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the entire world of organized crime. Nobody knows about it because nobody talks, not even the gangbangers. See, the Mafia is everywhere—even in Kansas. We’ve worked for damn near every one of them. But mostly for David Hartman.
    It’s always been like that.
    Since my professional career began.
    Hiding in plain sight, without a driver’s license.
    Since the day I met him, Hartman had me in his pocket. On that day, I saw him at his worst. And while he did his business, he pulled those insane words out of the air, sounding like a comic-book version of an evil genius, run through the dirty mill of some backwoods Quentin Tarantino sound-bite machine. That part never changed, like the air in Texas never changes, like the streets of Austin never change. While Hartman’s insanity just got worse and worse, the more he was able to get away with. His schemes and hustles, backed up by the smartest operators and mechanics on two legs. The streets of Austin stained dark red under their feet, the air hot and ancient.
    David Hartman has the thickest Southern accent I’ve ever heard.
    He sounds like chicken-fried steak smothered in cream gravy.
    Thick and awful.
    If someone thinks you’re crazier than they are, they usually don’t know what the hell to do with you, but Hartman was crazier than everyone.
    Crazy enough to send us after dangerous people, and not just the mob.
    There were politicians, too—guys who greased the wheel, de facto bosses Hartman wanted leverage over. Defense contractors. Lobbyists. He eventually had dirt on all of them. We pulled a file less than an inch thick from a bank vault in Upstate New York that contained the names and locations of thirteen men in the federal Witness Protection Program. Nearly all of them turned up dead a few weeks later. Toni asked me if I felt responsible, and I told her no. I’ve been surrounded by death all my life. I was trained to be a killer—by the army, by my masters in the dojo.
    And yet I’ve never killed a man with my own hands.
    That would make me like my father. I’m not sure I want to be like him at all. It might prove that he’s right, about what he passed on to me, just by being a professional shooter. I don’t want to believe that. I want to believe in what Toni taught me.
    I want to see her again, more than anything.
    •  •  •
    I report to the Travis County Correctional Office at 3 P.M. sharp, just like they told me to at orientation. Washington escorts me upstairs to see my probation officer while Dad waits for me in the car. The PO is frumpy but nice, a young girl fresh to the business. I can tell she’s not on the payroll, but the people above her are. I was pardoned by the prison board for good behavior on a thirty-year sentence and this just tickles the hell out of her. There’s nothing in my case file about the six men I nearly paralyzed with my bare hands while I was inside. There’s plenty in there about the bullet that nearly killed me and the botched operation that almost vegged my brain permanently. Lots of reports from the docs and psychologists about my selective memory loss. She asks if I still get the dizzy spells and I lay down a happy series of very safe lies. She asks how my motor reflexes are and I give her the fifty-watt okey-dokey. My smile makes her blush. She tells me in that cheerful voice that she likes my long hair—it’s very Austin, she says. Then she chuckles that I remind her of James LeGros, the movie actor, and I have no idea who that is, but I pretend to be flattered.
    James LeGros is a handsome guy, apparently.
    She says that I have a good skill set and that I should do well over the next year. She’s assigned me a work program that consists of three phases: first I do six months in an entry-level position at a retail store near campus called Toy Jam, one of those locally owned knickknack businesses where twentysomethings pull down eight bucks an hour. Phase two is a professional job, if I can find