“As in, he’s driving back to the farm?”

“Yes, Caitlin, as in they didn’t find anything incriminating. It would look weird if they tried harder. I gotta go.”

“Wait—”

“Seriously, word of this got to the chief and I might have to tap dance.”

“You didn’t pull him over? Personally, I mean?”

“No, a patrol car did a routine traffic stop.”

“So you didn’t see the spinach or the seeds?”

“They sent pictures. I’ll forward them. I’m hanging up.”

The line disconnected.

“Damn it.” Caitlin threw her phone onto the couch.

Lakshmi bit a nail. “So why did Frodo drive to Florida to meet with Adam?”

Caitlin dropped onto the cushions. “No idea.”

Greenwood’s images arrived. The first showed neatly stacked produce boxes. The next showed an officer’s hand two inches deep in a pile of green leaves. A third showed a five-pound sack marked “Seeds—Spinach, Crocodile Hybrid.”

Caitlin went back through the photos. “What am I not seeing?”

She stared at the leaves. Slender, one to two inches long, one vertical vein down the middle. “Son of a bitch.”

She swiped her phone to the web browser, did an image search, didn’t wait for the results. She switched back, dialed Greenwood’s number.

He answered. “Caitlin—”

“Why would he drive a truck full of spinach all the way to Florida and not deliver it?”

“Doesn’t really matter as far as I can tell.”

She swiped back to the browser, copied and pasted the results into their text message thread.

“I’m sending you an image. Look right now—don’t hang up.”

“I’ve got Renton on the other line.”

She heard his phone ding. “Just look—there aren’t enough veins.”

He said nothing for five seconds, then came back loud. “I’ll call you back.”

He hung up, and Caitlin jumped in the air. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Mary and Lakshmi rose for the explanation. “What is it?”

Caitlin turned the phone toward them. The screen showed the image she’d sent Greenwood, a group of four green leaves and a search heading—“Coca leaves.”

“They’re making cocaine.”

Chapter 46

CHAPTER

46

THE PLASTIC FORK and knife made the tray look childish. He wanted to impress her, but this was only Paige’s second day out of the restraints. He’d been too eager with Angela, and before her, Lourdes, his first. Younger then, less practiced, he’d matured since. Paige would stay; Paige would last.

She’d eaten every bit of yesterday’s rosemary chicken. Today’s menu—poached salmon, garden salad.

He pulled the tray from the dumbwaiter shelf and carried her dinner toward her room. The need to hide the basement entrance to his collection restricted the ease of use, so one of his first improvements to the old house had been a rope-and-pulley dumbwaiter accessible from the kitchen.

“Shit.”