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Kira and Mike were the last of the team to arrive at the farmhouse at twelve minutes after four in the morning. Bo and Hala had arrived first, about 2:20, and Jax just after three o’clock. Now that Kira and Mike were here—and, thank goodness, they’d brought food—the team was complete.

“Yay! The snack crew has arrived,” Wally exclaimed when Kira and Mike walked into the house carrying numerous grocery bags.

“Glad to see you, too,” Mike said as he and Kira dumped the bags on the kitchen counter. Wally and Hala immediately started sorting through them, pulling out stuff.

“Thumbs-up to whoever picked up the barbecue potato chips,” Wally said. “Those are my favorite.”

“That was me,” Mike replied. “Be warned, though, Kira made me buy some healthy stuff, too. Sorry it took us so long. We navigated carefully, making sure we weren’t followed.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “Are the cars are parked and out of sight in the barn?”

“They are,” Jax confirmed, strolling into the kitchen. “I just double-checked, and every car remains clean of trackers and bugs. By the way, my little GPS friend is quietly attached to the underside of a trailer among several hundred other campers at the campground where several of us are now presumably camping.”

“Brilliant. Everyone’s phones are off, too, right?” I asked. “You understand you can’t turn them on for the entire duration of our stay here. Not even for a second.”

“We understand,” Bo said, holding up a bag. “This bag contains everyone’s personal cells. It’s under my watch now. We’re using burner phones only from this moment on.”

“Perfect. Thanks, guys. If someone would go wake up Frankie, we can eat and discuss the operation. I know everyone’s tired, but I’d like to give you some important background information first.”

Mr. Toodles ran around barking, his white ears perked, until everyone petted and admired him. After that exhausting exercise, he pawed at my legs until I picked him up and held him, rubbing his ears while he licked my other hand.

Frankie staggered out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes. She brightened up when she saw the food and plopped down on the couch next to Wally, who handed her some yogurt and a plastic spoon. I gave everyone a little time to eat before I handed Mr. Toodles off to Frankie and stood in front of the gas fireplace.

“Thanks for coming, everyone, for being a part of this operation, and for believing in me. Some of you know my story, and some of you don’t, so I’ll start at the beginning. My dad disappeared when I was eighteen months old. By disappeared, I mean vanished, poof, gone. Growing up, I was told he was a security engineer for King’s Security. But a couple of months ago, Wally and I discovered that company is a front for the NSA. Turns out my dad was working for the NSA.”

“Why does NSA have a front company?” Hala interjected. “What did he do that was so secretive?”

“As far as I know, he was a computer engineer and coder. But not an ordinary one. At the time of his disappearance, he was working on a top-secret coding project for the government with another man named J. P. Lando. I don’t know anything about that project, but I presume the NSA had a front company because they didn’t have the facility to do what they needed to on the NSA campus. No need to advertise the project and invite potential industrial spying. So, King’s Security was set up as a commercial organization but was secretly a part of the NSA in order to complete this project.”

“Interesting,” Jax said.

It was, but walking everyone through my personal history was uncomfortable, even if it was necessary. “What’s more interesting, and disturbing, in my opinion, is about a year after they finished the project, J. P. Lando drowned in an unfortunate boating accident.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Frankie said. “The poor man.”

“Mr. Lando’s wife told me he never went out on the boat without her,” I said. “She was the mariner in the family, the owner of the boat, and he couldn’t swim. So, why did he go out on the lake without her? It’s a mystery.”

“It’s not a mystery,” Jax said. “He was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Frankie repeated with a shocked expression. “Jax, why does your mind always go to those places?”

“It’s not a stretch to get to that conclusion, Frankie.” He gave her an amused look. “Look, the guy was scared of the water and never went out without his wife. Then, for some unknown reason, he decides to take the boat out by himself without her and drowns? It’s suspicious. The more important question in my mind is, why didn’t murder seem obvious to the police or the NSA? Unless someone made sure the investigation didn’t go anywhere.”

I nodded, not adding anything. Jax had summed up my feelings exactly.

“Why would someone kill your dad’s colleague and cover it up?” Hala asked, brow crinkling, which always happened when she was thinking. “Is that connected to your dad’s disappearance and your mom’s kidnapping?”

I didn’t want to lead anyone to a conclusion, but she’d asked, so I answered. “I think so. Mr. Lando’s wife didn’t know he worked at the NSA. I don’t know if my mom knew my dad worked there, either. When I asked her about it, she didn’t give me a straight answer.”

“So, maybe she knew,” Kira offered.

“Or suspected.” Hala stretched her hands over her head and rolled her neck.

“She’s probably trying to protect you,” Frankie said. “The less you know, the better.”

I shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk about my dad at all.”

Mike wagged a potato chip at me. “You don’t know what kind of coding project your dad was working on? Maybe that project is the key here.”