Persuader

and Harley himself were going to be no-shows for sure.
    "Stupid to do it alone," Villanueva said.
    "Stupid to do it together," I said back. "The approach is going to be suicidal." He didn't answer.
    "Better that you guys stand by out here," I said.
    He made no reply to that. He wanted my back and he wanted Teresa but he was smart enough to see that walking toward a fortified and isolated house in the last of the daylight was going to be no kind of fun. He just kept the car rolling slowly. Then he took his foot off the gas and put the transmission in neutral and let it coast to a stop. He didn't want to risk the flare of brake lights in the mist. We were maybe a quarter-mile short of the house.
    "You guys wait here," I said. "For the duration." Villanueva looked away.
    "Give me one hour," I said.
    I waited until they both nodded.
    "Then call ATF," I said. "After an hour, if I'm not back."
    "Maybe we should do that now," Duffy said.
    "No," I said. "I want the hour first."
    "ATF will get Quinn," she said. "It's not like they're going to let him walk." I thought back to what I had seen and just shook my head.
    I broke every regulation and ignored every procedure in the book. I walked away from a crime scene and failed to report it. I obstructed justice left and right. I left Kohl in the bedroom and Frasconi in the living room. Left their car on the driveway. Just drove myself back to the office and took a silenced Ruger Standard .22 from the company armory and went to find Kohl's boxed-up files. My gut told me Quinn would make one stop before he headed for the Bahamas. He would have an emergency stash somewhere.
    Maybe phony ID, maybe a wad of cash, maybe a packed bag, maybe all three. He wouldn't hide the stash on-post. Nor in his rented house. He was too professional for that.
    Too cautious. He would want it safe and far away. I was gambling it would be in the place he had inherited in northern California. From his parents, the railroad worker and the stay-at-home mom. So I needed that address.
    Kohl's handwriting was neat. The two cartons were filled with her notes. They were comprehensive. They were meticulous. They broke my heart. I found the California address in an eight-page bio she had prepared. It was a five-digit house number on a road that came under the Eureka post office. Probably a lonely place, far out of town. I went to my company clerk's desk and signed a stack of travel warrants for myself. Put my service Beretta and the silenced Ruger in a canvas bag and drove to the airport. They gave me papers to sign before they let me carry loaded firearms inside the cabin. I wasn't about to check them. I figured there was a good chance Quinn might take the same flight. I figured if I saw him at the gate or on the plane I would waste him right there and then.
    But I didn't see him. I got on a plane for Sacramento and walked the aisle after takeoff and scanned every face and he wasn't there. So I sat tight for the duration of the flight.
    Just stared into space. The stewardesses stayed well away from me.
    I rented a car at the Sacramento airport. Drove it north on I-5 and then northwest on Route 299. It was a designated scenic road. It wound through the mountains. I looked at nothing except the yellow line ahead of me. I had picked up three hours because of flying across three time zones but even so it was gathering dark when I hit the Eureka limit. I found Quinn's road. It was a meandering strip that ran north-south high in the hills above U.S. 101. The highway was laid out far below me. I could see headlights streaming north.
    Taillights heading south. I guessed there was a rail line down there somewhere. Maybe a station or a depot nearby, convenient for Quinn's old man back when he was working.
    I found the house. Drove past it without slowing. It was a rough one-story cabin. It used an old milk churn instead of a mailbox post. The front yard had gone to seed a decade ago. I K-turned five hundred yards south of it and drove two hundred yards back toward it with my lights off. Parked behind an abandoned diner with a caved-in roof. Got out and climbed a hundred feet into the hills. Walked north three hundred yards and came on his place from the rear.
    In the dusk I could see a narrow back porch and a scuffed area next to it where cars could be parked. Clearly it was the sort of place where you use the back door, not the front.
    There were no lights on inside. I could see dusty sun-faded drapes half-closed in the