“We’ve got a death certificate. The cause is listed as SIDS.” She handed Faith the form. “Poor thing suffocated in his sleep.”

Faith didn’t take the form. It felt like bad luck to even look at it. She wanted to feel sorry for Gwen because of what she had gone through as a child, but the woman was grown now. She was no longer a victim. If she had given a pedophile access to her child, she was an abuser. Worse than an abuser, because Gwen knew intimately what it felt like to be a helpless kid who lived under the constant threat of rape.

Van said, “Thank you, Miranda. I know you’ve got another meeting.”

Faith told the woman, “Thanks. I mean, this is all awful, but thank you.”

“I hope I’ve been helpful.”

“You have.” Faith went to collect her bag, but Van stopped her.

“Could you hang back for a minute?”

Faith sat down again. She looked at the clock.

3:52 p.m.

Beau Ragnersen and Will were probably at the park. Dash’s flunky was supposed to meet them at four. Faith wanted to hit pause and tell Will everything she had learned. The military stuff was important. The fact that Dash was a pedophile. He could use both to angle his way into the group.

Or Will could finally snap and just beat the shit out of the flunky until he agreed to take him to Sara.

The door buzzed as Miranda left. Van waited for the click, the red light to roll indicating that the room was secure again.

He said, “All right, Mitchell. Give me your best shot.”

She was already locked and loaded. “You had Naval Intelligence analyze Garcia’s beach photos to verify the place and date on his story. You’re telling me you can’t find experts to look at the stumps on Pedo’s left hand where his fingers used to be and match him to Martin Novak?”

“All of our stump experts are trying to break up the Dam Mafia.”

Faith stared at him. “We’re a quarter of a mile from a graveyard where a parking deck used to be.”

He could not be chastened. “Carter and Vale are dead. Hurley is in custody.”

“Thanks to my partner,” Faith reminded him. “I get the leaderless resistance and the lone-wolf stuff, okay? But Martin Novak’s bank robberies netted half a million bucks. Miranda said that 9/11 took coordination, discipline and money. From where I’m sitting, the IPA has all of that, which means they’re not lone wolves, they’re a full-on domestic terrorist operation. And I’m just going to say it: it’s fucking negligent that your boss is so busy covering her ass that she won’t let the FBI do its job.”

“Oh, hey, did you see this?” He held up the ID card on his lanyard. “I actually work for the FBI. This whole thing today, all the cloak and dagger, that’s the FBI helping local law enforcement. Because I work for the FBI. And I ran an FBI informant who gave me intel on Dash. And I flew to Mexico looking for Dash. And I’m talking to you right now because I, me, the FBI agent, want to find Dash.”

Faith probably owed him an apology.

She couldn’t be chastened, either.

Van said, “I know you’ve got a two-year-old at home. These guys, they’re a lot like two-year-olds. They want attention, and they’re willing to destroy things to get it.”

That was a dirty trick. “How do you know about my kid?”

Van ignored the question. “McVeigh inspired dozens of copycats. The Unabomber’s Manifesto has four and a half stars on Amazon. If we tell the press that the Invisible Patriot Army bombed Emory, then we’re going to be dealing with dozens of copycats, and Dash is going to go even farther underground than he is now.”

Faith was already shaking her head. “Dash was early twenties, sweating it out with a Federale, looking at time in a Mexican prison. There’s no way he wasn’t making up shit as he went along. Maybe he really was a student at UC-SD. The name he gave Garcia—Charley Pride. Based on the pattern, you could assume Dash’s real last name starts with a P.”

“Terrific. You get the stack of mattresses. I’ll find a princess.” He took off his glasses and tossed them onto the table. “Look, it’s been one day, Mitchell. I get that you’re scared for your agent. We all want Sara Linton back. We want Michelle Spivey back. We’ve been working that case for a month with nothing to show for it but a shit-ton of brick walls. But don’t for a minute think that the FBI isn’t taking the IPA seriously. I don’t hold meetings in SCIFs because I’ve got a thing for bossy, opinionated women.”

She raised her eyebrows, because that had come out of nowhere.

He said, “Sorry, I meant that as a compliment.”

“Still weird.”

Van bought himself some time by cleaning his glasses with the end of his tie. “Proof. That’s what we need. All we’ve got now is conjecture and gut feeling. We think that’s Novak in the beach photo. We think that’s Dash talking to him. We think Dash took over the reins of the IPA when Martin was captured. We think Dash was the fourth man at Emory yesterday. We think that the IPA abducted Michelle. We think that they’re planning something bigger.” He looked up at Faith. “Since we’re tossing around unproven theories here, I’ll tell you one of mine: my gut tells me that Gwen Novak is married to Dash.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right, because there’s no marriage certificate, no financial ties, no overlaps, but I’m doing the math here and I know how these groups value bloodlines. You want to take over from the king, you marry the king’s daughter.”

“Do you think Gwen had more children?” Faith’s queasiness made her head start to ache. “That’s Gwen’s job, right? She entraps kids for her dad and his frat buddies? Maybe Gwen found an easier way with Dash—she makes her own supply.”

Van rubbed his tie into his glasses so hard that the lens flexed.

She said, “Martin Novak is in custody. Go back at him and—”

“Novak hasn’t talked for over a year and he’s not likely to start now.” Van put his glasses on. “Novak wants whatever is about to happen to happen. He rejoiced when he heard about the explosion yesterday. He wants people to die. He wants to disrupt society and take down the government. He understands that his arrest left a leadership void. If there’s a grand plan, Novak isn’t a part of it. And he’s happy about that. He’s happy to see what comes next.”

Faith knew he was right. She’d spent hours studying Novak as part of the special transport team. The man lived for chaos. “So, what do we do? What’s the plan?”

“I’m working my informants. Carter’s not the only white supremacist I do business with.”

“Carter was such a huge success for you.”

Van acknowledged the dig with a smile. “Finding these guys is the hard part. Once I locate them, it’s basic RASCLS framework.”

Faith tried to hide her excitement over learning a new acronym. “Are you trying to impress me with shop talk?”

“Of course I am,” Van said. “How do you flip a bad guy into a confidential informant? Reciprocation. Authority. Scarcity. Commitment. Consistency. Liking. Social proof. RASCLS. Fortunately, I’m an expert at empathy, sympathy, and handing out cash.”

Faith had to ask, “They don’t know you’re Jewish?”

“Yeah, but it’s funny—you slip them a little money, you keep them out of jail, you listen to their problems without judgment, and they’re all, like, ‘Hitler? I hardly knew him.’”

Faith forced a laugh, but only to cut him some slack over the recent weirdness.

Van said, “I’ve got informants in all the major groups, but what we really need is someone inside the IPA. That’s what I’m working toward; a guy who knows somebody who knows somebody. The IPA is four men down now. Not just regular men, but soldiers. We don’t know what Dash’s medical condition is after the car accident. Whatever he’s planning next will take a certain level of expertise. According to Carter, Dash’s group is comprised of old men and boys. Soldiers like Carter, Hurley, Monroe and Vale were the real leaders. Dash is going to have to recruit some qualified men, pronto.”

Faith looked at the clock.

3:58 p.m.

Beau and Will would be waiting to meet Dash’s flunky.

She asked Van, “Why am I here?”

“Is that an existential question?” He saw that he wasn’t going to get another laugh out of her. “My boss wants you guys to know exactly what kind of people you’re dealing with. The IPA has Sara Linton. We know she’s family. Your family is our family.” He got to the point. “I’ve got a file waiting for you downstairs with everything we have on Michelle Spivey’s abduction. I had to redact the top-secret stuff, but as far as locating her, there’s not a lot of there there. Maybe a second set of eyes can break something apart that twenty of our analysts couldn’t.”

“Okay.” Faith offered, “I can send you the forensic reports from the motel, the autopsy reports. Everything we have is yours.”

He asked, “Everything?”

Faith couldn’t figure out his tone. He either thought she was lying or he was making another lame attempt at flirtation.

She flipped the Magic Eight Ball back in his direction. “My sources say no.”

13