"Don't see how. Danny's never been what you'd call financially savvy. His interests are a lot more basic. Debby was an artist. She had nothing to do with the fund."

"Well, those guys tonight didn't seem like the Wall Street types either."

Abby's phone buzzed. She answered it and then passed it across to Stone. "It's Tyree," she said.

The sheriff said, "Ben, I went to the place you said. Nobody was there. Didn't find nothing. No bats, no blood, no belt."

"They must've come back and cleaned it all up."

"How's Danny?"

"Getting some tests run."

"Did you ask him who did it?"

"He said it was an accident."

"And you're sure it wasn't?"

"Not unless you categorize three guys with baseball bats doing you bodily harm an accident."

"I'm heading over to talk to Danny. How's Abby?"

Stone glanced at her. "She's holding up."

Stone passed back the phone. "I'm going to get a cup of coffee, you want one?"

She shook her head and tried to smile. "No thanks. I'm just going to stay planted here until they tell me Danny's going to be okay."

Stone walked off looking for a vending machine, stretching out his sore arm as he did so. Then the rather obvious occurred to him. Willie Coombs was still here.

Crack and pinpoint pupils. And now Danny beaten nearly to death. And a dead woman in the middle of it all.

The coffee could wait. He needed to talk to Willie.

KNOX'S CELL PHONE BUZZED. The caller ID came up as blocked. He hesitated and then answered it.

"Hello?"

It took a second for Knox to place the caller's voice. "Finn?"

"I thought about what you said and I thought you might want to know something."

Knox snatched a small notebook off the kitchen island and uncapped a pen. "I'm listening."

"I was at the Visitor Center with Stone. That won't come as a surprise to the folks at CIA. Carter Gray was there too, as was Senator Simpson."

"What were you all doing there? Having a pre-opening party?"

"We were doing an exchange. My son for Senator Simpson."

Knox caught a breath. "CIA snatched your kid?"

"And we grabbed a U.S. senator in return."

"Why Simpson?"

"He, Gray and Stone have a history. Not a good one."

"I didn't think they were all best buds."

"Anyway, we did the exchange, gave Gray all he wanted, including a cell phone with a recording on it that Stone had."

"What was the recording of?"

"Don't know. But whatever it was, it's the reason Gray resigned his post as intelligence czar."

"Some dirt?"

"Seems to be."

"I take it after the exchange was made they weren't going to let you walk away?"

"You could say that Gray had a different idea as to how we were going to leave the place."

Knox was writing fast and scribbling questions in the margins. "Let me ask something. Was Milton Farb a casualty in this little skirmish?"

"He's dead, isn't he? Stone was getting us all out on a prearranged route. He knew Gray would try and screw him so he had a backup plan. But while we were getting out of there, Milton was killed by one of Gray's men. Stone didn't leave after that. He went back in." Finn paused. "I went with him."

"Why?"

"He saved my son. He saved me along with everyone I cared about. I owed him."

"Okay. I can see that." Knox clenched the top of the pen between his teeth.

"One more thing. Before Simpson left the building he called out something to Stone."

"What was that?"

"He told him that he'd been the one to order the hit on Stone and his family when Stone was with Triple Six and Simpson was with CIA. His wife was killed and his daughter just disappeared during the hit. Stone got away and he's been on the run ever since. They took everything he had, Knox. Everything."

"Why would they want to torpedo one of their own?"

"He wanted out. He'd had enough. Only they didn't want him to leave," Finn said simply.

Knox settled down in a chair and peered out the window into his small front yard as he digested this. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Two reasons. Owing to something that happened a long time ago involving Gray and Simpson, my family and I are bulletproof so far as the U.S. government is concerned. They're not coming after us no matter what I say or don't say."

"Yeah, I got that impression. And the second reason?"

"I've still got contacts on the inside and I checked you out. I peg you as a good guy in a tough spot. You may need a lifeline more than anybody before this is all over."

"I hope you're wrong but I appreciate the assist."

"Here's another one. If you are trying to find Oliver Stone, I'm not going to wish you luck."

"I can understand that."

"It's not just for the reason you think."

"Come again?"

"That night at the Capitol Visitor Center he had a thirty-year-old sniper rifle and a shitty scope. There was a seasoned CIA paramilitary force on the other side loaded for bear with a six-to-one advantage over us. We walked out, they didn't. I've never seen anything like it, Knox, and I was a SEAL who pulled time in just about every flame point there is in the world. Oliver Stone is the most stand-up guy you'll ever meet. He'll never let you down. He's a man of his word and he'll lay down his life for his friends without hesitation. But with a gun or knife in his hand the guy's no longer human. He knows ways to kill people I've never even heard of. So if you do run into him the chances are pretty high that you won't be the one walking away. Just thought you ought to know."

Finn clicked off and Knox sat there looking out his window, his pen now making nonsensical doodles on the paper.

This intelligence from Finn, while compelling and interesting, should not have made a difference to Knox insofar as his mission was concerned.

But it did.

It had come as no shock to Knox that his agency had less than clean hands. That was just the nature of the business. But though Knox was a veteran of the intelligence world, there was something in his gut-perhaps as deep as his soul-that had recoiled in anger with every fact that Finn had revealed about John Carr and how his country had repeatedly ripped the man's life apart.

There was right and wrong, although those lines got blurred all the time. Justice and injustice too were often all over the place, he knew. There were no easy answers and whatever road you took, be it the high, low or more likely somewhere in between, half the people would hate the result and half would applaud. And the hell of the thing was in a way they'd both be right.

However, as Knox dwelled on all this, it seemed to him that John Carr, no matter what he might have done on that rainy, gray morning a few days ago, deserved to live out his life as a free man, but that was not Knox's decision to make. His investigator mind told him to verify what he'd been told. Then he would just have to see.