Why he caught her eye, and what was different about him, was not immediately obvious. Then Dahlia saw two other people, both Latinas, carrying bags of trash out to a wheeled cart. They grunted as they swung the heavy bags up. One paused to drag a forearm across her brow to wipe away sweat. They also wore jeans and plain T-shirts. Their hair was not expensively coifed, and they wore no jewelry of any kind. They wore sandals and gave furtive looks, meeting no one’s eyes.

Then Dahlia saw the guards. A pair of young white men with sunglasses were pacing along the street. At first Dahlia thought they were coming to reinforce the walls, but that wasn’t it at all. Instead they looked left and right as they walked, glancing at the black man trimming the hedges and the brown women hauling trash. And at others. A skinny white kid in ragged jeans with long unkempt hair and lots of tattoos who was pushing a broom along the street. A heavyset black woman with two white children in a stroller. An Arab with a wheelbarrow full of freshly picked vegetables. The guards looked at them and maintained their stares until each worker, in turn, paused and nodded.

The nods were small, but definite, and they troubled Dahlia. They looked like bows. Like statements of obedience. None of the people who bowed were smiling. The Arab man had a bandage across the bridge of his nose. The heavyset black woman had pink scars on her arms. The tattooed white man had the raccoon eyes you get with a broken nose.

And that’s when she understood. That’s when she knew how Happy Valley had survived. That’s when she understood why Old Man Church had adopted the persona he had—white, entitled, condescending. That’s when the whistles that still filled the air seemed less of a comprehensive threat and became instead one half of a pair of jaws.

She looked around, trying not to let anything show on her face, and saw that although the men on the wall were looking out, rifles and other weapons ready, there were plenty of other people—men and women—clustered around Van Sloane, and standing in a large circle around the Pack. All of them were armed, many had handguns, and if their barrels were not directly pointed at Dahlia’s friends, there was more than a suggestion of that.

Which is when Dahlia tuned back into the conversation between Church and Van Sloane.

“ . . . your weapons, of course,” Van Sloane was saying.

Dahlia turned, fighting to recapture all of what the woman said. “Wait,” she said, “you want us to give up our weapons?”

“Fuck that,” said Slow Dog, placing a hand on the hilt of a big machete that hung from his belt.