She rose again to adjust a wall thermostat. Hood heard the air conditioner click on. Seliah went to the shaded window, then stepped away from the muted light and looked at them again.

"I looked into my heart, Charlie. It wasn't hard to see in. My heart has always been big and simple and obvious. My loyalty was to Sean. Not to ATF. Not to Blowdown. Not even to you, and you're the best friend we've had through this."

Hood's spirit withered when he heard the words best friend. What kind of a friend let this happen? What kind of friend failed to register such pain? True, Sean was a fine actor. And he'd acted well during their few hours together, here and there, over the last fifteen months. Seliah, too. They'd fooled Bly and Morris and Velasquez and Soriana and Mars. But doesn't a friend know? Doesn't a friend see?

"Three months ago, almost exactly one year in, he was close to breaking," said Seliah. "So we took off together. July, Costa Rica. It was somewhere we'd always wanted to go. Two weeks, just us, traveling around a beautiful country. We stayed in a cloud forest and on the beach and even up on the Arenal Volcano. We leased a little plane and tooled around it. No phones, no cartels, no ATF. Sean presented that trip to you as a much-needed break for me. You have no idea how exhausted and bitter he was. Everything came out."

"Bitter," said Hood.

"He thought the war on drugs was a sham and a scam. He thought the United States was arrogant and ignorant to throw away millions of dollars and quality guys like Jimmy Holdstock and sell it as a 'war.' He thought ATF was a pawn in that war, a bureau that wasn't given the right tools to do its job. He felt betrayed. He thought the Mexican government was even worse. The billions still come into Mexico year after year after year. What government would try to stop that? What government would shut down sixty percent of its own economy and turn legions of cartel gunmen, growers and traffickers into the unemployed? There would be another Mexican revolution. Guaranteed."