Taking one last look around the compound to make sure nothing was moving, no one was coming down the dirt track over the hill, he turned and went back into the villa. Somewhere deep inside him, that thing that had contracted whispered that he should tell Whitman of the inner changes. But then a battering pain quashed the thought, and by the time he rejoined Whitman he had forgotten all about the growing dichotomy inside him.

*   *   *

“I’m not telling you anything,” Bluto said, sitting on his hands in one corner of the steel bench. “I’m not an enemy combatant; we’re not in-country. I’ve got rights. This is America, buddy.”

“I’m not your buddy,” Kinkaid said.

“You can’t do this,” Bluto said. “You touch a hair on my head and you’re toast, fucker.”

That was when Kinkaid took out the noise-suppressed handgun Bluto had been wielding when he’d been taken into custody. With one hand he compressed Bluto’s nostrils, then, when he opened his mouth to breathe he jammed the end of the noise suppressor between his teeth.

“You came after one of my people with this.” By “my people” Kincaid meant one of Preach’s people, but he was happy to let Bluto believe he meant FBI. “You were all set to put a bullet in her temple, so don’t you fucking tell me you’re not an enemy combatant, that we’re not in-country. Don’t you dare claim this is America. You have no rights here. You’ve broken the law. NSA is forbidden to issue briefs on American soil. That’s strictly for the FBI.”

“I didn’t fire that,” Bluto mumbled around the metal. “You’ve got nothing on me.”

“Nothing, you say?” Bending over, Kinkaid shoved most of the barrel into Bluto’s mouth, making him gag. “Here, in my world, where you are, intent is nine-tenths of the law. When you got out of your car, drew this gun, and approached my people, you made your intent perfectly clear.”

Kinkaid shrugged. “So now you know the situation you find yourself in.” Inch by inch, he withdrew the gun from Bluto’s mouth. He unscrewed the noise suppressor, put away the two pieces of weaponry. “But, now I come to think of it, I wonder…”

Grabbing a chair, he spun it around, straddled it, folding his arms across the back. He sat, staring into Bluto’s face. “You may not know this, but my father was once in jail.” He spoke in a normal conversational tone, as if they were two friends exchanging war stories over drinks. “He was an embezzler—a mighty one, too. He had some powerful mojo going for him, even when he was in prison. Somehow—don’t ask me how—he got his sentence reduced to barely more than a tenth of what it had been. Can you beat that?”