THERE ARE NO WINDOWS, AND THE OVERHEAD LAMPS inside the machine shop are an intense candlepower on a par with an OR. I can see Lucy and Janet in vivid detail. I can make out the expressions on their faces and their every gesture as they hover by the same area of flooring, the bright lights harsh on them, unkind and glaring, and that’s the way life feels right now.

Exposed, unsafe and rife with deceptions and brazen lies as I witness my niece and her partner in the privacy of their home. They’re deliberating, talking somewhat tersely, cryptically in the midst of workbenches, with vises and tall red roll-around toolboxes, a CNC mill and lathe and a table saw, a surface grinder, a shaper, drill press and welding machines.

I don’t know for a fact what they’re pondering but I can make an educated guess. They’ve hidden something down here, probably Lucy has. Drugs, firearms, maybe both, and as I watch my niece and listen to her I realize her FBI sweats from her academy days still seem ironic to me but not in the same way.

They’re not the chest-thumping taunt they were hours ago when I first saw her trotting toward me on her driveway. They look wilted and faded, sweat splotched and tired in their soft cotton grayness, drooping and defeated like a faded old battle flag on a windless day. Lucy looks rather pitiful really, and her demeanor has completely changed. She’s fast talking and aggressive, about to fly apart and I know what that means. It’s the way she gets when she’s desperate. Which is almost never.

“Didn’t I tell you nobody would ever know? And they were walking in and out of here all day without a clue. I told you there was nothing to worry about.” Lucy is full of bravado and I don’t buy it.

She’s scared.

“There’s everything to worry about.” Janet is quiet and controlled but I sense something else. “They’ve predicted you’ll do this.”

“So you’ve said fifty times.”

“And I’ll make it fifty-one times, Lucy. They can anticipate with pretty good certainty what your post offense behavior is going to be.”

“I’ve not committed an offense. They fucking have.”

“Do you want me to talk like a lawyer right now?”

“No I don’t.”

“I’m going to anyway. Erin Loria knows how you’re wired. She’s well aware there’s no way you’d ever allow us to be left in the position they’ve just put us in—of not being able to defend ourselves. She knows you’re not going to sit on your hands and let us be hurt or killed.”

“Why is it my behavior and not both of us? Since when do you sit on your hands either?”

“They took my guns too,” Janet says as if that answers the question.