It was in February that I went out to dinner with Edo—without Mikala or Gil. Edo was excited about the progress with NME and wanted to sell; he’d already entered talks with Landon-Rousse and Kensington, Inc. Gil was ready to cash out, but Mikala and I had always said that we would remain in control of the intellectual property. We’d lease development and manufacturing rights, but the IP remained with us—even if it cost us millions in lost revenue. When we first enlisted Edo he’d said he was fine with this, but that was when our chance of success had been minuscule. I think he always assumed that if Little Sprout produced something viable, he could talk us into selling.

And he was right.

“The marriage is over,” I told him.

Edo expressed shock, then sympathy. He was always good at social niceties. But he was a businessman first, and immediately understood what this meant for him. He tried hard to tamp down his excitement. “Of course you must take care of yourself,” he said. “Do you think this would change Mikala’s mind—make her vote with us?”

“Never.”

Edo nodded. He had expected this answer. It did not change his plans, however; with my vote we did not need Mikala’s.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“Of course,” Edo said. He knew I’d demand something for my agreement, because that’s what he would have done. I told him the amount I needed to borrow from him, and that I needed it now.

“May I ask what for?” he said.

“Ransom money,” I said. He laughed, thinking I was joking.

Edo sent me the paperwork the next day. He was too much of a shark to trust our deal to a handshake. In return for the loan, I gave him the right to vote as my proxy, without relinquishing any IP rights. The money immediately transferred to my account. Two days after that I paid for the release of seventeen frozen eggs.

*   *   *

I woke to a hand shaking me. “Trouble,” a voice said.

“Gloria?” The room was dark, but the angel glowed with artificial light. “You came back.” It was embarrassing how happy I was to see her.

“It’s Ollie,” she said, and pointed toward the bathroom. A sliver of light shone at the bottom of the door.

I sat up, pawed for the clock, finally lifted it in both hands: 2:45 a.m.

“Ollie?” I called. I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to the bathroom door. “You all right?”

Ollie said something I couldn’t catch. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and squinted against the light.

She sat on the edge of the tub, arms on her bare legs, staring hard at the floor. She’d laid out scraps of toilet paper. No, not scraps, shapes: stars, squares, triangles, cigar rolls. She’d arranged them on the tile in the small space according to a scheme I didn’t understand.

“Whatcha doing, sweetie?” I asked gently. It was the voice you’d use on a growling dog as you reached for the door.

“I’m your gun,” she said without looking up.

“What?”

“You brought me here to kill Edo.”

“What? No!”

She looked me in the eye. “Of course you did. You got me out of the hospital and brought me here and loaded me up with clues—and now you’re going to aim me at him. Bang. You get the girl, and I go to jail. But no one can put this on you, because I chose to shoot.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Then what’s the plan?” Ollie asked. “What are you going to do when you meet him? What are you going to do with the girl?”

“I don’t know! There is no plan.”

“You’re lying. You know what I used to do. You brought me here to do it again.”

“I don’t know what you used to do—you never told me.”

She squinted at me. She opened her backpack and brought out a silver pistol with a black grip.

“Jesus, what are you—?”

“This is a Sig Sauer P226 with an E-squared grip. It’s my favorite sidearm. I’ve had it since Toronto.”

I didn’t know what was more alarming, that she had a gun, or a favorite.

“It’s that she’s got a gun,” Dr. Gloria said.

“I don’t blame you for bringing me,” Ollie said. “You were probably afraid that you wouldn’t have the strength to do it when the time came.” She smiled tightly. “I can be your strength.”

“Look, sweetie … no.” I leaned toward her. “That’s not what I—”

Ollie put her hand on the gun. I sat back on my heels.

“You’re scaring me,” I said.

“I don’t mean to.”

“Have you taken your meds?”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

“I think it’s time to take those pills.”

“That’s not an option right now,” Ollie said. “It’s too dangerous. The cowboy is still out there. Edo has your daughter. Rovil could be working with Edo, or with Gil. The text message could be a trap. They could be trying to get you out there in the desert and—”

“Hon, please…” I held out my hands, palms up. Nothing to fear from me. “I need you to stay here tomorrow.”

She looked shocked. “I’m not leaving you.”

You’re already gone, I thought.

I couldn’t call the police or we all went home. I couldn’t call 9-1-1 to have her committed, because they would call the police. But if she got in that car tomorrow, someone would die. I just wasn’t sure who.

I covered my face with my hands. I might have been praying.

“Give me the words,” I said to Dr. Gloria.

“There’s got to be another way,” the angel said. “If you do this to her—”

“I’ll make it up to her later.”

“There may not be a later. If she loses trust in you, then she’s got no one.”

“Give me the words.”

Dr. Gloria removed her glasses. I’d never seen her tear up before. She cleared her throat and said, “I don’t love you.”

“What else?” I asked the doctor.

“I will never love you.”

I began to speak. I laid out the words the doctor had given me like scalpels. I convinced Ollie that she’d been lying to herself, that I found it kind of sad that she thought just because we had sex and shared a few late-night conversations, that I’d told her things I’d never told anyone else—that somehow that meant something. Her damaged brain had taken a few bits of data and strung them into the story she wanted to hear—a fairy tale.

It was not as hard to convince her as I would have thought. Ollie already suspected that I did not love her. She’d invented a dozen conspiracies to explain why I came for her, why I stayed with her. After only thirty minutes of tears and yelling and icy insults, she threw on her clothes and slammed the motel door behind her.

I’d won.

I’d won.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The two men kneeling in the cornfield weren’t scared, despite the hoods and the plasticuffs and the near certainty that they were about to die. The Vincent had gotten used to this stoicism by now. He’d been on the trail for two weeks and had interrogated so many of these pastors and deacons of the Church of the Hologrammatic God, each one calmer and more pain-resistant than the last, that he was getting bored. It was a necessary job, like branding cattle, but it wasn’t exactly rocket science.

The original assignment had been to follow Lyda Rose and engage in heavy conversation with whomever gave her the drug. That had led him to the first church and that Mexican pastor, then into the woods of Cornwall Island for the most confusing dead end of his career: fake cops, fake smugglers, and two teenage Afghan gangsters. A circus.

He’d been worried about Lyda’s ex-Special Forces, ex-SIGINT sidekick. He’d known a lot of those folks back when he worked with the government, and some of them were Goddamn nuts. He didn’t recognize the name or face of the woman—Olivia Skarsten was probably as fake as his own new name—but they’d probably known some of the same people. Those social circles weren’t all that damn big.

If he’d had his druthers he would have shot Rose and Skarsten both, just because they’d seen his face, but the employer had given him clear orders on how to handle them. He was forced to let them escape.