Randy White - Night Vision

I held the Sig’s magazine in my hand, testing the mobility of the rounds with my thumb, the odor of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun solvent spreading a lingering sweetness through the cab of my truck. It reminded me of Tomlinson’s crack about smelling gun oil in the lab whenever I felt restless. An inside joke? Or was it a veiled reminder that, one way or another, my relationship with Emily was doomed as long as I continued to live my shadow life.

Whether a dig or a warning, what he’d said was true: When I get restless, it shows. After a month or two without a new mission, I find myself studying maps. I find myself at night sitting within easy reach of my Trans-Oceanic Radio, recleaning my weapons as if that private ceremony was an incantation that would bring a call from my handler.

After inspecting the Sig Sauer, I took the much smaller, lighter Kahr pistol in hand. It was black-matte stainless, comfortable to hold. After so many years trusting the Sig, it was tough to admit that this was now my weapon of choice. It wasn’t as tiny as another favorite-a Seecamp. 380-but the Kahr slipped just as easily out of the pocket. And it could be hidden almost as completely in the palm of my hand. Firing the Kahr, though, was a pleasure, and it had more stopping power than the Seecamp.

Like the Sig, the Kahr was loaded with federal Hydra-Shok hollow points. But the Kahr had the added advantage of a built-in laser sight that was activated whenever I gripped the thing to fire.

Unlike the high-tech Dazer Guardian, also in the bag, the laser sight was red, not green.

It was unlikely that I would use any of these weapons, just as I knew there was very little chance now that I would stumble onto Harris Squires and the Guatemalan girl. He and Tula were on their way to Red Citrus while I was out here wasting time on back roads east of Immokalee.

It didn’t matter. I was in a certain mood. To rationalize wasting time, I told myself this was training, a way to stay sharp.

I leaned to roll down the passenger window, and drove on.

Tomlinson is right. I’m not a fast driver. I slowed even more whenever I switched on the dome light and checked the satellite aerial. My pal had used a highlighter to square off the boundaries of Squires’s property, but it still wasn’t easy to pick out landmarks. I was driving through a shadowed mesa of cypress that I guessed was Owl Hammock. It meant I had at least fifteen miles to go.

Thus far, I hadn’t passed a car. Not one.

Alternately squinting at the aerial, then accelerating, my headlights tunneled through a starry silence, toward a horizon abloom with the nuclear glow of Fort Lauderdale, eighty miles to the east.

I passed through the precise geometrics of tomato fields and citrus orchards. Then more cypress domes that exited into plains of myrtle and saw grass. My eyes moved from the road, to the satellite aerial, then to my watch.

11:45 p.m.

Training exercise or not, my mind wandered back to Emily. My reaction to her had been a surprise. A shock, in fact, and now it was a new source of restlessness that was pleasure mixed with angst.

I had left Tomlinson alone with Emily for a reason-a deceit that Tomlinson had guessed correctly. It was a test. He suspected it, I knew it. I was subjecting myself, my new lover and my old friend to yet another of my relentless personal evaluations.

“Why do you set traps for people you care about when you’re the one who is inevitably hurt?” a smart but troubled woman had once asked me.

I had no answer then. I had no answer now.

It was a uncomfortable truth to admit, but that was balanced by something I believed with equal honesty: Emily Marston could be trusted. There was no rational explanation for why I trusted her, but I did. Attraction is commonplace. A visceral, indefinable unity is not. The chemistry that links two people is comprised of elements too subtle to survive dissection, too complex to permit inspection.

It was unlike me to ponder the exigencies of romance, but that’s exactly what I was doing as the miles clicked by. My mind returned to the bedroom, where I had used every gentleness to follow Emily’s physical signals, then fine-tuned what I was doing to match her respiratory and moaning guidance. Our rhythms escalated until, finally, she had tumbled over a sheer apex, crying out, then sobbing, a woman so disoriented even minutes later that she seemed as vulnerable as a creature newly born.

I’d like to believe I am a competent lover, but I knew my skills did not account for an eruption of such magnitude. It was Emily, uniquely Emily, her physical release so explosive that it was as unmistakably visual as it was audible-a jettisoning fact that only made her sob harder, and voice her embarrassment.

“That’s why I’ve always been so careful about men,” she had whispered. “I can’t help how my body reacts, and it’s goddamn embarrassing. It creeped Paul out, I think, so I almost never really let myself go. Tonight, Christ! I got carried away, I guess. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? I had just experienced one of the most sensual couplings of my life. I did my best to reassure her and succeeded, apparently, because half an hour later it happened again.

To equate sexual release with trust was as irrational-or as sensible-as any other aspect of love play between male and female. But there it was. It was the way I felt.

Just by thinking it through, I felt better about coming to Immokalee alone. After only a day together, I had no right to expect fidelity from the woman nor a reason to demand trust. If Tomlinson or anyone else could lure Emily away, so be it. I would be disappointed. Very disappointed. But I also knew that I would be secretly relieved. Discovering the truth tonight might spare me a more painful surprise down the road-no doubt the reason why I set such traps in the first place.

It was refreshing to be able to admit that to myself. Freeing, in its way. So I closed a mental door on the subject and focused my attention on what I was doing.

A good thing, too.

By then, in the lights of my truck, I could see a curvature of tree line that indicated a bend in the road. According to the satellite aerial, it was where County Road 846 turned north as County Road 857-and marked the midway point of Squires’s acreage. To the south was saw grass and swamp. To the north, more of the fertilized geometrics that define Florida agriculture.

I slowed enough to poke my head out the window and checked an east-facing road sign that drifted past. I was not surprised by its message. It was the same sign I’d seen in my odd vision of the girl.

IMMOKALEE 22 MILES.

Almost concurrently, two Hispanic-looking men on the Everglades side of the road caught my attention. They were standing by a gate, smoking cigarettes, no vehicle in sight. The gate was chained, I noted. I also noted the way the men turned their faces away from my headlights, shielding their identities, as I drove past.

They were spotters, I decided. They were standing watch. If Squires had indeed driven Tula Choimha home to Red Citrus, why were these two guarding the gate to his Everglades acreage?

It suggested to me that I had indeed seen some kind of structure beneath the trees in the aerial photo. It suggested to me that Squires and the girl were nearby.

Slowing to a crawl, I gave the men a mild wave. In response, one of them flipped his middle finger, then turned his back. His reaction was more than just aggressive. It was stupid. Why would he invite a confrontation down here in redneck country, where a lot of pickup trucks still had gun racks?

I decided the guy was either drunk or he was aggressive for a reason. Was there something happening beyond that metal gate he couldn’t risk anyone seeing or hearing?

I shifted into neutral, letting the truck coast, as I picked up my phone to call Leroy Melinski. It was the reasonable thing to do even though I didn’t want to do it. Perversely, I hoped there was no reception or that I got the man’s voice mail. Leaving the detective out of the loop would allow me to remain invisible.