Certain prey

'Gotta go,' Rinker said urgently.

'She saw us,' Carmel said.

But there were footsteps on the landing above and Rinker thrust Carmel toward the door. She went, hurrying, Rinker a step behind, out the door, down the sidewalk, the apartment door closing behind them.

'She was just a kid,' Rinker said. 'She won't remember. They might not find the bodies for a week.'

'Why can't this be easy?' Carmel asked. They hurried down the dark side walk toward the lights of Dinkytown, and she added, 'This is just like a dream I had when I was a teenager. A school dream, where I couldn't find my locker and the bell was about to ring, and every time I was about to find it, something else happened to keep me away from it…'

'Everybody has that dream,' Rinker said. 'We're in the clear.'

'Maybe,' Carmel said. She turned to look back; the dark figure of a man was climbing on a bike, and then headed away from them, out on the street. 'But I am on the inside; if anything comes out of that kid, we're gonna have to go back and clean up.'

'Let's get that drink,' Rinker said.

They had several drinks, and two midnight steaks, at Carmel's apartment. Carmel had a rarely used grill on her balcony, and Rinker did the honors, moving the meat and sauce like a professional. 'I once worked in a bar where we had an outdoor grill. Place was full of cowboys, wanted their steaks burned,' she told

Carmel.

'Make mine not-quite-rare,' Carmel said. 'No blood.' Carmel was in the media room, looking at the tape: the whole episode with Rolo was on the tape, while the other tapes had only the final sequence. 'So this is the original,' she told

Rinker with satisfaction. 'Even if there's a copy someplace, they could get me into court, but I'd prove it was a copy and could have been altered and I'd be gone.'

'Still be best if there weren't any copies,' Rinker said.

'You about done out there?'

'All done. Dinner is served.'

'Good. One more thing before we eat.' Carmel stripped the tape out of the cassette by hand, tossed the cassette pack into a waste basket, squeezed the jumbled tangle of tape into a wad the size of a softball, and dropped it onto the hot charcoal in the grill.

'That won't be coming back,' she said as she watched it burn.

'Three people dead because of that tape,' Rinker said, shaking her head.

'Ah, they were nothing, a bunch of druggies,' Carmel said. 'Nobody'll miss them.'

'Even druggies have families, sometimes,' Rinker said. 'I hated my step-dad and my older brother, I don't like my mom anymore, but I've got a little brother, he's out in L.A. and he does drugs, sometimes he lives on the beach… I'd do anything I could for him. I do everything I can for him.'

'Really,' Carmel said, impressed. They'd moved the steaks onto a seldom-used dining table. 'I've never been like that with anybody. I mean, I give to charity and all, but I have to. I've never really been where… I do anything for somebody.'

'Not even for Hale?'

Carmel shook her head: 'Not even for Hale.'

'You killed for him,' Rinker said.

'No, I didn't,' Carmel said. 'I killed for me – for something / want. Which is

Hale. If he'd had his choice, who knows? He might've decided to stay with

Barbara.'

'Mmm,' Rinker said, chewing. She swallowed, watched for a moment as Carmel worked her way into the steak and then asked, 'Would you have killed the little girl?'

Carmel said, 'You make me sound like a monster.'

'No, no. I'm just interested,' Rinker said. 'I'd do it, if it was absolutely necessary. But I'd hate doing it.'

'Why?'

'Because she's a kid.'

'So what? None of this means anything, this…' Carmel looked around. '… this life. We're just a bunch of meat. When we think something, it's just chemicals. When we love something, it's more chemicals. When we die, all the chemicals go back in the ground, and that's it. There's nothing left. You don't go anywhere, except in the ground. No heaven, no hell, no God, no nothing. Just

… nothing.'

'That's pretty grim,' Rinker said. She pointed a fork at Carmel. 'I've seen people like you – philosophical nihilists. People who really believe all that. .. eventually, they can't stand it. Most of them commit suicide.'

Carmel nodded. 'I can see that. That's probably what I'll do, when I get older.

If I live to get older.'

'Why not do it now?' Rinker asked. 'If nothing means anything, why wait?'

'No reason, except curiosity. I want to see how things come out. I mean, killing yourself is as meaningless as not killing yourself. Makes no difference if you do or you don't. So as long as you're not bored, as long as you're feeling good

… why do it?'

'But you'd do it if you had to. Kill yourself.'

'Hell, I might kill myself if I don't have to,' Carmel said.

'Really?'

'Sure. For the same reason that I'm staying now. Curiosity. I can't be absolutely one-million percent sure that there's nothing on the other side; so as long as it's one-millionth of a percent possible, why not check?'

'Man, that's almost enough to bum me out,' Rinker said.

'It does bum me out from time to time,' Carmel said. 'But I get over it pretty quickly. I'm just an upper sort of person.'

'Chemically.'

'Absolutely,' Carmel said. After a couple more bites, she asked, 'How about you?

How do you justify all this stuff.'

'I'm kind of religious, I guess,' Rinker said.

'Really?'

'Yeah. I don't think anything really happens in this world that isn't part of

God's plan. And if God wants somebody to die, now, if that's that person's fate,

I can't say no.'

'So you're just what… the finger of God?'

'I wouldn't put it exactly that way. It sounds too… vain, I guess. Too important. But what I do is God's will.'

'Jesus,' Carmel said. Then quickly: 'Sorry, if that offends you, I'll…'

'No, no, jeez, I hang around with Italians, for Christ's sake. Catholics, man.

Nobody talks the talk like Catholics. I'm not exactly religious that way – I mean, I used to work in a nudie bar. It's just that I believe in

… some kind of God. Not in heaven or hell, just in God. We're all part of it.'

'What about stuff like guns? Where'd you learn about that?'

'We always had guns in our house when I was a kid, my step-dad was a hunter.

Poacher, really. So I knew about rifles and shotguns. Then the Mafia guys taught me the basic stuff about handguns, though most of them don't know a lot,' Rinker said. 'I figured that if I was gonna do this – be a hit man – I'd better learn about them. You can get most of what you need from books. There's an ocean of gun stuff out there.'

'So you know all about the bullets and how fast they go…'

'Pretty much. I don't reload – make my own ammunition – because that would be too much of a trademark,' Rinker said. 'Sooner or later they could get me on it.

But factory ammo is as good as anything I could make up for my kind of work, anyway.' 'Are the guns really special? I mean…' 'Nah. Most of them are stolen, and they get passed around. I got a friend who picks them up for me, cuts the threads for the silencers. He checks them mechanically, and I fire them a few times to double check, but basically, all my work is within ten feet or so. Up close. So I use fairly small calibers and fire several times.'

'You carry the silencers separately?'

'Yeah. A little plastic box with a couple of crescent wrenches and a couple pairs of pliers – if you saw them on an X-ray, it'd look like a tool kit.

There's no way to hide guns, though. Not conventional guns, anyway.'

They talked for a long time, nihilism and religion, guns and ammo, and that night, very late, as Carmel was dozing off, she smiled sleepily as she replayed the conversation. She'd gone to college with a lot of finance and law students.