at all. I think we?re intruding.?

?They?re not paying us any mind. It?s worse if we walk away and make noise. There?s a willow tree yonder. Let?s sit under it a minute or two.?

The minister escorted a huge woman into the pool, the immersion gown she wore ballooning up like white gauze around her knees. The minister cupped one hand behind her neck and lowered her backward into the pool. Her breasts were as taut and dark and heavy as watermelons under her gown. The surface of the pool closed over her hair and eyes and nose and mouth, and she grasped the minister?s arm with a rigidity that indicated the level of her fear. On the bank, the leaves of the cottonwoods seemed to flicker in the wind with a green-gold kinetic light.

The minister raised his eyes to his congregants. ?Jesus told the apostles to go not unto the Gentiles. He sent them first unto the oppressed and the forlorn. And that?s how our shackles have been broken, my brothers and sisters. I now baptize Sister Dorothea in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we welcome our white brethren who are watching us now from the other side of our little Jordan.?

Vikki and Pete were sitting in the shade on a pad of grass under the willow tree. Pete plucked a long, thin blade of grass and put it in his mouth. ?So much for anonymity,? he said.

She brushed at a fly on the side of his face, then looked in a peculiar way at the back of her hand. ?What?s that?? she said.

?What?s what?? Pete said. His arms were locked around his knees, his attention fixed on the baptism.

?There was a red dot on my hand.?

?Just then??

?Yes, it moved across my hand. I saw it when I touched your face.?

He got to his feet and pulled her erect, looking up through the leaves at the side of the hill. He pushed her behind him, deeper into the shade, under the cover of the tree.

?Give me your hand,? he said.

?What are you doing??

?Looking for an insect bite.?

?I wasn?t bitten by an insect.?

He looked out again from under the tree?s canopy at the hillside, his eyes sweeping over the scattered rocks, the pi?on and juniper spiked into soil that was little more than gravel, the shadows inside an arroyo and the scrub brush that grew along its rim, the shale that had avalanched down from a collapsed fire road. Then he saw a glassy reflection at the top of a ridge and, for under a second, an electric red pinpoint racing past his feet.

?It?s a laser sight,? he said, stepping backward. ?Get behind the tree trunk. They don?t have the angle yet.?

?Who? What angle??

?That bastard Hugo or whoever works for him. That?s what Collins said, right? Hugo wanted to do both of us? They cain?t get a clear shot yet.?

?There?s a sniper up there??

?Somebody with a laser sight, that?s for sure.?

She took a deep breath and blew it out. She opened her cell phone and stared at it. Her blue-green eyes were bright in the shade, locked on his. ?No bars,? she said.

?We don?t have a lot of time. A nine-one-one call wouldn?t he?p us.?

?What do you want to do??

The fact that her question indicated options seemed testimony to the quality he admired most in her, namely her refusal to let others control her life, regardless of the risk she had to incur. He wanted to hold her against his chest. ?Wait them out,? he said.

?What if they work their way down the hill??

His head was hammering. If he yelled out to the congregants, they would scatter and run, and the rifleman on the hill would have no reason not to fire round after round through the branches of the willow.

?Pete, I?d rather die than live like this.?

?Live like how??

?Hiding, being afraid all the time. Nothing is worth that.?

?Sometimes you have to live to fight another day.?

?But we don?t fight another day. We hide. We?re hiding now.?

?You told Jack Collins to go to hell. You spit on him.?

?I told him to rape me if he wanted. I told him I wouldn?t resist.?

Pete rubbed his palm across his mouth. His hand was dry and callused and made a grating sound on his skin. ?You didn?t tell me that.?

?Because I didn?t want to hurt you.?

?I think I?m going to kill that fellow if I catch up with him. You don?t think I?ll do it, but there?s a