Chapter One

The first time I asked about Mom, Dad sat us down beneath a shade tree and pulled a three-ring binder out of our backpack. There was a set of pictures in protective plastic sleeves, most of them very formal, some of them snipped out of newspapers. Only one seemed to be an honest shot: a Japanese woman with naked shoulders, her hair sleeked into a tight bun. She was looking at the photographer out of the corner of her eye, and there was the barest hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth. Every angle of her bust was a hard one, from the knife-like sweep of her jaws to the jag of her collarbone. To be honest, I was a little afraid of her.

"When can we meet her?" I asked.

Dad told me why we couldn't, and we got up and walked down the road like I had never asked. I took longer strides than usual, and felt relieved when we saw the next town breaking over the horizon.

I can pass for human, so I'm the one Dad sends shopping. I learned how to count and read at a very young age. I don't even remember learning how to do this. But Dad says it's that way with our kind, whatever our kind is. We grow fast, we learn fast. I didn't grow as quickly as he did when he was small, he says, but that's probably the human in me.

We're always on the move. Dad mixes it up. Six months in the wild, learning how to move silently through underbrush so thick that a snake can't pass through it. Six months in the city, learning about what a person's stride looks like when they're packing heat and how to disarm them. He showed me how to throw a punch so hard it could rupture a man's spleen and taught me how to snap a wrist when I was six. In the beginning, I didn't ask why he would teach me these things: endless katas, how to handle weapons, how to scrounge for food in the least likely places, how to slip into a shadow and pad soundlessly through the dark. It was something that I did because he told me to, and later, because it was the only thing I knew.

There are certain ways that you think when you're always moving. The first is that everything is temporary; the second is that you don't hold on to anything you can't carry; the third is that comfort and stasis are hard-won luxuries. Once Dad had that luxury. He had a single photograph for proof: four brothers cross-legged on the floor with beers, knee-to-knee. Someone must have told a joke, because they were bent double, slapping at the floor, slapping at each other. I had stared at it so much that I had memorized all of the scratches in the floor, the scars in the shells, and the layout of the room.

The family was still out there, he said, but it was best not to look for them. She was waiting, and her eyes were everywhere. She'd know if we so much as called them on the phone. We'd only put them in danger, and they'd suffered enough already.

The day it all changed was back in mid-April. We were passing through the flat country in Texas, these endless dreary furrowed hillocks. In the springs and summers, the wind kicks up and the topsoil lifts off. On bad days, you can't even see the disc of the sun, only a hazy halo. Dust goes everywhere: up your nose, up your ears. It scours your skin and you grind it between your teeth.

We were walking ahead of one of these bitter sandstorms in the tense yellow daylight. Every now and then a farmer would rumble to a stop and give us a ride in his pickup. Usually I got to ride in the front seat where the AC was, but I didn't like this terribly much. There was usually a cross dangling off of the rearview mirror and old Bibles stuffed under the seats. You could feel the Old Testament God crackling in the upholstery. The farmers would get to staring at my face. Then they'd ask in friendly voices about me, my dad, my family, what we did. I always told them we were traveling across the country to see our friends in California, and that I was fine. If they were really forward, and Dad had opted to sit in the back of the pickup like he usually did, they'd ask what happened to my face and if I were okay and did I really know that man sitting back there? That bulky man in the heavy coat and the ski mask and the gloves, even in the extreme heat of summer, with the backpack between his knees.

Yes, I said. I always said yes, and I could have said "no" anytime I wanted, and then there would have been a call on the phone. A police car could have taken me far away. Dad would have been okay—he could have lived through a nuclear apocalypse. But I was sort of afraid of phones, ever since Dad had told me that Mom could tap them. I didn't understand at the time that she would only tap specific ones. I thought she had the entire system tapped. I went so far as to think she could hear me if I spoke out loud. When I was very little, I had invented entire rituals where I would only speak at certain times of day, and never at night, or only inside of buildings or car cabs or narrow alleys, where the closed spaces swallowed sounds.

But like I said, things changed anyway, and it wasn't because I spoke. We had just found a rest stop and were sitting in the shade. Dad had dared to unbutton the faded front of his jacket and his plastron was showing, gouged and chipped from countless battles. It had to be over a hundred degrees, and he was way too hot; he shouldn't have been wearing so much. In the distance, we saw a black car coming, shimmering in the heat. He didn't even bother to look up; he was drinking bottled water and pouring it on the back of his neck. We could afford to do this since there was a water fountain.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go behind the trees."

What he really meant was, "I need to take this jacket off or I'm going to die." So we went to sit in the shade beneath this huge old cottonwood, and he put me on watch while he aired out. I watched that black car grow closer and closer and closer. A dust storm was right on its tail. For some reason I felt it was important. Perhaps Dad did, too. Maybe he was done running. I don't know. But when the car slowed down, the hairs on my neck started prickling.

"Dad," I said, "I think they're stopping."

He slipped his coat on again and buttoned it up while the car creaked to a stop. It had Florida license plates, the double oranges coated with red dust. The driver-side window opened and a white man in sunglasses and a dark t-shirt leaned out, arm over his face. A violent gust of sand rattled the signs.

"Hey there, honey," he shouted. "You look lonesome. What are you doing here all alone?"

"Waiting," I said. "Thanks."

"Waiting for who?"

"She's with me," Dad said, stepping around the tree. "Come on, Saya. Let's go."

"Saya," said the driver. "That's a nice name. Japanese?"

Dad grunted. "Yeah."

"Is that a winter coat?" said the driver. "In this heat?"

Every other time someone had asked about Dad's coat, they'd sounded a little worried, like Dad was crazy or a criminal or something. But the driver sounded jubilant and he was grinning like we were all the best of friends. We could barely see the man in the passenger seat, but there was a flash of movement as he grabbed for the phone in his back pocket.

Dad grew very quiet. He looked up. He was holding our backpack loosely in one hand. The wrapped hilts jutted out near his open palm. I knew what he was thinking because he'd given every part of his brain to me, every part but the one with Mom in it. What he was thinking was that the land was too open and exposed, so there was only one way out, and that was to get to the men in the car and make sure they never talked.

"Yes," Dad said. "The sun is... not good for me."

I took the cue and eased toward the car, head low, like a shy child might.

"But it's okay for your daughter?" said the driver. He looked at me and grinned. "What's wrong, kiddo?"

I flashed up to the door. The passenger shouted, but before he could get a word out I had slung my fist. The first throwing knife went through the passenger's eye and the second through the driver's throat. He flung his arms up spastically, knocking me away, and pounded a foot against the gas pedal. The tires spun uselessly on the gravel for a precious second before it took off, just long enough for two shuriken to whistle through the window. There were two wet thunks, and the car whipped wildly to the right, so fast that it skidded and nearly rolled. Dad was closer than I had realized: he leaped onto the car, swung the door open, yanked the driver out, then rolled in. The brake lights flared on, but not before the car had clipped one of the cheap metal awnings shading the picnic tables. A scream of tortured metal and the awning crashed into the hood.

By this time I was on top of the driver. He was still alive, groping at his throat. I cut it for him and twisted his arms back while he bled out. No easy task. I told you, I was small. I've always been small. I had to keep his arms pinned with all of my strength, and even then he rolled on top of me and fought as he choked on his own blood. As for the passenger, he was thrust out of the car, and Dad was on him. There was a squawk and a choking sound, and then Dad rushed over to help me, and before we knew it, everything was over.

Dad picked through the passenger's pockets: a handgun, a handful of business cards for a private investigator, a wallet. Then he gingerly raised the phone. Even from that distance, I could see that a number had been dialed.

Dad raised the phone to his ear. A man's voice rang out from the speaker, loud and clear.

"Hey! Are you there? You all right?"

Dad hesitated. "Yes."

"Who is this?" A pause. "Leonardo?"

Dad hung up, then began picking through the phone, eyes darting over the screen. He was splattered liberally with blood. So was I. For the first time in a long time, I felt a pang of terror. We couldn't talk to people in clothes like this, and this was all we had. Where was Dad going to find a big enough winter coat to cover himself in the middle of a blazing southern summer?

But there wasn't time for panic. I frisked the driver: loaded handgun, badge, wallet containing a driver's license and concealed carry permit, phone. The pistol was loaded, safety on; its grip was smooth and untarnished. I piled the contents of his pockets in the car to protect them from the gusting wind. Then I grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him behind the picnic area, cursing my decision to cut his throat, and dropped him off the ditch. It hadn't rained in a while so the grass wasn't very high at all. Anyone who turned around for a scenic view of the cotton field would see the body just lying there. The stream of blood was like an arrow pointing to the scene.

I had gone back for the passenger and grabbed him beneath the arms when the phone rang. Dad hesitated again. Then, looking at me, he accepted the call.

A string of Japanese rolled out in a husky woman's voice. Chills ran down my spine. Dad's eyes narrowed.

"No," he said. "She wasn't harmed. She's right here." He looked me in the face. "She doesn't want to talk to you."

I should've been dragging the passenger away, but I couldn't stop looking at the phone. Furious and incomprehensible words rattled through the speaker.

"It's a little too late for threats," Dad said.

Then, clearly, I heard her voice in English: "Child, whatever he has told you..."

Dad hung up and arched his arm as though to fling the phone far out in the field. Then he hesitated, very slowly, breathing out through his nose, and slipped it into his pocket. It began ringing immediately.

"Go on," he said. "Drag him back. Don't worry about covering it up. We need to get out of here."

So I dumped the passenger's body on top of his friend's and ran to join Dad in the car. The tank was nearly full, we had two wallets brimming with cash, and there was a GPS plugged into the lighter. We threw the AC on full blast, and Dad took off down the road, going ninety.

He went north as soon as he could. Grain silos loomed like monuments against the endless horizon. I spent the downtime going through the layer of trash in the back seat, separating Styrofoam cups and candy wrappers from digital recorders and documents. We had just passed through Amarillo when Dad began talking, the longest stream of sentences I could remember in weeks.

"You did well back there," he said.

"Thanks." I shifted uncomfortably. "We don't have to go back to the wild, do we?"

"We do. Our position was compromised."

I groaned and collapsed into my seat. Everyone who romanticizes living in nature is an idiot. All the game starts tasting the same, there's no seasoning except what you harvest yourself, and if you can't find food, tough cookies—you go without. You're always too cold or too hot or too wet. God, and the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes! Getting whipped by branches and sleeping on dirt and stepping into poison sumac. Once we were stalked by a mountain lion, for god's sake. And I don't care how much you pad the ground with leaves, you wake up with a crick in your neck and an aching back. I'd read comic books where kids were wishing for MP3 players and computers, but I would have killed for a mattress.

"It's for our safety," he said.

"I don't want to."

"Do you want her to find us?" he asked.

"Yes," I snapped.

"You do not. You know what she'd do to you."

"But I hate running all of the time," I said. "I want to stay somewhere for longer than two weeks."

"You know we can't do that."

"Why not?" I asked. "What if we stayed in California this time? What if we went to Mexico? You told me we could go to Mexico if things got really bad. If we just hid out for a long time, and nobody saw us, that's just as good as always running, right?"

"That brings its own dangers," he said. "I won't feel comfortable until you're large enough to take care of yourself."

"But I am big enough to take care of myself."

He glanced at me with a little smile. It was a proud one. "It's true. You do an excellent job."

I couldn't help it. I began to smile a little, too.

"But you are still small," he said.

My smile collapsed. "Dad."

"You'll get there. Don't worry. It's not an insult."

"Then... when can we stop running?"

"I think we'll know when the time is right."

"But why not now?"

"That's a foolish question, Saya."

"If she calls again," I said, "can I talk to her this time?"

Suddenly the air went out of the cab. His face grew solemn, his eyes fretful. I hated that look.

"I shouldn't have taken the call," he said flatly.

I prickled with irritation. Own what you do, he always said. If you can't bear the outcome of an action, don't act.

"Why not?" I asked. "You could find out clues about how much they know."

He grunted. "It was a mistake. She knows exactly where we are now."

"She sounded angry," I said.

"She's always angry."

"Then why did you ever like her?" I asked.

"We had many similar interests... similar backgrounds."

"That's it?" I asked. "A human wanted to touch you because of similar interests?"

He squinted at me out of the corner of his eye and said nothing.

"Sorry," I said.

Silence. I groaned and kicked the dash. If I didn't say something, I knew the opportunity would go, and god knew when it would return.

"Come on, Dad. Tell me."

"It's a long story," he said. "And it isn't interesting."

"It is, too!"

His eyes never left the road. "I was the in-between for our clan. Your mother and I became well acquainted over time. Discussions over tea, the merits of weapons, some sparring, an outsider's perspective on the Foot's disputes... we took the tasks the Foot didn't want their fingerprints on."

"I thought you said you weren't criminals."

"We weren't. But criminal activities sometimes coincide with vigilante justice." He shrugged. "We needed money sometimes, and we couldn't earn it like normal people. The Foot provided a… comfortable gray area. Criminal elements will always exist, and some are better than others."

I thought I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

"And that was it?"

"On and off for about three years. Hand me a water."

I thrust a bottle into his hand. "How did you meet?"

"She had me tased."

"Shouldn't that have been a bad sign?"

"Of course it was," he said, and tipped the bottle back. "I lost all of my common sense. Your mother and I had sprung from... competing organizations. Hers in particular dealt with deception. In the end, it's what you're loyal to that wins out."

"What were you loyal to?" I asked.

One of the detectives' phones started ringing before he could answer. When I checked it, I saw that it was from someone labeled "The Missus." There was a picture of a black woman with a white smile, a toddler clasped up against her chest. Dad saw it briefly, then looked back to the road.

"Let it ring," he said.