Lydia blinked as she tried to translate the words she damn well knew the meanings of. “Ah … that’s something to ask the board. It’s their people who are coming, not ours. Well, obviously not mine as I don’t know anyone.”

“Then you need to pick up the phone and find out what’s going on. I’ve got vendors calling and asking questions. Tent setup, caterers, all this kind of stuff. I don’t know what to tell them. I mean, I’m on the frontlines of this place, everything comes through me, but I have no authority—”

For some reason, everything about Candy became super clear, from her short shock-blond hair, to the blue eye shadow that matched her blue sweater, to her pink, perma-press slacks.

“What,” the woman said. “What’s wrong.”

Lydia slowly got to her feet.

“I need you to be honest with me, Candy.” As the words left her mouth, they were an octave lower than her normal tone. “No more fucking around. What do you know. What are you keeping secret.”

The receptionist’s eyes narrowed. “You’re my boss now. If something was happening in this organization—”

“You open every piece of mail that comes here. Each supply order. All the packages and FedEx envelopes.” Lydia stepped around the desk. “You have access to all the bank accounts because you pay the bills and do the bookkeeping. You are the network administrator for our computers, you got us our cell phones, you’re my emergency contact at my doctor’s.”

She continued forward until she was standing over the woman. “Several million dollars is gone from the accounts—that I didn’t even know had come in. The package you’ve been calling UPS about got delivered here—instead of Peter’s home address, which was what was on the label. And you weren’t all that surprised about Rick’s death. So I’ll say it again, what the fuck is going on here, Candy.”

The receptionist’s left brow raised, but other than that, there was no reaction. “You’ve just accused me of doing my job. Congratulations, Columbo. And how I feel about Rick is none of your business—”

“You know what’s been happening under the surface here. You know the truth.” Lydia searched the woman’s face. “And you killed Peter Wynne. Didn’t you.”

AS DANIEL CAME up to the metal hatch that had been installed in the ground, he looked around. Except for a pair of crows circling overhead, there was no one anywhere near him.

And now that he was right up on the damned thing, he could see why it had caught and winked back the sunlight. A rotten trunk had fallen off its root bed and skidded down the slope, tearing a swath of the pine needles off the circular seal—and in the process, scraping some of the steel clean so it was reflective.

Four feet in diameter. With a wheel crank that was low to the lid.

“Well, hello there, needle in a haystack.”

Tucking his gun, he knelt down, grabbed the wheel, and gave it a pull. A harder pull. With a curse, he put all his strength into—

The wheel broke off its crank with a screech and Daniel fell back, landing on his ass. “Fuck.”

He had to get inside. To complete what he’d come to do, he was going to need full access.

Repositioning himself over the seal, he wiped more of the dirt off to get a sense of what he’d need to open the thing. Talk about solid. There were no gaps around the—

The bullet sizzled by his ear and pfft’d! into the pine needles behind him.

With a lunge, he threw his body up and over the fallen tree—but because of the rot, most of the trunk was hollow so it offered only visual, instead of tactical, cover. Palming his gun, he hustled down to the base, where things were more solid.

Triangulating the location of the attack, he saw the black uniform behind an outcropping of rocks. About fifty feet away—

“Oh, look at you,” he muttered as he recognized the face. “You got your eyes back, didn’t you.”

It was the guard he’d killed. The one he’d disarmed—

More bullets. Striking wood. Striking ground. Ricocheting off of stone.

Daniel ducked down. What he needed was some backup—

When the count of the bullets got high enough, he jumped up and ran hard, taking advantage of the nanoseconds that reloading required. And just in the nick of time, he back-flatted against one of the few oaks this high up on the mountain.

The guard thought he was still behind the downed trunk, the other man focusing forward as he aimed from behind those boulders.

Daniel leveled his gun and started to pull the—

Pop!

A bullet that was not his own hit the guard in the side of the skull, vaporizing his head, a red cloud with white flecks blowing off in all directions. The decapitated body slumped forward, landing with a thud—and then like the trunk that had revealed the hatch, the still-warm, still-twitching corpse slid forward on the slope until its momentum ended on a facedown.

Or no face, as it were—

Daniel swept his own muzzle around. And pointed it at the tall figure who’d snuck up on the scene.

The Walters Township sheriff was standing on a ridge about thirty feet away, boots planted, hand-cannon service weapon just lowering.

“I think you’re safe now,” came the dry comment. “At least from me.”

With a glance over his shoulder, Daniel made sure he wasn’t being rode up on, on the other side. “Am I?”

“I’m the law. I don’t murder people.”

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t fall for that.”

The sheriff shrugged and strolled forward, putting his weapon away in its holster. But he didn’t come at Daniel. He went across and stood over the guard.

Or what was left of the guard.

Daniel kept his gun on the man, tracking him as he leaned down.

“I know what you are, Daniel Joseph,” Eastwind murmured. “And I know why you’re here.”

“You don’t know shit about me.”

“You’re wrong about that.” The sheriff shook his head. “No eyes to take this time, I’m afraid. That’s what you did with the other one, didn’t you. That’s what you do.”

“I got no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You killed the other one. I don’t know what you did with the body, but you did something. And you took the weapons on him—did you stash them somewhere? I’ll bet you did—before you walked out to the county road and Lydia picked you up. You hid them so she wouldn’t find out what you’d done.”

Daniel stayed quiet. Which was what you did when an opponent was busy sharing exactly how much they knew about you.

“You can’t afford for her to know you killed him.” Eastwind looked across the distance that separated them. “She has no idea what you are, does she.”

“And what have you done to protect her,” Daniel demanded. “I’m just curious. I mean, after she told you she was being stalked, that someone had been on her property, that there was a device under her car … what. Did. You. Do.”

“She can take care of herself.”

“She’s a woman living alone—”

The sheriff laughed in a burst. “Your chauvinism is wasted on someone like her.”