tricks, but I didn't
'Believe.' This was starting to sound very California. 'In what, yourself?'
He shook his head. 'In the power of the suit.'
'Okay, you've lost me.'
'You know that movie where the dad puts on the Santa suit and he turns into Kris Kringle?'
'
'Okay. All this'-he waved his arm around, taking in the computer and the mic and the racked and locked shotgun and his hat balanced on the dashboard-'is the suit. You put on the suit, and you become The Man.'
She thought about that for a moment. 'I don't know. I've got the uniform and all that, and I still feel like a fraud.'
'Just give it time.'
Her mouth crooked up. Words of wisdom from a-'Flynn,' she said, 'how old are you?'
'Twenty-four.'
From a kid who was eight years younger than her. She curled into the seat. 'I think you may have more time than I do.'
Spinning yellow lights appeared on the road ahead of them, resolving into a tow truck. She stirred, ready to get up, but Flynn's hand was in the way. 'Gimme your key,' he said. 'I'll take care of it.'
She stripped the key off her ring and dropped it onto his open palm. She watched through the windshield as he spoke with the tow truck operator, handed over the key, and shook the man's hand. Weird. Considering what almost happened with the freaks in the Hummer, she should still be jangling, jumpy, coked up. Instead, she felt as relaxed and boneless as she did in the shampoo girl's chair at the salon.
Letting someone else take care of her.
Huh.
Kevin climbed back into the cruiser and tossed his hat back on the dash. 'All set.' He turned off his light bar and shifted into gear. 'He's taking it to Ron Tucker's garage. Best mechanic in town. He'll do you right.' He pulled onto the road. She let the rolling fields and farms slip past them, almost invisible in the darkness.
'Flynn.' The question popped into her head from nowhere. 'Did you run the plates on those guys?'
He grinned.
'What?'
'There you go. That's thinking like a cop.'
'Did you?'
'Of course I did. When I pulled in behind you. The truck's registered to Josefina Feliciano, DOB 7-25-61, POR Brooklyn, New York. Three points down for passing a school bus, no record.'
She shook her head. 'Did you see the guy who was hassling me? With three studs in his upper lip? He looked like he escaped from an S and M convention.'
'Maybe Ms. Feliciano likes to hang out with rough trade.'
'You sure the vehicle wasn't stolen?'
'It hasn't been reported. Maybe one of them was Feliciano's son?'
'God. Can you imagine? If my son ever gets anything other than his earlobe pierced-' She pictured the pumped-up SUV and the young men in their city clothes. 'What were they doing up here, anyway? It's a little far for a ride in the country. And it's too early for people coming up to do Lake George.'
'Hikers? White rafting? Bird-watchers?'
She opened her mouth to shoot him down, then noticed his grin.
'Mexicans and Jamaicans control the pot trade up through the North Country,' he said. 'Mexicans, for the most part. They bring it up out of the Caribbean and Central America, funnel it through New York City, and distribute it up here.'
'You think maybe they were here on business?'
'What do you think?'
'I think we should flag the car. Send out its plate and description to area law enforcement.'
'I think you're right, Officer Knox.' He grinned again.
'What?'
'Who's The Man? You're The Man. Say it with me now. Who's The Man?'
She mumbled.
'I didn't hear you!'
'I'm The Man! Idiot.' She shook her head and looked out the window. Her own reflection, limned by the computer lights, looked back at her. She thought it might be smiling.
III
Amado Esfuentes wiped the sweat from his forehead before tugging his work gloves back on. He reshouldered the spool of electrical cable he had set against the fence post. 'Ready?' he asked Raul. Raul groaned as he picked up the buckets of porcelain conductors and screw plates.
'If this was barbed wire, we'd have been done by now,' Raul said.
'If you worked as hard as you complain, we'd be done by now.' Amado wished, as he had every day in the month since the accident, that his little brother was toiling beside him. Octavio worked more and talked less than any other man on the crew, and when he did have something to say, he didn't whine like Raul. But Octavio was in town, sweeping and polishing for a lady minister and answering to the name 'Amado.' Meanwhile, Amado was the McGeochs' foreman 'Octavio,' always partnering Raul because he couldn't, in good conscience, stick any of the others with the laziest guy on the farm.
'Cheer up.' Amado let the electrical cable slip off the wooden spool as he walked over the uneven ground toward the next fence post. 'We'll be finished and back before lunch,' he said. 'And this is better for the cows than barbed wire.'
Raul gave a detailed suggestion of what Amado might like to do to the cows.
'Oh, I would,' Amado said, 'but I'm afraid I might hurt them, on account of being so large.'
Raul roared with laughter. They reached the next post, and Amado clipped off the cable while Raul screwed an insulating plate into the wood and attached the conductor. Amado threaded the cable through, untwisted the wires, and fastened them around the conductors. Then he did the same thing in the opposite direction for the next length of cable.
Amado tied off the insulated black wire, and they picked up and moved down the line. This portion of the property was divided from the mountain by a swiftly churning stream that cut a hollow almost deep enough to call a gorge in places: an irresistible lure that would mean lost and trapped cows, in the best cases, and broken legs and drowned carcasses in the worst. Amado had no problem taking a little extra time and fencing it off nice and tight.
'Mark my words, they're going to have us back here next month, hauling in watering troughs and throwing hoses into that creek.'
Amado, tugging the cable taut, grunted. 'It splits, maybe a kilometer from here. One branch runs into the McGeochs' land. The cows can water from that.'
Raul stared. 'How do you know? We haven't worked this section before.'
Amado knew because he had crossed this stream several times in the past weeks,
