“I didn’t, for sure. It was just a feeling.”

“Turn right at L, then go left at the next signal. Based on what?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it.”

“Will you try?”

“It was a lot of things. Things that had been floating around in my head. Like the claymores at the compound. The trip wire on porch steps of the farmhouse. The buried cash. It’s hard to nail down.”

“There was a trip wire?”

“It was rigged to a bunch of empty beer bottles. I cut the string before you got there.”

“I saw the bottles, but I didn’t think twice about them.”

“Harv and I were trained to look for stuff like that, to be suspicious of things that seem ordinary. I’m just glad the garage door itself wasn’t rigged. That’s why I asked you and Henning to look for a wire when I started lifting it.”

“I’m just really glad you were there. To be honest, I resented your involvement. I didn’t say anything at the airport. I didn’t want to offend you.”

“Larry Gifford told me the same thing at the compound, almost word for word.”

“Larry’s a good man.”

“I like Gifford a lot,” Nathan said. “He’s the real deal.”

“We’re like a family, the FBI. We look out for each other. Sometimes I think we’re dependent on each other to the point of being restrictive, arrogant even. We don’t like asking for outside help.”

“You’re not alone.”

“How can you sound so calm about all this? The Bridgestones know who you are.”

“Like I said, all they have is my name.”

“Turn left at the next signal. You can park anywhere, the bar’s just up the street.”

Nathan pulled over to the curb and climbed out quickly, but before he made it to Holly’s side of the Explorer, she had her door open and was sliding out. He closed it for her.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“My mother’s old school.”

They walked in silence down the sidewalk. A few cars still lingered about, but for the most part, the downtown streets of Sacramento were deserted. Nathan saw the entrance to the bar just ahead. A small black awning overhung its glass door. A red neon sign in the shape of a grand piano lit the window next to the door. The opposite window had two blue neon signs shaped like cocktail glasses. He could hear muffled jazz coming from inside. It sounded good, even through the glass. He looked for black, flattened wads of gum on the sidewalk as a gauge of the bar’s patrons and found none. The glass door was clean. No handprints or smudges.