Ten minutes into the wait, Jack looked down at his phone to see an incoming text. He read it once, then again, before he shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Change of plans. We’re headed up to the penthouse for a briefing with Avery and Abner. Let’s just hope they have some good news.”

In less than twenty minutes, all the guys and Maggie were seated at Annie’s dining-room table. Coffee was perking, and everyone was chattering a mile a minute until Charles blew the whistle that he was never without. The room went silent instantly. Fergus handed out cups of coffee while Avery and Abner shuffled papers and folders in preparation for their brand of show-and-tell.

“You have the floor, Avery,” Charles said the moment Fergus sat down.

Avery didn’t bother clearing his throat the way he usually did before giving one of his reports. Nor did he rotate his neck to ease the tension he was under. He looked over at Abner, who nodded, and dived right in. “None of this is good. That’s for starters. I think, and Abner agrees with me, as does Philonias Needlemeyer, that we have every piece of information there is on the dark web. I also want to say we would not have what we have without Phil’s help. So kudos to Phil.

“Let’s start with Mr. Zack Meadows. He loves money. Actually, I think it’s safe to say he worships money. He’s also a high-stakes gambler. We can throw all kinds of shade at him, and it would fit. He takes bribes. Big bribes. He has two sets of friends. Normal people he associates with on a daily basis, personal as well as professional. None of those people have a bad word to say about him. Then he has a dark set of friends, the kind you don’t invite to Sunday dinner. In other words, he lives two separate lives, with the dark, black side the more prominent one. It seems to be where he thrives.

“As near as we can tell, somehow, in some way, Cosmo Cricket must have seen or heard something that caused him to be concerned about Zack Meadows as far back as a year ago. We were not able to find out what it was or even if we’re right. But he had many meetings with Meadows, which was unusual, given that they were not even serving on the same regulatory outfit. The meetings took place off the beaten track, so to speak—a diner here, the park, a pub, all public places. This is where we think Meadows got spooked. Cricket was closing in on him. One possibility is that he somehow lured Cricket to Happy Village that day with the intent of having him killed.