Shaw rose. The men shook hands.
It was then that his phone hummed with a text. He read the words. Debated only a moment and replied.
—
He stood on the riverwalk, near the Fourth Street Bridge.
Beneath him the mustard-brown Kenoah muscled past.
Shaw inhaled. Harmon’s toxic cocktails were no longer being dumped into the victimized body of water, and it seemed there’d been an improvement in the odor.
Imagination? Maybe.
He was looking across the river, at the famed tourist draw, the Water Clock—the inspiration for the project that father and daughter had tackled for history class. The model of the attraction that Jon Merritt had built in prison had been recovered from the wrecked Buick and returned to Parker and Hannah. It was still in working order and was now sitting on the mantelpiece of their rental home. He wondered what had become of the bolo.
“Hey there,” came the melodic, Southern-laced voice.
Sonja Nilsson was climbing up a stone stairway from a dock twenty feet below. She’d been conferring with two men on a small craft fitted out with a bristle of scientific equipment.
Shaw nodded a greeting.
The woman was in jeans, a work shirt and a leather jacket, a far cry from the stylish outfit she’d worn when they’d first met in Harmon’s office. An orange safety vest too. Her blond hair was done up in a braid that was then swirled into a careless bun and pinnedfirmly to the back of her head. Looking for all the world like a Saturday morning shopper in Stockholm, about to stop for a coffee. Minus the vest, of course.
“How’s your Range Rover?”
“A couple of weeks. Quite the long pause when I told the insurance examiner that the cause of the damage was an improvised explosive device.”
Shaw peered down at the Kenoah. “And the water quality?”
The workers had been wielding yellow Geiger counters.
“We’re good. Negligible from the point of the spill to here. Downstream, it’s negative.”
So the radiation was no longer a threat.
He glanced at her face and noted her scanning about them. He had just done the same. Her jacket was partly open and he could see the grip of her weapon.
Their eyes met.
Ah, that green... Nature, or not?
He said, “Probably we’re good.” Referring to risk assessment.
True.
Nilsson would always be cautious about being on the watchlist, thanks to the larcenous government contractor. As for individuals involved in the HEP situation, though, there were none left to pose a threat.
At Deep Woods Lake, Jon Merritt had killed Dominic Ryan and one of his Irish crew. The other, wounded, was in jail and fully prepared to gab.
Tan Jacket—Desmond Sawicki—was gone, of course.
And so was his partner, Moll Frain, the man Allison Parker had set free. There was no danger of his making a shocking act-three appearance, like the supposedly dead henchman at the end of a bad movie. He was found this morning in his workshop on the outskirts of Ferrington, dead by his own hand. He was sitting in a chair made of aluminum but painted to look like rich wood. He himself haddecorated it. Apparently he was quite the artist. Who would have thought?
“Is HEP shut down?” Shaw asked.
“For a spell.”
The Mason-Dixon phrase, and appropriate accent, coming from the mouth of a Swedish fashion model both jarred and was oddly appealing.