“They want to kill me,” she said.

“What?”

“They want me dead.”

Another man appeared in the door and came across to them both. Another guard.

Milton turned his head to look at him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Look at her. What’s happened?”

He snorted out a derisive laugh. “She’s tripping out, man. Look at her! They said she went into the bathroom and when she came out she was like that. But you don’t need to worry. We’ll look after her. We’re going to drive her back to the city.”

“She says someone wants to kill her.”

“You want me to repeat it? Look at the state of her. She’s off her head.”

Milton didn’t buy that for a moment. Something was wrong, he was sure of it, and there was no way he was going to leave her here.

“Who are you?” the man asked him.

“I drove her out here. You don’t need to worry about another car. I’ll take her back.”

“No you won’t. We’re taking care of it and you’re getting out of here. Right now.”

“Not without her.”

Milton stood slowly and turned so that they were face-to-face. The man was about the same height as him but perhaps a little heavier. He had low, clenched brows and a thick, flattened nose. He had nothing in common with the well-dressed, affluent guests next door. Hired muscle in case any of the guests got out of hand. Probably armed, too, like his pal with the broken nose and the headache outside. Milton took another deep breath. He stared forward with his face burning and his hands clenching and unclenching.

“What?” the man said, squaring up to him.

“I’d be careful,” Milton advised, “before I lose my temper.”

“That supposed to be a threat, pal? What you gonna do?”

Milton’s attention was distracted for just a moment and he didn’t notice Madison sprint for the door. He shouldered the man out of the way and gave chase but she was quick and agile and already halfway across the library and then into the living room beyond. Milton bumped into a drunken guest, knocking him so that he toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the floor, barely managing to keep his own balance. “Madison!” He stumbled after her, scrambling through the room and into the foyer and then the cool of the night beyond.

He could barely make her out as she headed up the driveway.

He called out to her. “Madison! Wait!”

She crossed the driveway and kept going, disappearing into the bushes at the side of the gardens.

She vanished into the fog.

The man outside was on his knees, still dazed, struggling to get to his feet.

Milton started in pursuit but came to a helpless stop. He clenched his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t start crashing across the neighbours’ properties. They would call the police and then he would be arrested and they would take his details. He had probably stayed too long as it was. Perhaps they had already been called. Bringing attention to himself was something that a man in his position really couldn’t afford.

He rolled the car up the road. He turned right, further into Pine Shores, and, as the headlights raked through the murky gloom, he saw Madison again, at the front door of the next house, knocking furiously. He watched as the door opened and an old man with scraps of white hair and an expression that flicked from annoyance to concern came out and spoke with her. She shrieked at him, repeating one word — “help” — before she pushed her way into the house. Milton stepped out of the car and then paused, impotent, as the sounds of an argument were audible from inside. Madison stumbled outside again, tripping down the porch steps, scrambling to her feet as Milton took a step towards her, the old man coming outside after her, a phone in his hand, calling out in a weak and uncertain voice that he had called 911 and she needed to get off his property. He saw Milton, glared at him, and repeated that he had called the cops. Milton paused again. Madison sprinted to the old man’s fence and clambered over it, ploughing through a flower bed and a stand of shrubs, knocking on the front door of the next big house, not waiting to have her knock answered and continuing on down the road.

Milton heard the growl of several motorcycle engines. Four sets of lights blasted around the corner, powerful headlamps that sliced through the fog. He turned and looked into the glare of the high beams. The shape of the bikes suggested big Harleys. The riders slotted the hogs in along the side of the road. The engines were killed, one by one, but the headlights were left burning.

A car rolled up alongside them. It was difficult to make it out for sure but it looked like an old Cadillac.

He got back into the Explorer and drove slowly up the road after Madison. It was poorly lit, with dense bushes on the left. He couldn’t see where she had gone. He dialled the number she had used to book him earlier. There was no answer.

Another set of headlights flicked on behind him, flashing across the rear-view mirror. The town car from before had pulled out of the driveway to the party house. Milton redialled the number as he watched its red taillights disappear into the fog, swerving away behind the shoulder of dark trees at the side of the road.

He turned around and went through the gate in case she had doubled back and tried to make her way back up towards West Shore Road. The vegetation was dark and thick to either side, no light, no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of her anywhere. He parked. After five minutes, he heard the engines of the four motorbikes and watched as they looped around in a tight turn and roared away, heading back out towards the road, passing him one after the other and then accelerating sharply. The Cadillac followed. Five minutes after that he heard the siren of a cop car. He slid down in the seat, his head beneath the line of the window. The cruiser turned through the gate and rolled towards the house. He waited for the cruiser to come to a stop and then, with his lights off, he drove away. He had already taken more risks than was prudent. The cops would be able to help her more than he could and he didn’t want to be noticed out here.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel bad.

He flicked the lights on and accelerated gently away.

4

Milton stirred at twelve the next day. His first waking thought was of the girl. He had called her cell several times on the way back to the city but he had been dumped straight to voicemail. After that he had driven home in silence. He didn’t know her at all and yet he was terribly worried. He made his bed, pulling the sheets tight and folding them so that it was as neat as he could make it, a hang-up from a decade spent in the army. When he was done he stared out of the window of his room into the seemingly never-ending shroud of fog in the street beyond. He feared that something dreadful had happened.

His apartment had a shared bathroom and he waited until it was unoccupied and then showered in the lukewarm water. He ran his right hand down the left-hand side of his body, feeling for the broken ribs that he had suffered after Santa Muerte had stomped him in the dust and dirt outside Juárez. There had been no time to visit a doctor to fix them but they had healed well enough. It was just another fracture that hadn’t been dealt with properly and he had lost count of the number of times that that had happened. He took his razor and shaved, looking at his reflection in the steamy mirror. He had short dark hair with a little grey. There was a scar on his face, running horizontally from his ear lobe, across his cheek, and terminating just below his right nostril. He was even-featured although there was something ‘hard’ about his looks. He looked almost swarthy in certain lights and, now that he had shaved away the untidy beard that he had sported while he travelled north through South America, his clean, square, sharply defined jaw line was exposed.