Soon enough they would know he was still loose and they had sustained still more casualties. They would have to redouble their efforts to reel him in. He reloaded. Even if he found Amy and the two of them got out of Colombia alive, they would still have Chino after them. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It was as if the nightmare suddenly exploded inside him anew. They would have Chino after them forever. O’Malley had been the proof of that. Working for Chino’s enemies? The money is where the money is. Merrill knew what the phrase meant, but why was it bounding through his thoughts like a tired old song?

The bright strip of road appeared through the darkness of the trees, and Merrill started to take a course parallel to it. No sign of anyone. Around a bend the car was where he had left it, pulled over to the side, where Rosario would have been out of harm’s way. A little way beyond the car a shadow stretched across the middle of the road. Merrill wanted to stay away from the road itself, in case he had to run for it again. He moved past the car carefully, edging closer to the road to get a better look at the long package beyond. A dark stain spread from one end of the package across the pavement.

At a distance of thirty feet the package came into focus. It was Rosario’s body.

Rosario’s head was on the other side of the road, face up in the weeds.

Eight

EIGHT

From her position behind the bar Amy watched Gregory pause in front of the mirror to smooth his hair with his hand. He had changed his suit. Now he was wearing a soft, cream-colored, summer-weight, single-breasted flannel number so finely tailored that Amy could not imagine that it had cost less than two thousand dollars. He had changed his shirt and tie, too, the shirt solid blue with a wide collar, and a dark blue tie with small crimson figures.