“Because it was him or you.” Shawn took two running steps, then leaped over the counter, landing in a crouch next to the body, his duster sending waves through the puddle spreading across the floor.

“What was he going to do?” Gus said. “Throw the bottle at me?”

“Worse. He was going to give it to you.” Shawn pulled the bottle of Glen Graggenlogan from the shopkeeper’s cold, dead hands and looked it over carefully. Then he pulled out the cork and turned it upside down. There was a rattle of metal on glass, and a small olive-colored device fell into Shawn’s hand.

“What is that?” Gus said.

“Doesn’t matter what it is now. What matters is what it would be if you walked out the door with it,” Shawn said.

“And what is that?”

“The ultimate theft-protection device,” Shawn said. He jumped back over the counter, opened the door, and tossed the device out onto the street. The thing bounced twice on the asphalt and then exploded into a fireball that took out two cars and the area’s last remaining pay phone.

It took a few seconds for Gus’ ears to stop ringing. He spent the time staring at the crater in the center of the road and trying to figure out how far his body parts might be separated by now if Shawn hadn’t stopped him from taking the bottle.

“I thought that was the thing I was supposed to bring Morton,” Gus said finally.

“Apparently you were supposed to think that.”

Gus looked around the liquor store in despair. “So what is the object?” he said. “What is it we’re supposed to collect here? Because I haven’t seen it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Shawn said. “You were staring at it all along.”

“I wasn’t staring at anything all along,” Gus said, then realized he wasn’t completely right. “Except…”

Shawn nodded. “Except.” He jumped back over the counter and fished around under it in the area the old man had kept his hand, then came up with a machete.