7:48 a.m.

I was resting uncomfortably on a plastic chair in a waiting room at the sheriff’s substation, a cup of cold coffee on the table beside me. I’d been there all night. My eyes felt as if they’d been rubbed with sandpaper; my clothes were the same filthy ones I’d had on when I fled Bellefleur; my body craved sleep, but I was too agitated to settle down—even if there had been a place to do so.

I couldn’t begin to count the number of questions I’d been asked and had answered, over and over again. By the sheriff and his investigators, FBI and Homeland Security agents, Mick and then Ted on the phone. Hy had undoubtedly been subjected to the same, provided they’d been able to locate him. God, I was sick of questions!

Rolle and his followers had been rounded up at Bellefleur by a team of sheriff’s deputies acting on a hastily obtained search warrant. They’d still been partying, and too drunk and/or high to put up any resistance. Fortunately, they hadn’t bothered to carry out their intention of burying the gardener Jerzy had beaten to death; his body was still in the upstairs bathroom. The deputies had found Jerzy in the fountain where I’d left him, alive but still unconscious, with a cracked skull. He was now in the prison ward at the San Mateo County Hospital.

Dean Abbot’s laptop had been found in the house, along with evidence of the gang’s racist activities, and was now in the hands of Homeland Security. The HS agent agreed with me that it was the computer that had been used to shut down M&R, and that its hard drive would contain enough data to help their experts restore our operation and eventually convict Abbot of the hacking crimes.

Naturally Rolle and Abbot and the rest had hollered for their attorneys and were refusing to talk to the authorities. They were being held in the county lockup until it could be sorted out which agency had jurisdiction and would take custody of them.

So why did they still need me?

My hackles rose as I saw one of the Homeland agents approaching across the waiting area. I got to my feet and was about to bark a question of my own at him—Can I go now?—when he said, “Thanks for your time and your assistance, Ms. McCone. We won’t be needing you any longer.”

“Well, finally!”

“But please keep yourself available in case we need to confer with you again.”

“Confer with me? You mean ask me more questions?”

“If necessary.”

“Oh, wonderful. There’s nothing I’d like better than having to repeat myself a few hundred times more.”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. The hell with it.”

I turned my back on him and walked out into the new day.