Ross thought it through. “Oh, I get it. I steal a little for me, a little for him, then claim it was all his idea if I get caught. That gets me a reduced sentence, maybe even immunity.”

“It’s happened before.”

“You know something, Mr. Wren?” Ross looked off at the waterfall for a minute, then back again. His eyes were hard and filled with a rage he could no longer disguise. “I’m just about as mad as I’ve ever been in my life. I love my work with Fresh Start. I would never do anything to jeopardize that. Nor would I do anything to jeopardize a program I strongly believe in and support. I’ve never stolen a penny in my life. Frankly, I don’t care much about money. I’ve never had it, and I’ve never missed it. Nothing’s happened to change that.”

He rose, stiff-legged and seething. “So you go right ahead and do what you have to do. But let me tell you something. If you don’t find out who’s behind this, I will. That’s a promise, Mr. Wren. I will.”

“Mr. Ross?” Andrew Wren stood up with him. “Could you just give me another minute? Mr. Ross?”

But John Ross was already walking away.

Bait.

Nest Freemark considered the implications of the word as calmly as she could, which wasn’t easy to do. The thought that she had been dispatched to Seattle to find John Ross, not with any expectation she could influence him by virtue of well-reasoned argument, but solely for the purpose of influencing his dreams and forcing him to rethink his position at the same time she was being put at risk was almost more than she could bear.

She fumed for a moment, then wondered how the Lady could know how her presence would affect things. Could she know the dream would be changed in a way that would make Ross reconsider? If the Lady knew what the dream was, it wasn’t such a long shot she knew how to change it.

Nest put her face in her hands and closed her eyes. She was jousting with shadows. She was just guessing.

She left behind the dream and its implications and went back to what she knew. There was a demon. The demon was in Seattle. The demon was after Ross. The demon was someone he knew, probably well. The demon was determined to claim him—so determined it had been willing to attack and kill another demon who challenged it for possession of his soul.

So far, so good. Nest nodded into her hands. What else?

The demon had recognized Nest and decided she was a threat. But not enough of a threat to do anything about her until after she had gone to Lincoln Park to speak with Boot. Boot was going to tell her something when the demon attacked, something about the demon changing again, only not in the same way.

She backed off, knowing all she could do with that approach was to speculate, that the answers she needed had to be reached from another direction.