“That will work,” Jack said, as Hershel rummaged under the kitchen sink and came up with a ball of fishing line. He tossed it to Jack, who had Meadows trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey in mere minutes.

“You wanna talk to us now or wait till later, when we have all your pals corralled in one spot?”

Meadows sneered. “I don’t have anything to say to you. I didn’t do anything, and I am going to sue all your asses for kidnapping me and holding me as a hostage. Whatever plan you have up your sleeve is not going to work, I can tell you that right now.”

“Yeah, right, and my name is Robin Hood,” Jack said, sneering in return. “We know all about you and the Scorpions. We saw that bag of money by the front door. You’re planning on paying off the Scorpions for whatever you hired them to do. Knowing what I know about you, I’m thinking you were trying to get out of paying the second half of the money to those animals. Then they came down on you, and here you are, holed up in a senior citizen’s house rather than daring to live in your own multimillion-dollar condo.”

Jack turned to Dennis. “Call Abner and tell him to freeze all of Meadows’s money or move it to a safer place. Every penny. Hold on a minute here. We need this guy’s records. The insurance he collected, and so on. I don’t care how smart he claims to be, he can’t keep everything straight, especially when it comes to killing people. I’m going to send Dennis back to Happy Village with his laptop and phone. We’re meeting up with Maggie, Ted, and Espinosa after Snowden shows up. How long, Abner?”

Jack ended the call and said to Harry, “He said a couple of hours, so we should have everything by the time we meet up with the others and make it back to Babylon. Unless we’re needed here.”

Dennis was halfway to the door with Meadows’s laptop under his arm and his phone in his hand. His hand was on the doorknob when he turned and asked if Jack was going to need Meadows’s phone log. “Never mind, I’ll send them to your phone the minute I get in the Uber. You need me, call.”

“I like that youngster. Dolly would have loved him,” Hershel said with a catch in his voice.

“Yeah, the kid is okay. He’s got heart,” Harry said quietly. Cyrus woofed softly in agreement.