Will’s lips parted. He let out his own frustrated breath. Then he told himself that Kevin was a flunky and Gerald was his boss, which meant the guy above Gerald could be Dash.

Beau laughed into the phone. He told Gerald, “Dash said he’d take care of me if I could find him a couple of solid guys.” He smirked at Will, acknowledging that this wasn’t information he’d shared with Amanda. “His name is Jack Wolfe. Airborne, tough as shit. My word should be enough to vouch for him, and if it’s not, you can suck my fat dick.”

Beau was grinning when he handed Will the phone.

Will wanted to beat him with it. Instead, he got back on the line, telling Gerald, “It’s me.”

“Wolfe.” Gerald paused, then asked, “How long you been out, son?”

He didn’t sound old enough to be calling Will son. “Long enough to know it was all a bunch of bullshit.”

Beau laughed.

Gerald had gone quiet again. He was thinking. Again.

Will did his own thinking. Beau was not acting right. He was too amped up, bouncing on his toes. There was nothing Will could do about him. Beau was going to do what Beau was going to do. Kevin was another matter. If Gerald said no deal, Will still had the Flunky. He would shove his Sig into the kid’s mouth and put his finger on the trigger if he had to.

Gerald said, “I’ll call you back.”

Will heard the line go dead. He clocked the time.

4:03 p.m.

If Gerald took more than two minutes, then he was making his way up the chain of command. If he took less than two minutes, he was calling Dash directly.

The latter scenario would put Gerald as Dash’s right-hand man.

Will pocketed the phone. He reached down to Kevin and grabbed the backpack.

“What the fuck?” Kevin complained.

Will motioned for Beau to walk with him to the bleachers. His hands were sweating. Every part of him wanted to stare at the phone until it rang and he found out whether or not he was one step closer to finding Sara or one step toward pounding Kevin into the ground.

“Dude,” Kevin said, “come on, gimme that.”

“Shut up.” Will unzipped the backpack. He pretended to examine the bricks of cash while he mumbled to Beau, “Dash told you to bring him a couple of guys, huh?”

Beau’s mouth smirked up another notch.

Will said, “I’m thinking a guy like Dash doesn’t trust many people, but he trusts you. Which means you lied about how well you know him.”

Beau tucked his hands into his pockets. He wasn’t looking for a fight. He just wanted to fuck with Will. He said, “Gotta keep some cards hidden up my sleeve, right, bro?”

Will told him, “Start thinking about where to hide things when the guards tell you to grab your ankles and cough.”

Beau laughed.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Will counted the money. There was at least thirty grand in the backpack. “You pull that shit again—”

Will’s threat was cut off by the phone ringing.

4:04 p.m.

He felt like he was going to throw up, but he let two more rings go by before answering, “Yeah?”

Gerald said, “All right, Wolfe, you can thank your buddy for vouching for you. Captain Ragnersen’s word goes a long way with the boss.”

Will opened his mouth and pulled in some air. “How much?”

“I can give you ten grand for a small job I got going tonight. Little try-out to see if you’re the real deal.”

Will made himself silently count to five. “How small?”

“Not a lot of risk. In and out. We’ve done it before. There’s a guy on the inside.”

“There’s always a risk,” Will said. In the silence, he counted off to five again. Ten grand was killing money. Or these guys had no idea what the street value was for a hired thug. He pressed, “Fifteen thousand.”

“Deal,” Gerald said, which meant that Will should’ve asked for twenty. “Hand the phone to Kevin.”

Will worked to hide his elation as he gave Kevin the phone. He was in. He was on the very edge, but he was in.

“Yes, sir,” Kevin told Gerald. The whininess had drained from his voice. “Yeah, I know where that is. I can meet him there in fifteen or twenty—okay, but—”

The call was ended.

Kevin slid the phone into his pocket. He told Will, “Help me up, Slenderman.”

Will grabbed his arm and lifted him up like a rag doll.

“Damn, that hurts.” Kevin limped to the bleachers. Blood had pooled into his shoe. White showed at the tip of his kneecap. He fell onto the seat. He unzipped the duffle. There had been no way to hide a GPS tracker inside the medications. Beau had been very specific about how everything was supposed to be prepared. The pills had been transferred to labeled Ziploc bags. The ointments and creams were out of the boxes, wrapped together with rubber bands, and still sealed.

Kevin exchanged the stacks of money from his backpack for the contents of the duffel. He said, “I need your phones and your IDs.”

“Fuck you,” Beau said.

Kevin shrugged. “You vouched for him. Gerald said either you and Wolfe go together or nobody goes.”

“We’ll both go.” Will tossed his wallet onto the bleachers. “I don’t carry a phone. I’m not gonna let the government track me.”

“No prob,” Kevin said. “I feel you, bro.”

Will’s wallet had opened on the seat. The driver’s license and credit card were in his fake name, Jack Phineas Wolfe. Unless the IPA had access to the Pentagon’s servers, Wolfe’s military service, a restraining order and two DUIs would clear any background check.

Will told Beau, “Come on, bro. Let’s do this.”

“This is fucked up.” Beau started shaking his head, but he added his wallet and phone to the stash. Will studied his face. Nothing about Beau felt right. He had capitulated too easily. Even high as a kite, he had managed to arm himself with the Glock. Will hadn’t heard Gerald’s side of the conversation with Beau. For that matter, he didn’t know what Gerald had told Kevin.

Will’s gut started screaming like a banshee.

He told Kevin, “We’ll follow you in the truck.”

“You’re not going with me. Gerald is in charge of the missions. Either one of you got outstanding warrants in North Carolina?”

North Carolina?

Will asked, “Who’s taking us to Gerald?”

“Hold your horses.” Kevin transferred the wallets and Beau’s phone into his backpack. “He’ll send us a location.”

Will fought the urge to look anywhere but the parking lot. Beau had told them that Dash sent a new flunky for every meetup, but Beau hadn’t described the guy in the van. He obviously knew Gerald. He had lied about his relationship with Dash. Will had to think that both Beau and Gerald knew every single way out of this park. And neither of them would be worried about the kids at the school next door.

Beau asked Kevin, “What about my money?”

“Give me the keys to your truck. I’ll put it under the seat.”

Beau capitulated again. He tossed Kevin the keys. His hands were loose at his sides. He was Zen again, ready to jump this thing off.

Kevin’s phone chirped. Will could see a pin on a map. Gerald had sent him a location.

“Thattaway.” Kevin pointed in exactly the direction Will thought he would, toward the woods. “When you get to the center of the field, take a right into the woods again. Go past the nursing home. A black van will meet you at the end of the driveway.”

Beau asked, “What field?”

He hadn’t studied the aerial map. He hadn’t worked for hours with a team of highly trained undercover agents who were searching for the best positions to monitor every single route in and out of the park.

All of the routes but one.

“The football field,” Kevin said. “It runs along the back of the elementary school.”

Will sat in the back of the packed van sweating so hard that he felt like he was boiling in a pot of water. The windows were painted black. A partition separated the cab from the rear. The dome light was on, but the bulb was so weak that Will could only see outlines of his fellow passengers. One measly vent in the ceiling shot out a cool stream of air conditioning, but it was over one hundred degrees outside and they were in an aluminum box, so no amount of air was going to keep them from baking.

They’d gone through the Gatorade in the cooler within the first two hours.

Will looked at his watch.

7:42 p.m.

Over three hours of transit time. They could be deep into North Carolina by now. Or Kevin could be a more convincing liar than Will had guessed and they could be in Alabama or Tennessee.

Beau grunted in his sleep. His shoulder was jammed into Will’s. His head had dropped down. He was snoring. Four young men were crammed together on the other side of the van. Their sweat smelled like raccoon musk if raccoons wore Axe Body Spray.