“Hey, good coffee,” he said after sipping the cup Tom had made for him.

“Colombian. I was thinking of scrambling some eggs. Want some?”

“Sure. And some hash browns and toast, and maybe some grits with extra butter. Oh, and while you’re at it, a side of biscuits and gravy.”

Tom gave him a dour look.

Jack shrugged and smiled. “Hey, we’re in the south so I figured one of their traditional, artery-clogging breakfasts would be in order.”

“What do you know about southern cooking?”

“There’s a place called Down Home a few blocks from where I live. In New York you can eat any style you want.”

“Right now,” Tom said, “I don’t feel like eating at all. Hard to be hungry when there’s someone out to get you. If I knew who or why, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d still be scared, but…”

“Maybe I can help there,” Jack said softly.

“You? How?”

The phone rang. It was the front gate, wanting to know if he was expecting any packages.

“Not that I know of. Wait.” He turned to Jack. “Are you expecting a delivery of some sort?”

“Yeah!” He grinned. “It’s here already? Great. Good old Abe.”

Tom told the gate to send the truck through, then turned back to Jack.

“You were saying something…?”

Jack cleared his throat. “I checked out the medical records on Borger, Leo, and Neusner last night and—”

“How on earth did you do that?”

“I got in through one of the clinic’s windows.”

“What?”

“No biggee. I popped the lock on one and crawled through. Don’t worry. You’d have to look pretty close to the underside of the sash to even suspect someone was there.”

Tom couldn’t believe this. His own son breaking and entering—and the clinic of all places.

“Dear God, why?”

“Stay calm. I wanted to see if any of them had had physicals recently—the answer turned out to be yes to all three, by the way—and to see how they did.”

“What if it had an alarm, or what if you were caught on camera? You could go to jail for something like that!”

“Only if I got caught, which I didn’t. No alarm, no surveillance cameras. I checked that out first. But I found what I was looking for: Each one of them passed their physical with flying colors.”

“A lot of good it did them. They’re all dead.”

“I think they died because they passed with flying colors.”

“Oh, you’re not going back to that Gateways conspiracy thing you were talking about yesterday, are you?”

“Follow the money, Dad. Whenever you wonder if something funny might be going on, follow the money. And the money leads to Gateways.”

Had he gone completely paranoid?

“Jack—”