The narrator recalls a federal raid on Nancy's warehouse in West Oakland, during which Nancy and a young man with a chin-line beard were thrown to the floor. Nancy, in a too-short kimono, glared at the narrator as she stepped back beside the agents, realizing the betrayal. The boy wept; Nancy remained composed, having dressed up for him.

Contrary to the narrator's expectations, the boy refused to turn state's evidence against Nancy, going to trial as her coconspirator. The narrator testified under an assumed identity as a federal informant. The boy's lawyer mounted an entrapment defense, arguing the narrator had pressured him into buying fertilizer using FBI money and lured him with romantic promises. Recordings and texts were withheld from the jury.

The jury accepted the entrapment defense, convicting the boy only on minor charges (one year prison, five years probation), and Nancy walked on time served plus probation. The narrator lost her job; the agency that hired her cut ties without ceremony. She then began working in Europe in the private sector, leveraging her fluency in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.

The narrator wonders why this memory surfaced and recalls it was prompted by Priest Valley, the empty California place she falsely claims as her hometown—a depopulated valley she had once driven through with the boy, marked only by a highway sign reading population zero.