Kharon thumped his fist against the dashboard. He was tempted to yell at Fezzan, who’d taken so long getting them here, but he held his anger in check, not least of all because the two men in the back of the SUV were the driver’s friends. He barely trusted them with weapons under the best of circumstances. Meanwhile, the boy who told him that the Americans had left stood trembling by the car window, frozen in place by Kharon’s retort at hearing the news. “Are they coming back?” Kharon managed to ask. The boy quickly shook his head. “Go,” said Kharon, dropping a few coins in front of the boy. “Go.” He rolled up the window. Rubeo had moved much more quickly than he had expected. But of course—this wasn’t a fantasy anymore, this was reality. And the reality was that Rubeo was very, very good. Kharon couldn’t afford to be sloppy, to play the child.
