He turns left off Memorial Drive. Then another left, and we stop in front of the CFC’s ten-foot-high black PVC-coated privacy fence. I open my window and reach out to enter a code on a keypad mounted to the left of the black metal gate topped by triple-pointed spikes. With a loud beep it lurches to life and begins to slide open on its tracks.

The Tahoe drives inside the back parking lot, and I recognize the personal cars belonging to certain members of my staff. Bryce is here. So is Anne, and the Tahoe creeps past parked vans, SUVs and trucks, all of them ghostly white and silent at the quiet hour. We stop behind the unmarked white Ford Explorer in the first space to the left of a pedestrian door at the back of the building.

It’s what I drove to work yesterday. But I left it here thinking I would be off the next day spending time with my sister, Janet, Lucy, Desi and everyone. I got a ride with Bryce, and then I would have ridden home with Benton from dinner. But nothing’s turned out that way, and the next day is here. There will be no time off or family gathering in my immediate future, and I get out of the Tahoe.

“I’ll be right there,” Benton says to me, and he stays inside the SUV with the doors shut.

I can imagine at least some of what they’re talking about. Mahant doesn’t want me around when he and his cronies help themselves to my headquarters and everybody in it alive and dead. But that’s too bad. No one is chasing me off, and I wait by the pedestrian door. I wait several minutes, then Benton steps out of the SUV. I scan my right thumb to unlock the biometric lock and we walk into a vehicle bay the size of a small hangar.

I smell fresh-scented disinfectant. The epoxy-sealed floor, the walls lined with storage cabinets, everything is spotless. Gleaming steel gurneys are neatly parked in a washing area, and in a far corner is La Morte Café, where Rusty and Harold drink coffee and smoke cigars at a table and chairs that can be hosed off.

“Lucy was able to hack into Elisa Vandersteel’s phone,” Benton starts in telling me what he thinks he can and probably more than he should.

As usual he’s smarter than everybody else. He knew Lucy would get into the phone far more quickly than the labs in Quantico would.

“So we know who the boyfriend is, the kid we saw at the Faculty Club,” Benton says. “Chris Peabody.”

“As in Mrs. P?” I remember she mentioned her grandson was working part-time at the Faculty Club.

“Probably but we’ll confirm. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on Ash Street, west of here.”