“Sounds too good to be true.”

“I know, doesn’t it?” Argent offers him a smile almost as greasy as his hair.

“So what’s your story? Why’d you risk your ass for me?”

Argent shrugs. “Isn’t much of a risk when you know you’ve got ’em outsmarted,” he says. “Anyway, I figure it’s my civic duty. I escaped from a parts pirate a while back, now I help others less fortunate than myself. And it wasn’t just any parts pirate I got away from—it was the ex-Juvey-cop who Connor Lassiter tranq’d with his own gun. He got drummed out of the force, and now he sells the kids he catches on the black market.”

The AWOL reaches through his memory for the name. “That Neilson guy?”

“Nelson,” Argent corrects, “Jasper T. Nelson. And I know Connor Lassiter too.”

“Really,” says the AWOL, dubiously.

“Oh, yeah—and he’s a real piece of work. A total loser. I showed him hospitality like I’m showing you, and he did this to my face.”

Only now does the AWOL see that the left half of Argent’s face is badly damaged from wounds that are still healing.

“I’m supposed to believe that the Akron AWOL did that?”

Argent nods. “Yeah, when he was a guest in my storm cellar.”

“Right.” Obviously the guy is making all of this up, but the AWOL doesn’t challenge him any further. Best not to bite the hand that’s about to feed him.

“Just a little farther,” says Argent. “You like steak?”

“Whenever I can get it.”

Argent gestures to a breach in the concrete wall through which cool air spills, smelling like fresh mold, instead of old rot. “After you.”

The AWOL climbs through to find himself in a cellar. There are other people here, but they’re not moving. It takes a moment for him to register what he’s seeing. Three teens lying on the ground, gagged and hog-tied.

“Hey, what the—”

But before he can finish the thought, Argent comes up behind him and puts him in a brutal choke hold that cuts off not just his windpipe, but all the blood to his brain. And the last thing that strikes the AWOL’s mind before losing consciousness is the bleak realization that he’s been swallowed by a snake after all.

2 • Argent

He’s on top of the world. He’s at the peak of his game. Things couldn’t be going better for Argent Skinner, apprentice parts pirate, who’s learning the trade from Jasper T. Nelson, the best there is.

Argent didn’t land in Nelson’s service under the best of circumstances, but he certainly has made the best of the circumstances he was given. He has proven himself so valuable that Nelson had no choice but to keep him on. The evidence of Argent’s value is tied up in the U-Haul behind him.

The small van, a one-way rental, had replaced a rented car that they had left abandoned in a suburban Walmart parking lot. Argent doesn’t worry that they’ll be tracked down for these little bits of petty larceny, because Nelson is a true master of evading so-called justice and keeping under the radar. Having been a Juvey-cop for so many years, Nelson knows all the angles, all the ropes. He knows how to skate smoothly across the slick surface of the law.

Nelson is Argent’s new hero. Connor Lassiter, the previous object of Argent’s hero worship, was a disappointment. Now both Argent and Nelson are united in hatred against the Akron AWOL—and such hatred can be as powerful a bonding force as love.

Argent turns around to take another look at the kids in the van behind him: four of them bound and gagged, practically gift wrapped for delivery. The AWOLs are all awake and squirming. Some cry, but silently and to themselves, because they don’t want to incur Argent’s wrath—which he has threatened to rain upon them several times. Of course, it’s all blustering on Argent’s part, because Nelson won’t let him physically hurt them.

“Bruises reduce their market value,” Nelson pointed out. “Divan does not like his fruit bruised. He’s already going to be aggravated that he’s getting a consolation offering from me, instead of the grand prize.”

The grand prize, of course, is Connor Lassiter.

Nelson could tranq them into silence, but he won’t. “I have to conserve,” Nelson told Argent. “Tranqs are expensive.”

However that doesn’t seem to apply where Argent is concerned. Argent once tried to turn up the volume on the radio, and Nelson tranq’d him for it. Not for the first time either. Nelson seems to take great pleasure in rendering Argent unconscious. “It’s like shocking a monkey to teach it not to take the banana,” Nelson had said. The next song on the radio had been “Shock the Monkey.” Argent is convinced that Nelson is psychic.

The prewar oldies station now plays Pearl Jam at the volume Nelson prefers: just loud enough to almost hear. Argent must constantly resist the impulse to turn up the annoyingly low music.

As Argent looks at the AWOLs in the back, the last kid that Argent caught locks eyes with him. He’s a harsh-faced boy with gentle amber eyes that clash with the severity of his face. His eyes beg for something from Argent, but what? Release? Mercy? An explanation of why his life has come to this?

“Stop it!” Argent tells him. “Whatever you want, you’re not gettin’ it.”

“Bff-foo,” he mumbles through his gag.

“No bathroom stops!” Argent growls. “You’ll hold it until we decide to stop—and don’t give me those puppy-dog eyes unless you want ’em punched black-and-blue.” Another idle threat, but the kid doesn’t know that. The boy casts his eyes to the scuffed floor of the van in defeat, which cheers Argent up.