“Seven,” said Jayden.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Tovar.

Kira leaned forward desperately. “Just calm down,” she said firmly. “He doesn’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Kira.”

Kira turned to Tovar. “It’s because you said you were in demolitions. We’ve had kind of a bad day, explosively speaking, and all they want to know is if you have been—”

“Not another word, Kira, or he’ll know exactly what to deny.”

Kira kept her eyes locked on Tovar’s. “Just tell us where else you’ve been.”

“I was in Smithtown yesterday,” said Tovar. “Came straight here from there. They’ve got a farm there on an old golf course. I was selling them guns.”

“Guns?”

“What, do you think I sell puppies? I’m a marine, I sell what I know, and out here without your Long Island Defense Grid to watch over them, people need guns. Most of these old houses have a gun safe in the basement, so I … blast them open and sell the guns.”

“You’re not sounding any less guilty right now,” said Jayden.

Tovar’s voice was thick and desperate. “As hard as it is to believe with ten-odd guns pointed at me, not everyone on the island has one. Not everyone on the island has a Defense Grid patrol ready to leap into action every time somebody looks suspicious. Out here, people know there’s a war coming, between East Meadow and the Voice, and people need to be able to help themselves. I just make sure they have the tools to do it.”

“He’s lying,” said a soldier.

“You don’t know that,” said Kira. “You can’t shoot someone on a hunch.”

“Did somebody try to blow you guys up?” asked Tovar.

“See?” cried the soldier, stepping forward. “He knows!”

“Stand down,” said Jayden. “Do not shoot without my order.”

Kira swallowed. “It doesn’t take a genius to look at the last few minutes of this conversation and guess that someone tried to blow us up. If he knew about the bomb, he wouldn’t have told us he was a demolitionist in the first place, would he?” She turned to Tovar. “Have you ever been to Asharoken?”

He shook his head. “That can’t possibly be the name of a real place.”

“You say you sell guns and ammunition,” said Jayden. “Do you sell explosives, too?”

“I’d be an idiot if I did,” said Tovar. “Anyone who’d buy them would either be after the same stuff I am, or planning something worse—like whatever happened to you guys. I keep all my explosives secret.”

“Where?” demanded Jayden.

“Some in the cart, some in little caches around the island.”

Gianna leaped away from the cart. “I’ve been leaning on a bomb?”

“It’s stable,” said Tovar, standing up. The soldiers retrained their guns on him, but he held up his hands in a show of innocence. “They’re perfectly stable, okay?” He shuffled to the cart, limping in one heavy boot and one bare foot. “It’s a water gel—it’s completely inert until you activate it, and even then it needs a detonator.”