Ronnie spun, staring him down.

“How do you know my name?”

He pushed away from the Jeep and held up a black leather credential case, open to reveal a frowning photo of him wearing what looked to be the same wrinkled suit.

“Glen Walter,” he said. “Internal Defense.” Ronnie caught the shadow of a sidearm on his right hip inside the suit jacket when he returned the credential case to his breast pocket. He smiled. “I actually came here to see you.”

Ronnie checked her watch, swallowing back the surprise that this man had known exactly where she parked and when she would be walking to her car. He was IDTF all right. “Well, Mr. Walters, it’s after five. You caught me on my way home.”

“It’s Walter,” the man said. “No s.”

“Whatever.” Ronnie shrugged again. “Anyway, I’m on my way home. This is a weird time for a meeting.”

“I suppose,” Walter said, his face holding a crooked half smile. “But it’s important to take care of some things right when they come up. Don’t you think?”

There was a decided hint of the South in his voice. Maybe one of the Carolinas, Ronnie thought. He had an overly sweet way of talking that seemed calculated to put her off balance.

“Okay…” She half expected him to pull out a silenced pistol and try to assassinate her. “How about you get to the point then,” she said, not one to dance around a matter for any length of time. “Because I’ve had a long crappy day.”

“Sure.” Walter shrugged, leaning sideways on the Jeep again and folding his hands. “I can appreciate that. How about I save us both a lot of time and tell you how this will go. I’m going to ask you a couple of very specific questions — for the record. I’m pretty sure you’ll refuse to answer them, or, if you do, your answers will be a pack of lies. After you lie to my face, I’ll read you a short statement from the Espionage Act, you know, 18 USC Title—”

“I’m familiar with the Espionage Act,” Garcia said. Smugness was a quality she could not abide, even for a minute, from a man with the authority to arrest her on the spot.

“I’ll just bet you are,” Walter said. “Anywaaaay…” He drew the word out as if to chastise her for the interruption. “After I admonish you about your responsibility regarding the act, I’ll ask you those same little questions one more time. You’ll look me right in the eye and lie… again.” He gave a halfhearted shrug, still leaning against the Jeep. “And we’ll be right back to where we—”

“Maldita sea!” Ronnie cut him off with her go-to Cuban curse before she lost all semblance of self-control. “Look, Mr. Walters, if this is about Jericho Quinn, I’ve already told investigators from the US Marshals and the FBI everything I know.”

“It’s Walter, no s,” he said. “And just like I predicted, there comes your first lie.”

“We are done here.” Ronnie turned to walk to her car.

“We may be done here, Miss Garcia,” Walter said, again much too smugly for Ronnie. “But we’re not done. I wouldn’t be leaving town anytime soon.”

Ronnie spun. “I don’t know what it is you think you know—”

“That’s true.” Walter smiled his half smile, cutting her off. “You don’t know what I know. Anyway, as you said, we’re done here.”

Agent Walter stood up from the Jeep. He gave a flip of his hand, as if he was bored with the conversation, and summoned a black Town Car that had been waiting down the aisle. A moment later, he was gone, leaving Garcia standing alone in the parking lot under a hot evening sun, wondering how much this guy did know about what she was doing for Jericho Quinn.

Quinn was moving before the scream trailed away into a mournful, gurgling cough. He stepped over Proctor’s lifeless body and shoved the front door open at the same instant Ukka charged in from the back hallway.

Both men stopped in their tracks at what they saw.

A squat contractor with dark curly hair lay on his back, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. The dead might leak, but they didn’t bleed very long, and the growing pool of blood on the living room floor revealed he’d not been dead more than a few seconds. Ukka’s wife, Christina, stood over him, a bloody skinning knife in her hand. A broken piece of what looked like ivory or bone, about the size of a child’s baseball bat, lay on the ground beside the man’s demolished skull. It was an oosik, the penis bone of a walrus, often found as decoration in Alaska homes. Christina had evidently used it to cave in the face of her attacker before grabbing a skinning knife off the table and virtually gutting him.

The mournful scream Quinn heard had been that of the dying man.

Ukka put a big arm around his wife and gently took the knife out of her hand.

“You okay?”

“I smacked him in the face with the oosik,” Christina said, small shoulders trembling. She looked up at him weakly, fighting shock.

“I know you did, sweetheart,” Ukka said, shooting a glance at Quinn. “He was a bad man. You did the right thing.”

Fico’s sidearm lay on the ground beside him. He was too far gone to lift it, but Quinn kicked it out of the way just in case.

A strained voice crackled over the radio. It was Perkins, one of the men who’d gone to scout the river.

“How about a SITREP up there?”

Quinn started to answer, but decided against it, listening instead.

“Proctor!” the voice called again. “What’s going on? We heard shots.”

There was a long pause, followed by another voice, presumably the pilot, letting them know he was coming to their location, down by the fishery plant. The man called Perkins cut him off, ordering radio silence.

Quinn sighed. It was too late for that. He had what he needed to know.

Ukka’s cell phone began to ring. He listened for a few moments, a smile spreading over his wide face as he ended the call.

“Chantelle says there’s nobody left to guard the plane.”

Quinn checked the magazine on the MP7 while he thought. “I don’t think these guys are actually affiliated with any specific agency. None of them have badges or any kind of credential — but they still have the backing of the government. If any of them make it out of here, he’ll come back with reinforcements and slaughter the whole village. It won’t matter to them that I’m not here.”

Ukka’s daughter Kaylee had ignored the direction to go to her auntie’s house. Unable to leave with the sound of the scream, she’d come in behind Quinn and now sat on the couch, helping to console her mother.

Ukka pulled Quinn to the side so his wife and youngest daughter couldn’t hear. “It’s all good, man,” he said. “I had Chantelle do some work on the plane. If they try and make a run for it, they’ll never get off the ground. If we take care of them somewhere else, she’ll torch the plane at the end of the runway.” He waved his hand as if saying good-bye. “No one’s getting back to call in the cavalry.”

“That might work,” Quinn said, glancing at the couch. He nodded at the two women in the room. “Christina should probably see a doctor. And Kaylee might need a counselor after what these guys just put her through.”

“All my girls are tundra tough.” Ukka gave a solemn nod. “But you’re right. This is a lot to process. I’m proud of Christina, though. Not a good idea to cross an Eskimo woman when she’s protecting her home.”

“Or any woman,” Quinn said, thinking of his ex-wife and of Ronnie Garcia, wondering what they would do in such a situation.

“Maybe,” Ukka said. “But most women don’t know their way around a skinning knife like my wife does.” He grinned. “Or a walrus pecker…”