“I can’t hear anything past the ringing in my ears, but let me say that you’ve just seen my personal ‘Fuck you!’ to the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. Next on my list: Belgiovene. If he thinks he got away with murdering my brother, he better think again. See you back in the city, Hari. Until then—”

A huge boulder dropped out of nowhere, crushing Donny along with the front of the Tahoe. The video went dead.

Hari screamed.

2

It took her hours and innumerable calls but Hari was finally able to track down someone who knew what had happened. The police in Williamstown, Mass, the town closest to Norum Hill, were totally closemouthed, but she found mention of the explosion on the website of the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, and tracked down the reporter from there.

Her name was Alina Eastridge and she’d managed to get close to Norum Hill after the explosion, which had rattled windows for many miles around. She said the area was crawling with law enforcement types—local cops, FBI, Homeland Security, ATF. Early concern was that it might be a terrorist act, but now they were leaning toward a lone actor who had set off a tremendous explosion that apparently damaged only the mountainside. No indication why. The suspect wasn’t available to explain because he and his vehicle were flattened by a secondary landslide.

Dead?

Yes, very dead.

The vehicle?

Rumor was saying an SUV, a Tahoe.

Hari sat in her office and stared for a long time. A steady stream of employees checked in, asking what was wrong and could they do anything. She waved them off. She didn’t wail or cry or sob. Not her style. After her one scream of shock, she’d made her calls and learned the bad news. Donny was gone. She hadn’t known him long enough to miss him, but still she mourned him in her own way: sitting in silence and staring at the blank windows of the building across the street.

And then she remembered what he’d said about dropping a thumb drive in her bag. Digging through the jumble within she found it and plugged it into her desktop. She scrolled through the contents until she came across contact information on a man known only as Belgiovene—email drops on the dark web, plus contact numbers in the real world.

Donny had done a good thing by blocking the Septimus Order’s access to its hoard. Now she would do something for him.

She called Belgiovene’s number.

BARBARA

“Whatever you do,” Ellie said, “stay off the Sheep Meadow.”

The four of us—Ellie, Hill, Winslow, and I—stood back by the Central park volleyball courts at the eastern edge of the meadow where we faced the Allard. A near-full moon was rising behind us, shedding pale light on the grassy expanse and the buildings lined up across Central Park West.

We’d all spent the day together in Hill’s penthouse apartment while he dismantled and repurposed the wide array of communications equipment clogging the main room. I found Winslow annoying in his insistence on turning any topic of conversation to himself, which might have been fine if he’d had an interesting life, but he hadn’t. Most of his existence had been spent sitting alone in a room typing. His favorite subject seemed to be the supposedly wonderful novella he’d written about his stay in a parallel world, but that, again, was about himself. The only topic he seemed to like more was Hari. He kept asking about her—I sensed he’d developed an instant crush—but the three of us had met her only shortly before he had, so we couldn’t add much. That didn’t stop him from pestering us about her.