bunch of rich people on TV and was doing his best to imitate them.
Dude gave a nod to a Bronco at the end of the nearest row. Crumpled grille, bashed front panel, wires snarled out from the shattered mouth of the headlight.
Duran hoisted his eyebrows. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the black-and-white dots dancing on the security monitors. “You don’t look like no Marshals Service.”
“I know,” the woman said sympathetically. “That’s the point.”
She had a full face of makeup and was attractive at first glance, but Duran got the sense that she looked like a different human when that mask was wiped off.
“Jake Hargreave is his name,” Mr. Slick said. “The man who belongs to that Bronco. There was a shoot-out on the 110, and he crashed and abandoned the vehicle. You can see why it’s a necessity for us to talk with him.”
The man produced a badge and held it out for Duran to see, but Duran didn’t know what he should be looking at, so he just tugged at his chin and frowned as if this answered everything.
The woman unbuckled her briefcase and removed an envelope. “We pay our confidential informants,” she said. “For tips.”
She counted ten hundreds from the envelope onto the counter, fanning them like a casino cashier’s cards. Duran could feel his eyes bulging. A grand meant he’d be out from under those loans. Free and clear. That he could find his way back to his house. And then to his daughter.
The woman gathered up the bills, tapped them once on the counter to align them, and slid them into the envelope again. Neat little magic trick, making all that cash disappear.
The man ran his thumb and forefinger around his mouth, smoothing down the glistening chestnut facial hair. “Owners require an appointment to claim their vehicle, is that correct?”
Duran said, “Don’t know if they require it, but pretty much everyone calls first to make sure their car’s here, yeah.”
“When the man sets up his appointment to claim the car, we’d appreciate a heads-up,” the woman said. She raised the envelope, gave it a shake for emphasis, and put it back in her satchel briefcase. “We can take it from there.”
“Why don’t you just pull the files?” Duran said. “If you’re Marshals Service. Track him down your own selves?”
“We have,” the man said, that thin, reedy voice unexpected each time out. “He’s gone to ground. But he needs his truck.” He was smiling again, like he was the most pleasant guy in the world. “And we need him.”
Duran realized he was sweating. Like his body knew something his mind couldn’t grasp.
The man cocked his head. Not meeting Duran’s gaze, but focusing lower, the just-missed eye contact unsettling. “You broke your jaw,” he told Duran. “When you were a child.”
Duran’s hand rose reflexively, touching the spot where a punch had cracked the bone. It was just a hairline, treated with a bag of frozen peas and a paper cup to drool into, and it had left no visible imperfection. At least that’s what Duran had always thought.
“A closed fracture,” the man continued, his eyes lasering in. “Up by the temporomandibular joint. Must’ve hurt something awful.”
Duran didn’t like the look in the guy’s eyes. Like he was hungry.
Duran forced a swallow, his throat suddenly dry.
The man finally broke off his gaze, jotted down a phone number on a blank slip of paper, and handed it to Duran. “Carrot or stick,” he told Duran with that amicable smile. “You get to choose.”
They turned and walked out of the yard.
As soon as they cleared the outer fence, the security feeds blinked back online. Either those deputy marshals had some mage-level government tech skills or it was a helluva coincidence.
Duran looked at the monitors, showing nothing now but the empty lot and the midnight mist creeping in. It thickened up until the city lights winked off, until the cars barely peeked out like boulders on some desolate mountaintop. He chewed his lip and thought about the bizarre woman and the guy staring at his jaw with that odd expression. He thought about what the U.S. Marshals Service could do to him if he didn’t cooperate. He thought about that thousand dollars.
They needed his help. No—they’d demanded it.
Okay, he thought.
Why not? he thought.
What’s the worst that could happen?
3
Whittled Down to Uselessness
A week later Evan is awakened by a foot in his chest. It is nothing personal. As the smallest kid, he sleeps on the mattress between the