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the dark end of the building, pressed against the cinderblock wall, and peered around the corner. The stranger was still there, sitting in his red Toyota truck, talking on his cell phone. He’d parked in the shadow of the Dumpster, not a favorable sign. Max hoped he was waiting for something innocent like a drug buy, something that didn’t require his involvement. Max had never liked the Ascension Motel. With an uneasy foreboding, he rolled down the sleeves of his work shirt and buttoned his cuffs. The night was growing cooler. He walked back toward the front of the building.
    And there under the light stood CJ. Slim and straight, pale as fresh milk, defenseless in the harsh motel light, she looked more like a budding child than the world-weary adult she tried to impersonate. A hank of her auburn hair had come loose from her ponytail and fanned across her cheek. She stared off in the distance, chewing her thumbnail, oblivious to her surroundings, lost in her usual interior tide.
    â€œThe moon’s down,” he said. “We can go. But I don’ like it.”
    Neither did CJ like it. Alsen’s story incensed her. As she stumbled through her motel room getting ready, she fumed and kicked furniture. She crushed her Quimicron pay stub in her fist. She despised the chemical industry. Unlocking the secrets of molecules, forcing artificial unions, synthesizing compounds with effects no one could foresee. “To make a killing,” that’s how Harry put it. To make a quick buck.
    Yes, Harry had sided with the corporations. When he wasn’t lecturing at MIT, he was off consulting with CEOs to “maximize shareholder value.” She accused Harry andhis corporations of playing creator, only without omniscience or compassion. But Harry never listened. When she raged about eco-disasters, he answered with his trademark sarcasm: “
Carolyn, don’t be naïve
.”
    CJ pulled her shoelace so hard, it broke in her hand. “
We are not the end!
” Harry used to rant when she accused him of soaking their planet in poison. She pictured him crouching at his desk, a tweedy graying scholar, slicing the air with his hands. His mad eyes seemed to glow.
    â€œPoisons are our medicines. They grow our food. They kill the germs and weeds and vermin we don’t want to live with,” he stormed. “And yes, they’re killing us, too. But life doesn’t end because we die.”
    â€œWhat’ll survive us?” CJ had shouted. “Black mold? Viruses? That’s hideous.”
    â€œHuman judgment does not apply!” he wailed. “Carolyn, you’re a bleeding heart. Like your mother.”
    CJ remembered knocking over a wineglass. “And you’re already dead.”
    How viciously they had fought. On the last night she saw her father alive, they had raged.
    From her balcony at the Roach, she hurled her coverall and hip boots down the concrete stairs to the parking lot. Max noticed her mood and kept quiet. He loaded her gear in the Rover, along with the portable magnetic field finder he had “borrowed” from the company shop at her request. She took her usual place in the driver’s seat, and when she slammed the Rover’s door, he said, “Settle down, child.”
    â€œYou settle down,” she snapped.
    Max opened his window and leaned out. Ceegie’s tone pained him. Sometimes her voice went so sharp and thin, it hurt his ears. He whistled softly through his teeth. This night was starting off badly, and more than once, he’d considered walking away. But he couldn’t let her go alone into Devil’s Swamp. It wasn’t in him to abandon her. So he leaned out the window and let the night air cool his face.
    Later, as they lurched onto a rutted back road, CJtouched his hand. He was slouching against the passenger door, hanging his elbow out the window. Neither of them had noticed the red Toyota following with its headlights turned