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  Maybe this is what happens to you if you stay out here too long, Brian thought, glancing at the coot. He almost felt like asking him if he was once in the witness protection program, too.

  “Holy cow! There you are!” came a shrill voice as they heard some rustling in the trees up the bank behind them.

  They looked up to see Juliana at the top of the sandy berm. She was sitting atop one of Mr. Cody’s horses, Spike, wearing riding boots like she was the Queen of England. Of course, Brian thought. They always let Miss Perfect do everything cool. Juliana could do anything she wanted.

  “Everybody is looking for you,” Juliana said, staring at Brian. “What the heck are you doing?”

  “Hello there, little lady. McMurphy’s the name,” the hippie said with a courtly little bow. “These boys with you?”

  Juliana nodded.

  “I was about to ask them if they wanted to learn how to fly-fish. Love to teach you, too. Why don’t you tie up that noble steed there on a branch and come on down? What’s his name?”

  “Spike,” Juliana said.

  “Spike. Well, of course. Fine name for a fine horse. Speaking of which, what’re your names?”

  “We’re the Warners,” Juliana said immediately.

  Brian sighed. Warner was the name they were supposed to use when coming into contact with strangers. Juliana’s just so responsible, isn’t she? he thought. She should really get a medal or something.

  “How many of you Warners are there, anyway?” McMurphy asked. “You guys seem to keep popping out of the trees like squirrels.”

  Brian and Juliana exchanged a glance.

  “Just the four of us,” she said.

  “Staying out at Mr. Cody’s place, is that right?” the hippie wanted to know.

  How’d he know that? Brian thought.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McMurphy, but my brothers need to get going. My, um, dad needs their help.”

  “Your dad? Wait, I think I’ve met you before. You came to church with that nice old Irish priest, right?”

  “No,” Juliana said. “You must be mistaken.”

  “Mysteries and wonders,” McMurphy said, nodding. “Now, now. Listen to me jawing, chewing your ear off, prying into your business. Just ain’t right neighborly, is it? I apologize. It’s just nice to meet folks this far out in the yonder. I live by myself, and when I finally meet someone, all that bottled-up talk just shoots out of me like soda from a shaken can.”

  “Uh, OK, Mr. McMurphy. Nice to meet you,” Juliana said, eyeing Brian, letting him know it was time to get moving.

  “Pleasure was all mine, miss. All mine. Hey, wait. Before you go, let me give you a little something.”

  He fished something out of the creel in his kayak. It was something green in a large ziplock bag. He offered it to Brian.

  “Son, that right there is straight primo hybrid sinsemilla. You will not find its equal in all of North America. I grow it myself with love. Ask anyone in the valley, and they’ll tell you McMurphy’s is a cut above all others. Top shelf, drawer, and notch, as my daddy used to say.”

  Brian stared at him, stared at the bag, stared at Juliana.

  “C’mon, it won’t bite. Hell, I was a kid. You’ll go crazy out here without having yourselves a little fun. Plus, it’s a gift. You don’t want to offend me none, right?”

  “We can’t, Mr. McMurphy,” Juliana said, making up an excuse on the spot. “We’re Mormon. We can’t even drink soda. The use of marijuana would be completely against, um, our way.”

  “Mormons, huh?” McMurphy said, squinting up at her.

  Juliana nodded.

  “Well, isn’t that nice,” McMurphy said, putting the weed back into his creel. “I’ll let you get back to your dad. Respecting your elders is always a good policy. Says that right in the Bible. So long, now.”

  CHAPTER 70

  Mary Catherine had sweat on her brow and tears in her eyes as she rabidly zested another lemon in the scorching kitchen. Leo was coming over for dinner tonight, on his day off, and she’d learned that he liked lemons.

  And what Leo wants, Mary Catherine thought, grinning to herself as she zestfully zested, Leo gets.

  She already had three chickens in the oven, and a five-pound bag of potatoes boiling in a cauldron-sized pot on the stove. There were still the green beans and the salad to take care of, stuffing to make along with the gravy, but she wanted to get the lemon cake going or she’d be in the weeds.

  Besides the lemons, pretty much everything was from Mr. Cody’s farm, even-Sorry, Chrissy-the chickens. They were probably flouting some FDA regulation to have the criminal gall to eat what they grew, but she had the feeling Deputy Marshal Leo would look the other way after he had a few bites.

  Farm food this fresh just tasted different, Mary Catherine knew from happy experience. Eating it for the first time was like seeing high-definition TV after a lifetime of black-and-white. It was going to be nice having someone new at the dinner table after all this time.

  The back screen door slammed, and Brian, Eddie, and Ricky stood in the mudroom, each one more sunburned and filthy and exhausted than the next.

  She bit her lower lip to keep from bursting into laughter.

  “Would you look at the state of ya! Were you wandering the earth or tunneling through it?”

  “Ow,” Ricky said, taking off a dusty sneaker. “Ow.”

  “Smells good. What’s for dinner?” Brian asked, his filthy finger creeping toward the mixing bowl.

  He howled as Mary Catherine whacked his hand loudly with the zester. Eddie and Ricky snickered.

  “Get your butts upstairs and shower this instant or I’ll drag you out into the yard and hose you down. See if I won’t, and don’t think you’re off the hook for going off by yourselves and skipping your lessons, getting us worried. As if I’m not busy enough.”

  “Why are you so busy?” Eddie said.

  “I told you yesterday. We’re having a guest tonight for dinner.”

  “A guest?” Ricky said. “Who?”

  “Deputy Marshal Leo,” Mary Catherine said.

  “Deputy Marshal Leo?” Brian said. “How is he a guest? He works here.”

  “Mary Catherine, does Dad know about this?” Eddie said, raising his brow.

  Mary Catherine stopped zesting. That was it. She knew the boys were having a hard time of late, especially Brian, but that was it. Like she hadn’t been working her fingers to the bone for this lot. Was she not allowed to have something nice in her life? Something even a little bit hopeful?

  Standing there in the kitchen, she remembered something from when she was a girl. One of her brothers would get cheeky, and her father, after coming in from haying all day or putting up fencing or some other extreme, fourteen-hour task of backbreaking cattle-farm manual labor, would let his fork fall from his callused fist with a clank. With the slow deliberation of a tank cannon acquiring a target, his weather-beaten face would slowly rise from his meal and shift until it was leveled at the offender.

  He never said anything. He never had to. A judge about to deliver a death sentence couldn’t approach the solemn, cold, carved-granite malevolence of his silence. There in his gray-blue gaze lay a guaranteed offer. With one more measly word, you would find yourself in the sudden possession of the entire universe of everything you didn’t want.

  Standing there in the sweltering kitchen, Mary Catherine suddenly gave that same look to the boys.

  The boys glanced at each other, and slowly, one by one, silently, left the room.

  Mary Catherine smiled to herself after they’d left. She’d always been her father’s daughter.

  CHAPTER 71

  The food had come out perfectly, even if Mary Catherine said so herself. The chicken wasn’t dry, and the mashed potatoes and stuffing were seasoned to her exacting standards. Leo certainly seemed to enjoy it, from the way he cleaned his plate and reloaded. He especially seemed to enjoy the homemade pepper gravy, she noticed with delight.

  It was t
he kids who were doing their level best to make the meal as unpleasant as possible. They ate with their heads down, slowly and all but silently, except for the harsh, scraping clicks of silverware off plates. Even Eddie and Ricky, who could eat their weight these days, were holding back, acting like they were at a funeral.

  “Don’t let these people fool you, Leo,” Seamus suddenly called out in the dead silence. “This fine bunch of formal young lads and lasses is usually quite lively come mealtime. You’re having quite an effect on them.”

  “A positive one, I hope, Father Seamus,” Leo said with a polite grin.

  “Aye, without a doubt,” Seamus said, chewing as he looked around the table. “Now tell me, Leo. I couldn’t help but notice, that’s quite some firepower you bring with you every evening. What kind of rifle is it?”

  “Now, Seamus,” Mary Catherine said, “is that polite dinner conversation?”

  “Perhaps not,” Seamus said with a shrug. “But I figure, even somewhat impolite dinner conversation is a tad better than none at all.”

  “It’s an M-four,” Leo said.

  “An M-four?” Seamus said, nodding. “Is it not an M-sixteen?”

  “Well, the M-four is sort of the latest version of the M-sixteen,” Leo said. “The main difference is that it’s smaller and lighter and has a shorter barrel, for close-quarter combat.”

  “Hmm,” Seamus said, chewing. “What round does it shoot? A.223?”

  The kids started to smile and giggle as they saw Mary Catherine roll her eyes. At least the little ones. The older crew of boys looked like they were silently praying to disappear.

  “No, a new 5.56 round, actually,” Leo said.

  “To account for the shorter barrel?” Seamus said.

  “Exactly,” Leo said, exchanging a smile with Mary Catherine. “Do you shoot, Father?”

  Seamus’s shoulders sagged as he sighed.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “They won’t let me.”

  CHAPTER 72

  In the shadows, catty-corner from the farmhouse, laughter echoed in the earbud of a man dressed head to toe in black, crouching there, motionless.

  The earbud was attached to a shotgun microphone he’d purchased in San Fran the day before, along with a zoom-lens camera. He would have gone in closer to get some shots through a window with the camera, but he’d spotted motion detectors along the property’s perimeter coming in, so he didn’t want to risk it. There seemed to be only one US marshal who was currently in the house, eating with the family, but you never knew.

  He’d ridden in on horseback, careful to skirt the herds of cattle as well as Cody’s farmhouse dogs. He’d tied up about a mile to the north and hoofed it the rest of the way. Care was required here, considering the marshal would probably shoot him on sight.

  It’s them, the man thought, listening to the tinny dinner chatter. They were everything his cartel contact had said to keep an eye out for: all those kids, the old man and the young woman with the Irish accents. It had to be the cop’s family. Who else on the face of the earth could it be?

  And to think that he had his drug-addict brother-in-law, Cristiano, to thank for this mother lode. He had gone by the house for his monthly sponge off his sister when Cristiano idly mentioned that a new Irish priest had been handing out cans at the food bank with three kids, one of them an Asian girl.

  Right away, he put it together with the cartel APB. The Mexicans were looking for a large, strange family with adopted kids and an old Irish priest, hiding in or around Susanville. A half-million-dollar purse was being offered for information. Might even be some negotiating room there, too, he was told. The Mexicans wanted these people bad.

  It didn’t take too much asking around to hear that the priest had also been spotted filling in for Father Walter, and that the family had driven to church in one of Aaron Cody’s beaters. Now here they were. Thirty feet away. All five hundred Gs’ worth of them.

  He’d been one of the first to understand the wisdom of partnering up with the cartels when they started moving into the Central Valley, four years before. He was no brain surgeon, but he was smart enough to know what men who truly didn’t give a shit about killing people looked like. Smart enough to know that getting on the wrong side of folks that serious was not an option if you didn’t have a second set of eyeballs in the back of your head and liked waking up alive every day.

  He’d become involved in the marijuana-growing business about a year after getting back to his hometown, Susanville, from an ’05 stint in Iraq with the army. He’d traded in the M1 Abrams tank he’d been driving for a beer truck and had applied to the huge state prison nearby, like every other sucker in town, when he bumped into some old buddies who had a grow house going. He’d helped them expand and organize it, ramp up production and sales until they were the biggest outfit around. Heck, he hadn’t even had to kill anyone. Just put a few guns to a few people’s heads.

  But now, squatting there in the dark like some Peeping Tom, he actually felt a little bad. He had a few rug rats of his own, and it was doubtful that the cartel wanted to find these people in order to deliver a Publishers Clearing House prize. But the problem was, half his crop had been seized by the state park rangers a month before. He owed a lot of dangerous people a lot of money he didn’t have.

  Here’s an opportunity to make everybody happy and then some, the man in black thought. Expand or, even better, quit altogether. Get out while he was young and rich, with his head still connected to his neck.

  It wasn’t his idea, the man in black finally decided with a sigh as he sat there, listening and recording the family’s laughter on his iPhone.

  It wasn’t his fault that God made the world so dog-eat-dog.

  CHAPTER 73

  Six hundred miles to the south, Vida Gomez was lighting a bath candle in the guest powder room when her cell rang.

  She stepped out and opened a sliding door to take it on the balcony. They were in the Hollywood Hills now, the lights of Los Angeles spread out below in the huge bowl of the valley, white on black, like cocaine on black velvet. The new safe house was pretty much bereft of furniture, but it actually suited the place. It was nothing but sterile stone and glass, clean and cold, just the way she liked it.

  “Vida, I have news,” Estefan said excitedly. “I just received a call. We have a lead.”

  Vida blinked. She had sent Estefan up to Susanville to see what he could see immediately after they’d dumped the agent at Venice Beach two days before. Already he had made progress. This was good news.

  “OK, slow down,” she said. “Is it credible?”

  “It can’t be confirmed, but I’ve been speaking to our people up here, getting them to put out the word about the reward, just like you said. One of the locals just called me directly. He claims to know the exact location of the Bennetts. There’s a problem, though.”

  “What is it?”

  “The informant wants more money. He wants a million, and he wants half up front. What should I do?”

  “Sit by the phone. I’ll call you back,” she said, hanging up.

  She went back inside as Manuel came out of the bedroom in a short silk robe. Most crime lords got fat when they got rich, but not the Sun King. He worked out like a madman with weights for an hour every day and ran for another on the treadmill. He was a health-food nut. Though he was in his mid-forties, he could easily pass for thirty-five.

  She couldn’t help but stare at his broad shoulders as he went into the kitchen and took some pomegranate juice out of the fridge. Not for the first time, she felt herself get aroused. When he’d asked her to be his special personal assistant for the duration of his stay in Los Angeles, she thought he might make a move, but so far, unfortunately, he’d been the perfect gentleman.

  He’d even informed her that he was having a guest over a little bit later. She knew what that meant. The two whores he’d had over the night before hadn’t left until three a.m.

  Then she remembered herself.

  “I h
ave news, Manuel. The FBI agent was right. The Bennetts seem to be in Susanville. We just heard from an informant who claims to know their exact location. But he wants a million, and he wants half up front.”

  “A million?” Perrine said, affronted. “That’s thievery.”

  “Perhaps we could set up the informant? Force him to tell us?” Vida said, lifting her phone.

  “No,” said Manuel as he poured himself some juice. “I have another idea. Send that other one up there. The one who found the last two stinking rats for us. What’s his name?”

  “The Tailor?” Vida said.

  “Yes, yes. The Tailor. He can easily find the Bennetts and eliminate them, especially now that we know we’re in the ballpark.”

  Perrine drank some juice and smiled, raising an eyebrow.

  “And you know what happens when we get in the ballpark, Vida.”

  She had just forwarded Manuel’s wishes when the front doorbell rang. She looked at the security camera. There was a tall, blond woman wearing a tube top and leather miniskirt and a raincoat. Just one hooker tonight.

  Terrific, Vida thought, rolling her eyes. Perhaps I’ll get to sleep before two.

  Vida opened the door. The woman who stepped inside was even taller than she looked on the video screen, and very heavily made-up. Like a TSA agent, Vida put on blue rubber gloves before she went through the prostitute’s bag. All cell phones and recording devices would be left in the living room, of course. The already-agreed-upon procedure was that the sex workers would be blindfolded throughout, so as to hide Manuel’s identity. A detail the whores had no problem with, LA being a town where discretion was valued almost as much as debauchery.

  As Vida was frisking the whore, she suddenly stopped and excused herself.

  “Um, Manuel? A word, sir?” Vida said, knocking and entering his bedroom.

  “Yes, Vida? Has my guest arrived?” Perrine said from where he lay back on the bed, smoking a cigar as he channel-surfed the seventy-inch flat screen.