Quaid harassed Durwood into swinging by the shi-shi sandwich shop on the way back to the hotel, where he got the #7: duck confit with miso mayo and spicy slaw. He stole a bite in the shop, savoring the melange of flavors. As he climbed back into the Vanagon's passenger seat, the cayenne still pinched his tongue pleasantly.

Durwood looked across the center console. His dinner had been almonds and a hard-boiled egg. Back in the cabin, Sue-Ann eyed the sandwich with lust in her face.

Quaid, buckling up, met his partner's gaze. "She'll come around."

Durwood put the van in gear.

The hotel was another ten minutes away. Quaid chewed and thought, thought and chewed. When shreds of cabbage dropped, he nudged them back to Sue-Ann with a tasseled loafer. Durwood gripped the wheel tight.

Quaid was experiencing an odd exhilaration as he processed Molly's account of the eDeed attack. A wrongheaded giddyup. He recognized the sensation from other missions. During the Nicaraguan coup, discovering training documents in the rebels' jungle stronghold written in Mandarin. Sixteen hundred feet below sea level in the Tears of the Turtle Cave, when that separatist's corpse showed green at the fingertips. That twist. That accelerant.

Whatever Piper Jackson had on that thumb drive was the accelerant. It raised the job from a simple infiltration-capture to full-blown catastrophe-prevention. It potentially explained how a bunch of amateurs kept avoiding capture and wreaking such sustained, pernicious havoc. It wasn't luck. Either Jackson possessed greater skill than they had known, or some unseen third party was involved. Either meant a challenge. Either meant danger.

They parked in a tree-hidden corner of the hotel lot. Durwood took a minute activating various security countermeasures—an arsenal like he kept in the Vanagon couldn't be left unsecured, particularly in today's climate—then walked with Quaid to their rooms. Quaid had eaten half his sandwich.

Anger poured off Durwood like smoke. Sue-Ann loped two steps back.

Quaid stopped outside his door. "You think I was harsh with McGill."

Durwood said nothing.

"If you keep saying nothing," Quaid said, "or doing that 'mm' thing, I'm going to assume we're good."

Durwood's hat was slightly askew, the brim like a poised blade. Pressure reddened his face. Quaid would've bet dollars to donuts his migraine was raging.

"Okay then." Quaid clapped his hands, upbeat. He inserted his brass key into his room's door and pushed inside. His sandwich down to the crusts, he licked off miso mayo as he went to close the door.

It did not close.

"We're not good." Durwood had planted his boot in the jamb. "No sir."

Sue-Ann mewed.

Quaid said, "You disagree about the danger of that thumb drive?"

"No."

"You disagree about taking the Jackson girl? You see a superior play?"

Durwood pushed out his lip. "I don't."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Problem is"—he gnashes the words—"it's not right, forcing people into what they're incapable of. Moll won't betray Jackson. So we find another way."

"She's capable. She's just reluctant. We're the pros—it's our job to bring her along, find the right motivation."

"Like the safety of her kin."

"Yeah," Quaid said. "Sometimes people need rattling. They need to have their deepest, darkest insecurities dredged up and pushed into their noses. As of this afternoon, Manhattan has no official record of who owns what. We're talking breakdown of society. I'm not about to pussyfoot around feelings."

"Moll shouldn't be worrying about society. She's civilian."

"I'm civilian."

Durwood lowered his steel-colored eyes.

Quaid said, "You know your problem? You think you're in some dime-store Western. Molly's no damsel in distress. She's tough. She's proved herself. We're a trio now—and she can hold up her corner of the triangle."

"Thirty-three-year-old woman. Been rearin' children half her life."

"So?"

"So have some honor."

Quaid spun out into the hotel room, looking up at the ceiling. He raised his flask to his lips but knew from its weight it was empty. He replaced it in his sportcoat.

Durwood and his son-of-the-south patriarchy. He had to be the hero. The martyr. Only they menfolk could fight and suffer and bear the full weight of trouble.

"With respect," Quaid said, "you know nothing about women."

"That right?"

"It is right. Women don't need bubble-wrap. They don't break if handled. Believe me, I've had my hands on enough to know."

Durwood bobbed his head. "Hog rolls around in mud all day, don't make him a landscaper."

Quaid momentarily lost his powers of speech. "Of all the hillbilly wisdom you've cracked over the years, that might take the prize." He laughed and, noticing Sue-Ann licking her chops, tossed his sandwich crusts to the hotel carpet. "All yours, Sue."

The hound flinched half out of her mottled skin going after the scraps.

"Leave it!" Durwood snapped.

The command came too late. Sue-Ann's jaws were already working. Her legs spasmed at Durwood's words, and she looked up shamefaced—though continued chewing.

Durwood seethed. "Gotta ruin everything, don't you?"

"Nothing's ruined," Quaid said. "How many years does that dog have left? Poor animal can't enjoy a lick of duck flesh? Allow her a little happiness, man."

"Table scraps don't make a dog happy."

"No? Look at those nostrils go. She'd be smiling ear-to-ear if you'd just back off the guilt trip."

"Dogs find true happiness by pleasing their master."

"Who do you suppose decided that? I'll bet the masters. I'll bet if dogs could talk, they'd say, 'We're sick of fetching slippers for you bunch of jerks. Give us our duck confit."

They were standing in Quaid's room now, the door knocking softly against the deadbolt throw. The hotel had retrofitted to physical locks after a spate of mass electromagnetic failures, and the fit was imperfect.

Durwood said, "Too many words."

"I got news for you." Quaid cracked a pair of nibs from the mini-bar and downed them in one swallow. "Words are how the rest of us homo sapiens communicate. But let's not bog down in semantics. Let's do what needs doing. This AmDye job is taking too long. Two missions and nothing to show for it. Zero for two. We can't afford to pull punches."

"Zero for two?"

"Right. Blackstone and now eDeed."

Durwood removed his hat as though it were hurting his head.

"Don't take it personal," Quaid said, "but results are results. We can't keep advertising ourselves as the premier small-force private-arms operators in the Western world on a track record like this."

"Good."

"Good what?"

"Never did like you saying that. Like we're insurance salesmen."

Quaid dug deeper in the mini-bar, in search of 90 or higher proof. "You're taking us off-topic, Wood. Can we focus on important stuff?"

"Seem to me Moll's welfare oughta be important. More'n finishing quick so you can hit the town with the mayor."

"That's what you think?"

Durwood crossed a bootheel behind the other. "You two certainly get around."

"What're you, my chaperon? All this time I thought I was partnered up with a cold-blooded soldier, turns out you're Oprah."

Truly, it surprised Quaid to hear Durwood juxtaposing Molly and his nights out with Sergio Diaz. The jarhead picked up more than you expected.

Quaid himself had qualms about his recently-vibrant social life, but on the whole felt justified. Molly had gone cool since the Blackstone attack, seeming to distance herself from their flirts and touches. They had no arrangement in place, no mutual obligations. His junkets with Sergio to the wilds of Manhattan's upper echelon were no more her business than some budding online romance of hers was his. Or Garret. Was that the pup's name, Garret? Grayson? What about him?

The argument lasted another ten minutes, the barbs only growing sharper. Durwood said he hoped those fancy sentences of Quaid's helped him sleep at night. Quaid accused Durwood of self-sacrificing to the point of indulgence. Maybe he should try coming along with him and Sergio. How long had it been since he'd received an actual kiss from an actual female, not counting Sue-Ann's slobbers? (Hearing her name, the dog snuffled out of a doze.) They were poking sore spots, dredging up subjects they had successfully ignored for years like some old married couple in a blow-out fight.

Finally Quaid said, "I don't know what to tell you. Maybe this thing's run its course."

Durwood stuck his hands in his jeans pockets, not disagreeing.

They stood in silence. Sue-Ann, raised to a sit now, cut her milky eyes between them.

Before tonight, the closest they'd come to dissolving the partnership had been five years ago in Rome. They had been unraveling a massive conspiracy when an informant had given testimony that stopped Durwood cold: the figure at the very top of the scheme was none other than the Pontiff himself. Quaid had been ready to dig into the Vatican's dirty laundry—membership was down; they got desperate like anybody else—but Durwood had refused. "Don't cost a thing to smear the Church," he'd said, believing a different standard of proof should apply.

Quaid had been dumbstruck. Durwood wasn't even Catholic. They had almost come to blows over it, and the job went unfinished. They hadn't spoken for three months afterward.

Now they faced each other in the dim hotel room, a radiator buzzing, stray sirens in the distance.

Quaid stared Durwood dead in the eye. Durwood stared back.

Sue-Ann began whimpering.

Quaid said, "Oh, pet your damn dog."

Durwood remained stoic another moment, then did reach down to scratch the old girl's armpit.