Bullets of rain broke against the armored gla.s.s.

"Have you ever eaten rattlesnake, dear?"

"No, ma'am."

"It tastes good if you prepare it right."

"I'm a little bit of a finicky eater."

"I sympathize. The taste of lamb makes me gag."

"Lambs are too cute to eat," I said.

"Exactly. You can't eat too-cute animals. Like kittens."

"Or dogs. Cows are nice, but they're not cute."

"They're not," she agreed. "Neither are chickens."

"Pigs are a little bit cute."

Mrs. Fischer disagreed. "Only in some movies like Babe and Charlotte's Web. Those are fairy-tale pigs, not real pigs."

Neither of us spoke for a minute, listening to the rain drumming on the limousine, seeming to float through the night, and finally I said, "So when we finish whatever business we're doing at Mazie's, is there another route out or do we have to come back along this track?"

"There's just this one. But not to worry, child. I don't believe snakes have the capacity to strategize. Anyhow, doing what you have to do, always and without complaint-that's the way."

"That's the way, huh?"

"That's the way," she confirmed.

A pair of thirty-foot Joshua trees appeared on each side of the road, eerie figures in the storm, less suggestive of trees than of blind creatures that might prowl the floor of an ocean, ceaselessly combing scents and tastes and, ultimately, small fish from the deep cold currents. They had been named by Mormon settlers, who thought these strange giants appeared to be warriorlike but also to be raising their arms beseechingly to Heaven, just as Joshua did at the battle of Jericho.

Easing off the accelerator again, Mrs. Fischer gestured toward the trees. "Even in daylight they look real, but they aren't."

"They aren't Joshua trees? Then what are they, ma'am?"

As we coasted forward, she said, "Just try to ram the gate, and you'll find out."

A nine-foot chain-link barrier, topped with coils of concertina wire with razor-sharp projections, loomed out of the rain, and Mrs. Fischer braked to a stop before it.

Fixed to the gate, a large ominous metal sign featured a skull and crossbones in each corner. Red letters warned: EXTREME DANGER / BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH STATION / VIRAL DISEASES / FLESH-EATING BACTERIA / TOXIC SUBSTANCES / DEADLY MOLDS / DISEASE-BEARING TEST ANIMALS / ADMITTANCE ONLY TO PROPERLY INOCULATED PERSONNEL. Those words were repeated at the bottom of the sign in Spanish.

Mrs. Fischer said, "That's just Mazie and Kipp's way of saying 'Private property, keep out.'"

"Probably works. Who's Kipp?"

"Her husband. You'll love him."

"I thought it was just her and her two sons."

"Well, dear, she's a woman, not a paramecium. She didn't just split in two a couple of times to produce Tracker and Leander."

"Ma'am, the way things have been going lately, I take nothing for granted."

From her purse, she retrieved her cell phone and placed a call. "Hi, Mazie. It's Lulu from Tuscaloosa." She waved at the gate, which I took to mean that a concealed camera was trained on the windshield. "Well, he's my new chauffeur." She reached out to pinch my cheek. "Yes, he's adorable."

Because it seemed to be the polite thing to do, I waved at the camera, wondering if it could detect the blush of my embarra.s.sment.

Mrs. Fischer said, "Oh, that's just because he dawdles. And since we've got an emergency we have to get to, I took the wheel." She listened for a moment, said, "Thank you, Mazie, you're a sweetheart," and terminated the call.

I said, "Lulu from Tuscaloosa?"

As the gate began to roll aside, she said, "Oh, that's just sort of my secret pa.s.sword. When you're in the line of work that Mazie and Kipp are in, you need pa.s.swords and codes and cryptograms, that kind of thing."

"What is their line of work?"

"Being helpful, dear."

"That's a pretty broad job description."

"Being helpful, but only to those who ought to be helped."

She coasted through the open gate, and I said, "How do Mazie and Kipp decide who ought and who ought not?"

"Well, they take new business only by referral from people they trust. And Mazie has the very best bulls.h.i.t detector ever. And then there's Big Dog."

We came to a halt in a cage, chain-link overhead as well as on all sides, another gate directly in front of us. The gate behind us rolled shut.

As we waited, I said, "Who's Big Dog?"

"When you see him, you'll know. There just couldn't be any other name for him."

Slanting through the chain-link and the concertina wire, some of the raindrops battered and shaved themselves into a fine mist. Chaotic gusts of wind spun those ravelings of fog into half-formed dancers with featureless faces, as ragged as anything that had been long in grave clothes, and waltzed them across the cage, out into the open night.

"Ma'am, I hate being all questions, but-what are we waiting here for?"

"They're checking out the car to be sure no one else is in it, because maybe we came here under duress."

"How are they checking it out?"

"Beats me. Techie stuff. They're probably scanning for insect spy drones, too, though I'm sure there isn't one in the car."

The gate in front of us rolled open, and Mrs. Fischer drove into a large compound that must have had a reliable water source, like an artesian well, because a forest of Phoenix and queen palms tossed in the wind. Mazie had made an oasis for herself.

Mrs. Fischer followed a gravel driveway, which appeared to be bordered by beds of succulents. She parked under a portico that, on blistering Mojave days, would shade the front of the house.

Neither the portico nor the residence was elegant. From what I could see, the single-story structure sprawled over as much as ten thousand square feet, but it was built of poured-in-place steel-reinforced concrete left in its "natural" finish, with a flat roof. It looked more like a bunker than like a home, with narrow deep-set windows that featured small French panes within stainless-steel frames and muntins that flashed silver in the headlights.

When we got out of the Mercedes, lights came on in the ceiling of the portico.

"Way out here, they must have their own generator," I said, raising my voice to be heard above the keening wind that thrashed the palm fronds.

"Lots and lots of solar panels," Mrs. Fischer said as she took my arm and pretended that I was helping her to the front entrance. "Plus two gasoline-powered generators, one to back up the other."

"What are they-survivalists?"

"No, dear. They just like their privacy."

More suitable to a vault than to a home, the stainless-steel door opened, and before us stood a fifty-something guy with a shock of red hair and lively green eyes. He had a face as sweetly appealing as that of Bill Cosby, a face of such likability that he would have been perfect to play the father in a TV-sitcom family, not in any contemporary show but in one made back in the day when sitcom dads were more real and less grotesque than they are now, when everyone still knew that families matter, when the word values meant something more important than the sales prices at the currently cool clothing store where you buy your gear.

He wore white tennis shoes, khakis, a white T-shirt, and a full-length yellow ap.r.o.n on which were printed the words KITCHEN SLAVE, and he was wiping his hands on a dishtowel. At the sight of Mrs. Fischer, he broke into a killer smile that would have been hard to match even by Tom Cruise or a golden retriever. "Come in, get out of that nasty night." As he ushered us across the threshold, he tucked the towel in an ap.r.o.n pocket. He took Mrs. Fischer's hands, brought them to his lips, kissed them, not as a courtly Frenchman might have done, but as a son might have kissed the worn and aged hands of a beloved mother.

He said, "We were so happy when we heard about Oscar."

"Kipp, dear, you're as kind as ever. Oscar waited a long time for his big moment, and I'm sure he found the wait worthwhile."

"No suffering?" Kipp asked.

"Not for someone who'd so completely gotten back his innocence. Oscar had been smooth and blue for years."

"It's just great news."

"When the people at the funeral home gave me the ashes in an urn, we all drank some Dom Perignon. You know how much Oscar liked Dom Perignon."

Turning to me, Kipp said, "You must be Edie's new chauffeur."

"Yes, sir. Thomas is the name."

We shook hands, and he said, "May I call you Tom?"

"That's as good as anything, sir."

"Please call me Kipp."

"Yes, sir."

He would never need a knife to spread a pat of b.u.t.ter on his toast. That smile would quickly melt it.

"Have you had dinner?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Back in Barstow."

"We ran into Chandelle and Gideon outside the restaurant," Mrs. Fischer told him.

Our host said, "That was an amazing thing they did last December in Pennsylvania."

"Wasn't it, dear? And for ever so long, poor Pennsylvania has needed something amazing to happen there."

"We might be outnumbered, Edie, but we're going to win this thing."

"I've never doubted it," Mrs. Fischer said.

"What thing?" I asked.

"The whole amazing thing!" Kipp declared with childlike delight. "Anyway, we were just about to have dinner when you showed up, but I hear you're in a hurry."

Mrs. Fischer said, "We're in a terrible hurry, Kipp. Could you put dinner in stasis and help us first?"

"That's exactly what we've done, we've put it in stasis."

I knew what the word stasis meant: the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces. I suspected that Kipp didn't simply mean that they had stowed dinner in a warming drawer.

Something huge and black burst into the foyer, and I let out a squeal of alarm that was no doubt identical to the sound that Little Miss m.u.f.fet made when a spider sat down beside her on that stupid tuffet.

Twenty-two.

THE CREATURE SURPRISED ME, COMING FROM MY RIGHT side, but when I reeled back, I realized this was none other than Big Dog, because he was a really big dog, a black Great Dane with soulful brown eyes. He was the most humongous specimen of his breed that I'd ever seen, his head so large that you might have been able to do a handstand on it if you could have trained him for a circus act. His ears hadn't been cropped when he was a puppy, which is a common practice among breeders; therefore, they didn't stand up but folded forward as if they were the flaps on two velvet purses.

Kipp said, "Don't be afraid, Tom. Big Dog is as gentle as a lamb-unless you mean to harm anyone in this house, which you don't."

"I definitely don't, sir."

"Just call him Big or Biggy, and let him smell you."

I said, "Hey there, Biggy. Big Biggy. Good dog."

The Dane snuffled at my jeans and sweater with such enthusiasm that I half thought he might vacuum them off my body.

Mrs. Fischer cooed to the dog: "Sweet Biggy Wiggy, him such a pretty, pretty boy."

Suddenly done with me, whimpering with extreme doggy pleasure, Biggy collapsed at Mrs. Fischer's feet. He rolled onto his back and bared his belly, tail swishing and thumping on the polished-mahogany floor in recognition of his old friend.

Mrs. Fischer knelt to rub the dog's tummy, and Kipp said, "What do you need, Edie? Birth certificates, driver's licenses, pa.s.sports, somebody's computer system hacked? Oh, and we've just got some of those insect spy drones the government doesn't want the public to know about, complete with control stations."

Biggy's mouth had fallen open, revealing two curved archipelagos of white teeth in a sea of black gums. In his throat he made a deep purring sound, as though he had swallowed a house cat whole.

As always, Mrs. Fischer knew what she wanted. "Kipp, dear, we need one bulletproof vest for Tom. Then a police gun belt hung with four spare magazine pouches, two Mace holders, one snap pouch to hold a Talkabout, one stretch sheath with a little flashlight, no swivel holster. We need a double shoulder rig so the child can carry a pistol under each arm. We'll need two Talkabouts, one for the gun belt, one for me. We don't want Mace for the Mace holders, but two ten-shot units of pressure-stream sedative. For the pistols, we'll need whatever you can match with sound suppressors. This job falls apart as soon as anyone hears a gunshot. Can you do all that?"

"What do you think?"