Jeremy sat up. “Dad?”

Shaun could only gape at him, his mouth working, trying to find words for the perfidy.

Jeremy stood up and gripped Shaun’s arm. “Dad. Serious. I don’t really want to see the old place get sold. But once that Haudenosaunee timber is taken off the market, our production costs are going to rise. With everything that’s going on in the Middle East, fuel prices aren’t going anywhere but up. Even if you can float the costs for a year or two, eventually they’ll slice so far into the profit margin, Reid-Gruyn will start bleeding red ink.”

“You talk just like my banker.” His voice sounded sulky, even to his own ears.

Jeremy shook him slightly, and Shaun had the inverted sense that he was the child and Jeremy the adult. “This day has been coming ever since you and Grandpa sold off the last of the Reid-Gruyn timberlands in the eighties. You left yourself at the mercy of the landholders, and sooner or later, all land goes for its best and highest use.”

Was this what B-school had done to his son? Bled off all his sentiment and turned him into a living economics textbook? It made him glad he had never gotten an MBA. The import of what Jeremy said sank in slowly.

“Maybe that’s it,” Shaun said, twitching his shoulder enough to break his son’s hold. “Maybe we ought to buy back our own timberland.”

Jeremy’s laugh was abrupt. “You’ve got to be kidding. The tax burden alone would sink your profits. I wasn’t criticizing what you and Grandpa did. It was the right move. Staying in your core business.”

Shaun returned to his desk and began sweeping the papers and spreadsheets and P and L statements into a folder. “I’m not kidding. Haven’t you ever heard of vertical integration? Owning the raw material, the manufacturing plant, and the means to transport it to the market. It could work.”

Jeremy shook his head. “You’ve lost it. The board would never vote to acquire forest land. And anyway, there isn’t timberland anywhere near Washington County that’s for sale.”

Shaun grinned at his son. “Oh, yes, there is. Haudenosaunee.”

Ditch the car. Ditch the car. But where? Randy’s mind ran round and round like a gerbil on a wheel. The sound of the tires on pavement thrumming the question What to do? What to do? What to do?

At one point, he realized it was the car, and not him, shaking. He checked the speedometer. He was doing seventy, twenty miles over the limit. His heart flipped over and he slammed on the brakes, a cold sweat shocking the back of his neck and his underarms. Jesus. A cop could have been hiding in a speed trap and he would have blown right by. Wouldn’t have even noticed until he was pulled over. After that, he kept his eyes on the gauges.

That didn’t solve his problem, though. He needed to dump the car. Someplace where it wouldn’t get found for a while. Someplace that wouldn’t lead the cops to him when they found it. Someplace where he could walk to Mike’s.

The sign for Lick Springs Road gave him the idea. It ran from the mountains down through rolling pastures and teed at Route 57. Route 57 rambled alongside the river that gave Millers Kill its name, through the town and east toward Glens Falls.

And the Reid-Gruyn mill was right off it.

He didn’t stop to ponder the idea. He spun the wheel and heeled the little car onto Lick Springs Road. He wouldn’t leave the car at the plant; that would be stupid. But he could pull in behind the old part of the mill, where nobody ever went, and where no one would see him. He could hike to Mike’s from there.

The only traffic on Lick Springs Road was a minivan with Vermont plates and a tractor hauling a boxy load of hay at the far edge of the breakdown lane. Good. The fewer people who saw him driving this car, the better. Traffic along Route 57 was similarly quiet. His racing heart slowed down. He stopped sweating. No one should be entering or leaving the mill’s parking lot at this time of day. He was in the clear. He slowed as the gate came into sight.

And slowed even further when he saw two cars approaching it from the parking lot. He grunted. How could anyone have such shit luck? He braked hard, yanking the little Prius to the side of the road. There were several maps in the driver’s-door pocket, and he yanked one out, snapping it open in front of his face. I’m a tourist, he thought, just an out-of-towner checking out my map before I get back on the road. I’m a tourist, don’t notice me…

He peeked out behind one edge of the map. A little BMW coupe was easing through the gate. He recognized the driver. Jeremy Reid, the boss’s son. Jeremy had been in his class at Millers Kill High School. Look at the redheaded sonofabitch, driving a car that cost as much as Randy and Lisa made in a year combined. Jeremy accelerated up the road without so much as glancing in Randy’s direction. That was good, that was what he wanted, but it pissed him off anyway.

Randy recognized the next car before he could make out the driver. Mr. Reid’s Mercedes. Oh, he remembered that car. The Joes that made Reid’s money for him would be stumbling across the employee parking lot, clutching their lunches in paper bags, and Mr. Reid would be getting out of that big German car, his cashmere coat sliding off of the leather seat. There may have been some serious belt-tightening at the mill, like Lewis Johnson said, but it sure as hell wasn’t pinching Reid.

As the Mercedes swept past him, Shaun Reid barely visible through the tinted windows, Randy spotted an Adirondack Conservancy Corporation bumper sticker and a Sierra Club decal on the rear.

Guys like Reid didn’t have to worry about losing their jobs, losing their houses. He could just picture the man, writing out checks to the ACC at some fancy fund-raiser. So what if guys like Randy were left with nothing to do but flip burgers. Reid was still going to get his. Reid, and Ed Castle, and the town, they would all get theirs. And what was Randy gonna get? Screwed.

Goddam Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. Goddam better-than-thou tree huggers. Her, too, Becky Castle, laughing at him for wanting to do something with his life instead of rolling over and giving it up to the man.

Becky Castle. Shaun Reid. The Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. It was like one of those cartoons, a big light-bulb going off in his head. He had been thinking small, thinking of stashing her car out of sight somewhere. But that was just getting some space between him and her. What he really needed to do was throw the blame on someone else, so the cops would be so busy looking at this guy they’d never go any farther.

His hands shook as he flicked on the turn signal and steered the Prius back onto the road. He drove through the gates and guided the car, not toward the old mill, as he had thought to do before, but to the administrative offices parking. There was a fancy sign fronting one spot: RESERVED FOR MR. REID. Randy pulled the Prius into the next space.

He turned the engine off and sat huddled in thought. Okay, let’s say he wanted the cops to think Mr. Reid was banging Becky Castle. She was-she had been-a pretty hot babe, in an outdoorsy way. Mr. Reid had already dumped one old wife for a younger model. Who’s to say he wasn’t looking to do it again?

He closed his eyes and pictured getting into the offices. The admin building door was sure to be shut up tight, but the plant door was never locked. From the break room, past the entrance to the mill floor, there was a dark little hall that ran all the way alongside the floor until it reached the ladies’ john. There had been three women working the floor when he was there, and that’s where they went to do their business. The trick was, the bathroom opened from both ends. It had originally been built for the reception area, and when Reid-Gruyn started hiring women at the mill, they just punched a door into the wall to give the ladies their own place to go.