facility lay buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, occupying what had once been bomb shelters during World War II. The location had been picked for both its convenient access to the halls of power and for its proximity to the Smithsonian Institution’s many research facilities.
    It was where Painter spent most of his days. His only windows on the world of late were his office’s three giant monitors.
    He turned away and crossed back to his desk, contemplating the implication of a homegrown terrorist, one with a Native American background. He seldom gave his own heritage much thought, especially after spending most of his youth in a series of foster homes. His mother, suffering from depression, had stabbed his father to death after seven years of marriage and the birth of their son. Afterward, Painter continued to have some contact with his Native American roots, fostered through the extended family of his father’s tribe. But after such a hardscrabble and chaotic upbringing, he’d grown to place more emphasis on the American part of his Native American ancestry.
    A knock on his open office door interrupted him. He glanced up to see Ronald Chin, Sigma’s geology expert, standing in the doorway. “Thought you should see this.”
    Painter waved the geologist inside, almost expecting him to have to duck through the doorway. Chin stood just shy of six feet, missing that mark only because he kept his head shaved to the skin. He wore a gray lab jumpsuit, zippered half down to reveal an Army Ranger T-shirt.
    “What is it?” Painter asked.
    “I was poring through some of the reports and came across something that could be important.” He placed a file atop the desk. “It was from a debriefing of a National Guardsman on the scene, a Major Ashley Ryan. Most of the questions centered on the identity of the bomber, along with events leading up to the blast. But Major Ryan seemed mighty agitated about the blast itself.”
    Painter sat up straighter and reached to the file.
    “If you look at page eighteen, I’ve highlighted the key passages.”
    Painter opened the report, flipped pages, and read what was marked in yellow. There were only a handful of exchanges, but the major’s last statement sent a chill through his blood.
    He read it aloud. “ ‘The ground . . . it looked like it was dissolving away.’ ”
    Chin stood with hands behind his back on the far side of his desk. “From the beginning, I thought there was something odd about that blast. So I consulted Sigma’s demolition expert. He came to the same conclusion. For a detonation strong enough to break through bedrock and crack open a geothermal spring, the concussive blast radius should have been tenfold larger.”
    A gruff voice interrupted from the doorway. “That’s right. Not nearly enough bang.”
    Painter turned to the doorway again. Apparently Sigma’s new resident bomb expert had come to support Chin’s assessment. The man leaned against the door frame. He stood half a foot taller than Chin, and outweighed his teammate by a good forty pounds, most of it muscle. His dark hair was stubble, but he still slicked back what little was there with gel. The man wore the same coveralls as Chin, but from the bared chest, it