Doesn’t seem very noble to help a rich man stay rich,” Ben said. Beatrix nodded in agreement. He had a point—Hastings wasn’t the most sympathetic of SRS victims. Still, I said, “Think big picture. We’re not helping Markus Hastings—we’re helping The League. We’re helping everyone SRS hurts with that money.” We were spread out around the kitchen table again, brainstorming ways we could keep Annabelle’s secret a secret. So far we had: 1. Fake a DNA test for Annabelle (We could fake her test, but a decent lab would likely run an independent control before Annabelle’s, and we couldn’t fake that one so easily.) 2. Switch Annabelle out with a real red-gold Tibetan mastiff (Nope—Annabelle was the only one in the world. In fact, the gold was probably “rare” because it was coming from her golden retriever roots.) 3. Clatterbuck goes in disguise as a dog-show judge (There was no point to the costume, really; I think Clatterbuck just wanted to go somewhere in disguise, so he suggested this.) “Maybe . . .
