The agents and investigators didn’t always want to hear the truths he had to tell them, but then it was not his concern that the truth as he knew it was ugly and inconvenient for them. He knew that Maive was giving them the same accounts, and so was Sofia. Adam had taken many dozens of photographs with which to corroborate their tales of bloody murder and perdition down in the Republic of Texas. In addition, Trudi Jessup, a government employee, one of their own people, had verified everything. Yet they still didn’t seem to accept, or want to accept, the truth of what had happened. These were ‘isolated incidents’, the investigators told him. Unfortunate events. The frontier was a dangerous place everywhere, they said.

Miguel shook his head in frustration. He wished Trudi were with them now. For a government woman, she was akin to an angel. She had been such a good friend to them, not just on the trail, but after they’d finally made it to KC too.

He cast his mind back to early August, to the morning he arrived at the café in the River Market for their weekly breakfast meeting. They were falling into the routine of city life by that time. Sofia had settled, uneasily, into the notion of becoming a ‘Northtown Hornet’ at the high school. He was working. They had the pleasure of routine, meeting Trudi and Maive every week to ‘catch up’, as the women called it. That particular day, the barista greeted Miguel with a sad look, and handed him a note: Trudi was gone. He knew it before he opened the slip of paper. She had been transferred back to Seattle, with immediate effect; no time even to say her goodbyes.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Maive asked, bringing him back to the cold reality of this stark winter morning.

‘They are worth less than that.’

‘They’re worth something to me,’ she said gently.

They reached a corner and waited as a small convoy of military trucks, gears a-grinding, rumbled by. The troops in the back looked wet and miserable, as though they had been out in the weather all night.

‘You know,’ said Maive, speaking up to be heard over the engine noise. ‘There were times when I wanted to tear my hair out talking to those migration people. Honestly, Miguel, it was like they were investigating you, not the road agents. But don’t worry. I told them I would go straight to the press, to the Huffington Post, if I thought for a moment they were trying to cause trouble for you or Sofia. I know that Trudi said the same thing. I think that drew them up short – the idea that they might have to account for the fact they’d let a bunch of rapists and murderers run wild in their precious Mandate. I think it might even explain why they transferred her so quickly.’