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take in the celestial view.
    Max ran to the body ahead of MacIan, Fred bringing up the rear. MacIan paused a few yards from the body and looked off into the horizon. “This is like a postcard.”
    Max looked to see what had delighted MacIan so much, and, now seeing through someone else’s eyes, noticed the magnificent panorama he’d always taken for granted. It was absolutely spectacular. From this small plateau, they looked out over a cascade of mountains descending into the Chesapeake Watershed, where the Great Lakes make their way to the Atlantic.
    MacIan wrapped his arms around himself, shivered, and said, “It feels strange standing on these humongous splinters, this wall, those spires, and that,” he pointed out over the horizon. “Makes me feel tiny.” He raised his arms to the sky.
    Max was stunned. Here stood a man amongst men, a giant, talking to him as though he were an adult. A powerful man making little of himself. A man with a Peregrine. And best of all! MacIan wasn’t assuming he — wouldn’t get it. Max hated that.
    “We’re like insects, microbes, on this scale,” said MacIan.
    Max turned to Fred, who was poking at the body, and his face lit up.
    MacIan envied the glow in Max’s eyes. He had someone to love. A luxury in good times, a necessity in bad. He had neither, and he intended to keep it that way.
    The body hadn’t changed since they last saw it. MacIan turned toward the Peregrine and said, “Triage.” An ambulatory shelf slid out from its under-carriage. MacIan peeled the body away from the boulder. “Grab him,” he said. Max took the wrists, MacIan the ankles, and they lifted the body onto the shelf, which slid back under the Peregrine.
    As they sped off, MacIan said, “No holes in him?”
    “No, nothing like that. Not even blood,” said Max.
    “Maybe he fell?” said MacIan.
    A skeptical groan rushed over the natives. Pastor Scott spoke first. “I’ve never heard of anyone ever going up there. Ever. There simply isn’t anything there.”
    Fred added, “No one could survive up there.”
    “How about the other side?”
    “The north side!” they jeered.
    Fred said, “We’re a mile from the tip of a mountain and hundreds of feet above the tree line. It’s all straight up and down here, worse on the north face. The wind alone will rip the hide right off ya.”
    MacIan turned back toward the Twin Spires. Once he’d found the perfect spot, he tilted the nose down until everyone had a bird’s-eye view of the whole range.
    “Whoa. Dad! Look! You can see exactly where something big and round crashed into the mountain. Look!” said Max. “It’s like a gigantic, perfectly round swimming pool filled with boulders.”
    MacIan leveled the Peregrine. “Back to Lily?” He could feel Max’s heart sink and it made him feel bad. “OK, then. Let’s have a look around.”

6
    T homka watched in astonishment as Murthy continued to fumble with his phone, searching for the report he was pretending to have read. “Here it is,” Murthy said, without a hint of embarrassment. “The contractor’s name is Arthur Gager. Guttenburg, New Jersey. Former arms merchant. Yada, yada.”
    “And what has he found so far?” asked Petey, his patience turning colder by the minute.
    “He was following a lead to an . . . associate. A Tuke associate . . . A software developer. A disgruntled employee.”
    Thomka couldn’t listen anymore.
    Murthy bungled on in a drunken slur. “Associate . . . money. . . twelve gold bars for the location of Tuke’s hideout,” Murthy came up for air, shamelessly. “Some kind of game programmer. A Brian Tessyier.”
    “Another Quaker?” grumbled Virginia.
    Thomka seized upon the Quaker theme. “Now, that is odd. A Quaker throwing another Quaker under the bus. That never happens.”
    Petey agreed. “He must have reason to believe Tuke is extremely dangerous. Why else would a Quaker resort to such a betrayal?” he said, shaking his head at Murthy. “What