The two men led me up the stairs, checked the yard all around for visitors, escorted me to the barn for the Prius. “Be best if you didn’t turn your lights on until you’re back at the main road.”

Ed said, “In the dark she’s going to go straight into a ditch. We’ll drive the truck down the hill. You can follow our taillights.”

They led me as far as the train station, where they turned off to drive by the Albritten house. Having these unexpected allies, street-savvy guys with strong arms, made me feel easier than I had in days. I drove across the bridge and up past the university to Quivira Road, not exactly with a song in my heart and a smile on my lips but ready to face the wrath of the house of Kiel.

It was seven by the time I got there. I’d had to stop at a grocery store for something to eat—they urge you to take doxycycline with food, and I could see why: swallowing a capsule with a gulp of water had left me with fiery pains along my esophagus and stomach.

Kiel came to the door himself, a napkin in one hand and a fork in the other. “It’s the dinner hour, or do they eat at midnight where you come from?”

“I can wait in the hall while you finish,” I offered politely. “I wanted to tell you that I now know why someone has been trying to kill your daughter, first with roofies in her Moscow Mule and then by trying to smother her in the ICU.”

“She almost died of a drug and alcohol overdose,” he said. “She’s been an addict for decades. Like her mother.”

“Yes,” I said. “Ever since she saw a soldier shoot your graduate student in the back. Matt was trying to get to Jenny Perec before her dead body was stuffed into her car. It’s not the kind of thing you forget very quickly, especially not when you’re fourteen and everyone around you says you’re crazy, so they can ensure no one listens to you when you tell the truth in public.”

Kiel stood glassy-eyed, not speaking. Shirley shouted from the back of the house, wanting to know who was at the door. When Kiel didn’t answer, I called, “It’s V.I. Warshawski, Mrs. Kiel, with news about your daughter.”

I turned back to Kiel. “What story did you tell Gertrude Perec? How did you keep her so loyal to you all these years? Her daughter was killed by the Y. pestis you helped spray around the protest camp. Her granddaughter was dead. You foisted off your own daughter on her—”

“What are you talking about?” he interrupted, the telltale vein above his right eye acting up. “I never ‘foisted’ Sonia on anyone, more’s the pity.”