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at him again. A hot one. Ah, yeah. He’s talking about the weather now, the goddam weather. This is all she needs.
    â€˜It’s heatstroke weather,’ he says. ‘Drink lotsa water.’
    â€˜Water, yeah.’ She walks away, the guard watches her, then he turns and strides back to the mall entrance and she keeps going between the rows of parked cars. She’s frantic, caught between the guard and the guys she imagines are maybe only a couple of blocks away. It’s like a whirlwind of panic around her and she’s dragged up inside it the way a leaf is sucked up in a cyclone.
    Find a goddam car.
    She crosses herself. Say a prayer. Ask for guidance. The saints are on your side. Except she has a sense they’ve abandoned her, because she wouldn’t be in this shit situation if they were around.
    Up ahead she sees an aged Datsun slide into a parking-lot. An old guy gets out. He has a black wood cane with a brass handle and his white shirt-tail hangs out over his black-green herringbone pants and he moves slow, closing the door of his car, then turning and catching her eye and drawing one hand across the stubble on his chin. She looks away.
    The old guy goes towards the mall. He uses the cane for support. He calls out to the guard. ‘Hot nuff fer you, Jimmy?’
    â€˜Nah,’ says the guard.
    She hears the old guy laugh and say something that sounds like, ‘Hot nuff to fry a damn ole egg on the sidewalk fer sure,’ and she moves a few feet towards the car, seeing a set of keys lying on the passenger seat.
    This is where it goes right or it goes all wrong.
    She runs a hand through her hair and waits. The tarmac shimmers. She feels heat rise up through the soles of her shoes. She feels the air is filled with invisible devils. Fuck you, Ángel. You put me in this place, you did that. And I loved you once, I gave you my heart, and what did you do with it?
    She touches the door handle of the Datsun. The metal burns right through her. Her skin’s welded to metal. She stares in the direction of the guard. The old guy’s reached the mall and the guard’s laughing at something and she knows she’s not gonna get a better moment than this.
    She opens the door, gets in the car, picks up the keys, tries until she finds one that fits the ignition, then she turns it and the engine makes a noise like karam-karam-karam . If this car had lungs they’d be bronchial. The vehicle shudders, roars into life and belches smoke. She pulls the seat forward, presses a foot on the gas-pedal, sticks the gears in reverse and backs out. She sees the guard come out of the entranceway shouting something, and the old guy poking the air with his cane and the black wood shining, but she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s moving, and although the guard is chasing after her she’s out of the parking-lot fast and onto the road. Then she’s looking for a freeway sign, even as she knows the demons are congregating in clouds behind her, and her world is about as secure as a house on stilts in a country of earthquakes.

5
    On the drive back to the cabin Drumm said, ‘Ok, Galindez goes in the Program. Then what? He decides he can’t hack the confines of witness protection and wants to get back to his old haunts, only to be dusted by one of his old cronies. Or do we skip that and point the finger of blame directly at Victor Sanchez and consider the possibility that he managed to breach Program security and get Galindez?’
    Amanda found herself remembering the sand and grit in the empty socket, the stench of dead flesh. ‘I’m not getting clear pictures of how he’d pull that off.’ Breach Program security . She didn’t want it to be that. Something at the back of her mind was sending up pale smoke signals she didn’t want to read. ‘How would he get inside information? How did he make the arrangements?’
    â€˜First he’d need a paid informant