She brought the noodle-asparagus-mushroom platter to the table, then got plates and silverware. “This is all I cooked tonight. If you want to add meat, there are some leftover meatballs in the fridge.”

“This is fine.”

“Because there are plenty of meatballs, and—”

“Really, this is fine. Perfect. By the way, I forgot to mention, I suggested to Kyle that he and Kim come back up here for a couple of days.”

“When?”

“Now. Starting tonight.”

“I mean when did you suggest it?”

“I called them on my way home from Sasparilla. The fact that they got that message in the mail means the sender knows where Kyle lives. So I thought it might be safer—”

Madeleine frowned. “The ‘sender’ also knows where we live.”

“It just … feels better to have them up here. Strength in numbers, maybe?”

They ate in silence for several minutes.

Then Madeleine put down her fork, her food only half finished, and gave her plate a small nudge toward the center of the table.

Gurney looked at her. “Is something wrong?”

“ ‘Is something wrong?’ ” She stared at him incredulously. “Did you really ask me that?”

“No, I mean … Christ, I don’t know what I mean.”

“It seems that all hell’s breaking loose,” she said. “Quite literally.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“So what’s your plan?”

She’d asked him the same question after the barn burned down. It was more unsettling now, because the situation had deteriorated so rapidly. People were dying, with ice picks rammed through their hearts. The FBI team seemed more intent on vilifying him and protecting themselves than discovering the truth. Holdenfield had insidiously undercut him with the “traumatic brain injury” and “psychological impairment” ammunition she’d fed to Trout. Bullard might be a semi-ally at the moment, but Gurney knew how quickly that alliance would evaporate if she decided it was in her interest to make peace with Trout.

But that wasn’t all. Beneath and beyond the tangle of ugly specifics and concrete threats, he had a sense of accelerating evil, the feeling of a faceless doom descending on him, on Kim, on Kyle, on Madeleine. Whatever devil that little recording in the basement had warned him to let sleep was awake and abroad in the land. And all Gurney had as a “plan” was his determination to keep studying the puzzle pieces, to keep searching for the hidden picture, to keep poking at the official house of cards until it collapsed—or until its defenders succeeded in dragging him away.

“I have no plan,” he said. “But if you have the time, there’s something I’d like you to look at with me.”

She glanced up at the big Regulator clock on the wall. “I have about an hour, maybe a little less. We have yet another meeting at the clinic. What do you want me to look at?”