My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

Inside, hay bales and old tools sat in carefully believable disorder. Ellis moved to the far corner and pulled aside several stacked bales. Beneath them lay a trapdoor flush with the floor.

I stared at it.

“He had this built last winter,” Ellis said. “Workers thought it was a root cellar.”

He lifted the door.

A staircase descended into darkness.

“After you, Mrs. Mitchell.”

The tunnel below was not rough or improvised. It was concrete, climate-controlled, lit by recessed fixtures that clicked on in sequence as we walked. Fifty yards perhaps, maybe more, leading to a reinforced room beneath the earth outfitted with filing cabinets, computer terminals, maps pinned to every wall, and enough documentation to suggest not panic, but campaign.

“What is this?” I asked.

Ellis’s expression held something like respect. “Mr. Mitchell called it insurance. I called it a war room.”

He gestured to the nearest wall.