“What happened?” I ask.

“There’s two guns out there. One silenced.”

“I’ve got a man out there, Ike. Maybe one of the guns was his.”

He whips his head around. “What man?”

“A private security guy. From Houston.”

He peers into the darkness the way he must have done in Vietnam, with absolute concentration. “I can’t see shit,” he hisses. “But some lardass ex-cop ain’t gonna help us one bit, I know that.”

“He’s not what you think.”

After a minute of silence, he works his way toward the edge of the door.

“What do you see?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

A boom like a cannon shot shatters the silence, reverberating through the warehouse for at least four seconds. Ike hits the floor with his pistol still aimed at the door.

“That’s a deer gun,” he says. “Stay down. We got serious shit going down out there, and it ain’t all got to do with us.”

“How do you know?”

“Ain’t but one bullet come into this warehouse.”

As I lie facedown on the floor, breathing accumulated dust and oil, the seconds drag past. There are no more shots, but the instinctual voice that warned me during the fire that killed Ruby is not comforted by this fact. It knows that silence is the cloak of the approaching enemy.

“How long we gonna lie here?” I whisper.

“Till I tell you to get up.”

Another five minutes pass.

“Penn Cage!” yells a man from beyond the warehouse door. “It’s Kelly! Daniel Kelly.”

“That your guy?” asks Ike.

“It’s Kelly,” shouts the voice again. “Come out! And bring your friend. We need some law out here.”

I scramble to my feet and trot to the edge of the door.

Daniel Kelly stands forty feet away, an MP-5 submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

“What happened?” I ask, walking into the parking lot.

“Somebody tried to whack you. Or the cop. I couldn’t tell which.”

Ike steps into the light, his pistol aimed at Kelly. “Who shot who out here?”

Kelly holds up his hands. “Take it easy, Deputy. I’m a friendly. I was out here covering your meeting when I saw a muzzle flash from over there.” He points at the levee, a dark silhouette fifty yards away. “It was a silenced rifle, and it was firing subsonic rounds, because I didn’t hear the bullet crack. I started running toward the flash, whipping out a spotter scope as I ran, trying to get within range and see at the same time. The shooter was firing from the prone position, already setting up for his second shot. I yelled just as he pulled the trigger, and as he swung around to deal with me, I double-tapped him on the run.”

“Is he dead?” Ike asks.

“Definitely. I put one through his head to be sure, and it’s a good thing, because he was wearing a vest.”