They were twenty minutes into their Monday-morning staff meeting when someone began to pound on the office door.

Casey rolled her eyes and said to Stacy, "Go educate whoever the hell that is, will you?"

"Happily."

When Stacy returned, she came with two men in dark suits and crew cuts. The shorter of the two flashed a badge.

"Special Agent Greg Lewis with the EPA," he said. "Is one of you Casey Jordan?"

"I am."

Lewis slipped a document out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. "I've got a court order here. We're closing you down."

"You're not closing anyone down," Casey said.

"For violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, ma'am."

"You're out of your mind," Casey said.

"This facility had a toxic release last Tuesday that you not only failed to report but where you ordered your employees back to work."

"Someone clogged the goddamned toilet," Casey said, glaring at Stacy.

Stacy wrinkled her nose in a silent snarl to say she had nothing to do with it.

"Right," Lewis said. "We'd like to talk to you about knowingly endangering the safety and health of your employees. I'm going to ask you to come with us and everyone else to vacate the premises."

"You're kidding," Casey said, standing and snatching the court order from the agent.

"Wish I were, ma'am," Lewis said. "Now, if you'll come with me."

"You're arresting me?"

"Not yet, ma'am," agent Lewis said. "We just want to talk at this point."

"Talk to my lawyer."

"You have to leave the premises, ma'am," he said, exhaling through a circular hole in his lips. "We're closing you down."

"You mean Senator Chase is closing us down," Casey said.

Lewis stared blankly.

"Ma'am, it'd be best if you came with us," Lewis's partner said.

"What if we won't leave?" Casey asked.

Lewis looked sideways at his partner, who pressed his lips tight and shook his head as though he'd predicted the outcome.

"Then we will arrest you and everyone in here, ma'am," Lewis said, turning to her and drawing back his suit jacket to expose a chrome set of handcuffs as well as a semiautomatic pistol. "But we'll start with you."

Casey gritted her teeth and stared.

"We'll get our things," she said finally.

"No," Lewis said, holding a hand in the air. "This is a contaminated site, ma'am. No one can take anything with them. Those are the rules."

Casey bit the inside of her mouth, but said, "Fine, we'll go."

The agents turned. Casey began to follow them into the lobby. She passed close to Stacy and said, "Buy me some time."

"What?"

"I need those files," Casey said, hissing. "Do something."

Casey kept going, staying right behind the agents. The shorter one opened the front door, the old service station bell tinkling. Casey saw the dark green government sedan and that the clinic's potential clients had already fled the scene.

Lewis looked back at her and his face went white when Stacy screamed.

Casey turned and saw her office manager flopped down in the doorway, writhing and clutching her chest.

"Oh my God," Casey said. "A heart attack."

She let the agents push past her.

"I'll call 911," she said, then ducked into her office and threw the bolt.

Her heart hammered at the inside of her ribs and her breath came in short strangled gasps. Her hands trembled as she pulled files from the shelf, spilling others across the floor. She tossed them down on top of the computer and yanked it free from the wall socket. Through the metal door she could hear the commotion, but she didn't know if it came from Stacy or the agents realizing what had happened.

With an armful of papers, files, and the computer, she flung open the back door and dashed to her car. No keys.

She set her work down and sprinted back inside. Someone pounded on the other side of the door, rattling the hardware. Her purse hung over the back of her chair. She snatched it and took off, fumbling for the keys as she ran.

She found them, dropped them, and heard a shout from in front of the clinic. She groped for the keys, scratching her knuckles on the broken pavement.

"Ms. Jordan!" Agent Lewis said, rounding the building.

Casey glanced up. Her fingers found the key. She stuck it into the lock and turned.

"Ms. Jordan, stop," Lewis said, starting to jog.

Casey grabbed the papers and the computer. Lewis closed the distance to twenty feet and lengthened his stride.

"Stop right there!"

She tossed everything across to the passenger seat, then jumped in and slammed the door. Lewis grabbed the door handle. She smacked down the lock and started the car.

Lewis pounded on the glass and Casey jammed the car in reverse, nearly running him under her front wheel.

Lewis had his gun out.

She threw it into drive.

He pounded the glass with the butt of the gun and she knew it would shatter. She closed her eyes and stomped on the gas. Lewis swung the gun in a wide arc, hit the roof with a bang that made her think gunshot, then cartwheeled over, losing his grip and spilling to the ground as she fishtailed out of the lot, burning her wheels on the street until they got their grip and she shot through the intersection like a bullet.

JOSe HAD AN AUNT IN WEST DALLAS, ONE OF THOSE TYPES WHO refuse to leave the home she raised her own kids in, even if the kids, like the area, had gone bad. She went to Mass every day and she kept her small place clean. As a cop, Jose had pushed the drugs and the gangs up around the corner and off her street, and stowed a Smith & Wesson snub-noseed.38, the same as his own, in the nightstand next to her bed. When he showed up with Amelia, his aunt didn't ask a thing, just took her in with a smile.

Jose stopped by early Monday morning before heading to Wilmer. He ate a plate of eggs and peppers while the two women sipped strong coffee, and he went over Amelia's story again so everything Nelly had overheard would be fresh in his mind. He knew he'd be lucky to get a chance with Mandy Chase, and that if he did, he wouldn't get a second one.

With a full stomach and plenty of ideas, he drove down to Wilmer in the rental sedan they'd picked up in Laredo. He knew Gage would recognize his truck and he didn't trust his luck with the chief a second time. It wasn't yet seven-thirty and Jose figured a woman like Mandy Chase wasn't likely to get up-let alone out-much before ten. He pulled the car off the road a good two hundred yards from the entrance to Lucky Star and dumped two sugars and four half-and-halfs into his coffee. He hadn't finished stirring his drink before the white Range Rover that he knew belonged to the wife came bursting out of gates in a cloud of dust and hit the road with a slight swerve before racing off toward town.

Jose capped his coffee and set off after her, keeping enough distance to avoid suspicion. He followed her onto Route 45, north toward Dallas. When she got off at a South Side exit, Jose squinted and looked around, unable to make sense of a rich senator's wife traveling to the wrong side of town. The white SUV was easy to follow, even from a distance. When it turned into the back lot of a run-down building with boarded-up windows, Jose could only think of another rich wife he'd been hired to follow the previous year. She'd come to this part of town to buy her meth.

He watched from across the street as Mandy Chase got out of the Range Rover wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair bound up in a purple scarf, and wearing a pair of large dark sunglasses. She glanced around, then walked hurriedly past a handful of battered cars parked in the lot and slipped into the back door of the three-story brick building.

Jose studied the area, waiting and watching for some time. When he got out of the car, he felt for the gun under his arm and then the one tucked into the waist of his pants before crossing the street. Clouds hid the sun, but the day was already warm and dank with humidity. Cars whooshed past on the nearby highway and the smell of spent fuel choked the air. In the gutters and scattered across the busted pavement of the lot lay flattened cans, broken glass, used condoms, and the wrappers of a hundred different forms of junk food. Jose circled the building and watched from the corner as a thin stream of ratty-looking people, mostly men, entered the front of the brick building through a battered wooden door.