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He shakes his head, then pulls out a joint and lights it, carefully extinguishing the match against the sole of his sandal. Despite the coolness beneath the trees, heat is shooting through my body.

“Ana, I cannot express to you the depth of my disappointment and sorrow. I would never have said it to him, your friend, the father of two—‘Prove your loyalty and I will share my treasure.’” His eyes bulge as he holds the smoke. “But I would have said it to you.”

“I can help you out.”

“How is that?” asks Stone.

“I feel you, brother.”

Stone doubles up laughing, spewing fragrant smoke.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I’m speed-talking, careening into street jive.

“No, dig it, look. You come into the FBI all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a well-educated attorney, a patriot like your brother, who made the sacrifice in Vietnam, and all you want is to follow the rules and do your duty, and look how you were treated. Sent undercover with no protection, no support. So here’s me. Female, biracial, and it’s the same tune. They throw me into this situation here and walk away. My supervisor is a jerk. He doesn’t care about my safety; he’s just worried about his career. I’m the way he’s going to advance, no matter how the case turns out with Dick Stone.”

Stone exhales a cone of smoke. “So I’m preaching to the choir?”

“I can’t argue with the evidence. The bullet casings? Berwick on the inside? What’s my choice? What would you do? You’d do the smart thing, too. You’d flip. It’s a no-brainer. I’ll come over and help you out.”

Stone extinguishes the joint. His tone is magnanimous.

“You can flip all you want. You can flop around like a goddamned salmon. But one day, I will take your life. In spite of the fact you’re good. Or maybe because you’re good. It completes a certain cycle of nature. You like science? I like science, too. No worries, Ana. It won’t be a surprise.”

“They know where I am and they’ll come and get me.”

“Yes, they will, but not before the Big One. After that, darlin’, it won’t matter much to either one of us.”

A task force of Bu-cars and tech vans moves in formation across the Harbor Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Lanes of traffic give way to the flotilla of black vehicles as it passes the Staples Center and the painted eyes of the twelve-story violinist on the famous mural, which are following the caravan with subtle surprise.

Curving down an exit and underneath the freeway, maintaining the speed limit, it moves with the precision of a fleet of Hornet warplanes. Entering the Central American nation, it slows for pushcarts selling ices and throngs of women and children shopping the mercados and botanicas in the early-morning particulate dust. The security gates roll back and the lead sedan, in which SAC Robert Galloway is riding, enters the secure lot of the JR Trading Co.

The sweep is a total surprise. The task force invades the ancient hallways, charging past the cubicles of the defunct unemployment office, where bewildered agents sit before computer screens, to the innermost heart of covert operations—the secret laboratory—securing doors and exits in less than four minutes.

Nobody is going home today.

Stone walks me out of the orchard. Like Slammer to his burial, I go willingly. He doesn’t have to show the gun.

We probably look like hippie father and daughter, or master and acolyte, strolling past the dusty blackberry bushes laden with ripe fruit and bees. It probably looks like everything’s okay in the heartland of the USA. In the center of a small ring, willowy young Sara is reluctantly learning to lunge Geronimo. Sterling McCord is teaching her how to exercise him, standing close behind her, spooning almost, with that uninhibited pelvis, as he reaches around to guide her hands on a long lead rope and whip. Just a whisper on the hindquarters, and the little white horse starts up a trot.

Like figures on a music box, the cowboy and Sara revolve in tiny steps together, guiding the foal with the lead and the whip in sprightly circles