with the necessary gear. They would be here in three or four hours.
Verbotski made a phone call to Reno. He listed the items they would need to rig the oil-fired furnace for an unfortunate accident.
As cover and to launder money, the Dark Web entity called Atropos & Company did business as a high-tech security firm, under the name Supersafe Tomorrow. Their headquarters was in Reno because of the considerable advantages of Nevada tax laws.
Verbotski said, “The coffee smells great.”
“The old guy had a good Jamaican blend,” Knacker said, “and I spiced it with a teaspoon of cinnamon.”
92
In less than a day, Rosa Leon had traveled from the middling finances of the middle class to wealth, from a quiet acceptance of the hardness of the world to a belief in the magical nature of it, from a mundane life to one of high adventure, and she marveled at her flexibility.
Mrs. Brickit’s muffins had been eaten, and coffee had been drunk. Especially because of Ben Hawkins’s expertise in the strategy and tactics of war, a plan of sorts had been devised with surprising speed. They were proceeding on the premise that bad people from Tragedy would be coming soon—We Will Find You—and that, because of incompetence and corruption, Sheriff Hayden Eckman would provide them with no useful protection.
Sitting on the bed in one of the two guest rooms, Rosa had already done her part by using her iPhone to call Dorothy Hummel’s attorney—well, her attorney now—Roger Austin, whom she knew to be an early riser, up before dawn. She said nothing of Kipp, because Roger didn’t know the dog’s secret. But she succinctly laid out the incredible story of Woody’s investigation of his father’s accident. She didn’t mention the threat issued by the Dark Web operators behind Tragedy. She asked Roger to keep safe the document—“The Son’s Revenge: Faithfully Compiled Evidence of Monstrous Evil”—that was even then being emailed to him by Megan. She asked him to read it and then share it with two people in the legal system, judges or lawmen, whom he knew for certain were not corrupt and could not be corrupted.
“But how did you meet Mrs. Bookman and her son?” Roger asked in that deep, mellifluous voice that might have given her confidence in the attorney even if she hadn’t known him. “I never heard you speak of them before.”
“Oh,” Rosa said, “I’ve known them quite a while. It seems like forever. Listen, Roger, I haven’t said who was responsible for the death of Woody’s father. You’ll discover the name when you read his research, and it’s a shocker. The man is powerful and very wealthy. You might be tempted to wonder if it’s a fantasy that Woody has spun. But I swear to you it’s not. There will be additional proof coming.” She couldn’t resist adding, “It’s not a shaggy-dog story, Roger. Anyway, once you’ve read the document and thought about it, we very much need your advice about how to proceed in such a way that what Woody’s discovered will be believed and acted upon. Until the story is out there in the press, it doesn’t seem that Megan and the boy will be safe.”
When she concluded that call, her immediate contribution to the plan had been made, although she had a role to play when the coming day ticked into the afternoon. Now she stretched out on the guest-room bed, hoping to get some rest for what lay ahead, though she doubted that she could quell her excitement enough to sleep. In spite of her doubt, she slept.
93
While Rosa Leon spoke on the phone to Roger Austin, Carson Conroy was on the east side of Pinehaven, at the home of his friend Harry Borsello, who was about to drive into town to oversee the morning rush at his restaurant, Four Square Diner, and grab some breakfast of his own.
Carson and Harry were friends not just because they relished bacon, but because they were in the same poker club and attended the same church and shared a love of nature and were widowers. Three years earlier, Harry lost his wife, Melissa, not to a senseless drive-by shooting, but to a senseless cancer, and Carson helped him make it through the worst of his grief.
Now, as he followed Harry to the barn at the back of the property, the low clouds churned, the pines thrashed, and all the creatures of the night cowered in their warrens and roosts as if the slowly approaching