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nightscope. Every once in a while he called the pay phone.
    It stood to reason that Jolie would wait until after dark to make her move.
    But she didn’t.
    Night stretched into morning. Landry shifted positions a few times for comfort. Toward dawn, the cold seeped through his clothes from the ground. Deserts were dry places; hot during the day but cold at night.
    No one approached the disabled Nissan Versa.
    Not on foot, not by car. Whatever the cops and other officials had been racing to was over with.
    The road remained empty.
    Long before dawn, Landry knew that Jolie would not be coming. She hadn’t taken advantage of her window of opportunity, and now that window had closed.
    She might be looking to find him in some other way, and so he would stick around Branch and let himself be seen. Hopefully she would see him.
    But for now, Jolie Burke was in the wind.

    He ate an early breakfast at Dina’s Diner next door to The Satellite INN in Branch, tipping the waitress enough to make her happy but not enough to make him stand out. Before that, he’d ducked into the bathroom of the neighboring Texaco for a quick strip wash and a change of shirts.
    Landry had adopted his “average dad” look: sports sandals and plaid cargo shorts covered by a big T-shirt featuring a sun wearing sunglasses.
    Despite multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Landry had managed to avoid tattoos—except for one, a snarling mountain lion on his upper arm. The tattoo was easily hidden by a short-sleeved tee.
    Landry had a fellow Navy SEAL to thank for his lack of tattoos. Jim Doolen (now deceased) was his superior officer and a good friend. Jim had spotted Landry’s abilities early on. He’d taken Landry aside and suggested he think twice about getting more tattoos. After his service, Landry might have few options for work, and he should keep every option still available to him, open. Tattoos were memorable, and would likely disqualify him from some jobs—especially if those jobs were covert.
    Tattoos didn’t matter to Landry much either way, so he took Doolen’s advice.
    In the military, there was always pressure to conform, but Landry had been immune to outside pressure. What other people thought about him or said about him didn’t matter much. He knew that at some point he would leave the military, and he also understood that his skill set was limited—elite though those skills might be.
    He was also blessed with a forgettable face: good-looking enough, but without the edginess of handsome. He wouldn’t scare anyone, but he wouldn’t engender any romantic fantasies, either. Landry’s face could blend in. His best looks were “affable and open,” and “I’m in my own world—don’t bother me.”
    He looked like someone’s dad. He looked like that for a reason. He had a daughter.
    Here, in a small town where he looked like a tourist whose wife and kid no doubt were sleeping in at The Satellite INN while he had a quiet breakfast to himself, Landry opened the newspaper he’d picked up at the vending machine inside the door of the restaurant, half an ear on the babble surrounding him. He learned two things immediately. One, there was good fishing in the mountains north of here.
    And two, one of the militia members at the checkpoint had been shot to death yesterday morning.
    The article in the paper was mostly photos. The Las Cruces Sun-News had decided to go artistic. Four photos. One large—above the fold—and three smaller shots.
    Plenty of ink.
    Landry found himself looking at the crime scene—the three Suburbans as he remembered them, a detective in the foreground looking down at a marker, a plastic pyramid with a number on it, like you might see at a car wash. In the background the squat lady in the Kevlar vest from yesterday appeared to be wandering aimlessly. Of course it was a static picture, but that was the feeling Landry got.
    Another photo featured one of the traffic cones that had blocked the road. An artistic