I struggled to my knees, stared at Langer. He gave me a weak smile. He was delirious. His eyes weren’t right. Or his expression wasn’t right.

“I loved her,” he said. “I loved her. I love her.”

I wanted to tell him that was pathetic. That he was delusional. I meant to tell him that when I should’ve said “I know.” Because what was he in that moment but stripped down to the truth?

But we didn’t have time left to talk, anyway.

Langer’s head split open. The blood spatter slapped against my boots, my pants. Whatever was left hung down lopsided. So that’s what happens next I remember thinking. A bullet in the brain. A bullet to the brain. The recoil from the gun burned in my ears. Made me fall to the side. I winced, waiting for me next.

But my time didn’t come.

Above me, Hellmouth Jack loomed up out of the shadows, looking just as he had in the bar centuries ago in New York. A peculiar anticipation on his face. Something akin to excitement. Or greed.

He had a Glock trained on me.

“No slacking, slacker,” he said. “Time to rise and shine. Jack and Jill have to go—up a hill.”

[96]

We waited until early morning. The fog had turned to drizzle. The bullet had just grazed my arm. I didn’t even bother to stop the bleeding. My shirt would stanch it in time. My head felt better. A dull ache. A dull ache, too, that I was a prisoner.

“He always talked too much,” Hellmouth Jack said. But I didn’t much care that he’d ended the man who’d tried to kill me.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

He was squatting on a tree stump a good ten feet away. Wary. The way I’d brought Langer low wouldn’t happen to him. Smoking a cigarette, Glock in the other hand, vaguely trained in my direction. Not as bad as my husband, but in the new light he didn’t look great. Either he’d been dyeing his hair before or the gray had just begun to come out around the temples. Subject to current events. Smelled the alcohol on him even from the ten feet. Rum, not whisky.

Langer’s remains lay among meadow grasses thirty feet farther down the slope. Neither of us had suggested burial.

“Called in a last favor with Homeland Security. I knew you weren’t going home home. Drone triangulation on your car when you parked at the cabin to talk to your beloved husband.”

A trap, then, and I’d walked into and through it, and here we were.

“Homeland Security still exists?”

“Not by that name. Just their drones. Do you know how many secret drones lacerate the sky these days? They’ll outlast us all. Form their own civilization.”

“Thanks for saving me,” I said.