Salazar’s eyes get slightly hot. “It’s a way of life in Miami, A-Dick. As I’m sure you know.”

“Sorry, Agent Salazar, it slipped my mind that your father was at the Bay of Pigs. No offense intended. Have the Nakosha been apprised that we think the suspect has access to heavy assault weapons?”

Salazar nods curtly. “Gentleman by the name of Joe Lang, he’s running the show. Relative of the suspect, obviously. Agent Healy advised him the suspect has rocket grenades, maybe worse.”

“What was the response?”

“These folks don’t exactly talk your ear off, A-Dick, but Healy said Lang—that’s Joe Lang, the new tribal president—he’s already assuming that the suspect will come in with guns blazing, possibly targeting the village.”

“The berserker segment of your nut-job diagnosis.”

“I never claimed to be a profiler, A-Dick.”

“No, but you might make a good one. I agree, everything about this guy, including the recent murder of his father, indicates he intends to go down in a hail of bullets. That’s the endgame scenario.”

“Yes, A-Dick.”

“And if it comes to that, the deputy director would prefer that the hail of bullets come from tribal authorities. Has the tribal president indicated how they intend to respond?”

Salazar shrugs. “He told Agent Healy that they’d be ready, but declined to provide details. Which, pardon me, A-Dick, but that’s typical of this operation. They’re polite and all, but they don’t share.”

“Not a surprise, Agent Salazar. My report to the D.D. will indicate you’re doing all that can be done in a difficult situation.”

“Thank you. I do appreciate that.”

“Any word from Randall Shane?”

“Nothing recent. Last I heard, he was planning to hire a backcountry guide.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Salazar’s cell phone starts to vibrate. She flips it open. “Yes? Go ahead. What?” The diminutive agent’s eyes get big. “Holy shit, I’ll be right there.”

“What happened?” Monica wants to know.

“It’s Edwin Manning. He’s missing and his bodyguard has been found, drugged with animal tranquilizer.”

“Holy shit indeed,” says the A-Dick.

20. Run, Jane, Run

Crouching in the muck of the Everglades, the mud that gave birth to his people, Ricky feels the power of the earth entering his body through the soles of his bare feet. He will come to them as avenging warriors came to the Nakosha in the old times, streaked with gray mud. The righteous wrath of an unseeable ghost may be what his people deserve—death from the sky, falling upon them like bolts of lightning—but the mud will make him visible, so they can gaze upon the instrument of their destruction.

Delicately he strokes three fingers of mud upon his left cheek, three upon his right. Using a razor-sharp KA-BAR killing knife, he saws away his black bangs, exposing a broad forehead.

There, with a single index finger, he paints a dollar sign.

They’ll see him coming for sure, a creature of mud and vengeance, with the white man’s sign upon him. Sign of greed and corruption. Sign of the great forgetting. Sign of the end.

Out of the rising sun he will come, wielding the white man’s terrible weapons, leaving all of his people behind. The old and the young, the guilty and the innocent, none shall be spared. As a tribe of ghosts he will lead them away from temptation, into the perfect wilderness of a new and better world.

In the great river of grass his children hover like fireflies, glowing from within.

He calls them. “Alicia! Reya! Tyler! Come to your father!”

The girls obey, glorious in their incandescent white dresses. Tyler, ever the impish wayward boy, hangs back, hiding in the deep grass. Peeping at them with eyes like little candle-flames. Now you see him, now you don’t.

“Wait for me here,” he tells them. “The house is forbidden, do you understand? It was paid for with the white man’s filthy dollars, and must be turned to ash. It must be erased from the earth. Tyler! Pay attention, son, this is important. Keep with your sisters, they’ll protect you until I get back. Understood? Very good. Your father loves you, children. He loves you to death.”

Before he gathers his weapons, Ricky strides along the shore, dripping with the rich black silt of the Everglades. There, in an area that once served as a boat ramp, on sloping ground a few inches above water level, he has arrayed his sacrifices. Three being the sacred number, the number of his dead children.

The sacrifices have been camouflaged with fresh cut palm fronds, to hide them from the air. The white man’s helicopters, the white man’s satellites—their cold mechanical eyes can’t see the life beneath the green and the grass.

Ricky crouches, gently parts the fronds until he can see a frightened blue eye looking out at him.

“Your blood will not be wasted,” he assures the frightened blue eye. “Before my people came from the mud, the alligator gods ruled the water and the grass. It is said that they walked upon two legs, and spoke in a tongue that not even the sun could understand. My people made them walk upon four legs, but gave them tails so they could swim, and teeth so they could eat.”

The blue eye blinks furiously, swinging violently from side to side.

“Struggling is good,” he says, patting at the palm fronds. “Struggling will bring them more quickly. Don’t worry, you will not be eaten alive. The alligator first drowns his prey, and if the prey is large he will keep it hidden and consume it at his leisure. This time next year, my dear, you’ll be a purse and a pair of shoes.”

Ricky leaves them staked to the ground and goes to gather up his weapons.

Some people are made for running. Slender bodies with long skinny legs and narrow hips. You can tell they like it, running through the pain or whatever. Not for me. I’m small waisted and fairly long legged for my size, but these child-bearing hips were not engineered with marathons in mind.

Even if I had been a runner, one of those moms who race along pushing special three-wheeled baby carriages, it’s doubtful I could keep up with Randall Shane. One stride and he’s past me, three and he’s heading for the horizon.

A mile, Fish tells us. The site of Ricky Lang’s house, the one he burned to the ground, is located roughly a mile along the shoreline. Half a mile beyond it, the new residential village constructed by the Nakosha. Traditional chickee huts built on stilts, as well as a new school, health clinic, and elder hospice, all of which may be his targets.

If he wants to kill a lot of people, his own people, that’s where he’d go.

Shane, already out of sight, can obviously run a mile. For all I know he can run a hundred. Whereas I’ve never run a mile in my life. I’m a Long Island girl, we drive.

Fish isn’t even trying. Bad knees. He’ll pole his way along in his little boat, meet us there in twenty minutes.

Kelly may not have twenty minutes, which is why I’m running with Shane, racing along the shoreline, kicking through the saw grass. More like I’m kicking through it and he’s leaping over it. Long arms pumping, long legs eating up the yards, what an amazing man. That big and he runs like a gazelle.

He wants to save the world. I want to save my daughter. God help me, that’s all I care about, just the one life.

Let her live, let her live, let her live, that’s the mantra that keeps my legs pumping, my heart pounding.

Glancing down as I run, my thin linen trousers are in tatters, shredded below the knee by the blade-sharp grass. Grass that can cut you to pieces, who invented this stuff?

Lawns are better. Roads are betters. Malls are better.

Run, Jane, run. Run for her life. You can do it. Anybody in reasonably good shape can run a mile if they absolutely have to. Ignore the blood running from your knees to your ankles. You can bleed to death later, after you’ve found Kelly.