By the light of the moon

Jilly's Coupe DeVille. Even his dreamy smile remained
intact.
    'Sit down,' Proctor said, 'and let's talk about this.'
    Jilly responded with a rudeness, and Dylan topped her suggestion
with one even ruder.
    'Yes, you've good reason to hate me,' Proctor said remorsefully.
'I've done terrible things to you, unpardonable things. I'm not
going to make any attempt to justify myself. But we are in
this together.'
    'We're not in anything with you,' Dylan said fiercely. 'We're
not your friends or associates, or even just your guinea pigs.
We're your victims, your enemies, and we'll gut you if we get a
chance.'
    'Would anyone like a drink?' asked Parish Lantern.
    'I owe you an explanation at least, at the very least,' Proctor
said. 'And I'm sure once you hear me out, you'll see that we have a
mutual interest that does make us allies, even if uneasy
allies.'
    'Cocktail, brandy, beer, wine, soft drink?' Lantern offered.
    'Who burned up in my car?' Jilly demanded.
    'An unlucky motel guest who crossed my path,' said Proctor. 'He
was about my size. After I killed him, I put my ID on him, my
watch, other items. Since going on the run a week ago, I'd carried
with me a briefcase bomb – small explosive charge, but mostly
jellied gasoline – for just that purpose. I detonated it with
a remote control.'
    'If no one cares for a drink,' said Lantern, 'I'll just sit down
and finish mine.'
    He went to an armchair from which he could watch them, and he
picked up a glass of white wine from a small table beside the
chair.
    The rest of them remained on their feet.
    To Proctor, Jilly said, 'An autopsy would prove the poor son of
a bitch wasn't you.'
    He shrugged. 'Of course. But when the gentlemen in the black
Suburbans were closing in on me, the big boom distracted them,
didn't it? The diversion bought me a few hours, a chance to slip
away. Oh, despicable, I know, to sacrifice an innocent man's life
to gain a few hours or days for myself, but I've done worse in my
life. I've—'
    Interrupting Proctor's wearisome self-accusatory patter, Jilly
said, 'Who are those guys in the Suburbans?'
    'Mercenaries. Some former Russian Spetznaz, some American Delta
Force members gone bad, all former special-forces soldiers from one
country or another. They hire out to the highest bidder.'
    'Who're they working for now?'
    'My business partners,' Proctor said.
    From his armchair, Parish Lantern said, 'When a man is so badly
wanted that an entire army has been put together to kill him,
that's quite an achievement.'
    'My partners are extremely wealthy individuals, billionaires,
who control several major banks and corporations. When I started to
have some success with experimental subjects, my partners suddenly
realized that their personal fortunes and those of their companies
might be at risk from endless liability suits, billions in
potential settlements when... things went wrong. Settlements that
would have dwarfed the billions squeezed from the tobacco industry.
They wanted to shut everything down, destroy my research.'
    'What things went wrong?' Dylan asked tightly.
    'Don't go through the whole dreary list like you did with me.
Just tell them about Manuel,' Lantern suggested.
    'A fat angry sociopath,' said Proctor. 'I should never have
accepted him as a subject. Within hours of injection, he developed
the ability to start fires with the power of his mind.
Unfortunately, he enjoyed burning things too much. Things and
people. He did a lot of damage before he could be put down.'
    Dylan felt queasy, almost moved to a chair, but then remembered
his mother and stayed on his feet.
    'Where in the name of God do you get subjects for experiments
like this?' Jilly wondered.
    The dreamy smile kinked up at one corner. 'Volunteers.'
    'What kind of morons would volunteer to have their brains
pumped full of nanomachines?'
    'I see you've done some research. What you couldn't have learned
is that we progressed secretly to human experimentation at a
facility in Mexico. Officials are still easily bribed there.'
    'More cheaply than our best senators,' Lantern added dryly.
    Proctor sat on the edge of a chair, but he kept the pistol aimed
at them. He looked exhausted. He must have come directly here from
Arizona the previous night, with little or no rest. His usually
pink face was gray and drawn. 'The volunteers were felons, lifers.
The worst of the worst. If you were condemned to spend the rest of
your days in a stinking Mexican prison, but you could earn money
for luxuries and