We sat. Time lost all meaning.

Finally, without looking at him, I said, “About Rotterdam…”

“Mind if I just sum it up?”

“Uh … yeah, sure.”

“Fuck you.”

I nodded. “Fair enough.”

We sat.

“Are you regretting the whole ‘going into the field’ thing?”

He took so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer.

“Actually,” he said, “I haven’t enjoyed myself this much in years.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “But seriously … and I mean this with my whole heart, Ledger … Fuck you.”

We nodded to one another and lapsed into a long silence.

That was me and Toys.

-3-

The authorities arrested eleven Fixers at the convention center.

With Rafael Santoro dead, they seemed a whole lot less hesitant about making deals for reduced sentences in exchange for telling every damned thing they knew. And they knew a lot. Since that day in LaBorde, there have been close to three hundred subsequent arrests, and with Interpol, Mossad, MI6, Barrier, and a slew of other agencies involved, that tally was likely to rise.

As for Kuga?

Only one Fixer knew about his mansion in Canada, but by the time the CRMP descended on it in a swarm of helicopters, there was nothing left to find. Some blood in what was clearly Kuga’s office, and it was a DNA match with Harcourt Bolton. But no bodies, no computers, no anything.

One odd little detail that I got from one of the Mounties was that the whole area—from driveway to the backyard to the eaves of the house—was covered with thousands of black birds.

-4-

On a sultry night in early September, I lay on a towel at the high tide line in a small cove of a secluded beach in Kauai. The sun was just starting to edge toward the horizon, the light through the clouds smearing the sky with every color in the paint box. Less than a hundred feet from the beach, two juvenile dolphins leaped and splashed and played; and a big old green sea turtle crawled out of the crystal water and stopped to doze near me. I looked into his ancient, wise eyes and saw peace and understanding there that went miles and miles deep.

There was a splash, and I saw Junie come out of the water pulling off her mask and snorkel. Water sluiced down her long legs, and her blond hair hung in salty rattails down the front of one shoulder. She wore a bikini that made no attempt to hide the scars time and hard use had cut into her skin. She was then, and forever, the most beautiful and complex woman I have ever known. And I’ve known a few.

She saw me watching her, and a smile blossomed on her face.