Paz looked around the kitchen. Well, not much of a mess. He sat on a chair and watched his daughter cook, rendered speechless by the splendor of it.

Fifteen

They finished setting out the booby traps just before it got dark, leaving the trip wires slack. They were gunpowder/ napalm pipe bombs. Cooksey explained that they would rig them just before they went to bed. There were only ten of them, and it would be an easy matter to set them in the event that anyone nasty arrived during the hours of daylight.

“We’ll need to have Kevin now, my dear,” he said to Jenny while he camouflaged the last one. “He’ll have to walk the property with us so that he knows where these little beauties are to be found.”

“I’ll get him,” she said and ran off to the cottage they had once shared. No Kevin, just the lingering smell of his marijuana smoke.

She called his name, checked the bathroom, both without result, but when she came out the door she heard the sound of a VW starter cranking futilely.

Kevin was in the driver’s seat of the van, twisting the ignition key and cursing.

“That won’t start,” she said.

“Oh, you’re the fucking expert now,” he snarled and tried it again.

“No, but I can take a distributor rotor off.” She took it from her pocket and held it up for him to see. “Kevin, there’s a car full of gangsters down the road. They’re looking for you and me. Could you please just for oncethink!”

He threw open the door of the van. “Give me that!”

“No. What is so important that you have to go this minute?”

“I’ll tell you what, bitch! Me and Kearney are going to blow up the S-9 pump station tonight. Give me that fucking rotor!”

“That’s crazy, Kevin…,” she began, but stopped when she saw the pistol, pointing at her in his shaking hand.

“You’re going toshoot me?” she asked after a hideous pause.

“Not if you give me the rotor.”

As he said this, she could not help but notice that Kevin still had the pistol’s safety on and didn’t know it. Even in the fading light she could see the red dot wasn’t showing. She could also see in his face the flickering terror behind the arrogant asshole mask. It struck her forcefully for the first time that she was the real thing of which Kevin was the counterfeit, and not the other way around. She was tough, and a survivor, and knew her way around the world, and had shot guns, and been in jail. Kevin was a banker’s kid with attitude. She wondered why this had never occurred to her before. In fact, Kevin should not be allowed to cross the street alone. But, she thought, he could change, with some help from her. Now that she knew what a real man was, maybe she could nudge him somehow in the right direction. In any case, she couldn’t just ditch him, the jerk!

“All right,” she said, “but I’m coming with you.”

“No fucking way.”

“Then pull the trigger.” She took the rotor out of her pocket. “And hurry up, because I’m about to fling this thing into the pond.” They stood that way for some moments. Then Kevin cursed and shoved the pistol into his waistband. “Okay, okay, let’s go, then. Put that thing back in the engine!”

“Give me the keys first,” she said. “I’m driving.”

In the dark van Prudencio Rivera Martínez felt his cell phone vibrate. The number showing was that of Garcia, who was crouching behind a tall hibiscus hedge directly opposite the property they were watching.

“That painted van is coming out,” he reported. “The girl is driving, and that little blondiemaricón is with her.”

“Which direction?”

“Just a second.” A pause. “North.”

“I’ll have Montoya pick you up,” said Martínez. He had stationed two cars in blocking positions, one at each end of the short road called Ingraham Highway. His own van was lodged in a driveway in the approximate center of this road. Now he formulated a plan and mobilized his vehicles. In a few minutes, the VW van rolled by and Martínez’s driver, Cristobal Riba, swung behind it. Traffic was moderate.

“Where are we going to lift them?” asked Riba.

“Just ahead. This road goes under some heavy trees. It’s like a tunnel, pitch dark. We’ll do it there.”

“A lot of traffic for a lift,” said Riba doubtfully.

“They’ll think it’s a little accident. Iglesias will jam on his brakes, and you’ll run into their ass. We’ll get out, they’ll get out, we’ll show them guns, they’ll get in with Iglesias and Rascon, and I’ll get in with them and we’ll drive to the garage. One two three.”

Jenny gave a little cry and jammed on her brakes when the black van shot into the road from a hidden driveway and was thrown against her seat belt by the impact.

“Oh shit!” cried Kevin, and the same again when the following van rammed against the rear bumper. Dark-skinned men emerged from each van and walked toward the VW.

“Move the car, move the car!” Kevin screamed. He popped his seat belt and shifted in his seat, looking frantically to either side of the VW, watching the men approach.

“I can’t, we’re stuck,” she shouted back at him, and then she saw the man just outside her window, a thick man with a round hard face, heavy brows, pockmarked cheeks, black hair worn in a brush cut. He was dressed in tan slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, untucked at the waist.

“You hit my car,” he said in clear but accented English. “You come out now and we show insurance, all right?”

She started to open her door, but Kevin shouted something she didn’t catch and heaved himself across her. To her horror he had his gun out and was pointing it at the man. “Move your fucking car, motherfucker, or I’ll blow your head off.”

Jenny saw surprise register on the man’s face. Kevin’s pistol was trembling right before her eyes and she saw that the safety was still on. She was about to mention this to Kevin when the pockmarked man reached under his shirt, drew out a semiautomatic pistol with a strangely long barrel and shot Kevin twice in the face, making less sound than the popping of two birthday balloons. Kevin collapsed, his dead head fell right on her thigh, gushing volumes of blood. She looked down at it, at the great obscene bulge of blood-matted hair, bone splinters, and ropes of gray brain, and drew in breath for the scream of her lifetime.

Whether she made a sound or not she never knew, for between that moment and the next she felt the familiar shaft of coldness shoot through her center and the sounds of the uncaring traffic faded and the face of the killer and everything else contracted to a bright dot and she went away into seizure land.

Tuesday morning, Lola Wise was still sound asleep, and her husband forbore to wake her. He called the hospital and had a brief conversation with Dr. Kemmelman, the chief resident, in which he said that his wife was suffering from exhaustion and would be out for some days. The doctor said he understood, that such things happened often in ER work, and not to worry. He asked if Paz wanted to pick up some meds; Paz declined. Paz then prepared his daughter for school, dodged a series of questions about what was wrong with Mommy, and took her to Providence. On his way back, he received a call from Tito Morales.

“Did you hear yet?”

“Hear what?”

“We should’ve gone over there last night, man. I had a bad feeling about that. I should’ve gone myself.”

“What’re you talking about, Tito?”

“Around nine-thirty last night a van belonging to the Forest Planet Alliance-remember them?-was jammed up on Ingraham Highway by a couple of vans. Witnesses thought it was a fender bender. A man named Kevin Voss took two through the head from a silenced nine and his companion, a woman named Jennifer Simpson, aged nineteen, was abducted by persons unknown. How do you like that shit?”