And all of it with a minimum of makeup!

Well, whatever we were going to do, it was time to start doing it. We had to get the agents’ car off the road. I put on my signal light. One exit was the same as every other. Time to go. I’d recently heard a pop philosopher sum up contemporary American culture: “All roads lead to Mickey D’s!” In my experience that was pretty accurate; get on any main road and eventually you’ll end up at a McDonald’s. As promised, in less than ten minutes I was looking at those Golden Arches. Those signs once boasted how many millions, then billions of hamburgers had been served. They no longer included that information; I wondered if they’d run out of numbers.

This Mickey D’s was on the corner of a strip mall. The lineup of stores was typical for a middle-class residential neighborhood. In addition to the McDonald’s it included a stationery store; a Chase bank with two ATMs in front, which was right next to a Citibank, which also had two ATMs in front; a pizza shop; a children’s shoe store; one vacant storefront; and most important, a twenty-four-hour CVS. There were a few cars in the lot. Inside the Mickey D’s, a man was swabbing the floor. Two people were working the ATMs.

I parked at an angle in front of the empty storefront. I’d learned my lesson; if it did have active surveillance cameras, which I doubted, I didn’t want them reading our plates. I took two regular spaces rather than one handicapped spot—and felt great about it. Laura pulled in right next to me at a similar angle.

I watched Laura turn around and say something to Russell before getting out. I rolled down my window as she approached Van. “Nice parking job,” she said.

“Cher, play rap, please.” The rap bopping through Van’s speakers made it nearly impossible for Corbin to overhear our conversation. I didn’t especially like rap, but I figured it would irritate him, and that was good enough for me. “What were you saying to him?” I asked.

“I was just being honest with him. I told him I didn’t know how stable you were, so if he decided to make a fuss, he probably was putting his partner’s life in danger.” She leaned on the window frame and spoke-whispered. “You wouldn’t really shoot him, would you?”

I was pleased she’d made it a hypothetical question. That made it much easier to answer. “I’m not sure.” I lowered my voice too and told her exactly what I wanted her to do. Cher had provided the information I needed. She was nodding as I gave her the list. As she turned to go, I put a restraining hand on top of hers. She paused, with a question in her eyes. “ATMs all have cameras,” I reminded her, “so keep your head down. You don’t want to show up on the intel network.” I had no idea if those cameras were tied into a facial recognition system, but we had to assume they were.