“You’re kidding!”

“Yep.”

A long pause, then a sigh, then, “Y’know, one day that mouth of yours could get you killed.”

“I know. Can’t wait.”

At the mall Hari picked up two large coffees—both for her—at an espresso bar while Donny bought these box lunches from Taco Bell that contained enormous amounts of food. Then they found a parking spot in the lot of the FedEx depot across the boulevard with a view of the Sirocco driveway.

“Do you ever drink anything that doesn’t contain caffeine?” Donny said just before cramming a soft taco into his face.

“Only when forced by circumstance. You don’t want to know me when I run low.”

The wait turned out to be shorter than Hari had anticipated. In fact she’d expected to be watching trucks returning from a haul. But at 1:22 one tractor-trailer after another started pulling out and heading for the freeway. Half of the trailers were rectangular freight semis, while the rest were tankers.

Hari counted ten rigs in all. When it looked like no more were joining the parade, she pulled out and followed.

“Odd time for a convoy, don’t you think?” Donny said. “I mean, if you’re not keen on drawing attention, an afternoon truck convoy is not the way to go.”

“Makes even less sense when you consider the level of security they have around the building. I’d give anything for a look inside one of those trailers. Just a peek. Then we can head back.”

Maybe they’d all pull into a rest stop and she could sneak up on one.

“What about those tankers? They could be filled with anything—gasoline, water, chemicals, slime, anything.”

“‘Slime’?”

“Yeah. Green goop. I’m guessing you never watched Nick.”

“Who’s he?”

“It’s a cable channel. Nickelodeon.”

As Donny launched into an explanation she only half heard, Hari followed the convoy to 787 North where it rolled to Troy, then crossed the Hudson onto Route 2 East.

“Where the hell are we going?” she said.

The car came equipped with its own wi-fi hotspot and Donny had his tablet fired up and running.

“If we stay on Two here, it’ll bring us into the Taconic Mountains.”

“How long’s that going to take?”

“Not bad—forty-five minutes or so to the Massachusetts border.”

“And then what?”

“Lots of mountains.”

Great. Hari hadn’t planned on any of this. She’d expected a few hours’ worth of nosing around to yield what they wanted—the nature of the cargo. That, in turn, would lead them to the reason for the Septimus stock sell off.

Route 2 soon started calling itself Taconic Trail, and seemed to be running perpetually uphill. Which meant slow going in the lower gears for the big rigs. They passed the Massachusetts line and kept on trucking.

“How much longer?” Hari groaned.

“Well, since I don’t know the destination, I can’t very well—”

“Rhetorical! Rhetorical!”

A couple of miles into Massachusetts the trucks took a left off Route 2 onto a narrow side road. A sign with an arrow read Norum Hill.