Hammer let him have his way, perhaps because she realized he was going to leave her anyway. He could launch a website as a special, classified project while he continued to work for her, she said, but the condition was that he had to remain anonymous, because Governor Bedford Crimm IV, who was an aristocratic, autocratic, impossible old man, did not allow Hammer to disseminate information to the public without his approval. Clearly, whatever Andy wrote could not be directly connected to the Virginia State Police, but at the same time had to reflect favorably on it and encourage the public to support it. She had added that Andy had to be available for emergencies, and if he wanted to learn to fly, he could work that out on his own schedule.

He pushed his luck by asking, "Will I have a travel budget?"

"For what?" Hammer asked. "Where are you going?"

"I'll need funding for archaeological and historical research."

"I thought you were writing about human nature and crime." Hammer had begun to resist him again. "Now what? You're flying helicopters and globetrotting?"

"If I discuss what's wrong with America today, I need to show what was wrong with it when it got started," he'd explained. "And you need more pilots. You've already had two quit on you in the past three months."

Andy sat at the table in the dining room, which had become his hopelessly cluttered office, and typed his password into his computer and opened a file. After twelve months of arduous research and writing, and flying lessons and ground school, he was desperate to get out and chase lawbreakers and investigate violent crimes from both the ground and the air. He was eager for people to read what he had to say, and often he fantasized about riding or flying with other troopers or working a scene and overhearing people talk about what they had read on the Trooper Truth website that day. No one would have a clue that Trooper Truth was in their midst gathering even more information from their comments. Only Hammer knew the truth about Trooper Truth, and she and Andy had been meticulously careful to protect his identity.