Luis went silent. He drove by reflex, his mind trapped in a numbing nightmare. Miles later, he suddenly said: "Now I fight. Why do you fight?"

After what Luis had told him, what could Lyons say? Had he suffered like Luis? Or like Dr. Orozco? Lyons had not lost his family to psychopathic monsters. True, years before, Mafia hoods had beaten and whipped him for a week, but within a few months he had healed. The experience had scarred him, hardened his character, but he had suffered no trauma.

As the landscape of fields and mountains drifted past, Lyons reconsidered his life. Why did he fight? Memories of his years as a police officer in Los Angeles came in a rush: the scenes of felons' mindless cruelty to their victims; the elderly broken for a snatched dollar; the bank clerks with their lives draining through wounds; the workers crippled or murdered for their paycheck; the children tortured and strangled to satisfy lust; the wide-eyed, slashed corpses of women — teenagers, mothers, grandmothers — raped and then murdered, sometimes murdered then raped, and dumped like trash.

He thought of the parole boards that considered the families of victims annoying obstacles to the swift release of convicts. He recalled the courts that gave child-rapists five trials to perfect their defense. And the psychiatrists who excused any atrocity as a product of society's errors. And the Utopians who petitioned the government to disarm society, to leave good people defenseless against the predators. And the industries glamorizing the drug gangs and criminals.

These things explained his rages, his passion for justice. But why did he fight?

Lyons had many excuses not to fight. As a taxpayer, he paid others to fight — police, teenage army recruits, air force pilots. As a robust male, no one personally threatened him. As a worker with skills and income, he could hire security guards to protect his home and office. As a man of some intelligence, he could easily rationalize noninvolvement. Why did he fight?