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“That’s what we need to find out. Her motive, what she knows.”

“Why’s she wait eight months ’tween Belden and Nash?”

“Maybe she worried popping them close together would draw too much suspicion to her. Or, hell, maybe this has nothing to do with Nochelobo.”

After a silence, Trott says, “No matter how good she looks, she’s some hard kind of woman.”

“Or just a survivor, only defending herself and good at it.”

“Whatever she is, shit like this could blow up the project.”

“Won’t happen. It’s too sweet a deal to let anyone monkey-wrench it.”

“Almost seems somebody already done it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Think about them eight months,” Trott says.

“What about them?”

“Not a damn thing been done up on the plateau.”

“A lot has been done,” Vector disagrees. “It’s in permitting. They need sign-offs from a shitload of agencies. It’s moving along.”

“At this rate, by the time it’s done, I’ll be wearin’ them adult diapers and won’t know my own name.”

“The fix is in. They just have to make it look like they’ve followed the rules. Actually, the longer it takes, the better.”

“How you figure?”

“The money’s been committed with full inflation protection and easy approvals of cost overruns, with no performance deadlines.”

“I ain’t never had no problem with performance,” Trott says, “but it’s them deadlines can make a marriage grim.”

“HowisCora these days?”

“Fatter, meaner, peckin’ her new hubby into an early grave. So even if no ground gets broken, you think a blue-collar guy like me has a year-end bonus comin’?”

“You’ll be pleased. Payments are already flowing, just not as big and fast as they will be later on.”

“So we just got to be good citizens and do our part.”

“That’s right.”

“Break the chippy for what she knows, kill her, burn the house down with her in it. Growin’ up, I never woulda thought.”

“Thought what?” Vector asks.

“How one day I’d be paid so handsome just for havin’ fun.”

“It’s a great country.”

“For damn sure.”

Vector’s disquiet has grown, and still he doesn’t know why he is so uneasy. The highway is without another vehicle, as though it leads from nowhere to nowhere. When the engine is shut off, maybe the world beyond the windows will vanish, and a void will take its place. When they open the doors, there won’t be air to breathe.

“Jesus,” he says.