“He was amused by how easy it had been to fool me,” Lander says quietly. “My father was slightly more gracious. He explained that while he couldn’t make it work with my mother, they both wanted me to be successful. By graduating from Oxford I had granted her dying wish. Of course, he left out the part about her being left to die alone without proper care. About the pain her disease must have caused her, or the loneliness she must have felt. How they really got her to lie to me, I’ll never really know. But as far as my father is concerned, he did a good thing. The point was that he looked out for his son. That’s what was important to him. You see, my father is a cruel bastard. But my brother is simply evil.”

I don’t say anything. I’m staring at the scratches on his face, the slight bruise that’s forming by his left eye despite the ice pack. I did that to him for a reason and now I’m doing everything I can to remind myself that this man is one of the bad guys.

He steps forward and I immediately step back, but it’s the sketchbook he reaches for. He opens it up to a picture of three men. I’ve seen this picture before. It’s titled Bite, Torture, Ruin. But the picture I took of it on my phone isn’t so good. I took it too quickly and it’s a little blurry. And I haven’t figured out this anagram yet. Sloppy work on my part, but there had been so many anagrams to work out I had assumed that this one could wait. After all, what were the odds that the one anagram I didn’t get a good picture of would be the important one?

But now, seeing it in person again, I study it a little more closely. One of the men in the drawing wears a suit with a nail where his heart should be. He’s arm in arm with an older man who has his pockets turned inside out. He appears to be handing over the last of his money to a boy who has extraordinarily sharp teeth. The boy looks like he’s going to take off the old man’s hand with those teeth of his.

The boy looks a little like Lander.

“I’m getting kind of tired of games and puzzles,” I snap. “Give me answers.”

And please, God, I think, give me solutions.

Lander shakes his head. “Just look at the picture. I know you’ve seen this before. If you haven’t gotten the answer it’s because it’s unexpected.”

“Unlike We Silenced Nick Foley?” I ask sarcastically.