Behind them, Faith heard Mike talking on the phone.

“You’re going to get us both arrested or killed,” Sean said. He was twenty steps away from her.

“You have to come back with me,” Faith said.

“No, I don’t.” Her brother turned away. “Go back, Faith. You and I don’t know each other anyway. Tell Mom and Dad something, I don’t care what.”

“Listen to me, Sean-”

“No, I won’t listen to you!” Sean kept walking, right in the middle of the road. No traffic came or went.

At the top of the hill, two Mexican men appeared at the edge of the small white building.

Faith kept running at full speed and tackled her brother around the waist. She squeezed his stomach and felt the air go out of him.

“Shit!” he cried, and rolled over, kicking at her.

Faith held on, sliding down his body, even when his foot connected with her face. Thankfully he was wearing soft-soled shoes.

“Let go! Goddammit, Faith, you’re insane! Let go of me!”

“No,” Faith breathed. They rolled over. She tasted gravel.

Sean scissored both legs back and forth, finally shaking loose of her grip. He stumbled, but managed to get to his feet. The two Mexican border guards began to hurry toward them.

Faith doubled over. “You have to come back with me.”

“To hell with you, Faith, and everything you stand for.”

Faith absorbed the words like a slap, shaking her head violently.

“I know what happened, Sean,” she said, and surprised herself by how steady her voice had become. “That call…I know what happened.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know you didn’t murder Daryn McDermott.”

The Mexican guards were closing. “No te muevas!” one of them shouted. Don’t move!

Sean went still. “How-”

“This wasn’t a murder,” Faith said. “Daryn McDermott committed suicide.”

THE MEXICAN GUARDS SEARCHED THEM AND, FINDING no contraband, escorted them back to the port of entry, requesting that they leave Mexico for “creating a public disturbance.”

They declared their American citizenship at the border and were admitted back to United States soil. Mike met them as soon as they’d made their declaration and walked them into the building. Sean did most of the talking, assuring Mike it truly was nothing but a family squabble. Never mind that it had spilled over into another country and created an incident at the border.

“Irish, you don’t want to be doing stuff like this,” Mike said. “I believe you’re in enough trouble already.”

Sean assured him they were leaving the border now, and they did. They walked back to the cantina, looking at Faith’s Miata and the huge Suburban next to it.

“You drove that?” Sean said. “You have changed.”

They followed each other back to Tucson, to the airport, where Faith turned in the Suburban to the rental agency and they left the Miata in the long-term parking area.

They caught a Southwest flight, traveling as Kimberly Diamond and Michael Sullivan, and settled in. Sean peppered Faith with questions, but she’d gone to the place where nothing and no one could reach her.

“Trust me,” she said.

She dozed off and on for the entire flight, and Sean drank three beers in rapid succession. He thought she was deeply asleep, but Faith heard him order the beer from the flight attendant. She decided against saying anything about it. They’d said enough to each other.

She thought back to what Rob Cain had told her. It all made a sort of sense now. A convoluted sense, to be sure, but now she knew where the pieces fit together.

And she knew that for all the lives that had been shattered, for all the people who had been destroyed, for the families who had been devastated, it had all been about two people: Isaac Smith and Faith Kelly.

Faith felt her rage, and this time, she wasn’t sure she could control it. What frightened her more was the fact that she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

They landed in Oklahoma City in the late afternoon. After only one day in the desert, the air of the plains seemed thick and humid to Faith. The sky seemed to be split: over the airport in south Oklahoma City, it was a dazzling blue with few clouds. To the north, it was gray and overcast with storm clouds building.

“Where are we going?” Sean asked as Faith rented another SUV.

“You told me he said the Coalition was going to regroup at Mulhall,” Faith said.

“But didn’t you already check there? You said the house was empty except for some homeless guy.”

“But now I wonder,” Faith said. “I think that homeless guy may have been one of Smith’s people, one of your Coalition people. I think that somehow Smith hurriedly cleaned out the house so it would look like no one had been there, and left one person there to let him know when I came looking. He would have known I would investigate the house eventually, and he was ready. He was waiting for me.”

Sean shook his head. “Now you sound like you’re talking to yourself.”

“Maybe I am.”

“That doesn’t make sense, though. He would have known that if you didn’t find anything to back up Daryn’s and my story about the Coalition’s plans after Oklahoma, that you’d reject Daryn from Department Thirty. What was the point of having her request protection, just to be rejected?”

“Oh, it makes perfect sense,” Faith said, but offered no more.

With the rush-hour traffic headed north out of the city, it took them nearly an hour to reach the exit for Guthrie. Sean showed Faith the route he had taken when he drove Daryn and Britt there the first time, passing over the Cimarron River and Skeleton Creek into Mulhall.

By the time they passed through the town and found the turn at the north end, the sky was almost black and the wind had begun whistling from the northwest. A few fat drops of rain smacked the windshield. Faith stopped at the foot of the rutted driveway and reached across Sean into the glove compartment. She took out the fanny pack, the same one she’d retrieved from where she’d dropped it near the border in Sasabe. She unzipped it and checked the load in her Glock. There was no safety on this model. It was ready to fire.

Faith didn’t try to hide their approach at all. She didn’t leave the SUV down the driveway from the farmhouse. She drove right up to the clearing and parked next to the dark luxury sedan there.

“Bastard,” she said, looking at the car.

With Sean beside her, she moved up the steps. She remembered which one creaked, and stepped especially hard on it. She wanted him to hear her. She wanted him to know she was here, and that the game was over.

She hauled open the screen door, the one that had flapped in the wind and startled her the first time she came here.

Nothing would startle her this time.

Faith twisted the doorknob and stepped into the house.

The man sat in an old bentwood rocking chair with a wicker seat. He was rocking back and forth, a book in his hands.

“Bravo,” Isaac Smith said. “It actually took you less time than I thought it would. I suspect it was difficult to convince your brother to come back with you. I wasn’t betting you’d be able to do that part. I should never underestimate you, should I?”

He looked the same as he always had: a few years older than Faith, completely unassuming, of medium height and build, dressed in a way that would let him blend into the wallpaper. But then, that was the idea. The focus was never to be on Smith himself, but on what he could do.

“Sanborn,” Sean said.

“Agent Kelly,” Smith said. “Or Mr. Sullivan, if you prefer. Please, let’s avoid confusion. Your sister knows me best as Isaac Smith. Let’s stick with that, shall we?”

“Why?” Sean said. “For Christ’s sake, why? Why all this?”

“Your sister knows,” Smith said.