A monkey with a hat ran out of the woods and stopped inches from us.

“Whoa,” the skinny guy said. “Do you see a monkey wearing a hat?”

“Yeah,” Diesel said.

“Shit, that’s a relief,” the skinny guy said.

We returned to the ATVs.

“I’m thinking he was Unmentionable,” I said to Diesel.

“Not in a good way,” Diesel said.

We backtracked to a road that led to the second house on Diesel’s list. It had started to drizzle, and I was wishing I had a hat. It wasn’t bad when the dirt road narrowed and the pines gave us some cover. It was a misery when the pines parted and the rain soaked into my sweatshirt and jeans.

By the time we got to the second house, it was pouring. My hair was plastered to my face, I was squinting to see through the sheets of wind-driven rain, and I was cold clear to the bone. The dirt road was mud. The mud clung to the wheels of the ATV and splattered everything in its path, including Diesel and me.

We got off the ATVs, slogged to the house, and looked in the front window. The house was empty. No furniture. The inhabitants had moved on. Diesel went inside, did a fast pass-through, and came out.

“Zero on this one,” he said. “We can cross it off the list.”

“It looks dry in there,” I said wistfully.

“Yeah, it would be perfect, except for the dead raccoon in the kitchen and the forty rats trying to figure out what to do with it.”

The yard in front of the house was a quagmire, and on the way back to the ATV I lost my shoe in the mud. It sucked it off me. I took a step, and next thing, I was wearing only one shoe.

“Fuck!”

Diesel turned and looked at me. “I don’t hear you using that word a lot.”

“I lost my fucking shoe! The fucking mud fucking sucked it off my fucking foot.”

Diesel gave a bark of laughter and retrieved my shoe. We were both ankle-deep in mud, the difference being he was wearing his beat-up boots, and I was wearing sneakers. He swept me off my feet and carried me to the ATV. He set me on the seat, knocked most of the mud off my sneaker, and laced it back on my foot.

“Follow me,” he said. “We’re going to the Subaru.”

It was slow going in the mud and rain. If it had been warm, it might have been fun sliding around on the slick, rutted road, but it wasn’t warm, and I wasn’t having fun. We reached the car, and I dragged myself off my ATV.

“I lied about neither sleet nor snow, blah, blah, blah,” I said to Diesel.

“You gave up your shoe for the cause,” he said. “You can’t ask for much more than that.” He released the hitch on the ATV trailer and handed the car keys to me. “You’re going home, and I’m staying here. Call Flash when you get cell-phone reception and tell him to meet you somewhere and swap out the Subaru. And then send him back here to wait for me.”

“I feel like a wimp.”

“Yeah, but you’re a cute wimp. And I’m an awesome superdude. Just don’t forget to send Flash.”

He took my phone and programmed Flash’s number in. Then he reached into the SUV and took a granola bar and the gummi bears.

“See you to night,” he said.

“What about Wulf? Don’t you need me to disguise your bread crumbs?”

“I’ll manage.”

So I’m a wimp. Better a warm, dry wimp than a dead, hypothermic idiot. And when I got the chance, I’d do something nice for Diesel.

I WAS ON the Atlantic City Expressway, en route to the Turnpike, and Martin Munch blew past me. He was doing ninety in the rain, driving a mud-splattered Audi. I would never have noticed, but he cut out around me, and I caught a flash of red hair and a vision of him hunched up on the wheel. I put my foot to the floor, and the Subaru lurched forward.

After a mile, Munch pulled right, took the exit, and I followed. It was Saturday afternoon, we were in the middle of a monsoon, and Martin Munch felt compelled to drive two exits down the Expressway to a junk shop masquerading as a crafts and antiques fair. The parking lot was vast and empty. The building was a renovated, industrial-size chicken coop. The walls were cement block, and the roof was tin. Inside the chicken coop, the rain on the roof was deafening.

I’d stealthily squished across the lot and entered the building several steps behind Munch. I was wet and disgusting and not feeling at my best, but getting passed by Munch on the highway was an act of God I couldn’t ignore. He cruised the corncob dolls and miniature wooden hand-painted cranberry buckets that said PINE BARRENS, USA and, on the bottom in small letters, MADE IN CHINA. He meandered into an aisle of dented lunch boxes from the 1950s and Howdy Doody puppets. He paused to heft an antique Etch A Sketch, and I thought, Come to mama.

“Martin Munch?” I asked him.

He turned and looked at me. “Yes.”

Clink. I clapped the cuffs on him.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“I work for your bail bondsman. You missed your court appearance. And I chased you through the woods yesterday.”

“Jeez. You scared the heck out of me. I thought you were one of those crazy Pine People. There’s an old guy who thinks he’s the Easter Bunny. And the worst of all is the Jersey Dev il. You can hear him flying around at night, and his eyes glow in the dark. I saw something big and black with glittery eyes in the bush, and I started running.”

“What were you doing in the woods?”

“I was going to check on a house, and I didn’t want to take the ATV through the bog in the dark.”

“Gail Scanlon’s house?” I asked.

I never heard his answer because there was pain. It went through me like lightning. I went to my hands and knees and saw a pair of expensive black boots and black slacks with a razor-sharp crease step into my field of vision. I looked up and saw Wulf staring down at me. He was even more impressive and frightening in daylight. He was big and ghostly pale. His eyes were black, shaded by thick black lashes. He reached out to me, and when he touched me, there was more pain, and then nothing.

SIXTEEN

MY MIND CAME awake before my body. I was thinking, and then I was hearing. I opened my eyes, and I could see, but I couldn’t move. I was stretched out on a bed, and Munch was poking me like I was a yeast roll and he was testing my freshness.

“Stop it,” I said. “What the heck are you doing?”

“I wanted to see if you were awake.”

“What hit me?”

“Wulf. He’s awesome. It’s like he’s not even human or something. It’s like he’s some sort of dark titan.”

I could feel tingling in my fingers and toes. The tingling moved along my arms and legs, and there was a rush of heat throughout my body.

“He’s not a titan,” I said. “He’s just a big, scary, creepy guy in expensive clothes. What are you doing with him?”

“We’re partners. We’re going to take over the world.”

“Get real.”

“Actually, I don’t really care about that,” Munch said. “I just want to be able to do my experiments. And I want to get chicks.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, girls. Pussy. Wulf said he’d make sure they were all over me.”

“You need Wulf to get you girls?”

“No way. I can get all the girls I want. It’s just that I’m busy, you know? I don’t have time to do the whole bar scene. Anyway, I think the bar scene is old. I mean, who does that anymore anyway, right?”

“What, do they check your ID?”

“Yeah. It’s humiliating.”

I pushed myself up to a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“So how’s Wulf going to get you girls?” I asked him.

“He brings them in to me. Like you. You’re my first. We have the monkey lady, but she’s kind of old and Wulf is using her for other stuff. Anyway, Wulf said I could practice on you. You’re kind of a mess, but you’re nice and soft.”

“Soft?”

“Yeah. Your breasts are soft.”

“You touched my breasts?”