“You’re being an idiot, Zil,” Sam said. “I’m not going to have you running around and stirring up trouble.”

“What are you going to do? Fry me?” Zil spread his hands in a gesture that was simultaneously defiant and innocent.

“This is bull,” Sam said. “Get in, Zil. We’re wasting time arguing.”

“No way, man. No way.” Zil turned and began to walk quickly away.

“You want me to stop him?” Dekka asked.

“No,” Sam said.

“He’s going to make trouble.”

“Sounds like Hunter already made trouble. Let’s get going, Edilio. Hopefully Breeze gets to the plant and at least wakes them up. The more I think about it, the more I think I overreacted. I don’t think Caine will start a war tonight.”

“We may have our own war, right here in town,” Edilio said.

EIGHTEEN

18 HOURS, 47 MINUTES

PATRICK FIGURED IT was all a party. His master was up in the middle of the night, and that was fun. Plus, now she was climbing into a pickup truck.

Quinn was behind the wheel. Albert sat beside him. The backseat would normally have been a little cramped for Lana and Cookie, who was a very big kid, but Quinn had his seat pulled all the way forward so he could reach the pedals. Patrick climbed in and lay across Cookie’s lap.

“You want to put the dog in the back?” Albert suggested.

“And have him bark at everything we pass? Wake everyone up?”

“Okay,” Albert said. He gave the dog a dirty look. Lana didn’t like that about Albert, that he didn’t like dogs, but this wasn’t the time to have that argument.

At least Albert wasn’t joking about eating Patrick. She’d heard that from more than one person.

The four of them—five, if you counted Patrick—had met up at a muffler shop on the highway. There was a heavy-duty four-by-four, extended-cab pickup parked there that Albert figured would be just right for the cross-country travel and the gold.

“Guess I better see if I know how to drive this thing,” Quinn said.

“You said you know how to drive,” Albert accused.

“I do. I’ve driven Edilio’s Jeep, anyway. But this is bigger.”

“Great,” Albert muttered.

Quinn turned the key and the engine roared. It seemed way too loud, like it would wake up the whole town.

“Yikes,” Quinn said. He put it into drive, and the beast lurched forward, bumped across a curb, and fishtailed out onto the highway.

“Hey, let’s not get killed, huh?” Albert yelled.

Quinn steadied the truck and it went off at a sedate thirty miles an hour straight down the center of what had once been a busy highway.

“You seem a little cranky, Albert,” Quinn said playfully. “Are you going to tell me what this trip is all about? I mean, it’s, what, three A.M.? We’re not going to kill a guy, right?”

“You’re getting paid, aren’t you?” Albert snapped.

“You haven’t told him?” Lana said from the backseat. “Albert, he has to know what’s going on.”

When Albert didn’t answer, Lana said, “We’re going after gold, Quinn.”

She saw Quinn’s eyes framed in the rearview mirror.

“Um. What?”

“Hermit Jim’s shack. The gold,” Lana explained.

Lana saw Quinn’s eyes again, more worried. “Excuse me, but last time we were out there, we were getting chewed on by coyotes.”

“You know how to handle a gun now. And you have a gun with you,” Albert said calmly. “And Cookie has a gun. You’re both trained.”

“That’s right,” Cookie agreed. “But I don’t want to shoot no one. Unless they mess with the Healer.”

“And we need gold why?” Quinn asked a bit shrilly.

“We need money,” Albert said. “You can only get so far with barter. We need a system, and the system works better if you have a basis for the currency.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, look, take the fish business, right?” Albert began.

“It hasn’t been much of a business,” Quinn grumbled. “I barely caught enough yesterday to make bait.”

“You’ll have good days and bad days,” Albert said impatiently. “Some days you’ll have a lot of fish. So let’s say you want to trade some fish for oranges.”

“Sounds good, actually. You know someone with oranges?”

“You have enough fish that you want to trade some for oranges, and some for bread, and some for a kid to clean your room for you. That’s three different places you have to go with your fish in your hand to pay someone.”

“Is anyone else really starving right now?” Quinn joked. “I mean, dude: oranges? Bread? Stop.”

Albert ignored him. “What you do if you have money, instead of just trading things, is you can have a market where everyone brings what they have to sell, right? All in one place. And everyone is walking around with pieces of gold, not their fish, or a wheelbarrow full of corn or whatever, trying to make deals.”

Quinn said, “Either way, I’m standing around with my fish. Either I’m walking around selling them at this market of yours, or I’m standing still and people are coming to me to trade, but either way—”

“No, man,” Albert interrupted impatiently. “Because you’re selling your fish to someone who sells it to other people. You need to be out fishing, because that’s what you’re good at. Not selling fish. Catching fish.”