Sarah Allersby was on the verge of taking a big step toward learning who she was. That was the way he thought about it. He had worked for many bosses over the years and he had seen the way they learned. They started out with the proposition that they were better than other people and therefore had a responsibility to lead them. In exchange for that brave work, they gained most of the available wealth. Once they had the wealth, it was theirs, and they had a right to protect it and the privileges it bought. If that was true, then they also had a right to get more in the same way—or, really, in any way, including taking it. They got involved in businesses that killed people indirectly, where they didn’t have to see it. Diego San Martin, the drug lord who paid Sarah for the security of being able to raise marijuana on the land of a rich, respectable woman, had killed people. He was probably killing people all the time. Little by little, she was getting used to the idea that it didn’t matter. Russell had met Sarah’s father after Mr. Allersby had already reached that point. Russell’s first job for the older Allersby was to kill a man—a business rival who was preparing to file a patent infringement suit.

Russell knew, although Sarah hadn’t taken the step yet, that she was very nearly ready to buy the deaths of these Fargo people. That could happen at any time. It occurred to him that he had better stop at the office and pick up a couple of additional items. He drove to the back of the building and went up the exterior stairway, unlocked the door and turned on the light.

He went to a locked filing cabinet and opened it. He took a pair of razor-sharp ceramic knives, which wouldn’t set off metal detectors, and a diabetic’s travel kit, with needles and insulin bottles, in a leather case. The insulin in the bottles had been replaced with Anectine, a drug that surgeons used to stop the heart. They would restart it with Adrenaline, but, of course, restarting hearts wasn’t the business Russell was in so he had none of that. He opened the leather case and looked at the prescription date. It was the new one, only a month old. He took the kit with him and put it in his suitcase.

As Russell drove on toward Ruiz’s house, he felt better. When Sarah got around to recognizing what she really wanted done, Russell and Ruiz would be able to take care of it without uncertainty or delay. Upper-class customers like her hated uncertainty, and they hated waiting. They wanted to be able to signify their will and have it carried out right away, like gods.

Chapter 17

SAN DIEGO TO SPAIN