He might not have met Ms Jones, but her driver, Chris Tanner, seemed okay. Vincent proposed to him that given this was a nice neighbourhood—a low-threat zone, is what he called it—maybe he could cover Vincent’s role as security chief, just for a couple of hours in the mornings while he had his dawn surf? Tanner said he could manage, and thus Vincent had himself a pleasant routine: get up at five-thirty and drive down the coast to Rincon, surf for ninety minutes, and then be back in time to take Eugene Lamar to breakfast at eight-thirty. After that, Lamar played nine holes of golf, and every so often he took an afternoon meeting. Which meant that a lot of Vincent’s time was passed sitting by the pool, catching up on his daydreaming, or chipping away at the screenplay he’d been working on the past few months. He felt he could handle everything just fine.

Seven pm Tuesday, six days into his new job, the phone in the apartment rang. He picked it up expecting to hear Lamar, but it was Freeman. ‘You need to give me your cell number so I can update the speed-dial lists.’

‘You got a pen?’

‘No, text it to me. Come upstairs. FBI sent your background check through.’

Something about his tone made Vincent disinclined to hurry. He waited ten minutes and then went up through the internal stairs and found Freeman in the office where he’d had his interview, sitting at the head of the table and thumbing out a text on his cell phone.

Without looking up he said, ‘No need to rush.’

‘Yeah, I figured.’

Vincent wondered how long they would keep this up: the small battles, and the point-scoring.

Freeman put away the phone. ‘Department of Justice seems to think you’re okay.’

‘Unless I robbed a bank and didn’t tell anyone.’

Freeman got up from the table. ‘I’ll show you the guns.’

He led Vincent down a hallway to a door between a bathroom and a spare bedroom, typed in a code on a button pad. A digital trill as the lock disengaged.

‘Panic room and weapons storage. Eight-one-nine-seven gets you in.’

Freeman hit the light. Guns on wall racks to the left, ammo on shelves to the right, the far wall stacked with cans of food—each can bearing a Lamar’s logo.

Vincent leaned in the door. ‘Send a photo to the NRA, probably make their weekly newsletter or something.’ He looked around. A couple of leather chairs, a landline phone on the wall, a safe bolted to the floor in the corner. ‘Those survivalist folks would be interested too. All that canned food, they’d love it.’

Freeman stood hands on hips with the cans behind him—a backdrop of the boss’s name, a hundred times over. He said, ‘Do you need a refresher course?’

Meaning the guns.