“I’ve been thinking,” I say. “About how fugitives from the law get into the country. There are lots of ways—used to be easier to come through the US, but with all these illegal border crossings from the US into Canada these days, the RCMP is cracking down. Sad, I know. Some of our most enterprising criminal organizations have had to adjust. But there are still ways. Places like, for example, Southeast Asia, where a well-connected person can get a fake passport cheaply. That’s if you’re flying. But Vancouver offers a variety of options—that’s what I love about this city. A few years ago we caught two boatloads of migrants. And that’s just the ones that made the papers!”

“You got a point?” asks the man.

“Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot. I’m getting to it, though.”

“Well, hurry up,” says the woman.

“There are lots of ways a man—or woman, but let’s just say it’s a man—can get into the country if he’s tapped into one of these human smuggling networks. My point is, since you asked, when he gets to town, let him know I’m waiting for him, won’t you?”

“Are you done now?” asks the woman.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Good. I’ve got a point, too, hon.”

“I’m all ears,” I say, knowing full well that when another woman calls you hon, she wants to rip your throat out.

“My point is that I would like you to get up and walk toward the ladies’ room nice and easy, where we can finish this chat privately.”

“No thanks, sweetie pie, my business isn’t with you. It’s with Dao.”

The name doesn’t register with her, but the man recognizes it. I file that away for later. “I like your jacket,” I say to the man. “It’s a nice color. What would you say it is?”

“Green.”

“Wow. You’ve really got a knack for description. I think I’ve seen this jacket before, at a Water Is Life march a little while ago. Then again, maybe I’m wrong.”

But I’m not. This is the man from the protest, the green jacket I’d been following right before someone tried to grab me.

I slide off the stool. “I just have this feeling—I don’t even know where it came from. But it’s this powerful instinct that if anything happened to me—if, say, I get hurt in the time it takes me to get from here to my car—you’ll have someone a lot more dangerous than me to answer to. That dangerous someone may want the pleasure of chatting with me himself.”

While they’re still processing that, I leave. They’ll figure out soon enough that Dao doesn’t care how hurt I am when he finds me, as long as he’s the one who gets to do all the murdering.