“And Lam had to do what, exactly, to get approved?” Karen asked him. “Walk through the mall in his underwear and a fright wig, if I remember right.”

“Let’s change the subject,” Talbot said. “Where are we going? I was thinking about Mather’s Bridge.”

Karen groaned.

“Kelly Park?”

“We could,” she said, trying to sound indifferent. “Or we could just go to the airport.”

“The airport it is.”

They crossed 520 and drove south, past clusters of darkened neighborhoods, the yellow glow of the Shell station, the Minute Mart, and the elementary school, to a dark, narrow road that peeled off the parkway and led to the Merritt Island Airport. The wind sock over the little terminal hung limp against its pole. The terminal was dark, save for a single light burning in the tower. The runway, which extended out between the airport’s two black-mouthed hangars and ended abruptly in the distance, looked like an enormous spike laid down over the marsh. Talbot backed the car into a spot opposite the terminal and turned off the engine. “How are we set for beer?”

“We’ve got some,” Winkle said.

“ ‘How are we set’ means ‘how many do we have left?’ ”

“Oh.” Winkle leaned forward and stirred his hand through the box. “Nine.”

“We have a beer problem,” Talbot declared.

Winkle looked at Karen, who was drawing a circle in the air with the bottom of her can. “That’s not enough?” he asked.

“No,” Talbot said. “Tonight will not be brought to you by the number nine. You’re a drinking man, right?”

“S-Sure,” Winkle stammered. “I mean, I’ll have a few.”

“Well, there you go: that’s only three more apiece.”

Karen took her cigarettes from the inside pocket of her jacket, opened the box, and shook one out an inch. She tapped Winkle’s shoulder. He flinched. “You’re Baptist, right?”

He nodded.

“I thought so. Want one?”

He glanced at the pack. “No, thanks,” he said.

“Your funeral.”

He grinned and cracked open a beer for himself, then clamped his lips on it to catch the fizz.

Out of the darkness beyond the far end of the terminal, a pair of headlights low to the ground flashed on and off.

“Holy shit. Is that who I think it is?” Talbot asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Karen said, though of course she did.

She’d marked the time on her calendar and knew this was the week of Colby’s return to the island. She knew he’d be out on the prowl the first chance he got, and that the airport was a likely spot to find him.

The headlights flashed again. “It is him. What did he end up with?”

“Six months,” Karen said. “One of those baby prisons.”

“Half a year. That seems harsh for a little hemp.”

“Intention to sell. Plus, he was drunk and had his dad’s pistol in the glove compartment.”