The call ended. Hootan said, “Screw that.”

“Don’t be crude,” Dr. G said.

“We’re going with you,” Aaqila said.

“Didn’t think I could stop you,” I said. To Aaqila I said, “The money?”

She handed me the Mr. Squiggly lunchbox. I thought about opening it to count the cash, but decided I didn’t need to antagonize her. Yet.

Dr. Gloria took to the air, and the rest of us entered the trees. I tried to step around the deeper patches, but the snow kept tipping into the tops of my boots. According to the map, the car shouldn’t have been more than a hundred meters from the water, but I couldn’t see anything through the trees, and I couldn’t make out any sound over my huffing and puffing.

Suddenly I stepped out onto a dirt road—really no more than a pair of deeply rutted tire tracks. Dr. Gloria landed in a flurry of wings.

“This wasn’t on the map,” Hootan said. He sounded hurt.

“I think that’s on purpose,” I said.

To my right the trail curled into the trees, heading roughly back the way we’d come. To my left it ended in an open area shaped like the head of a sperm. At the edge of the clearing, the land dropped off. Beyond was the moon-flecked river.

A flashlight raked us from the trees at the western edge of the clearing, then focused on my face.

“I told you to come alone!” a female voice yelled.

“At least she’s not using distortion,” Dr. G said.

I shaded my eyes against the glare. “I have the money,” I called back. “You have the printer?”

“Come forward—just you!”

I started forward, and Aaqila put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said.

“I think it’s too late for that,” Dr. G said.

The flashlight moved to cover Aaqila and Hootan, and I walked out into the dark. But not alone; Dr. G of course followed me out. When I was in the middle of the clearing, the voice called, “Stop!” A few feet away stood a mound about two feet high, covered by a tarp; in the dark I’d thought it was a boulder.

I pulled off the plastic. Two cardboard boxes, one big enough to hold a printer. I yelled back to Aaqila and Hootan, “It’s here!”

“Throw me the money,” the figure behind the flashlight said. She was twenty feet from me.

“No!” Hootan yelled. He marched forward, arm straight in front of him, one-handing the pistol like a Hollywood bad guy. Aaqila followed closely behind him. “Show yourself!” he said.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled to them. “Get the fuck back!”

That’s when I noticed the man in the cowboy hat. He stepped out of the northern trees halfway between Hootan and me. He was short, maybe only 5’4”. I couldn’t make out his face under the big brim, but something about the hat and the white shirt and that formal suit jacket looked familiar.

“The bar,” Dr. Gloria said. Yes: He was the man at the bar who’d tipped his hat at me.

Before I could answer her, a police siren wailed. Blue-and-red flashing lights lit up the trees. Headlight beams bounced; a police car was coming down that rutted road. In a second it would enter the clearing.

Hootan stopped and whirled toward the lights. Aaqila began to turn too, and then noticed the man in the cowboy hat. For what seemed like a long moment (but was not, the brain grabbing every detail in high def), no one moved.

Then, everyone moved at once. Everyone except me.

The person in the trees behind me with the flashlight said, “Lyda! This way!” Hootan spun toward the printer box. The cowboy raised his arm. Aaqila ran toward the cowboy, arms spread.

And I … watched.

The cowboy fired. Aaqila was almost directly in front of the man, but it was Hootan who fell, dropping to the ground as if his knees had been cut out from under him. Then Aaqila smashed into the cowboy and they went down tumbling, a confusion of arms and legs flashing in the glare of the headlights. The strobing blue-and-red lights seemed to sway the trees like a high wind.

Someone seized my arm. “Let’s go!” It was Ollie, in twelve-year-old-boy drag: the baseball cap and heavy jacket I’d seen her wearing on the street outside Aaqila’s house, plus a backpack I’d never seen before. She yanked me into the trees and we ran, crunching through icy snow, the beam of her flashlight hopscotching ahead of us. I hugged the lunchbox close to my body and followed as best I could.

“Who the fuck is that guy?!” I said.

Another gunshot, the sound splintering in the dark. I grabbed Ollie’s jacket and jerked her to a halt. We were surrounded by trees. The river should have been nearby, but I couldn’t see it.

I grabbed Ollie by the elbow. “Stop, damn it!” I said. “The guy in the hat! Is he a cop?”

“Cops aren’t real,” Ollie said, and sucked in a breath. “That car—it’s Bobby.”

“What do you mean it’s—?”

“His car,” Ollie said. “We put a light on it, wired the sound. Distraction. Everybody scatters, you get away.”

Dr. G appeared behind me. “You left him back there with those killers?”

Fuck.

The doctor unfurled her wings into Maximum Righteousness Mode. The flaming sword was in her hand. She pointed with it like the archangel casting us out of the garden. “Get your ass back there!”

“No,” I said aloud. “No no no.”

“Come on,” Ollie said. “We’ve got to go—the boat’s coming.”

I looked back toward the way we came. Ollie said, “Lyda, he’s fine, just—”

“Be right back,” I said. I shoved the money into her arms and ran. Drifts tugged at my ankles. Hidden roots kicked at my toes, sent me stumbling in the path of trees that seemed to rush at me out of the dark. I burst through curtains of pine branches, scattering snow.

Suddenly I was yanked sideways, and realized it was Ollie; she’d caught up with me and had seized my arm.

“This way,” she said. Her flashlight was turned off. “Quiet now.”

She led me to my right, around a jumble of boulders. Ahead, the headlights of the stopped car cut through the branches. I could hear nothing but my own breath and the crunch of the snow, which suddenly seemed obscenely loud. Ollie stopped me with a hand on my chest.

We stood at the edge of the clearing. Fifty feet away, Bobby knelt in the grass, his hands up. He was babbling. I couldn’t make out the words, only the panicked somersault rhythm of his voice. The man in the cowboy hat held his pistol to his side, so clearly in control there was no need to aim it at the kid. A few feet from Bobby lay a crumpled form: Hootan. But where was Aaqila?

Dr. Gloria descended in a nimbus of light. She hovered between Bobby and the gunman, her arms extended. “Now,” she commanded.

“Stay down,” I said to Ollie, then before she could object I called out: “Don’t shoot him!”

The cowboy instantly pivoted and brought his gun up, aiming at me. Could he see me in the dark? I couldn’t make out his eyes beneath the brim of his hat.

“He’s just a kid,” I yelled. “He doesn’t know anything.”

I didn’t know anything either. If the man in the hat wasn’t a cop, and he wasn’t with Fayza, then who the hell was he? One of her competitors?

“Lyda Rose,” the cowboy called back. “Why don’t you step out and we talk for a spell?” He spoke in a theatrical Western drawl.

No. I did not want to step out. I could feel a knot above my sternum like the tip of a bayonet. If I walked forward it would burrow into me.

Dr. Gloria said, “You have no choice.”

I stepped into the clearing, palms out—and did not die. Not yet.

Bobby said, “Lyda! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay,” I said to him. Then to the cowboy I said, “Let him go. I’ll give you what you want.”

“Which would be what, Miss Rose?”

“I have no fucking idea,” I said. “But whatever it is, it’s yours. Where’s Aaqila?”

“The crazy Afghan girl? Run off to die. She was shot up pretty good. And where’s your sidekick, the commando girl?”