"I'm not going to argue," he said. "Just make your report, and I'll pick it up, tonight."
Five minutes after he was gone, I was packing. I knew he wasn't coming back for any report. He was coming back for me, and it didn't much matter to him if I wanted to come, or not. I was coming, or staying here—dead.
What I didn't realize is that they wanted me to run, to get out where I could be taken with a minimum of interference.
They got me the other side of Blythe, in the middle of nowhere. A clear night in the desert, and headlights coming up from behind and then the big, black car crowding me off the flat road, into the sand.... And darkness.
Deering sighed and shook his head. "Corruption, Werig? Was it the corruption, or the girl?"
"I've made my report," I said. "Don't worry about them. They've got enough to worry about without worrying about us."
"Another war, it looks like," Deering said. "It could be the last one, you know. What was the girl—your wife like, Fred? Was she pretty?"
"Beautiful," I said.
"And the people—fear, is it fear?"