Overby lifted his palms.

“Sam Cohen. So I called him. And found out that Stone, on behalf of the trust, made a cash offer to buy the roadhouse and the property it sits on.”

“So, there’s a motive,” Dance said. “Ruin the business and then buy up the land cheap. Build a new development on it. Maybe buy Henderson Jobbing too, now that they’re going out of business.”

O’Neil asked, “How do we find out who’s behind the trust?… I don’t know if we’ve got enough for a warrant.”

“I did the next best thing. I pulled together some of Stone’s more prominent clients. Recognize anyone?” He set a sheet of paper in front of them.

One name was highlighted in yellow. He’d also drawn an exclamation point next to it.

Neither was necessary.

Dance blinked. “Hm.”

“Well,” Overby said, uneasily eyeing the name. “This’s going to be… I don’t know what this is going to be.”

“Awkward” came to Dance’s mind. Then: “explosive.”

Overby looked from her to O’Neil. “You better get on it right now. Good luck.”

Meaning he was already thinking about how to save himself from the train wreck about to occur.

Chapter 74

En route to Salinas.

Kathryn Dance was piecing together a portrait of the man now suspected of hiring the Solitude Creek Unsub. She was online. Michael O’Neil, driving.

Forty-one-year-old congressman Daniel Nashima had represented what was now the twentieth congressional district of California for eight terms. He was a Democrat but a moderate one, advocating socially liberal positions like gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, but pushing for lower taxes on the wealthy. (“Most of the one percent got that way by working hard, not by inheriting their money.”)

Nashima himself was a living example of that philosophy. He’d made a lot of money through Internet start-ups and real estate holdings. His goal of financial success, however, didn’t vitiate his do-good attitude, of course. If anything, the altruism deflected attention from his capitalistic side. You tend not to think of a man’s net worth when he’s hauling forty-pound blocks of concrete off victims trapped in earthquake rubble.

Nashima’s performance in Congress was stellar. He showed up for the majority of votes, he reached across the aisle, he served on the hard­working committees, Ethics and Homeland Security, without complaint. His term in office had never been tainted with the least scandal; he’d gotten divorced before commencing a romantic liaison with a lobbyist (who had no connection with him professionally) and in the closest brush with crime it was discovered that his housekeeper had herself forged visas; he was duped like everyone else. Dance and O’Neil were accompanied by Albert Stemple and a Monterey County Sheriff’s Office deputy. Dance had learned that Nashima was a hunter and had a conceal-carry permit.

They now arrived at his office in Santa Cruz. In a strip mall, next to a surfboard rental and sales shop, whose posters suggested you could walk to Maverick, site of the most righteous surfing on the West Coast (it was fifty miles north).