At this late hour, the road is so devoid of traffic that it seems no longer to lead anywhere that man or machine still exists. Broken lane-dividing lines glow softly like some coded message to be deciphered.

The team doesn’t approach the house on the private lane, which might invite discovery. They climb the fence and continue overland.

The wind that sprang up at sundown has blown away to the west, leaving a stillness in its wake.

The two-story white-clapboard main residence stands under old, canopied oaks. Lights glow at downstairs and upstairs windows.

The Hawks are evidently up late in spite of Ambien and Scotch.

Ancel’s Ford F-550 truck stands in a graveled parking area.

The stables and barn are dark, as is the residence of the ranch manager, a barely visible geometric form three hundred yards to the northwest.

The silence is deeper than elsewhere, bereft of insect song.

They take positions all around the house, except for Paloma, who stands aside with the Medexpress container.

Rupert and Chris climb the back porch steps, while Vince and Gottfrey move on the front. They have LockAid lock-release guns that defeat the deadbolts with little noise.

There is no alarm, for the Hawks believe themselves to be self-sufficient in matters of self-defense. They are Texans, after all, and they are ranchers; if they weren’t born with full knowledge of firearms, they were born with a predisposition to learn. Any of Gottfrey’s team could be shot dead, including Egon himself.

Guns drawn, Egon and Vince venture into the lighted foyer as Rupert and Chris enter by the kitchen door.

Earlier, they memorized the layout of the house from plans imported to their laptops.

Rupert and Chris will clear the ground floor. Vince and Gottfrey move directly to the stairs and ascend.

The house is solidly constructed, but they make some noise. Yet they arrive in the upstairs hallway without encountering anyone.

Every open door is a danger, every closed door yet a greater threat, if you believe you are a physical being and can therefore die. Vince has a fine sweat on his brow. Egon Gottfrey remains dry. They clear the second floor room by room, but they find no one.

Returning to the stairs, Gottfrey sees Rupert and Chris in the foyer below. Chris shrugs, and Rupert looks disgusted.

Then to the enormous barn. Click on the lights. Dust motes like galaxies spiraling. The scent of hay. In one corner, the Hawks keep two other vehicles, a Chevy sedan and a Ford SUV; both are here.

Vince Penn is big and powerful and stalwart, but the Unknown Playwright has chosen to make him the slowest intellect on the team. He blathers his way to a conclusion that is instantly obvious to everyone else: “Hey, you think maybe they left on horseback? Could be, huh? If they went on horseback, you know, they could escape overland. Then Pedro and Alejandro wouldn’t know they slipped out.”

Onward to the stables. As light blooms, horses swing their heads over stall doors and nicker. Eight stalls. Just three horses.

“How damn many horses do they have?” Gottfrey wonders. “If they rode out on horseback, the ranch manager will know where they went.”

The manager’s residence is reached by a single lane of blacktop cracked by weather and crumbling along the edges.

Dark without and within, the Craftsman-style bungalow shelters under another oak.

Gottfrey intends to invade it as they did the previous house. However, when they are still about fifteen yards from the place, every window brightens, and exterior lamps shed cones of light as well. They halt as the front door opens.

Recognizable from the photographs in the NSA’s Jane Hawk file, Juan and Maria Saba step out of the bungalow. He is holding what might be a .22 rifle, and she grips a long-bladed machete.

Gottfrey is familiar with the concept of humor, though he doesn’t find much that is humorous in his scripted existence. He’s amused, however, by this couple’s intention to stand off seven heavily armed professionals with these pathetic weapons.

From the door behind the Sabas appear two, four … eight other men and women, all with more impressive weaponry.

And from around each side of the bungalow come others, male and female, a few teenagers, all bearing firearms, some also outfitted with machetes in scabbards. About half of them seem to be Hispanic.

Among this solemn little army of citizen soldiers, none appears to be amused, and in fact Gottfrey can’t maintain his own smile.

How long has this crowd gathered in silence, so that Pedro and his brother, monitoring the premises, have heard not a word spoken?

“We want no trouble,” Juan Saba says. “Leave now.”

“FBI,” Gottfrey declares, rather than flashing his Homeland credentials. FBI has more history, more glamour, and is taken more seriously than Homeland Security. “We’re here with arrest warrants.”

They possess no warrants, but a lie is not a lie when there’s no such thing as truth. Words are merely words, used like tools.

He holds his ID high for them to see. “Put down your weapons.”

“FBI,” Saba says. “Yes, FBI, we are supposed to believe.”

Interesting. Saba seems to be expressing the doubt of one who, like Gottfrey, embraces radical philosophical nihilism. This would appear to suggest that his mind is as real as Egon’s.

“Some here are brave uncles, aunts, cousins,” Juan Saba says. “Some are neighbors, brave friends of Mr. and Mrs. Hawk—and friends of Jane.”

“Jane Hawk,” Gottfrey declares, “is guilty of multiple murders and treason. Anyone who assists her now is an accessory after the fact and will be charged and brought to trial.”

There are maybe thirty people arrayed in front of the house, not one face clouded with either anger or fear, all expressionless, as if they mean to convey that their resistance isn’t driven by emotion, which might wane under pressure, that it is motivated by loyalty or justice or some equally noble virtue.

Into their challenging silence, Gottfrey says, “If you insist on standing with a traitor and murderer, if you won’t help us find Ancel and Clare, I’ll call for backup. You can’t outlast a federally imposed siege of this property. Get real, Mr. Saba.”

After half a minute of silence perhaps intended to establish that he is unmoved by this threat, Juan Saba says, “You don’t want a big, loud thing here. You come with your needles to make slaves of Ancel and Clare. Such devil’s work can be done only in the quiet dark. They aren’t here anymore. You can’t force us to help you find them. We’ll make much noise and shine the light of justice on you.”

This is a twist that Egon Gottfrey hasn’t seen coming. Jane has told her in-laws about the brain implants, and they have shared this with Juan Saba, who shared it with these others. And they are all credulous enough to believe this mind-control story to be a fact.

Rupert Baldwin has little patience for the pretensions of common folk like this, who believe in the myth of constitutional rights. Loud enough for Saba to hear, he says, “We’re not going to allow this bunch of shitkickers to push us around, are we?”

Gottfrey has no objection to a shootout. His physical existence is an illusion; he can’t be killed. It would be interesting to see how such a close-quarters pitched battle might turn out.

However, just as he can somehow see, hear, feel, taste, and smell with this illusion of a physical body, he can also experience pain.

Gottfrey has no copy of the script. It always seems that the Unknown Playwright trusts him to intuit what he is expected to say and do. Gottfrey has come to believe that when his intuition isn’t keen enough to discern what is wanted of him, the Unknown Playwright inflicts pain, in one form or another, to encourage him to try harder to be true to the narrative in the future.

Gottfrey and his crew are not clad head to foot in Kevlar. A lot of pain can be inflicted with a leg wound, with an arm wound.

In Gottfrey’s experience, clandestine action is what is usually expected. He isn’t likely to be rewarded for instigating a shootout.

Saba says, “These friends will be with Maria and me while we do chores and oversee the day workers, and while we sleep. We won’t be taken by surprise. We won’t be easy.”

“Even if they went on horseback,” Gottfrey says, “we have ways of tracking them, ways of finding them.”

“Then go to your ways,” Saba advises.

“You’ll live to regret this.”

“There is no regret in doing right. Go to your ways.”

“Arrogant shitkicker,” Rupert Baldwin snarls.

Before the situation might spiral out of control, Gottfrey orders his people to concede and return to the grove of cottonwoods.

When they are with Pedro and Alejandro, wrapped in the fabric of cottonwood shadows threaded by moonlight, he takes the Medexpress container from Paloma and sends his people back to their motels.