Cypress planking underfoot, and the smell of bacon cooking and sourdough biscuits in the oven. Someone stirred in the next room, stifled a yawn and then turned over, sheets rustling. This was his favorite part of a mission. Insinuated into a subject’s routine. Inside their private moment. His solitude. Silent as a kiss. This ability to absorb another person’s pattern, to slip between the spaces of his routine, was the essence of shadow warrior training. Impossible to teach, the training was only able to improve an innate capacity to slow down the warrior’s own consciousness, to lose one’s self for a time.

To graduate the shadow warrior had to infiltrate one of the instructor’s own haunts and tap him on the shoulder without being caught. His favorite restaurant or coffee shop. His mosque. His streetcar. Rakkim had watched his chief instructor’s home for three days from the house next door, lain atop the neighbor’s roof for two days and nights, not moving, watching everything inside through the bulletproof windows. On the third day, the instructor’s wife went outside to feed the birds, as she did every morning, and Rakkim slid off the roof, vaulted the fence, and went inside. That night, as the instructor sat down for dinner with his wife and children, Rakkim walked out of the linen closet, tapped his instructor on the shoulder, then bowed and asked for his blessing and a bowl of soup.

Annabelle poured tea, humming to herself as she filled two mugs. A plain crucifix loomed over the stove. Family holograms in the dining nook, Moseby with a shy smile, holding hands with his wife and daughter. The kitchen was furnished with salvage from New Orleans, the ceiling embossed tin, Cajun bubble-glass windows. Brightly colored origami animals were arranged on the soapstone counters, a menagerie of cranes, ducks, deer, and cats. Overhead, three geometric forms dangled from the ceiling, odd origami shapes he couldn’t recognize, gleaming as they rotated on the warm air currents. Rakkim stepped out of the alcove of the side door. Her back was still to him, and he saw the creases along her neck, age and fatigue catching up. Time always won the race. She sighed, spooned brown sugar into her tea, the spoon banging against the side.

She had been more delicate the last time he saw her, the twenty-seven-year-old mother of a young daughter, plump and rosy. He had watched her and Moseby from the shelter of the surrounding forest, watched them go about their daily routine while he tried to decide whether to kill the renegade shadow warrior. Trying to decide if he would turn his back on his duty, as Moseby had. She was thirty-five now, lightly tanned, her long, dark hair gathered in a thick braid. Strong hands, the knuckles raw from hard work and not enough time to care for herself. The Belt did that to people, the land poor and played out for the most part, no real industry except what was owned by foreign companies: Chinese and Brazilian auto manufacturers, Swiss food giants, Congolese textile plants. Annabelle had kept her figure; the modest blue dress slid along her slender ankles and he wondered for a moment if Moseby still appreciated her. Foolish question. John Moseby had given up everything for her and the baby. He had abandoned his Fedayeen oath. Turned his back on his country. His religion. He had nothing left but love.

Annabelle turned. Saw him standing there. “It’s okay,”

Rakkim reassured her. “I’m Rikki. A friend of John’s.”

The mug of tea trembled in her hands. “I know who you are.” Hot water ran down the sides of the mug and over her fingertips, but she didn’t react. “You here to kill me?”

“No. No. I’m here to help you. To help John.”

“I saw you that night,” whispered Annabelle. “I woke up…I woke…and you had a knife at John’s throat. I pretended to be asleep, rolled over and reached for something to hit you with…when I looked again, you were gone. I thought you were a dream. John tried to convince me that’s all you were, but I saw the look on his face, and I knew you were real.”

Rakkim took the mug of tea from her hand, set it down before she burned herself worse.

“John told me who you were afterwards. Told me who he really was too.” Annabelle backed against the counter. “Now, here you are. I suppose I should be grateful to you for letting him go that night. For letting us all go.” She slowly shook her head, her braid twitching around her shoulders. “Still…I see you and I see death in your eyes.”

“You’ve got me wrong.” Rakkim heard the bed creak in the next room. “I’m here to help you.”

“Sure you are,” she said.

“Mama? What’s going on?” The girl stood in the doorway in a pair of red flannel pajamas. She was dark brown, with her daddy’s smooth skin, her hair in tight curls. Young…she couldn’t have been older than seventeen, all her curves in place, a sheath of baby fat just starting to melt away. “Mama?”

“It’s all right, Leanne,” said Annabelle, “this gentleman is just leaving.”

“You don’t look like you’re all right.” Leanne sidled toward the wood-block holding the kitchen knives. “And this gentleman doesn’t look like he’s leaving.”

“Annabelle, please.” Rakkim sat down, trying to defuse things. “The men who took John…they’re not going to bring him back. You know that.”

Annabelle stared at him, then sat down across from him, her shoulders slumped.

“I’ll find him,” said Rakkim. “I’ll find him and bring him home.”

“You’re not kin, and for certain you’re no saint.” Annabelle tore a paper napkin into shreds. Confetti drifted onto the floor. “So what’s in it for you, mister?”

Rakkim touched her hand and she pulled it away. “I need his help.”

“John’s in no position to help anyone,” said Annabelle, fingers working away.

“Let me be the judge of that. When exactly did he leave?”

“Twelve days, twenty-two hours, and nine minutes,” said Leanne. “Exactly.”

“That ugly redheaded toad wanted to leave at dawn, but John made him wait,” said Annabelle. “John said we were going to eat breakfast together…Together. Like a family.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she swatted it away.

“The redheaded bastard, that would be Gravenholtz?” said Rakkim.

Annabelle nodded. “Yes, that would be Gravenholtz.”

So the Colonel had sent his number-two man to fetch Moseby. “I’ve read about him.”

“What you read doesn’t do justice to the malignant toad that he is,” said Annabelle.

“The men that Gravenholtz left behind,” said Rakkim. “Is there just the four of them?”

“Just four?” said Leanne.

Annabelle watched Rakkim’s eyes. “That’s right, just four. That’s not hardly anything for you, is it?”

Rakkim glanced out the window. It would be dawn soon.

“I bring them breakfast at eight-thirty,” said Annabelle. “It keeps them from showing up at the back door.”

“It didn’t stop Jeeter from peeking in my bedroom window,” said Leanne.

“No, it was a pot of hot grits that stopped him,” said Annabelle.

“I thought he was gonna kill Mama for burning him, but I guess he thought better of it,” said Leanne. “Instead he killed our dog.”

Rakkim had seen the small grave at the edge of the woods. “You won’t have to worry about this Jeeter-” He heard footsteps, had already flattened against the wall beside the side door when he recognized the clumsy pace. Knock-knock on the door. Unbelievable. Rakkim opened the door, pulled Leo inside.

“C-careful,” sputtered Leo.

“This is Leo,” said Rakkim.

Blushing, Leo waved. “Hi.”

Annabelle stared at him. Leanne waved back.

“Do Gravenholtz’s men check in with him?” asked Rakkim.

“I don’t know,” said Annabelle.

“Twice a day,” said Leanne. “Eight a.m. and eight p.m.”

“You’ve seen them clock in?” asked Rakkim.

Leanne nodded. “It’s some special encrypted phone from China that gets great reception. Hardly any chaff. Jeeter won’t let anybody else use it, but Pruitt spied the access code one time when Jeeter wasn’t paying attention-”