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 h.e.l.l are you doing?" I yelled to them. "Get the f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k 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, d.a.m.n 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?"

f.u.c.k.

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 a.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 h.e.l.l was he? One of her compet.i.tors?

"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 f.u.c.king 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?"

Commando girl? "Back in the trees," I said.

"Ah." His head didn't move. I still couldn't see his eyes. "I imagine she's a pretty good shot."

"I imagine so." Jesus Christ, he had me talking like him.

He chuckled. "Well, I wasn't going to stick around anyway. I have to ask, though. Is that there an actual printer of Numinous?"

It was a shock to hear the man say its name. After a moment I managed to say, "It's a fake. We don't have the printer, or the ingredients."

He laughed again, louder. "Oh, you're a tricky one," he said. He touched the brim of his hat, just as he had in the bar, and began to back away. "Y'all have a nice night. And say h.e.l.lo to your friend Rovil for me. Tell him, no hard feelings." In a few steps he had backed between two trees and disappeared.

Oh s.h.i.t. What did he do to Rovil?

Dr. Gloria slid an arm under mine to steady me. "Don't worry about that now."

Bobby jumped up and hugged me. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry! I told him everything!"

"You were great," I said. I pulled away from the boy. "You saved my life, okay? Now go. Drive home. Take care of Lamont."

"All right already!" Ollie called from the woods. "Let's go!"

Bobby said, "I'll feed him every day."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

I was a forty-two year old woman. I'd spent the last ten years abusing my body with every illicit drug I could get my hands on, as well as all the good licit ones. Additional pharmaceuticals had been provided over the years by the hospitals I'd attended. A car crash-which one, in which year, I could no longer remember-had left me with a grindingly painful deficit of cartilage in my left knee. I also ate like s.h.i.t.

All this is by way of saying that I did not have another sprint in me. Ollie, however, forced one out of me. We plunged through the trees, Ollie leading again, now holding both the Mr. Squiggly lunchbox and the flashlight. She seemed to know where she was going. I was blind to everything except the dark in front of my face, my concentration taken up by my burning lungs and the pain spiking up my left leg.

Suddenly the ground turned soft beneath my boots and I stumbled. We were on a dirt path now, a line of dark snaking through the snowy woods. The river appeared on our right, surprisingly close.

"Here," Ollie said. The path bent toward the water, sloping to a landing about six feet wide. We pulled up, and I gulped oxygen. Somewhere out on the dark water lay the invisible dashed line of the USaCanadian border, a ghost-st.i.tch visible only to satellites.

"It's coming," she said. I heard it then: the whine of an outboard motor. I could see nothing on the river but shadows and an ill-defined ma.s.s in the distance. Was that New York? I'd gotten turned around.

The sound of the motor abruptly grew louder. Ollie yelled, "Watch out!" and shoved me aside. A black shape lunged at us up the rocky embankment. It slammed down with a bang, then suddenly the engine cut out. It was a shallow-bottomed ba.s.s boat, painted some dark color-and it was full of black garbage bags.

"Unload them," Ollie said. "Quick! It's part of the deal."

"What the f.u.c.k happened to the driver?!" For a crazy moment I thought he'd been thrown clear.

"It's a rowboat," she said. She grabbed one of the bags and grunted. It was evidently heavy. She tossed the bag into the bushes. There were more than a dozen of them in the small boat. All the benches except the front one had been removed to make room for the cargo. The craft had been stripped down to a motor, a big gas can, and in the corner a black fishing rod poking up like an antenna.

Dr. Gloria walked across the top of the water toward the rear of the boat. "Get it now?" she said.

Of course. The fishing rod wasn't poking up like an antenna; the antenna was poking up like a fishing rod. The craft was a remote controlled ro-boat.

I started hauling bags, lifting from the bottom because of the weight. I could feel cardboard boxes inside them and hoped that they only contained cigarettes. I wasn't ready to do hard time for smuggling drugs. When the last bag had been tossed into the trees, Ollie threw her own backpack into the boat, where it landed with a clunk.

"Get in," she said.

I climbed over the side and sat down on the bench. Ollie handed me the money box. "Show it to the camera."

"What camera?"

She gestured toward the antenna. I twisted and straddled the bench, then waved the Mr. Squiggly box at the antenna, figuring the camera was somewhere inside it or near it. "We have the money," I said, trying to enunciate clearly.

The boat lurched-Ollie shoving it a few sc.r.a.ping feet across the rocky bank toward the water. I grabbed the boat's side-the gunwale? whatever they called it-and leaned forward, ready to pull Ollie in when she got us all the way in the water. Behind her, a shadow moved on the path. It was a bent figure, barely visible in the moonlight.

Dr. Gloria said, "Aaqila!" and I shouted something like, "Down!"

Ollie was already in motion. She pushed the boat again-a full-body shove with arms and legs straight-and then let go and dropped below my line of sight with a splash.

Aaqila stumbled forward, her leg dragging behind her. One arm clutched her chest, and the other was straightening to point at me. She screamed a collection of consonants and vowels.

I have two overlapping memories of the next moment. In both, I hear each bang of the pistol-five shots, shockingly loud. But in one memory I am watching the pistol in Aaqila's hand, and see red-orange flames flashing at the mouth of the barrel. In the other memory, I see nothing but Dr. Gloria. The angel is standing on the water between the boat and Aaqila, her wings flaring and trembling as each bullet strikes those pure-white feathers and bursts into light.

The details of both memories are suspect. Did I really see the muzzle flash, or was that something sketched in from countless movies? Alternatively, how does a figment of my imagination stop bullets?

The boat slipped sideways in the river's current. On sh.o.r.e, Aaqila nestled the gun in her bent arm, trying to do something to it with her good hand-reload? Unjam it? Then Ollie rose up off the ground, holding some glossy shape above her head with both hands-a river rock, big as bread loaf. She brought it down on Aaqila's head and the girl collapsed. The sound of the two impacts-the rock hitting her skull, her body hitting the ground-were so faint that I may have filled them in on my own.

"Oh my," Dr. Gloria said.

From behind me came an electrical hum; then the outboard motor belched and fell into a deep rumble. The front of the boat swung toward open water.

I threw up a hand, waving at the antenna, and yelled, "Wait!" The boat continued to turn. I twisted to face the sh.o.r.e. "Ollie! It's going!"

She was bent over Aaqila's unmoving body. I yelled again, and Ollie looked at me over her shoulder, only her nose and mouth visible beneath the cap. Was she grimacing? Saying good-bye? I thought, Don't you dare abandon me now!

Ollie abruptly turned and ran, not toward the water, but along the bank to my left. The current was pushing my boat downstream, toward a spit of land, and Ollie was sprinting toward it. She popped open her coat on the run like Clark Kent and tossed it aside, then tore the cap from her head and sent it spinning across the water. She reached the end of the land and leaped, not diving because the water could not have been very deep, and landed with a splash. The water came up to her knees. She took three slogging steps and then launched into a shallow dive. She was eight or ten meters west of the boat, but I was moving away from the sh.o.r.e.

The motor roared and the boat spun hard to my left. I gripped the sides and yelled at the camera, "G.o.dd.a.m.n it! Wait!" The bow was aimed at the dark hulk of land less than a kilometer across the water. That was too close for New York; it had to be le-Saint-Regis, the island on the Quebec side of the border.

The throttle kicked a notch higher. I pushed off the bench and half leaped, half fell toward the motor. The boat bucked and I fell the rest of the way, nearly impaling myself on the tiller. My forearms came down on the fat skull of the outboard cowling. I gripped the sides of the motor and held on as it vibrated beneath me, the entire mount swiveling as if to throw me off. Icy spray struck my face. Gasoline fumes filled my nostrils.

I'd lost track of Ollie.

Dr. Gloria flew overhead, keeping pace easily. "Remain calm," she said.

"f.u.c.k you!" I yelled.

Suddenly Ollie broke the surface of the water, two body lengths away, her arms knifing toward me.

"Come on, baby!" I crouched and reached for her, my thighs jammed against the sides. Too much: My weight tipped the boat and I fell forward. I seized the rim and stopped myself, my face inches from the water. The remote-controlled prop swerved to compensate, and suddenly the boat was almost on top of Ollie. Her eyes shone bright in the moonlight. I thrust out an arm, and she latched on. If I hadn't been wearing a jacket she wouldn't have been able to get a grip.

The throttle kicked into high then. Ollie's weight nearly yanked me out of the boat.

Dr. Gloria landed behind me in the boat. "Pull!" she said.

"You think?" I shouted back.

I got my hips below the rim of the boat, then gripped Ollie with both hands. It took all my strength to hold on; I had nothing remaining to pull her in. The boat slewed left, then right, the drag nearly pulling us apart.

The doctor kneeled behind me and put her arms around my waist. "Ready?" she said into my ear. "One! Two!"