“Yeah,” Weed answered, looking around and scared.

“Well, the cops don’t come here, but I can’t take the chance. They see your car, and you’re fucked.”

He put the Escort in gear and drove back around to the front. Weed was quiet as Smoke backtracked and parked on the side of a rutted, muddy road on the outskirts of the trailer park.

“This is how I go in,” Smoke said, cutting the engine and reaching down for his Glock. “You gonna have to come in another way because they don’t have nothing in here but white trash and you’ll attract attention. They might even call the cops.”

“Then what do I do?” Weed asked, climbing out and casting furtively about.

“Cut in through Fast Track, Jiffy Tune, Turnpike Auto Parts, one of those other places on the strip, and just come through the woods behind the motel,” Smoke said, sticking the pistol down the front of his jeans and pulling his Chicago Bulls sweatshirt over it.

He kept a good pace along the unpaved road, Weed limping along as fast as he could, obviously hurting. Smoke knew his latest recruit was wondering if he was going to get his brains blown out behind an abandoned motel in the middle of nothing, and Smoke let him worry. Smoke understood fear. The gratification was instant when he made something suffer. He had learned this as a little boy when he could see panic in the eyes, when he could feel terror in the rapidly beating heart of the weaker creature he tortured to death.

Smoke came from a better home than most, one of comfortable, open-minded parents who had never gotten in his way or tried to hold him back or believed their son could be bad. They preferred to give permission rather than force the child into clandestine behavior. They believed if they were trusting and fair-minded, their three children would make the right choices. Smoke’s older brother and sister had seemed to prove the philosophy right. They were making good grades in college and associated with nice people and had normal ambitions.

Smoke had always been different. During the interminable evaluations and counseling sessions in Durham and training school at Butner, he had not complained about his family or a single event that had or hadn’t happened to him. He had blamed no one for who he was, and in fact, took full credit. He had diagnosed himself as a psychopath. He worked hard to be a good one. Smoke had no doubt that one day the world would know his name.

Smoke wasn’t giving Weed a hard time right now, and Weed was grateful and appropriately cooperative. Their feet clinked bits of broken bottles and dislodged rocks, and acres of dense woods shielded the back of the motel from busy highways and streets just blocks away. Smoke headed straight for a large sheet of plywood propped against a wall behind a clump of junipers. His eyes narrowed as he looked around and listened. He slid the plywood to one side and stepped through the empty bent aluminum frame of what was left of sliding glass doors.