The guard guided him through the door and shut it behind him.

“Was this really necessary?” he asked as he rattled his wrist chains at the bulky man on the other side of the interrogation table. A slim manila folder was on the surface of the table.

“Probably not,” the man answered with a slight grin. He wore a suit jacket, tie, and a white shirt that strained over his belly. His name was Stan Dudley, and he was the FBI special agent in charge of Nate’s case. Dudley was in his mid-forties, with a fleshy bland face and pasted-down light brown hair that would rise away from his scalp as the day went on. He had close-set eyes, a rounded nose, and ancient acne scars beneath his cheekbones. His thick neck bulged over the collar of his shirt, and sometimes when he talked, the swell of fat under his jaw trembled.

“Then why did you bring me up this way?”

“People talk,” Dudley said. “We don’t want the guards and other staff to think we’re letting you walk, do we?”

Nate grunted.

“Have a seat.”

“Do you have a key for these?” Nate asked, thrusting his arms out.

“Someone does. Sit down.”

Dudley liked this, Nate knew. He liked telling Nate what to do and how to do it and when he wanted it done. And he liked stringing him along, reminding Nate who was in charge and who was in custody.

As he repositioned the hard-backed chair with his foot so he could sit down in it, Nate thought how easy it would be to quickly reach across the table and twist Dudley’s ears off. The chain between his wrists was long enough that he could grab both of them.

But because he wanted out and he knew that Dudley would love the excuse to keep him inside, Nate sat.

Dudley reached out and tapped the file. “You know I fought against this, don’t you?”

Nate didn’t respond.

“I think it’s a despicable deal. If it was up to me, I’d unleash the federal prosecutors on you and put you away for a hundred years. I know—and you know—that you’ve been responsible for murder and mayhem across most of the continental U.S. People just can’t go around serving as judge, jury, and executioner based on some kind of personal code. We have laws for that. To that, we can agree.”

Nate agreed to nothing.

“But we’ve gotten the word to back off. All they care about at the Department of Justice right now is this deal,” Dudley said, again tapping the file. “I don’t know if you realize how flipping lucky you are.”

“I’m Mr. Luck,” Nate said sourly. He’d been held in the basement of the Federal Building in detention for four months. He’d not flown his falcons, or breathed mountain air, or eaten his normal diet of lean game meat he killed himself. Although he’d done thousands of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and other exercises in his cell, and he was in many respects in the best physical shape since he’d been in Special Operations, mentally he felt bloated, flabby, dull, and completely off his game. His brain was foggy, and he had trouble concentrating. Nate had come to understand the vacant-eyed tigers he’d seen pacing rhythmically back and forth in the zoo because he felt like one of them.

“Rulon didn’t help, either,” Dudley scoffed, referring to the governor of Wyoming, who had two and a half years left in his second and final term of office. “I don’t know what you ever did for him, or if you have illicit photos of him or what, but he went to bat for you. He somehow convinced my superiors you’d be of better service to us out there than in here. I think he’s full of shit, but he must have been pretty convincing.”

Nate raised his eyebrows in surprise. He wasn’t aware that Rulon had been involved in the negotiations, but he was grateful for it.

“We’ve got your gun,” Dudley said. “And you’re not getting it back.”

“I’ve got a right to defend myself,” Nate said.

“When you sign these papers, you sign away your rights. You have no rights beyond that, unless I say so.”

“I want my weapon back.”

Nate had surrendered his .50-caliber five-shot Freedom Arms .500 Wyoming Express revolver when he gave himself up. It was a handgun that could take out a moose a mile away or kill a car. The gun was a part of him and he knew how to use it.

Dudley placed his hand on the file and said, “If you’re stupid enough to arm yourself again, you’ll be right back here, and I’ll be happy to expedite the paperwork.”

Nate looked away.

“I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that even though I lost the argument against releasing you, the DOJ agreed to retain me as your case manager, since we have such a special relationship and all.”

He said, “You know, before I took this job out here, I was warned about people like you. I was told there were still a number of lone-wolf survivalist types who lived out here in places like Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. I thought we’d stomped them out years ago, but here we are. There still may be a few of you left, but as of today the number is one less, which makes me feel very . . . patriotic.”

Dudley grinned at that.

—

“THE NEGOTIATIONS WERE LIKE five monkeys fucking a football,” Dudley complained. “You’ve got career federal prosecutors, a military JAG because of your Special Forces background, DOJ political lackeys, and the governor’s office all fighting about what to do with you. My solution was real simple: put you on trial and send you to the supermax in Florence, Colorado.”

Dudley looked up to see if he could get a reaction out of Nate. He couldn’t.

“But our biggest problem, as you know, was placing you at the scene of your most heinous crimes, because you were literally off the grid. No credit card receipts, no hotel registries, no cell phone records, no loans, no CC videotape, no arrests, no nothing. No direct or circumstantial evidence. Don’t get me wrong—I’m convinced that with enough time and manpower we’d be able to nail you. We can nail anyone if we set our mind to it. Anyone.”

Nate tried not to sigh. He’d heard the threat from Dudley a half-dozen times. He knew better than to rise to the bait.

What he wanted to say was simple: I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.

—

THE FACT WAS, Nate knew, the feds couldn’t convict him on the murder, conspiracy, kidnapping, or other charges they’d originally filed against him. As Dudley had admitted, the evidence wasn’t there.

But what they could do was put him away for not filing tax returns for the last twelve years. While the crime didn’t even remotely rise to the level of the original charges, a conviction on tax evasion could put him into federal prison for years. It was the “Al Capone method” of going after a target indirectly, and it could be devastatingly effective if the prosecutors were motivated to pursue it.

The original charges had been quietly dropped and replaced with new charges while the negotiations were under way. However it went, he knew, they had him.

—

“SO LET ME BE the first to welcome you back to the modern world,” Dudley said, showing his teeth. “Consider your wings clipped. You can’t make a move without me knowing about it. If you decide to try and go underground again, I’ll be on you with a team within minutes and we’ll drag your ass back here, unless, you know, something bad happens during the arrest that results in your demise.

“I’ll know where you drive, what you eat, where you sleep, and how long you sit on the toilet. You’ll be just another American citizen. We’ll know everything about you and we can take you down anytime we want. And believe me, I’ll be paying attention to those things because I’m . . . motivated. Motivated to putting you away. Do you understand that?”

Nate grunted again.

“Did you read the agreement?” Dudley asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you ready to sign it? Because if you aren’t, I’ll happily call the guard and send you back to your home away from home in the basement. Even the governor would have to understand that we couldn’t release you if you refused to play ball.”