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Dick Stone’s face is now so close, I can see the tiny bristles on his cheeks.

“One question. Where did you hide the tools? You can’t just pick a lock.”

“Have you been going through my stuff?”

“Regularly.”

“That’s why I kept moving them.”

I reach under the bed, pull out a small bundle that was duct-taped to the frame, and toss it over.

This open display stops him. Could anyone actually be so guileless?

I’ve pasted on a casual smile but I think I’ve stopped breathing. For several long seconds I watch Dick Stone waver, like a high school coach who discovers his best starting pitcher smoking weed in the locker.

Screw it. He likes the kid.

“Darcy,” he says slowly, “you’re okay. You’re the same as me. All you want is to have some fun. You like to start little fires, don’t you?”

I rest for a moment in enormous relief. He hasn’t made a move on me, hasn’t doubted my story. And there is truth in what he says—sitting butt-to-butt on the edge of the bed, seemingly at ease in the heart of the night like father and daughter, or supervisor and agent, we recognize something inside the other that is the same.

A paradox is unfolding. The longer I stay under, the larger Dick Stone becomes. Rather than working his way into ordinariness through everyday contact, he grows more vivid, and my own sense of self-cohesion fades. The boundaries between Darcy and Ana seem inconsequential, not worth defending, as we are swept toward the Big One by some inner momentum of Stone’s that the meticulous procedures of the Bureau are powerless to stop. Donnato’s voice on the Oreo phone and my former life in Los Angeles dwindle and disappear like radio signals moving out of range.

The first time I drove through the Marine base at Quantico as a new agent, there was that orgasmic surge of ecstasy: This is what I’ve always wanted! Now, out of this cozy intimacy with Stone, the same words echo, but with a newly ominous tone: This is what I wanted, going undercover, isn’t it? To forget the past and my mistakes and the larger-than-life figures who dominated, even as the realization creeps at the edge of my mind that I have replaced one despot with another.

There is no retribution here. Dick Stone believes what he has said—that he and I are somehow the same—and now that he is done saying it, he simply gets up and leaves.

And the Darcy part of me experiences a rush of feeling for the old bandit that Ana, still the FBI agent, could never admit:

Affection.

Twenty-four

The panic in Donnato’s voice brings Ana Grey back instantly.

“You breached Stone’s security system?”

“I was looking for the sniper rifle.”

“What’d he do?”

“He laughed.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He likes me, or he’s nuts.”

“Or he’s made you and is playing for time.”

My stomach flips. “I have no way of knowing, do I?”

Neither of us speaks. I am up in the hazelnut trees again, fussing with the traps for moths, and not liking the symbolism one bit.

“This is not a disaster,” Donnato muses, as if to assure himself. “We can piggyback on his wireless signal. Hear everything going on inside the house.”

“If he made me, he wouldn’t let you do that,” I remind him.

“Tell me this—where does he go every morning?”

“He started running and lost fourteen pounds. I told you, it’s a new ritual. I think he’s preparing for the Big One.”

“Does he always go by the front door?”

When I first came to the lost farm, the agent in the cherry picker who was dressed like a repairman, aside from wiretap devices, installed cameras on the telephone poles. Command center in Portland can see everything that comes and goes.

“Because we don’t always get a visual until he’s a quarter mile away from the house,” Donnato says. “How does he get out? Suddenly he pops on-screen, heading north. We don’t know how he gets there or where he’s going. Find out.”

At 7:45 a.m. the next day, Stone, wearing a fluorescent yellow Grateful Dead T-shirt, running trunks, and a belt holding a water bottle, heads out through the kitchen door. No big mystery about that. I watch from the second-floor window—careful to stay