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She and Scotty got into their car, pulled onto the highway, and headed for the house where Ken Capshaw, aka Zero Sum, lived with his parents in Encinal Bluffs. Capshaw was second on Tong’s suspect list, and she read the note Tong had written next to the name out loud to Scotty.
“‘Capshaw is a charismatic cockroach, antiestablishment and philosophically destructive. Not as bright as he thinks he is. His clueless parents travel on business. A lot.’”
Scotty grunted, stepped on the gas. They were going about seventy, but still, Justine felt the pressure of passing time. If Boyd alerted Capshaw, and if Capshaw was smart, he would immediately get behind a wall of parents and lawyers. He might leave the country.
As Scotty drove the car up the coast, Justine sent an e-mail to Dr. Sci, attaching the photos of the bomb kit. A minute later, her phone rang.
It was Sci.
“Justine. Where are you?”
“In the car with Scotty.”
“Something has happened. I’m sending you a link to a video. Open it now. It’s going viral as we speak.”
Sirens sounded behind their fleet car, then police cars loomed in the rear window. Scotty pulled onto the shoulder and slowed as three cop cars sped past.
Justine picked up her iPad and opened the link from Sci, which took her to YouTube. She watched for a couple of seconds, then hit Pause.
She said, “Scotty. Capshaw just posted a video. Stop the car.”
Chapter 78
THE VIDEO HAD been shot in a garage, the camera angled at the BMW convertible with its top down. The kid in the driver’s seat looked to be in his late teens, had a narrow, intelligent face, curly brown hair, wore denim and glasses with wire rims.
He drank from a plastic water bottle, then looked into the camera and said, “I’m Ken Capshaw and you should listen to what I have to say. You won’t want to hear it, but which would you rather have, romance or the truth? This is the truth.”
The kid turned away, wiped his lips with his sleeve. It looked to Justine as though he was both nervous and detached, and in her estimation, that was a bad combination.
Capshaw turned back to the camera and said, “As I speak, the world is coming to an end and it’s because of us. We’ve ruined the planet in the last hundred and fifty years. Thank the combustion engine for that.
“We’ve enslaved ourselves to fossil fuel, and so we’ve poisoned the air and we’ve polluted our waters and we’ve taken objects like this petroleum artifact”—he waggled the bottle—“and thrown millions of them into the oceans and landfills where they will stay intact for a thousand years.
“It’s all corrupt. The banks, the church, politics, corporations, the earth, the air, and the water we’ve ruined with our poisons and gases. And there is no sign of reversing this trend. No sign of redemption.
“You see where this is going? Do you have an exit strategy? I’ve warned you on my blog, and I tried to demonstrate the pernicious nature of greed by torching a few cars. But I didn’t plan to kill someone.
“That was a mistake and I’m sorry. At the same time…at the same time, no one here gets out alive. Not even me.”
Justine yelled at the image on her iPad, “Jesus Christ. Noooo.”
Justine and Scotty saw Capshaw take a cell phone from the top of the dashboard, type in a few numbers. There was a soft boom, the sound of something igniting.
Scotty bellowed at Capshaw’s image, “Get out. Get out of the car.”
Capshaw rose up in his seat. Justine saw the heavy chains around his waist, probably looped and locked around the steering-wheel column. Flames leaped around the sides of the car and then reached out to Capshaw, lighting up his clothes and hair. The boy screamed wordlessly, writhed in an agonized dance.
The bomb turned the picture a staticky white.
Justine threw her tablet down on the seat. She put her palms over her eyes. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” she said. “And now everyone in the world will see it. Every kid in the world.”
Her cheeks were wet, and her hands were shaking when she called Jack.
PART FOUR
UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS
Chapter 79
