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They lived in a dreamworld.

Shaun looked at the doorway to the abandoned mining building. Jimmy was just inside, the sunlight spotting him against the deeper shadow. His clothing was streaked and clotted with blood. He was working on something, cutting away at the sun-pinked corpse.

Then he held his hand up and gave a rebel yell.

Riis’s scalp.

Shaun understood the rush, the feeling of triumph with your first kill. To know that you could cross that line—and easily—made you special. She had sensed that in Jimmy when she first met him. That knowledge had ripened in the weeks after Jimmy agreed to become her son. He was impatient, but he had to be schooled first.

Today she’d finally let him experience his first kill: she let him have Riis.

She smiled at the way her boy had listened to Riis’s pleas and appeared to consider them. He knew what was required, and deflected pity. Actually, Shaun suspected Jimmy didn’t have pity.

To his credit, he did not toy with Riis. He did not tease him. He listened, he considered, giving great weight to Riis’s pleas…and then he shot him twice, a clean shot through the eye and a follow-up shot to the chest.

Bang bang.

Look at him now, holding up the scalp!

This would be the first and last time Jimmy would be allowed to celebrate in the end zone. The whole point was to divorce yourself from emotion, good or bad. Do your job. Take pride in it, but carry out your assignment in a workmanlike, efficient manner. Don’t get too involved, because that is how even the good ones get tripped up. She’d learned all this, and she would teach Jimmy.

It made her proud to know she was not only a mom, but a teacher.

“OK,” she called out. “Time to get rid of them.”

Jimmy stared at her. He had the scalp on his head. Blood was dripping over his eyes and onto his nose.

“Don’t be such a clown,” she shouted.

He removed the scalp and bowed deeply, with a flourish of hair and blood. “Ta-daaaa!”

Like the magician they saw in San Francisco.

Cocky.

She could have debriefed Hogart and Riis and sent them on their way to screw up another day. But there had been pressure. Recently, Jimmy had begun to withhold his affection.

All he could think of was his first hit. Shaun had told him to wait, to be patient, hoping he would learn discipline, but now she wondered if her decision to let him kill Riis might have been too much, too soon. It worried her.
Their bond could not be broken.
Which might have been the reason she let him have his way today.

Was she an overindulgent mother?

She hoped her decision to let Jimmy kill Riis wouldn’t turn out to be a big lapse in judgment.

Chapter Nine

T
ESS WAS DRIVING
back to the sheriff’s office when she saw the woman and the boy.

She’d answered a burglary call out in Two Points, a wildcat development of manufactured homes in the desert flats south of Paradox, and had come back by way of County Route 9, which turned into Third Street. When Tess rolled to a halt at the stop sign at Third and Yucca, she noticed the “For Sale” sign up at Joe’s Auto-Wash.

She constantly scanned her surroundings. That was part of her job: to look for trouble. Tess was always on the alert for any kind of anomaly, anything out of place.

She spotted a woman, a boy, and a new white truck in one of the bays at Joe’s.

The boy was using the spray gun to reach the top of the truck and the woman was scrubbing the wheel wells.

The woman, whose back was to Tess, stiffened. She straightened up slowly and turned to look in Tess’s direction. For a moment, Tess thought she’d been mistaken—was it a man? No, a woman.

The woman gave her a long look and then turned away—a casual move that was anything but—and went back to work. But Tess could sense the woman was aware that she hadn’t driven on. Tess could imagine the woman sending feelers out into the air. Silly, but she didn’t dismiss it because so much of police work depended on instinct. Instinct had saved her life on more than one occasion.

The strange thing was, the woman looked like a cop. She was clothed the way a male undercover cop would dress: she wore a knit polo shirt loose over the hips, jeans, and good athletic shoes. When the woman turned away, Tess saw the outline of a weapon on her hip, under the shirt.

The truck was brand new. Tess memorized the temporary Arizona license sticker in the back window of the truck, then drove on, circling the block. She came back up the other street—Yucca. Now she could see the inside of the car wash bay from the other side. Everything was silhouetted against the hot glare of the sun, but Tess could see that the woman was standing in front of the truck now, watching as she drove past.

Tess felt a jolt to her heart. Pure adrenaline, laced with fear.

Something about that woman, the way she watched Tess drive by. It made Tess feel as if she’d dodged a bullet. When she reached the next stop sign, she realized her legs were shaking.

B
ACK AT THE
sheriff’s office, Tess ran the white truck’s temporary license number. The truck was new off the lot at Talbot’s Chevrolet in Clarkdale, Arizona. It had been sold to a Sedona company called “Sandstone Adventures.”

Tess spent the next twenty minutes trying to run down Sandstone Adventures, but after checking several business directories, she found no such company. She called a friend of hers who ran a jeep tour out of Sedona.

“Sandstone Adventures? Never heard of them.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know every company in this town. I have to—they’re the competition.”

“Thanks,” she said.

She called the dealership that sold the truck and asked to talk to the salesman. He was reluctant to divulge any information about a customer at first, but at last, he told her that the buyer wanted the truck for a company.

“What did he look like?” Tess asked.

“It was a she.”

“Did she look like a man?”

“Are you kidding? She was a real looker. Long blonde hair, pretty rich looking.”

Could that be the same woman? The one who clearly enjoyed looking like a man?

Tess knew what Pat would say: nothing there.

But he hadn’t seen her in the flesh.

“Anything else you can tell me about the woman?”

“She had a kid with her.”

Tess’s pulse quickened. “How old?”

“I dunno. Eleven, twelve, maybe? Kid had a yo-yo. About drove me nuts. A distraction, you know?”

It was her.

By now, the woman and boy were probably long gone. Why would they stay in Paradox? Tess would keep an eye out for them, sure, but she wouldn’t go looking. She’d have no reason to pull them over. They had not broken any law as far as she could tell.

Tess realized she was relieved.

Chapter Ten

Ten Minutes to Midnight

T
HE COYOTES ON
the bajada were yipping again. No matter how often Sheriff Thaddeus “Bonny” Bonneville heard them, their manic, high-pitched shrieks set his teeth on edge. Been that way since he was a kid.

His coon dog, Ed, was waiting for Bonny to get up and walk down the hall to bed, but Bonny wasn’t ready yet.

Bonny thought about Bajada County’s one detective, Pat Kerney, and the deputy. They worked well together. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Bajada County had two detectives instead of one.

Bonny was surprised that Pat actually appreciated Tess McCrae’s help. Even a year ago, that would not have been the case. Although Pat was pugnacious as ever, Bonny had a strong feeling that his mind wasn’t on business anymore. Bonny thought he knew why. Pat’s priorities had changed.

Bonny, himself a widower, knew plenty of friends who’d lost their wives. Most of them wanted to get married again, and usually did so within a year. They liked being married so much they wanted to repeat the experience. In Pat’s case, his wife didn’t hadn’t died. She’d left him. But damned if old Pat wasn’t desperate to get himself back into holy matrimony as soon as possible. He’d courted just about every woman in town, including the new deputy.

Tess McCrae had put paid to that in a hurry. Rare ability, to shoot a guy down and be able to work with him the next day.

Ed whined, then lay down on the floor, inconvenienced but patient.

“In a minute,” Bonny said to the old dog. He punched in the home number for Harry McCrae, a sergeant with Las Cruces PD in New Mexico. Harry answered on the first ring.

“How’s my niece working out?” Harry McCrae asked.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Bonny said. “Remind me again what happened in Albuquerque?”

“Not much to tell. She found her husband in bed with a young woman and got mad, is all.”

“Way I heard it she trained her gun on them.”

“That’s what she testified to.”

Bonny was silent.

“She’s not like that,” Harry said.

“I know.” “Hair-trigger” wasn’t a term Bonny would use for his star deputy. He didn’t even know why he was bringing it up. He and Harry’d had the selfsame conversation when he’d thought about hiring her eight months ago. “She threw the gun out the window?”

“It hit the window and cracked the glass.”

“Misfired, as I recall.”

“Nobody was hurt.”

“Still.”

“What is it you’re getting at, Bonny? You regretting bringing her on board?”

“No, that’s not it.” Might as well give it voice. “I’m thinking of making her detective tomorrow. Am I doing the right thing?”

No hesitation at all: “If you have the good sense God gave a goose, you’ll do it.”

Chapter Eleven

M
AX AWOKE IN
the middle of a conversation. It took him a moment to realize the conversation was not in his head, but nearby.

His head ached. He wanted to sit up but was afraid if he did, he’d vomit. So he lay there like an aching tooth, eyes squeezed shut. The conversation went on in his head, or around his head, or a few feet away.

“Look, Corey, I said we’d split it three ways. What more do you want?”

Max recognized the voice. Luther, the motel clerk. His host.

“Just sayin’, it don’t work out, who’s gonna be takin’ out the trash?”

“There’s no risk. It’s not like he’s some bum we picked up off the street. They’ll pay through the nose to get him back.”

“I’m the one’d be taking the risk. More risk, more remuneration is all. I can’t see you doin’ it. I’m the guy who risked my ass in Tikrit.”

“And I appreciate that, I really do. But we’re splitting it three ways. That’s only fair. Wait a minute.”

Max heard a scrape, the sound of boots on concrete. The air stirred above him, vile breath in his face. “You awake, Max?”

“He’s waking
up
?”

“Max, you awake, buddy?”

Play dead.

“You’re not fooling me,” Luther said. He dashed some cold water on Max’s face.

Max opened his eyes. It hurt to open them. Luther’s face loomed like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, and his breath smelled like the lining of a birdcage.

Max squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. Dizziness followed. He was in a vortex, spiraling down inside the blackness.

After what might have been minutes—or it might have been hours—he was awake again.

“Maxie, oh,
Max
ie! Wakey
up
py.”

Max opened one eye.

“That Coca-Cola has one hell of a kick, doesn’t it, man?” Luther said sympathetically.

“What was in it?” Max said, realizing his voice was slurred.

“Rohypnol.” Luther went out of Max’s line of vision and came back with a wet rag. “Look at all this puke! Can’t take you anywhere, I swear.” But his tone was merry.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ve been kidnapped.”

“I was, um…” Wished he could talk better. Wished he had better vision too. Something was wrong, spatially. Objects in relation to one another were larger or smaller than they appeared. Like Luther’s giant moon face, floating in and out of his airspace.

“Don’t worry, be happy,” Luther said, squeezing the rag into a bucket on the concrete floor. “This should all be over in a wink. No harm done.”

“The vomit?”

“No. The kidnapping. You’ll be snug as a bug in your bed with the lovely Talia before you know it.” Then he climbed up the fixed ladder on the wall, knocked on the ceiling, and disappeared through a trapdoor.

Max stared at the ceiling where Luther had disappeared, wondering if he was still dreaming. It felt like a dream—surreal.

He had to shake this. Had to get his mind back, now. If he really had been kidnapped, he should figure out a way to get out of here. He concentrated his gaze on one object after another until they began to make sense, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle filling in.

The room was claustrophobic. Faded turquoise walls curved like the insides of a culvert. Max was lying under an army blanket on a cot. Nearby, a bottle of water and some Lunchables sat on a card table. A large pipe snaked along one wall, ending in an ancient metal box. He noticed that the trapdoor in the ceiling once had a handle, but it had been sheered clean off.

He was in a bomb shelter.