‘After Matthew’s dead your stock’ll be through the roof. We can bring hundreds, thousands of young people into the fold. We’ll take over Midwest Patriot Frontier.’ This was a legendary militia not far from the AFFC hometown, headed by two visionary leaders. ‘And we’ll keep going, spread around the country.’

Harriet believed there were vast swaths of the American people who hated the direction the country was going and would join the AFFC. But they needed to know what dangers were out there – terrorists, Islamists, minorities, socialists. And they needed a charismatic young leader to protect them from those threats.

Harriet and Billy would save them all.

There was another reason for the coup. Harriet had limited power in the AFFC as it existed now – since she was, of course, merely a woman, the wife of the founder of the Council. Billy and the new generation believed that discrimination against women deflected from the important issues – of racial segregation and nationalism. As long as Matthew or his kind – the hunting and cigar-smoking sort – were in charge, Harriet would be marginalized. That was simply not acceptable. Billy would empower her.

Now, in the laundry room, he felt her gaze and finally looked back. This locking of eyes was as he’d remembered it for years. When he was atop her, every time he would press his face into the pillow but she would grip his hair and draw him back until they were pupil-to-pupil.

She asked, ‘Now, what are the police leads like?’

‘We’re okay,’ Billy said. ‘The cops’re good. Better than predicted but they bought your description – the Russian or Slav, thirty, round head, light blue eyes. The opposite of me.’

When Amelia Sachs had ‘rescued’ Harriet in the hospital, the woman had come up with a false description for the Identi-Kit artist, to lead the police away from her nephew, who’d come to the hospital not to ink another victim to death but merely to visit Matthew.

Billy asked about his cousin, was he handling everything all right?

‘Josh is Josh,’ Harriet said distractedly. Which pretty much described the mother-son relationship in a nutshell. Then she was laughing like a schoolgirl. ‘We’re having quite a trip to New York, aren’t we? Didn’t turn out the way we’d planned but I do think it’s for the best. After the heart attack, Matthew’ll be seen as weak. Easier for him to … go away when we get back home. God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?’

His aunt stepped forward, gripping his arm, and with her other hand brushed fingers across his smooth cheek.