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Gordon ignored her. “Of course, as far as the cops and media know, he was right here all along. And no one can prove different. He was in rehab, in the sensory deprivation flotation tank, and we protected his privacy. Because that is what we do .”

Jerry laughed. “Good luck selling that, Gord. Just turn on the news. Seems to me a lot of people saw him.”

“Or saw somebody like him,” Gordon murmured. “Like his stunt double.”

“So what now, Gordon?” Talia said, that mosquito whine to her voice. Once this was over, once Jerry got control of Max’s estate, he was going to sever his relationship once and for all.

“I want him primed. If you think he’s messed up now, you should see him in a while.”

Jerry said, “We’ve got to talk about what we’re going to do next.”

“Oh, we will, Jer. But I, for one, am savoring the moment. I’ve been vindicated. From where I’m sitting, it’s ‘move along folks, nothing to see here.’ I made the right call.”

“The right call? What right call?”

“All along I’ve stood firm and told the media I’ve been protecting his privacy. The media, the cops, I told them the same thing. He’s here, he’s undergoing life-affirming therapy. Confidential therapy. I did not waver.”

Talia examined her nails. “Does this mean we’re not going to dissolve him in acid?”

SHERIFF BONNY BONNEVILLE made sure the door to his office was closed, then said to Tess. “You telling me you’d stake your career on that? Max Conroy is innocent in the killing of five people?”

It was just the two of them, although Bonny knew there were a few deputies crowded around the door, listening. Bonny lowered his voice. “He took you hostage. At gunpoint. At the very least, he’s in deep for that.”

“I know.”

Bonny stared out the window. Not that he could see anything. Just raindrops sliding down the glass and darkness behind it and a few street and porch lights, mostly glare. He tried to concentrate on everything his newly minted detective had told him, but it was hard to make sense of it.

Bonny knew what his mentor, the long-dead Sheriff Walt McKinney, who had been sheriff of Bajada County for forty years, would have said.

What does your gut tell you?

“Tell me again about the woman and the boy.”

Tess described them. “The boy is dead, though.”

“I’ll put out an Attempt to Locate for them both. Phrase it this way, ‘one or both.’ And the truck is operable?”

Tess said, “She drove right by. With the boy strapped into the seat.”

“You’re sure he’s dead?”

She looked at him. Her honest hazel eyes, smooth face, neat hair. Nothing spectacular—she wouldn’t stop traffic—but there was something about her. Something that couldn’t be summed up in words. Reliable , maybe. Although that didn’t do her justice.

Besides, she had that weird ability—what did they call it? Superior autobiographical memory.

He swiveled back in his chair and propped his lizard-skin boots up on the desk. “Tell me everything you remember.”

IT WAS QUITE a long list. Bonny put out an Attempt to Locate for a white Chevy Silverado 2500HD with a black bed liner. Tess had given him the license plate number. It was a new truck, this year’s model. Of course, Tess remembered the woman too. She described her down to her New Balance athletic shoes. The woman sounded like something out of a horror movie. Half man, half woman, and all mean. The fade haircut. The man’s clothes. The strange boy. Tess said she’d seen the woman with a .45 and a .22.

The .22 was an assassin’s gun. Tess was sure she was a hired assassin.

But would a hired assassin scalp one of the men at the mine site? “That doesn’t sound like an efficient killer to me,” Bonny said.

“It was the boy,” Tess said.

“The boy?”

Tess licked her lips. She was rarely unsure of herself, so he was taken aback by it. “I think,” she said, “it was a blooding.”

Her voice was soft.

“What did you say?”

“I think it was a blooding. She let him have the kill, and he went overboard.”

“You mean, like an animal?”

Tess looked at him with those disturbingly calm eyes. He noticed for the first time she had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.

“She was training him to be like her. To be a killer. I think…” Tess paused. “She doesn’t see the boy as her son. I think she sees him as her cub.”

BONNY KNEW HE’D face a firestorm of criticism. He’d be called every name in the book. But he sent out the Attempt to Locate for the man-woman and her cub (who might be dead or, for all he knew, regenerated like you saw in those god-awful horror movies his kid liked). He sent it out to every other agency in a five-hundred-mile radius. He fielded a dozen calls personally. He did not talk to the press, although the phone rang off the hook. He wondered if he should call a press conference. This was too much. He was in his late fifties, and it might be time to retire anyway. He could see himself on a lake in the White Mountains, fishing. In this state, in this day and age, this was no job for an old man.

Pat Kerney demanded to see him. Tess remained seated in Bonny’s office, and she said nothing during Pat’s tirade. Pat ended with, “We’re the laughingstock of the country!”

Tess just looked at Pat with those calm, reliable eyes.

After ten minutes, Bonny said to Pat, “Are you done?”

“Yes, I’m done!”

“Then follow my directive.”

Pat slammed out the door without another word.

Bonny sighed. “I’ve probably sunk my reelection bid, no matter what happens,” he murmured to no one in particular.

He glanced at her, looking for a sliver of doubt in those hazel eyes.

And found none.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

MAX LAY ATOP the bedspread, trying to remember. Did Jerry or Gordon ever show him a script? He didn’t think so. In fact, he was pretty sure they hadn’t. But Gordon had mentioned something about it.

He tried to remember. Something about a scene…one more scene for the film he’d just wrapped. The director had said something about it. That was his impression. But maybe the director hadn’t said anything at all. Hard for Max to remember. Everything got mixed up for Max these days. It was as if someone had been pouring stuff into his brain like veggies into a SaladShooter, and what came out was chopped into little pieces.

Desert God was the name of the film.

But the film had already wrapped, except for a few leftover scenes that didn’t involve him.

Would they really want him to do a scene now, while he was in rehab?

No. They wouldn’t.

He turned to the first the page of the script and started reading.

The scenario was all too familiar.

The scene opened with a long shot of a car on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere.

The room’s temperature seemed to drop fifty degrees. He could practically feel his organs shrink inside him.

There was a woman and a girl.

In the script, there was also a mother and a girl.

A mother and a little girl.

His face grew hot and his heart rate sped up.

A mother and a little girl and a car in the middle of nowhere.

The logical part of his mind told him there was no car, there was no mother with a little girl, not in Desert God . None of them belonged in the story. Whatever this was, it wasn’t Desert God . The scene had been tacked on.