“Share a tent with you? No, I think I can handle that. I'll do my best.”

Adanne stretched herself out on the mat. She reached out and patted my hand. Then I took her hand in mine.

“You have someone-back in America?” she asked.

“I do. Her name is Bree. She's a detective too.”

“She's your wife?”

“No, we're not married. I was-once. My first wife was killed. It was a long time ago, Adanne.”

“I'm sorry to ask so many questions, Alex. We should sleep now.”

Yes, we should sleep.

We held hands until we drifted off. Only that- hand-holding.

Chapter 90

THE FOLLOWING DAY, we left the camp at Kalma. Nine refugees had died during the nighttime attack; another four were still missing. If this had happened in Washington, the entire city would be in an uproar now.

Emmanuel was one of the dead, and they had cut off his head, probably because of his participation when we'd fought back earlier.

A mutual hunch took Adanne and me to the Abu Shouk camp, the next-largest settlement in the region. The reception there was more ambivalent than we'd gotten at Kalma.

A big fire the night before had made personnel scarce, and we were told to wait at the main administrative tent until we could be processed.

“Let's go,” I said to Adanne after we'd waited nearly an hour and a half.

She had to run to catch up with me. I was already headed up a row of what looked like shelters. Abu Shouk was much more uniform and dismal than Kalma. Nearly all of the buildings were of the same mud-brick construction.

“Go where?” Adanne said when she came up even with me.

“Where the people are.”

“All right, Alex. I'll be a detective with you today.”

Three hours later, Adanne and I had managed half a dozen almost completely unproductive conversations, with Adanne attempting to serve as translator. The residents were at first as friendly as those in Kalma, but as soon as I mentioned the Tiger, they shut down or just walked away from us. He had been here before, but that was all the people would tell us.

We finally came to an edge of the camp, where the sand plain continued on toward a range of low tan mountains in the distance, and probably bands of Janjaweed.

“Alex, we need to go back,” Adanne said. She had the tone of a person putting her foot down. “Unfortunately, this has been unproductive, don't you think? We're nearly dehydrated, and we don't even know where we're sleeping tonight. We'll be lucky to get a ride into town”-she stopped and looked around-“if we can even find our way back to the admin tent before dark.”

The place was like an impossible maze, with rows of identical huts wherever we looked. And so many displaced people, thousands and thousands, many of them sick and dying.