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Benson, who nodded back, polite but noncommittal, a seasoned cop greeting an outsider who was not himself a cop.
    The hatch creaked again, making them all jerk. Griff was not disposed to like whoever climbed up through that hatch, not now. Three was already a crowd. Worse still, this one was female: thin strong hands with chipped nails, hazel eyes, mussed auburn hair, high cheekbones, and a goddamned gray power suit.
    ‘Pardon me, gentlemen.’ The female stood up straight and wiry on the drafty wooden floor and pulled down her jacket. She wore black running shoes and white socks, her only concessions to the woods and the climb.
    Griff scowled at Levine. Levine lifted his brows.
    ‘Apologies for interrupting,’ she said. Griff hadn’t seen this woman in over ten years and it took him a moment to go through his memory, age a face, and place her name.
    Griff introduced them all. ‘Cap Benson, Washington State Patrol SWAT team, this is Jacob Levine from the Southern Poverty Law Center. And this is Special Agent Rebecca Rose. She investigates bioterror. That was what you were working on the last time we met.’
    ‘Still do,’ Rebecca said.
    ‘Pleasure,’ Benson said. They firmly shook hands, but all three men looked like boys whose tree-house club had been violated.
    ‘What brings you here, Rebecca?’ Griff asked.
    ‘Someone down in that valley has taken delivery of contraband biotech equipment. Fermenters, incubators, some driers.’
    ‘No shit,’ Griff said. ‘And…?’
    ‘Don’t mind me,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m just an observer.’ She whistled at the array of binoculars and the telescope. ‘There must be two dozen guys loafing around at the trail head. What have you got down there?’
    ‘Ant farm,’ Griff said.
    ‘Sonofabitch,’ she said. ‘Can I see?’
    ‘Be my guest.’
    Rebecca applied her eyes to the biggest pair of binoculars. ‘Your ant farm doesn’t have any ants,’ she murmured.
    ‘Just wait,’ Griff said.
    The operation had begun a week ago, following a complaint about illegal fireworks. Intense white flashes like giant morning glories had bloomed in the middle of the night over the hills around the farm, letting loose echoing booms, two a night for three nights in a row, bright enough and loud enough to wake up the nearest neighbor—a sleepless old codger who lived with his Airedale four miles away.
    Two days after the complaint had been filed, a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy had driven down the long dirt road to the farm to investigate. He had found a hidden homestead with a concrete and wood-frame barn, one large old house, and a newer, smaller house at the rear, almost lost in the trees. A polite knock at the door of the main house had roused a gray-bearded, broad-shouldered, proud old man with brilliant green eyes. The old man had two middleaged women, slender and worn-looking, living with him in the big house. Six kids had come around from the back and stood in the yard, ranging in age from three to seventeen, all well-fed, conservatively dressed, and well-behaved. Respectful. The deputy had asked about fireworks and been met with puzzled denials and the offer of a hot cup of coffee and fresh sourdough biscuits. He had been invited into the house. The deputy had removed his Smoky hat and held it to one side, leaving his gun hand free. Taking it all in.
    The bearded old man had asked one of the women to get coffee. They had waited in the living room, the deputy’s brown uniform wrinkle-free, his equipment and holster shiny black, shirt tucked tight over a young patrol car paunch: a good and reasonable defender of the peace, standing straight and a little awkward on the throw rug in the living room; the old man tall and erect in a loose white shirt and denims, dignified and relaxed. The house inside neat and spare, with handmade shelves and a big antique oak table. Red curtains on the windows. Yellow daffodils in a big vase on a mantel over the stone fireplace.
    The old man