Crispin returned to Ellaville on Monday.

I watched him walk into the warehouse, a shit-eating grin on his face. Jack greeted him warmly, like they hadn’t seen each other in months rather than days. Quentin grinned himself, a rare enough sight that it was something to remark upon. Matthew offered a friendly handshake. And then Crispin turned to me.

“Patrick, I can’t begin to express my gratitude to you.”

“What for?” I asked, truly confused.

“For making me go to Memphis.”

That was even more confusing. “You got stabbed and then shot, Crispin. If I’d known that guy was going to follow you there, I never would have—”

“But if you hadn’t, Alli and I wouldn’t have done this,” he said, raising his hand so everyone could see the wedding band on his finger.

I was flabbergasted.

“But you didn’t even want to spend the few hours in the car with her!”

Everyone else was laughing, Jack slapping him on the back, Quentin offering him obscene advice. Matthew just sat back in a corner, watching like a child learning from the interactions of the adults around him. And then Crispin’s eyes fell on mine.

“You made me go, and that forced me to get over myself and really see Alli for who she was. I owe it all to you.”

I smiled. “Well, glad I could help.”

We hugged, one of those awkward bro hugs that looked painful, but really wasn’t. I was truly happy for him, and happier for Alli. I liked her. I was glad to see she’d found a little happiness.

“While I’ve got you all here,” Jack said a moment later, clapping his hands to draw our attention over the sounds of the construction workers getting started, “I wanted to let you know that the guys from Memphis have agreed to stay on for a few weeks. In the meantime, we’ll be having interviews for new operatives. I would like everyone’s opinion on who we add to the team next since we are something of a small group. I don’t want to cause trouble by adding a personality we don’t all get along with.” He glanced at Matthew when he said this, making me wonder if his new brother-in-law had been talking behind my back. “Therefore, I’ll be assigning any new cases to the Memphis guys to free you guys up for these interviews. I will, however, like for the three of you”—he indicated Quentin, Matthew, and me—“to continue taking shifts at Alli’s and working with our current clients, since they know you and are comfortable with you.”

“What about Crispin?” Quentin asked. “Too good to work at his wife’s store?”

“I’m sure I’ll be working there plenty in the future, just not on the books.”

A little laughter moved around the room.

“Crispin is working to find us a religious expert we can consult about the Guardians. And I’ve got him working with the new crew, making sure they understand how we do things out here in Arizona.”

My eyebrows rose. That felt like something I should be doing since I was from the Memphis office, too. But I didn’t think now was the time to say anything.

“Okay, that’s all I have.” Jack made a shooing motion with his hands. “Get to work.”

I followed Jack to his office after clapping Crispin on the shoulder one last time.

“Do you have a minute?”

Jack turned and nodded, gesturing for me to follow him inside. He shut the door and fell into his chair, sighing heavily.

“Ruth has morning sickness. She gets me out of bed at five every morning to sit in the bathroom with her while she loses half her body weight into the toilet.”

“She’s pregnant?”

Jack’s smile was so big, so proud, that it was impossible not to see how thrilled he was by the idea. “Yeah. Eight weeks.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks, man.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing them for a moment. “Is this about the guys from Memphis?”

I shrugged, not denying it even though I’d come to talk to him about Rachel.

“I put Crispin on them because you’ve been working double duty much longer than I intended for you to. It wasn’t fair of me to ask that much of you, but you were the one I trusted.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Part of the reason I’m hiring new operatives is because I’m going to need an executive team when the offices are finally finished.” He sat up, studying my face. “How do you feel about making Ellaville your permanent residence? Do you have anything back in Memphis that you want to go back for? I mean…I understand if you’d rather go back and return to what you had before.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t leave anything behind.”

“Good.” Jack sat back again. “I’d like to make you my head of operations. You’ll be kind of like Brent is back in Memphis, working directly with the operatives, making sure everyone’s staying on top of their cases, not going rogue or doing anything that will get the company in trouble. And, of course, you’re more than welcome to take on your own cases whenever the mood strikes.”

“That sounds good.”

Jack glanced at me. “It’ll come with a significant pay raise. And a housing allowance for the first year because of the permanent move.”

“That’s generous.”

Jack rolled his shoulders. “We couldn’t have stayed in business these past few months without you. It’s the least I could do.” He sat up again, logging into his computer. “I’m also promoting Crispin. I think his law enforcement experience will prove to be a big help when it comes to training new operatives. I’m putting him in charge of that, of making up the rules everyone must abide by and making sure the operatives keep to them.” He glanced at me. “The two of you will have to work closely together. Is that going to be a problem?”

“No. I like Crispin.”

“Good.” Jack tapped the computer screen. “I see you encrypted a report on here over the weekend. Anything I need to know about?”

Something about the way he touched the screen set off alarms in my head, but I wasn’t sure why. There was nothing wrong with the computer, nothing wrong with what Jack was asking. But I still felt uneasy as I began to explain to him what I was doing.

“You have a witness?”

I nodded. “A woman who was present when Briggs killed this guy. Cameron thinks he can get the coroner to change the cause of death with her testimony alone, but we gave him other names as well, just in case he needed more.”

“How did you meet this woman?”

I was still uncertain about telling him about Rachel. I wasn’t sure what my hesitation was except a personal drive to protect her. Some part of me was afraid that if I made her public, she would somehow cease being mine.

“It’s complicated.”

Jack studied my face for a long moment. “Okay. Keep me posted on how this progresses.”

Just like I’d told Rachel: Jack trusted me.

I left him to peruse his email, heading out as a couple of the construction guys came through the front door with buckets of dry wall mud. One of the guys looked me dead in the eye as we passed, a dark expression on his face. I wondered what the hell I’d ever done to him, assuming he was one of the guys who’d gotten sawdust all over my car the other day, prompting me to have a talk with the foreman about where they were allowed to cut wood and where they weren’t. But, still, did it really require that sort of dark look?

I climbed into my car and cranked up the radio, tapping my hand to a new pop song that had been playing every hour for days, so often that I knew most of the words by now. I was halfway to the hotel when something about the way Jack had tapped the computer screen burned its way into my thoughts. What was it about the computer? Was I put out because Jack had taken over my duties again? I didn’t think I was. Was I worried about how this thing with Cameron was going to play out? I didn’t think that was an issue, either. I was confident in the prosecutor and in Rachel’s testimony.

And then the expression on that construction worker’s face burned across my mind’s eye.

I knew him.

He’d been parked outside the hotel when Rachel and I got back Friday.

And then it clicked. The computer. There was a virus on the computer.

The car outside the hotel had shown up after I used Stone Security’s system to encrypt Rachel’s testimony in that murder. There’d been other cars all weekend, coming and going at odd times. I told myself it was a coincidence, but now I was wondering if maybe they were checking up on us, making sure we were staying put.

They knew. They knew what Rachel and I were up to.

It must have been the emails. There was a virus, and they were using it to read everything that was on the system, including the testimony I encrypted. I had had to put a raw copy on the system to encrypt it, and they saw it.

And the guy with the construction crew?

I turned the car around in the middle of traffic, narrowly missing a van filled with small children. I sped, but it was already too late. I saw the explosion while I was still half a mile away.

The foreman was stumbling out the front door of the burning warehouse when I pulled up, dragging one of his workers beside him.

“Where’s Jack?”

The man was coughing so hard from the smoke that he couldn’t answer. He just shook his head.

I ran inside, flames everywhere. The place was so filled with lumber, framed walls that were still uncovered, that it was a fire’s paradise. The worst of it seemed to be raging in the back corner, ironically right where we’d had our meeting that morning, the same place where we’d all put our cots when we were first occupants of this building. I had last seen Jack in the office on the opposite side of the building.

I ran, pulling my jacket up over my mouth to keep from breathing in the worst of the fumes. The door was closed, the glass blown out of the walls and the door itself. The knob was red hot. I had to use the sleeve of my jacket to get it open.

“Jack!”

He was on the floor, his chair blown backward from the blast. I grabbed his arm and pulled him up, tossing him over my shoulder. He was damn heavy! My knees buckled, but I managed to pull myself upright with the help of the heavy desk. I turned to discover the fire was quickly spreading, leaving a very narrow corridor for us to get through outside the office door.

“Hold on!”

I moved quickly but steadily, afraid I’d drop him if I tried to run. I could see the foreman standing at the door, calling out. I couldn’t make out his words, but I moved through the smoke, guiding my escape with what little light from the doorway was making its way through the heavy haze. He grabbed Jack from my shoulder as I passed through.

“It’s going to blow. There’s chemicals back there, gas tanks for the welders. We’ve got to get back!”

I followed him, coughing as he’d done when he first came out the door. We ran across the street to a bare field where the other workers were waiting. I stumbled around, looking for the man I’d seen earlier, but he wasn’t there. Probably took off the moment he set up whatever it was that caused the explosion.

Sirens were screaming in the distance. I had turned to see how far they were when the building suddenly seemed to take a deep breath and then exploded, the heated air whipping me off my feet.

I remember falling. I don’t remember much after that.