Using the password he already knew, he was into Lisa Carver’s computer and well into the Arrival network—an elaborate program that showed where every active Arrival was, where it had been, and how it was communicating with all the other little Arrivals—but he could not find a way to counteract or disable the virus, or simply shut the entire system down.

Why couldn’t Lisa Carver have installed a big red STOP button he could just click on?

But he could see the virus working its magic, insinuating itself into the system, branching out in all directions, a tsunami overwhelming a coastal village. There was nothing he wanted more than to pull the plug on all of it, given his role in facilitating the madness. If his arrangement with Brandon Kyle ever became known, he’d like to be able to say that at least he’d tried to undo the damage.

Good thing Massachusetts no longer had a death penalty. Joe thought if he were ever convicted for his misdeeds, trying to make things right might prompt a jury to show compassion: five life sentences instead of ten, say. There was a comforting thought.

But suppose he did get away with it? What if no one ever learned about his deal with Kyle, or that he killed Ruskin? Nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong.

Joe’s thoughts turned to Kyle. He wished there were a way to talk to the man, right now, face-to-face. But he’d had a plan to get off the island, and was probably long gone by now. Joe wanted to tell him Ruskin was dead, and how that development presented an opportunity. If the authorities ever did suspect Kyle, Joe could say that before Ruskin died, he confessed to sabotaging the Arrival system because of his hatred for Lisa Carver.

And wouldn’t that give Joe some badly needed leverage over Kyle? As things stood now, Kyle held the advantage. What was it he had said in their meeting, when the discussion turned to the death of Adam Montrose?

“But the timing is a bit curious.”

At first, it struck Joe as impossible that Kyle’s investigators could have found out what he had done. Or, more accurately, what he had failed to do.

Whoever Kyle had hired was good, very good. The first red flag had to be that Joe was going out with the widow of the man whose roadside death he’d investigated. That, in itself, was hardly incriminating, but if it had led Kyle’s people to dig a little deeper . . .

Joe knew there’d been a witness.