“I wouldn’t count on that,” Donovan said, dropping his cell phone into his shirt pocket. “Two of our agents paid a visit to the Bradens early this morning—and you’re right, Nick, they’ve denied everything. According to Victoria Braden, Riddick had become paranoid about losing his job. He was with her the day she visited Endor; they stopped at the library, and the old librarian showed them the scrapbook. Victoria says she took the news in stride but Riddick went ballistic; he thought the news about his boss’s true identity would cost the Bradens the election, and that would mean his job for sure. So he decided to go after Alena—acting independently and without his employers’ knowledge— to keep her from digging up any more dirt.”

“Did your people actually believe her?”

“Not at first—but then she showed them the other scrapbook.”

“What other scrapbook?”

“It seems the old librarian put a second scrapbook together, and this one held a lot of dirt on John Braden himself. Apparently Braden isn’t the nobleman he thought he was; his ancestors stole all their landholdings from another family and murdered anyone who was able to expose them—then buried them in existing graveyards.”

“The two-hundred-year-old body,” Nick said. “All four victims must have been part of that family.”

“Exactly. Riddick knew about the second scrapbook too, and he figured the Bradens could never survive both scandals at once—so he decided to intervene.”

“And Victoria just handed this scrapbook over to you?”

“She said she had hoped to keep it a secret until after the election— but the moment she learned what Riddick had done she immediately handed it over. She said that she and her husband plan to go public with it—tell everyone all about it before it leaks into the papers anyway. They figure they’ll take the ethical high ground and hope the American public is in a generous mood.”

Nick frowned. “Do you buy that?”

“No—but it doesn’t matter what I ‘buy.’ It only matters what I can prove, and I can’t prove otherwise—yet.”

Nick looked at Alena. “Don’t you have a liar-sniffing dog somewhere?”

“Sorry—I’ll get to work on that.”

“I need to ask you a lot of questions,” Donovan said to Nick. “Can you stick around for a couple more days?”

“Yeah—I can do that.”

“I’ll give you a call. Get the cell phone out of your car and put it in your pocket—you’ll get better reception that way.”

“Thanks for the technology update. Can we go now?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Nick, I owe you one—and sorry for all the trouble, Alena. You shouldn’t have any more.”