By the second day, I knew in my gut that we wouldn’t find it. If it had ever been there. Jack was surly, snapped often, smoked more. Urged me on as if I was the problem. As if he would have found it if I hadn’t been there. As if I put out some invisible field or aura obscuring the truth. When he accused me of knowing more than I’d told him, I shrugged. And he could see in the resignation that I had given up.

The weather got worse. We shared Jack’s tent on the wet gravel, me tied up, hands in front. He had a couple bottles of rum. He offered me a cup. I took it. I didn’t know rum from Adam, but it tasted good.

The lantern made his face crooked, febrile. Took away the redness. I could almost imagine he was the attractive man from the bar.

“Senseless anyway. I should’ve known better. How big a hole can you put in the world to kill it dead? You can’t. Whatever Silvina wanted to do—virus, bomb, whatever. It’s already done. We did it to ourselves. We’re always doing it to ourselves. And first rule of dealing with wildlife traffickers: they do not give a fuck about anything. Except money. Except Langer. Who thought he had a soul. What love does to you. What love deforms.”

“Sociopaths have souls?”

“Don’t be cute,” he said. “Shut up and drink your rum…”

Don’t be cute.

Langer, being interrogated by someone at a federal agency. The pages Allie had given me of the transcript. Mr. Redacted had used that wording, more than once. “Don’t be cute, Langer.”

“You ran Langer,” I said. “But why? What was Contila?”

“Eh? Says who. Who says I ran Langer?”

I ignored that.

“Agency-wide or just you solo?”

Hellmouth Jack gave me a look of respect that made me shudder inside.

“Jilly! You are a detective. Sort of. Okay, let’s do this. If you can answer this riddle. Tell me: what’s bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a breadbox?”

“So not agency-wide, but not just you.”

He looked at me sideways like a crow. “You’re not supposed to solve that riddle.”

“Maybe I just understand you.”

He’d picked up his gun, like I’d insulted him. No one was supposed to understand the great Hellmouth. Then he put it down, took a swig of rum.

“Langer worked with Vilcapampa on all sorts of import-export ventures. Through Contila. I was ambitious, wanted to make my mark. I thought, ‘Why create some fake company? Why not just use Contila?’ So we did. We got dirt on the CFO and took it over and tried to embroil Vilcapampa in shadier and shadier shit, some of which involved wildlife trafficking. Wasn’t like they hadn’t done it before.”

“A sting.”