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I make it back to Bellamy and Eric’s house as they are finishing eating.

“There’s plenty,” Bellamy tells me when I walk in. “Grab a plate.”

“Thanks,” I tell her, breathing in the rich scent of her lasagna as I drop my bag in the living room and head for the kitchen.

She comes in carrying dishes as I cut a chunk out of the baking dish and put it on a plate to zap it in the microwave.

“There’s a salad in the fridge too,” she says. “I made too much, so you have to eat some of it.”

“I will,” I assure her.

I grab a bowl from the cabinet and get the salad out of the refrigerator.

“How did it go today?” she asks.

I barely register the words. My mind is in the bag in the living room, lingering in my notes.

“Hmm?” I say, realizing she said something but not really knowing what she said.

“I asked how it went today,” she says. “You went and talked to more people, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It went… It went. I still don’t feel like I’m on any definite path, but I got some insights that were interesting.”

“You’re thinking about something,” she says.

The microwave dings, and I take my plate of lasagna out. Carrying it and my salad into the dining room, I set them on the table and look back at Bellamy.

“I am,” I say.

I go into the living room and get my bag, taking it back to the dining room so I can dig out the notes from my talk with Ander. Deeper in the house, I can hear Bebe giggling as Eric gives her a bath to get her ready for bed. I have a feeling tonight is going to be one of those nights for me. The hard nights when I find myself staring at the ceiling for hours and can’t will myself to sleep because my mind is going to too many places. If I were at home, I’d snuggle up beside Sam and try to at least relax, but here I might find myself pacing the guest room until just before I should be getting up.

Spreading my notes out on the table, I scan through them and find what I was looking for.

“Ander Ward, that’s Tracy Ellis’s primary bodyguard, told me about a protest that broke out during one of Tracy’s talks at a local college. It apparently got pretty heated. You’ve seen some of the protests that have happened on campuses recently. These aren’t the little groups holding up signs and chanting like they did when we were in school. These things get violent, and people can get really carried away with them. I wonder if that could have anything to do with what’s happening,” I say.

“It sounds like something to go after,” Bellamy says. “I’ll leave you to it. Gotta help get Bebe into bed.”

“I’ll try to be quiet,” I tell her.

“You’re fine. That girl sleeps like a rock. She gets it from her father,” she says.

She leaves to do the bedtime routine, and I grab my phone from my bag. I dial Tracy Ellis, thinking it would go to voicemail and I’ll talk to her tomorrow, but she answers.

“This is Agent Griffin,” I tell her. “I didn’t think you would still be at the office.”

“I’m not,” she says. “I have my calls transferred to my cell phone when I’m not there to make sure I don’t miss anything important. What can I do for you, Agent Griffin?”

“I talked to Ander Ward yesterday evening, and I want to ask you about an incident he described to me,” I tell her.

“All right. What incident?” she asks.

“He said that you did a talk at a local college and there was a protest,” I say.

She draws in a breath. “Yes. That was just a few months ago. It was just some young people who have been woefully misled in how they see the world lashing out against something they can’t understand.”

“The way Ander was describing, it seemed much more serious than that,” I say. “By the sound of it, things got fairly violent. He said the police had to be called.”

“I don’t want to sensationalize the actions of those people by talking about them,” she says.

“You aren’t sensationalizing anything. I need as much information about people who might have a problem with you as I can possibly get. Someone is threatening people who work for you and are now fulfilling that threat with a murder. It’s crucial I get your full honesty and openness with me so that I can do my investigation the way it needs to be done.”

There’s a long pause, as she seems to consider what I’ve said, then she lets out another breath, slower and softer this time.

“All right,” she says again. “That talk was something I was really looking forward to. I believe strongly that our young people are being drawn in the wrong direction by the influences around them, and they need strong leaders to guide them back to the right path.”

“Leaders like yourself.”

“Well, of course. This was an opportunity for me to show them that there was a truth out there that they could follow, a different life far more fulfilling and meaningful than anything they had ever experienced before. I knew it was going to be a challenge. Like I said, the young people are being pulled away from lives of righteousness and poisoned with all kinds of falsehoods everywhere they look. Even from the kinds of courses they are being taught in their schools now. Things that should never reach their ears are warping their minds and leading them to believe things that are so far removed from what they should be thinking, feeling, and doing… It’s tragic. But it’s also very difficult to convince them of anything different. I knew I would be facing some difficulty trying to get them to listen to what I had to say.

“It was a thrill when I got there and saw how many students were actually there to hear me speak and excited about what I was saying. It gave me so much hope to see that there were minds that hadn’t yet been altered, hearts that were still in the right place, doing the right things. Those are the people who can influence others in the right way, and I couldn’t wait to talk to them.”

“Can you tell me about what happened?”

“The talk itself was going well. We were outdoors in a courtyard area of the student commons, so most of the people there listening were standing. Suddenly, another group of students rushed in and started shouting and chanting, trying to drown me out. Others who were around joined in. A few of the people there to listen to me argued back with them, and it turned into a physical altercation. Someone even tried to rush up onto the platform where I was standing and get to me. Fortunately, Ander and Gideon were there to bring everything under control, and no one was too seriously hurt,” she says.

“Do you remember what they were saying? When they were shouting and chanting, do you remember any of the specific words or phrases they used?” I ask.

“I do remember them calling me the devil,” she says. “And saying that my teachings were what were vile, not what I was teaching against.”

“They used those words?” I ask, instantly linking them to the threatening notes.

“Yes,” she says.

“Can you give me the contact information for the people at the school who arranged the talk?” I ask.

“I’ll have to look it up, but I’ll send it to you,” she says.

“Thank you.”

I get off the phone and head for a shower, then change into pajamas, hoping to convince my body to rest. By the time I’m back to the table, I have a message from Tracy with the name and information for the contact at the school, whom I’m assuming Marcus Kelsey went through to get the talk set up. I call the number and leave a voicemail introducing myself and asking Samantha Clark to call me back. I then get my computer and look up the school along with Tracy Ellis’s name, wanting to see if any coverage of the protest will pop up.

It doesn’t take long for me to get a hit on my search. An article in what looks like the student paper comes up first. There’s an image on the front of police officers standing among a group of students in an outdoor area with a caption describing the scene. I read the article and find out the group of protestors was a campus organization that called themselves the Student Action Committee. The vagueness of the name is enough to put me on edge. That’s the kind of name a group gives itself when it doesn’t want to be clear about what it’s actually doing. I jot the name down so that I remember to ask about it tomorrow and keep researching.

There’s little news coverage of the incident, and the rest steers away from naming the group, simply referring to them as “protestors” and focusing on the physical assaults that led to the police involvement. One has a close-up picture of Ander standing with one of the officers, and I notice blood trickling down the side of his face. I remember him saying he had to subdue some people, and I see the blood as evidence of just how far it actually went.

I find another article about the incident and look at the picture attached. Rather than being of either of the security guards, the caption reveals that the man in khakis and a polo shirt is Marcus Kelsey. In the picture he’s standing close to Tracy Ellis and a police officer. It looks like he’s making an angry and agitated gesture. I read through the article wanting more information, but it is largely the same as the other one.

Resigned to the fact that I’m not going to find out anything more tonight, I gather everything back up and bring it to the guest room. It’s still early, so I go back out into the living room and find Eric stretched out on the couch with the remote, flipping aimlessly through the channels on the TV.

“Feel like binging some cooking competition shows with me?” I ask.

“Sounds good to me,” he says, tossing me the remote.

I curl up in a recliner and flip through on-demand screens until I find the show I want and turn it on.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask you how things are going with the investigation,” he says. “How is Tracy Ellis in person?”

“She’s a lot,” I tell him. “What you thought when you watched that video of her talking about Terrence Brooks—yeah, that and then some. I sat in on a company meeting, and she sounded just like she did in that video. Just as worked up and intense, and she was just talking to her employees. It makes me understand even better why people have a problem with her. But also why people would be obsessed with her. She would definitely be the kind of person some people would desperately want to be accepted by. They would want to feel like they were part of the special, exclusive group she creates just by talking about how terrible everything else is.”

“That’s how people like her end up gaining so much popularity. People really want to feel like they are included in something that others aren’t or that they are better than other people in some way,” Eric says.

“Even when the whole point is supposedly to reach out to people and make them better,” I say bitterly. “Bring them into the truth. That seems like one of her favorite words. Everything is about the truth.”

“Convenient when that’s exactly what you’re trying to find.”

I let out a breath. “Yeah.”