The black Mercedes SUV sheared into a howling skid, the rear wheels fishtailing wide across the centerline, into a spin. There was a screeching lurch and the car swung back into its lane, swaying for a few seconds as the driver overcorrected right and left, before finally regaining control. The vehicle rolled to a halt.

A minute or so later, the driver reversed, the SUV’s taillights flooding the road as it pulled slowly back toward Bentas’s hiding place. When Adam Weiss’s body broke the edge of the light field, the car stopped sharply.

The driver’s-side door swung open, and the sound of a girl screaming repeatedly filled the air.

The driver was young, a dark-haired kid maybe Weiss’s age, driving—what? His dad’s car? Bentas looked for the plate: a Palm Beach County plate surrounded by a loop of pulsing blue lights: it read GTARGOD. A rich kid’s car, then.

The boy climbed out and ran to Adam’s body. He kneeled and looked at him for a second, then started pacing, hands pressing the top of his head as if holding his skull together, saying over and over, “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!”

He paused, then glanced up and down the highway.

Bentas knew what the driver was doing: math. The kid was figuring out if he could get away with it.

The boy began to back away, looking shakily in the direction of his car, where the girl was still screaming. She’d undone her seat belt, and her screaming was punctuated by the rhythmic chime of a door alarm.

From where he crouched, Tarver now squatting close behind him, Bentas could see Weiss was in bad shape. One of the arms was impossibly twisted, and the right leg bent out at an unnatural angle. The kid’s head lolled to the left in a gleaming puddle of dark blood.

The boy was hesitating, standing there with his cell phone out, looking down at Adam’s body, looking back at the car at his screaming girlfriend. Bentas thought, Leave, you little fuck. Just leave! No one will find out, no one will ever know…

And then Adam moaned.

Bentas stiffened.

It seemed impossible—enough methamphetamine to drop a circus elephant, washed down by an insecticide chaser and then smashed by that tank of a car, and Weiss was still alive? No way…

The sound galvanized the driver, who punched numbers into his cell.

Tarver touched Bentas’s shoulder, then held up his pistol, tapped it, then pointed first at the driver on his phone, then at the screaming girlfriend.

Bentas shook his head quickly and jabbed his finger in the direction of the field. The two men crept down the slope, moved quietly across the drainage ditch and out onto the strawberry field.

Bentas muttered to Tarver to put the gun away. “No need: kid was already ninety-nine percent dead. This way is perfect—they ran him over while he was alive, lying on the road, fucked up on crystal meth. Just one more dead stupid fucking tweaker.”

Tarver moaned as his nose began to bleed again. “Shit!”

Bentas snickered at him. “Yeah, one more dead stupid fucking tweaker.” He paused. “Hey, Tarver—you thirsty? I got some wine…”

By the time they reached their pickup truck, they could hear the distant sirens.