Still, seeing her, he felt his heart rate begin to slow. He had a purpose.
I’m coming, he told her. And I’ll make them pay.
48
June
June tried not to think about Peter, trading himself and the armor-piercing rounds for Ellie’s and Carlotta’s lives. Instead, while Lewis fought traffic on the way to Greenwood Avenue, where Manny was waiting, she pulled the Washington state map from her bag and opened it up. Geoff Reed’s circles and lines and hieroglyphics were all over the place, but there was nothing in the rough area Faraday had given them for a location of the Messenger’s compound.
Although that gave her an idea. Faraday had thought it was an old summer camp. Refolding the map, she opened her laptop, connected it to her mobile hotspot, and ran a simple search for the sale of a summer camp. In a smaller community, that would be a newsworthy event, especially if it was a Boy Scout camp. She found several mentions of camps sold in the last ten years, but again, nothing even close to the right area. Hmph.
She’d already shown Faraday the photo she’d taken of the Resilient Systems brochure pinned to the wall at Reed’s place, folded to thepicture of the owner. Faraday had confirmed Garrison Bevel as the Messenger. Now she logged onto her subscription databases, trying to find traces of the man.
Unfortunately, Bevel seemed to be a ghost. She found no physical address, email, telephone number, real estate, or vehicles in his name. He had no credit history or available banking information. He had no presence on social media or any of the business networking sites. She tried Resilient Systems with the same lame-ass result. Most government websites only kept business information for five years. The company’s own website was long gone.
The only mention she could find was a letter to the editor he’d written to theSan Francisco Chronicleafter the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise, killing eighty-five people and causing over eighteen billion dollars in property damage.
As it turned out, Bevel was once an engineer at Pacific Gas and Electric. The letter called out the utility company for poor equipment maintenance. Bevel claimed he’d warned executives of the risk for years, but had lost his job because he wouldn’t be quiet. He said he had a simple plan to solve the wildfire problem, citing the ideas of Dr. Theodore Kaczynski, who he referred to as a mathematician and a philosopher.
So the Messenger’s inspiration was the Unabomber, June thought. A convicted madman. That’s just fucking great.
Of course, the Camp Fire was just one of many fires caused by utility company failures. PG&E was by far the worst culprit, and in the end was found legally liable for multiple wildfires. A private company, it declared bankruptcy because of its inability to pay for damages. After restructuring, it still only paid a fraction of what it owed. And utility-caused fires continued, including the Lahaina fire in 2023 and the Texas Panhandle fire in 2024.
So Garrison Bevel had been proven correct, at least about this.
Just the kind of thing to give a disturbed individual a messiah complex.
Unfortunately, he appeared to have the personal magnetism to turn his obsession into a movement.
—
In Greenwood, they found Manny pacing in the parking lot. The family minivan lay dead and bleeding on the blacktop. There were no police.
Lewis flashed the lights and slewed to a stop. Before the big Lexus stopped rocking on its springs, Manny pulled open the passenger door, his usually calm face a mask of fear. “Please tell me you know where they are.”
“Working on it,” June said. “Nobody called the cops?”
Manny climbed into the heavy vehicle. “It happened so fast, I don’t think anyone even noticed. Plus they had suppressors on their pistols, so the gunfire was relatively quiet.” He looked over at Faraday. “Who’s this?”
Lewis made the introductions. “We only got two long guns and three pistols. Can you add to that?”
Manny gave a grim nod. “Get to my place, I’ll set us up.”
Lewis hit the gas and turned the wheel and the Lexus leapt into traffic through a chorus of angry horns. “Your girls safe or do we need to find someplace to put them?”
“They’re still at school. Carlotta’s mom is coming down from Bellingham to pick them up. She’ll drive them to a friend’s cabin in the Cascades until this is over.” Manny pulled on his seat belt and turned to look over his shoulder at June. “You got an update on Ashes?”
She glanced at the time. “The meet was an hour ago. They have him now.”
Manny swore softly. “I’m so sorry, June.”
She looked at him. “Not your fault, Manny. It’s ours, for bringing your family into this shit.”
“Screw that,” Lewis said. “Those motherfuckers killed two people, then kidnapped two more. That’s on them, not us. We’re just trying to make it right.”
—
At Manny’s house, he and Lewis went inside and emerged a few minutes later with several equipment cases and two long duffels that clanked as they were loaded into the Lexus.
