I nodded. “I won’t either. That’s why I’m here. I’d like for you and the boys to go with Carter. I hope just for today, but it might be longer. He’ll make sure you are safe.”

She looked at Carter, who remained expressionless.

“I’ll stay here and see what happens,” I said. “When I know it’s safe to come back, I’ll let you know.”

“Should we call the police?” she asked. “Detective Asanti?”

“I think it’s better if we keep them out of this at the moment,” I said. “I don’t want to bring any unnecessary attention to your family.”

I was using her situation to get myself in the situation I wanted to be in. It wasn’t fair, and what I’d said wasn’t necessarily true. But it had the desired effect.

She stood. “I will go wake the boys.” She left the room.

Carter watched her go down the hall. “You’ll be alright here?” he asked. “If he shows up, you’ll be alright?”

I waited for Lucia Vasquez and her boys to return, not knowing how to answer that question.

SIXTY-SEVEN

For three days, I wandered around the Vasquez home, looking at pictures, checking closets, waiting. Periodically I called Carter, making sure all was okay. They were twenty minutes away, in a hotel in Yuma, safe. The kids thought they were on vacation. Lucia seemed concerned but was making the best of it.

On the fourth day, I was beginning to think that what Carter had suggested was true. Maybe Keene was just coming down to attend to other business and I’d overreacted. Maybe he’d assumed that Liz’s death had sent me into a downward spiral since I’d disappeared and he was in the clear. Maybe I had unnecessarily disrupted the Vasquezes’ lives for my own agenda. But I’d told him about my conversation with Klimes and he’d gone through the trouble to blow up Carter’s car. I just didn’t think he’d run. It didn’t fit with everything else he’d done.

I decided to sit through one more night. Then, if nothing had happened, I’d call it off.

The house was mortuary quiet for most of the evening, just like all the previous nights. A few creaks and hums in the dark, but nothing more. I sat in the far corner of the living room, listening to the tiny sounds, wondering if Keene was coming.

It was just past four in the morning when I stopped wondering.

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard anything. I listened hard and it was quiet. But then I made out the faint scrape of a footstep outside the front door.

I lay down next to the couch, pressing myself into the floor. My eyes had adjusted enough to the dim light that I could see the doorknob move. It jiggled, the hand on the other side slowly working it back and forth. Finally, it gave.

I steadied the 9mm in my hands and aimed right at the door.

The door inched open, and initially it seemed no one was there. But my eyes focused, and I could see Keene dressed entirely in black. He’d made the mistake of coming in without his gun drawn. He shut the door behind him, not a sound coming from him or the door.

He turned away from the door and eyed the hallway. If Lucia and the boys had been there, Keene would’ve smiled and thought about how clever he was.

I squeezed the trigger and the quiet of the house exploded. The bullet hit Keene’s thigh with a wet thud, and he collapsed.

I vaulted off the floor and was on top of him immediately. His hands were grasping at his leg, and his eyes were wide with shock. I dropped my knee onto his thigh where I thought the wound was, and he howled. I slapped a hand across his mouth.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I said, grinding my knee harder into his leg.

He strained against me, ugly groans echoing against the palm of my hand.

“See you in a little bit,” I said, then dropped the butt of my gun into his temple.

SIXTY-EIGHT

I drove east on the highway, then south without a road, until we were out in the middle of the dark desert. Keene was still unconscious in the passenger seat. I opened the door and threw him to the ground.

He rolled over with a grunt, his left thigh decorated with a wide swath of dark blood. I pulled out the garbage bags I’d lined the interior of the rental car with and tossed them in a pile next to him.

His eyes opened slowly.

I fired the Sig Sauer Carter had obtained for me about a foot from Keene’s left ear. He jerked and rolled hard to his right. He came face up again, dirt and sand now caked in the bleeding gash above his eye.

“You killed Darcy,” I said and fired again at the ground, this time to his right. My voice sounded unusually loud in the silent and lonely desert.

He yelled and rolled in the opposite direction. He pushed up on his hands and sat up, his breathing ragged.

“You left my father to rot in prison,” I said.

Keene tensed, waiting for another shot. I surprised him with a roundhouse kick to the jaw and felt the bone snap as I drove my foot through the kick. He fell to the side, his hands coming to his face.

I dropped to my knees and pulled him up. He grunted, and a weird smile came over his busted-up face. Even knowing he was near the end of his life, Keene was arrogant.

I held onto his shirt, our faces two feet apart. “And you killed the only person who has ever really mattered to me.”

The tears welled up in my eyes. I looked away for a moment, angry that I was showing him how much he had hurt me and that I couldn’t get a handle on my emotions. I waited, willing my control to return.

I took a deep breath and looked at him through my blurred, salty vision.

I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe that I would drag it out, make him tell me more things that I wanted to know. But we were beyond that.

I tugged on his shirt and brought our faces together, shoving the gun against the middle of his sternum. He was gasping but too weak to pull away. He coughed, and the sound echoed across the desert floor.

And yet the uncomfortable smile remained on his face, letting me know that no matter what was about to happen, he had still won part of the battle.

For a second, I thought about ending it. Leaving it all and walking away. Be the stronger person. Do the right thing, like Liz had said.

But I no longer had a grasp on the difference between right and wrong. It all melted into one big mountain of hurt and pain and emptiness.

The smile on his face grew a fraction.

I squeezed the trigger and emptied the gun into Landon Keene’s chest.

SIXTY-NINE

“I don’t see it,” Carter said. “Me either.”

We were standing in the middle of the desert. I’d called him and told him they could come back. He’d taken the Vasquezes to their home and then found me.

I’d buried Keene, and we were looking for any visible signs that there was a grave in the middle of nowhere.

“Then we’re good,” Carter said.

That was about as far from the truth as we could get. “We should go separately,” Carter said. “Call me when you get there.”

I nodded.

He walked to the truck and slid in through the passenger side. The engine started with a low rumble. He nodded at me, drove up onto the road, and disappeared.

I turned to the valley and stared hard.

The sun was coming up.

Just like before.

I stared again. It was a remote location, not a place people went hiking or off-roading. But people would start looking for Keene. Even assholes have friends.

The sand and isolation would hide him for a while. I just wondered for how long.

SEVENTY

I drove back to San Diego feeling numb and empty. All of things that I had vaguely hoped I might feel once Keene was gone were non-existent. And I kept thinking of Liz, somewhere, watching me and shaking her head, telling me I’d screwed up.

I knew I needed to bring the whole thing full circle, to find some sort of closure, no matter how forced or pointless.

I went straight to the airport and bought a ticket to San Francisco. Simington had about twelve hours left in his life, and I thought I needed to be there for one of them.