“Yep,” Sally said chirpily, “it’s been me and only me ever since I started this thing up. Thought it would be more secure for me to just do all the work myself. I do the coding, the maintenance, the programming, the investigating and the writing.” She swung around in her chair to tap a few times on the keyboard. The home page of The Red Door came up. He saw that the latest article was a new one about Standedge and Marsden that he hadn’t read. “Impressive, right?”

“But what else do you do?”

“What?”

“The Red Door had no advertisements on it. So what do you do...to make money?”

She sighed and adopted a tone like she was talking to a two-year-old. “You see those server towers?” She gestured and he looked to the large black plastic structures with blinking lights lining the walls. “I rent out a large amount of my processing power remotely to people who mine cryptocurrency.” She saw his face. “Don’t bother saying you don’t understand, because I’m not going to explain.

“What is your interest in the Standedge Incident? And don’t lie.”

He realized he wasn’t in control of the conversation. And for some reason, he trusted this person in front of him. She was part of the reason he was even in Marsden. Her articles about Standedge had piqued his interest. “Matthew McConnell called me.”

Sally laughed. “Now, that...that was not what I was expecting.” She pulled up another desk chair so Robin could sit down, which he did. Over the next half an hour, he told her the entire story—the truth. He told her about Sam, and about Matthew, and about everything that had happened since he’d arrived. And when he was done, she just regarded him. “When I said ‘don’t lie,’ I didn’t mean for you to tell me the whole damn thing.”

“Sorry, just...”

“So you think you help Matthew and he tells you about your wife.”

“What choice do I have?” Robin said.

Sally shrugged like a petulant child. “You have...” She was interrupted by a loud baa. Robin jumped—the sound was so out of place. Sally just sighed and got up. “I’ll be back in a minute. Teddie wants feeding.”

“What?” Robin said. “Those sheep are yours?”

Sally shook her head. “No. But I still feed them.”