She stopped, looked at John, and a tear ran down her face. “I think so, too,” she said. “They couldn’t just grab him and let him go later

“

“No.” I turned and looked at LuEllen, and her face was like a rock.

“Oh, God.” Marvel sighed. She was standing close to John, and he slipped an arm around her waist and squeezed her.

Jesus, I thought, these people trust us.

With nothing more to say, we left Marvel to continue her search and made a pro forma stop in the bar. Bell, the city councilman, was sitting at a table with a pretty, freckled blonde. He raised a hand to us, and LuEllen waved, but we turned away, found a corner table, and ordered.

“What’s next, boss?” LuEllen asked with a light overlay of sarcasm.

“Just keep cranking,” I said. “But now we’ve got to put a little extra on Hill and St. Thomas. Dumping the machine isn’t good enough anymore.”

“I don’t know,” she said, now serious. “When I mess with you, things seem to turn violent. Before that time in West Virginia, I don’t know if I’d ever seen a killed person.”

“It’s not us, not me-“

“You keep saying that.”

“I’ve got to believe it,” I said.

We talked for twenty minutes, through two drinks. Two is about as many as I can take before my lips start going numb. We paid, and LuEllen waved again at Bell. Bell nodded back, tipped up his glass, finishing a drink, and dug in his pocket for cash.

We were halfway across the parking lot when two car doors slammed with the kind of aggressive impact that makes you look around. Duane Hill was there, drunk, with St. Thomas on the other side. They each had a longneck beer.

“Hey, artist fuckhead,” Hill yelled, wandering toward us.

“Keep walking,” LuEllen said.

But I had the two drinks in me and, instead of walking, slowed down and stopped. Hill swaggered across the parking lot from his van, St. Thomas a step or two behind him. Two guys in broad-rimmed hats and cowboy boots had been sitting on the hood of a pickup down the lot. Now they hopped down and sidled over to watch.

“Where’s that old bitch Trent? You trade her in on some younger cunt?” Hill asked.

“Fuck you, asshole,” LuEllen said in a tone of pure ice. For a second Hill stopped, nonplussed. He was a brawler, tuned to danger, and he heard it in LuEllen’s voice. He didn’t know quite how to take it.

“Gonna let the pussy do your talking?” he said after a minute, trying to recover. He was about fifteen feet away. He half turned to the two onlookers, to catch their reaction to this witticism.