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But nothing happened.

He continued to be Max.

And pretty soon, his thoughts branched out from the word “move.” He began to think, to plan. How would he get out of this situation, what could he do? He thought about the script Darren had given him to read, his one or two lines. The girl, the mother, the car. And a strange thing happened. He was becoming stronger , not weaker.

Max lay in the tank, touching nothing. No sensation on his skin, no sense of smell, no taste, nothing to hear, no one to reach out to. But he felt a presence. Realized with surprise who it was. The deputy-turned-detective. Her calm eyes, her proximity . Bide your time, she seemed to say. The idea that he was not alone, that she was somehow here with him, perhaps even looking for him, bolstered his courage. Plan for every contingency, she told him. Be ready. He held onto that—an inner flame that glowed inside him, like a bright green fire.

Be ready.

Chapter Forty-Five

DAVE FINLEY SLID into the seat of the Cadillac CTS-V sports coupe, careful to stare straight ahead. A profile was easier to fake than a full-on shot. The paps were kept out by the barred fence surrounding the healing center. He couldn’t hear their cameras clicking, but he could see the long telephotos pushed through the bars. Plenty of other people had snapped photos of him today—everybody had a cell phone—but he knew from experience how people accepted him at face value. No one had ever questioned that Dave was Max when they went on their little adventures. Not in all the years they had switched places.

A couple of paps followed—one on a motorcycle and two in cars.

Dave was good at evasive driving and knew all the tricks. He and Max had ditched a lot of paparazzi in their time.

Once he’d shed the paps, he drove down into the Verde Valley.

He was supposed to take Argos Road, a two-lane that headed out into the wilderness to the west. But as he drove, he thought, Maybe I should just take the Cadillac and keep on going .

What was he thinking when he told Gordon he’d have no problem shooting Max? He would be happy if they did it, but no way would he get himself into the middle of that. He’d never killed anybody.

Dave checked his watch. He was supposed to drive out to the property (there actually was a place for sale way out there in the boondocks, although he would not stop) and then, later today, meet up with them at the outlet mall soundstage and they would go from there.

That was before they had asked him to kill Max.

Did that ever come out of left field.

But hadn’t he pictured himself shooting Max a dozen times? Confronting Max over that time in the canyon with Karen, and watching Max beg for his life?

He felt the familiar rage build again. How they’d betrayed him, thinking he’d gone off ahead down the canyon. And yes, he had gone on ahead, but decided to go back for them. And that was when he saw them:

His wife and his best friend.

He should have confronted them then. But he didn’t. Instead, he’d swallowed his anger.

His resentment only grew. Good ol’ Dave, Max’s best buddy since they were kids. What a joke.

Dave had always known, if he were ever to go through with it, he’d hire a hit man.

It had been easier just to go along with Jerry and Gordon’s plan, once he knew what they were doing. Let them take the risks. And then, this morning, when they’d met in Jerry’s suite—

They told him that not only did they expect him to shoot Max, they wanted him to shoot an unarmed woman and her kid!

The woman he’d solicited at the Safeway.

Their killer, the crazy woman Shaun, turned out to be a no-show.

And they expected him to do it? To shoot a woman and a child?

Dave knew when something was doomed to fail. As much as he’d like to see Max dead, he wanted someone else to do it.

Plus, he had his doubts he could even do it. Drill Max with two shots to the heart with a .22?

Crazy. You had to be a stone-cold killer to do that. Even an expert marksman would be affected by executing a guy. It was bound to affect his aim.

Jerry’d told him why they wanted Max to be shot in the chest with a .22. They wanted him to look good. “If somebody got into the morgue and got pictures of him, at least the wounds would be small and neat.”

Small and neat.

Jerry was in his own little world. The asshole spent too much of his time coming up with crazy schemes.

It wasn’t going to work. Not when you dragged a woman and a kid into it. How do you keep a lid on that ?

As much as Dave hated his so-called best friend, he’d have to put his money on Max.

At least he could save the woman and her daughter. He’d called earlier to tell her what time she should be at the outlet mall, giving clear directions to go to the back of the largest store in the middle of the mall. She didn’t answer her phone this time either. He waited for the tone and left a message, telling her the shoot was off and they didn’t need her after all.

He hoped she got the message.

Dave turned onto the main drag in Cottonwood, where he’d parked his truck and cargo trailer behind a Pep Boys store. He left the Cadillac in the parking lot of the Pep Boys, careful to wipe down the steering wheel, dash, car door handles, seats, and everything else he’d touched. He left the window rolled down and the keys in the ignition. With luck, somebody would steal the thing.

Chapter Forty-Six

TESS DIDN’T GET on the road until midafternoon, driving up I-17 in the direction of the Desert Oasis Healing Center. She’d had a lot to do, what with two crime scenes in Bajada County and Pat being shorthanded. Fortunately, they’d had some help from DPS, which had enlarged its investigation beyond the accident on the I-17 access road.

Earlier today, Tess had caught the local news on TV. The story had shifted from Max Conroy sightings to a warning to watch out for a woman who had been involved in a car accident with a Bajada County sheriff’s detective the day before. Tess had sat down with a police artist earlier today. The woman’s face was indelible in Tess’s mind, and that transferred to the artist’s likeness of her. The resemblance was chilling.

The woman was a person of interest in six deaths. She was considered armed and dangerous, and citizens were cautioned not to approach her under any circumstances.

Tess was halfway through the two-hour drive to Jerome when she spotted a vehicle flashing past on the freeway coming from the other direction, a truck pulling a cargo trailer—the kind you’d haul motorcycles with. She saw it for only a moment, but knew immediately who it belonged to. The logos on the trailer and on the truck door were identical to the logo above the door of a fabricated metal shop in LA: Luna Vintage Motorcycles. Tess had seen the sign in the People article on Max Conroy. Max and his best friend from boyhood, Dave Finley, had posed before the building. Max wore a white undershirt, and Dave wore a black one. Their arms had been crossed—just a couple of toughs. The photo had been taken at an angle so they seemed to tower over the viewer in grainy black and white. Max was shorter and leaner than Dave. Dave’s face was fuller and he wore sideburns. They could almost be twins. They could definitely be brothers.

The truck and trailer hurtled down the freeway in the opposite direction. The same sign: Luna Vintage Motorcycles. A Ouija board sun on one side and a Ouija board moon on the other, and underneath the name of the shop, the word “good-bye.” Silver letters on black.

Was Max in that truck?

Tess turned off at the next exit and got back on the freeway going the other direction. She roared up on him, toggled her wigwag lights, and hit the siren.