I open my eyes and stare at Caesar, who sits on my bed and looks placidly back at me, legs crossed at the ankle, hands clasped on his lap, a counselor awaiting his client’s decision.

CAESAR DRIVES US to the airport in his rental, a new Mercedes that is white as pearl, I having sold my pickup to Bert and Shirley for a ridiculously low price. Before we left, Caesar copied Bobby Bonaroo’s hard drive onto his own portable laptop, encrypting the copied data before erasing the original files on Bobby’s machine. Then he produced a hammer and we took turns smashing the laptop into bits before sweeping the pieces up into a trash bag. As an afterthought I put my red wig into the bag as well. Besides taking a five-minute shower and changing into jeans and a T-shirt, the only other thing I did was disassemble my CZ pistol and fling the separate components in different directions into the weeds and scrub behind the motel. I have a permit for the pistol under a false name, but I don’t need to give anyone a reason to flag me because I have a firearm in my checked luggage. I also didn’t want to just toss the CZ into a dumpster where someone might find it and use it to hold up a liquor store or shoot somebody.

As Caesar refills the rental car at a gas station near the airport, I shove the bag with Bobby Bonaroo’s smashed laptop and my red wig into a trash can, then take out my cell to make two calls. The first is to Ellie Mangum, the immigration lawyer who introduced me to the Asturias family. I get her voice mail as I had hoped and leave her a message saying something has come up and I can’t head to North Dakota right now after all, but she has all the information she needs to find her lost cat and I’ll be in touch when I can. The second call I make is to the San Antonio police department, and I tell the bored operator that there is a man tied up in an abandoned Sam’s Club and give her the address, then hang up. When I was taking a shower, Caesar made additional copies of the files detailing the money Bobby had skimmed off contracts, then emailed those to both the San Antonio police and the local DA. Bobby Bonaroo is going to have his hands full.