“Something,” she says. “Anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already convened a grand jury, in fact you can count on it. In fact I’m convinced. The Feds have the nasty little habit of raiding a place after they’ve already got a grand jury ready to indict you. They don’t base a case on the evidence. They base the evidence on the case they’re determined to make even if it’s wrong. Even if it’s a lie. Do you know how rare it is for a grand jury not to indict someone? Less than one percent of the time. They aim to please the prosecutor. They hear only one side of the story.”

“Where can we talk?” I don’t want to continue this conversation in her driveway.

“They can’t hear us. I just knocked out the audio for that lamp and that one and the next one.” She points at copper lampposts. “But let’s go someplace we don’t have to worry about it. My own personal Bermuda Triangle. They’re watching and all of a sudden we vanish from their radar.”

The agents searching her house are monitoring us on her security cameras, and I feel a rush of frustration. Lucy’s battle with the Feds is as old as wars in the Middle East. It’s a power struggle, a clash that’s gone on so long I’m not sure anyone remembers exactly what started it. She was probably one of the most brilliant agents the Bureau ever hired, and when they eventually ran her off, that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. It never will be.

“Follow me,” she says.

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

WE TRUDGE THROUGH BRIGHT GREEN GRASS SPATTERED with poppies as red as blood and brazen with gold sunflowers, white daisies, orange butterfly weed and purple aster.

It’s as if I’m wading through a Monet painting, and beyond a shady fragrant stand of spruces we emerge into a low-lying area I’ve never seen before. It looks like a place of meditation or an outdoor church with stone slab benches and sculpted rock outcrops evocative of a pond filled by running water formed of river stones. I can’t see the house or the driveway from here, nothing but rolling grass and flowers and trees and the constant whomping of the helicopter.

Lucy takes a seat on a boulder while I choose a stone bench in dapples of light shining through dogwoods. Hard unyielding surfaces aren’t my first choice these days, and I sit down very carefully, doing what I can to diminish my discomfort.

“Has this always been here?” I ask, and the light moves on my face as branches move in the wind. “Because I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s recent,” Lucy says and I don’t ask how recent.