Jays fingers curl around a blunt suggestion of steel, he straightens up with the gun, dripping wet, and points it shivering straight-armed uncertainly at the unarmed Dunn the way hes seen people do it in the movies. His finger fumbles for the trigger guard, wondering if theres a safety he has to flick. "Then why did you kill the stripper?"

Dunns empty hands float out from his sides and he stares back at Jay with a careless look that says: I dont know. "Girls," he says, finally. "With all their . . ."

"And why," Jay asks, the nausea of exhaustion overtaking him, "did you just shoot my friend?"

Dunn is incurious, defensive, matter-of-fact. Almost apologetic. "Extortion-I thought you guys, the two of you, had the list and you were . . ." But its as if saying it out loud, here, in front of Jay, causes Dunn to finally understand the absurdity of the statement, of all of his a.s.sumptions, and he just stops talking.

"No," Jay tells him. "You made up a story. So did they. So did I-"

-A bladed reflection stares back at him (or he thinks it does), cropped, distorted (as it has to be), as if illusory (in distinct relief from the motionless moil of the strip bar), a face caught, for one impossible timeless instant in- "-But I dont know anything, really," Jay says. "Neither do you. Neither do they. You dont know." Jays found the safety with his thumb, but has no idea whether hes sliding it on or off. "n.o.body knows anything."

"Jay," Public says, closer, but Jays afraid to look away from Dunn to see just how close, "step away and let us-"

"Jay?" Ginger interrupts sharply, "Put it down, Jay." In more high weeds and cattails, on the edge of the tidal basin, she has a gun, too-Jay looks to her and thinks, Jesus, what movie am I in? because her gun is aimed at Jay, unfaltering, two-handed, a real marshal. And like she means it. There are tears in her eyes. Mouthing the words, "Put the gun down," as Public shouts the exact same words at Jay from his position, his voice hedged toward impatience.

Bait, Jay remembers. And suddenly he knows that if he just had a little more time, if he could just think a little harder, longer, he will understand the change hes felt in her as they hurtled to this moment.

But hes still convinced she wont shoot him. So he pivots, back to his right, and aims his gun at Public, whos drifted down knee-deep into the swamp water among the Mexican rush. Close. Publics gun is aimed back at Jay. So. Stalemate.

"Shoot him," Dunn says to Jay, meaning Public.

Gingers voice is calm. "Jay? No."

"SHOOT HIM!".

"Dont . . ."

Public begins, "A man got killed . . ."

Jay shakes his head. "A girl."

"All right . . ."

Dunn says, "Hes gonna kill us both."

". . . a girl got killed, and you saw who pulled the trigger."

"Did I?"

The helicopter cyclones, twisting bright light bending.

"Shut UP!" Dunn screams at Public.

"-WELL," Public is shouting, too, over the din of the rotors, "SOMEBODY SAW SOMETHING."

Jay says, "I saw a girl die."

"Put the gun down," Ginger says to him, steel beneath silk, "put it down and walk away."

"HES ROGUE, MAN!" Dunn is drifting wide, dividing Jays already divided attention. "IM FBI, THIS GUYS A BAD MARSHAL-we were ONTO HIM and-"

"-Jay?"

"THE DEAD MAN . . ." Public holds forth like hes giving a deposition, the Official Version of Something. ". . . WAS A FEDERAL WITNESS WHO CERTAIN COMPROMISED GOVERNMENT INDIVIDUALS WANTED SILENCED-"

"Derp derp derp," Dunn jeers.

Or is it just a new story Public is trying out?

"Hes lying."

Jay looks at Ginger, her gun aimed right at him, and he frowns, resigned, confounded. Which part of which life is this? He lets his gun fall to his side.

"-YOU SAW THE SHOOTER-".

Jay smiles oddly. Time slows, pulsing with the helicopters whorple-roar: Public, right, almost behind him now, moving in slow motion, and Dunn, left, different time plane, natural, equal and opposite, putting Jay between himself and- "-Do you love me?" Ginger, immobile, asks in a whisper that Jay knows he cant possibly hear.

I dont even know her name.

"YOU SAW THE SHOOTING OF A DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL BY A DISGRACED FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT WHO WAS UNDER SUSPICION OF SELLING SECRETS . . .".

"LIES!" Dunn screams.

". . . And they murdered you to cover it up," Public concludes simply, with every intention of squeezing the trigger of his gun and killing Jay, but across the tidal swamp Ginger fires hers twice, first.

Golden Roman candle tracers slash the sky.

Laws of physics warp: The first of Gingers nine-millimeter slugs spins toward Public; chased by the sound of its discharge, the second rips through Jays shoulder, berserking precisely the soft gap between humerus and scapula, and, though slowed by this leg of its adventure, is still humming along at nearly 1,100 feet per second when it punches into the chest and then heart of Sam Dunn, lifting him up off his feet, onto his back, mortally wounded, bleeding out.

Jays body spasms when Gingers bullet goes through him, and her other Dopplers past his ear, flashes silvery through the searchlight beam, to enter through an eye socket of the unfortunate skull of John Q. Public as he finally squeezes the trigger of his own gun, way too late.

Falling, Jay meets Publics disappointed gaze as life leaves him and his gun discharges harmlessly and Jays sentience spirals in on itself, all a-shambles: garbled voices, vibrant colors, swirl of black water, smell of Scotch, perfume, longing-frat boys clotted at the clubs entrance-a flower girls smile and the thump of blown speakers- -and Jay is front row, mesmerized by the gentle slur of pale naiad flesh across curving gla.s.s as a parade of suits pa.s.ses, drawing his attention into the back reaches of the bar, behind the tank, where a wiry, restless seller at a table argues with a second man, a buyer, in jeans and a leather jacket, looming over him, this second mans face canted obscure, just turning away, like a door closing. Briefcase between them; the seller is closing it, nodding, putting it down beside his chair and leaving, on the table, a tiny flash drive which the buyer starts to cover with his hand as the shadows of the men in suits cross the room of shadows, surrounding the sellers table; the buyer steps back like hes making room for them, and starts to turn his face to the light.

Then chaos.

The room erupts.

Through a parting of the churning crowd, a glimpse of the seated seller rising, intending to flee, but violently thrown back across the table by the impact of a gunshot from a shooter farther back in the shadows- -and this time everything goes very quiet- -except for the dull pock as the bullet punctures the tank, the entire bar in soundless motion, suits, girls, leather jacket, crowd surging scattering in every direction and- -half-risen, hand outstretched to the rupturing gla.s.s and the tanks startled denizen, but to any witness or witnesses later asked, in fact staring past her into the darkness behind her with something resembling recognition, or cognizance, staring into that lightless back bar blackness where a gun spat fire, staring at the exit door, staring, moonlight splashing in, a shadow pa.s.sing through it, eclipsed when the door swings shut again. Staring.

The tank explodes. Water. Gla.s.s. Mermaid. Limp body tossed out at Jay staggering shoulder-shot along the muddy banks of Two Harbors tidal swamp to the muddy berm where John Q. Public has sunk to his knees as if penitent, and folds forward into the dark water.

Dead.

Dunn on his back in the gra.s.s. Hands fussing with his chest. Gasping for air that will not save him.

Jay somehow keeps his feet, arm pressed tight against his side, and, look of bewilderment, finds Ginger as she lowers her gun, slowly, hands steady.

Bait. He thinks he says it aloud.

"n.o.body saw anything," Ginger says.

Does helicopter circles like G.o.ds unsparing judgment overhead.

Dreamy: the tidal swamp rotates like a turntable in the magic trick of the searchlights movement. The tumult of the helicopter rotor is so overwhelming it ceases to be noise and becomes one with Jays shock. He angles his head back into the bright light and stares, dizzy, up, his face washed out and ghostly.

Doe, leaning out of the searchlights halation, looking down at him.

Ginger, lifting Helen up out of the reeds.

The sparkling brittle sawtooth of wind-whipped water blasted white.

Jay surrenders to vertigo, and sinks, cross-legged, heavy.

Church campers break into the bright perimeter of light, stumbling across Vaughns body first and crying out and kneeling to tend to him. One woman listening for a heartbeat, ripping the duct tape off, while another starts the chest compressions of CPR.

Time skips.

Someone drapes a blanket over Jays shoulders and says things he cant hear.

Time skips.

A circle of men and children, heads bowed, praying. Does helicopter has been sucked into the night. Not even a distant sound of it remains. The swamp is filled with an exhilarating rush of wind through gra.s.s, soughing of surf, the low, fretful murmuring of the women working on Vaughn, and the mad ululation of crickets.

"Theres no cell signal," one of the men from the church group cries out, and the CPR woman yells at him to run up the f.u.c.king hill until he finds one.

Jay wants to laugh, but lies back in the gra.s.s, played out. Was it worth it? Yeah, he tells himself. But was it worth it? No, he decides bitterly. Better not to have a life, than to have one and lose it. He feels light-headed. He feels dumb. Another fail.

Another fail.

Jay looks but cant find Ginger or Helen.

But, "Yes," he says, then, stubbornly, fiercely, into the wind, trying it out: "Yeah, it was worth it." He says it like he believes it. He can believe it. Hes earned at least that.

A wave of shock nausea. His eyes close.

And the veil falls away- -strip bar, that singular moment of the shooting, frozen in time, and Jay floats through it, unmoored. Glides past himself, past the half-fractured, near-bursting mermaids tank and the pale, shocked underwater stripper with threads of blood beginning to leak from her chest.

As if illusory, in distinct relief from the motionless moil of the strip bar, a reflection stares back at him, distorted, caught for this timeless instant in the polished stainless steel of a structural support.

A woman. A grown girl.

Riot of hair pulled back, no makeup, straight-line mouth set hard.

Its Ginger.

She moves among the motionless, slides her spent gun back into the holster on her hip, palms the flash drive from the table, tucks it under her coat, and slips away. The back exit opens, splashing one hopeful measure of moonlight into the darkness as-

31

.

HE LOOKS UP.

There: the mazelike grid of cracks in the white plaster ceiling. Dull thrum of an old air conditioner. All that white noise, kicking on.

Cheerless light seeps down from the translucent windows, still no wall decorations, just the bed, containing Jay, the stainless-steel sideboard, and the one metal chair.

He remembers this part all too well; its one of those glib pulp endings where the story circles back where it began and, for a moment, you wonder if the whole thing was a dream.

"Howre you feeling?" Jane Doe is bedside. Shes got her "h.e.l.lO My Name Is" sticker plastered to the lapel of her jacket but shes left the fill-in s.p.a.ce blank. Jay turns his head in slow motion and the world crawls reluctantly with him.

Doe even says Publics line: "Sometimes that tranquilizer really kicks your a.s.s," and waits, deadpan.

Jay smiles, languid in the anesthetics wake, and lets his eyes stray back to the map of cracks in the ceiling. Dej vu. Okay. Sure. Maybe he imagined the whole thing.

"Gee, where am I, I wonder?" he says drily.

"Witness protection. Youre in witness protection, Jay." She sits down. Shes flushed with color, like someone whos just come from running a 5K: playful, jacked with endorphins, oddly upbeat, after all thats happened.

"I remember," he says.

"What a s.h.i.tstorm, huh? Empty out one can of worms," Doe quips, "and open up another."

"Im in the program," Jay offers.

"Back. Youre back in the program, yes."

"Vaughn?"

"Safe."

"Safe. Everybodys safe. Thats how you roll."

Doe shrugs. "Dont give me s.h.i.t about it, either."

Jays wrist lifts away from the bedrail. At least hes not handcuffed, this time. But theres an IV shunt stuck in the vein in his arm, tubes snaking up to a clear bag on a tall stand. They have what they needed from him. Hes not a captive. Just . . . what?

Doe hesitates, frowns. "Question? Something you want to ask me?"

"Dunn?"

"The man was not in a good place, morally or ethically."