“Blame your friend Bobo. He’s got something I want. He killed two of my soldiers. He got two others arrested. He burned down our meeting place. And he murdered a woman who was part of my movement. Lisa tells me you’re real close to him. Maybe you’ve taken Aubrey’s place. So I’ve taken someone of his, until he steps up to answer for his crimes.”

“Oh, bullshit. None of that is true. He doesn’t have this cache of arms, he didn’t kill your so-called soldiers, and your buddies deserved to be arrested. He thought the sun shone out of Aubrey’s ass. He did not harm any of those people, and he doesn’t have any of that stuff.”

“But my soldiers disappeared after I sent them to talk to him.”

“You mean, after you sent them into his own place of business to beat him up. Be man enough to say it.” She could not twist her head enough to see him well, but she hoped she was shaming him. Being diplomatic would be wiser, but she was mightily pissed off.

“Why not? He’s got what I need, what I want. He’s not part of the cause. He should give up the arms that were so important to his grandfather, a real patriot. Those guns were meant for people willing to fight to sustain our liberty. Don’t you know how close we are to Armageddon here? Don’t you understand how fast we’ll go under? The Mexicans will drown us. The tide will come across the border, and that’ll be all she wrote. Unless we’re armed and ready.”

“So the answer to everything is to kill people.”

“We gotta defend ourselves! You’re just being a damn liberal if you don’t see that. Aubrey understood.”

“Then why did you kill her?”

He came closer to the open door. He was hopelessly soaked now. She saw that the torrent had abated to a slow but steady pelting of drops. “We did not kill her. He did, your boyfriend Bobo.”

“He did not,” she said again. “He grieves for her every day. He had no idea when we set out on that picnic that we would find her body. I was there. I know.”

This time he did slap her, an openhanded smack to the cheek. “You’re wrong, bitch. You are so wrong, and he is so guilty. I liked you better when you weren’t talking. Shut up, now, or I’ll tap you on the head with the gun,” he said, as he climbed into the truck.

That was an effective threat, because Fiji had recently read an article about how thin the skull could be. It had creeped her out. She was terrified that his “tap” could put her in a wheelchair for life. She had no idea if she had a thick skull or a thin skull, and she didn’t want to bet on it one way or another.