Again, Flix refused to answer what was obviously a rhetorical question.

St. Vincent cleared his throat. “In any event, the good news is that Lucy has been found.”

Orteño’s heart began to pound. This was not at all what he had expected. “She has? Where? Where is she? When can she be brought back to us?”

“Not so fast, Felix. There are, um, complications. She’s been charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell. In the state where she was picked up, that’s a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence if she’s convicted, and believe me when I tell you that she will be.”

“What?” As fast as elation had come upon him, it was plowed under by dread. He felt as if he were choking. “They can’t—”

“I’m afraid they can, Felix.” An artfully arranged expression of sorrow and pity arrived on St. Vincent’s face dead on schedule. “And they surely will.”

“Don’t tell me. You know both the state police chief and the chief prosecutor well.”

“True enough.” St. Vincent studied his nails, which were as perfect and shiny as a runway model’s. “But I’m also very well connected in the FBI. I can send in the feds and, well, you’re a smart guy, you know the rest.”

There was nothing more to say, so St. Vincent simply checked out the monitors Orteño was attached to. He had made his pitch. The rest was up to the patient.

Orteño put his head back on the pillow. He became aware that he was sweating. He hated sweating; he almost never did, unless he was sufficiently ill to warrant it. He closed his eyes, as if to blot out the man standing beside his bed. He remembered with vivid clarity his sister’s almost unimaginable loss. How she had been inconsolable, how, had it not been for him, she would have slipped into a deep depression, a downward spiral from which there might very well have been no returning. He had gotten her into counseling, then to a meds psychiatrist, and slowly but surely she had righted the ship. But always in the back of her mind was the loss of her beloved Lucy. He imagined now how the news would hit Marilena. The joy that would suffuse her face, her entire being. Then he imagined keeping the news from her, keeping Lucy from her, Lucy in jail, and he knew that he couldn’t allow any of that to happen.

He opened his eyes. St. Vincent was still there, but now his gaze had fallen upon Orteño. “The reunion,” he said in a thick voice. “When?”

“As soon as you agree to my proposal.”

“How will I contact you?”

St. Vincent produced a mobile phone. “This is only for us. It has no GPS, so it cannot be tracked. It also possesses the latest DARPA encryption, whether we speak or text each other. It’s absolutely secure. My private number is built in.”

St. Vincent held out his left hand—the hand of the devil, it was thought, in medieval times, and still today in areas of rural Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Flix had no choice; he took it.