“It isn’t, though, is it?” she said quietly, knowing instantly that she’d overstepped again.

“Get back to work,” he said brusquely, and went into his office, slamming the door shut behind him.

Yelm slept in the verdant green valley between Olympia and Tacoma. It had always been the kind of town where people dressed in flannel shirts and faded jeans and waved to one another as they passed.

All that had changed a few years ago, on the day a thirty-five-thousand-year-old warrior from Atlantis supposedly appeared in the kitchen of an otherwise ordinary housewife.

The locals, who believed in the Northwest creed of “live and let live,” looked the other way for a long time. They ignored the “weirdos” who came to Yelm (many of them in expensive cars, wearing designer clothes—”Hollywood types”) and paid no attention as SOLD signs started appearing on prime pieces of land.

When the whispers began that J. Z. Knight was gearing up to build some kind of compound to house a school for her followers, though, the townsfolk had had enough. According to the South Sound bureau chief at KCPO, people were picketing the Knight property.

The “crowd” protesting the proposed development turned out to be about ten people holding up signs and chatting with one another. It looked more like a coffee klatch than a political gathering—until the news van showed up. Then the crowd started marching and chanting.

“Ah,” Mutt said, “the power of the media.” He pulled over to the side of the road and turned to Tully.

“Here’s what they didn’t teach you in college: Get into the middle of it. Wade in. If it looks like there’s going to be a fight, I want you there, got it? Just keep asking questions, keep talking. And if I give you the sign, get the hell out of the shot.”

Tully’s heart was going a mile a minute as she followed his lead.

The protesters surged toward them. Everyone was talking at once, trying to make their point, elbowing each other out of their way.

Mutt shoved Tully, hard. She stumbled forward and came face to chest with a huge, burly guy with a Santa-like beard and a sign that read: JUST SAY NO TO RAMTHA.

“I’m Tallulah Hart from KCPO. What are you out here for today?”

“Get his name,” Mutt yelled.

Tully winced. Shit.

The man said, “I’m Ben Nettleman. Me and my family’s lived in Yelm for nearly eighty years. We don’t want to see it turn into some supermarket for new age weirdos.”

“They got California for that!” someone yelled.

“Tell me about the Yelm you know,” Tully said.

“It’s a quiet place, where people look out for each other. We start our day with prayer and mostly we don’t care what our neighbors do . . . until they start building shit that don’t belong and bringing crazies by the busloads.”