Just left, I typed. Thanks for the warning.

No prob.

My nurse said, "It's time to go, Lyda. Do you need any help with your things?"

"I'm good." I typed, Are you okay? How was the therapist?

Talkety talkety talk.

Was she nice?

I guess. Ed and Suz keep asking me how I'm doing. Weird.

Two cops, a man and a woman, entered the room. I didn't recognize the uniforms, but I a.s.sumed these were the US marshals. I pretended I didn't see them and kept typing.

Last message for a while. Taking me to airport now.

Then prison?

Yup.

!!!! Aren't you scared?

I wondered, should I tell her that this wouldn't be the first time? Surely a ten-year-old didn't need to know that her mother was a hardened criminal. I'll be fine, I typed.

TWO YEARS!!!!!.

Maybe less. Depends.

One of the marshals said, "Let's go."

Tell your angel to watch over you, she typed.

I was evidently too dangerous to be held by mere leg irons. The marshals manacled both ankles, then circled me with a waist chain. My damaged arm couldn't be moved to the sling, so they handcuffed my remaining arm to the chain. Then they took my pen and placed it in a bag with the other surviving personal items: a HashCash card; a smartpaper sketch of a pirate bear; my bra.s.s wedding ring. I signed a paper that consigned them to the care of the US government.

At least I didn't have to shuffle through the whole hospital. Baby Chop brought a wheelchair and thoughtfully covered my new hardware with a blanket.

Outside, the sky was a clear, cloudless blue. It was before 10 a.m., but already the day was heating up. The marshals helped me out of the chair and led me to a white van. The male marshal opened the side door and helped me into the bench seat. He even buckled my seat belt for me.

A movement outside caught my attention. Past the marshal, standing at the edge of the parking lot, stood a small person in a big jacket, wearing a baseball cap pulled low. Her hand lifted a second time, at waist height. Her fingers slowly opened.

I opened my fingers in answer. The van door slid closed, and a minute later we were rolling north, dragging my heart behind me like an anchor.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Vinnie woke up with a shout, the image of a gleaming metal blade blazing before his eyes. Then he realized that he was behind the wheel of a moving car, and he shouted again.

The rear end of a vehicle was in the lane ahead of him, and he was rushing toward it. He slammed on the brakes, and a jolt of pain shot up his leg, tore at his gut. He felt like his stomach had been torn in half.

The pain made him drop his foot from the pedal. The car swerved, and he corrected, but each movement sent another wrenching pain through him. He was wide awake now, and terrified. He moved his left foot to cover the brake, and eased to the side of the road. He was on the interstate. Thank G.o.d no one had been right behind him.

He was dressed in a suit, though his shirt was open. b.l.o.o.d.y bandages wrapped his abdomen. The inside of the car was a mess. Crumpled bags from fast food chains, plastic bottles of Black Lightning energy drink, a wad of b.l.o.o.d.y gauze bandages. He'd thrown up somewhere in the car, and the stench was terrible. Most shocking was the condition of the Seratelli; the black hat had fallen onto the floor of the pa.s.senger side with the rest of the trash. Foul, b.l.o.o.d.y napkins and bandages were piled inside it.

What had happened? If he had time to concentrate, he could recall those memories. After all, everything that happened to the Vincent also happened to him. The calm, confident veneer that made him the Vincent was gone, evaporated between moments while he was hurtling down the highway at sixty-five miles per hour.

This had never happened before.

All other times when he'd worked as the Vincent, he had returned home with plenty of Evanimex in his system. Over the course of a few days he came down, returning to his old personality like a glider returning to earth. But this time the drug had worn off-and suddenly, in a rush of terror.

On the seat beside him, mixed in with the garbage, were a pistol and two pill bottles. The one that used to contain Evanimex was empty. The Vicodin bottle, thank G.o.d, was half-full. He found a bit of liquid at the bottom of a Black Lightning bottle and swallowed half a dozen of the pills. He was soaked in sweat, and every movement sent pain racketing through his body. He wanted to lie down, but he knew that falling asleep in the car was inviting the police to investigate. He had to keep moving.

Tears rolled from his eyes. This wasn't fair!

He started the car again. The GPS told him he was thirteen hours from home.

The apartment was dark, and strangely silent. The air smelled of death. He flipped on a light and moaned.

In the center of the kitchen floor, a bison cow, barely three inches long, lay on its side, dead. How had it gotten in here? It shouldn't have been able to get through the barrier. The air stank of grease and methane. On the counter was a cutting board, and beside it a small pile of fur and bones.

Al, he thought. Al, the neighbor he'd trusted, had been eating the herd.

He hobbled to the living room, trying to keep his weight on his left leg. The grow lights were off, even though it was daytime. The living prairie gra.s.s had turned brown, and was dying in vast patches. He could not see any of his bison. Where was the herd?

He made his way back to the bedroom. There he found the Poomba, inert, in the middle of the carpet. The little robot was dead, not even an indicator light. The herd was nowhere in sight.

Then he heard a faint chirp, the high-pitched grunt of the micro bison. He braced himself against the bed and dropped to one knee, grimacing from the pain. If not for the Vicodin he would have pa.s.sed out. Slowly he lay down on the dry, sickly gra.s.s. There under the bed was a pair of cows.

Two, out of thirty-eight.

Al would pay for this. A man's herd was sacred. Vinnie would become the Vincent, get his gun, and take that walk down that hallway....

He pa.s.sed out dreaming of frontier justice.

Someone was knocking at his door. Banging, really. He wasn't sure how long the noise had been going on, but soon enough it stopped. He was drifting between sleep and wakefulness on a raft made of pain.

He heard a deep voice. Al. Coming to poach the last of his cattle. He struggled to open his eyes. He needed the Vincent's gun. Where was the gun?

"You can go," another voice said. This one was female. "I'm his sister."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Accident," she said. "I'll take it from here."

"Just tell him it wasn't my fault," Al said. "He was supposed to come back in a couple days! The critters just started dying. What was I supposed to do?"

"Don't worry about it."

Some time pa.s.sed. Lights came on, and he shut his eyes.

"Do you know who I am?" the female voice said.

He tried to guess. The Vincent's memories were hard to sort through. Was it the red-haired one? Or the tiny one? If it was the tiny one ... that would be bad. The Vincent had been afraid of what she could do.

"You shot my girlfriend," she said.

"It wasn't me," he said.

"I'm getting tired of hearing that."

She crouched next to him. He heard a click, and then the woman was talking to someone else on the phone.

"I'm here," she said. There was a pause. "Right. Is Aaqila ready for the video?"

The woman touched Vinnie on the face. "Open your eyes, Vincent. That's it." He was looking at the pinhole camera of a pen. Then the woman said, "See? It's him. I'm sending the address now."

Another silence, and then the woman said, "So we're good?"

A moment later the woman clicked off the pen. She seemed very satisfied.

"We've got some time," she said. "Tell me all about yourself."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

My father used to say that every evil in Canada could be found within a mile of the 401, and he would have included the Elgin-Middles.e.x Detention Centre. The EMDC was an overcrowded, aging prison campus a couple hours southwest of Toronto, in London. After six months I'd had enough of the place. Unfortunately they made me stay another year and a half.

Bobby had been pacing the waiting room, and when I finally appeared he galloped to me and crushed me in a hug. The treasure chest still hung from his neck, though now it hung from a metal chain.

"How you doing, kid?" I asked him. "Still hanging in there?" He didn't get the joke.

Toronto was no place for me-I still didn't quite trust Fayza to abide by our deal-so instead we drove north, toward Lake Huron. The trees were ablaze with color. I'd missed a few seasons while inside, and I was glad to get out before the snow came down.

Our destination was over three hours away, but Bobby seemed prepared to deliver a monologue that lasted the entire trip. He had a new roommate who had a set of weird habits completely different from the weird habits of all previous roommates. He'd gotten a new job, working in a distribution center for a big online site. He'd stayed off drugs like I'd asked.

"How's Lamont?"

"Oh," he said. "I had to give him up. No cats allowed in the new place."

He wanted stories from prison. "Like what?" I asked. "Showers? Pillow fights? n.a.z.i lesbian guards?"

"No! I mean ... no! I was talking about, I don't know, escape attempts?"

"No escapes, kid. It was actually weirdly calm."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.

We stopped for supper at an Italian place that promised Killer Kalzones. I went into the bathroom and opened the little plastic bag given to me by the helpful doctors of the Ministry of Public Safety and Security. Inside was a bottle of 120 pills of phenacemide, the antiepileptic I'd been taking while in their care. Best to take with food. I looked myself in the mirror as I swallowed two pills. The only person looking back was me.

It was well past dark when we arrived in Meaford, a little town on the sh.o.r.e. My mother had grown up there. The car directed Bobby west of town. Bobby pulled in the driveway and cut the lights. The windows of the farmhouse were dark.

"This is it, right?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah, I just thought ... Well. You want to come in? It's too far to drive back to Toronto tonight."

"Are you sure?"

"You like sleepovers, don't you?"

We went up the steps. The email I'd gotten said the key would be under a ceramic pot, which I hoped I could find in the dark. Before I could look down, the door opened and the lights flicked on.

Ollie. Her expression was worried. She looked at my face, but her eyes weren't quite tracking mine.

"It's me," I said.

Her face lit up. The visual was hard for her when she was on her meds, but voices always broke through.

She pulled my face down to hers and kissed me fiercely. We stood like that for a long time, unwilling to let each other go.

Something brushed past my ankles. I broke the kiss and looked down. "Is that Lamont?"

"Still clean and sober," Ollie said.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Ollie had made a cake, but wouldn't let us eat it.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked.

She wouldn't answer. Playing coy.