"Sure. We got a few books back on the far wall. Near the oil and car stuff."

  "Thanks."

  Widow walked back down two aisles and turned on one, and found the book and magazine rack. On the rack was USA Today. No other paper of record to speak of, which he had expected. He saw on the cover of the USA Today an article about the building of a wall on the US-Mexican border. Then down on the front of the paper, some guy was mentioned as being attached to the proposal—Sheridan.

  Widow picked up the paper and folded it. He might as well buy it. He also sifted through the books, which was easy because there were only ten of interest. The rest was that romance crap. A few were authors he knew and liked. One was a Grisham book he'd read before but really liked.

  He bought the book and the paper and headed over to the café side and took a seat at an empty booth. Actually, they were all empty. After several minutes, the same kid from behind the register came over and acted slightly differently, like now he was wearing his waiter hat and not his gas station attendant hat.

  Whatever works, Widow thought.

  Glock and the three other members of the kill team sat in his personal Chevy Tahoe on the street across from Claire Hood's El Paso apartment building. They’d been there for a few hours and realized her granddaughter had never come home from school. They had tapped Claire's phone line and had listened in the entire night, which had been easy since the old lady still used her house phone for most of her calls. And they weren't even sure she had a cell phone.

  The woman on the team said, "He took the kid. We missed him."

  Glock said, "No shit."

  "What do we do now?" asked the oldest member of the team.

  Glock sipped the last bit of his coffee, which he had brought in a big thermos, and he said, "I guess we split up."

  "How?" asked the woman.

  "Into two groups. You two stay on the old bird."

  "But she's called about everyone she must know already. If she knew where Hood was with the little girl, she'd have gone there already. Right?"

  Glock said, "Nah. She doesn't have a car. I looked before. She doesn't have a car registered in her name, and no driver's license either."

  "Why didn't she call the cops?" the other guy asked.

  "She can't call them. The kid is illegal. Like the mother."

  The woman asked, "How's that? Hood looks white from his photo."

  "Yeah, he is. Hood’s not the actual father. He took in the little girl and her mother from Mexico. He brought them over illegal-like."

  The older guy said, "I'm surprised the boss let you hire him. Didn't you guys vet him?"

  "Just do your job!" Glock barked. It had been his mistake not to look closer at a new hire.

  The woman asked, "So what do we do?"

  "You two stay on her. If she goes anywhere, follow her."

  "How the hell will she go anywhere without a car?"

  Glock said, "Bus, maybe."

  The woman nodded and asked, "What about you?"

  "We're going to pay a visit to Mrs. Hood. His wife."

  Silence fell over the SUV.

  The other guy asked, "Isn't she dying?"

  "Yeah. She's in the hospital."

  "Are you guys going to kill her?"

  Glock said, "We might kill them all. The Principal warned Hood two years ago. We told him what would happen if he caused problems for us. They all die."

  "But we don't even know if he's told anyone," the other guy said.

  Glock said, "We don't pay you to think. We pay you to follow orders. You got a problem killing a kid?"

  "No."

  "An old lady?"

  "No."

  "A dying woman?"

  "No. Of course not."

  Glock said, "Good."

  The kill team didn't share Glock's motivations, but they liked money, and this was a well-paying job. That was all that mattered.

  The woman said, "We need a vehicle."

  "Let's go rent something. You stay here," Glock said to the other guy.

  The other guy nodded and got out of the Tahoe. He walked over to a park across the street and sat on a bench and watched the apartment. Glock and the rest headed out to rent a second car.

  Widow ordered a coffee and sat in a booth in a makeshift café, one of those generic things with stale muffins and day-old cakes and scones wrapped in plastic bags and two flavors of coffee—nothing fancy, just black, caffeinated, and decaffeinated, and that's it. And that was fine with him. He only drank black coffee. No sugar. No cream. No milk. None of those artificial sweeteners, not the pink ones or the blue ones or the yellow ones, and not even the white ones with the tiny green leaf on the package that indicated to lesser minds, Hey, use me. I'm natural. I got a leaf. I'm better for you than sugar. Those sweeteners were worse for people than mountains of sugar. He had witnessed coffee drinkers shoveling it into their cups. The thought often made him grimace, but only a little because Widow's opinion was basically live and let live. It was your life, your body, your choice, not his. So why judge?

  He hadn't even cracked open the book he bought because he read the newspaper instead. He skipped over much of the political nonsense. One side was right and one side was wrong. And which was which depended on who you asked.

  Widow stopped to read about this Texas senator named Sheridan.

  John Sheridan—sounded like the hotel chain, only no connection—was a two-term Texas senator who used to work with the DEA and had quite an impressive rise there. Now he was a senator in Texas. The biggest takeaway about him was that he was the strongest advocate for the building of the border wall. In fact, the article traced the idea of the wall to his creation many years ago. It said that he was the one who had pushed the new presidential candidate on the idea. They were of the same party and were aligned on the entire issue of immigration—nothing surprising to Widow. Texas politicians had been screaming about illegal immigration for decades. The irony here was that most illegal immigration of undocumented people was from people traveling by air, not crossing the border. They simply came over with a visa and then overstayed. There was little enforcement of penalties for overstaying.

  Things were different now than in previous decades because there was a real possibility of a wall. Widow didn't live in a border state, but he had been to Texas and had even crossed into Mexico before. The terrain was beautiful; he couldn't imagine sullying it with a big, monstrous wall. Then again, the Great Wall of China was pretty magnificent. Of course, that was apples and oranges. He couldn't imagine the same being true with a US-Mexico wall because the governments of today were all about saving money and cutting corners. Thousands of years ago, China was all about using the best materials to make a wall that was really impregnable. Which proved true because that wall was still standing and magnificent today. That's why it's called the Great Wall.

  John Sheridan was an impressive guy to read about. He was wealthy, successful, and had a law enforcement background. He had gotten rich after leaving the DEA. The article didn't go into too much detail on how. It only said it happened through a series of investments and holdings, etcetera. Apparently, John Sheridan had aligned himself with all the right people in the public and private sectors.

  Widow drank three cups of the generic but tolerable gas station coffee, caffeinated and black, then stood up from the booth and left five bucks in cash on the tabletop for the waiter who doubled as the gas station stock boy. At first, Widow had felt bad for the guy as he'd watched him come over and serve him and then go back to the gas station to stock and rearrange the candy bar aisle. But on second thought, Widow's sympathy retreated because he thought maybe the guy had originally been a stock boy, making minimum wage, and the café gave him the opportunity to make tips on top of his wages. That didn't seem like such a bad gig. The guy looked like he should've been in high school instead of working at a gas station. Maybe he was eighteen, or maybe he had dropped out of school, or maybe both. Tips plus a decent wage wasn't bad money for an eighteen-year-old. Widow had worked for much less when he was this kid's age.

  Widow guessed refills were free, as they always are for gas station coffee, and he guessed at most that the coffee was two dollars plus tax, which was about eight percent. It was probably more like seven and some decimal points, but it was always better to round up. So eight percent seemed right. Five bucks meant the guy got a generous tip for serving only a coffee, even though it had been three trips.

  Widow left the USA Today on the table and stuffed his new book into his back pocket. He walked out to the highway and started looking for a ride, which didn't take him long. He ended up getting into an old blue Buick with two women who weren't much younger than he was. They wore college-branded clothes—comfortable T-shirts with the same three Greek letters. They were obviously sorority sisters. Widow didn't recognize the letters or the name of the sorority because he had never been to a public university and had no interest in fraternities or sororities or what he had heard called the "Greek life."

  The girls were half road-tripping and half on a mission. They explained to Widow that they had begun their trip to Amarillo about a week earlier. They had started as a trio who were best friends through all four years of college. The third friend was getting married in Las Vegas.

  Now that school was fading into the past and one of them was getting married, they were going to be split up for the first time, something they were a little nervous about. Therefore, they had thought they should go out on one last adventure—one last road trip from Amarillo to Las Vegas to deliver their missing friend to her wedding, which they had done.

  Widow rode with the two remaining girls the rest of their trip back to Amarillo, which didn't feel as long as it actually was. Not at all, because he had a good time. He had met a lot of drivers on the road. Some talked, and some didn't. Normally, the ones who talked a lot rambled on and on. Widow would nod along and smile and try to listen in case he was quizzed afterward. He tried to memorize small tidbits of the conversation so that it seemed like he was interested, even though many times he wasn't. And sometimes it wasn't because the driver was boring or he wasn't interested, but many times, different people had similar stories. These drivers were the ones who drove long stretches and were lonely and needed single-serving companionship, which Widow was happy to provide for the ride.

  After the girls had accepted him into their fold, he felt for a brief time like he was part of their clique, like he was one of the girls, which made him smile because he was a large guy, a former Navy SEAL, and here he was, having girl talk. But Widow was never one to disrupt the flow. Sometimes going with it was the right course of action. So they talked, and he listened, and then he talked. He told them he was traveling the country like a tourist, and for no particular reason other than just to wander. Sometimes people needed a little more explanation, so he'd say he'd already seen the world. Why not see America?

  They drove on I-40 east until they wound down into Amarillo. They stopped at a gas station to fill up and asked Widow where he wanted to be dropped off. He shrugged and told them they could leave him at the station if they wanted. But they refused this because they claimed to be new friends, and friends didn't abandon each other. They asked if he had ever taken the bus, and he told them he had ridden the bus before, but not that often and not for any reason. It was just one of those things. He enjoyed walking and following the road. When you buy a bus ticket, you have to choose a destination, and Widow didn't like to make choices or plans. He didn't mind hitching rides, but choosing a destination was like knowing where he wanted to be, and he wanted to be wherever life led him.

  But in the end, he asked the girls to drop him off at a bus station, which they did, and they said their goodbyes and good lucks.

  Widow stepped up on a curb and stopped next to a man in an old motorized wheelchair. He had a blanket over his legs, and his legs looked a little short, like maybe he was missing part of them from the knees down. Widow didn't stare, and the guy didn't ask for money, which Widow hadn't expected, because in his experience in America, homeless people in wheelchairs found better territories than bus stations in which to panhandle for change. People who rode the bus weren't looking to donate money to charity. Typically, they were at the bus station because they needed to be somewhere and couldn't afford a plane ticket or didn't have a vehicle of their own. It wasn't the best place to find charitable people with spare money. The American bus system was basically the last choice and not the first choice for most people.

  Widow walked past the guy without looking at him.

  He walked up to a two-story building with red brick that looked orange. He glanced up at three oversized white letters painted high on the building that read "Bus." Part of the building was painted white and wasn't two stories but was attached to the other section.

  He walked through a set of double doors into the white part. Inside were maybe a dozen people waiting around for buses. He stepped up to a ticket counter, where a short guy with one lazy eye stood ready and smiling like he had the best job in the world—different people have different expectations. Widow smiled back because the guy had a warm smile and a glow about him. He might've been in his late thirties or early forties. When he spoke, he sounded a little slower than most, but not as dumb as many.

  The guy asked, "You need a ticket?"

  Widow said, "I do."

  The guy asked, "Where to?"

  And for the first time in a while, Widow froze. He had planned little farther than walking up to the counter.

  So he said, "I don't know."

  The guy continued to smile and asked, "You don't know where you're going?"

  Widow shook his head.

  The guy said, "Well, that's like most people." And he chuckled a little at his own joke. Then he said, "Where would you like to go?"

  Widow asked, "What are my choices?"

  The guy said, "Well, you can go just about anywhere, but I'd suggest taking a direct bus, and that limits your choices by a lot."

  Widow said, "Okay. Where's the next bus headed?"

  The guy tapped his fingers on a keyboard to a computer that was hidden beneath Widow's line of sight. A first tap. A second tap. He could see the guy staring off to the right at a computer monitor.

  And the guy said, "There's one in thirty minutes, south to Rough Creek."

  Widow asked, "Rough Creek?"

  "Yeah. It's a small town on the way to San Antonio. That's the soonest bus."

  "Why can't I just ride the bus to San Antonio?"

  "It goes to San Antonio. But the ride from Rough Creek to San Antonio is full. There's one seat left, but you'll have to get off in Rough Creek. We already booked another passenger from Rough Creek for the seat to San Antonio."

  Widow furrowed more than his brows; his whole forehead showed his displeasure.

  The guy said, "You can buy a ticket to San Antonio from there. On another bus."

  "Why the hell does your bus stop there, anyway?"

  "Native American casinos. There's two of them. They're popular."

  Widow thought for a moment and shrugged and said, "Fine. Give me a ticket to Rough Creek."

  The guy clicked away on the keyboard some more, and then he said, "That's fifty-five dollars."

  "Do you take debit?"

  The guy said, "Of course, sir. We also have an ATM around the corner. Near the bathrooms. But it has a three-dollar fee for use that is automatically deducted from your bank account."

  Widow backed away from the counter and turned a corner in the lobby. He found the bathrooms and the ATM. Widow stepped into the bathroom first because life for him was all about opportunity. He went to a urinal, which had a Power Ranger shoved in it on top of a bright green urinal screen. Widow found he was having a good day so far—full of little bits of humor.

  He did his business and zipped up and walked to the sink, which was the primary reason he had gone into the bathroom in the first place, because it was the middle of the summer, and he was in Texas. Texas wasn't a friendly state for summer temperatures. It wasn't as hot as it could've been, or even as it normally was, but it was still somewhere in the eighties. And Widow had been sweating from the moment he stepped out of the blue Buick. He felt the need to wash his face.

  He stood over the sink, ran the water as cold as he could get it, and splashed it in huge shovelfuls with his hands onto his face. His hair had grown back out from the last time he had shaved his head. At the moment, he had small, messy sprouts of hair cropping up—black hair. It wasn't much less than an eighth of an inch. In a month, he figured he would have a good half an inch. He debated on shaving it again, just because of the heat, but he wasn't planning to stay in Texas long. He considered the bus to Rough Creek and thought it sounded quaint, which was something he liked about small towns. Maybe he'd like it there. Maybe he'd stay a while.

  After he got his face cold and wet, he didn't dry it or his hands.

  He dug into the pocket of the pair of khaki cargo pants he had got back in Colorado. He walked out to the ATM and withdrew some cash. The machine returned his card, ejected the money in crisp twenty-dollar bills, and then shoved out a receipt, which blew downward from an air vent above that rushed cold air out. He ripped the receipt free from the machine and gasped in horror at his dwindling bank account.

  Being homeless is getting expensive, he thought. He had money tucked away in a savings account from when his mother had died and left him a bank account balance from selling his family home. That was some time ago, nearly two years. Widow had stayed in a lot of motels and bought food at least twice a day since then. And he didn't have a job or investments or stock or any sort of income. Maybe it was time to think about that sort of thing. Better to have money coming in, even if it was a small percentage, because living the life of leisure, which was how he thought of it, was getting expensive.

  Widow crumpled up the receipt, tossed it into a wastebasket next to the wall, and returned to the jovial guy behind the counter.