Frames’s command had no visible effect on Peña. The dealer continued to hold Rivas in the sights of his gun and to grip the gun steadily. He blinked once, slowly like a prehistoric reptile.

“Suelte el arma,” Frames shouted again.

For a few long seconds, they all stood unmoving, a silent tableau. Then Peña’s gaze narrowed at Rivas, and he raised his chin. His lips pursed in a kiss. Keeping his eyes on Rivas, he slowly bent his right arm and brought the gun to his shoulder.

Frames reached out and grabbed Peña’s gun without moving the Glock he still held at the back of the man’s head.

This isn’t it, Rivas thought. Death will come another way.

He stepped forward to Peña and shoved him against the garage wall. Holstering his gun, he cuffed Peña’s wrists. As he worked the cuffs, Rivas noticed for the first time his partner’s shoeless feet and his ridiculous socks—sky blue with yellow soccer balls.

“Why’d you come back here?” Rivas asked. His hands started to shake.

“It was quiet,” Frames said. “Quiet’s never a good thing, right?”

Chapter Three

(TUESDAY, 8:45 A.M.)

Thackrey had been awake for three days—or was it four? He couldn’t remember.

With just the Adderall, it was easier to tell. Thirty milligrams of extended release in the morning, another sixty in the afternoon. But once he switched to doing stacks of Ritalin and Provigil and mixing in the new crank, the hours and days blurred together. He wiped a wooden coffee stirrer on his sleeve and poked it into the plastic bag on his lap. Balancing a tiny pile of powder on the end, he snorted it and felt a sharp sting in the back of his sinuses.

The Mercedes sat parked at a twenty-four-hour Quik Mart in Santa Rosa—Thackrey in the front seat, Russ and Vic in the back. The store’s morning customers looked like admins and techs going to work at Brookside, the medical building across the street. He and the boys had started out drinking coffee to get their hands warm, but now they were bored and were playing rounds of Phone Invader.

A silver Mazda roared into the lot, swerved toward a spot, and missed, parking two wheels over the line. A young woman emerged in black slacks and jacket, a paisley scarf knotted at her neck. She pressed a remote lock, and the car blared. Her boots clicked across the lot toward the entrance.

Thackrey whistled. “My turn. Her name’s Leslie. She’s in Sterile Processing, and she’s just had an all-nighter with the new urology resident.”