“Hey,” he said, kissing her quickly on the cheeks and lips. “Your shit’s my shit. Think of someplace sunny we can go.”

THE KEYS WERE still in Kathy’s Bonneville, and Lester had the colonel and boy sit in the front while he sat in back. The upholstery was already warm from the sun, and the inside of the car smelled faintly of gasoline and Kathy’s cigarette smoke. At Lester’s feet was an empty Bacardi rum nip. He told the colonel to start the car and drive it over the lawn and around to the rear of the house. Behrani paused before putting the car in gear. The son glanced at his father, then looked away, and Lester leaned forward and pressed the gun barrel to the back of the colonel’s neck. The boy seemed to stiffen in the passenger’s seat, and Lester felt bad about that, but not enough to pull the gun away. The colonel drove slowly around to the back of the house. There were beads of sweat on his bald head. One dripped into another and caused a rivulet to run into the old officer’s thinning black-and-gray hair.

“Pull right up to the hedge and give me the keys.” Lester turned to the son, who was looking straight ahead through the windshield as if they were on the open road. The boy’s sideburns were soft, downy hairs. “Esmail—am I pronouncing your name correctly?”

The boy nodded once.

“Good. Now I want you to listen to me, Esmail. Last night you did something that got your family locked into the bathroom, and right now we’re going for a ride to Redwood City and I want you along for company. Look at me, please.” The boy did, and Lester pressed the barrel a bit deeper into the colonel’s neck. “Men learn from their mistakes, Esmail. And you don’t want consequences to get any worse, do you?”

Esmail shook his head, his eyes on the trigger finger of Lester’s hand.

“Good boy.” Lester got out of the car and stuck his weapon into the waistband of his pants, covering it with his shirt. The sky was a bright gray haze that made him squint, and he had the colonel walk first, then the boy. The inside of the colonel’s Buick was as clean as a model right off the lot, and Lester sat in the back directly behind Esmail in the passenger seat and stretched his leg out on the gray fabric. When the colonel started the engine, Lester pressed the window button for some air, held his pistol in his lap, and told the colonel to drive down the hill and take Hillside Boulevard for El Camino Real south.

Lester’s mouth was dry from the black Persian tea and no sleep, and he wanted a cold Coke, though he knew he didn’t need the sugar or caffeine; it was as if he was in a downward rush off a mountain, a fine electric current running from his feet to his brain, and the feeling wouldn’t stop until he landed on solid ground. But where would that be? Mexico? Driving south through Chula Vista and the neighborhoods of his youth to the same border post his father had worked? No, they would drive north to Vancouver or British Columbia, where he’d heard there were mountains along the coast. He and Kathy could get lost in them, find a cabin where they’d spend the morning and early afternoons in bed, getting up to shower together, then dress and go into one of those seaside towns in search of a long hot meal. Lester felt Bethany and Nate standing outside this picture, and he tried to swallow, but couldn’t. And would it be that easy anyway? Did the United States have an extradition treaty with Canada? Would they have to lie low there too? Lester didn’t know. He would have to find out.

At the bottom of the hill the colonel stopped at the intersection before the main drag through downtown Corona. Across the street was a black-and-white from the city parked against the curb, and Lester recognized the young cop behind the wheel. His name was Cutler. One night last spring Lester had given him cross-jurisdictional backup for a jeep full of drunk fraternity boys from San Francisco State. Now he glanced over at the colonel’s Buick just as it took the left for Hillside, and Lester slowly turned his face away, kept his eyes on the colonel’s profile as he drove them up into the hills past pure stands of ponderosa pine broken up by the trimmed lawns of homes with seaside views from their second-story decks. The sky was still gray and it made the grass appear a heightened green, not quite natural. The colonel was driving with both hands on the wheel, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds. Lester turned and saw three or four cars on the incline behind them and he leaned back and told the colonel in a calm and relaxed voice to speed up a bit. The colonel obeyed instantly. Was he still playing possum? Or was he truly deep under Lester’s thumb? Deep enough he would stay quiet after this was all through? Lester felt a rise of hope in him. Maybe there was still a way to work this out. He took his service pistol and slid it beneath his leg.

“We need to talk, Colonel.”

Behrani’s eyes darted to the rearview, and Lester saw new fear in them, that and a hardness, one he would have to start softening right now.

“How much did you pay for the house?”

“Forty-five thousand dollars.”

Lester looked down at his hands, his long thin fingers, the fingers of a woman; he knew an auction price would be low, but he hadn’t expected it to be a third of what the house was worth. He took a half breath and let it out. Why give this dictatorial son of a bitch the best deal? What had he done to deserve it? Why not take his money and the house? But it wasn’t what the colonel had done last night, Lester knew; it was what he had done. And Kathy. There was still time to plea-bargain; they weren’t completely on the run yet.

“Ms. Nicolo’s not a well woman.”

The colonel’s eyes moved to the rearview mirror again, and this time they looked softer, curious, not about Kathy probably, but the direction of the conversation, the shift in tone. This was good, Lester thought, two men talking.

“You saw that last night, didn’t you, Colonel?”

The boy looked at his father, then straight ahead at the road.

“Yes.”

“What she really needs is rest.”

Behrani looked like he wanted to say something, but was content to wait for hours.

“She’s had a change of heart about the house.”

“What does this mean?” The colonel glanced back into the mirror.

“It means you can keep it.”

Behrani’s eyebrows went up, two thin snakes springing out of nowhere. “She does not wish the sale to be rescinded?”

“Yes and no. Only she wants to be included in the transaction this time. No county, just a private deal.”

“I do not understand.”

“Between the two of you. You take the county check and sign it over to her. When the county returns ownership to Kathy, she’ll just let you keep it and she gets some rest.”

They were entering a small business district, passing a clothing boutique, a golf supply outlet, and a video store and sandwich shop. Behrani’s eyes were back on the road, his face expressionless. “She will produce the proper paperwork for this amount? It will be in writing the bungalow belongs to me?”

“Yes.”

Up ahead was the turnoff for Skyline Boulevard and the Junipero Serra Freeway. Lester usually took El Camino Real, but the freeway would get them there faster.

“Are we agreed, Colonel?”

Behrani glanced into the rearview. “Once the county bureaucrats have written the property in my name, I will give to her the money.”

Lester took a deep chest-wavering breath and let it out. That could take days. “Take the Skyline, please.”

The colonel took the turn slowly. He had just agreed to sign over the check, but why the somber, doubtful tone in his voice? It was the circumstances under which all this was happening, Lester was sure of it. It was the colonel’s pride. Lester thought that maybe he should apologize, just explain that he hadn’t known what had happened to Kathy, that he’d overreacted and now would like to put it all behind them if he could. But then he would be offering the captive colonel his bare throat, and a new fear was beginning to move coolly through Lester’s ribcage; the county tax office was fifty yards from the Hall of Justice building in Redwood City, so he would have to let the colonel go in alone and hope he was sold enough on this new proposition just to sign his papers and leave without an extra word to anyone. And what about the boy? If Lester let him go with his father, then Lester would be a lone target on a shelf if Behrani concluded he was better off calling in the wolves than keeping his end of the agreement. And what was in it for Behrani to stay in the deal? He already owned the house. All he would be getting in return is what he already had, that, and Kathy and Lester off his back, which he could also get if he called the department from the county tax office and a half-dozen deputies descended on Lester sitting in the colonel’s Regal. No, Lester thought, this was no time for false hopes; the thing to work on was getting back to Corona with the county check, then taking a reading on things from there. And he was going to have to reconsider the tone of this whole exchange; the only thing Lester still had going for him was the fact he had lost his temper last night, that he was still armed, and for all practical purposes was moving the colonel and son against their will and they still did not know what he was capable of, which meant Lester was going to have to keep the boy in the car with him once they got to Redwood City, keep the boy as some kind of human collateral, a thought that sent a tinge through Lester’s shoulder and neck. He rotated his head once but his muscles were too tight for anything to crack.