She was. As much as she knew it was foolish and couldn’t go anywhere, she most definitely was.
“Okay, that said, I wanted to prove to you that I can do more than sit and tap at a keyboard.”
He waved to the woodsy scenery behind him.
“I think you can recognize that area just a little ways back up the hill there.”
She did: the cutoff from Norum Hill Road to the passage to that other place. What was he doing back there?
“Remember I told you I had some unfinished business up here? Well, this is it. It’s been a busy morning, lemme tell you. I contacted a few folks I’ve come to know on the dark web and arranged the purchase of a satchel bomb.”
“Oh, crap!” Hari said aloud. “Don’t!”
“It’s twenty pounds of C4 explosive. My little gift to those Septimus sonsabitches. Their trucks made another delivery. Another ten trailers and tankers, no doubt filled with more freeze-dried food and water. I watched them leave the mountain, so I’m here all alone.
He slammed a fist on the Tahoe’s hood.
“Damn them! They knew this was coming and didn’t tell anyone. Grabbed everything they could and socked it away for themselves. Big plans to profit from the shit storm. Remember how I told you someone needs to take them down? Well, that someone is me. I’m gonna see to it they went to all that trouble for nothing.”
“Please be careful,” she whispered.
She noticed the running time stamp in the upper right corner of the video. He’d recorded this almost an hour ago. That meant whatever he planned to do was already done.
Then why was his phone going straight to voicemail? And why hadn’t he called her back?
Anxiety began a slow, tingling crawl through her gut. She didn’t like this one bit.
“Like I said, the truckers have come and gone, the passage was open but now it’s closed again. But I’ve got twenty pounds of C4 wedged into the mountain wall back there right where the passage opens. When I send the signal, a shitload of rock is gonna come down. Ain’t nothin’ or nobody gonna be traveling between worlds through there.”
He leaned closer to the camera.
“It looks like I’m going to be able to get away with this, Hari. There were a couple of spots where things could’ve gone south—like taking delivery of the satchel bomb, for instance. You never know when a fed is going to be playing games with you. As insurance, I slipped a thumb drive into your bag this morning. It contains everything I’ve learned about Septimus and its operations. It’s all moot now, but I’m just letting you know so you won’t be puzzled when you find it.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Showtime, babe.”
Something awful was going to happen, she just knew it. She held her breath as he raised a cell phone and pressed a button.
Up the road behind him the side of the mountain exploded, causing the camera to shake and blur the image. Smoke billowed as shattered trees and rocks blasted into the air. It took a while for the debris to stop falling, but the smoke remained.
And so did Donny. She released her breath with a sob. He was unscathed. The young jerk was fine. He turned to the camera, grinning.
“I can’t hear anything past the ringing in my ears, but let me say that you’ve just seen my personal ‘Fuck you!’ to the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. Next on my list: Belgiovene. If he thinks he got away with murdering my brother, he better think again. See you back in the city, Hari. Until then—”
A huge boulder dropped out of nowhere, crushing Donny along with the front of the Tahoe. The video went dead.
Hari screamed.
2
It took her hours and innumerable calls but Hari was finally able to track down someone who knew what had happened. The police in Williamstown, Mass, the town closest to Norum Hill, were totally closemouthed, but she found mention of the explosion on the website of the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, and tracked down the reporter from there.
Her name was Alina Eastridge and she’d managed to get close to Norum Hill after the explosion, which had rattled windows for many miles around. She said the area was crawling with law enforcement types—local cops, FBI, Homeland Security, ATF. Early concern was that it might be a terrorist act, but now they were leaning toward a lone actor who had set off a tremendous explosion that apparently damaged only the mountainside. No indication why. The suspect wasn’t available to explain because he and his vehicle were flattened by a secondary landslide.
Dead?
Yes, very dead.
The vehicle?
Rumor was saying an SUV, a Tahoe.
Hari sat in her office and stared for a long time. A steady stream of employees checked in, asking what was wrong and could they do anything. She waved them off. She didn’t wail or cry or sob. Not her style. After her one scream of shock, she’d made her calls and learned the bad news. Donny was gone. She hadn’t known him long enough to miss him, but still she mourned him in her own way: sitting in silence and staring at the blank windows of the building across the street.
And then she remembered what he’d said about dropping a thumb drive in her bag. Digging through the jumble within she found it and plugged it into her desktop. She scrolled through the contents until she came across contact information on a man known only as Belgiovene—email drops on the dark web, plus contact numbers in the real world.
Donny had done a good thing by blocking the Septimus Order’s access to its hoard. Now she would do something for him.
She called Belgiovene’s number.
BARBARA
“Whatever you do,” Ellie said, “stay off the Sheep Meadow.”
The four of us—Ellie, Hill, Winslow, and I—stood back by the Central park volleyball courts at the eastern edge of
