monks who’d be helping them carry their gear across.
Dalton tilted his head up at the top of the keep, cupped his hands around his mouth like a bullhorn, and yelled, “Finch. We’re all set here. Time to move out, pal.”
No answer.
Gracie looked around, then asked Dalton, “You sure he went up there?”
Dalton nodded. “It shouldn’t be that long. He’s just looking for his BlackBerry.”
Gracie glanced around again, impatiently, then frowned at the keep. “I’m gonna see what’s keeping him,” she said, and stepped away.
She’d almost reached the doorway when something inside her made her look up—the barely perceptible noise of a wind rush, a hardly noticeable darkening of the ground to her right—and she turned and looked up just in time to see Finch’s body hurtling to the ground and slamming into the hard sand a few feet away from her.
Chapter 50
Outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts
“It makes sense,” Jabba concluded, all pumped up, his mouth motoring ahead. “He’s got the money. He’s got the technical chops to pull off something like this. And he’s a major, major environmentalist.” Jabba shook his head, his face locked in concentration. “Question is, how’s he doing it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Matt replied.
They were back on the mainland, heading down the Salem Turnpike, toward the city. Jabba had told Matt what he knew about Rydell—the way he championed alternative energy projects across the globe, the passion with which he lobbied Washington to take the climate change issue seriously, the support he gave to politicians and to groups who’d been fighting the mostly losing battle against the previous administration’s callous disregard for environmental concerns. Every word of it added an additional pixel of clarity to the picture that was forming in Matt’s mind: him getting in Rydell’s face and hearing what they’d done to Danny straight from the horse’s mouth.
“How is it you know so much about Rydell?” Matt asked.
Jabba looked at him askance. “Dude. Seriously? Where’ve you been living?”
Matt shrugged. “So he really thought he could start a new ‘green’ religion? Is that it?”
Jabba cracked a grin. “We’re hardwired to believe from minute one, dude. It’s all around us from the day we’re born. There’s no escaping it. And people will believe all kinds of crap. Look at what a third-rate sci-fi writer was able to pull off, and everyone knew he was only out to get stinking rich. Rydell . . . the man’s in a whole different league. He’s got state-of-the-art technology and all the money he needs at his disposal. And he’s no fool. It’s an awesome combination.”
Matt nodded, taking it in. “And he’s set this whole thing up to save the planet?”
“Not the planet. Us. It’s like George Carlin said. The planet’s gonna be just fine. It’s been through far worse than anything we can throw at it. It was here long before us and it’ll still be around long after we’re gone. It’s we that need saving.”
Matt shook his head in disbelief, then glanced out the window. The traffic up and down the turnpike was already noticeably heavier, with the Christmas rush home starting to clog the nation’s arteries.
“Do you think they knew what they were really working on?” he asked Jabba. “Danny, the others . . . do you think Reece and Rydell told them?”
“I don’t know . . . They had to be aware of the power of what they were putting together.” He glanced sideways at Matt. “The question isn’t just whether or not they were told. It’s whether or not they knew about it from day one. Whether or not they were working on it knowing what it was going to be used for.”
Matt shook his head again with denial.
“He was your brother, man,” Jabba added, hesitantly. “What do you think? Could he have been part of something like this?”
Matt thought about it. “A hoax like this? Scamming millions of people.” He shook his head again. “I don’t think so.”
“Even if he thought it was for a good cause?”
That one was harder to answer. Danny wasn’t any more religious than Matt was, despite their parents’ best efforts, so there wouldn’t have been any faith issues for him there. And although he was a high-minded, upstanding kind of guy, Matt didn’t remember him being particularly concerned with the planet’s environmental problems, no more than most well-read, levelheaded people. He certainly wasn’t mes- sianic about it. Still, they’d spent a lot of time apart, courtesy of Matt’s stints behind bars, and when all was said and done, how well did anyone