Enrique’s nephew, Ferrante, operated a legit business in Indio, customizing limousines, high-end SUVs, and other vehicles, not only making them more luxurious than the original manufacturers had made them, but also armoring them and installing bullet-resistant glass and run-flat tires for wealthy people who watched the world grow darker and heard lethal violence justified from podium to pulpit.

In addition, as insurance against another government screwup that would sink the economy yet again and devastate his customizing business, Ferrante dealt in illegal arms from a secret basement under one of his factories. Because his mother, Josefina, Enrique’s sister, had for some reason raised the boy in the Church, he would not sell weapons to criminals, only to the upstanding citizens who purchased his armored vehicles, titans of industry and banking and social-media companies—and probably to a rogue FBI agent who was maybe more righteous than the people who accused her of treason.

“I assume,” Jane Hawk said, “your contact there will let your vehicle on his lot and let me prepare for a trip I have to make.”

“We’re tight. But I have to say he’s a weird duck. He does Mass daily, always saying his rosary like some old abuela who wears a mantilla even in the shower. He’s got this blood obsession.”

“ ‘Blood obsession’?”

“You meet him, you’ll see. But he’s not loco. He’s smart. He knows how the world works. I guarantee you can do your meet there.”

“I’m assuming the Tiffin Allegro can tow an SUV.”

“What SUV you want it to tow?”

She told him. “So how much will you rob me for?”

He stood thinking, watching the insects leap, watching a sudden flock of crows cackle down out of the sun, snaring the bugs in mid jump, glossy black wings thrashing the golden grass and fireweed, the singing of the grasshoppers now like thin screams.

“A hundred twenty thousand on delivery. You got that much?”

“Yeah. But you’re a true bandit, Ricky.”

“There’s a way I could let you have it for seventy.”

“What way is that?”

“Take a break from what you’re doin’, stay a month with me.”

“A month with you, Ricky, I’d be used up, worn out, no good for anything anymore.”

“I’d be gentle. You’d be surprised.”

“I know you’d be gentle. You’re chivalrous. But I’m a widow, you know, and figuratively speaking I’m wearing black.”

“I forgot the whole widow thing for a minute. My apologies.”

“Accepted. And don’t worry about the hundred twenty, it’s all in clean bills. Nobody’s looking for it.”

“I don’t worry about you,” he said. “I know you won’t screw me, not that way, and I guess not any other way.”

“Business and romance never mix, anyway,” she said.

“Guy who had this operation before me,” Enrique said, “hooked up with this lady customer, ended up with his head cut off.”

“There you go. Let’s keep our heads, Ricky.”

She terminated the call.

Up there at the barn in which Enrique had his office, at a door that couldn’t be seen from the highway, Danny and Tio were dumping a dead guy in the open cargo bed of a Mule, a nice little electric vehicle that was useful for a variety of tasks.

20

THE SHADOWS OF THE PARKING LOT LAMPPOSTS, sheathed at noon, now slowly extending west across the truck-stop blacktop, like swords drawn to defend against the dragon growl of diesel engines …

Enrique de Soto had come to Jane Hawk’s attention when she had tracked down Marcus Paul Headsman, a serial killer who’d stolen a car from Enrique. The FBI had too few agents and too many cases to care about the small-beer de Soto operation. Headsman was the game. Likewise, over in the Department of Justice, prosecutorial overload required a triage approach to selecting which criminals to proceed against. Jane had first purchased a Ford Escape from Ricky, shortly after she went on the run. She’d given him the impression that the law had never bothered him because she’d shredded the file on him, which was neither true nor necessary. Ricky was macho enough to convince himself that a good-looking FBI agent would be so drawn to him that she’d cut off the hands of justice to keep them from seizing him.

One of the most dispiriting things about her current situation was the need to work with criminals whom she would have liked to put behind bars. There were degrees of evil, however, and in these dark times, which seemed to darkle deeper every day, absolute purity of action ensured defeat. The armies of virtue were either too few in number or too cowed by the volume of political hatred to be counted upon. When bargaining with lesser evils to obtain what was necessary to wage war against Evil in the uppercase, she’d keep her footing if she was always alert to the stain it left on her, if she remained aware of the need for contrition, and if she would—supposing that she lived—eventually bring to justice those like Ricky de Soto with whom she’d had to traffic.

Now, in a remote corner of the big parking lot, with the Explorer Sport shielding her from observation by those coming and going from the truck stop, she knelt on the blacktop and used a hammer to pound a screwdriver into the charging port of the burner phone, destroying the battery and, with it, the identifier by which the phone might be tracked. She smashed the screen and broke open the casing, intending to cross the fifty yards of weedy field and throw the debris into the ravine toward which the land sloped.

In this age when every phone and computer and laptop and every car with a GPS and even every high-tech wristwatch was a beacon by which you could be tracked, measured paranoia was essential to survival. If the first call she made was to any person who might conceivably be a target of law enforcement, she discarded her burner after a single use. Luther Tillman’s location was unknown to all authorities, and Bernie Riggowitz was a most unlikely subject for surveillance; however, once she had spoken to Enrique de Soto, she needed to dispose of the phone, lest someone monitoring him might learn its identifier code and even now be committing the nation’s every resource to locate and apprehend her.

Recently she had destroyed a lot of disposable phones.

Of course, if these days Enrique was in fact a hot target of one law-enforcement agency or another, simply placing the order for the motor home had all but ensured Jane’s destruction. When the Tiffin Allegro 36 showed up in Indio, driven by one of Ricky’s people, soon thereafter a demon horde of SWAT-geared Arcadians would storm the place. However, she had no choice but to trust that Ricky had taken adequate steps to mask his true identity when he’d bought the smartphone and contracted with a telecom company.

She picked up the broken burner and rose to her feet and saw the guy first from the corner of her eye. He was coming through the bristled field, from the direction of the oaks and ravine, moving fast, a shotgun raised and ready.

21

FROM HIS ROVER, THROUGH BINOCULARS, Ivan Petro watches Jane Hawk exit the truck-stop diner with a bag of takeout and a tall drink container. Spine straight, shoulders back, with the grace and confidence of a born athlete, she exhibits none of the furtiveness or wariness that might mark her as a fugitive. The pixie-cut wig is different from the shaggy black number she wore the previous night, but neither the hair nor the horn-rimmed glasses can conceal her essential Janeness.

She returns to the Explorer and drives as far from the bustling business as the pavement allows and parks next to an open field.

After Ivan repositions his SUV, he uses the binoculars again, pulls her close, and sees that she is eating lunch. She has put down the window. A soft breeze stirs her hair, suggesting that she has also put down the front window on the passenger side.

He watches her, thinking. When she seems to be talking on a cellphone, he decides he better seize this opportunity.

His all-wheel-drive vehicle has a special GPS, developed by the NSA, which offers displays not only of highways, roads, and streets, but also off-road topography in considerable detail. Because Jane has chosen to have lunch in the most remote corner of the property, Ivan realizes that a way exists to get close to her without calling attention to his Range Rover or himself.

He leaves the truck stop not by its exit lane, but overland. Her Explorer faces due east. He passes behind her, a hundred yards to the west. She can see him, if at all, only in the rearview mirror.

He crosses the fifty yards of open land and drives between two live oaks, under massive anaconda limbs of hardened sinuosity. He negotiates a long slope—a carpet of beetle-shaped leaves crunching under the tires, scaring squirrels up tree trunks—and descends into a realm of Gothic shadows, the dark ground patterned by a scattering of sunlight configured by the branches and leaves overhead.

At the bottom of the glen, he drives east until the blinking indicators on the GPS display—red for the Explorer, green for his Rover—are parallel, whereupon he stops and switches off the engine.