The Night Crew

is?’’
    ‘‘She would have told Wyatt,’’ Harper said.
    Louis’ number got no response at all: now they were out of range.
    ‘‘I thought those fuckin’ towers were everywhere. They’re building one on the hill over my house,’’ Harper said.
    ‘‘Not everywhere,’’ Anna said. Harper slowed at a gravel intersection, and they peered up at a road sign. ‘‘Right,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Two miles.’’
    Harper didn’t hesitate at the ranch gate. He passed it by, still climbing the gravel road, over a rise, down the side of a canyon, up the rise on the other side, around a turn.
    He pulled over against the mountainside, killed the engine. ‘‘Five-tenths of a mile,’’ he said. ‘‘Five- or six-minute jog.’’
    ‘‘Let’s go,’’ Anna said, popping her door.
    ‘‘There’s a flash in the glove box,’’ he said. His voice was tight, edgy. ‘‘Better get it. Give me the rifle.’’
    Anna handed him the Ruger and found the flash, a black aluminum cylinder about the length and diameter of a fat man’s cigar.
    On the road, Anna found she could cup her fist around the flash, and project a needle-thin beam of light, enough to keep them on the gravel. As their eyes adjusted, moonlight began to show. Anna turned, looking for the moon, and finally, below a break in the hillside, found it lurking in the trees above them, a quarter-crescent.
    ‘‘There’ll be more light up on top,’’ she whispered, as they jogged.
    Harper grunted, then put up a hand, touching her chest. ‘‘Coming up,’’ he said. Anna slowed, felt the slope of the road easing beneath her feet. The drive had started up from a short flat stretch; they should be close.
    ‘‘There,’’ she said. The galvanized gate was a gray shadow in the darker brush around it. ‘‘Let me check it.’’
    She shined the needle of light on the post side of the gate, sliding down the metal joint between the hinges. Nothing.
    ‘‘All right?’’ Harper asked.
    ‘‘Just a minute.’’ She checked the opening side, and found the contact: ‘‘No, it’s alarmed,’’ she said. Harper came up, squatted, looked at the light. Anna aimed it at the patch of ceramic insulator set in the post. ‘‘We’ve got one like it on the farm,’’ she whispered. ‘‘There’s a magnet in the gate and a needle in the post. When you move the gate, the needle goes with the magnet and hits a contact, and that sets off the buzzer inside.’’
    ‘‘Can’t even climb over?’’
    ‘‘Nope. That’ll push the gate down. Let’s look at the fence.’’
    The barbed-wire fence showed a single strand of electric wire running along the top. ‘‘Bottom should be okay,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Let’s find a low spot, where we can squeeze under.’’
    They found a spot fifty feet down the road, the desert brush ripping at their jackets as they slid under the wire. Anna stood, pulling pieces of dead brush from her hair.
    ‘‘You okay?’’ Harper whispered.
    ‘‘Yeah. Let’s go.’’
    They jogged the first couple of hundred feet up the hill, but Harper was enough out of shape that he caught her arm and told her to slow down. Impatiently, she walked ahead of him, urging him along.
    The hill seemed to go on forever, gently sinuous, always climbing. After ten minutes, they topped the first rise and saw the orange glow of a yard light. Harper caught her arm and said, ‘‘Stop for a minute. We’ve got to talk.’’
    They squatted beside the road, looking slightly down at the ranch yard. The house was ahead and to the right, with an open yard further to the right. A light showed in what they knew was the office window, along with the blue glow of a computer monitor or television. Another light showed behind that, but from the same window, adding a slightly warmer glow. There was no movement in the window with the light: and the light had the stillness of an empty room.
    To the far left of the house, they could just see the hulk of the barn; between the barn and the house, two buildings— a garage, Anna thought, and what must once have been a machine shed.
    A hundred yards behind the house were two long graywhite structures, almost too far out to recognize; but Anna thought that they must once have been chicken coops. Directly behind the house, a hundred feet back, the beginning of the corral complex.
    As Anna squatted by the road, picking out the main features of the ranch, she could smell the broken brush beside the road, and the