The patio was packed tonight. Four residents and a visitor—a middle-aged woman busy preparing a plate of cheese and crackers for her father. Or grandfather. Helen hoped to be long gone before she reached that golden age of ambiguity, and given the likely response to Wilson’s kidnapping, she stood a good chance of skipping the nursing-home stage altogether. If they caught up to her before she could convince the agency to protect her, she’d end up in a gently heated barrel of lye. Turned into a DNA slurry over the course of several days and unceremoniously poured down a drain. Still sounded marginally better than melting into a bed here over the course of several years.

The other residents were spread out along the spacious patio, having parked themselves in chairs facing west. None of them were particularly well positioned to witness what was about to happen to one of their elderly compatriots.

Wilson sat at the far-left edge of the patio in his wheelchair, drink dangling precariously over the right armrest. She had to squint to see him, the deep-orange sun still glaringly bright as it touched the top of the distant trees. Helen reached into the tote bag and readied one of the blue syringes, keeping it hidden inside until she was directly behind him.

She lightly jabbed Wilson’s upper-left shoulder with the syringe and injected its contents before sidestepping to the right. He muttered an obscenity and turned his head to examine the site of the injection, missing her entirely. She took the drink from his right hand and downed it in one gulp, tossing the plastic cup in his lap. Jack Daniel’s from the bar, if she had to guess, and slightly watered down. Still hit the spot. He glanced at the cup, then her, an entirely bewildered look on his face. For a brief moment, she had second thoughts about the kidnapping. A senile Donald Wilson would be useless.

“What the hell?” he said, his eyes quickly shifting back to the cup.

“You spilled your drink,” she said.

“I think something stung me,” he said, touching his left shoulder.

Wilson appeared to have recovered from his initial confusion.

“I have a bottle in my bag,” she said, reaching into the tote that hung from her shoulder. “Jack Daniel’s. They told me my dad was out here. I thought you were him for a second. Care for a refill?”

“Sure,” he said, lifting the cup a few inches.

She prepared an eight-inch strip of duct tape, gripping it by both ends.

“My dad drinks it straight. Sometimes right out of the bottle,” she said. “I don’t have any mixers.”

“Your dad sounds like my kind of guy,” said Wilson. “What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”

“Beautiful,” she said, nodding toward the blood-orange orb sinking behind the trees.

“Sure is,” he said, shifting his attention to the sunset.