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chemical sparkling through his brain, brightening dark threads and creating halos around trees where wind was blowing the waxy light.
    There was another matter Perry had been waiting to address. The topic was creating pressure inside his skull and needed to get out. Perry was still fuming about the way King had almost bolted, back there at the old man’s house, instead of joining in and doing what had to be done. There was something else, too.
    “The next time we steal bicycles,” Perry said over his shoulder to King, “I take first pick. I wanted that Trek, but you took it. Didn’t even ask.”
    He gave the man a hard look, adding, “Bikes or anything else. The King don’t get first pick anymore. Understand?”
    King swallowed without making eye contact, afraid of his cell mate for the first time since Statesville.
    “Sure,” he said, “whatever.” He was chewing the fig bar, letting his attitude say, No big deal, settling himself by turning his attention to practical matters. Thinking was his job; Perry was a two-time loser, nothing but a punk.
    King took some time to review. How safe was this place?
    The hunters’ shed was a quarter mile away, no path cut to the lake—like the hunters didn’t know the lake existed. There was a swamp, remnants of a barbed-wire fence cutting through—private property. Maybe that was the reason.
    Today was . . . Monday?
    Yes, Monday. He and Perry had food, and they could find a place to sleep beneath the cypress trees. Tomorrow, regular people would be working, no hunters to worry about. With any luck, a couple of Perry-dumb punks had spotted the Subaru on MLK, keys on the dash, and would give the cops something to do besides search the area again with helicopters.
    King could picture it, the cops spotting the stolen car— Smart —and he let himself relax a little. Couple of days sleeping near the lake, then back on the bicycles and head south. Key West, just like regular tourists.
    Safe. Yeah . . . And it got even better the next morning, Tuesday, when the men with the scuba gear and pickup truck appeared out of nowhere.
     
     
    Perry and King watched the men from the distance. Watched the skinny hippie, with his ribs showing and ponytail, and the Apache-looking teenager and the nerdy-looking guy with glasses and shoulders take their sweet damn time before suiting up in their scuba gear, wearing short-sleeved wet suits, then walking their fins into waist-deep water before submerging, one by one.
    That left the old redneck man, the one who’d been driving the truck, alone onshore.
    Perry looked at King, but King took his time acknowledging Perry—back in charge now, and he wanted the punk to know it.
    “Dude,” Perry whispered, “I wouldn’t go in that water. No fucking way, dude. What you think they’re after?” He still hadn’t told King what he had seen yesterday afternoon, the large dark shadow swirling beneath the surface.
    King didn’t answer. An executive silence, that was the way to handle punks on speed.
    “Maybe fishing, huh?” Perry said. “Or looking for something. How long you think they’ll be down?”
    King held his hand out until Perry finally figured out what it was he wanted.
    “Long enough,” King said, as Perry handed him the pistol. “You know what’s funny? They’re down there having fun, thinking nothing in the world can go wrong. But here we are.”
    King was smiling, picturing the divers’ faces when they surfaced, finding their truck gone, and the old redneck dude shot or cut up—probably dead, knowing Perry.

ONE
    ON A WINTER AFTERNOON, DIVING AN INLAND LAKE, south of Orlando, every small thing was going right, far better than I had anticipated, but then it all went suddenly wrong in ways I could not have imagined.
    That’s the way it happens, when it happens. People like me, the obsessive planners, the compulsive guardians, always say later—if they survive—“It’s the one thing I didn’t think about.”
    On the water,