made circles, like they were playing ring around the rosie.
Stackhouse had returned to Mrs. Sigsby’s office and opened the locked bottom drawer of her desk with the duplicate key she had given him. Now he held the special box phone in his hand, the one they called the Green Phone, or sometimes the Zero Phone. He was thinking of something Julia had once said concerning that phone with its three buttons. This had been in the village one day last year, back when Heckle and Jeckle still had most of their brain cells working. The Back Half kids had just offed a Saudi bagman who was funneling money to terrorist cells in Europe, and it had totally looked like an accident. Life was good. Julia invited him to dinner to celebrate. They had split a bottle of wine before, and a second bottle during and after. It had loosened her tongue.
“I hate making update calls on the Zero Phone. That man with the lisping voice. I always imagine him as an albino. I don’t know why. Maybe something I saw in a comic book when I was a girl. An albino villain with X-ray eyes.”
Stackhouse had nodded his understanding. “Where is he? Who is he?”
“Don’t know and don’t want to know. I make the call, I give my report, then I take a shower. There would only be one thing worse than calling on the Zero Phone. That would be getting a call.”
Stackhouse looked at the Zero Phone now with something like superstitious dread, as if just thinking of that conversation would make it ring in his—
“No,” he said. To the empty room. To the silent phone. Silent for now, at least. “Nothing superstitious about it. You will ring. Simple logic.”
Sure. Because the people on the other end of the Zero Phone—the lisping man and the greater organization of which he was a part—would find out about the spectacular balls-up in that little South Carolina town. Of course they would. It was going to be front-page news across the country and maybe the whole world. They might know already. If they knew about Hollister, the stringer who actually lived in DuPray, they might have been in touch with him for all the gory details.
Yet the Zero Phone hadn’t rung. Did that mean they didn’t know, or did it mean they were giving him time to put things right?
Stackhouse had told the man named Tim that any deal they made would depend on whether or not the Institute could be kept a secret. Stackhouse wasn’t fool enough to believe its work could continue, at least not here in the Maine woods, but if he could somehow manage the situation without worldwide headlines about psychic children who had been abused and murdered . . . or why those things had taken place . . . that would be something. He might even be rewarded if he could manage a cover-up that was watertight, although just keeping his life would be reward enough.
Only three people knew, according to this Tim. The others who had seen what was on the flash drive were dead. Some of the ill-starred Gold team might be alive, but they hadn’t seen it, and they would maintain silence about everything else.
Get Luke Ellis and his collaborators here, he thought. That’s step one. They might arrive as soon as 2 AM. Even one-thirty would give me enough time to plan an ambush. All I’ve got on hand are techs and widebodies, but some of them—Zeke the Greek, to name just one—are hard guys. Get the flash drive and get them. Then, when the man with the lisp calls—and he will—to ask if I am handling the situation, I can say . . .
“I can say it’s already handled,” Stackhouse said.
He put the Zero Phone on Mrs. Sigsby’s desk and sent it a mental message: Don’t ring. Don’t you dare ring until three o’clock tomorrow morning. Four or five would be even better.
“Give me enough ti—”
The phone rang, and Stackhouse gave a startled yell. Then he laughed, although his heart was still beating way too fast. Not the Zero Phone but his own box phone. Which meant the call was coming from South Carolina.
“Hello? Is it Tim or Luke?”
“It’s Luke. Listen to me, and I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”
4
Kalisha was lost in a very large house, and she had no idea how to get out, because she didn’t know how she’d gotten in. She was in a