“So why go after Roger Simpson and not Jack? Kind of a failure, isn’t it?” Wanting to drive in a knife.

“Vilcapampa’s evil. Jack’s a phantom. No one knows how to get to him.” All in good time.

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’d have liked to talk to Roger again, wouldn’t you? Good old Roger. Family protector. Him, Ronnie—that’d be rich. What they might tell you.”

It struck me Langer had gone rogue, too. It struck me that he was supremely unreliable. That it didn’t really matter what I said to him or he said to me.

Apparently, Langer’d had the same thought, because he raised the rifle. A tough shot in the rain, but he might catch me in the spray.

“Anyway, it ends here. Take your hand out of your pocket. Put the gun down.”

“It’s not a gun,” I whispered. “It’s a message from Silvina.”

I saw the look on his face as I pushed the button on the device. Saw him understand I didn’t much like my neighbor. And I realized he could read lips.

He was already diving into the river as the deck exploded around him. He was already being carried downriver, surrounded by hot embers and burning shards of wood. I saw his head bob to the surface, go under, as he tried to right himself. But the river was too swift. He went under again.

By the time he washed up somewhere, alive or dead, I’d be long gone.

THE FARM

[86]

What folly, by a different name. The blaze. The way I saw it entire because I had created it. How it enclosed the world. No light upon the water not forced there. No sound not inflicted. No heat. Oh, the heat. The light. Everything Silvina hated. I was sure of that. The way the edges of the water winced away from the aftershocks. The way holes appeared symptomatic, like reverse miracles, in the tree trunks lining the riverbank.

A haze to the sky that took over, that overtook me. What better way to give away my location to the world? I’d never thought it would work. But the instructions online had been simple and clear.

I loaded up the car with my supplies. By then it was dusk, and the neighbor’s place was a smoldering, damp wreck. It didn’t take much imagination to realize my neighbor’s blackened body lay somewhere in the wreckage. Langer would’ve had to strangle him to make him quiet. Which told me more about what he, or his ghost, was capable of. And what I was capable of. Maybe even capable of whatever Silvina might want from me. I had plenty of explosives left.

I felt more at peace than in a long time. So much I didn’t know, and the stress of my destination, but at least I knew where to go. No doubt about that.