“So last night after my shift I tried to track down Fanta. He wasn’t home. He wasn’t at his office. I spent until midnight searching the taverns. By then I was worried for him. I had a hunch—that name Goodgolly just rings all kind of bells—and I drove out here, where we’re headed now. I thought I might find him at Goodgolly’s farm.”

He pumped his brakes for a doe crossing the road, timing her, then came to his senses. He slowed hard and stopped Luck’s Tahoe to wait for two fawns to skitter out, halt in panic, and gallop after.

“That time of day,” he muttered. As he accelerated, her tongue came unstuck.

“Dick, I thought you hated me.”

“Personal feelings got nothing to do with it.”

No sooner had he rammed the Tahoe back up to speed and crested a sunlit rise than he had to hit his brakes again for an Amish wagon rolling down the backside. A plow horse shuddered against the weight of the wagon and its precarious heap of cut hay. Two wide-eyed tykes in straw hats rode at the very top of the heap.

“How the hell they don’t fall off of there…” Bender grumbled. With blind curves ahead, he had to be patient. She had to be patient with him.

“Well, I appreciate—”

“I will just be goddamned,” he blurted, pumping the brake, “if Prickreiner is going to wear that badge.”

“I appreciate that. You don’t have to like me.”

“I’ll quit if he gets elected. But I’m afraid of that. I don’t know what else I’d do.”

“Dick, I appreciate that.”

“It’s good to be appreciated.”

“I appreciate you, Dick.”

“Good.”

At last he got enough straightaway to ease around the hay wagon. Clear, he flattened the accelerator, throwing her head back. Four roller-coaster miles later, he took the final turn and launched the Tahoe east on Liberty Hill Road, spewing dust and gravel behind.

Halfway into Jon Golly’s driveway, she jumped out, pushed open the heavy swing gate, and jumped back in. As Bender hit the gas, she felt disembodied, as if someone else had just done that. Oh, Taylor. Oh, God, please.

She felt blind with terror as they bounced through Jon Golly’s sun-scorched yard past the house and clothesline, the sawmill and barn and wellhead pump, then out the tractor road on the north end of the farm where a steep green coulee wall rose and filled the windshield. There was Bender’s Avenger, parked beside the stream that cut the coulee. The sight startled her back to the task. The Avenger’s tires were knifed. Its windows were smashed. The radio and onboard computer were damaged. A failed attempt to penetrate its trunk had ended with an old-fashioned farm tool, a scythe, embedded in the lid.

Bender shut off Luck’s overheating engine.