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Bern had the lock picked in under a minute. The garage interior smelled of oil, ink, leather, and old paper. He ran his fingers over Bibles and religious tracts in varying stages of dismantlement, reassembly, and restoration. Between two windows stood the Chandler & Price platen press, which looked to Bern like a sewing machine crossed with a wheelchair. He could see it was conscientiously maintained, with fresh varnish applied to the wood parts and lubricant to the metal. Swatches of leather, predominantly red and black, were stored in rolls on adedicated shelf beside a vintage printer’s tray in dark wood, its alcoves filled with neatly arranged metal letter blocks. The whole layout communicated neatness and precision. Once again, Bern felt admiration for Seeley even as his disquiet grew. Whatever the range of Seeley’s more singular expertise sets, he had managed to keep it concealed from all but those who might have need of them. This was no garden-variety troubleshooter, no blunt instrument for hire to the highest bidder. No, this was a craftsman, perhaps even an artist.

In a closet at the back of the workshop, Bern discovered a fireproof document box. Inside was paperwork relating to a self-storage unit on Welshwood Drive and, more intriguingly, the ownership of a farmhouse in Blountville, including utility bills and a warranty for roof repairs dating from 2022. Blountville was close to the Tennessee-Virginia border, within easy reach of North Carolina, Kentucky, and even West Virginia if one was familiar with the roads. The farmhouse would make sense as a base or refuge, a location from which a man like Seeley could dart with ease across state lines should difficulties arise. He wondered if Seeley had chosen Nashville for a similar reason; it was central enough to make cities like Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, and parts of the East Coast accessible by road in eight or nine hours, if that. For someone in Seeley’s line of work, it wouldn’t pay to be too remote.

Bern made a note of the address, along with the particulars of the self-storage unit. He then restored the paperwork to the box and replaced it where he’d found it. Bern left the workshop and pulled the door closed behind him. In the cottage, he and Doak rolled the dead woman in a rug and deposited her in one of the bedrooms before Doak used a mop and bucket to clean up the blood. They didn’t want a mailman or curious neighbor spotting either the body or the redness and calling the police.

“Her phone beeped once while you were outside, then rang once as well,” said Doak. “The screen flashed, like it was malfunctioning. WhenI picked it up, it went dark. I tried using facial recognition and her finger- and thumbprints to open it, but no dice.”

Udine’s cell phone was sitting on the breakfast bar. It wasn’t any make that Bern recognized and was unusually solidly built. Bern tapped at the screen with a gloved finger. As Doak had said, it remained dark. Bern tried hitting buttons on the side and activated only a request for an eight-digit security code. He set the phone down again, saying nothing, but his anxiety crept up another notch. He tried to calculate how long it might be before Seeley realized there was a difficulty in Madison: close of business that day, he decided, at best. It would take them about four hours to get to Blountville. If Seeley was there, they’d deal with him immediately. If he wasn’t, Bern would leave Doak to wait in case Seeley returned.

The fact that the Udine woman had come at them with a gun confirmed that Seeley wasn’t only a fixer but a killer too: secretaries didn’t normally go pulling guns on strangers without the approval of their bosses. Someone at Shining Stone Senior Living could have alerted Udine to questions being asked by a stranger. Despite his religious tie clip, the facility manager struck Bern as slippery as an eel in a bucket of Vaseline, and he could well have been under orders to make a call should anyone come inquiring after Howlett. Also, if Seeley was aware of Devin Vaughn’s involvement in the theft of the children, he would have gone to the trouble of familiarizing himself with Vaughn’s associates and shared that information with his factotum, Udine.

Bern took a last look around. The activation of Udine’s odd cell phone nagged at him. Had he been a betting man, he’d have laid good money on his having missed an alarm at Seeley’s workshop. All the more reason, then, to get moving.

Bern and Doak left through the kitchen, making sure the front and back doors were locked behind them, before walking a block to where the Explorer was parked. They stopped at a gas station near Lakewoodto buy supplies and use the bathroom because committing a crime, especially murder, did things to the bowels; it had been all Doak could do to hold it in until they’d left the house. Amateurs sometimes couldn’t manage this and ended up defecating where they’d robbed or killed, leaving behind a sample rich in DNA for the police to work with. His stomach settled, Doak took the wheel and they drove northeast toward Blountville.

CHAPTERLXIV

Seeley had been following news reports of the previous night’s events in Loudoun County when his phone beeped, indicating that persons unknown had entered the Madison workshop without first deactivating the alarm, the keypad for which was concealed behind a sliding wood panel by the door. Mertie Udine had been by Seeley’s side for so long that she would never have set off the alarm accidentally, and she rarely had cause to enter the workshop. If someone else had done so, Udine would immediately have been in touch with Seeley because her cell phone would have received the same notification. The procedure had been in place for years.

When Udine didn’t call, Seeley sent a coded message to her secure phone. He gave it five minutes, and when Udine still hadn’t responded, Seeley reached out for assistance. While the Nashville property had cameras in place, the system was relatively primitive, linked to a hard drive in a bedroom closet: another demonstration of Seeley’s reluctance to live any aspect of his life online. But Seeley’s IT expert—the same young man recently responsible for supportingThe Tennesseanby buying two copies—had gained access to the Blink cameras on two nearby houses, one of them directly opposite Seeley’s own.

“What do you have?” Seeley asked him.

“Two men approaching from the street. The door is opened. The men enter. They exit from the back twenty-eight minutes later and head east. One looks to be in his thirties, the other twice as old. No vehicle that I can see.”

“Isolate as clear an image as you can, then fax it,” said Seeley.

“Doing it now.”

The fax came through shortly after. The younger man was unknown to Seeley, but the other’s face was familiar: Aldo Bern.

Seeley went to the farmhouse’s guest bedroom. La Señora was sitting on the side of the bed, staring out at the trees beyond. The bed had not been slept in, just as the adjoining bathroom had not been used, nor had his guest consumed any of the food in the kitchen. He had witnessed her drink some water, but so little that it must barely have moistened her mouth.

“I think we ought to leave,” said Seeley.

They had driven through the night from Virginia to Blountville, after which Seeley had gone to bed for a few hours. He was somewhat refreshed but not so much so that he wanted to get in a car again so soon. Harry Acrement was in Manassas, preparing for the move against Devin Vaughn. Seeley had persuaded la Señora that it would be wiser if they retreated to Blountville in the interim, just in case they had tripped a wire in Virginia. The woman had consented, if reluctantly; she wanted to be closer to the third child, not farther away.

From the bed, la Señora stared at him. Even after the time he’d spent with her and the devastation they’d visited on others together, he still found being the focus of her attention deeply unsettling. Hers was an inhuman regard.

“Why?”

The word was barely a whisper. Had the house not been so quiet, he might have missed it entirely.

“There’s been a break-in at my workshop,” said Seeley, “and Miss Udine isn’t answering her phone.” He felt sorrow rise like bile, butswallowed it down. “The security of the Madison office has been compromised, which means this property may also be at risk.”

“From the ones who took my children?”

“By those they’ve sent after us, yes.”

“Then we will wait for them,” she said in her slow, accented English, which seemed to improve with each day. “We will find out what they know.”

She turned away from Seeley, back to the light, signaling an end to the discussion. She liked the sun, even at this time of year. She relished it as one who had been deprived of it for too long: a prisoner, maybe, or—

A corpse.

The thought had been lurking at the back of Seeley’s mind for a while, but this was the first time he’d acknowledged it. The idea made no sense, of course: la Señora walked and talked—well, not so much the latter, though certainly the former—but she didn’t seek much rest or sustenance and there was a dryness to her tegument, a hint of desiccation. She rustled when she moved, like dead leaves brushing against one another.

Blas Urrea had advised Seeley that he was to be guided by the woman in all matters relating to the children, but Seeley hadn’t survived this long by surrendering authority and judgment to another.