“Would you like to come this way, sir?”

She opened a door at the end of the desk as I stood up. She held it open for me while I went through and behind the counter. She waved me toward the door to the back office while she again locked up. I pulled open the door, and got my second surprise.

Part of me had expected a group of uniformed deputies standing waiting to arrest me, but instead I found two men in sharp suits. One of them was a gaunt, almost skeletal man whom I did not know. The other was my friend and mentor, Walter Hayes Conrad IV.

“Hunter,” Walter said frowning. “You took your time getting here.”

Then he came and clapped a hand on my shoulder, giving me a reassuring squeeze.

“What the hell’s going on, Walter?”

“As direct to the point as ever, eh?”

“Things would’ve been much more direct if you’d answered my calls,” I told him.

He shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

“So have I.”

He gave me a grimace, then waved at the skeletal man who was watching me with eyes like dark pinpricks. “This is Don Hubbard. He’s the special agent in charge from the Bangor FBI field office.”

Hubbard didn’t extend a hand so I didn’t offer him mine. There was nothing ambivalent in his nod of greeting and I guessed that whatever Walter had told him hadn’t fully allayed his suspicion of me.

“We need to speak,” Walter went on. “All three of us.”

“I want to see Imogen first.”

“The woman’s fine. She’s over at the hospital having her wounds treated.”

“Wounds?”

“Superficial only.”

“She’d better have a guard, Walter. The killer might try for her again.”

“I have agents with her,” Hubbard said in a gravelly voice. “We still need to conduct a thorough debrief with her.”

“I want to talk to her.”

Hubbard shook his head.

“I insist,” I said.

“You’re not in a position to insist on a thing. In fact you’re very lucky that we talked Sheriff Hughes out of locking you in a cell. You’re a wanted felon, remember? A suspected cop killer.” His last words came out with enough venom to kill an elephant. “A murderer.”

Somehow I suspected that SAC Hubbard and I weren’t going to get along.

“But we know that is wrong,” Walter interjected. Walter is a short, rotund man, bald and pallid, but he has the presence of a giant and the weight of presidents behind him. Hubbard didn’t argue, just continued to look at me with his small raisin-like eyes. Finally he glanced away. Caroline Lehrer was standing nearby, wavering in indecision.

“Ahem.” She said, “would you like me to take you back through to the office?”

Walter smiled at her. “We can find our own way, thanks.”