rendered unconscious, they would be restrained with zip ties.
Thereafter, the interrogation could begin, to discover exactly all that Megan Bookman had learned about Dark Web murder-for-hire and the clients who paid for well-staged accidents, induced heart attacks, cerebral embolisms, suicides, and fake terrorist incidents.
They would inject the widow Bookman and possibly others with the barbiturate thiopental, often called “truth serum,” which did not guarantee she would tell them everything, only that she would experience an irresistible compulsion to answer their questions. When thiopental was administered with a cocktail of drugs developed by Russia’s chief intelligence directorate, however, lying became almost an impossibility, especially when the injections were with the threat of extreme pain.
“If we’re lucky,” Verbotski said, “she hasn’t yet shared what she’s learned with anyone outside that house. Then we only need to gather all her evidence, bring the four of them back here, kill them with as little mess as possible, take them back to Reno, and dispose of the bodies so they can never be found.”
Atropos & Company had an unblemished record of disposing of the dead in ways that no remains were ever recovered. The liquidation lab in their Reno facility was a marvel of cadaver processing.
“What about the dog?” Rodchenko asked. “That guy, whoever he is, showed up with a dog.”
“What about it?”
“Are we going to kill the dog?” Rodchenko wondered.
“If it gives us trouble.”
“I want to kill it whether it gives us trouble or not.”
“What’ve you got against dogs?”
“I don’t like the way they look at me.”
“How do they look at you?” Bradley Knacker wondered.
“The way a cop looks at you when his instinct is on fire. Dogs just creep me out. They always have. I’ve been bitten three times.”
Speer said, “So kill the dog.”
“Everyone okay with that?” Rodchenko asked.
Everyone was okay with it.
114
Woody led his mother from the kitchen to her studio, where she sat on her stool near the unfinished painting of him and the deer.
Beyond the tall windows, the yard trees were not tossing as violently as before. The wind seemed to be at last diminishing a little, though the overcast was growing darker.
He stood before his mom and took her hands in his. He saw that she was still surprised and moved by his willingness to touch rather than just assenting to be touched.
“Something really big is happening,” he told her.
“Something enormous already has, sweetie.”
“Bigger than just me.” Of course she knew about the Mysterium and the Wire. She knew that the dogs couldn’t read one another’s mind, that the Wire was essentially just a psychic telephone. Now he told her about Bella in Santa Rosa and about what Bella had done for him. “I’m still learning how to do what Bella does, how she speaks to all of them, gets through to all of them, whether they’re on the Wire at the moment or not. It’s cool. It’s like something out of Heinlein. But I’m going to need more hours of practice before maybe I can . . . take the next step.”
Her long, graceful fingers tightened around his hands. “What next step, Woody?”
“It’s nothing scary,” he assured her. “I just need some time to practice, to be sure I can do it right. I’m going to practice real hard. But before then, I just wanted to tell you.”
Into his silence, she said, “Tell me what, honey?”
He knew the words he wanted to say, for he had said them to her when first he’d been able to speak after his long silence, but words were only part of it, the smaller part. Woody closed his eyes and gathered all of his feelings about her: his recognition of her love for him, of her sorrow over the loss of his father, of her grace and profound tenderness, of her devotion and commitment to him, of the sacrifices she had made for him, of her talent as an artist and a pianist, of her great heart and the purity of her intentions. He took all those bright truths about her and all the emotions they evoked in him, and he wove them into a radiant fabric and wrapped them around fourteen words—You are an angel on earth, and I love you with all my heart—and he transmitted everything to her with the same gentle but irresistible force that Bella used when she sent one of her Bellagrams.
The Wire had existed for thousands of years. No one knew how long. Before they’d had a word for it, without even