“Loup…”

“I do!”

“Look.” Pilar spread her hands. “Maybe Senator Ballantine can negotiate knowing he’s got a sure witness. If he’s got me, he doesn’t need Miguel. Maybe he can persuade the skeevy hotel guy to let him go once he’s not that valuable.”

“Maybe,” Loup said reluctantly.

“Can we at least try it?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Give me the phone.” Pilar put out her hand. “I’m calling him back.” She rang. “Hi, Senator? No, this is Pilar. Okay, this is what I’m thinking.” She told him, then listened for a moment. “Okay, thanks. Call us.”

“Well?”

“He thinks it’s worth trying. He’ll let us know. And he thinks we’d—you’d—better not do anything stupid and dangerous.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Loup asked.

Pilar didn’t answer.

“Pilar, please? It’s important to me.”

She gave Loup a long, level look. “Baby, listen to me. You know I love your hero complex. But it’s one thing to risk losing you over the fate of all of Santa Olivia and maybe thousands of other people. It’s another to risk it for Miguel fucking Garza’s dumb mistake. If I say I don’t want you to have anything to do with this, will you go off on your own and try it anyway?”

Loup was silent, struggling. “No,” she said at length. “I won’t.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I did it to you once. I won’t do it again. I promise.”

“Thank you.” Pilar kissed her cheek. “Now stop looking like a small thundercloud and help me think. Did Senator Ballantine say where they’re holding Miguel hostage?”

“Huh?” Loup gave her a dumbstruck glance.

“Did he say where they’re holding him?” she repeated patiently, turning on her Dataphone and entering the password for Global’s secure databases.

“At the casino, he thinks. Hellfire Club. They’ve got him under guard in one of the suites.”

“Hellfire Club, Hellfire Club…” Pilar smiled. “Yeah, here it is. I figured. All the big casinos are in the database, even the American ones.” She showed the screen to Loup. “Complete security specs. Do you remember anything from the chapter in Clive’s bodyguard manual on hostage extraction?”

“Something about securing your avenue of retreat. Pilar, are you saying you’ll help me? Even if it means we could get caught?”

“Of course. I don’t think I could handle it by myself, and there’s no way I’m going to let you go it alone if it comes to it.”

“Then why did you…?”

“Because I really, really wanted to know what you’d choose,” she said evenly. “And now I’m glad I do. Okay?”

“Okay,” Loup said. “You’re really gonna help?”

Pilar shrugged. “I figure we didn’t become secret agent bodyguards for nothing.”

THIRTY-FIVE

They broke the news to the band backstage while their manager was busy elsewhere.

“I’m really sorry,” Loup said after they’d explained the situation. “Maybe it will all work out like Pilar hopes. But if it doesn’t… I can’t say for sure when I’ll be back.”

“Or me,” Pilar added. “If we get caught and they do take you into custody, I’m sure as hell not going anywhere.”

The band exchanged glances.

“Vegas, huh?” Randall tucked his bangs behind one ear. “We might be able to use some R & R in Vegas, eh, lads?”

“You can’t do that,” Loup said.

“Sure we can.” Charlie grinned. “Viva Las Vegas!”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I.” Randall smiled sweetly at her. “And it’s not your choice.” He rummaged under a tattered notebook and pulled out a mock-up of the cover of next month’s Rolling Stone Australia. It bore a photo from the shoot in Sydney. The band was on a pedestal, framed by a battered tin warehouse cargo door—Randall in the center with his arms outstretched in a lazy Jesus pose, Charlie and Donny flanking him, slouching sideways. In front of them on the street Loup stood in her security togs with arms folded, looking enigmatic.

The headline read KATE’S CRUSADERS.

“It’s a thing, right?” he said. “Our thing?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Shut up,” Donny said brusquely. “It’s not your choice. Just let us know, all right?”

Loup glanced at Pilar, who raised her eyebrows. “Okay, okay!”

“Good,” Randall said mildly. “Now bugger off and go hit your punching bag or something, will you? It’s the last concert of the tour and I want it to be a good one. Pilar, can we get some single malt back here?”

“Right away!”

The last concert was a good one. The band played well, old music and new alike. The audience was at once enthusiastic and respectful, obeying the rules laid down the night before. Loup caught them up and put them back, showing off every now and then to the delight of the crowd. She felt a nostalgia for something that might be ending, and a faint underlying hollowness where fear of what might come should have been.

The last after-party was wild.

It took place at a club called Mermaid with submerged swimming pools on opposite walls where topless women performed languid arabesques underwater. The entire place was suffused with an eerie subaquatic glow.

“This is not what I authorized!” Geordie Davies said, flushed with anger.

“Sure it is, man.” Randall smiled lazily. “You just didn’t look close enough at the fine print.”

The band proceeded to get spectacularly drunk. Donny threw up and passed out in the bathroom and had to be carried to the limo. Randall and Charlie managed to stagger out on their feet, propped up by a bevy of female fans, at least one of whom appeared to be wearing a schoolgirl outfit.

“We need exshtra girls,” Charlie slurred. “Case Donny wakes up.”

“Gotta have at least one member of the security team in there,” Bill Jones informed Loup with malevolent cheer. “You’re the smallest.”

“Great.”

Pilar eyed the crammed limo. “I’ll ride in one of the taxis. See you back at the hotel.”

“After-after-party in our suite.” Randall poked his head out of the sunroof. “C’mon! You’ve gotta come. You’ve gotta. Could be historic.” He put on his best wheedling voice. “Please? Half an hour?”

“Five minutes.”

“Ten?”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, ten. Fine.”

Ten minutes turned into two hours of babysitting drunk rock stars, consoling sobbing extras left unchosen and calling taxis for them, confiscating illegal drugs, and cleaning up room service refuse.

“Our would-be heroes,” Pilar commented.

“They mean well.” Loup fetched an extra blanket from the closet and spread it over Donny, who was unconscious on the couch.

“You really think they could help?”

“I have no idea.”

“Loup, Loup.” Donny’s eyelids opened a crack. He plucked feebly at her low-slung track pants. “Promise we will. Can I have a kiss g’night? Puh-leeze?”

She kissed his forehead. “Go back to sleep, Donny.”

He sighed and did.

Their day of rest found the band hungover and torpid. After checking in with Bill Jones, Loup and Pilar managed to get out and do a little sightseeing in the city, culminating at the famous Sensoji Temple in the heart of old Edo. They passed through a gate beneath a massive red lantern into a market thronged with people. Pilar browsed the stands while Loup gazed at the crowd. As they grew closer to the temple proper, fragrant smoke drifted. Loup stifled a cough, her eyes stinging and unable to water.

“It’s supposed to be purifying,” Pilar informed her. “You want to get a fortune?”

“Sure.”

Inside the temple they paid two hundred yen to shake a metal canister until a numbered stick popped out. A group of friendly Japanese tourists helped them match it to a drawer with fortunes written on slips of paper, explaining that if it was a bad fortune, all they had to do was tie it to a tree to let the bad luck blow away.

“You pick, baby,” Pilar said, apprehensive.

Loup pulled out a slip and read the English translation in fine print. “A million drops of water can wear down a mountain. A thousand tears can melt the hardest heart.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It is not bad.” One of the tourists, a middle-aged woman with a warm smile, spoke up. “You face obstacles, yes?”

“That we do,” Loup agreed.

Her smile broadened. “Then it is good. Difficult, but good.”

“Oh,” Pilar said with relief. “Thank you!” She attempted a polite Japanese bow. The tourists laughed and returned it.

“Do you want to pick one?” Loup asked. “We can get another stick.”

She shook her head. “I like this one. Can we share it?”

“Sure.” Loup searched her face. “This scares you, doesn’t it?”

“To pieces.” Pilar kissed her lightly. “But I am going to be muy macha and not let fear control me. C’mon, let’s find you an interesting snack to try, then we have to head back to the hotel to pack.”

“Okay.” Loup folded their fortune and stowed it carefully in her wallet.

They had dinner that night with the hungover band and their concerned manager in one of the hotel’s very excellent restaurants.

“So,” Geordie said when they’d finished. “This geemo business. Ms. Dunbar sent me a preliminary draft of her article for approval. She’s done some digging. She found correlations between unconfirmed accounts of a Chinese program in Haiti that was shut down by the Yanks, unconfirmed experiments in the U.S. Army, and confirmed accounts of rogue geemos in Mexico. That’s supposed to be you, right?”