She wasn’t alone. . . .

She kept telling herself that.

Not alone.

She had Tansy. And Tansy had her tracker and an SUV full of DARC Ops mercenaries.

In the best-case scenario, neither would be necessary. In the best case, the deal would go smoothly. Her militia contact wouldn’t suspect anything. He’d hand over the hard drive. And then she could leave.

Leave.

She could almost hear herself scream the word in her head.

Turn around and leave.

But she kept driving, her borrowed car bouncing across the potholes of an old dirt lot. It used to be a drag strip in the sixties, some signs of it still left. An old snack bar hut that was shuttered and falling apart. A wood pile for grandstands. Old crumbly pavement stretching into the horizon. Carly drove through the large gap in a chain link fence, avoiding more potholes and old tires, and pulled onto the drag strip proper. The pavement.

She was told to drive to the end, to the finish line.

But that voice came back, telling her to turn around immediately and drive anywhere else but that creepy, abandoned drag strip. Drive straight to the FBI. Confess. Who gave a fuck? At least she would survive.

She looked down at her wrist, at the tiny tracking dot, hoping that her faith in technology would prevail and maybe even brighten her spirits. She could depend on it. Right? Technology was how she made a living. And it was how she found Tansy. It might have already saved her life.

The ride was a little smoother on the racing surface. Carly powered up the engine and sped toward the finish line. She didn’t have time for suspense. By the time she began slowing down, she spotted a motorcycle parked next to a ramshackle wooden structure. It was a Harley Davidson, its chrome exhaust pipes and handlebars shining in the early-morning light.

She slowed and parked next to it, giving a quick scan of the area. She expected to see some clichéd looking biker. Jeans, a leather vest, long hair. But the guy who stepped out of the shadows was clean-cut, a military type with short hair. He even dressed like Tansy, with his black compression shirt and tactical pants. But his face certainly didn’t look like Tansy.

“Nice mask,” she said, trying to fight the shakiness in her voice.

“You, too.”

She wasn’t wearing one.

Asshole.

His voice was muffled, vibrating through a Bill Clinton mask. It was horrible looking, with a big, red, bulbous nose.

“Where’s the hard drive?” She stepped out of the car, slamming her car door shut, her voice straightening out as her fear turned to anger. This was the son of a bitch who wanted to ruin her life.

“Take it easy.”

“Where is it?” She leaned back on her closed driver’s side door, her arms crossing. “I don’t have to time to fuck around with some guy in a mask.”

“I’m not just some guy in a mask,” he said. “I’m the arbiter of your freedom.”

“Then I’m the arbiter of your life.” She pulled up her shirt to expose the grip of her revolver on her hip.

“Take it easy.”

“Don’t fuck with me.” She dropped her shirt back down over the gun, turning her hip to make sure the outline still showed.

He stood there casually, hand on his hip. “You don’t think I have friends, too?”

She couldn’t tell if he was referring to the guns he armed himself with, or his militia buddies likely hiding nearby. Both were problematic. But she had that all covered by Tansy and his men, or so she hoped.

“So whose car is that?” he asked.

“Mine.”

He laughed under the mask, the plastic moving up and down. “You’re a bad liar.” He pulled a phone from his pocket. “And you’re sloppy. That’s why you got caught in the first place.” He dialed a number and held the phone to his ear. “Okay, Marty, how’re we doin’?”

Carly looked around, trying to spot any of his militia cronies, any sign of a trap. Aside from the dilapidated wooden structure and a few clumps of Joshua trees, there weren’t many hiding places available. It was open desert all the way to Nellis Air Force Base. The lights of flight control twinkled in the distance behind the masked man.

“If that’s what he says, then I’m happy.” He ended his call and looked at Carly. “Okay. I’m happy.”

“I’m so glad.”

“You ready to do this?” Bill Clinton cocked his head to the side. “Or are you gonna keep coppin’ attitude?”

“Let’s do this. Where is it?”

He laughed again. “You expected me to be carrying it right now?”

“Well, yeah, I expected an exchange. What the hell else are we doing here?”

“We’re making sure you’re alone.”

“I’m alone,” she said, rubbing at the small raised dot on her wrist.

“No, you’re not.”

She let go of her wrist.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to where the hard drive is.” He walked over to his motorcycle and waved his hand over the seat. “Ever ride on one of these before?”

“Where are we going?”

“My place. It’s not far.” He grabbed a helmet from its holder behind the seat. “Come on. Slip on your brain bucket and we’ll go.”

“Where’s yours?”

“That is mine. And I’m offering it to you.”

She made her way slowly toward the bike. Toward him. “What’s your name?” she asked, as if they were having some normal conversation, some normal exchange like two people in line at the supermarket. Just two unarmed people. No tracking bug and no Bill Clinton mask.

“My name?” he said after a pause. “I don’t know . . . Kendall?” He shook the helmet impatiently. “Come on, let’s go.”

She slipped the helmet over her head. It was too big and it slid around with every movement.

“Come on.” He straddled the motorcycle and patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”

Carly hopped—rather, slid hesitantly onto the bike behind Kendall.

“You can touch me, you know. It’s okay.” He fired up the engine with a low guttural roar of bwap bwap bwap. He revved it higher, louder. “If you don’t want to hold on to me, that’s fine,” he shouted over the engine. “It’s your neck to break.”

The motorcycle started moving and Carly had no other choice but to accept her fate, the repulsion of wrapping her arms around the driver. It made her arms and chest feel sick, as if she was holding on to death itself.

Why couldn’t she be on vacation with Tansy somewhere? A cross-country tour, this time not in a rented carpet-cleaning van, but on Tansy’s plush touring bike, her arms wrapping around his sculpted torso and not around the hateful pudginess of this masked idiot.

They drove back to the interstate, turning onto it and speeding toward Vegas, their sweaty hug already becoming intolerable. Quite a few times during the ride, Carly wondered what in the motherfucking fuck she was doing. Why was she allowing this to happen? Her hugging on to this disgusting pig, her breasts pushed up against his back. Why was Tansy allowing this to happen?

And where the fuck was Tansy?

She focused back on her situation, wondering how much danger she’d just put herself in by leaving with Kendall. The one bit of good news was that he seemed unarmed. At least, he had no sidearm strapped to his waist. She would have noticed. She tried looking elsewhere, where the cuffs of his pants met his boots, leaning over to look at each in turn, but she found nothing.

Kendall—or Bill Clinton, or whoever the hell this militia guy was—finally veered off the interstate at the outskirts of Las Vegas, taking a bypass road that was seldom driven by tourists to a considerably less-touristy part of town. They turned away from all the glitz and glamour, away from all the money, and safety, and instead headed toward the run-down environs of North Las Vegas.

Carly stretched her back while they waited for a red light, and for a disheveled homeless person to hobble across the intersection. The reprieve from constant contact with Kendall was woefully short. She’d almost worked up enough courage to pull out her microdot pen when the light changed and they continued on, delving deeper into what appeared to be a nearly vacant neighborhood. Along one side of the road were houses without tenants, hell, without windows. There were piles of mattresses all strewn about. Cardboard. Shopping carts. On the other side of the road was a large parking lot. It was brightly lit but empty, with sun-baked weeds growing through the cracks. It was the most depressed-looking strip mall she’d ever seen.

The motorcycle growled its way into the parking lot, curving around to the rear of the lot—which looked even more ominous than the front. Along a cinder-block back wall was a long string of aggressive-looking graffiti. The roadway was spattered with shiny bits of broken glass. The back of the building was shadowed despite the daylight, the sickly pale glow from a security light creating ominous points of darkness behind a dumpster.

“We’re here,” he said proudly. Carly was just barely able to hear him over the bike’s engine. He parked the bike, cut the engine and then spoke again. “We’re here. Home sweet home.”

“Home?”

“Well, home to a few thousand pounds of old computer scrap.” He stepped off the bike with a groan, still wearing the mask. “It’s an electronic salvage station. We take in anything. Old TVs and monitors, cell phones, smart phones, computers, incriminating hard drives.”

That feeling came back again, the urge to punch his mask into his face.

“You wanna look around for it? Yours is in there, somewhere.” He laughed, this time sounding as wheezy as an old man. “I’m just kidding. I know exactly where it is.”

He guided her through a metal security door, past two separate security alarm consoles that needed decoding, and a slobbering ninety-pound Rottweiler that snapped as they walked past.

“Mind the guard dog.” Kendall opened one of the doors in a long hallway and corralled the animal into the room. “Good boy,” he said, before closing the door.

“Nice dog.”

“Yeah, he dudn’t do shit.”

He gestured at her and Carly took a cautious step forward, making sure to leave several feet of space between her and Kendall. In her head, she heard all the warnings about how deceptively fast someone can close in on you. Faster than you can draw a weapon from its holster. She wasn’t sure if it had been her father or Tansy who had made that warning. Maybe both.

“Alright,” he said, taking off the mask. “Enough with the theatrics.”

Carly looked at the face now staring back at her. He was older than she’d imagined, his skin sun-baked and dry. Reddish, as if permanently burnt from the desert sun. He had a faint goatee. Prominent crow’s feet.

He smiled with yellow teeth. “Are you gonna take off yours?”

“You already tried that joke.”

“Oh, yeah?” He turned, opened another door, and motioned her inside. “Step into my office.”

“No.”

He frowned, and a few dozen more wrinkles appeared. His face looked like candied glass.

“Thanks, but this is far enough.” She knew better than to get cornered.

“Would it make you feel better if I let you pull your gun out?”

“What?”

“Go ahead. Pull your gun out.”

She didn’t.

“Go ahead,” he implored, his voice lilting musically. “It’s okay.”

The back of her neck prickled and Carly quickly turned around. The hallway leading to the exit was empty, but when she turned back around, Kendall was gone.

She drew her weapon.

Carly held the gun in front of her, tucked close to her belly in a defensive position. She crept up to his office doorway and swung around the corner, the gun now fully extended and ready to aim and fire on Kendall and whatever bullshit he was up to.

But he was just sitting at his desk.

“See?” he said calmly. “Don’t it make you feel better?”

She scanned the room for danger.

Nothing. Just a filthy mess of computer parts and paperwork.

“Don’t it? Don’t it feel safer?” He was thumbing through a stack of papers. “You got your gun trained on me. I’m defenseless. Can’t move.” He grabbed a few pages and then stood up, folding the paper and slipping it into his pocket. “Well, alright. . . . Ready for the tour?”

She eased up with the gun, pointing it down. “If it ends with me getting the hard drive.”

“You and that hard drive.” He shook his head as he walked back around his desk and toward the doorway. Carly gave him his space, and then she followed him down the hall and into a large warehouse. “So what do you think of my little operation here? Pretty nice, huh?”

She didn’t bother to inspect it too closely. Her only concern was to avoid tripping over the odd keyboard or inkjet printer. If she was on the ground, she’d lose what little advantage she had. “It’s a pile of junk.”

“Another man’s treasure, Darlin’. Another man’s treasure.”

Her grip tightened on the gun.

“Take a good look, though. It’s all gonna be gone soon. I actually came to just grab some last stuff.”

“What about your dog?”

“My dog? No, he ain’t mine. He came with the place.”

They rounded a few junk piles and ended up at a workstation. Long tables covered in dust, plastic, and frayed wires. Kendall pointed to an opened computer tower, some relic of a thing hooked up to an old CRT monitor. A keyboard lay on top of the tower, and a mouse on top of that.

“There she is.” He knocked on the dusty glass of the monitor. “I hooked it up so you could explore it and make sure it’s the real deal.”

He powered up the machine and they waited for what felt like ten minutes.

“This startup’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Carly ignored him and instead looked behind her for the twentieth time. When she turned back, a Windows 2000 OS screen was staring back at her.

“Ta-da,” Kendall said cheerfully.

She moved in to start navigating through the machine, but he was standing so fucking close. “Can you fucking back off for a second?”

Kendall turned and walked away without saying anything. No jokes. Nothing.

In his absence, Carly sped through the contents of the hard drive. It was indeed, as Kendall said, the real deal. The original, too.

“How many copies did you make of this?” she hollered across the room.

“Why don’t you go ahead and check,” he called back. “I know you know how.”

Carly checked.

It was un-copied.

“You must think I’m a real son of a bitch,” he said, laughing. Carly unplugged the machine and ripped the hard drive out of the case with her bare hands.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for the tour. Good luck with the move.” She turned around to look for him. “Kendall?”

He was gone.

“Kendall?”

The lights turned off.

“Tansy?!”