One by one, Prince hurled the pistols and phones into the water on the far side of the road.
“Now let’s get this back on track,” Pauly said. “Thorn, cuff these guys. Make yourself useful.”
Sheffield looked at Thorn, their eyes holding. The gash on Sheffield’s cheek was deep and ragged. “You’re with these people?”
“Seems that way.” Thorn grabbed Frank’s armpit and hauled him up.
“And Flynn?”
“He’s okay,” Thorn said. “So far.”
Thorn walked over to Leslie. She’d propped her butt against the grill of the SUV, her face smeared by confusion. She had come so far, driven by principles that were clear and defined, making a logical progression of decisions that had led her to this strip of road. It had all made sense. It had all mattered so much. The earth, saving what was left. The war she’d conceived of had cleanly drawn lines of battle, but now that illusion had dissolved and everything was scrambled. They had entered a free-fire zone. No rules. No good or bad.
Thorn stood before her, brought his face into her line of sight, waited till she focused on him. “It’s over, Leslie. Look around you. A woman’s dead. Pauly’s out of control. We can’t go on. It violates everything you believe. This is finished. Call it off. You’re the only one who can do it.”
She shook her head, eyes blank, turning away from him, looking off down the empty roadway.
“We knew there’d be risks,” Prince said. “Things could get bumpy.”
“You fucking moron.” Thorn swung to him, slammed his palms into Cameron’s chest, barely budged him. “Is that what you call this, bumpy?”
“You two shut the fuck up and cuff these guys,” Pauly said. “Or I’ll shoot every goddamn one of you, handle the rest myself.”
“Do it, Thorn,” Leslie said. “There’s no U-turn here. We’re going in, we’re shutting that place down.”
Thorn glanced at Sheffield. “I tried.”
“Not hard enough,” Sheffield said.
Thorn cuffed two of the agents and Prince handled the other two.
“Big mistake, cowboy,” one of the agents said. “Big, bad mistake.”
“I’ve made bigger,” Thorn said. “You guys relax. You get a chance, roll in the mud, it’ll keep the mosquitoes off until somebody comes along and sets you loose. There’s not going to be any more killing.”
An ankle in each hand, Pauly dragged the woman’s body across the road. Frank watched, groaning deep in his chest. Chee rolled the corpse into the ditch.
Prince directed the four agents to lie on the shoulder in the weeds close beside the ditch, then he bound their ankles and left them facedown. One of them kept warning anyone who’d listen that this was a mistake. A big mistake.
After they repositioned the two SUVs back to back, they transferred the wooden cage and Pauly’s aluminum cases to the Chevy Suburban. Then Prince parked the battered SUV well off the road, a few yards from where the agents lay. In a medical kit in the back of the Chevy, Leslie found a roll of gauze. She tore open Thorn’s pant leg, flinched at what she saw, then wrapped half the roll of gauze tight around the wound.
With every second the magical numbing agent his body produced was wearing off. She asked him if he was okay, could he make it, or should they leave him here.
Thorn forced a smile. “It’s a scratch.”
“I’m afraid it’s more than that.”
“I’m in this. You need somebody sane.”
“And that’s you?”
Leslie climbed into the shotgun seat of the Suburban. Pauly buckled in behind the wheel. Prince, Sheffield, and Thorn crammed into the second row, Frank in the middle. Behind them the gators and python were quiet, alert, probably smelling the blood in the air.
A half mile down the road, Thorn said, “So that was the easy part?”
No one replied.
He rolled his window down and drew a breath of summer air, ripe with the sour mud of the Everglades and the heavy sulfur undertone of its marshy prairie of saw grass and cypress and hummocks of cabbage palm and mahogany, all that thick air mingling with lighter tones—the honeyed bursts of sweet ferns and thousands of night-scented orchids and bromeliads breaking into bloom.
That vast expanse was a few miles distant, but its pollen and its darting night birds and its wild immensity radiated like a beautiful fever beyond its borders, altering the air around them, enlivening their own blood chemistry with its swelling presence in ways no one could fully reckon.
Thorn leaned forward and laid a hand on Leslie’s shoulder. “Who’s Julie?”