I continue standing in the front yard, thinking. Why is the FBI looking for Tane? How did they know I know him, or that I was at my brother’s house? Did they guess I’d be here and got lucky? Again I look around the yard but see no one. And why did Agent Scott seem so pissed off about Uncle Gavin?

After a few moments I walk back up the driveway and go through the back door into the kitchen, where Wilson greets me, tail wagging happily. I let him out into the backyard, where he runs into the small patch of grass and pees, then runs back into the house and looks at me like I should be proud. “Good boy,” I say, closing the door. “Tane!” I call out. “They’re gone.” I walk into the den, Wilson trotting at my heels. “Tane!” Nothing. I imagine him hiding under Ethan’s bed and go down the hall to the bedroom. “Tane?”

He’s not under the bed, or anywhere in the bedroom or the bathroom or the spare bedroom, which is really Ethan’s storage room. There’s nowhere for him to hide in the den. “Shit,” I say, causing Wilson to look at me in alarm. Tane has clearly skedaddled. He must have gone out the back while I was talking to the Feebies. And then I see my duffel bag on the floor where I left it, but now it’s unzipped. I rummage through it. Son of a bitch took some of my cash. None of my other gear is missing from the bag. Then I look at the coffee table and see the New Yorker that I’d placed over my revolver is now in a different place on the table. The revolver, of course, is gone. I burst out the kitchen door and look around the backyard, then into the trees I went through last night. There’s no sign of him.

I spend half an hour looking for him, circling the block and jogging up and down Roswell Road. I talk to the people manning the cash registers at the three nearby gas stations, then question the staff at the Waffle House. I ask the Korean woman running the dry cleaners on the corner, the cashiers at the Kroger, even the two people on the sidewalk waiting for a MARTA bus. Nothing. Tane has vanished. By the time I walk back to Ethan’s house, I’m good and pissed—at Tane, at the FBI, and at myself. I sit on the couch and think while Wilson watches me with worried eyes.