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audible breath; Mike’s Glock doesn’t waver.
    And then there’s laughter in the hallway, a giggled “
Fuck it
,” running footsteps, and the office door falling shut with a decisive click.
    The silence afterward is ringing. Carr is conscious only of the pulse in his ears and the sweat running over his ribs. Latin Mike crawls back through the closet wall, and Bobby follows. Carr locks the office door and goes through too, then stands in Lucovic’s office while Mike drills the safe.
    Two hundred twenty-seven thousand dollars in neatly bundled cash; three million, give or take, in loose polished stones.

5
    When the adrenaline washes out, Carr thinks, it’s like another country—another planet altogether. On this planet, on this evening, they look like film stars by the swimming pool: Valerie in a slate-blue shift, dark glasses, and a loose French braid; Dennis, Bobby, Mike, and Carr himself all freshly showered, shaved, in crisp shirts and shades of their own. The late-day sun throws sheets of orange light across the pool, the fieldstone deck, the wrought-iron chairs and tables, the sinuous olive trees, and a wide swath of Napa Valley hillside below. The waitress delivers another bottle of Chardonnay, another plate of cheese, and another basket of warm bread to their table. She leaves, and they have the terrace to themselves again.
    Latin Mike sips and sighs and stretches in the cooling air. “Nice,” he says. “Whose choice?” Carr nods toward Valerie, and Mike smiles. “You can book all my hotels,
chica.
” She lifts her wineglass and smiles back.
    “Lucky to be here, no,
jefe
?” Mike continues. “Those two stoners could’ve screwed us up but good.”
    Carr shakes his head. “The luck was that you didn’t start banging away. Otherwise we’d be picking brains off our lapels around now, instead of drinking wine.”
    “That’d work too,” Mike says. “My tastes are simple.”
    “So instead of nobody knowing anything, we’d have had maybe ten minutes to haul ass before the cops got there. And that works for you?”
    Mike shrugs. “Not everybody’s so squeamish,
cabrón.
”
    Carr takes off his sunglasses. “Not everybody’s so stupid, either.”
    “You saying Deke was stupid, bro? ’Cause he didn’t mind a little juice.”
    “He didn’t mind when there wasn’t another option.”
    “Traffic moves fast. There’s not always time to figure the options.”
    “Which is why you’re not supposed to figure anything—you’re supposed to listen to me. For chrissakes, Mike, we’ve put months into this gig, and you nearly ended it in the first act.”
    Valerie mutters something, and Dennis shifts nervously in his chair. Bobby clears his throat. “Which is something we’ve been wondering about,” Bobby says, “ending it in the first act, I mean.”
    It was hard travel from Houston—dusty, hot, and bumpy—and though he’s washed off the grit, Carr can still feel the ride in his shoulders. He looks at Bobby and then at Latin Mike. “We made a deal,” he says, “a commitment. We’ve got big sunk costs in this thing, and so does Boyce. He’s not going to like it if we walk away.”
    Mike clasps his hands behind his head. “
Señor Boyce—el padrino.
”
    “Fucking ghost, more like,” Bobby says.
    Carr rises from the table and walks to the terrace railing. He looks at the darkening vineyards and sighs. He’s been down this road before with Mike and Bobby, more than once—do the job, don’t do the job; one last run, or not—but with three and a quarter million in swag in a room upstairs, the potholes and blind curves are less theoretical now.
    “You’ve worked for him longer than I have, Mike,” Carr says. “You were working for him when I signed on.”
    “True that,
cabrón
, but I’ve never met the guy. None of us have had the honor—only Deke and you.”
    “I didn’t ask for it—it’s the way Deke set it up. It’s the way Boyce wants it.”
    “But you see how it makes a