If it comes to that, Roy figures he’ll opt for lethal injection, on the grounds that going to sleep and never waking up is way better than cooking to death.

“How you gonna do it?” Dug wants to know as they approach their destination.

Distracted by thoughts of flaming skulls, Roy asks, “How’m I do what?”

“Kill the girl.”

Roy slows the truck to a stop, shifts the stick to neutral, and looks his brother in the eye. “We’re not killing no girl, get that straight.”

Dug has that stubborn look he gets. “Ricky said.”

“Ricky Lang done lost his mind,” Roy reminds him. “Think about it. We kill the girl, there’s nothing left for us. Ain’t like he’ll be around to pay us our share. Whatever he’s got planned, it ends with him getting his head blown off.”

“He told you that?”

“Hell no! Didn’t have to. The crazy bastard thinks he’s Superman. He thinks bullets can’t touch him. And sooner or later, he’ll find out different.”

That silences the slower twin for a few moments as he processes the information. “I could do it if you want,” Dug eventually offers. “Tap her down.”

Most observers would conclude that Roy Whittle shows remarkable patience with his brother, but even he has his limits. “Listen to me, Dug. Get this straight. The girl is our only remaining chance of getting anything out of this. We’ll trade her for money once Ricky’s gone.”

Dug makes a face, stares at his hands. “Ricky burned Stick,” he points out.

“Yeah, he did, and he burned the plane, too, but he ain’t going to burn us. You’re gonna take the boy to him, like he wants. That’s all he really cares about, the rich man’s son. He won’t know if the girl’s alive or buried in the swamp. We’ll keep her somewhere safe till this blows over, then see what we can get for her. If her family won’t pay, we’ll find someone who will. Good-lookin’ white girl that age is fully negotiable.”

Dug is clearly troubled, but mutters a reluctant acceptance of his brother’s superior judgment. “Whatever you say, Roy.”

Roy sighs, keenly aware their prospects have plummeted. “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. A thousand percent right. We messed up, getting in with Ricky Lang, but I’m gonna fix it. That’s a promise. Carolinas here we come.”

They drive until the road ends, then hike half a mile through the saw grass, following an old Indian trail so obscure and overgrown you have to know it’s there. A perfectly good ATV waits on the other end, designed for terrain like this, but Ricky has insisted it only be used for transporting the captives, and that at all other times it remain hidden under camo-netting, far away from prying eyes.

The Whittle brothers make do, proceeding afoot, having covered the same ground several times recently. The night is especially dark—no moon, and the stars obscured by heavy clouds. Roy illuminates the way with a flashlight, figuring if satellites can pick up flashlights they’re screwed anyway. Dug grunting as the sharp grass whips at his legs but Roy knows his twin could go like this for miles, even in the night. Maybe especially at night, if there’s something to hunt.

Say what you like about Dug, he’s never been scared of the dark. Almost the reverse, like he’d come up with a notion that darkness protected him from those who tormented him by daylight. Namely their father, until Dug got too big to beat, and the kids who taunted him during his brief and disastrous stint in school.

They come upon the remains of the old settlement just beyond the saw grass, at the edge of where the wetlands begin. One of Ricky Lang’s backcountry lairs. The settlement, originally an Indian camp, had eventually included a dozen or so ramshackle trailers, as well as a few decrepit chickee huts and a tarpaper shack or two. Population, as Roy understood it, had been mixed. Members of the Lang clan, some mixed-blood Seminoles, a few cracker trappers who’d gone native or who just liked living outside of civilization. At the end, tribal drug runners had used it as a storage depot. A little world all its own, or so Roy imagines, having seen similar type settlements in the Ten Thousand Islands, where the populace was pretty much white, though equally impoverished.

Park rangers had eventually taken over, clearing out the trailers, burning the shacks. Then at some point the area had been zoned inside the Nakosha Reservation and mostly forgotten. Not by Ricky Lang, though, who liked the fact that it could be accessed by land or by water. Plus, from the air it looked like nothing more than a small clearing in the saw grass, one of thousands of such bald spots within the Glades. The useful bits that remain are undercover, out of sight.

“I’ll check on the girl,” Roy tells his brother. “You get the other one, take him to Ricky.”

“Where you gonna put the girl?” Dug wants to know.

“Dunno. Closer to home, I guess. Someplace Ricky doesn’t know.”

Truth is, Roy isn’t sure he wants Dug to know the location. He’s got it fixed in his mind the girl needs killing, and Roy knows his twin well enough to understand that his stubborn notions can become obsessions that must be acted upon. Like the neighborhood pets when they were boys, and a few other much more serious incidents later on.

Killing wasn’t a sex type thing with Dug, just that he liked to snuff things out. Household cats, wild pigs, human beings, they all gave similar satisfaction.

“What if he asks?” Dug says.

“You tell him I took care of it. Just hand over the boy and get out of there. He won’t be expecting no long conversations. You got your knife?”

“Always got my knife,” Dug responds with elaborate dignity.

“Okay then. You best be careful. Whole idea is, we come out of this alive. We got plans, remember?”

“I get my own cabin.”

“You get your own cabin, and enough ammo to kill everything in a ten-mile radius, how does that sound?”

“Good,” says Dug, and obediently turns to the path that will take him to the boy.

Roy hurries toward the girl. He can feel Ricky Lang in his head, a nudge of pure fear that makes his knees feel weak. He’s well aware of the terrible risk he’s taking by failing to obey. My God, look what befell poor Stick! One moment a laid-back dude, a living legend, the next moment nothing more than a howl in the flames. Ricky’s way of saying see what happens to those who disobey. Not that he’d ever actually forbidden Roy from hijacking the aircraft, selling it on the black market. Like most of Ricky’s rules it was a presumed thing, subject to his whims.

All gone now, that beautiful flying machine. Reduced to twisted metal, a blackened path on the runway. A man dead, millions of dollars up in smoke, all because the former Nakosha chief is in a bad mood, wants to make an impression on his subordinates.

Kill the girl. Just issues the order without explanation. Like saying burn the money, only worse, because even if he and Dug survive the madness of Ricky Lang, the abduction and killing of a minor in the state of Florida almost invariably leads to death row. If they get caught. If? A zillion FBI agents combing the area, what are the odds of not getting caught on a stone-cold murder?

No, no, no. Roy knows he has to play it smart. Play it smart and he can still come out the other end with something to show for his troubles.

His mind ticks over the possibilities as he approaches the cooler. The old walk-in cooler, ripped out of a failed Miami restaurant and dumped here in the middle of nowhere, had once been used to store wax-sealed bales of marijuana. Somehow it had been missed when the rangers swept through. Probably because it had been neatly hidden within a stand of overgrown cypress. Now its thick, insulated walls make a handy cage of galvanized steel.

Nice thing, the girl can scream her lungs out, all that emerges is a faint, birdlike shriek. Plus with the foot-thick door padlocked from the outside, she can be left unattended for hours or even days. Really too bad they can’t keep her in the cooler, but eventually the search parties are bound to find it. Plus there’s the Dug problem.