Gideon’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mercy gave him a hard nod. “All right, then. Tom, what else did the notebooks say?”

Tom cleared his throat, his expression momentarily shaken by the exchange. Rafe knew how he felt. He loved Gideon like a brother, and Mercy . . . well, not like a sister at all. The two had suffered so much and Rafe desperately wanted to make them okay, but all he could do was be there for them.

And help them track down the assholes who’d hurt them. One down, two to go.

Tom squared his jaw, a determined gleam in his eyes, and Rafe had the feeling that this guy was going to be key in taking Eden down.

“All right,” Tom said, having regained his composure. “The parts you need to know at this point are that Pastor and Waylon met at Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution. Pastor was arrested as Benton Travis for forgery and money laundering, and that does appear to be his real name. He met Waylon in prison, just as you suspected. They were, according to Aubrey Franklin, running drugs in the prison. Aubrey came along a little later and they became friends, so when Aubrey botched the bank robbery, he reached out. Waylon and Pastor had already fled to the first Eden site. They gave Aubrey a very rudimentary map, which Ephraim re-created in the notebook, so in time, we may be able to find that first site.”

“Why would you want to?” Mercy asked. “They aren’t there any longer.”

“But Amos said that they reuse locations, so maybe they’ll go back,” Gideon said, clearly excited. “What else don’t we yet know?”

“That Pastor transferred all the money he was given by his new members to offshore accounts, which, again, is something we suspected, but they’ve been sitting on that money for thirty years. The money was to be split between the ‘Founding Elders.’”

“Who were Pastor, Waylon, Ephraim, and Edward,” Gideon said.

Tom shook his head. “Apparently there was a fifth Founding Elder. Ephraim wrote about him in the notebook. Called him ‘Doc.’ Said he died three years after they started the community, but that he was really old, so no one suspected foul play.”

“That’s news to me,” Gideon said, “but I arrived a few years after that. I never heard him mentioned. But back to the money. How do you know that they’ve been sitting on it? They could have spent it.”

Tom shook his head. “Not according to Ephraim Burton. He visited the box regularly to make updates in the notebook, using his Eustace Carmelo ID. The last time he updated his record was about six months ago. Pastor had shown them the ledger and their account had grown to more than fifty million dollars. With Waylon and Aubrey gone, the money would be split between Pastor, DJ, and Ephraim.”

Mercy gasped, and she wasn’t alone. “Fifty million?”

Rafe whistled quietly. “That is one helluva motive for Ephraim and DJ to want to kill each other.”