All these gray back roads that called to me, how doubling back and the walk to the houseboat I lived in now weren’t chores or a difficulty. The hawk on the wire. The deer staring from a vacant field. The mink staring at me from the side of the road, juxtaposed with dull clay and tall grasses. It wasn’t the idea of nature as Silvina saw it. Not the connection with an invisible world. But it meant something to me, moving through the wilderness. Maybe because I knew it would’ve meant something to Ned, too.

The thing that made me chuckle cleaning the Fusk or just staring at the half-burnt salamander: even as dysfunctional as it had been, I’d thought I’d needed some semblance of office camaraderie. I thought I’d needed small talk by the watercooler. The drunken Christmas party with the splayed-out table of miniature, perfectly plated appetizers.

No threat of that now. None of that was real. None of it now felt like it had ever been real.

But the growing sense of betrayal, looming—that was real.

For example, once you looked for a connection between Vilcapampa and Langer, you found it almost right away. Shell companies that colluded on both sides. The way Langer companies gave over to Vilcapampa companies’ resources Silvina couldn’t find otherwise. Most of these companies weren’t the ones Silvina had run, but some were. The way Silvina sold out Contila but let Langer slip away from the authorities. Or someone did.

I bought burner phones like they were breath mints. Tedious work, covering my tracks. Each new connection made me sadder, but also more suspicious. Silvina had needed Langer. Silvina had drawn Langer in. Vilcapampa had said she’d blackmailed him. What did that mean? Vilcapampa had meant it as proof Silvina was corrupt, but how could he be sure? Effective tactic: to accuse your enemy of the crime you had committed. Politicians did it all the time.

I settled on a scenario like a thesis, intending to poke holes in it. What if. What if Silvina got to stay in the U.S. because she gave up Langer’s organization to the authorities? Even as she played both sides because Vilcapampa Senior also engaged in wildlife trafficking? Or had at one time. And, during that period, Silvina had a desperate need to acquire or steal wildlife contraband and resell it to fund her own secret project because her family had cut her off.

Which brought me back to a question I couldn’t quite answer: Why, exactly, had Langer tried to kill me? Because of the past or because of the future?

[70]