He looked at his watch, and said, “Fergus and I will go topside and you all can stay here and strategize if you like. Dinner will be in an hour.”

The others looked at one another and by nods agreed to stay in the war room to talk and try to work out a plan.

Dennis West whispered in Harry’s ear. “Harry, what do you think about Lincoln Moss?”

“What I think, kid, is the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I think too. Oh, boy, this promises to be a thrill a minute, don’t you agree, Harry?”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry drawled.

Chapter 3

Charles looked across the room at the bank of clocks that gave the time all over the world. It was 6:00 A.M. in Virginia. He was tired, but it was a good kind of tired. He and Fergus had worked through the night, with only two short breaks up in the kitchen for coffee, just to stay awake.

“I think we’re done here, Fergus. We need to decompress, shower, snatch a few hours of sleep, eat something, and be back down here by ten. Does that work for you?”

Fergus sighed. Charles would get no argument from him. He was bone tired. He’d had no real idea until now how Charles and the Vigilantes worked. Now he knew what went into a mission, and he was glad to be a part of it. He crossed his fingers, the way he had when he was a child, that he could keep up. He stapled the last packet he’d just taken out of the printer and slipped it into a bright blue folder. They were ready to be handed out to the girls once the morning meeting got under way.

“You going home or staying here, Fergus?” Charles asked, as they mounted the moss-covered steps that let them out of the dungeon and up to the main part of the house.

“I’m going home. Annie went back home last night because she said she had a lot of thinking to do and wanted to sleep in her own bed. I’ll come back with her for the meeting.

“Charles, do you think Pearl can hold it together. She seemed pretty fragile to me last evening.”

Charles looked at his old friend, concern on his face. “I am . . . not exactly worried, but I must admit that I am concerned. If anyone can shake Pearl out of it, Annie and Myra can. What really concerns me is that everything is in Pearl’s head. If anything were to happen to her, all her hard work would collapse, and I don’t even want to think about what would happen then. I told Myra to try to convince her to call Lizzie Fox. Pearl trusts Lizzie. There has to be a legend so that down the road, if the unthinkable happens, the railroad and the people are protected.

“Pearl does not want to give that up. I get that, but right now, she is not thinking clearly. If we’re successful in this mission, then I think there is a very good possibility that Pearl will allow Lizzie to document everything. That’s just my opinion, Fergus.”