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She looked haggard. She woke up screaming every night, and was followed every hour of every day by the image of being tossed out of the helicopter into the fire below. It was a waking, walking nightmare. Made worse by the fear that it might still happen. If they didn’t get this right. Shona had told no one about those dreams. But she didn’t have to. They knew.

The Sûreté officers recognized the signs. That terror that clung like a caul. It was called post-traumatic stress by doctors who had no idea what they were talking about. There was nothing “post” about it. The trauma was still present, ever present. Evergreen. A perpetual, perennial horror, relived every day and through the night.

It might lessen, but it never left.

“The document makes it clear that they meant to set up Woodford and the American President,” Shona continued.

“Did Marie Lauzon realize what the file was saying?” Paul Workman asked.

“That if it wasn’t Woodford, the Black Wolf was almost certainly her father after all?” asked Beauvoir.

“No, I don’t think she did,” said Gamache. “At least not consciously.”

It was one of the more difficult things he’d had to do. Tell Marie that they’d once again arrested her father, using the dossier she’d found containing the plans. And this time the evidence against him, including Jeanne Caron’s and the Minister of Public Safety’s testimonies, would stick.

“It’s obvious that once Woodford was either arrested or killed, Marcus Lauzon would be released from a wrongful conviction,” said Gamache, wiping the last of the cream off his hands. “That was why we had to get him out of Parliament. It seemed the most likely course was to murder him so he couldn’t defend himself.”

“Since Marcus Lauzon would be one of the few now beyond suspicion, he’d be placed at the head of the emergency government,” said Isabelle.

Her ribs were bound, and she was on painkillers and bomboloni.

“And Giselle Trudel?” asked Reine-Marie. “How does she fit in? This file was in her office, after all.”

“Robert Ferguson’s admitted he put it there,” said Jean-Guy. “Trudel had no idea. It was a perfect hiding place. People rarely go into paper files anymore.”

“But why did they even keep it?” Shona asked. “It seems foolish.”

“Electronic files can be hacked,” Nichol pointed out. “Hard copies are easier to control.”

Both Workman and Shona looked dubious, though the conspirators, who’d been so careful, had obviously made that one fatal mistake.

“I feel awful for Lauzon’s daughter,” said Isabelle. “Without her we’d never have survived.”

She herself had been barely aware of what was happening on the helicopter. It was only later she learned what Ferguson had planned for them. And that Captain Pinsent had been in the copilot’s seat. And the pilot was also on their side.

After Marie Lauzon had had Pinsent released, the Captain had rounded up her squad and waited in the tunnel for Marie and Armand to show up with Prime Minister Woodford. While she waited, she’d read the file they’d hidden there.

It had been a shock.

It had become clear to the senior RCMP officer, as the strange day had progressed, that something was very wrong. But she never, ever expected this. A deliberate firebombing of the forests by elements within their own government and military. In order to provoke an action by the United States. And setting up the Prime Minister to take the blame.

Pinsent had gone to the airfield named in the report, leaving her lieutenant behind in the tunnel to wait for Gamache and Marie Lauzon.

Once out, Gamache had driven south to his rendezvous with Jeanne Caron in the Haskell Opera House, while Pinsent had assembled a team of trusted colleagues within both the RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces and headed to Mont-Laurier.

“How did you get Chief Petty Officer Flores to the opera house to arrest Caron?” asked Shona. “You couldn’t have had his contact information.”

“True. I wrote Bert’s number two and told him what was needed, and asked that Flores be sent.”

Jean-Guy smiled. There were many ways, he now knew, to be a poet. Not all of them rhymed.

Captain Pinsent had been invited to join them at Open Da Night, but was in Ottawa answering questions about her own actions. Defying orders and allowing prisoners to escape. No matter the happy outcome, it was still, to the RCMP, disturbing.

Armand had also been summoned and was heading there the next day to be grilled.

But nothing those on the quickly struck Parliamentary committee did to him could be worse than being dragged over the coals by Jean-Guy. Nothing would be worse than seeing the look in those eyes. Not anger but hurt when Jean-Guy realized Armand had withheld information and deliberately allowed him to go to the wrong airport.

Armand and Jean-Guy had sat in the bistro by the muttering fire, exhausted. Their limbs and lids heavy.