“Oh,” Julie said. “Why didn’t you guys tell me we were being followed?” She looked at me seriously. Her lips were tight.

“Uh. Yeah,” Hank began. “You see, just like you we weren’t sure.”

“But we suspected,” I said. “We didn’t want to alarm you.”

She was looking at me with hurt eyes, but I turned to focus my attention on our company.

“Look,” I said. “Who are you and why is the federal government following our every move?”

“You don’t know, do you?” he said. He looked at us, pausing as he looked from face to face to face and then passing over us again.

“Okay,” he said. He raised a hand up and motioned to his partner outside.

“We’re going to need a bigger table,” I said.

When the bigger fellow came in we were already moved to another table in the center of the restaurant. He walked over, took a seat and introduced himself.

“Ben Cranford,” he said. “You’ve met my partner, Felix Bruce.”

“You’ve got two first names,” I said to his partner.

“Thanks,” Agent Bruce said. “Two coffees,” he said to the waitress at his elbow.

Agent Cranford took a seat.

“I told you guys,” Julie said, “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

I looked at her. She was avoiding my gaze.

“Wait a minute-” Hank started to say, but I cut him off, turning to Agent Cranford.

“How long have you been following her?” I asked him.

“Miss Simmons and the two rednecks who have been chasing her? About a month.”

“You were watching me when-” Julie began, obviously upset. Agent Cranford cut her off.

“When you dropped the kid off at the Greyhound station? Yes.”

“How did Archie get Jessica then, if you were watching?” she demanded.

“We were watching… But we were following you. Like you, we left the girl on board the bus. By all reports, she was taken off at the next stop by her quote, father, unquote.”

“Julie,” I said. “Shut up a minute. It’s me and Hank who ought to be upset. You never said a word about Batman and Robin here,” I turned to Cranford. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Agent Bruce said.

“What about the explosion?” Hank asked. “What were they using? Sounded-felt like TNT.”

“It was,” Cranford said.

“Why?” I asked. “Why would they want to kill her when-” I stopped short. I’d almost let it slip.

“When what?” Agent Bruce asked, and took a sip of his coffee.

“Well,” I said, face deadpan and covering quickly. “It’s that it’s not consistent with the action of someone who wants her back.”

Cranford put his elbows down on the table, laced his fingers together in space.

“Right now,” he said “Carpin is at his horse ranch. The last I checked, Mr. Jacob Jorgenson and Mr. Frederick Sanderberry were en-route to the ranch.”

“Replaced the plug wires and on their way again, huh?” Hank asked.

Cranford laughed. “Apparently. We were wondering what was wrong with their truck when we passed by them. Also, one of ‘em looked to be bleeding.”

“I wonder how they got around the cops,” I said.

“We heard about it over the radio. They were released when they said that two men and a woman fitting your description tried to rob them. They kicked your asses and ran you out of there. When asked, neither of the men wanted to press charges.”

Hank and I were chuckling.

“Also the ranch is pretty well deserted from what intelligence I’ve gathered.”

“Racing,” Julie said. “We’re in mid-Spring. Carl and Lefty and half the still crew are probably in Louisiana right now.”

“Right,” Cranford said.

“Where’s the ranch from here?” Hank asked. “I was about to start asking locals.”

“Fifteen miles this side of Childress,” Agent Bruce said. “It’s off the beaten path but you can’t miss the signs. You don’t have far to go.”

“What do you want with us?” I asked.

Agent Cranford coughed once into one of his meaty hands.

“I want to know where the still is,” he said. “Miss Simmons, you can tell us that much, can’t you?”

“It moves around,” she said. She was lying. I knew it. Hank knew it. Either she didn’t trust Cranford and Bruce or there was something she didn’t want them to know.

“Okay,” Cranford said. “So where was it the last time you saw it?”

“I didn’t ever see it,” she said. “Look. That’s all I’m going to say. Nothing more until I have Jessica. You could get him on that. On kidnapping.”

“Not technically,” Agent Bruce said. “You left her.”

“I put her on a bus!” She said, a little too loudly. The few other patrons in the diner turned their heads.

“I put her on a bus,” Julie said again through her teeth.

“Fine,” Agent Cranford said. “You put her on a bus. We can’t help you there.”

“Then we have nothing more to talk about,” she said. She looked at me, tilted her head and tried to smile. It was my cue.

“Okay,” I said. “You fellahs take it easy.”

Agent Bruce tossed off the last of his coffee and put his cup down quickly. Agent Cranford stood up.

At first I thought he was going to offer to shake hands with me, but instead he gave me a business card.

“Call me,” he said. “I won’t be too far away.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hank said.

They left.

I had to cover their coffee tab.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was after midnight and I had just put a couple of motel rooms on my American Express card in Childress.

In the balmy Texas night, bats darted to and fro gobbling down moths and mosquitoes in the parking lot lights, and Julie stood behind me in the doorway in just her bra and panties, waiting for me to come inside and be good to her.

Inside the room, lights off, the blackness near complete, Julie and I once more got into the act; doing what teenagers and old married folks and even animals do.

And sleep came.

I had dreams in which old truck drivers adopt little kids and barbecue tastes like new money. And then I had thedream.

My dad and I were fishing in the late afternoon. The mosquitoes had been buzzing in my ears despite several layers of bug spray and the sweat was running down my cheeks and spine. The river was a mirror for the sky, reflecting each cloud, each ray of sunshine perfectly. I was hungry and tired and anxious and I hadn’t had so much as a nibble. I was gazing at the white hemisphere of my cork, floating immobile, as if it were embedded in a sea of glass. I could almost see my reflection in the cork. My line was a strand of angel’s hair or spider-web silk making a series of long, undulating indentations in the water.

The cork went under fast, disappearing into obscurity, into the upside down alien landscape that existed beneath the mirror in which I was fishing.

I felt a tug, a strong pull, and for an instant I got a mental image of my alter-self sitting on an upside-down embankment, pulling with all his strength.

The little Zebco fishing rod nearly pulled free of my hands. I pushed all of my strength down into my fingers, my wrists, my lower arms, my biceps, and pulled back hard. The pulling from down below gave a little and I was winning.

“ Got something?” my father asked, but he said it slowly, like his mouth was filled with Karo syrup or he was on twenty-eight rpms instead of forty-five.

I did have something. Something big. I pulled it further in. I remembered that I could reel-in and pull at the same time. I cranked hard and fast on the reel, my rod bending double. I thought it might snap before I landed what was on the other end.

I got the sense that something was coming up toward me, almost could feel the slickness of it against the cloying, cottony river bottom silt on the embankment below the surface. And what was coming was not a fish.

“ Not a fish,” I tried to tell my dad, only no sound came out. It was like I’d gotten too much peanut butter wedged up against the roof of my mouth.