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downstairs.
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    —
    The study was at the opposite end of the house from the kitchen and contained a corner computer station, a sofa, a pair of wing chairs, and a large fireplace. There was a turret at the other end of the room, with a circular staircase, and under that a coffee table and an Eames lounge chair next to the windows.
    Holly went to a bookcase, and her eye immediately fell on a title: 1942, The Year That Tried Men’s Souls , by Winston Groom. She took it and settled into the Eames chair.
    Immediately, a head leaned out from the turret on the upper floor. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m afraid that’s an insecure location. You’re too easily seen from outside.”
    “Right,” Holly said, and moved further inside to a wing chair and turned on a floor lamp next to it.
    Viv was already settled on the sofa. “Would you like a fire?” she asked.
    “Oh yes.”
    The fireplace was already laid with hardwood. Viv found a gas valve and a box of long matches, and immediately had a blaze going.
    “Much better,” Holly said.
    Later, Bill Wright knocked on the doorjamb and came into the room. “Lunch in half an hour,” he said.
    “Any result from your search party?” Holly asked.
    “They found some truck tracks on a neighboring road to the south where they could have loaded their kill and driven away,” he said. “No telling where they went from there.”
    “Thanks, Bill. Stone and Dino are upstairs. You might let them know when it’s lunchtime.”
    Bill went away, and Holly and Viv settled back with their books.

9
    Colonel Wade Sykes, U.S. Army (Ret.), sat at his desk in a book-lined, walnut-paneled study of a comfortable stone house near McLean, Virginia, working on an op-ed piece for the Washington Stalwart, which came close to being a paper version of Fox News, except that there was no unslanted news reporting printed in this newspaper. He wrote for them and other publications under the pseudonym Watchman. The cell phone in his shirt pocket hummed.
    “Yes?”
    “Are you encrypted?”
    “Always, on this line.”
    “Would you care for some fresh venison?”
    “Good God, don’t tell me you’ve been hunting!”
    “Quite by accident. We were walking the area, lookingfor the house, when a buck popped up, and Harold got him from the hip. Pure instinct.”
    “I hope it didn’t wake anybody up.”
    “Nobody to hear it, and at that hour the wind was howling.”
    “Are there no people out there?”
    “Apparently, it’s nearly all snowbirds,” Rudy said. “Last night there were lights in only one house, some distance away. We saw a car drive away very early, as if it had a long commute.”
    “You’re sure they’re not on that road?”
    “We drove all the way to the point and found nothing but three or four houses, boarded up for the winter. It’s a dead end, so we couldn’t have missed anybody coming or going.”
    “As long as you’re certain they’re not there.”
    “I am.”
    “There’s been nothing on TV or in the papers—not even the Maine papers—about the incident on Islesboro.”
    “Then they must be keeping it quiet.”
    “I expect so.”
    “You know, our next stop could be to go right back to Islesboro. Last place they’d look for us.”
    “They’ve got a caretaker and his wife listed for the property, and you didn’t shoot them. Also, there’s the busybody storekeeper who runs the jungle telegraph on the island. There’s also a guy named Rawls, ex-Agency, who practically shoots at anybody he sees. Did you check the local airports?”
    “Both Rockland and Bar Harbor are dead quiet; not worth stationing a man at either of them.”
    “Then you might as well make a move.”
    “All right. What are your orders?”
    “Come back to base, and we’ll regroup.”
    “Right. Shall I bring the venison?”
    “Why not?”
    “We’ll be there by nightfall.” Rudy hung up, and Sykes went back to his piece, which put a little meat on the bones of a conspiracy theory he’d