"No. I see it all right, Mose. I don't know how we got here, that's all. It's so unreal."

"Yeah, well, remember 'Nam. It was unreal, too, until the bullets started flying. The World Trade Center was pretty unreal, too, if you think about it. You think people are reasonable, you think there are rules. But then, guess what? Suddenly there aren't."

"All right. But we're not going in shooting, Mose. We're backing up Abe, and that's all we're doing."

"If you say so."

"Unless something goes wrong."

McGuire threw him another look, couldn't tell if he was serious or not. Hardy would crack wise at his own execution. The truck turned onto the freeway, going south. Hardy pulled a box from his jacket pocket and set it on his lap, then pulled off the lid. Reaching under his arm, he pulled out the massive, blue steel Colt's Police Special that he'd carried when he'd been a cop years before. He snapped open the cylinder, spun it, and began pulling. 357 copper-jacketed hollow-points from the box one at a time, dropping them into their slots.

When the six bullets were in place, he closed up and reholstered the gun, then pulled a second cylinder from his other pocket. Methodically-click, click, click as they fell into the cylinder-he sat filling the speed loader.

1

Ten o'clock, a Wednesday morning in the beginning of July.

John Holiday extended one arm over the back of the couch at his lawyer's Sutter Street office. Today he was comfortably dressed in stonewashed blue jeans, hiking boots, and a white, high-collared shirt so heavily starched that it had creaked when he lowered himself into his slouch. His other hand had come to rest on an oversize silver-and-turquoise belt buckle. His long legs stretched out all the way to the floor, his ankles crossed. Nothing about his posture much suggested his possession of a backbone.