‘We did agree to stay in touch, right?’ said Dan.

‘Yes, but that’s not the same as telling each other where we’d be. Why didn’t you just get in touch the way we agreed, rather than actually hauling your ass all the way out here?’

‘Your ex-wife in Vermont told me where to find you,’ Dan replied. ‘She told me she thought you’d been acting strangely and that, if you’d gone anywhere at all, it was probably here.’

Jeff groaned and leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘How did you find her?’

‘I met her one time when she came down to Orlando to meet you, remember?’ Dan replied. ‘Right after you got back together with her, and you’d already mentioned she lived in Jacksonville. There’s only one Olivia Jury there. I told her I badly needed to get hold of you.’ He looked around the room. ‘So why did you decide to come all the way out here?’

‘I’ve been hiding in case someone figured out we’d hacked the Tau Ceti databases. I got tired of sleeping in motels and thought I might as well hole up here as anywhere else, at least until I heard from Farad.’

‘And you didn’t bring Olivia with you?’

‘I thought I’d be putting her in danger if I did.’

‘You haven’t told her anything?’

‘No.’ Jeff shook his head. ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’

Dan chewed his food for several long seconds, as he gazed into the flames. ‘I came to tell you Lucy’s dead.’

Jeff stared at him, his hangover suddenly forgotten. He remembered the sight of her crouching by the pit next to Dan, in the moments before they found Mitchell.

‘Police found her in her car in a motel parking lot.’ Dan finally looked back up. ‘She’d been on her way to Miami.’ He took a sip of his coffee and finally met Jeff’s eye. ‘Officially it was a heart attack, but she’d called me the day before and told me she was certain she was being followed. She wanted to know if I’d noticed anything like that myself.’

‘That’s . . . that’s dreadful.’

‘Terrible,’ Dan agreed. ‘And particularly worrying since Lou Winston also appears to have vanished. First thing I did after hearing about Lucy was try to get hold of him. Turns out he has a place on one of those floating platforms just offshore from New Orleans, but his family reported him missing more than a day ago.’

Jeff felt like a cavity had been hollowed out inside his chest. ‘They know about the files, right? And now they’re coming after us.’