Best to cut that shit off now, sister.

She dropped her keycard off at the desk and made her way over to the entrance to wait for Dan Colvin. She wasn’t sure what, if any, meaning she should look for in the killing of the homesteader. There was no obvious connection to her primary interest, namely Baumer, Ozal, and the undeclared salvage contract the latter’s company, Hazm Unternehmen, had obtained down in Texas. And it wasn’t as though settlers didn’t have it tough on the frontier anyway. There were more than enough real pirates and banditos out there.

Just as she was shaking her head at the muddy, opaque nature of it all, she recognised Special Agent Colvin coming towards her through the revolving doors. A black, GSA 2002 Chevy Suburban sat idling outside for them.

‘Colonel Murdoch,’ he said, offering her a smile. Dressed in jeans and an anonymous sports coat, he looked like any other government contractor. Apparently there was not much call for the suit-and-tie look of the Hoover era these days.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said.

‘De nada.’ He took her suitcase without preamble and wheeled it out towards the car. ‘Where are you flying off to?’

‘Just the next stop on my never-ending End of the World Tour,’ Caitlin replied.

If Special Agent Colvin was sufficiently alert to have noticed she hadn’t answered him, he was also good-mannered enough to make nothing of it. He took care when hoisting her luggage into the back of the Suburban. Although there was nothing breakable in there, Caitlin appreciated the thought nonetheless. She couldn’t help noticing a number of foreign-language books piled up in a plastic bin in the trunk, among them The Complete Idiot’s Guide to French and a similar Spanish title. A third book looked like a text from the now defunct Defense Language Institute.

She indicated the collection with a tilt of her head. ‘How many languages do you speak?’

He didn’t seem the type to puff up his chest and brag about himself. ‘Oh, three if you count Arabic. How about you?’

‘None,’ she lied. ‘I have a hard enough time with English.’

She picked up a manila folder from the passenger seat, Miguel Pieraro’s name handwritten on its cover in thick black ink. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked as they strapped themselves in.

‘Sure, knock yourself out, ma’am.’

He put the Suburban into gear, before navigating his way around the potholes, following a route that took them east towards the Chouteau Trafficway. There was no light to wait for at any of the intersections. He simply stopped long enough to avoid a pair of Hummers leaving the militia substation at the Chouteau Bridge, before proceeding north to the ramp for Highway 210.