Lionel clapped me on the shoulder when the news broke. The evidence we’d gathered turned Adeyemi against his friend, convinced him to strike Redlick down from the shadows. The dead weren’t coming back, and as usual, the masterminds eluded justice, but Gerald Redlick was temporarily thwarted in his larger ambitions. I commented to Lionel that this is what winning looked like these days. The angel on my left shoulder laughed. In the greater battle of good versus evil, this is what winning has always looked like.

Bellow called early one morning in mid-December. His sources reported that the machinery was in motion; odds were being made on Adeyemi’s life expectancy. Best bet was forty-eight hours. Bellow reminded me that, as with all gambling, the information was for entertainment purposes only.

■■■

Lionel and I used a junker car with throwaway plates and traveled incognito to Elkhorn Lake. No one, and I mean no one, not even Meg, knew anything about the trip. This was a real New York winter. Last year, I’d been able to drive all the way in. Not this time around. We parked where the road ended and heaps of snow began. Several other snowy cars and a couple of pickups occupied the plowed spot. We walked our weary asses nearly a mile through the woods and over the hills along a slippery path to Badja Adeyemi’s cabin. Our gear dragged behind on a plastic sled.

Adeyemi greeted us from the porch with an automatic pistol. Recognition filtered into his deadpan expression. He nonetheless weighed whether or not to blow my head off a tick too long for comfort. He lowered the pistol, invited us inside, and offered us beers.

“Suppose I’m glad to see you,” he said. “How’d you know I was holed up at the shack?”

“Where else would you go?” I said.

The lake was frozen to dark, wind-scoured marble. Black and blue storm clouds glowered like a crowd of villains.

I asked whether he’d spotted any bogeys. Because they were inbound.

“Counted two at the market,” he said. “Means five.”

“It means six or eight,” Lionel said. He slipped into his black clothes.

“They could hit us with a drone,” Adeyemi said. “Missile comes through the window and kaboom, this shack is kindling.”

I shook my head.

“No, your friends will want it to look like an accident. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Heart attack. Outside chance it could be a staged hanging or self-inflicted gunshot. Four men will breach and neutralize. The rest will perform overwatch and lookout.”

“Failing that,” Lionel said. “Yep, next time it’ll be more dramatic.” He was mostly dressed and going over his arsenal. The last glimmer of sunlight enfolded him and softened into a full-body halo. It made me imagine the Angel of Death and his choir tuning their axes and singing their arpeggios in anticipation of what must surely come.

I checked the yard for the hundredth time.

“Let’s hope I’m right and it doesn’t turn into World War Three.”