“Satellite’s moving damn fast. You don’t get a feature-length film of anything.”

“What if they didn’t stop at that other ranch? They might have passed it by, crossed the road, and gone somewhere else.”

Rupert turns to the second laptop and calls up a file. “Just finished putting this together before you knocked.”

The first photo, captured from Google Street View, shows a gated entrance to a property and a sign that reads LONGRIN STABLES.

Rupert clicks away the first photo and splits the screen for two Texas DMV images of driver’s licenses, one for Chase Longrin, one for Alexis Longrin. They appear to be in their early thirties, good-looking in spite of the poor quality of DMV photography.

“Husband and wife,” Rupert says. “We recently became suspicious of them. Maybe they’re a conduit for messages from Jane to her in-laws. Nick Hawk and Chase Longrin were best friends in high school.”

Gottfrey considers the two faces. Chase still looks like a high-school jock. Alexis is a pretty woman.

It’s noon. Almost ten hours since the two riders on horseback—if they were riders and horses—had been captured by the satellite.

Gottfrey says, “Let’s go have a chat with the Longrins.”

18

THE WOMAN IN RESEDA, known as Judy White but also as Lois Jones, neither of which was her real name, claimed to be a Syrian refugee, though her accent sounded sometimes like Eastern European Slavic, at other times flat-out Russian. She didn’t answer her phone in any traditional manner. “You have wrong number, go away.”

From experience, Jane knew neither Judy nor Lois would hang up.

“We’ve done business before.”

“I not in business. Read palms. Tell fortunes. My gift. Is life mission, not business.”

“Enrique introduced us.”

“You have wrong number, go away.”

“When I saw you a week or so ago, the last thing you said to me was, ‘Go. Go where you go. You want to die, so go die.’ ”

“Was nothing personal. Just opinion. Observation. My gift.”

“You’re going to get two photos by email.” Jane explained what she needed. “I want to stop by and get everything in three hours.”

“Want, want, want. Everybody want. Is impossible, three hours.”

“I’ll pay triple the usual.”

“Don’t die on way here, nobody to pay us.”

“I’ll do my best to get there alive.”

“So you say.” Judy and Lois terminated the call.

19

THIS GUY SAID HE KNEW A GUY who bought cars from Enrique de Soto, reworked wheels to outrun anything a cop might jack around in. This guy who knew a guy, he swaggered like some TV-wrestling star.

Enrique’s product started out stolen and went for a makeover in Nogales, Mexico, where its identifiers were removed and the GPS was stripped out. The vehicle was either given a new engine compatible to the Batmobile or otherwise supercharged. Anything you purchased from Enrique came with a valid California DMV registration or with one from a DMV of your choice in any Canadian province.

This guy who knew a guy also knew what sweet prices Enrique charged for his merchandise, and he was dumb enough to think that Enrique kept a bank’s worth of cash on the premises.

Ricky de Soto worked out of several weathered barns on a former horse ranch near Nogales, Arizona, directly across the border from Nogales, Mexico. The front barn held no vehicles, but was stocked with junk furniture and other items to provide Ricky with cover as an antiques dealer.

So that morning, this guy who knew a guy came into Ricky’s office without an appointment, smelling of some pussy-boy cologne. Obviously a bodybuilder. Shaved and waxed bullet head. Tattoo of a snake around his throat. Wearing a loose black raincoat in a warm rainless morning. He was accompanied by a nervous dude who resembled Mick Jagger but even skinnier, with the bad teeth of a methhead.

They evidently didn’t think they looked like what they were. The one with the tattoo mentioned a good customer of Enrique’s and started talking cars, a lot of shit picked up from bad movies. The methhead thought he was casual, easing around the office, pretending to admire the cheap vases and the mantel clocks that passed for collectibles, but he was moving away from his buddy and into a backup shooting position.

Bullet Head’s raincoat didn’t hang right, because there was no weight on the left side to balance the concealed sawed-off shotgun in a sling under the right-side panel of fabric.

Ricky didn’t worry that he might have misjudged his visitors. In the event that he was mistaken, he would have no regrets.

When the guy in the raincoat asked if he could smoke, just to explain why he was reaching into the right-hand pocket of his coat, Ricky stepped hard on the pedal in the knee space of his desk. A 12-gauge shotgun was mounted to the center rail that supported the desktop. The pedal drew taut a wire that pulled the trigger. The skirt on the front of the desk was a mere quarter-inch panel of Masonite. At such close range, the blast chopped Raincoat Guy mostly in the crotch and lower abdomen, and blew him down.

Skinny Mick had a gun in, of all places, an ankle holster. As the fool bent and fumbled for it, Ricky drew a pistol from a holster attached to the side of his office chair and stood and shot the meth addict twice. He stepped around the desk and shot the screaming guy in the raincoat, who wasn’t long for this world, anyway.

All the gunfire in close quarters left Ricky de Soto half deaf. He stepped around the bodies, left his office, pulled the door shut.

The would-be heist artists had arrived in a Cadillac Escalade, possibly stolen, in any case now hot. It would have to be boxed over to Mexico, given a new identity. Because he hadn’t paid some punk to boost it, there would be a good profit when it was ready for sale.

He didn’t work the operation alone, of course, but the other guys were in the barns farthest back from the highway. By the time he walked there, with grasshoppers springing out of the tall grass alongside the oiled-dirt driveway as if to celebrate him, his hearing slowly returned, though he would have tinnitus for a while.

He told Danny and Tio what had happened. They knew what to do without being instructed, and they headed directly for his office.

One of the benefits of having major acreage was that you had numerous places where graves could be dug discreetly with a backhoe.

Ricky didn’t immediately follow Danny and Tio, but stood yawning elaborately, trying to pop the tinnitus out of his ears.

His iPhone rang, and as usual there was no caller ID, because his clientele preferred anonymity. He took the call. “Yeah?”

She said, “Hardly more than a week since I saw you. I must be the best customer you have.”

Sexy as she was, he knew her voice as much from dreams as from the times she’d done business with him face-to-face.

He said, “You’re so big now, maybe I shouldn’t risk doing any more business with you.”

“Like I’m going to believe your balls fell off. I’m only a few hundred miles away, I’d have heard them hit the ground.”

He laughed. “Bonita chica, maybe yours are bigger than mine.”

“I need a motor home. I’m sure you’ve fitted them out before with cute little hard-to-find compartments.”

“Could be I got a couple right now.”

“Gas, not a diesel pusher. Thirty-six to forty feet.”

“I got a Tiffin Allegro thirty-six. Total refit, custom paint. Nobody ever knew her would know her now, she’s so pretty.”

She told him the size of the custom storage spaces she needed.

She also specified a pistol that she required.

He said, “Doable on both counts.”

“I need everything by late tomorrow morning.”

“Shit, no.”

“I’ll pay a premium.”

“Tiffin Allegro thirty-six-footer, new off the showroom floor, would cost you a hundred eighty thousand.”

“Like you bought it right off the showroom floor. What was your wholesale price—four thousand to some booster?”

“Plus there’s the work you want done overnight.”

“Ricky, Ricky, Ricky. Will you pretend you have to charge sales tax? Listen, one thing you do need to add to the total is delivery.”

“You think I’m Amazon or somethin’?”

“You know the address near Palm Springs. You once recommended the man there to me, but I never needed him until now.”