She made it to the outskirts of Vegas a little after one. Belinda always felt naked outside of a city. All these wide lanes and huge parking lots, all these car washes and cluttered signs. The Walmart was on a street called East Serene, which she could relate to, being east of serenity. Sort of how she felt since Bennett had come back into her life.

It was the brilliant heart of the afternoon as she parked. She killed the engine, listened to it tick as she flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. The port wine stain shadowed her eye and cheek.

You’re no longer Belinda Nichols. You’re Barb Schroeder. You’ve got charm to spare and a laugh that makes other people happy. You grew up in the South, and though you lived most of your life in the Midwest—Wisconsin—you never completely lost the accent. Two years ago you said, “Okay, winter, you win,” and packed it in for Las Vegas, fastest growing city in the country. No better place to be in real estate, at least it was, until about the time you got here. But what the hell, it’s warm, the sky is blue, and tomorrow is a long way away.

She checked her outfit, jeans a couple of years out of date but snug and flattering, and a fitted white button-down she’d found at Target. Not bad. She undid the top button, then another, so that the lace edge of her bra was visible. Better.

The store was an airplane hangar, the grid of lights running into the horizon. Bored clerks rang up endless lines. Barb Schroeder took it in, then followed the signs to sporting goods.

It had always amused her that these stores had everything, everything, you could ever need. Groceries, clothes, toys, electronics, housewares . . . ammunition.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” The voice came from behind.

Barb turned, smiling, looking him in the face, and watched him take in her port wine stain, the dark red blotch that had defined her whole life. His eyes did the usual dance—the stain, the floor, her face, but not up to the mark.

“I hope so,” she said, and threw just the tiniest hint of twang into her voice. Kentucky, not Alabama. “I need to buy bullets.”

“Rounds,” he said. He was nice-looking in a cowboy sort of way, probably late forties. Perfect. “We call them rounds.”

“Sorry.” A little giggle and a cock of her hips. “My boyfriend got me this gun, a Sig Sauer something, said if I won’t move in with him, I need to have it. He’s a cop, says until they get rid of all the bad guys with guns, we all need them too.”

“You know which model?”

“A pretty one. Silver and black.”

“Well—”

“I’m kidding, hon. I need .45 ACP.”

He grinned, then took a key ring from his belt, opened a glass display case. “Got a preference as far as brand?”

“It matter?”

“Not really. Winchesters are good, Blazer is a little cheaper.”

“Winchester is fine.”

“They come a hundred to a box.”

“I’ll take . . . three, I guess? Need to practice some.”

The clerk nodded, took out three boxes. “Anything else?”

“Targets?”

He showed her a selection, paper targets with bull’s-eyes and silhouettes of deer and people. She picked the ones shaped like a man.

“I can ring you up over here.” He led her up the aisle to a small register, scanned the ammunition. The register beeped, and he gave her a sly look. “You over twenty-one?”

She laughed. “Hon, I weren’t already seeing a man with a gun, I might just marry you for that.”

He smiled, put her stuff in a bag. “Eighty-seven forty.”

“Easy come, huh?” She counted out the bills, made sure to touch his fingers when she passed them to him. “Thanks for the help.”

“No problem.”

Barb Schroeder picked up the bag, surprised at the weight, then started for the front.

Now it was almost four, and Belinda Nichols was on the 15 again, heading back through the desert, about ten miles outside of Barstow. A sign told her exit 194 was coming up; she took it, found herself on the kind of dusty two-lane you saw in modern westerns, a long straight run to the sky. A few minutes later a dirt road branched off, and she took that, followed it for fifteen minutes until she was in a low canyon, all brown earth and scrub weeds. Pulled the van over and sat at the side of the road. Nothing happened. No cars, no trucks, nothing.

Belinda picked up the bag of ammunition, the paper targets, and the Sig Sauer she had taken from Daniel Hayes’s house and walked into the hills.

She found a twisted tree and hung the target on it, poking a branch through the paper. Then she walked back ten feet. The sun beat down on her as she held the pistol, found the lever to unlock the magazine. She opened one of the boxes of ammunition and loaded it carefully. Belinda hated the feeling of it, the way it was so clean and smooth and appealing; the machined precision of the gun, the perfect cylinder of each round. Hated the slickness of the whole thing, the fact that for all the flawless appeal on one side, the end result was messy and evil.

Get over it. You don’t have a choice. Until you do this, Bennett owns you. When it’s done, you’ll be free.

She blew out a breath, held the gun up in both hands. It was heavy, and as she stared down the barrel, the thing wavered back and forth across the target. Her hands were sweaty.

When Belinda pulled the trigger, the crack was so loud the rest of the world seemed to buzz.

A neat hole had appeared in the target. It wasn’t in the bull’s-eye, but it was inside the rings. Not bad.

Not good enough. You can’t screw this up. It won’t be a target you’re shooting at. It will be a man, and you can’t miss.

She wiped her hands on her jeans, one then the other, and then raised the gun again.

And again.

And again.

5

The building was a rent-a-room in Studio City, a two-story reclaimed from an old dance hall and divided into offices. Nice enough place, the façade intact, and the original floors, the boards battered and wide. Bennett had scoped it, walking into the lobby with a pizza box in one hand. Marking the security camera mounted in the ceiling. Nothing fancy, your standard closed-circuit, likely feeding to a digital recording system, a stack-burner for DVD-RWs. There was a wall board with the list of tenants, and he counted seconds while examining it. Mostly small production companies—who in this town wasn’t a producer?—as well as a number of writers, a lowrent agent or two, a dentist. He found the name he was looking for, suite 106, then scanned quick for the occupant of 105. He was up to twenty-two seconds before a dude in a blue monkey suit stepped out of an unmarked office door, asked if he could be of service.

“Yeah, I’ve got a delivery for,” he faked looking at the ticket, “the Council for Colombian Imports?” He smiled. “That’s just got to be a joke, right?”