It was late. The house was dark all around him. Nicholas Drake was sitting at his desk in his home in Brentwood, near Santa Monica. He was precisely 2.9 miles from the beach (he had recently measured it in his car), so he felt secure there. It was a good thing, too, because NERF had bought this house for him only one year before. There had been some discussion about that, because they had also bought him a townhouse in Georgetown. But Drake had pointed out that he needed a residence on the West Coast in which to entertain celebrities and important contributors.

California was, after all, the most environmentally conscious state in the nation. It had been the first to pass anti-smoking laws, almost ten years before New York or any other Eastern state did. And even when a Federal Court overturned the EPA on the issue of secondhand smoke in 1998, saying that the EPA had violated its own rules of evidence and banned a substance they had failed to prove caused any harm at all—the Federal Judge was from a tobacco state, obviously—even then, California did not budge. The anti-smoking laws stayed. In fact, Santa Monica was about to ban all smoking outdoors, even at the beach! Now that was progress!

It was easy here.

But as for getting major funds…well, that was another matter. There were some rich people in the entertainment industry who could be counted on, but for the real money in California—the investment bankers, portfolio managers, CEOs, real estate, trust funders, people with five hundred million to a couple billion, serious money—well, those people weren’t so easy. Those people inhabited a different California. Those people belonged to golf courses that didn’t allow actors to join. The big money was in the hands of pioneers and tech entrepreneurs, and they were very smart and very tough. A lot of them knew their science. Christ, a lot of them were scientists.

Which was why they presented such a challenge to Drake, if he wanted that bonus for making his numbers for the year. He was staring at the screen, thinking it was time for a Scotch, when a new window opened and the cursor blinked:

SCORPIO_L: Can you talk?

Speaking of dimwits, he thought. He typed:

Yes I can.

Drake shifted in his seat, adjusting the light over his desk so it would illuminate his face. He looked at the camera lens mounted just above his screen.

The window opened up. He saw Ted Bradley, sitting at his desk in his house in the San Fernando Valley.

“Well?”

“It was just as you said,” Bradley said. “Evans has gone over to the dark side.”

“And?”

“He was with that girl, Jennifer, who works on the lawsuit…”

“Jennifer Haynes?”

“Yeah. She’s a wise-ass bitch.”

Drake said nothing. He was listening to the sound of the voice. Bradley had been drinking again. He said, “Ted, we’ve talked about this before. Not everybody likes it when you come on to them.”

“Yeah, they do. I mean, mostly they do.”

“Ted, this is not the impression we want to make.”

“Well, she insulted me.”

“All right. So Jennifer Haynes was there…”

“She’s a stooge for big oil and coal. Gotta be.”

“And who else was there?”

“Sarah Jones.”

“Uh-huh. She flew up to see the body?”

“I don’t know why she was there. She was with a guy named Kenner, a real asshole. Another know-it-all.”

“Describe him.”

“Forties, dark, kind of butch. Looks military to me.”

“Uh-huh. Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Nobody foreign? No other people?”

“No, just the ones I described.”

“Would you say that Peter Evans knew Kenner?”

“Yeah. Pretty well, I would say.”

“So, it was your impression they were working together?”

“Yes. I would say very much together.”

“All right, Ted,” Drake said. “I like your instincts here.” He watched as Bradley preened on the monitor. “I think you may be on to something. Evans could prove a problem to us.”

“I’ll say.”

“He’s been one of our trusted attorneys. Why, he was in my office just the other day, getting an assignment from me. If he’s turned on us, he could do damage.”

“Damn turncoat,” Ted said. “He’s another Bennett Arnold.”

“I want you to stick close to him for the next week or so.”

“My pleasure.”

“Hang out with him, stay by his side. Buddy-buddy. You know.”

“I got you, Nick. I’ll be on him like glue.”

“I’m sure he’ll be at the opening of the conference later this morning,” Drake said. And he thought, Or then again, he might not make it.