“We need to find those two guys.”

“How are we going to do that? We don’t even know their names.”

Hooker called Nutsy again. “I need some more information. There are two guys looking for me. They’re on the Huevo payroll. Probably working for Ray. Muscle in suits. One guy is big and has a snake tattooed onto the back of his neck. Dark hair cut short. Just recently got his head bashed in. The other guy is bald. I want to know who they are, and it would help if I knew where to find them.”

We moved the SUV back to the mall lot where we felt less conspicuous and waited. Hooker and Beans fell asleep, but I stayed awake. My mind wouldn’t shut down. It was making lists. Pick up the cleaning. Buy baby-shower gift for Nancy Sprague. Try to cut back on the swearing. Call mother more often. Forgive Hooker. Get car ser viced. Have lock fixed on apartment front door. Adopt a cat. Clean out hall closet. Get manicure.

After two hours, I woke Hooker up so he could change locations in the lot. “Do you think we’ll get out of this?” I asked him.

“Sure,” Hooker said. And he went back to sleep.

It was a little after four when Nutsy called. Hooker put his cell phone on speaker mode so I could hear.

“The guys’ names are Joseph Rodriguez and Phillip Lucca,” Nutsy said. “The big guy with the tattoo is Lucca. The little bald guy is Rodriguez. They’re part of Ray Huevo’s entourage. Security detail. Usually travel with Ray, but Ray’s in Miami, and these guys are here. So I don’t know what that means. I imagine it isn’t good since you’re in shit up to your eyeballs and you need this information.”

“Just want to send them a candygram,” Hooker said. “They’ve been nice to me.”

“Yeah, I bet. I don’t know where they’re staying. They’re operating independently of everything here. I’d guess they’re at one of the chains in Concord.”

Hooker disconnected and started calling hotels, asking for Joseph Rodriguez. He hit gold on the fifth try. The desk rang the room, but no one answered.

“Probably out looking for us,” I said to Hooker. “Got a couple bullets left with our names on them.”

“We need a different car,” Hooker said. “The police are looking for us, and the bad guys are looking for us, and everyone probably knows my plate by now.”

I hated to part with the car. It was reliable and comfy. I looked around the lot. “What we need is a different plate. Just swap ours for someone else’s. Most people would never notice if their plate was changed.”

Hooker scrounged around in the console compartment and came up with a small screwdriver. Fifteen minutes later, we had new plates, and Hooker was back in the car, drenched to the skin. He tossed the screwdriver back into the console and turned the heat up full blast.

“If I don’t get dry pretty soon, I’m going to start to mold.”

He put the SUV in gear and drove across the highway to the motel lot. He backed the SUV into a slot at the far end where we had a good view of the lot and the hotel back door. As good a hiding place as we were going to get.

We’d just settled in when the Taurus pulled into the lot. No Lexus. Hooker had his gun out. Rodriguez and Lucca got out of the Taurus and hunched against the rain. Hooker reached for the door handle, and another car pulled into the lot and parked. Hooker took his hand off the door handle.

“This is like when you’re taking a test in school, and you don’t know half the answers, and the fire alarm goes off,” Hooker said. “You’re sort of saved, but you know eventually you’re going to have to go back to the test and you’ll totally screw up.”

Rodriguez and Lucca crossed the lot and disappeared into the building. They were soaking wet, and their shoes and the bottoms of their trousers were muddy.

“It looks like they’ve been digging,” I said to Hooker.

“Yep, the boys have been busy.”

“You think they buried the car, too?”

“The car’s probably at the bottom of Lake Norman.”

Hooker’s phone rang. It was Nutsy.

“You know that property you bought for a future shop?” Nutsy said on speaker mode.

“On Gooding Road?”

“Yeah. I had to go by it a while ago, dropping my kid off at a friend’s house. Anyway, I think those guys you were asking about were on your property. I can’t be sure it was them, with the rain and all, but they seemed to fit your description. The big guy had a bashed-in head. They were just standing by their cars. Guess they were looking for you.”

“What kind of cars?”

“A Taurus and a blue Lexus.”

Hooker disconnected and thunked his head on the steering wheel.

“What?” I asked. And then it hit me. “Omigod, you don’t think they buried Bernie on your property? How would they know it was yours?”

“Everyone knows it’s mine. I didn’t buy the tool-and-die building, but I bought this warehouse. I haven’t started construction, but the warehouse has a big sign on it advertising it as the future home of Hooker Motor Sports.” Hooker rolled the engine over. “We’re going to have to check it out. It would be a smart move for them to bury Bernie on my land. It would tie everything up nice and neat. There are three murdered men. One has tooth marks that perfectly match my dog’s teeth. The other two are found on my property. All undoubtedly shot with the same gun. And I’m sure they’re counting on me being too dead to defend myself.”

We drove a half mile and Hooker cut off into a strip mall that was anchored by a Wal-Mart.

He parked and gave me a wad of cash. “Buy a shovel…just in case. I’d go in but I’m afraid I’ll be recognized.”

Twenty minutes later I wheeled a shopping cart out of the store and into the rain. I had two shovels, a flashlight, and a box of giant-sized garbage bags. All just in case. I also had a bag of dog food and three gallons of water for Beans, plus dry clothes for Hooker. And I’d run next door to the supermarket and gotten a rotisserie chicken, some cookies, and a six-pack of beer. I loaded everything onto the backseat and jumped in.

I opened a bag of cookies and fed one to Hooker. “I hope we don’t have to use the shovel. Digging up a water-logged corpse isn’t high on my list of favorite things to do.”

The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, the sky was heavily overcast, the light was somewhere between gloom and the twilight zone. Hooker’s property was on a country road that was dotted with small race shops and supporting businesses. The structure was classic cinder-block warehouse, smaller than the warehouse we’d gone to earlier. It was surrounded by a cement apron that led to three bays in the back and a door in the front. Beyond the apron was hard-packed dirt and scrubby grass. Beyond the dirt was woods.

Hooker drove to the rear and parked. We got out and walked the property. We stopped when we reached a piece of ground at the far back corner that was newly disturbed. It was slightly mounded and the smell of freshly dug earth hung heavy in the air. There were footprints and tire tracks in the surrounding mud. Details had already been obscured by rain.

“Fuck,” Hooker said. More a sigh than a swear.

I was in total agreement. “How did this happen?” I asked him. “This is a nightmare. I didn’t sign up for this.”

Hooker turned and trudged through the muck, back to the SUV. I followed him, no longer caring where I stepped. I was in mud to my ankles. My hair had succumbed to the relentless drizzle and was plastered to my face. My jeans were soaked through to my underwear. And I was cold clear to the bone.

Beans popped up when Hooker opened the side door. Beans was wearing his excited now what expression, looking like he wanted to be part of the adventure.

“Sorry, big guy,” Hooker said. “Too much mud. You’re going to have to stay in the car.”

Here’s the irony of it. The dog would have loved to roll in the mud, and he had to stay in the car. I wanted to stay in the car, and I had to wallow in the mud.