"Not him. Me."

She sat up, the sheet falling away from her breasts. "Where you going?"

"The bridge," said Twilly.

"Why?"

"You coming?"

"It's nippy out, Twilly. And I'm beat."

He turned to McGuinn. "Well, how about you?"

The dog was up in an instant, spinning euphorically at Twilly's feet. A walk – was he kidding? Did he even haveto ask?

Krimmler had worked nineteen years for Roger Roothaus. He had been hired because of his reputation as a relentless prick. When Krimmler was on-site, construction moved along swiftly because Krimmler whipped it along. The faster a project got completed, the less money it cost the developer, and the more profit and glory accrued to the engineering firm of Roothaus and Son. Krimmler abhorred sloth and delay, and would let nothing – including, on occasion, the law – stand in the path of his bulldozers. Unless otherwise instructed by Roger Roothaus personally, Krimmler began each day with the mission of flattening, burying or excavating something substantial. Nothing gladdened his soul so much as the sharp crack of an oak tree toppling under a steel blade. Nothing fogged him in gloom so much as the sight of earth-moving machinery sitting idle.

Krimmler's antipathy toward nature was traceable to one seminal event: At age six, while attending a Lutheran church picnic, he'd been bitten on the scrotum by a wild chipmunk. The incident was not unprovoked – Krimmler's mischievous older brother had snatched the frightened animal from a log and dropped it down Krimmler's corduroy trousers – and the bite itself had barely drawn blood. Nevertheless, Krimmler was traumatized to such a degree that he became phobic about the outdoors and all creatures dwelling there. In his imagination every uncut tree loomed as a musky, mysterious hideout for savage scrotum-nipping chipmunks, not to mention snakes and raccoons and spiders and bobcats ... even bats!

Young Krimmler felt truly safe only in the city, shielded by concrete and steel and glass. It was the comfort drawn there – in the cool sterile shadows of skyscrapers – that propelled him toward a career in engineering. Krimmler proved ideally suited to work for land developers, each new mall and subdivision and high-rise and warehouse park bringing him that much closer to his secret fantasy of a world without trees, without wilderness; a world of bricks and pavement and perfect order; a world, in short, without chipmunks. It was inevitable Krimmler would end up in Florida, where developers and bankers bought the politicians who ran the government. The state was urbanizing itself faster than any other place on the planet, faster than any other place in the history of man. Each day 450 acres of wild forest disappeared beneath bulldozers across Florida, and Krimmler was pleased to be on the forefront, proud to be doing his part.

Early on, Roger Roothaus had recognized the value of placing such a zealot on-site as a project supervisor. So long as a single sapling remained upright, Krimmler was impatient, irascible and darkly obsessed. The construction foremen hated him because he never let up, and would accept none of the standard excuses for delay. To Krimmler, a lightning storm was no reason to shut down and run for shelter, but rather a splendid opportunity to perform unauthorized land clearing, later to be blamed on the violent weather. He would permit nothing to waylay the machines, which he regarded with the same paternal fondness that George Patton had felt for his tanks.

Krimmler regarded each new construction project as a battle, one step in a martial conquest. And so it was with the Shearwater Island resort. Krimmler lost no sleep over the fate of the oak toads, nor did he derive particular joy from it; burying the little critters was simply the most practical way to deal with the situation. As for the sudden disappearance of Brinkman, the pain-in-the-ass biologist, Krimmler couldn't be bothered to organize a search.

What'm I now, a goddamn baby-sitter? he'd griped to Roothaus. The guy's a lush. Probably got all tanked up on vodka and fell off that old bridge – speaking of which, what's all this shit I see in the newspaper ...

"Not to worry," Roger Roothaus had assured him.

"But is it true? The governor vetoed the bridge money!"

"A technicality," Roger Roothaus had said. "We get it back in a month or two. All twenty-eight mil."

"But what about the meantime?"

"Just chill for a while."

"But I got a survey crew coming over from Gainesville this week – "

"Calm down. It's a political thing," Roger Roothaus had said. "A long story, and nothing you've got to worry about. We just need to chill out for a spell. Take some time off. Go up to Cedar Key and do some fishing."

"Like hell," Krimmler had said. "Forget the bridge, I've still got serious acreage to clear. I've got the drivers ready to – "

"No. Not now." The words of Roger Roothaus had hit Krimmler like a punch in the gut. "Mr. Clapley says to lay low for now, OK? No activity on-site, he says. There's a small problem, he's handling it. Says it shouldn't take long."

"What kind a problem?" Krimmler had protested. "What in the hell kind a problem could shut down the whole job?"

"Mr. Clapley didn't say. But he's the boss chief, OK? He's paying the bills. So I don't want no trouble."

Krimmler had hung up, fuming. He was fuming when he went to bed, alone in the luxury camper that he drove from site to site. And he was still fuming the next morning when he woke up and heard the goddamned mockingbirds singing in the tops of the goddamned pines, heard the footsteps of a goddamned squirrel scampering across the camper's aluminum roof – a squirrel,which was a second goddamned cousin to a chipmunk, only bolder and bigger and filthier!

Wretched was the only way to describe Krimmler's state after the Roothaus phone call; wretched in the milky tranquillity of the island morning, wretched without the growling, grinding gears of his beloved front-end loaders and backhoes and bulldozers. And when the surveyors showed up at the construction trailer at 7:00 a.m. sharp (a minor miracle in itself!), Krimmler could not bring himself to send them away, just because some shithead politicians were monkeying around with the bridge deal. Because the bridge was absolutely crucial to the project; without it, Shearwater Island would forever remain Toad Island. It had been hairy enough (and plenty expensive!) hauling the earth-moving equipment, one piece at a time, across the old wooden span. A fully loaded cement truck would never make it, and without cement you've got no goddamned seaside resort. Without cement you've got jack.

So why not get the bridge surveying out of the way? Krimmler reasoned. What harm could come of that!It would be one less chore for later, one less delay after the money finally shook loose in Tallahassee. To hell with "laying low," Krimmler thought. Roger'll thank me for this later.

So he led the surveyors to the old bridge and sat on the hood of the truck and watched them work – moving their tripod back and forth, calling coordinates to one another, spray-painting orange X's on the ground to mark critical locations. It was tedious and boring, but Krimmler hung around because the alternative was to sulk by himself in the trailer, listening to the goddamned birds and hydrophobic squirrels. The bridge survey was the closest thing to progress that was happening on Toad Island at the moment, and Krimmler felt a powerful need to be there. Once the surveyors were gone, that would be all for ... well, who knew for howlong. Krimmler willed himself not to fret about that. For now, perched on the hood of a Roothaus and Son F-150 pickup, he would be sustained by the click of the tripod and the sibilant ffftttof the aerosol spray-paint cans. Briefly he closed his eyes to envision the gleaming new bridge, fastened to the bottom muck of the Gulf with stupendous concrete pillars, each as big around as a goddamn sequoia ...