A Billion Ways to Die by Chris Knopf Page B

new-car fumes and fiddling the climate control into perfection, that our spirits began to lift. After some minor navigational confusion, we cleared the snarled confines of Queens and crossed the Throgs Neck Bridge on our way to New England.
    “We lived here, right?” said Natsumi.
    “Born and raised.”
    “I was born in Japan, though I was little when we left.”
    “What do you remember?”
    “The traffic.”
    The Jeep took well to the twisty Hutchinson Parkway that soon merged into the Merritt, equally blessed with hill and curve, which crossed the line into Connecticut. We took a detour into Stamford to buy more clothing and rugged footwear, and to startle my sister by sitting down across from her in the cafeteria at the hospital where she practiced cardiology.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, clearly stunned, a cheeseburger halfway to her mouth.
    “I thought heart doctors only ate tofu and sprouts.”
    “You’re not dead,” she said, or rather breathed in relief.
    “Depends on your definition.”
    “Hello, Natsumi,” she said.
    “Hello, Evelyn. I told him we should call ahead,” she added, aware and sympathetic over the shock we’d caused.
    “Phones aren’t safe,” I said.
    “You call this safe?” asked Evelyn.
    “Nobody’s watching,” I said. “Not at the moment.”
    “The last I heard you were in Europe,” said Evelyn. “According to Shelly.”
    Shelly Gross was a former FBI agent who’d spent his recent retirement years tangled up in severe approach-avoidance. It was my fault—I’d drawn him back into service when I needed a connection inside serious law enforcement. Though it was a little like coaxing a poisonous snake to be your proxy in a snake fight. One wrong move and you’re the one with the fangs in your throat.
    Still, he’d helped me when he didn’t have to, and kept quiet about me when he could have burnished an already illustrious career with a high-profile collar. It made it easier to forgive his declared desire that I spend the rest of my life in jail.
    “How is the old stiff?” I asked.
    “Still sore at you, but said I shouldn’t suffer because of that.”
    “I need to talk to him,” I said.
    She looked down and realized she was still holding her half-raised burger. She took a bite and wiped her face with the napkin.
    “So it’s not over yet,” she said.
    “Far from it,” I said.
    “The world’s a dangerous place,” said Natsumi, “and not what people think it is.”
    “How bad is it?” Evelyn asked.
    “I’m not sure,” I said. “I thought we were more or less in the clear. In exile, but comfortably so. But apparently we’d stumbled over something in the past that caught up to us.”
    “And you don’t know what?”
    “No. It has something to do with money, an imprisoned financial security consultant named Joselito Gorrotxategi and people connected to The Société Commerciale Fontaine, the big engineering firm working for the State Department.”
    “That doesn’t sound that serious,” said Evelyn.
    “They kidnapped us in the middle of the night, put us through psychological torture and threatened to make it physical. Then they tried to kill us,” said Natsumi.
    “Oh.”
    “It’s possible we could be in even worse trouble than before, we just didn’t realize it,” I said.
    “What do the French have to do with all this?” Evelyn asked.
    “Fontaine is only nominally French,” I told her. “They rolled up a bunch of American engineering and defense contractors. Enough to clear domestic political hurdles. Besides building oil refineries and petrochemical plants, they specialize in big public works following disasters, natural and man-made. And they’re also woven into the international security community, which means everything deep, dark and nasty anywhere in the world.”
    “I might have read that.”
    “You read about them losing the security part of the contract with the State Department. Apparently, not