“If his books get out to the public…” Slootjes said.

“What difference does it make? You and I are the only ones who know the story behind them. To everyone else they’re pure fiction.”

“But as loremaster I’m seen as an authority on the history of the Order. If our members read this book and ask me to explain the parallels, what will I tell them?”

“How can you have any doubt? You tell them it’s pulp fiction and that everything is fine and going just as we’ve planned.”

“But is it?”

This was not good. A loremaster with growing doubt about the Order’s lore. Instead of providing reassurance to wavering brothers, he might instead spread panic among them. A catastrophe in the making…

The best way to avoid that was to prevent the book from being published. Which meant Winslow had to be stopped.

And Ernst knew just the man to do it.

HARI

1

…the coroner ruled it an accidental drowning…but I know he was murdered… and I know the Septimus Foundation was behind it…

Hari ran Donny’s words around in her head a few times to make sure she had this right.

“This charitable foundation—”

“Supposedly charitable.”

“Whatever. You’re saying it murdered your brother?”

Donny’s nod carried no hint of doubt. “Right.”

“And you’ve determined this based on…?”

“Okay. I told you I accessed the foundation’s spreadsheets back to the first of the year. I also rescued a big-ass load of deleted emails. Putting the two together, it’s pretty clear that they were funding Russ’s project.”

Hari held up her hands. “Stop-stop-stop. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Donny leaned back and ran his hands through his long sandy hair. “Of course you don’t. Okay. Russ started hacking as a teen, phreaking and the like.” Before Hari could ask, he said, “Breaking into a phone company’s computers just to see if he could. Innocent stuff.”

“Why bother?”

“Just for lolz. He’d—”

“Just for what?”

“Lolz.” He gave her an I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-explain-this look. “You know…for laughs.”

Okay. A derivative of LOL.

“Got it. Go on.”

“Okay. The worst he’d do was arrange for free long distance, which was a big thing before cellular took over. His problem came when he graduated to banks.”

“Uh-oh,” Hari said. “Ran afoul of Treasury’s FinCEN unit?”

“Exactly. His hack arranged for the banks’ computers to round off a fraction of a cent on each international transaction and transfer it to his Swiss account. He was collecting in the high six figures a year until someone got wise. Did two years inside but came out with a twenty-five-year ban on going online.”

“Plus he was saddled with the ‘felon’ label.”

“Right. No one wanted a felon near their computers, and computers were all he knew.”

“Let me guess: He kept on hacking via the dark web.”

“What choice did he have? Anyway, somewhere around the first of the year, NRO sought him out and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

Hari held up a hand. “NRA I know. But NRO?”