“You know from experience?”

Christopher said nothing, his eyes locked on the road ahead. They were past Soweto and Randfontein before he said, “I could still turn the car around. Tell him that you changed your mind.”

“Who is this guy? You act like Mobius is Satan himself. Like he drinks the blood of babies for breakfast.”

Christopher shrugged his thickly muscled shoulders. “He’s not what you’d expect. But Gandhi said, ‘Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty’.”

“So Mobius is evil incarnate?”

“No, he’s just … indifferent. But he has a way of drawing out the evil in others. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. He took the R500 toward Holfontein but then hit the 14 heading out toward absolutely nowhere. It was July, midwinter in South Africa. The mealie fields were barren and empty, nothing but weeds and thorn bushes. The road was paved but was far from being a highway. They crept along deeper into the growing night until Christopher pulled onto a road of red dirt.

“If you’re taking me out here to kill me and bury me in the asshole end of nowhere, I’m going to be very cross with you.”

Christopher touched the brakes and let the car roll to a slow stop. “He wants to make sure that no one is following or observing. He’s a man who vehemently protects his privacy. Now, your guns. You’re going to have to leave those with me.”

She pulled her Beretta Px4 Storm from the small of her back and handed it to Christopher.

“The ankle as well,” he said. “And the switchblade in your pocket.”

“How the hell—”

“It’s my job.”

She relinquished all of her weapons and said, “So where’s the boogeyman?”

“This is where I leave you.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“It’s cold and dark and there’s nothing around. Is he going to fly down in a UFO to pick me up?”

“Don’t know. Don’t want to know. These were my orders. I could still take you back home.”

She growled but reluctantly stepped from the car. Christopher initiated a three-point U-turn and headed back the way they had come. She watched his taillights disappear into nothingness.

“Brilliant, Izzy. This is gonna be great. Freezing to death in the middle of nowhere.”

It was chilly — about 50°F degrees out. Although she wore long sleeves and would have probably been fine in the city, the winds on the barren plains whipped and howled around her like banshees. She stamped her feet and rubbed her arms to stay warm, hoping that she hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of her life, or the last.

Then she saw a set of headlights come to life from farther down the red dirt road and a white panel van—the extra-large kind with a long backend—appeared out of a cloud of dust. A very serious looking black man with a shaved head wearing a dark blue set of coveralls sat behind the wheel. He pulled the van to a stop but didn’t look at her, didn’t even glance her way. She stood there a moment and then walked up to the sliding door on the van’s side. She found it unlocked and pulled it open.