ATHRYN DANCE WAS back at CBI headquarters. She was disappointed to learn that Jonathan Boling had returned to Santa Cruz. But since he’d come up with the platinum find—Stryker, well, Jason—there wasn’t much else for him to do at the moment.

Rey Carraneo called in with some interesting news. He explained that Clint Avery had left his company ten minutes ago. The agent had followed him along the winding roads in the Pastures of Heaven, the name that literary legend John Steinbeck had given to the lush, agriculturally fertile area. There he’d stopped twice, on the shoulder. Both times he’d met with someone. First, two somber men—dressed like cowboys—in a fancy pickup truck. The second time, a white-haired man in a nice suit, behind the wheel of a Cadillac. The meetings seemed suspicious; Avery was clearly nervous. Carraneo had gotten the plates and was running profiles.

Avery was now headed toward Carmel, Carraneo right behind him.

Dance was discouraged. She’d hoped that her meeting with Avery would flush the construction boss—force him to speed to a safe house, where he’d stashed evidence—and perhaps Travis himself.

But apparently not.

Still, the men Avery’d met with might’ve been hired guns who were behind the killings. The DMV report would give her some clues, if not answers.

TJ stuck his head in her doorway. “Hey, boss, you still interested in Hamilton Royce?”

The man who was probably at that very moment considering how to bring her career down in flames. “Give me a one-minute précis.”

“A what?” TJ asked.

“Synopsis. Summary. Digest.”

“‘Précis’ is a word? Learn something new every day…. Okay. Royce’s a former lawyer. Left practice mysteriously and quickly. He’s a tough guy. Works mostly with six or seven different departments in the state. Ombudsman’s his official title. Unofficially he’s a fixer. You see that movie Michael Clayton?”

“With George Clooney, sure. Twice.”

“Twice?”

“George Clooney.”

“Ah. Well, that’s what Royce does. Lately he’s been doing a lot of work for senior people in the lieutenant governor’s office, the state energy commission, the EPA, and the Finance Committee of the Assembly. If there’s a problem, he’s there.”

“What sort of problem?”

“Committee disagreements, scandals, public relations, pilfering, contract disputes. I’m still waiting to hear back on more details.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can use.” Picking one of the man’s favorite verbs.

“Use? To do what?”

“We had a falling-out, Royce and me.”

“So you want to blackmail him?”

“That’s a strong word. Let’s just say I’d like to keep my job.”

“I want you to keep your job too, boss. You let me get away with murder. Hey, what’s with Avery?”

“Rey’s tailing him.”

“Love that word. Almost as good as ‘shadow.’”

“What’s the progress on Chilton’s list of suspects?”

TJ explained that tracking them down was going slowly. People had moved or were unlisted, they were out, names had changed.

“Give me half,” she said. “I’ll get going on it too.”

The young agent handed her a sheet of paper. “I’ll give you the small list,” he said, “because you’re my favorite boss.”

Dance looked over the names, considering how best to proceed. She heard in her mind Jon Boling’s words. We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much.

Kathryn Dance decided she’d get to the official databases in a while—National Criminal Information Center, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, California Open Warrants and consolidated DMV.

For now, she’d stick to Google.

GREG SCHAEFFER STUDIED James Chilton, who sat bloodied and frightened before him.

Schaeffer had been using the pseudonym Greg Ashton to get close to Chilton without arousing suspicions.

Because the name “Schaeffer” might raise alarms in the blogger.

But then again it might not have; it wouldn’t surprise Schaeffer one bit if Chilton regularly forgot about the victims who suffered because of his blog.

This thought infuriated Schaeffer all the more and when Chilton started to sputter, “Why—?” he slugged him once more.

The blogger’s head snapped back against the upper part of his desk chair and he grunted. Which was all fine, but the son of a bitch wasn’t looking terrified enough to satisfy Schaeffer.

“Ashton! Why’re you doing this?”

Schaeffer leaned forward, gripped Chilton by the collar. He whispered, “You’re going to read a statement. If you don’t sound sincere, if you don’t sound remorseful, your wife will die. Your children too. I know they’ll be home from camp soon. I’ve been following them. I know the schedule.” He turned to Chilton’s wife. “And I know your brother’s with them. He’s a big guy, but he’s not bulletproof.”

“Oh, God, no!” Patrizia gasped, dissolving into tears. “Please!”

And now, at last, there was real fear in Chilton’s face. “No, don’t hurt my family! Please, please…I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt them.”

“Read the statement and sound like you mean it,” Schaeffer warned, “then I’ll leave them alone. I’ll tell you, Chilton, I’ve got nothing but sympathy for them. They deserve a better life than being with a piece of shit like you.”

“I’ll read it,” the blogger said. “But who are you? Why are you doing this? You owe me an answer.”

Schaeffer was seized by a wave of fury. “Owe you?” he growled. “Owe you? You arrogant asshole!” He slammed his fist into Chilton’s cheek once more, leaving the man stunned. “I owe you nothing.” He leaned forwards and snapped, “Who am I, who am I? Do you know anybody whose lives you destroy? No, of course not. Because you sit in that fucking chair, a million miles away from real life, and you say whatever you want to say. You type some shit on your keyboard, send it out into the world and then you’re on to something else. Does the concept of consequences mean anything to you? Accountability?”

“I try to be accurate. If I got something wrong—”

Schaeffer burned. “You are so fucking blind. You don’t understand you can be factually right and still be wrong. Do you have to tell every secret in the world? Do you have to destroy lives for no reason—except your ratings?”

“Please!”

“Does the name Anthony Schaeffer mean anything to you?”

Chilton’s eyes closed momentarily. “Oh.” When he opened them again they were filled with understanding, and perhaps remorse. But that didn’t move Schaeffer one bit.

At least Chilton remembered the man he’d destroyed.

Patrizia asked, “Who’s that? Who does he mean, Jim?”

“Tell her, Chilton.”

The blogger sighed. “He was a gay man who killed himself after I outed him a few years ago. And he was…?”

“My brother.” His voice cracked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” Schaeffer scoffed.

“I apologized for what happened. I never wanted him to die! You must know that. I felt terrible.”

Schaeffer turned to Patrizia, “Your husband, the voice of the moral and just universe, didn’t like it that a deacon in a church could also be gay.”

Chilton snapped back, “That wasn’t the reason. He headed a big anti–gay marriage campaign in California. I was attacking his hypocrisy, not his sexual orientation. And his immorality. He was married, he had children…but when he was on business trips he’d call up gay prostitutes. He was cheating on his wife, sometimes with three men a night!”

The blogger’s defiance was back and Schaeffer wanted to hit him once more, so he did, hard and fast.

“Tony was struggling to find God’s path. He slipped a few times. And you made it sound like he was a monster! You never even gave him a chance to explain. God was helping him find the way.”

“Well, God wasn’t doing a very good job. Not if—”

The fist struck again.

“Jim, don’t argue with him. Please!”

Chilton lowered his head. Finally he looked desperate and filled with sorrow and fear.

Schaeffer enjoyed the delicious sense of the man’s despair. “Read the statement.”

“All right. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll read it. But my family…please.” The agony in Chilton’s face was like fine wine to Schaeffer.

“You have my word on it.” He said this sincerely, though he was reflecting that Patrizia would outlive her husband by no more than two seconds—a humane act, in the end. She wouldn’t want to go on without him. Besides, she was a witness.

As for the children, no, he wouldn’t kill them. For one thing they weren’t due home for nearly an hour and he’d be long gone by then. Also, he wanted the sympathy of the world. Killing the blogger and his wife was one thing. The children were something else.

Beneath the camera Schaeffer taped a piece of the paper containing the statement he’d written that morning. It was a moving piece—and had been drafted in a way to make sure that nobody would associate the crime with him.

Chilton cleared his throat and looked down. He began to read. “This is a statement—” His voice broke.

Beautiful! Schaeffer kept the camera running.

Chilton started over. “This is a statement to those who’ve been reading my blog, The Chilton Report, over the years. There is nothing more precious in the world than a man’s reputation and I have devoted my life to needlessly and randomly destroying the reputations of many fine, upstanding citizens.”

He was doing a good job.

“It’s easy to buy a cheap computer and a website and some blog software and in five minutes you’ve got a venue for your personal opinions—a venue that will be seen by millions of people around the world. This leads to an intoxicating sense of power. But it’s a power that isn’t earned. It’s a power that’s stolen.

“I’ve written many things about people that were merely rumors. Those rumors spread and they became accepted as the truth, even though they were total lies. Because of my blog the life of a young man, Travis Brigham, has been destroyed. He has nothing more to live for. And neither do I. He has sought justice against the people who attacked him, people who were my friends. And now he’s rendering justice against me. I’m ultimately responsible for destroying his life.”

Glorious tears were streaking down his face. Schaeffer was in purest heaven.

“I now accept responsibility for destroying Travis’s reputation and those of the others I’ve carelessly written about. The sentence that Travis now serves on me will stand as a warning to others: The truth is sacred. Rumors are not the truth…. Now, good-bye.”

He inhaled deeply and looked at his wife.

Schaeffer was satisfied. The man had done a good job. He paused the webcam and checked the screen. Only Chilton was in the image. The wife wasn’t. He didn’t want an image of her death, just the blogger’s. He pulled back a bit so the man’s entire torso was visible. He’d shoot him once, in the heart, and let him die on camera, then upload the post to a number of social networking sites and to other blogs. Schaeffer estimated it would take two minutes for the video to appear on YouTube and would be viewed by several million people before the company took it down. By then, though, the pirate software that allowed the downloading of streaming videos would have captured it and the footage would spread throughout the world like cancer cells.

“They’ll find you,” Chilton muttered. “The police.”

“But they won’t be looking for me. They’ll be looking for Travis Brigham. And, frankly, I don’t think anybody’s going to be looking very hard. You’ve got a lot of enemies, Chilton.”

He cocked the gun.

“No!” Patrizia Chilton wailed desperately, frantic. Schaeffer resisted a tempting impulse to shoot her first.

He kept the gun steady on his target and noted a resigned and, it seemed, ironic smile crossing James Chilton’s face.

Schaeffer hit the “Record” button on the camera again and began to pull the trigger.

When he heard, “Freeze!”

The voice was coming from the open office doorway. “Drop the weapon. Now!”

Jolted, Schaeffer glanced back, at a slim young Latino man in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. Pointing a weapon his way. A badge on his hip.

No! How had they found him?

Schaeffer kept the gun steadily on the blogger’s chest and snapped to the cop, “You drop it!”

“Lower the weapon,” was the officer’s measured reply. “This is your only warning.”

Schaeffer growled, “If you shoot me, I’ll—”

He saw a yellow flash, sensed a tap to his head and then the universe went black.