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  “What?” Phillips said. “It looks weird when you do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Smile,” she said. “I’m not used to it.”

  Cutter shook his head. “Sounds like Lola’s husband is about to come down here and kick my ass.”

  “Hmmm.” Phillips gave Cutter a piercing look, like she was studying the back of his skull for clues. It would have been off-putting had she not been so genuine. “Are you sure you want her on the task force? Don’t get me wrong. I like Lola, but she’s got a tendency to be a bit of a blue flamer if you ask me. I have requests on my desk for her to get a bomb dog, go to an armorer’s school, attend interview training, and take part in a pursuit driving instructor’s course in Vegas. On top of that, I have a package requesting consideration for promotion to the Witness Security Division. Kid’s like a BB in a boxcar when it comes to applying for jobs.”

  “There are worse qualities,” Cutter said. “She did tell me she’s thinking about putting in for SOG.”

  “Of course she is.”

  “She handled herself like a champ today,” he said.

  “Even so,” Phillips said. “Her idiot husband could turn into a liability real fast.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Cutter closed his eyes and sank further into the soft chair. “I’m not worried about him.”

  “I’m not either,” Phillips said. “I’m worried about you.”

  Cutter’s eyes flicked open. “How’s that?” He’d heard Jill Phillips was the kind of chief who didn’t hold much back.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “I think every good deputy has to have a little bit of hunter in the blood—but there’s something harder about you—a berserk side, if that makes sense.”

  “Berserk?”

  “Like you’re a nanosecond from throat punching anyone who gets in your way.”

  Cutter scoffed, but was a little worried Fontaine had called ahead to discuss his behavior with the Halligan tool. She’d yet to mention it, but he knew the chief was aware of his two shootings. He’d been cleared by the Office of Professional Responsibility in both, but findings of the OPR didn’t matter much in the court of deputy opinion. Most in the agency—people with half a brain anyway—chalked the shootings up to the tragic but unavoidable part of the profession. There were more than a few, though, who considered Cutter a trigger-happy psychopath. Some, who’d heard the hushed stories about his time in Afghanistan, stayed completely out of his way.

  After the second shooting, a fellow deputy in Florida with one too many Moscow mules under his belt had observed that Cutter only needed one more deadly force incident to tie his divorce record. Cutter hadn’t been quite drunk enough to find the comment funny. His buddies had dragged the other deputy away before things got rough.

  He gave his second smile of the day to the chief, hoping it looked more genuine than it felt. “I think I’ve been extremely judicious in dealing out throat punches since I came aboard the Marshals Service.”

  Phillips patted her belly, as if to soothe the baby. She never took her eyes off Cutter. “Maybe so,” she said. “Look, I’m not supposed to ask about Afghanistan . . . but what about Afghanistan?”

  Cutter nodded, figuring it would come up. “What do you want to know?”

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “Parts of it were fun,” Cutter said. “Parts of it sucked.”

  “Your file says you were awarded a Silver Star.”

  “Politics,” Cutter said. “They could just as easily have ripped the buttons off my uniform and broken my sword.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Drummed me out.”

  “I doubt that,” Phillips said. “We’ll have to revisit this topic again over a beer one day—when you’ve learned to trust me and I can drink beer again.” She casually flipped through the pages of his record, before folding it closed—apparently satisfied that Cutter wasn’t in the mood to reminisce. The most interesting parts weren’t in his Marshals Service file anyway.

  Phillips returned the folder to her drawer and leaned back again. “Your last chief warned me that you’d always seek out the broken ones—people you think need fixing.”

  Cutter crossed his legs, studying the toe of his boot. “My older brother called it a Tarzan complex. He was right, I guess. I do have freakishly long arms, a prominent brow, and I’m always looking to save the girl.”

  Phillips laughed, wincing a little. She put a hand behind the small of her back. Cutter had always thought pregnant women were beautiful, but it wasn’t a compliment he felt comfortable giving his chief until he knew her a little better—or maybe never.

  “I wish I’d met your brother,” Phillips said. “I gotta tell you, this is a good thing you’re doing—coming up here to take care of your sister-in-law and her kids.”

  “Thanks,” Cutter said. He tried, and probably failed to hide a grimace, striving to change the subject for the second time. “So, you read my e-mail about the raid?”

  He’d sent her a quick note from the hospital. The marshal and chief could forgive almost any sin, so long as they knew about that sin before they got calls from the media.

  “I did,” Phillips said. “Pretty quick thinking to go through the neighboring wall like that. I wonder what walls cost these days.... Anyway, I was thinking about Dusty McBride.”

  “For?” Cutter said, knowing where this was going. McBride was a good kid. A little wet behind the ears, but a solid, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of deputy who did his job and got along with the rest of the squad room.

  “The task force,” the chief said. “You have a part-time ATF agent, and the trooper, but you need at least two PODs.” P-O-D was a plain old deputy, the worker bees and backbone of the service.

  Cutter shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you, Chief, I’d just as soon wait for Blodgett to get better.”

  Phillips leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “I’ve only been here a month longer than you, but that’s been long enough to see Blodgett’s kind of an asshole.”

  Cutter closed his eyes and groaned. Phillips was still in the same position when he looked up. “Chief,” he said. “You ever notice how the bad stuff always happens to the good guys?”

  Phillips shrugged. “I’d like to think we’re all the good guys.”

  Cutter shook his head and wagged an index finger, wanting to drive home his point. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I mean the very best ones. In my experience, the decent souls take it in the shorts nine times out of ten, while the ones who might deserve a smack or two walk away unscathed.”

  “So you’d rather run the Task Force of Misfit Toys?”

  “I know it sounds stupid—”

  She raised both hands in surrender. “It sounds like you have some unresolved issues from your time in the military,” she said. “But I’m not going to push you. You’ve had enough trauma for one day.”

  Phillips spun her chair a quarter turn so her belly could resume the fight with the keyboard. It was a sure sign she was ready to get back to the mountain of budget reports and personnel appraisals that plagued upper management. Her pregnancy forced her to sit farther away from the screen than she was accustomed to, so she put a pair of tortoiseshell readers on the tip of her nose. “You and Fontaine call it a day,” she said, wincing. “Damned hemorrhoid. . .” Cutter pretended not to hear as he stood to leave, but she looked up at him, hand back on her belly. “Two pieces of advice, Arliss. Don’t ever get pregnant . . .” She nodded toward her door. “And do your best not to throat punch Lola Fontaine’s husband on your way out.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MANUEL ALVAREZ-GARZA DRUMMED LONG, MANICURED FINGERS against the varnished teak table and stared out the aircraft window at the frothy green water below. Breaking surf and gray gravel beaches set a stark line against the darkness of the rain forest that ran from ravaged coast to the rolling mountains that covered the island. There wasn’t much to see, just water and trees, bu
t it gave Garza’s mind respite from looking at his boss.

  The Gulfstream G-III was a quiet jet, comfortable and well appointed, but the trip from El Paso to Alaska had been a long one, no matter how plush the aircraft. Garza was a tall man, dark where a man should be dark—around the eyes—with a full head of wavy black hair he kept slicked back. On his last trip to Colombia, one of the “prepaids”—the word for a very particular sort of hostess—said he looked like a young Andy Garcia. He’d always liked that particular actor, and tipped the whore well for her compliment. Today Garza wore designer jeans and a gunmetal-gray Brooks Brothers shirt that was unbuttoned far enough to reveal three gold chains across his waxed chest. His knee bounced a little, in time with the drum of his fingers.

  “Do not be so jittery, Manolo,” Garza’s boss said from the seat across the teak table. He used the nickname “Manolo” as if they were old friends. Of course, being the friend of Ernesto Camacho, old or otherwise, was much preferred to being his enemy. Even friends sometimes found their charred corpses dissolving in a drum of acid—Camacho’s second favorite way to dispose of bodies. As the leader of the relatively small but powerful Los Leónes cartel, he found much opportunity to experiment with a variety of killing and disposal methods. Some were private affairs where the bodies were never found. Most of Camacho’s murders, however, were of rival cartel members, or politicians and policemen in northern Mexico who dared to cross him. These bodies Camacho preferred to leave out so the public could see them. Others, like his cousin who had dared to skim a few thousand dollars extra for himself, met the acid treatment—but only after the skin had been peeled off his face and sewn to a football so Camacho could kick the traitor around just a little longer after he was dead.

  “Seriously, my friend,” the boss continued, slapping the table between them with an open hand to get Garza’s full attention. “You must learn to relax.” Camacho smiled at the woman lying on the sofa that ran lengthwise across the aisle of the airplane. “Is not that right, my love?” The boss breathed a lungful of air through his nose, making a phlegmatic, wheezing rattle. Garza thought he saw a telltale shudder dance across the resting woman’s shoulders. Her name was Feliciana Cárdenas, but her pimp in Reynosa called her Flea—a particularly distastful name for a whore, Garza thought. Camacho liked the name Beti, so much so, in fact that he’d called all his girls Beti from the time Garza had first met him, almost ten years before. So Flea became Beti when she’d taken up with the cartel boss.

  “Beti” slept most of the way from their refueling stop in Portland and her long, naturally blond hair lay across the plush leather of the sofa as if it had been styled for a glamour shot. This was her second trip to Camacho’s mine in Alaska, and she seemed the sort of girl to which the new of things wore off very quickly. An irony, Garza thought, since Camacho had the same propensities about his Betis.

  “Relax, Manolo,” Beti parroted without looking up. Garza looked at her and shook his head. She would have been much prettier had she not chosen to spend her time with a man like Camacho. Being with Camacho brought out the ugly in people.

  “You pay me to keep you safe, Patrón,” Garza said. “I only wish you would allow me to do my job.”

  Camacho leaned across the table and used a thick index finger to grind his point into the teak surface. “What good is it to be filthy rich, if a man cannot go fish in Alaska when it pleases him? I can launder my money in many ways. Why do you think I purchased a mine thousands of miles away from our home? All I ask is to catch one of these halibut as big . . . how do they say it . . . big as a barn door. Or maybe just go for a relaxing walk in the darkness of the ancient forests or explore one of the many caves. Did you know there were caves on this island, Manolo?”

  “I did not,” Garza said.

  “Is it too much to ask that you protect me while I do these simple things that make me a happy man?”

  “Of course not, Patrón,” Garza said. “But I must remind you that the DEA does not care if you are a happy man or not. Your photographs are very prominent on the Internet and with the reward of half a million US dollars for your capture . . . I am only able to do so much—”

  “Then do that!” Camacho slammed the flat of his hand on the table again. The three sicarios seated in the rear of the airplane glanced up at the outburst—each a professional killer among their other skills, handpicked for this trip by Garza. After a scant moment, they returned to their card game. Beti Cárdenas yawned. Such outbursts by their boss were not uncommon.

  Camacho took another wheezing breath and chuckled, reeling in his apparent anger. “We are at the northern edge of nowhere, Manolo. There will be no one here to see me or attempt to collect the reward. I would be surprised if anyone out here even has the Internet.”

  The G-III touched down, bouncing once on the mine’s private runway. “And if they do, Patrón?” Garza asked.

  A wide smile spread across Camacho’s jowly face. “As I said, we are at the edge of nowhere. Many things could happen to someone on the edge of nowhere. It would do you well to remember that, my friend.”

  * * *

  As per the protocols Garza himself had put in place, he was first to step off the aircraft, followed by one of the sicarios, then Camacho. Garza made his way down the folding stairs to meet with Bean, the gaunt man who saw to the day-to-day operations of Camacho’s mine—or at least the property where the mine was supposed to be located once it was developed, according to the records of the shell corporation. Unwilling to admit that he was balding, what little fuzz Bean had left on his egg-shaped head stuck out in all directions, like the down on a mangy chick. Standing at the base of the open aircraft door, the man cast furtive looks from side to side. A short-barrel AR-15 hung from a single-point sling around his neck.

  “Are you expecting trouble?” Garza asked, eyeing the rifle.

  “No, sir,” Bean said. “Not especially. I knew you were concerned about security so I thought I’d assist as much as I can.”

  “Well,” Garza sneered, “do not shoot yourself in the foot.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bean said, smiling as if he had a bad case of indigestion.

  The fact that the man had a weapon might have alarmed Garza had it been anyone else, but Bean was too jumpy to pose much of a threat. He was harmless, but even if he weren’t, Garza and his men would have cut him down before he got his hands wrapped around the rifle. Besides, he was paid well for doing nothing but watch over a property on which nothing ever happened.

  Apart from the runway and a few roads—all made from stone crushed on site, the only other improvements to the mine property were the metal building that housed a shop and made the place look official—and a boat dock where Camacho’s pride and joy was moored.

  Bean stepped to the side and motioned toward the company van that was parked on a gravel pad at the edge of the runway. The air was cooler and cleaner than anything Garza has smelled in years. Garza reminded himself that this was, after all, an island, and he closed his eyes, imagining the nearby sea.

  Broomstick thin, Bean had an affected way of scooping at the air with his right shoulder when he walked. This sideways gait brought to mind the writhing of a snake—and made Garza hate him from the moment they’d first met.

  “The boat is ready for you, sir,” Bean said, bowing his head slightly toward Camacho. His quirky behavior chased away any feelings of tranquility the pristine scene might have otherwise offered.

  Garza was not certain how his boss had come to hire the strange man, but whatever it was, it was enough for Camacho to trust him with his life. It was not, however, enough to keep him from growling when Bean was too slow in picking up his luggage. Garza motioned for the sicarios to help. He wanted to keep his hands free—and establish his dominance as a gun-carrying drug lord rather than a money-laundering baggage handler.

  The two pilots, a German and an Australian, were well aware of the sort of man they worked for. With no ground crew, they set about taking care of the Gulfstre
am. There was an apartment in the back of the shop, and they would stay there, keeping to themselves until their boss was ready to depart.

  “I’ve arranged for a tour of a nearby cave, sir,” Bean said, sliding the last of the suitcases into the back of a white Ford van.

  “Later,” Camacho barked, glancing at the gold nugget Omega he insisted calling his “Alaska watch.” “Take me to Pilar before we do anything else.” He waved his hand at the rapidly darkening sky. “I wish to be underway and fishing as soon as possible. It looks as though we may be in for some wind and rain very soon.” He threw back his head as if to howl and drew in a wheezing breath. “Oh, how I love this air!”

  “You are correct in your forecast. I believe we are in for a storm,” Bean said. “Probably by tomorrow morning, but I suppose it is good to get away from the heat.”

  Camacho gave Beti a hard pinch on the bottom, causing her to jump. Garza saw the flash of hatred in the girl’s eyes, but it melted into a smile soon enough. Camacho gave her a pat on the rump as if to console her from the injury of the pinch.

  “It is good to get away from my wife,” he said. “Enough talk. Take me to my boat.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A BLUE-BLACK RAVEN ROSE INTO A SLATE SKY FROM THE TOP OF A giant Sitka spruce two minutes after Camacho had boarded Pilar, his fifty-four-foot Nordic Tug. The bird, apparently startled by the sound of Beti’s agitated shrieks, settled back into the branches a moment later.

  Garza rushed forward, more interested in what had caused the scream than in Beti’s well-being.

  The blond woman stood at the foot of the queen-size bed, gripping a red silk nightgown in both fists. She held it up, shaking it at the men as they poured into the small cabin.

  “What?” Camacho demanded. “Why do you caw this way?”

  “Look at it!” Beti howled. “Just look at it! Someone has worn my things.”

  “Are you certain?” Garza stared at the gown. His mind wandered and he imagined what it would look like hanging off Beti’s wide shoulders. She was an attractive woman, so it was a natural reaction. Still, his main concern was of a possible trespasser on the boat.