FIVE

SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 8:20 P.M.

Coffee?”

Ephraim looked up from his laptop to see Regina Jewel standing in the doorway to his room, a steaming cup in her hand. “Please.”

She entered without the slink in her step that she showed the rest of her customers. Ephraim had known her too long for her wiles to have any effect on him—plus, at forty-five, she was about thirty years too old for him. But she knew what he liked, from the girls she kept to the coffee she prepared.

“Thank you. I needed a hit of caffeine.” His head pounded and he felt a little sick.

Regina eyed him with concern. “You don’t look so good, my friend.”

Except that they weren’t friends. But they weren’t enemies either, and Ephraim aimed to keep it that way. Powerful in her own right, Regina owned enough cops to run her business smoothly. She was first and foremost a businesswoman, and she respected the financial relationship they’d built over the past decade.

“Got a headache,” Ephraim muttered.

Regina stroked her fingers up his neck, then began to massage his shoulders, which felt so damn good. Until she brushed a lock of his hair at the back of his skull aside and probed, making him hiss.

“Bad bump,” she said. “Your headache from getting hit in the head by any chance?”

“Yes.” Ephraim had to hold back a snarl. “The massage felt good. More of that.”

“I’ll do more later. I need to get some ice for your head.”

“No, it’s not that bad. I popped some Tylenol,” he said, then looked back at his laptop. He stored the device here, in Regina’s house. She allowed him to keep a locker in her bedroom, and only Ephraim had the key. He didn’t think she’d try to snoop, and she knew far worse things about him. Besides, his laptop was password protected, so even if she got curious, she couldn’t snoop.

He didn’t dare use his laptop when he was in Eden. DJ Belmont was damn handy with technology, and Ephraim would bet his last dollar that DJ had rigged their system so that he could view all computer searches. There was only one computer in Eden, anyway, kept locked up in the clinic. They had a satellite hookup that enabled them to access the Internet, and that was how Pastor managed their funds. It was also how DJ communicated with the customers who purchased whatever illegal substance they happened to be making at the time. Nearly thirty years earlier, it had been pot, but the Feds had gotten good at sniffing out large pot farms. They’d dabbled in opioids, but that had required too much labor for too little profit. Now they grew and sold psilocybin, but that market was becoming iffy as well, what with cities decriminalizing it.

They were good for now, because the market was still strong. It could be decades before shrooms were legal everywhere. Ephraim had no doubt that DJ had a plan for their next illegal venture, and it was all on that one computer. One that Ephraim wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.