The Passage

ONE

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.

The day Amy was born, her mother, Jeanette, was nineteen years old. Jeanette named her baby Amy for her own mother, who’d died when Jeanette was little, and gave her the middle name Harper for Harper Lee, the lady who’d written To Kill a Mockingbird, Jeanette’s favorite book-truth be told, the only book she’d made it all the way through in high school. She might have named her Scout, after the little girl in the story, because she wanted her little girl to grow up like that, tough and funny and wise, in a way that she, Jeanette, had never managed to be. But Scout was a name for a boy, and she didn’t want her daughter to have to go around her whole life explaining something like that.

Amy’s father was a man who came in one day to the restaurant where Jeanette had waited tables since she turned sixteen, a diner everyone called the Box, because it looked like one: like a big chrome shoe box sitting off the county road, backed by fields of corn and beans, nothing else around for miles except a self-serve car wash, the kind where you had to put coins into the machine and do all the work yourself. The man, whose name was Bill Reynolds, sold combines and harvesters, big things like that, and he was a sweet talker who told Jeanette as she poured his coffee and then later, again and again, how pretty she was, how he liked her coal-black hair and hazel eyes and slender wrists, said it all in a way that sounded like he meant it, not the way boys in school had, as if the words were just something that needed to get said along the way to her letting them do as they liked. He had a big car, a new Pontiac, with a dashboard that glowed like a spaceship and leather seats creamy as butter. She could have loved that man, she thought, really and truly loved him. But he stayed in town only a few days, and then went on his way. When she told her father what had happened, he said he wanted to go looking for him, make him live up to his responsibilities. But what Jeanette knew and didn’t say was that Bill Reynolds was married, a married man; he had a family in Lincoln, all the way clean over in Nebraska. He’d even showed her the pictures in his wallet of his kids, two little boys in baseball uniforms, Bobby and Billy. So no matter how many times her father asked who the man was that had done this to her, she didn’t say. She didn’t even tell him the man’s name.

And the truth was, she didn’t mind any of it, not really: not the being pregnant, which was easy right until the end, nor the delivery itself, which was bad but fast, nor, especially, having a baby, her little Amy. To tell Jeanette he’d decided to forgive her, her father had done up her brother’s old bedroom as a nursery, carried down the old baby crib from the attic, the one Jeanette herself had slept in, years ago; he’d gone with Jeanette, in the last months before Amy came, to the Walmart to pick out some things she’d need, like pajamas and a little plastic tub and a wind-up mobile to hang over the crib. He’d read a book that said that babies needed things like that, things to look at so their little brains would turn on and begin to work properly. From the start Jeanette always thought of the baby as “her,” because in her heart she wanted a girl, but she knew that wasn’t the sort of thing you should say to anyone, not even to yourself. She’d had a scan at the hospital over in Cedar Falls and asked the woman, a lady in a flowered smock who was running the little plastic paddle over Jeanette’s stomach, if she could tell which it was; but the woman laughed, looking at the pictures on the TV of Jeanette’s baby, sleeping away inside her, and said, Hon, this baby’s shy. Sometimes you can tell and others you can’t, and this is one of those times. So Jeanette didn’t know, which she decided was fine with her, and after she and her father had emptied out her brother’s room and taken down his old pennants and posters-Jose Canseco, a music group called Killer Picnic, the Bud Girls-and seen how faded and banged up the walls were, they painted it a color the label on the can called “Dreamtime,” which somehow was both pink and blue at once-good whatever the baby turned out to be. Her father hung a wallpaper border along the edge of the ceiling, a repeating pattern of ducks splashing in a puddle, and cleaned up an old maple rocking chair he’d found at the auction hall, so that when Jeanette brought the baby home, she’d have a place to sit and hold her.

The baby came in summer, the girl she’d wanted and named Amy Harper Bellafonte; there seemed no point in using the name Reynolds, the last name of a man Jeanette guessed she’d never see again and, now that Amy was here, no longer wanted to. And Bellafonte: you couldn’t do better than a name like that. It meant “beautiful fountain,” and that’s what Amy was. Jeanette fed and rocked and changed her, and when Amy cried in the middle of the night because she was wet or hungry or didn’t like the dark, Jeanette stumbled down the hall to her room, no matter what the hour was or how tired she felt from working at the Box, to pick her up and tell her she was there, she would always be there, you cry and I’ll come running, that’s a deal between us, you and me, forever and ever, my little Amy Harper Bellafonte. And she would hold and rock her until dawn began to pale the window shades and she could hear birds singing in the branches of the trees outside.

Then Amy was three and Jeanette was alone. Her father had died, a heart attack they told her, or else a stroke. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone needed to check. Whatever it was, it hit him early one winter morning as he was walking to his truck to drive to work at the elevator; he had just enough time to put down his coffee on the fender before he fell over and died, never spilling a drop. She still had her job at the Box, but the money wasn’t enough now, not for Amy or any of it, and her brother, in the Navy somewhere, didn’t answer her letters. God invented Iowa, he always said, so people could leave it and never come back. She wondered what she would do.

Then one day a man came into the diner. It was Bill Reynolds. He was different, somehow, and the change was no good. The Bill Reynolds she remembered-and she had to admit she still thought of him from time to time, about little things mostly, like the way his sandy hair flopped over his forehead when he talked, or how he blew over his coffee before he sipped it, even when it wasn’t hot anymore-there was something about him, a kind of warm light from inside that you wanted to be near. It reminded her of those little plastic sticks that you snapped so the liquid inside made them glow. This was the same man, but the glow was gone. He looked older, thinner. She saw he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair, which was greasy and standing all whichaway, and he wasn’t wearing a pressed polo like before but just an ordinary work shirt like the ones her father had worn, untucked and stained under the arms. He looked like he’d spent all night out in the weather, or in a car somewhere. He caught her eye at the door and she followed him to a booth in back.

– What are you doing here?

– I left her, he said, and as he looked at where she stood, she smelled beer on his breath, and sweat, and dirty clothes. I’ve gone and done it, Jeanette. I left my wife. I’m a free man.

– You drove all this way to tell me that?

– I’ve thought about you. He cleared his throat. A lot. I’ve thought about us.

– What us? There ain’t no us. You can’t come in like you’re doing and say you’ve been thinking about us.

He sat up straight. -Well, I’m doing it. I’m doing it right now.

– It’s busy in here, can’t you see that? I can’t be talking to you like this. You’ll have to order something.

– Fine, he answered, but he didn’t look at the menu on the wall, just kept his eyes on her. I’ll have a cheeseburger. A cheeseburger and a Coke.

As she wrote down the order and the words swam in her vision, she realized she had started to cry. She felt like she hadn’t slept in a month, a year. The weight of exhaustion was held up only by the thinnest sliver of her will. There was a time when she’d wanted to do something with her life-cut hair, maybe, get her certificate, open a little shop, move to a real city, like Chicago or Des Moines, rent an apartment, have friends. She’d always held in her mind a picture of herself sitting in a restaurant, a coffee shop but nice; it was fall, and cold outside, and she was alone at a small table by the window, reading a book. On her table was a steaming mug of tea. She would look up to the window to see the people on the street of the city she was in, hustling to and fro in their heavy coats and hats, and see her own face there, too, reflected in the window, hovering over the image of all the people outside. But as she stood there, these ideas seemed like they belonged to a different person entirely. Now there was Amy, sick half the time with a cold or a stomach thing she’d gotten at the ratty day care where she spent the days while Jeanette was working at the Box, and her father dead just like that, so fast it was as if he’d fallen through a trapdoor on the surface of the earth, and Bill Reynolds sitting at the table like he’d just stepped out for a second, not four years.

– Why are you doing this to me?

He held her eyes with his own a long moment and touched the top of her hand.-Meet me later. Please.

He ended up living in the house with her and Amy. She couldn’t say if she had invited him to do this or if it had just somehow happened. Either way, she was instantly sorry. This Bill Reynolds: who was he really? He’d left his wife and boys, Bobby and Billy in their baseball suits, all of it behind in Nebraska. The Pontiac was gone, and he had no job either; that had ended, too. The economy the way it was, he explained, nobody was buying a goddamn thing. He said he had a plan, but the only plan that she could see seemed to be him sitting in the house doing nothing for Amy or even cleaning up the breakfast dishes, while she worked all day at the Box. He hit her the first time after he’d been living there three months; he was drunk, and once he did it, he burst out crying and said, over and over, how sorry he was. He was on his knees, blubbering, like she’d done something to him. She had to understand, he was saying, how hard it all was, all the changes in his life, it was more than a man, any man, could take. He loved her, he was sorry, nothing like that would happen again, ever. He swore it. Not to her and not to Amy. And in the end, she heard herself saying she was sorry too.

He’d hit her over money; when winter came, and she didn’t have enough money in her checking account to pay the heating oil man, he hit her again.

– Goddamnit, woman. Can’t you see I’m in a situation here?

She was on the kitchen floor, holding the side of her head. He’d hit her hard enough to lift her off her feet. Funny, now that she was down there she saw how dirty the floor was, filthy and stained, with clumps of dust and who-knew-what all rowed against the base of the cabinets where you couldn’t usually see. Half her mind was noticing this while the other half said, You aren’t thinking straight, Jeanette; Bill hit you and knocked a wire loose, so now you’re worrying over the dust. Something funny was happening with the way the world sounded, too. Amy was watching television upstairs, on the little set in her room, but Jeanette could hear it like it was playing inside her head, Barney the purple dinosaur and a song about brushing your teeth; and then from far away, she heard the sound of the oil truck pulling away, its engine grinding as it turned out of the drive and headed down the county road.

– It ain’t your house, she said.

– You’re right about that. Bill took a bottle of Old Crow from over the sink and poured some in a jelly jar, though it was only ten o’clock in the morning. He sat at the table but didn’t cross his legs like he meant to get comfortable. Ain’t my oil, either.

Jeanette rolled over and tried to stand but couldn’t. She watched him drink for a minute.

– Get out.

He laughed, shaking his head, and took a sip of whiskey.

– That’s funny, he said. You telling me that from the floor like you are.

– I mean what I say. Get out.

Amy came into the room. She was holding the stuffed bunny she still carried everywhere, and wearing a pair of overalls, the good ones Jeanette had bought her at the outlet mall, the OshKosh B’Gosh, with the strawberries embroidered on the bib. One of the straps had come undone and was flopping at her waist. Jeanette realized Amy must have done this herself, because she had to go to the bathroom.

– You’re on the floor, Mama.

– I’m okay, honey. She got to her feet to show her. Her left ear was ringing a little, like in a cartoon, birds flying around her head. She saw there was a little blood, too, on her hand; she didn’t know where this had come from. She picked Amy up and did her best to smile. See? Mama just took a spill, that’s all. You need to go, honey? You need to use the potty?

– Look at you, Bill was saying. Will you look at yourself? He shook his head again and drank. You stupid twat. She probably ain’t even mine.

– Mama, the girl said and pointed, you cut yourself. Your nose is cut.

And whether it was what she’d heard or the blood, the little girl began to cry.

– See what you done? Bill said, and to Amy, Come on now. Ain’t no big thing, sometimes folks argue, that’s just how it is.

– I’m telling you again, just leave.

– Then what would you do, tell me that. You can’t even fill the oil tank.

– You think I don’t know that? I sure as by God don’t need you to tell me that.

Amy had begun to wail. Holding her, Jeanette felt the spread of hot moisture across her waist as the little girl released her bladder.

– For Pete’s sake, shut that kid up.

She held Amy tight against her chest. -You’re right. She ain’t yours. She ain’t yours and never will be. You leave or I’m calling the sheriff, I swear

– Don’t you do me like this, Jean. I mean it.

– Well, I’m doing it. That’s just what I’m doing.

Then he was up and slamming through the house, taking his things, tossing them back into the cardboard cartons he’d used to carry them into the house, months ago. Why hadn’t she thought it right then, how strange it was that he didn’t even have a proper suitcase? She sat at the kitchen table holding Amy on her lap, watching the clock over the stove and counting off the minutes until he returned to the kitchen to hit her again.

But then she heard the front door swing open, and his heavy footsteps on the porch. He went in and out awhile, carrying the boxes, leaving the front door open so cold air spilled through the house. Finally he came into the kitchen, tracking snow, leaving little patches of it waffled to the floor with the soles of his boots.

– Fine. Fine. You want me to leave? You watch me. He took the bottle of Old Crow from the table. Last chance, he said.

Jeanette said nothing, didn’t even look at him.

– So that’s how it is. Fine. You mind I have one for the road?

Which was when Jeanette reached out and swatted his glass across the kitchen, smacked it with her open hand like a ping-pong ball with a paddle. She knew she was going to do this for about half a second before she did, knowing it wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had, but by then it was too late. The glass hit the wall with a hollow thud and fell to the floor, unbroken. She closed her eyes, holding Amy tight, knowing what would come. For a moment the sound of the glass rolling on the floor seemed to be the only thing in the room. She could feel Bill’s anger rising off him like waves of heat.

– You just see what the world has in store for you, Jeanette. You remember I said that.

Then his footsteps carried him out of the room and he was gone.

She paid the oil man what she could and turned the thermostat down to fifty, to make it last. See, Amy honey, it’s like a big camping trip we’re on, she said as she stuffed the little girl’s hands into mittens and wedged a hat onto her head. There now, it’s not so cold, not really. It’s like an adventure. They slept together under a pile of old quilts, the room so icy their breath fogged the air over their faces. She took a job at night, cleaning up at the high school, leaving Amy with a neighbor lady, but when the woman took sick and had to go into the hospital, Jeanette had to leave Amy alone. She explained to Amy what to do: stay in bed, don’t answer the door, just close your eyes and I’ll be home before you know it. She’d make sure Amy was asleep before creeping out the door, then stride quickly down the snow-crusted drive to where she’d parked her car, away from the house, so Amy wouldn’t hear it turning over.

But then she made the mistake one night of telling someone about this, another woman on the work crew, when the two of them had stepped out for a smoke. Jeanette had never liked smoking at all and didn’t want to spend the money, but the cigarettes helped her stay awake, and without a smoke break there was nothing to look forward to, just more toilets to scrub and halls to be mopped. She told the woman, whose name was Alice, not to tell anyone, she knew she could get in trouble leaving Amy alone like that, but of course that’s just what Alice did; she went straight to the superintendent, who fired Jeanette on the spot. Leaving a child like that ain’t right, he told her in his office by the boilers, a room no bigger than ten feet square with a dented metal desk and an old easy chair with the plush popping out and a calendar on the wall that wasn’t even the right year; the air was always so hot and close in there Jeanette could barely breathe. He said, You count your lucky stars I’m not calling the county on you. She wondered when she’d become someone a person could say this to and not be wrong. He’d been nice enough to her until then, and maybe she could have made him understand the situation, that without the money from cleaning she didn’t know what she’d do, but she was too tired to find the words. She took her last check and drove home in her crappy old car, the Kia she’d bought in high school when it was already six years old and falling apart so fast she could practically see the nuts and bolts bouncing on the pavement in her rearview mirror; and when she stopped at the Quick Mart to buy a pack of Capris and then the engine wouldn’t start up again, she started to cry. She couldn’t make herself stop crying for half an hour.

The problem was the battery; a new one cost her eighty-three dollars at Sears, but by then she’d missed a week of work and lost her job at the Box, too. She had just enough money left to leave, packing up their things in a couple of grocery sacks and the cartons Bill had left behind.

No one ever knew what became of them. The house sat empty; the pipes froze and split like bursting fruit. When spring came, the water poured from them for days and days until the utility company, realizing nobody was paying the bill, sent a couple of men to turn it off. The mice moved in, and when an upstairs window was broken in a summer thunderstorm, the swallows; they built their nests in the bedroom where Jeanette and Amy had slept in the cold, and soon the house was filled with the sound and smell of birds.

In Dubuque, Jeanette worked the night shift at a gas station, Amy sleeping on the sofa in the back room, until the owner found out and sent her packing. It was summer, they were living in the Kia, using the washroom behind the station to clean up, so leaving was just a matter of driving away. For a time they stayed with a friend of Jeanette’s in Rochester, a girl she’d known in school who’d gone up there for a nursing degree; Jeanette took a job mopping floors at the same hospital where the friend worked, but the pay was just minimum wage, and the friend’s apartment was too small for them to stay; she moved into a motel, but there was no one to look after Amy, the friend couldn’t do it and didn’t know anyone who could, and they ended up living in the Kia again. It was September; already a chill was in the air. The radio spoke all day of war. She drove south, getting as far as Memphis before the Kia gave out for good.

The man who picked them up in the Mercedes said his name was John-a lie, she guessed, from the way he said it, like a child telling a story about who broke the lamp, sizing her up for a second before he spoke. My name is… John. She guessed he was fifty, but she wasn’t a good judge of these things. He had a well-trimmed beard and was wearing a tight dark suit, like a funeral director. While he drove he kept glancing at Amy in the rearview mirror, adjusting himself in his seat, asking Jeanette questions about herself, where she was going, the kinds of things she liked to do, what had brought her to the Great State of Tennessee. The car reminded her of Bill Reynolds’s Grand Prix, only nicer. With the windows closed you could barely hear anything outside, and the seats were so soft she felt like she was sitting in a dish of ice cream. She felt like falling asleep. By the time they pulled into the motel she hardly cared what was going to happen. It seemed inevitable. They were near the airport; the land was flat, like Iowa, and in the twilight she could see the lights of the planes circling the field, moving in slow, sleepy arcs like targets in a shooting gallery.

Amy, honey, Mama’s going to go inside with this nice man for a minute, okay? You just look at your picture book, honey.

He was polite enough, going about his business, calling her baby and such, and before he left he put fifty dollars on the nightstand-enough for Jeanette to buy a room for the night for her and Amy.

But others weren’t as nice.

During the night, she’d lock Amy in the room with the TV on to make some noise and walk out to the highway in front of the motel and just kind of stand there, and it didn’t take long. Somebody would stop, always a man, and once they’d worked things out, she’d take him back to the motel. Before she let the man inside she’d go into the room by herself and carry Amy to the bathroom, where she’d made a bed for her in the tub out of some extra blankets and pillows.

Amy was six. She was quiet, barely talked most of the time, but she’d taught herself to read some, from looking at the same books over and over, and could do her numbers. One time they were watching Wheel of Fortune, and when the time came for the woman to spend the money she’d won, the little girl knew just what she could buy, that she couldn’t afford the vacation to Cancún but could have the living room set with enough money left over for the his-and-her golf clubs. Jeanette thought it was probably smart of Amy to figure this out, maybe more than smart, and she guessed she should probably be in school, but Jeanette didn’t know where there were any schools around there. It was all auto-body-repair and pawn shops and motels like the one they lived in, the SuperSix. The owner was a man who looked a lot like Elvis Presley, not the handsome young one but the old fat one with the sweaty hair and chunky gold glasses that made his eyes look like fish swimming in a tank, and he wore a satin jacket with a lightning bolt down the back, just like Elvis had. Mostly he just sat at his desk behind the counter, playing solitaire and smoking a little cigar with a plastic tip. Jeanette paid him in cash each week for the room and if she threw in an extra fifty he didn’t bother her any. One day he asked her if she had anything for protection, if maybe she wanted to buy a gun from him. She said sure, how much, and he told her another hundred. He showed her a rusty-looking little revolver, a.22, and when she put it in her hand right there in the office it didn’t seem like much at all, let alone something that could shoot a person. But it was small enough to fit in the purse she carried out to the highway and she didn’t think it would be a bad thing to have around. -Careful where you point that, the manager said, and Jeanette said, Okay, if you’re afraid of it, it must work. You sold yourself a gun.

And she was glad she had it. Just knowing it was in her purse made her realize she’d been afraid before and now wasn’t, or at least not so much. The gun was like a secret, the secret of who she was, like she was carrying the last bit of herself in her purse. The other Jeanette, the one who stood on the highway in her stretchy top and skirt, who cocked her hip and smiled and said, What you want, baby? There something I can help you with tonight?-that Jeanette was a made-up person, like a woman in a story she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the end of.

The man who picked her up the night it happened wasn’t the one she would have thought. The bad ones you could usually tell right off, and sometimes she said no thanks and just kept walking. But this one looked nice, a college boy she guessed, or at least young enough to go to college, and nicely dressed, wearing crisp khaki pants and one of those shirts with the little man on the horse swinging the hammer. He looked like someone going on a date, which made her laugh to herself when she got into the car, a big Ford Expo with a rack on the top for a bike or something else.

But then a funny thing happened. He wouldn’t drive to the motel. Some men wanted her to do them right there, in the car, not even bothering to pull over, but when she started in on this, thinking that was what he wanted, he pushed her gently away. He wanted to take her out, he said. She asked, What do you mean, out?

– Someplace nice, he explained. Wouldn’t you rather go someplace nice? I’ll pay you more than whatever you usually get.

She thought about Amy sleeping back in the room and guessed it wouldn’t make much difference, one way or the other. As long as it ain’t more than an hour, she said. Then you got to take me back.

But it was more than an hour, a lot more; by the time they got where they were going, Jeanette was afraid. He pulled up to a house with a big sign over the porch showing three shapes that looked almost like letters but not quite, and Jeanette knew what it was: a fraternity. Some place a bunch of rich boys lived and got drunk on their daddy’s money, pretending to go to school to become doctors and lawyers.

– You’ll like my friends, he said. Come on, I want you to meet them.

– I ain’t going in there, she said. You take me back now.

He paused, both hands on the wheel, and when she saw his face and what was in his eyes, the slow mad hunger, he suddenly didn’t look like such a nice boy anymore.

– That, he said, is not an option. I’d have to say that’s not on the menu just now.

– The hell it ain’t.

She threw the door of the truck open and made to walk away, never mind she didn’t know where she was, but then he was out too, and he grabbed her by the arm. It was pretty clear now what was waiting inside the house, what he wanted, how everything was going to shape up. It was her fault for not understanding this before-long before, maybe as far back as the Box on the day Bill Reynolds had come in. She realized the boy was afraid, too-that somebody was making him do this, the friends inside the house, or it felt like it to him, anyway. But she didn’t care. He got behind her and tried to get his arm around her neck to lock her with his elbow, and she hit him, hard, where it counted, with the back of her fist, which made him yell, calling her bitch and whore and all the rest, and strike her across the face. She lost her balance and fell backward, and then he was on top of her, his legs astride her waist like a jockey riding a horse, slapping and hitting, trying to pin her arms. Once he did this it would all be over. He probably wouldn’t care if she was conscious or not, she thought, when he did it; none of them would. She reached into her purse where it lay on the grass. Her life was so strange to her it didn’t seem like it was even her own anymore, if it had ever been hers to begin with. But everything made sense to a gun. A gun knew what it was, and she felt the cool metal of the revolver slide into her palm, like it wanted to be there. Her mind said, Don’t think, Jeanette, and she pushed the barrel against the side of the boy’s head, feeling the skin and bone where it pressed against him, figuring that was close enough she couldn’t miss, and then she pulled the trigger.

It took her the rest of the night to get home. After the boy had fallen off her, she’d run as fast as she could to the biggest road she could see, a wide boulevard glowing under streetlights, just in time to grab a bus. She didn’t know if there was blood on her clothes or what, but the driver hardly looked at her as he explained how to get back to the airport, and she sat in the back where no one could see. In any case, the bus was almost empty. She had no idea where she was; the bus inched along through neighborhoods of houses and stores, all dark, past a big church and then signs for the zoo, and finally entered downtown, where she stood in a Plexiglas shelter, shivering in the damp, and waited for a second bus. She’d lost her watch somehow and didn’t know the time. Maybe it had come off somehow when they were fighting and the police could use it as a clue. But it was just a Timex she’d bought at Walgreens, and she thought it couldn’t tell them much. The gun was what would do it; she’d tossed it on the lawn, or so she remembered. Her hand was still a little numb from the force of it going off in her fist, the bones chiming like a tuning fork that wouldn’t stop.

By the time she reached the motel the sun was rising; she felt the city waking up. Under the ashy light, she let herself into the room. Amy was asleep with the television still on, an infomercial for some kind of exercise machine. A muscled man with a ponytail and huge, doglike mouth was barking silently out of the screen. Jeanette figured she didn’t have much more than a couple of hours before somebody came. That was dumb of her, leaving the gun behind, but there wasn’t any point worrying over that now. She splashed some water on her face and brushed her teeth, not looking at herself in the mirror, then changed into jeans and a T-shirt and took her old clothes, the little skirt and stretchy top and fringed jacket she’d worn to the highway, streaked with blood and bits of things she didn’t want to know about, behind the motel to the reeking dumpster, where she shoved them in.

It seemed as if time had compressed somehow, like an accordion; all the years she had lived and everything that had happened to her were suddenly squeezed below the weight of this one moment. She remembered the early mornings when Amy was just a baby, how she’d held and rocked her by the window, often falling asleep herself. Those had been good mornings, something she’d always remember. She packed a few things into Amy’s Powerpuff Girls knapsack and some clothing and money into a grocery sack for herself. Then she turned off the television and gently shook Amy awake.

“Come on, honey. Wake up now. We got to go.”

The little girl was half asleep but allowed Jeanette to dress her. She was always like this in the morning, dazed and sort of out of it, and Jeanette was glad it wasn’t some other time of day, when she’d have to do more coaxing and explaining. She gave the girl a cereal bar and a can of warm grape pop to drink, and then the two of them went out to the highway where the bus had let Jeanette off.

She remembered seeing, on the ride back to the motel, the big stone church with its sign out front: OUR LADY OF SORROWS. If she did the buses right, she figured, they’d go right by there again.

She sat with Amy in the back, an arm around her shoulders to hold her close. The little girl said nothing, except once to say she was hungry again, and Jeanette took another cereal bar from the box she’d put in Amy’s knapsack, with the clean clothing and the toothbrush and Amy’s Peter Rabbit. Amy, she thought, you are my good girl, my very good girl, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They changed buses downtown again and rode for another thirty minutes, and when Jeanette saw the sign for the zoo she wondered if she’d gone too far; but then she remembered that the church had been before the zoo, so it would be after the zoo now, going the other direction.

Then she saw it. In daylight it looked different, not as big, but it would do. They exited through the rear door, and Jeanette zipped up Amy’s jacket and put the knapsack on her while the bus pulled away.

She looked and saw the other sign then, the one she remembered from the night before, hanging on a post at the edge of a driveway that ran beside the church: CONVENT OF THE SISTERS OF MERCY.

She took Amy’s hand and walked up the driveway. It was lined with huge trees, some kind of oak, with long mossy arms that draped over the two of them. She didn’t know what a convent would look like but it turned out to be just a house, though nice: made of stone that glinted a little, with a shingled roof and white trim around the windows. There was an herb garden out front, and she thought that must be what the nuns did, they must come out here and take care of tiny growing things. She stepped up to the front door and rang the bell.

The woman who answered wasn’t an old lady, like Jeanette had imagined, and she wasn’t wearing a robe, whatever those things were called. She was young, not much older than Jeanette, and except for the veil on her head was dressed like anybody else, in a skirt and blouse and a pair of brown penny loafers. She was also black. Before she’d left Iowa, Jeanette had never seen but one or two black people in her life, except on television and in the movies. But Memphis was crawling with them. She knew some folks had problems with them, but Jeanette hadn’t so far, and she guessed a black nun would do all right.

“Sorry to bother you,” Jeanette began. “My car broke down out there on the street, and I was wondering-”

“Of course,” the woman said. Her voice was strange, like nothing Jeanette had ever heard, like there were notes of music caught and ringing inside the words. “Come in, come in, both of you.”

The woman stepped back from the door to let Jeanette and Amy into the front hall. Somewhere in the building, Jeanette knew, there were other nuns-maybe they were black, too-sleeping or cooking or reading or praying, which she guessed nuns did a lot of, maybe most of the day. It was quiet enough, so she supposed that was probably right. What she had to do now was get the woman to leave her and Amy alone. She knew that as a fact, the way she knew she’d killed a boy last night, and all the rest of it. What she was about to do hurt more, but it wasn’t any different otherwise, just more pain on the same spot.

“Miss-?”

“Oh, you can just call me Lacey,” the woman said. “We’re pretty informal around here. Is this your little girl?” She knelt in front of Amy. “Hello there, what’s your name? I have a little niece about your age, almost as pretty as you.” She looked up at Jeanette. “Your daughter is very shy. Perhaps it is my accent. You see, I am from Sierra Leone, west Africa.” She turned to Amy again and took her hand. “Do you know where that is? It is very far away.”

“All these nuns from there?” Jeanette asked.

Standing, the woman laughed, showing her bright teeth. “Oh, goodness no! I’m afraid I am the only one.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Jeanette liked this woman, liked listening to her voice. She liked how she was with Amy, the way she looked at her eyes when she talked to her.

“I was racing to get her to school, you see,” Jeanette said, “when that old car of mine? The thing just kind of gave out.”

The woman nodded. “Please. This way.”

She led Jeanette and Amy through the hallway to the kitchen, a big room with a huge oak dining table and cabinets with labels on them: CHINA, CANNED GOODS, PASTA AND RICE. Jeanette had never thought about nuns eating before. She guessed that with all the nuns living in the building, it helped to know what was where in the kitchen. The woman pointed to the phone, an old brown one with a long cord, hanging on the wall. Jeanette had planned the next part well enough. She dialed a number while the woman got a plate of cookies for Amy-not store-bought, but something somebody had actually baked-then, as the recorded voice on the other end told her that it would be cloudy today with a high temperature of fifty-five degrees and a chance of showers moving in toward evening, she pretended to talk to AAA, nodding along.

“Wrecker’s coming,” she said, hanging the phone back up. “Said to go outside and meet him. Said he’s got a man just around the corner, in fact.”

“Well, that’s good news,” the woman said brightly. “Today is your lucky day. If you wish, you can leave your daughter here with me. It would be no good to manage her on a busy street.”

So there it was. Jeanette wouldn’t have to do anything else. All she had to do was say yes.

“Ain’t no bother?”

The woman smiled again. “We’ll be fine here. Won’t we?” She looked encouragingly at Amy. “See? She is perfectly happy. You go see to your car.”

Amy was sitting on one of the chairs at the big oak table, with an untouched plate of cookies and a glass of milk before her. She’d taken off her backpack and was cradling it in her lap. Jeanette looked at her as long as she would let herself, and then she knelt and hugged her.

“You be good now,” she said, and against her shoulder, Amy nodded. Jeanette meant to say something else, but couldn’t find the words. She thought about the note she’d left inside the knapsack, the slip of paper they were sure to find when Jeanette never came back to get her. She hugged her as long as she dared. The feeling of Amy was all around her, the warmth of her body, the smell of her hair and skin. Jeanette knew she was about to cry, something the woman-Lucy? Lacey?-couldn’t see, but she let herself hold Amy a moment longer, trying to put this feeling in a place inside her mind, someplace safe where she could keep it. Then she let her daughter go, and before anybody said another word, Jeanette walked from the kitchen and down the driveway to the street, and then kept right on going.

TWO

From the computer files of Jonas Abbott Lear, PhD

Professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

Assigned to United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)

Department of Paleovirology, Fort Derrick, MD

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Monday, February 6 1:18 p.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject: Satellite linkage is up

Paul,

Greetings from the jungles of Bolivia, landlocked armpit of the Andes. From where you sit in frigid Cambridge, watching the snow fall, I’m sure a month in the tropics doesn’t sound like a bad deal. But believe me: this is not St. Bart’s. Yesterday I saw a snake the size of a submarine.

The trip down was uneventful-sixteen hours in the air to La Paz, then a smaller government transport to Concepción, in the country’s eastern jungle basin. From here, there aren’t really any decent roads; it’s pure backcountry, and we’ll be traveling on foot. Everybody on the team is pretty excited, and the roster keeps growing. In addition to the group from UCLA, Tim Fanning from Columbia caught up with us in La Paz, as did Claudia Swenson from MIT. (I think you told me once that you knew her at Yale.) In addition to his not inconsiderable star power, you’ll be happy to hear that Tim brought half a dozen grad assistants with him, so just like that, the average age of the team fell by about ten years and the gender balance tipped decidedly toward the female. “Terrific scientists, every one,” Tim insisted. Three ex-wives, each younger than the last; the guy never learns.

I have to say, despite my misgivings (and, of course, yours and Rochelle’s) about involving the military, it’s made a huge difference. Only USAMRIID has the muscle and the money to pull together a team like this one, and do it in a month. After years of trying to get people to listen, I feel like a door has suddenly swung open, and all we have to do is step through it. You know me, I’m a scientist through and through; I don’t have a superstitious bone in my body. But part of me just has to think it’s fate. After Liz’s illness, her long struggle, how ironic that I should finally have the chance to solve the greatest mystery of all-the mystery of death itself. I think she would have liked it here, actually. I can just see her, wearing that big straw hat of hers, sitting on a log by the river to read her beloved Shakespeare in the sunshine.

BTW: congrats on the tenure decision. Just before I left, I heard the committee voted you in by general acclaim, which didn’t surprise me after the department vote, which I can’t tell you about but which, off the record, was unanimous. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Never mind that you’re the best biochemist we’ve got, a man who can make a microtubule cycloskeletal protein stand up and sing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” What would I have done on my lunch hour if my squash partner hadn’t gotten tenure?

My love to Rochelle, and tell Alex his uncle Jonas will bring him back something special from Bolivia. How about a baby anaconda? I hear they make good pets as long as you keep them fed. And I hope we’re still on for the Sox opener. How you got those tickets I have no idea.

– Jonas

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Wednesday, February 8 8:00 a.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject: Re: Go get ’em, tiger

Paul,

Thanks for your message, and of course for your very sage advice re: pretty female postdocs with Ivy League degrees. I can’t say I disagree with you, and on more than one lonely night in my tent, the thought has crossed my mind. But it’s just not in the cards. For now, Rochelle is the only woman for me, and you can tell her I said so.

The news here, and I can already hear a big “I told you so” from Rochelle: it looks like we’ve been militarized. I suppose this was inevitable, at least since I took USAMRIID’s money. (And we’re talking about a lot of money-aerial recon doesn’t come cheap: twenty thousand bucks to retarget a satellite, and that will buy you only thirty minutes worth.) But still, it seems like overkill. We were making our final preparations for departure yesterday when a helicopter dropped out of the sky at base camp and who should step off but a squad of Special Forces, all done up like they were ready to take an enemy pillbox: the jungle camo, the green and black warpaint, the infrared scopes and high-power gas-recoil M-19s-all of it. Some very gung ho guys. Trailing the pack is a man in a suit, a civilian, who looks to be in charge. He struts across the field to where I’m standing and I see how young he is, not even thirty. He’s also as tan as a tennis pro. What’s he doing with a squad of special ops? “You the vampire guy?” he asks me. You know how I feel about that word, Paul-just try to get an NAS grant with “vampire” anywhere in the paperwork. But just to be polite, and because, what the hell, he’s backed by enough firepower to overthrow a small government, I tell him, sure, that’s me. “Mark Cole, Dr. Lear,” he says, and shakes my hand, wearing a big grin. “I’ve come a long way just to meet you. Guess what? You’re now a major.” I’m thinking, a major what? And what are these guys doing here? “This is a civilian scientific expedition,” I tell him. “Not anymore,” he says. “Who decided this?” I ask. And he tells me, “My boss, Dr. Lear.” “Who’s your boss?” I ask him. And he says, “Dr. Lear, my boss is the president of the United States.”

Tim was plenty ticked off, because he only gets to be a captain. I wouldn’t know a captain from Colonel Sanders, so it’s all the same to me. It was Claudia who really kicked up a fuss. She actually threatened to pack up and go home. “I didn’t vote for that guy and I’m not going to be part of his damned army, no matter what the twerp says.” Never mind that none of us voted for him either, and the whole thing really seems like a big joke. But it turns out she’s a Quaker. Her younger brother was actually a conscientious objector during the Iran War. In the end, though, we calmed her down and got her to stay on, so long as we promised she didn’t have to salute anyone.

The thing is, I can’t really figure out why these guys are here. Not why the military would take an interest, because after all, it’s their money we’re spending, and I’m grateful for it. But why send a squad of special ops (they’re technically “special reconnaissance”) to babysit a bunch of biochemists? The kid in the suit-I’d guess he’s NSA, though who really knows?-told me that the area we were traveling into was known to be controlled by the Montoya drug cartel and the soldiers are here for our protection. “How would it look for a team of American scientists to get themselves killed by drug lords in Bolivia?” he asked me. “Not a happy day for U.S. foreign policy, not a happy day at all.” I didn’t contradict him, but I know damn well there’s no drug activity where we’re going-it’s all to the west, on the altiplano. The eastern basin is virtually uninhabited except for a few scattered Indian settlements, most of which haven’t had any outside contact in years. All of which he knows I know.

This has me scratching my head, but as far as I can tell, it makes no difference to the expedition itself. We just have some heavy firepower coming along for the ride. The soldiers pretty much keep to themselves; I’ve barely heard any of them even open their mouths. Spooky, but at least they don’t get in the way.

Anyway, we’re off in the morning. The offer of a pet snake still stands.

– Jonas

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Wednesday, February 15 11:32 p.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject: See attached

Attachment: DSC00392.JPG (596 KB)

Paul,

Six days in. Sorry to be out of touch, and please tell Rochelle not to worry. It’s been hard slogging every step of the way, with dense tree cover and many days of constant rain-too much work to get the satcom up. At night, we all eat like farmhands and fall exhausted into our tents. Nobody here smells very nice, either.

But tonight I’m too keyed up to sleep. The attachment will explain why. I’ve always believed in what we were doing, but of course I’ve had my moments of doubt, sleepless nights when I wondered if this was all completely harebrained, some kind of fantasy my brain cooked up when Liz became so sick. I know you’ve thought it too. So I’d be a fool not to question my own motives. But not anymore.

According to the GPS, we’re still a good twenty kilometers from the site. The topography is consistent with the satellite recon-dense jungle plain, but along the river, a deep ravine with cliffs of limestone pocketed with caves. Even an amateur geologist could read these cliffs like the pages of a book. The usual layers of river sediment, and then, about four meters below the lip, a line of charcoal black. It’s consistent with the Chuchote legend: a thousand years ago the whole area was blackened by fire, “a great conflagration sent by the god Auxl, lord of the Sun, to destroy the demons of man and save the world.” We camped on the riverbank last night, listening to the flocks of bats that poured out of the caves at sunset; in the morning, we headed east along the ravine.

It was just past noon when we saw the statue.

At first I thought maybe I was imagining things. But look at the image, Paul. A human being, but not quite: the bent animal posture, the clawlike hands and the long teeth crowding the mouth, the intense muscularity of the torso, details still visible, somehow, after-how long? How many centuries of wind and rain and sun have passed, wearing the stone away? And still it took my breath away. And the resemblance to the other images I’ve shown you is inarguable-the pillars at the temple of Mansarha, the carvings on the gravesite in Xianyang, the cave drawings in Côtes d’Amor.

More bats tonight. You get used to them, and they keep the mosquitoes down. Claudia rigged up a trap to catch one. Apparently, bats like canned peaches, which she used as bait. Maybe Alex would like a pet bat instead?

– J

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Saturday, February 18 6:51 p.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject: more jpgs

Attachment: DSC00481.JPG (596 KB), DSC00486.JPG (582 KB), DSC00491.JPG (697 KB)

Have a look at these. We’ve counted nine figures now.

Cole thinks we’re being followed, but won’t tell me by who. It’s just a feeling, he says. All night long he’s on the satcom, won’t tell me what it’s all about. At least he’s stopped calling me Major. He’s a youngster, but not as green as he looks.

Good weather, finally. We’re close, within 10K, making good time.

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Sunday, February 19 9:51 p.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject:

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Tuesday, February 21 1:16 a.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject:

Paul,

I’m writing this to you in case I don’t make it back. I don’t want to alarm you, but I have to be realistic about the situation. We’re less than five kilometers from the grave site, but I doubt we’ll be able to perform the extraction as planned. Too many of us are sick, or dead.

Two nights ago we were attacked-not by drug traffickers, but bats. They came a few hours after sunset while most of us were out of our tents doing the evening chores, scattered around the campsite. It was as if they had been scouting us all along, waiting for the right moment to launch an aerial assault. I was lucky: I had walked a few hundred yards upriver, away from the trees, to find a good signal on the GPS. I heard the shouts and then the gunfire, but by the time I made it back the swarm had moved downstream. Four people died that night, including Claudia. The bats simply engulfed her. She tried to get to the river-I guess she thought she could shake them off that way-but she never made it. By the time we reached her, she’d lost so much blood she had no chance. In the chaos, six others were bitten or scratched, and all of them are now ill with what looks like some speeded-up version of Bolivian hemorrhagic fever-bleeding from the mouth and nose, the skin and eyes rosy with burst capillaries, the fever shooting skyward, fluid filling the lungs, coma. We’ve been in contact with the CDC but without tissue analysis it’s anybody’s guess. Tim had both his hands practically chewed to pieces, trying to pull them off Claudia. He’s the sickest of the lot. I seriously doubt he’ll last till morning.

Last night they came again. The soldiers had set up a defense perimeter, but there were simply too many-they must have come by the hundreds of thousands, a huge swarm that blotted out the stars. Three soldiers killed, as well as Cole. He was standing right in front of me; they actually lifted him off his feet before they bored through him like hot knives through butter. There was barely enough of him left to bury.

Tonight it’s quiet, not a bat in the sky. We’ve built a fire line around the camp, and that seems to be keeping them at bay. Even the soldiers are pretty shaken up. The few of us who are left are now deciding what to do. A lot of our equipment has been destroyed; it’s unclear how this happened, but sometime during the attack last night, a grenade belt went into the fire, killing one of the soldiers and taking out the generator as well as most of what was in the supply tent. But we still have satcom and enough juice in the batteries to call for evac. Probably we should all just get the hell out of here.

And yet. When I ask myself why I should turn back now, what I have to go home to, I can’t think of a single reason. It would be different if Liz were still alive. I think for the past year some part of me has been pretending that she’d simply gone away for a while, that one day I’d look up and see her standing in the door, smiling that way she did, her head cocked to the side so her hair could fall away from her face; my Liz, home at last, thirsty for a cup of Earl Grey, ready for a stroll by the Charles through the falling snow. But I know now that this isn’t going to happen. Strangely, the events of the last two days have given my mind a kind of clarity about what we’re doing, what the stakes are. I’m not one bit sorry to be here; I don’t feel afraid at all. If push comes to shove, I may press on alone.

Paul, whatever happens, whatever I decide, I want you to know that you have been a great friend to me. More than a friend: a brother. How strange to write that sentence, sitting on a riverbank in the jungles of Bolivia, four thousand miles away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known and loved. I feel as if I’ve entered a new era of my life. What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Tuesday, February 21 5:31 a.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject: Re: don’t be dumb, get the hell out, please

Paul,

We radioed for the evac last night. Pickup in ten hours, which is the nick of time as far as everyone’s concerned. I don’t see how we can survive another night here. Those of us who are still healthy have decided we can use the day to press on to the site. We were going to draw straws, but it turned out everyone wanted to go. We leave within the hour, at first light. Maybe something can still be salvaged from this disaster. One bit of good news: Tim seems to have turned a corner during the last few hours. His fever’s way down, and though he’s still unresponsive, the bleeding has stopped and his skin looks better. With the others, though, I’d say it’s still touch and go.

I know that science is your god, Paul, but would it be too much to ask for you to pray for us? All of us.

From: lear@amedd.army.mil

Date: Tuesday, February 21 11:16 p.m.

To: pkiernan@harvard.edu

Subject:

Now I know why the soldiers are here.

THREE

Situated on four thousand acres of soggy East Texas piney woodland and short-grass prairie, looking more or less like a corporate office park or large public high school, the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a.k.a. Terrell, meant one thing: if you were a man convicted of capital murder in the state of Texas, this was where you came to die.

On that morning in March, Anthony Lloyd Carter, inmate number 999642, sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of a Houston mother of two named Rachel Wood whose lawn he had mowed every week for forty dollars and a glass of iced tea, had been a resident of the Administrative Segregation Block of Terrell Unit for one thousand three hundred and thirty-two days-less than many, more than some, not that in Carter’s sense of things this made a lick of difference. It wasn’t like you got a prize for being there the longest. He ate alone, exercised alone, showered alone, and a week was the same as a day or a month to him. The only different thing that was going to happen would come on the day the warden and the chaplain appeared at his cell and he’d take the ride to the room with the needle, and that day wasn’t so far off. He was allowed to read, but that wasn’t easy for him, it never had been, and he had long since stopped fussing with it. His cell was a concrete box six feet by ten with one window and a steel door with a slot wide enough to slip his hands through but that was all, and most of the time he just lay there on his cot, his mind so blank it was like a pail with nothing in it. Half the time he couldn’t have said for sure if he was awake or still sleeping.

That day began the same as every other, at 3:00 A.M., when they turned on the lights and shoved the breakfast trays through the slots. Usually it was cold cereal or powdered eggs or pancakes; the good breakfasts were when they put peanut butter on the pancakes, and this was one of the good ones. The fork was plastic and broke half the time, so Carter sat on his bunk and ate the pancakes folded up, like tacos. The other men on H-Wing complained about the food, how nasty it was, but Carter didn’t think it was so bad on the whole. He’d had worse, and there were days in his life when he’d had nothing at all, so pancakes with peanut butter were a welcome sight in the morning, even if it wasn’t morning in the sense of being light out.

There were visiting days, of course, but Carter hadn’t had a visitor in all the time he’d been in Terrell except for the once, when the woman’s husband had come and told him that he’d found Christ Jesus who was the Lord and that he’d prayed on what Carter had done, taking his beautiful wife away from him and his babies forever and ever; and that through the weeks and months of praying, he’d come to terms with this and decided to forgive him. The man did a lot of crying, sitting on the other side of the glass with the phone pressed to his head. Carter had been a Christian man himself from time to time and appreciated what the woman’s husband was saying to him; but the way he spoke the words made it seem like his forgiving Carter was something he’d chosen to do, to make himself feel better. He certainly didn’t say anything about putting a stop to what was going to happen to Carter. Carter couldn’t see how saying anything on the subject would improve the situation, so he thanked the man and said God bless you and I’m sorry, if I see Mrs. Wood in heaven I’ll tell her what you did here today, which made the man get up in a hurry and leave him there, holding the phone. That was the last time anybody had come to see Carter at Terrell, two years ago at least.

The thing was, the woman, Mrs. Wood, had always been nice to him, giving him an extra five or ten, and coming out with the iced tea on the hot days, always on a little tray, like folks did in restaurants, and the thing that had happened between them was confusing; Carter was sorry about it, sorry right down to his bones, but it still didn’t make sense in his head, no matter how he turned it around. He’d never said he hadn’t done it, but it didn’t seem right to him to die on account of something he didn’t understand, at least before he had the chance to figure it out. He went over it in his mind, but in four years it never had come any clearer to him. Maybe coming to terms, like Mr. Wood had done, was the thing Carter hadn’t been able to see his way to. If anything, the whole thing made less sense than ever; and with the days and weeks and months all mashed together in his brain the way they were, he wasn’t even sure he was remembering the thing right to begin with.

At 6:00 A.M., when the shift changed, the guards woke everybody up again, to call out names and numbers, then moved down the hallway with the laundry bags to swap out boxers and socks. This meant today was a Friday. Carter didn’t get a chance to shower but once a week or see the barber except every sixty days, so it was good to have clean clothes. The sticky feeling of his skin was worse in summer, when you sweated all day onto yourself even if you lay still as a stone, but from what his lawyer had told him in the letter he’d sent six months ago, he wouldn’t have to go through another Texas summer in his life. The second of June would be the end of it.

His thoughts were broken by two hard bangs on the door. “Carter. Anthony Carter.” The voice belonged to Pincher, head of the shift.

“Aw, come on, Pincher,” Anthony said from his bunk. “Who’d you think was in here?”

“Present for cuffs, Tone.”

“Ain’t time for rec. Ain’t my day for the shower neither.”

“You think I got all morning to stand here talking about it?”

Carter eased himself off the bunk, where he’d been looking at the ceiling and thinking about the woman, that glass of iced tea on the tray. His body felt achy and slow, and with effort he lowered himself onto his knees with his back facing the door. He’d done this a thousand times but still didn’t like it. Keeping your balance was the tricky part. Once he was kneeling, he pulled his shoulder blades inward, twisted his arms around, and guided his hands, palms up, through the slot that the food came through. He felt the cold bite of the metal as Pincher cuffed his wrists. Everybody called him Pincher on account of how tight he did the cuffs.

“Stand back now, Carter.”

Carter pushed one foot forward, his left knee making a grinding sound as he shifted his center of gravity, then rose carefully to his feet, simultaneously withdrawing his cuffed hands from the slot. From the far side of the door came the clanking of Pincher’s big ring of keys, and then the door opened to show him Pincher and the guard they called Dennis the Menace, on account of his hair, which looked like the kid’s in the cartoon, and the fact that he liked to menace you with the stick. He had a way of finding spots on your body that you never knew could hurt so bad with just a little poke of wood.

“Seems like somebody’s come to see you, Carter,” Pincher said. “And it isn’t your mother or your lawyer.” He didn’t smile or anything, but Dennis looked to be enjoying himself. He gave that stick of his a twirl like a majorette.

“My mom’s been with Jesus since I was ten years old,” Carter told him. “You know that, Pincher, I told you that about a hundred times. Who is it wants me?”

“Can’t say. Warden set it up. I’m just supposed to take you to the cages.”

Carter supposed this was no good. It’d been so long since the woman’s husband had come to visit; maybe he’d come to say goodbye, or else to tell him I changed my mind, I don’t forgive you after all, go straight to hell, Anthony Carter. Either way Carter didn’t have anything else to say to the man. He’d said sorry to everyone over and over and felt done with it.

“Come on with you then,” Pincher said.

They led him down the corridor, Pincher gripping him hard by an elbow to steer him like a kid through a crowd, or a girl he was dancing with. This was how they took you anywhere, even to the shower. Part of you got used to people’s hands being on you this way, and part of you didn’t. Dennis led the way, opening the door that sealed administrative segregation from the rest of H-Wing and then the outer, second door that took them down the hall through general population to the cages. It’d been almost two years since Carter had been off H-Wing-H for “hellhole,” H for “hit my black ass with that stick some more,” H for “Hey, Mama, I’m off to see Jesus any day now”-and walking with his eyes pointed at the ground, he still let himself peek around, if only to give his eyes something new to look at. But it was all still Terrell, a maze of concrete and steel and heavy doors, the air dank and sour with the smell of men.

At the visiting area they reported to the OD and entered an empty cage. The air inside was ten degrees warmer and smelled like bleach so strong it made Carter’s eyes sting. Pincher undid the cuffs; while Dennis held the point of his stick against the soft spot under Carter’s jaw, they shackled him in the front, legs too. There were signs all over the wall telling Carter what he could and couldn’t do, none of which he wanted to take the trouble to read or even look at. They shuffled him over to the chair and gave him the phone, which Carter could manage to hold in place against his ear only if he bent his legs halfway up his chest-more damp crunches from his knees-pulling the chain taut across his chest like a long zipper.

“Didn’t have to wear the shackles the last time,” Carter said.

Pincher barked a nasty laugh. “I’m sorry, did we forget to ask you nicely? Fuck you, Carter. You got ten minutes.”

Then they left, and Carter waited for the door on the other side to open and show him who it was had come to see him after all this time.

Special Agent Brad Wolgast hated Texas. He hated everything about it.

He hated the weather, which was hot as an oven one minute and freezing the next, the air so damp it felt like a wet towel over your head. He hated the look of the place, beginning with the trees, which were scrawny and pathetic, their limbs all gnarled up like something out of Dr. Seuss, and the flat, windblown nothingness of it. He hated the billboards and the freeways and faceless subdivisions and the Texas flag, which flew over everything, always big as a circus tent; he hated the giant pickup trucks everybody drove, no matter that gas was thirteen bucks a gallon and the world was slowly steaming itself to death like a package of peas in a microwave. He hated the boots and the belt buckles and the way people talked, y’all this and y’all that, as if they spent the day ropin’ and ridin’, not cleaning teeth and selling insurance and doing the books, like people did everywhere.

Most of all, he hated it because his parents had made him live here, back in junior high. Wolgast was forty-four, still in decent shape but with the miscellaneous aches and thinning hair to show for it; sixth grade was long ago, nothing to regret, but still, driving with Doyle up Highway 59 north from Houston, springtime Texas spread all around, the wound felt fresh to him. Texas, state-sized porkchop of misery: one minute he’d been a perfectly happy kid in Oregon, fishing off the pier at the mouth of the Coos River and playing with his friends in the woods behind their house for endless, idle hours; the next he was stuck in the urban swamp of Houston, living in a crappy ranch house without a scrap of shade, walking to school in one-hundred-degree heat that felt like a big shoe coming down on his head. The end of the world, he’d thought. That’s where he was. The end of the world was Houston, Texas. On his first day of sixth grade, the teacher had made him stand up to recite the Texas Pledge of Allegiance, as if he’d signed up to live in a whole different country. Three miserable years; he’d never been so glad to leave a place, even the way it happened. His father was a mechanical engineer; his parents had met when his father had taken a job the year after college as a math teacher on the reservation in Grande Ronde, where his mother, who was half Chinook-her mother’s family name was Po-Bear-was working as a nurse’s aide. They’d gone to Texas for the money, but then his father was laid off when the oil bust hit in ’86; they tried to sell the house but couldn’t, and in the end, his father had simply dropped the keys off at the bank. They moved to Michigan, then Ohio, then upstate New York, chasing little bits of work, but his father had never righted himself after that. When he’d died of pancreatic cancer two months before Wolgast graduated from high school-his third in as many years-it was easy to think that Texas had somehow done it. His mother had moved back to Oregon, but now she was gone too.

Everyone was gone.

He’d gotten the first man, Babcock, from Nevada. Others came from Arizona and Louisiana and Kentucky and Wyoming and Florida and Indiana and Delaware. Wolgast didn’t care much for those places, either. But anything was better than Texas.

Wolgast and Doyle had flown into Houston from Denver the night before. They’d stayed the night at a Radisson near the airport (he’d considered a brief side trip into the city, maybe tracking down his old house, but then wondered what in hell he’d want to do a thing like that for), picked up the rental car in the morning, a Chrysler Victory so new it smelled like the ink on a dollar bill, and headed north. The day was clear with a high, blue sky the color of cornflowers; Wolgast drove while Doyle sipped his latte and read the file, a mass of paper resting on his lap.

“Meet Anthony Carter,” Doyle said, and held up the photo. “Subject Number Twelve.”

Wolgast didn’t want to look. He knew just what he’d see: one more slack face, one more pair of eyes that had barely ever learned to read, one more soul that had stared into itself too long. These men were black or white, fat or thin, old or young, but the eyes were always the same: empty, like drains that could suck the whole world down into them. It was easy to sympathize with them in the abstract, but only in the abstract.

“Don’t you want to know what he did?”

Wolgast shrugged. He was in no hurry, but now was as good a time as any.

Doyle slurped his latte and read: “Anthony Lloyd Carter. African American, five foot four, a hundred and twenty pounds.” Doyle looked up. “That explains the nickname. Take a guess.”

Already Wolgast felt tired. “You’ve got me. Little Anthony?”

“You’re showing your age, boss. It’s T-Tone. T for ‘Tiny,’ I’m thinking, though you never know. Mother deceased, no dad in the picture from day one, a series of foster homes care of the county. Bad beginnings all around. A list of priors but mostly petty stuff, panhandling, public nuisance, that kind of thing. So, the story. Our man Anthony cuts this lady’s lawn every week. Her name is Rachel Wood, she lives in River Oaks, two little girls, husband’s some big lawyer. All the charity balls, the benefits, the country clubs. Anthony Carter is her project. Starts cutting her lawn one day when she sees him standing under an overpass with a sign that says, HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP. Words along those lines. Anyway, she takes him home, makes him a sandwich, puts in some calls and finds him a place, some kind of group home she raises money for. Then she calls all her friends in River Oaks and says, Let’s help this guy, what do you need done around the place? All of a sudden she’s a regular Girl Scout, rallying the troops. So the guy starts cutting all their lawns, pruning the hedges, you know, all the things they need around the big houses. This goes on about two years. Everything’s hunky-dory until one day, our man Anthony comes over to cut the lawn, and one of the little girls is home sick from school. She’s five. Mom’s on the phone or doing something, the little girl goes out into the yard, sees Anthony. She knows who he is, she’s seen him plenty of times, but this time something goes wrong. He frightens her. There’s some stuff here about maybe he touched her, but the court psychiatrist is iffy on that. Anyway, the girl starts screaming, Mom comes tearing out of the house, she’s screaming, everybody’s screaming, all of a sudden it’s like a screaming contest, the goddamn screaming Olympics. One minute he’s the nice man who shows up on time to cut the lawn, next thing you know, he’s just a black guy with your kid, and all the Mother Teresa shit goes out the window. It gets physical. There’s a struggle. Mom somehow falls or gets pushed into the pool. Anthony goes in after her, maybe to help her, but she’s still screaming at him, fights him off. So now everybody’s wet and yelling and thrashing around.” Doyle looked at him quizzically. “Know how it ends?”

“He drowns her?”

“Bingo. Right there, right in front of the little girl. A neighbor heard it all and called the cops, so when they get there, he’s still sitting on the edge of the pool, the lady floating in it.” He shook his head. “Not a pretty picture.”

Sometimes it was troubling to Wolgast, how much energy Doyle put into these stories. “Any chance it was an accident?”

“As it happens, the victim was on the varsity swim team at SMU. Still did fifty laps every morning. The prosecution made a lot of hay with that little detail. That and the fact that Carter pretty much admitted to killing her.”

“What did he say when they arrested him?”

Doyle shrugged. “He only wanted her to stop screaming. Then he asked for a glass of iced tea.”

Wolgast shook his head. The stories were always bad, but it was the little details that got to him. A glass of iced tea. Sweet Jesus. “How old did you say he was?”

Doyle flipped back a couple of pages. “I didn’t. Thirty-two. Twenty-eight at the time he went into custody. And here’s the thing. No relatives at all. Last time anybody came to see him in Polunsky was the victim’s husband, a little over two years ago. His lawyer left the state, too, after the appeal was turned down. Carter’s been reassigned to somebody else in the Harris County PD office, but they haven’t even opened the paperwork. Ipso facto, nobody’s watching the store. Anthony Carter goes to the needle on June second for murder one with depraved indifference, and not one soul on earth is paying attention. The guy’s a ghost already.”

The drive to Livingston took ninety minutes, the last fifteen minutes on a farm-to-market road that carried them through the intermittent shade of piney woods and open fields of prairie grass spangled with blue-bonnets. It was just noon; with luck, Wolgast thought, they could be done by dinner, enough time to drive back to Houston and dump the rental and get on a plane to Colorado. It was better when these trips were quick like that; when he lingered too long, if the guy was hemming and hawing and drawing it out-never mind that they always took the deal eventually-he’d start to get a queasy feeling in his stomach about the whole thing. It always made him think of a play he’d read in high school, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and how he, Wolgast, was the devil in this deal. Doyle was different; he was younger, for starters, not even thirty, a cherry-cheeked farmboy from Indiana who was glad to play Robin to Wolgast’s Batman, calling him “chief” and “boss,” with a streak of old-fashioned midwestern patriotism so unalloyed that Wolgast had actually seen him tear up at the national anthem at the start of a Rockies game-a game on TV. Wolgast hadn’t known they still made people like Phil Doyle. And there was no question Doyle was smart, with a good future ahead of him. Fresh out of Purdue, his law school applications already in the works, Doyle had joined the Bureau right after the Mall of America Massacre-three hundred holiday shoppers gunned down by Iranian jihadists, all the horror captured by security cameras to be replayed in painstakingly gruesome detail on CNN; it seemed like half the country was ready to sign on to something, anything that day-and after finishing his training at Quantico, he had been posted to the Denver field office, assigned to counterterrorism. When the Army had come looking for two field agents, Doyle had been the first in line to volunteer. Wolgast couldn’t quite figure that; on paper, what they were calling “Project NOAH” had looked like a dead end, and Wolgast had taken the assignment for just that reason. His divorce had just come through-his marriage to Lila hadn’t ended so much as evaporated, so it had taken him by surprise, how blue the actual decree had made him-and a few months of travel seemed like just the thing to clear his mind. He’d gotten a small settlement in the divorce-his share of the equity in their house in Cherry Creek, plus a piece of Lila’s retirement account from the hospital-and he’d actually thought about quitting the Bureau entirely, going back to Oregon and using the money to open up a small business of some kind: hardware, maybe, or sporting goods, not that he knew anything about either one. Guys who quit the Bureau always ended up in security, but to Wolgast the idea of a small store, something simple and clean, the shelves stocked with baseball gloves or hammers, objects with a purpose you could identify just by looking at them, was far more appealing. And the NOAH thing had seemed like a cakewalk, not a bad way to spend his last year in the Bureau if it came to that.

Of course, it had turned out to be more than paperwork and babysitting, a lot more, and he wondered if Doyle had somehow known this.

At Polunsky they were ID’d and asked to check their weapons, then went to the warden’s office. Polunsky was a grim place, but they all were. While they waited, Wolgast used his handheld to check for evening flights out of Houston-there was one at 8:30, so if they hustled they could make it. Doyle said nothing, just flipped through a copy of Sports Illustrated, like he was waiting at the dentist. It was just after one when the secretary led them in.

The warden was a black man, about fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair and the chest of a weight lifter compressed under his suit vest. He neither rose nor offered to shake their hands as they entered. Wolgast gave him the documents to look over.

He finished reading and looked up. “Agent, this is the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen. What in the hell would you want Anthony Carter for?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. We’re just here to make the transfer.”

The warden put the papers aside and folded his hands on his desk. “I see. And what if I said no?”

“Then I would give you a number to call, and the person on the other end of the line would do his best to explain that this is a matter of national security.”

“A number.”

“That’s correct.”

The warden sighed irritably, spun in his chair, and gestured out the wide windows behind him. “Gentlemen, do you know what that is out there?”

“I’m not following you.”

He turned to face them again. He didn’t seem angry, Wolgast thought. Just a man accustomed to having his way. “It’s Texas. Two hundred sixty seven thousand square miles of Texas, to be precise. And the last time I checked, Agent, that’s who I work for. Not for anybody in Washington, or Langley, or whoever the hell is on the other end of that number. Anthony Carter is an inmate in my care, and I’m charged by the citizens of this state to carry out his sentence. Short of a phone call from the governor, I’m going to do exactly that.”

Goddamn Texas, Wolgast thought. This was going to take all day. “That can be arranged, Warden.”

He held up the papers for Wolgast to take. “Well then, Agent. You better arrange it.”

At the visitors’ entrance they collected their weapons and returned to the car. Wolgast got on the phone to Denver, which patched him through to Colonel Sykes on an encrypted line. Wolgast told him what had happened; Sykes was irritated but said he’d make the arrangements. A day at the most, he said. Just hang around and wait for the call, then get Anthony Carter to sign the papers.

“Just so you know, there may be a change in protocol coming your way,” Sykes told him.

“What sort of change?”

Sykes hesitated. “I’ll let you know. Just get Carter to sign.”

They drove to Huntsville and checked into a motel. The warden’s stonewalling was nothing new-it had happened before. The delay was aggravating, but that was all it was. A few days from now, a week at most, Carter would be in the system, and all evidence that he’d ever existed would be wiped from the face of the earth. Even the warden would swear he’d never heard of the guy. Somebody would have to talk to the deceased’s husband, of course, the River Oaks lawyer with the two little girls he now had to raise himself, but that wasn’t Wolgast’s job. There would be a death certificate involved, and probably a story about a heart attack and a quick cremation, and how justice had, in the end, been served. It didn’t matter; the job would get done.

By five they hadn’t heard anything, so they changed out of their suits into jeans and walked up the street to find a place for dinner, choosing a steak joint on a commercial strip between a Costco and a Best Buy. It was part of a chain, which was good-they were supposed to travel lightly, to leave as little an impression on the world around them as possible. The delay had made Wolgast antsy, but Doyle seemed not to mind. A good meal and a little time off in a strange town, courtesy of the federal government-why complain? Doyle sawed his way through a huge porterhouse, thick as a two-by-four, while Wolgast picked at a plate of ribs, and when they’d paid the check-in cash, pulled off a wad of fresh bills Wolgast kept in his pocket-they took a pair of stools at the bar.

“Think he’ll sign?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast rattled the ice in his Scotch. “They always do.”

“I suppose it’s not much of a choice.” Doyle frowned into his glass. “The needle, or whatever’s behind curtain number two. But even so.”

Wolgast knew what Doyle was thinking: whatever was behind the curtain, it was nothing good. Why else would they need death row inmates, men with nothing to lose?

“Even so,” he agreed.

A basketball game was playing on the television above the bar, the Rockets and Golden State, and for a while they watched in silence. It was early in the game, and both teams seemed sluggish, moving the ball around without doing much of anything with it.

“You hear anything from Lila?” Doyle said.

“Actually, yeah.” Wolgast paused. “She’s getting married.”

Doyle’s eyes widened. “That guy? The doctor?”

Wolgast nodded.

“That was fast. Why didn’t you say something? Jesus, what’d she do, invite you to the wedding?”

“Not exactly. She sent me an email, thought I should know about it.”

“What did you say?”

Wolgast shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

There was more to it, but Wolgast didn’t want to go into it. Dear Brad, Lila had written, I thought you should know that David and I are expecting a child. We’re getting married next week. I hope you can be happy for us. He’d sat at the computer staring at the message on the screen for a good ten minutes.

“There was nothing to say. We’re divorced, she can do what she wants.” He drained his Scotch and peeled off more bills to pay. “You coming?”

Doyle passed his eyes over the room. When they’d first sat at the bar, the place was nearly empty, but more people had come in, including a group of young women who had pushed together three tall tables and were drinking pitchers of margaritas and talking loudly. There was a college nearby, Sam Houston State, and Wolgast supposed they were students, or else they worked together somewhere. The world could be going straight to hell in a handbasket, but happy hour was happy hour, and pretty girls would still fill the bars in Huntsville, Texas. They were wearing clingy shirts and low-cut jeans with fashionable tears at the knees, their faces and hair done for a night on the town, and they were drinking furiously. One of the girls, a little heavy, sitting with her back to them, wore her pants so low on her spine that Wolgast could see the little hearts on her underwear. He didn’t know if he wanted to get a closer look or throw a blanket over her.

“Maybe I’ll stay awhile,” Doyle said, and raised his glass in a little toast. “Watch the game.”

Wolgast nodded. Doyle wasn’t married, didn’t even have a steady girlfriend. They were supposed to keep their interactions to a minimum, but he didn’t see how it was any of his business how Doyle spent his evening. He felt a flicker of envy, then put the thought aside.

“Okay. Just remember-”

“Right,” Doyle said. “Like Smokey Bear says, take only pictures, leave only footprints. As of this moment, I’m a fiber-optic sales rep from Indianapolis.”

Behind them, the girls broke into laughter; Wolgast could hear the tequila in their voices.

“Nice town, Indianapolis,” Wolgast said. “Better than this one, anyway.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Doyle replied, and grinned mischieviously. “I think I’m going to like it here just fine.”

Wolgast left the restaurant and walked up the highway. He’d left his handheld behind at the motel, thinking they might get a call during dinner and have to leave; but when he checked it now, he found no messages. After the noise and activity of the restaurant, the quiet of the room was unsettling, and he began to wish he’d maybe stayed with Doyle, though he knew he wasn’t very good company these days. He removed his shoes and lay on his bed in his clothes to watch the rest of the game, not really caring one way or the other about it, but it gave his mind something to focus on. Finally, a little past midnight-eleven in Denver, a little too late, but what the hell-he did what he’d told himself he wouldn’t do and dialed Lila’s number. A man’s voice answered.

“David, it’s Brad.”

For a moment David didn’t say anything. “It’s late, Brad. What do you want?”

“Is Lila there?”

“She’s had a long day,” David said firmly. “She’s tired.”

I know she’s tired, Brad thought. I slept in the same bed with her for six years. “Just put her on, will you?”

David sighed and put the phone down with a thump. Wolgast heard the rustling of sheets and then David’s voice, saying to Lila, It’s Brad, for Pete’s sake, tell him to call at a decent hour next time.

“Brad?”

“I’m sorry to call so late. I didn’t realize what time it was.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m in Texas. A motel, actually. I can’t tell you where exactly.”

“Texas.” She paused. “You hate Texas. I don’t think you called to tell me you’re in Texas, did you?”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you. I don’t think David’s too happy.”

Lila sighed into the phone. “Oh, it’s all right. We’re still friends, right? David’s a big boy. He can handle it.”

“I got your email.”

“Well.” He heard her breathe. “I kind of figured. I supposed that was why you called. I thought I’d hear from you at some point.”

“Did you do it? Get married.”

“Yes. Last weekend, here at the house. Just a few friends. My parents. They asked for you, actually, wanted to know how you were doing. They always really liked you. You should call them, if you want. I think my dad misses you more than anyone.”

He let the remark pass-more than anyone? More than you, Lila? He waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t, and the silence was taken up by a picture that formed in his mind, a picture that was actually a memory: Lila in bed, in an old T-shirt and the socks she always wore because her feet got cold no matter the time of year, a pillow wedged between her knees to straighten her spine because of the baby. Their baby. Eva.

“I just wanted to tell you I was.”

Lila’s voice was quiet. “Was what, Brad?”

“That I was… happy for you. Like you asked. I was thinking that you should, you know, quit your job this time. Take some time off, take better care of yourself. I always wondered, you know, if-”

“I will,” Lila cut in. “Don’t worry. Everything is fine, everything is normal.”

Normal. Normal, he thought, was what everything was not. “I just-”

“Please.” She took a deep breath. “You’re making me sad. I have to get up in the morning.”

“Lila-”

“I said I have to go.”

He knew she was crying. She didn’t make a sound to tell him so, but he knew. They were both thinking about Eva, and thinking about Eva would make her cry, which was why they weren’t together anymore, and couldn’t be. How many hours of his life had he held her as she cried? And that was the thing; he’d never known what to say when Lila cried. It was only later-too late-that he’d realized he wasn’t supposed to say anything at all.

“Damn it, Brad. I didn’t want to do this, not now.”

“I’m sorry, Lila. I was just… thinking about her.”

“I know you were. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Don’t do this, don’t.”

He heard her sob, and then David’s voice came on the line. “Don’t call back, Brad. I mean it. Understand what I’m saying to you.”

“Fuck you,” Wolgast said.

“Whatever you say. Just don’t bother her anymore. Leave us alone.” And he hung up the phone.

Wolgast looked at his handheld once before hurling it across the room. It made a handsome arc, spinning like a Frisbee, before slapping the wall above the television with the crunch of breaking plastic. He instantly felt sorry. But when he knelt and picked it up, he found that all that had happened was the battery case had popped open, and the thing was perfectly fine.

Wolgast had been to the compound only once, the previous summer, to meet with Colonel Sykes. Not a job interview, exactly; it had been made clear to Wolgast that the NOAH assignment was his if he wanted it. A pair of soldiers drove him in a van with blacked-out windows, but Wolgast could tell they were taking him west from Denver, into the mountains. The drive took six hours, and by the time they pulled into the compound, he’d actually managed to fall asleep. He stepped from the van into the bright sunshine of a summer afternoon. He stretched and looked around. From the topography, he’d have guessed he was somewhere around Ouray. It could have been farther north. The air felt thin and clean in his lungs; he felt the dull throb of a high-altitude headache at the top of his skull.

He was met in the parking lot by a civilian, a compact man dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt rolled at the sleeves, a pair of old-fashioned aviators perched on his wide, faintly bulbous nose. This was Richards.

“Hope the ride wasn’t too bad,” Richards said as they shook hands. Up close Wolgast saw that Richards’s cheeks were pockmarked with old acne scars. “We’re pretty high up here. If you’re not used to it, you’ll want to take it easy.”

Richards escorted Wolgast across the parking area to a building he called the Chalet, which was exactly what it sounded like: a large Tudor structure, three stories tall, with the exposed timbers of an old-fashioned sportsmen’s lodge. The mountains had once been full of these places, Wolgast knew, hulking relics from an era before time-share condos and modern resorts. The building faced an open lawn and beyond, at a hundred yards or so, a cluster of more workaday structures: cinder-block barracks, a half dozen military inflatables, a low-slung building that resembled a roadside motel. Military vehicles, Humvees and smaller jeeps and five-ton trucks, were moving up and down the drive; in the center of the lawn, a group of men with broad chests and trim haircuts, naked to the waist, were sunning themselves on lawn chairs.

Stepping into the Chalet, Wolgast had the disorienting sensation of peeking behind a movie set; the place appeared to have been gutted to the studs, its original architecture replaced by the neutral textures of a modern office building: gray carpeting, institutional lighting, acoustic-tile drop ceilings. He might have been in a dentist’s office or the high-rise off the freeway where he met his accountant once a year to do his taxes. They stopped at the front desk, where Richards asked him to turn over his handheld and his weapon, which he passed to the guard, a kid in camos, who tagged them. There was an elevator, but Richards walked past it and led Wolgast down a narrow hallway to a heavy metal door that opened on a flight of stairs. They ascended to the second floor and made their way down another nondescript hallway to Sykes’s office.

Sykes rose from behind his desk as they entered: a tall, well-built man in uniform, his chest spangled with the various bars and little bits of color that Wolgast had never understood. His office was neat as a pin, its arrangement of objects, right down to the framed photos on his desk, giving the impression of having been placed for maximum efficiency. Resting in the center of the desk was a single manila folder, fat with paper. Wolgast knew it was almost certainly his personnel file, or some version of it.

They shook hands and Sykes offered him coffee, which Wolgast accepted. He wasn’t drowsy but the caffeine, he knew, would help the headache.

“Sorry about the bullshit with the van,” Sykes said, and waved him to a chair. “That’s just how we do things.”

A soldier brought in the coffee, a plastic carafe and two china cups on a tray. Richards remained standing behind Sykes’s desk, his back to the broad windows that looked out on the woodlands that ringed the compound. Sykes explained what he wanted Wolgast to do. It was all quite straightforward, he said, and by now Wolgast knew the basics. The Army needed between ten and twenty death row inmates to serve in the third-stage trials of an experimental drug therapy, code-named “Project NOAH.” In exchange for their consent, the inmates would have their sentences commuted to life without parole. It would be Wolgast’s job to obtain the signatures of these men, nothing more. Everything had been legally vetted, but because the project was a matter of national security, all of these men would be declared legally dead. Thereafter, they would spend the rest of their lives in the care of the federal penal system in a white-collar prison camp, under assumed identities. The men would be chosen based upon a number of factors, but all would be men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five with no living first-degree relatives. Wolgast would report directly to Sykes; he’d have no other contact, though he’d remain, technically, in the employment of the Bureau.

“Do I have to pick them?” Wolgast asked.

Sykes shook his head. “That’s our job. You’ll receive your orders from me. All you have to do is get their consent. Once they’re signed on, the Army will take it from there. They’ll be moved to the nearest federal lockup, then we’ll transport them here.”

Wolgast thought a moment. “Colonel, I have to ask-”

“What we’re doing?” He seemed, at that moment, to permit himself an almost human-looking smile.

Wolgast nodded. “I understand I can’t be very specific. But I’m going to be asking them to sign over their whole lives. I have to tell them something.”

Sykes exchanged a look with Richards, who shrugged. “I’ll leave you now,” Richards said, and nodded at Wolgast. “Agent.”

When Richards had left, Sykes leaned back in his chair. “I’m not a biochemist, Agent. You’ll have to be satisfied with the layman’s version. Here’s the background, at least the part I can tell you. About ten years ago, the CDC got a call from a doctor in La Paz. He had four patients, all Americans, who had come down with what looked like hantavirus-high fever, vomiting, muscle pain, headache, hypoxemia. The four of them had been part of an ecotour, deep in the jungle. They claimed that they were part of a group of fourteen but had gotten separated from the others and had been wandering in the jungle for weeks. It was sheer luck that they’d stumbled onto a remote trading post run by a bunch of Franciscan friars, who’d arranged their transport to La Paz. Now, hanta isn’t the common cold, but it’s not exactly rare, either, so none of this would have been more than a blip on the CDC’s radar if not for one thing: all of them were terminal cancer patients. The tour was organized by an outfit called Last Wish. You’ve heard of them?”

Wolgast nodded. “I thought they just took people skydiving, things like that.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But apparently not. Of the four, one had an inoperable brain tumor, two had acute lymphocytic leukemia, and the fourth had ovarian cancer. And every single one of them became well. Not just the hanta, or whatever it was. No cancer. Not a trace.”

Wolgast felt lost. “I don’t get it.”

Sykes sipped his coffee. “Well, neither did anyone at the CDC. But something had happened, some interaction between their immune systems and something, most likely viral, that they’d been exposed to in the jungle. Something they ate? The water they drank? No one could figure it out. They couldn’t even say exactly where they’d been.” He leaned forward over his desk. “Do you know what the thymus gland is?”

Wolgast shook his head.

Sykes pointed at his chest, just above the breastbone. “Little thing in here, between the sternum and the trachea, about the size of an acorn. In most people, it’s atrophied completely by puberty, and you could go your whole life not knowing you had one, unless it was diseased. Nobody really knows what it does, or at least they didn’t, until they ran scans on these four patients. The thymus had somehow turned itself back on. More than back on: it had enlarged to three times its usual size. It looked like a malignancy but it wasn’t. And their immune systems had gone into overdrive. A hugely accelerated rate of cellular regeneration. And there were other benefits. Remember these were cancer patients, all over fifty. It was like they were teenagers again: smell, hearing, vision, skin tone, lung volume, physical strength and endurance, even sexual function. One of the men actually grew back a full head of hair.”

“A virus did this?”

Sykes nodded. “Like I said, this is the layman’s version. But I’ve got people downstairs who think that’s exactly what happened. Some of them have degrees in subjects I can’t even spell. They talk to me like I’m a child, and they’re not wrong.”

“What happened to them? The four patients.”

Sykes leaned back in his chair, his face darkening a little. “Well, this isn’t the happiest part of the story, I’m afraid. They’re all dead. The longest any of them survived was eighty-six days. Cerebral aneurysm, heart attack, stroke. Their bodies just kind of blew a fuse.”

“What about the others?”

“No one knows. Disappeared without a trace, including the tour operator, who turned out to be a pretty shady character. It’s likely he was actually working as a drug mule, using these tours as a cover.” Sykes gave a shrug. “I’ve probably said too much. But I think this will help you put things in perspective. We’re not talking about curing one disease, Agent. We’re talking about curing everything. How long would a human being live if there were no cancer, no heart disease, no diabetes, no Alzheimer’s? And we’ve reached the point where we need, absolutely require, human test subjects. Not a nice term, but there really is no other. And that’s where you come in. I need you to get me these men.”

“Why not the marshals? Isn’t this more up their alley?”

Sykes shook his head dismissively. “Glorified corrections officers, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Believe me, we started there. If I had a sofa I needed carried up the stairs, they’d be the first guys I’d call. But for this, no.”

Sykes opened the file on his desk and began to read. “Bradford Joseph Wolgast, born Ashland, Oregon, September 29, 1974. BS in criminal justice 1996, SUNY Buffalo, high honors, recruited by the Bureau but declines, accepts a graduate fellowship at Stony Brook for a PhD in political science but leaves after two years to join the Bureau. After training at Quantico sent to-” He raised his eyebrows at Wolgast. “-Dayton?”

Wolgast shrugged. “It wasn’t very exciting.”

“Well, we all do our time. Two years in the sticks, a little of this, a little of that, mostly piddly shit but good ratings all around. After 9/11 asks to transfer to counterterrorism, back to Quantico for eighteen months, assigned to the Denver field office September ’04 as liaison to the Treasury, tracking funds moved through U.S. banks by Russian nationals, i.e., the Russian Mafia, though we don’t call them that. On the personal side: no political affiliations, no memberships, doesn’t even subscribe to the newspaper. Parents deceased. Dates a little but no steady girlfriends. Marries Lila Kyle, an orthopedic surgeon. Divorced four years later.” He closed the file and lifted his eyes to Wolgast. “What we need, Agent, is somebody who, to be perfectly candid, has a certain polish. Good negotiation skills, not just with the prisoners but with the prison authorities. Somebody who knows how to tread lightly, won’t leave a large impression. What we’re doing here is perfectly legal-hell, it may be the most important piece of medical research in the history of mankind. But it could be easily misunderstood. I’m telling you as much as I am because I think it will help if you understand the stakes, how high they are.”

Wolgast guessed Sykes was telling him maybe ten percent of the story-a persuasive ten percent, but even so. “Is it safe?”

Sykes shrugged. “There’s safe and then there’s safe. I won’t lie to you. There are risks. But we’ll do everything we can to minimize them. A bad outcome isn’t in anybody’s interest here. And I remind you that these are death row inmates. Not the nicest men you’d ever care to meet, and they don’t exactly have a lot of options. We’re giving them a chance to live out their lives, and maybe make a significant contribution to medical science at the same time. It’s not a bad deal, not by a long shot. Everybody’s on the side of the angels here.”

Wolgast took a last moment to think. It was all a little hard to take in. “I guess I don’t see why the military is involved.”

At this, Sykes stiffened; he seemed almost offended. “Don’t you? Think about it, Agent. Let’s say a soldier on the ground in Khorramabad or Grozny takes a piece of shrapnel. A roadside bomb, say, a bunch of C-4 in a lead pipe full of deck screws. Maybe it’s a piece of black-market Russian ordnance. Believe me, I’ve seen firsthand what these things can do. We have to dust him out of there, maybe en route he bleeds to death, but if he’s lucky he gets to the field hospital, where a trauma surgeon, two medics, and three nurses patch him up as best they can before evacuating him to Germany or Saud. It’s painful, it’s awful, it’s his rotten luck, and he’s probably out of the war. He’s a broken asset. All the money we’ve spent on his training is a total loss. And it gets worse. He comes home depressed, angry, maybe missing a limb or something worse, with nothing good to say about anyone or anything. Down at the corner tavern he tells his buddies, I lost my leg, I’m pissing into a bag for the rest of my life, and for what?” Sykes leaned back in his chair, letting the story sink in. “We’ve been at war for fifteen years, Agent. By the looks of things, we’ll be in it for fifteen more if we’re lucky. I won’t kid you. The single biggest challenge the military faces, has always faced, is keeping soldiers on the field. So, let’s say the same GI takes the same piece of shrapnel but within half a day his body’s healed itself and he’s back in his unit, fighting for God and country. You think the military wouldn’t be interested in something like that?”

Wolgast felt chastened. “I see your point.”

“Good, because you should.” Sykes’s expression softened; the lecture was over. “So maybe it’s the military who’s picking up the check. I say let them, because frankly, what we’ve spent so far would make your eyes pop out. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to live to meet my great-great-great-grandchildren. Hell, I’d like to hit a golf ball three hundred yards on my hundredth birthday and then go home to make love to my wife until she walks funny for a week. Who wouldn’t?” He looked at Wolgast searchingly. “The side of the angels, Agent. Nothing more or less. Do we have a deal?”

They shook, and Sykes walked him to the door. Richards was waiting to take him back to the van. “One last question,” Wolgast asked. “Why ‘NOAH’? What’s it stand for?”

Sykes glanced quickly at Richards. In that moment, Wolgast felt the balance of power shifting in the room; Sykes might have been technically in charge, but in some way, Wolgast felt certain, he also reported to Richards, who was probably the link between the military and whoever was really running the show: USAMRIID, Homeland, maybe NSA.

Sykes turned back to Wolgast. “It doesn’t stand for anything. Let’s put it this way. You ever read the Bible?”

“Some.” Wolgast looked at the both of them. “When I was a kid. My mother was a Methodist.”

Sykes allowed himself a second, final smile. “Go look it up. The story of Noah and the ark. See how long he lived. That’s all I’ll say.”

That night, back in his Denver apartment, Wolgast did as Sykes had said. He didn’t own a Bible, probably hadn’t laid eyes on one since his wedding day. But he found a concordance online.

And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.

It was then that he realized what the missing piece was, the thing Sykes hadn’t said. It would be in his file, of course. It was the reason, of all the federal agents they might have chosen, that they’d picked him.

They’d chosen him because of Eva, because he’d had to watch his daughter die.

In the morning, he awoke to the chirp of his handheld; he was dreaming, and in the dream it was Lila, calling him back to tell him the baby had been born-not hers and David’s baby, but their own. For a moment Wolgast felt happy, but then his mind cleared and he realized where he was-Huntsville, the motel-and his hand found the phone on the nightstand and punched the Receive button without his even looking at the screen to see who it was. He heard the static of the encryption and then the opening line.

“All set,” Sykes told him. “Everything should be in hand. Just get Carter to sign. And don’t pack your bags quite yet. We may have another errand for you to run.”

He looked at the clock: 6:58. Doyle was in the shower. Wolgast heard the faucet shut off with a groan, then the blast of a hair dryer. He had a vague memory of hearing Doyle returning from the bar-a rush of street noise from the open door, a muttered apology, and then the sound of water running-and looking at the clock and seeing it was a little after two A.M.

Doyle stepped into the room, a towel wrapped at his waist. Steam moistened the air around him. “Good, you’re up.” His eyes were bright, his skin flushed from the heat of the shower. How the guy could stay out half the night drinking and still look like he was ready to run a marathon was beyond Wolgast’s comprehension.

Wolgast cleared his throat. “How’s the fiber-optic business?”

Doyle dropped onto the opposite bed and ran a hand through his damp hair. “You’d be surprised, how interesting a business that is. People underestimate it, I think.”

“Let me guess. The one with the pants?”

Doyle grinned, giving his eyebrows a playful wag. “They all had pants, boss.” He tipped his head at Wolgast. “What happened to you? You look like you got dragged from a car.”

Wolgast looked down at himself to discover he’d slept the night in his clothes. This was becoming something of a habit; ever since he’d gotten the email from Lila, he’d spent most nights on the sofa of his apartment, watching television until he fell asleep, as if going to bed like a normal person was something he was no longer qualified to do.

“Forget about it,” he said. “Must have been a boring game.” He rose and stretched. “We heard from Sykes. Let’s get this over with.”

They ate breakfast at a Denny’s and drove back to Polunsky. The warden was waiting for them in his office. Was it just the mood of the morning, Wolgast thought, or did he look like he hadn’t slept very well, either?

“Don’t bother to sit,” the warden said, and handed them an envelope.

Wolgast examined the contents. It was all pretty much as he expected: a writ of commutation from the governor’s office and a court order transferring Carter to their custody as a federal prisoner. Assuming Carter signed, they could have him in transit to the federal lockup at El Reno by dinner. From there, he’d be moved to three other federal facilities, his trail growing fainter each time, until somewhere around two weeks or three or a month at most, a black van would pull into the compound, and a man now known simply as Number Twelve would step out, blinking at the Colorado sunshine.

The last items in the envelope were Carter’s death certificate and a medical examiner’s report, both dated March 23. On the morning of the twenty-third, three days hence, Anthony Lloyd Carter would die in his cell from a cerebral aneurysm.

Wolgast returned the documents to the envelope and put it in his pocket, a chill snaking through him. How easy it was to make a human being disappear, just like that. “Thank you, Warden. We appreciate your cooperation.”

The warden looked at each of them in turn, his jaw set. “I’m also instructed to say I never heard of you guys.”

Wolgast did his best to smile. “Is there a problem with that?”

“I’m supposing if there were, one of those ME reports would show up with my name on it. I’ve got kids, Agent.” He picked up his phone and punched a number. “Have two COs bring Anthony Carter to the cages, then come to my office.” He hung up and looked at Wolgast. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to wait outside. I look at you any longer, I’m going to have a hard time forgetting about all this. Good day, gentlemen.”

Ten minutes later, a pair of guards stepped into the outer office. The older one had the benevolent, overfed look of a shopping mall Santa, but the other guard, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, was wearing a snarl on his face that Wolgast didn’t like. There was always one guard who liked the job for the wrong reasons, and this was the one.

“You the guys looking for Carter?”

Wolgast nodded and showed his credentials. “That’s right. Special Agents Wolgast and Doyle.”

“Don’t matter who you are,” the heavy one said. “The warden says to take you, we’ll take you.”

They led Wolgast and Doyle down to the visiting area. Carter was sitting on the other side of the glass, the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. He was small, just as Doyle had said, and his jumpsuit fit him loosely, like the clothing on a Ken doll. There were many ways to look condemned, Wolgast had learned, and Carter’s look wasn’t scared or angry but simply resigned, like the world had been taking slow bites of him his whole life.

Wolgast gestured at the shackles, turning toward the two COs. “Take those off, please.”

The older one shook his head. “That’s standard.”

“I don’t care what it is. Take them off.” Wolgast lifted the phone from its cradle on the wall. “Anthony Carter? I’m Special Agent Wolgast. This is Special Agent Doyle. We’re from the FBI. These men are going to come around and remove those shackles. I asked them to do that. You’ll cooperate with them, won’t you?”

Carter gave a tight nod. His voice on the other end of the phone was quiet. “Yessir.”

“Anything else you need to make you comfortable?”

Carter looked at him quizzically. How long since anybody had asked him a question like that?

“I’s all right,” he said.

Wolgast turned to face the guards. “Well? How about it? Am I talking to myself here, or am I going to have to call the warden?”

A moment passed as the guards looked at each other, deciding what to do. Then the one named Dennis stepped from the room and reappeared a moment later on the far side of the glass. Wolgast stood and watched, keeping his eyes fixed on the guard while he removed the shackles.

“That it?” said the heavy guard.

“That’s it. We’ll want to be left alone for a while. We’ll tell the OD when we’re done.”

“Suit yourself,” the guard said and walked out, closing the door behind him.

There was only one chair in the room, a folding metal seat, like something from a high school auditorium. Wolgast took it and positioned himself squarely to the glass, while Doyle remained standing behind him. The talking was Wolgast’s to do. He picked up the phone again.

“Better?”

Carter hesitated a moment, appraising him, then nodded. “Yessir. Thank you. Pincher always does ’em too tight.”

Pincher. Wolgast made a mental note of this. “You hungry? They give you breakfast in there?”

“Pancakes.” Carter shrugged. “That was five hours ago, though.”

Wolgast swiveled to look at Doyle, raising his eyebrows. Doyle nodded and left the room. For a few minutes, Wolgast just waited. Despite the large No Smoking sign, the edge of the counter was rutted with brown burn marks.

“You said you from the FBI?”

“That’s right, Anthony.”

A trace of a smile flicked across Carter’s face. “Like on that show?”

Wolgast didn’t know what Carter was talking about, but that was fine; it would give Carter something to explain.

“What show’s that, Anthony?”

“The one with the woman. The one with the aliens.”

Wolgast thought a moment, then remembered. Of course: The X-Files. It had been off the air for what, twenty years? Carter had probably seen it as a kid, in reruns. Wolgast couldn’t remember very much about it, just the idea of it-alien abductions, some kind of conspiracy to hush the thing up. That was Carter’s impression of the FBI.

“I liked that show too. You getting on in here all right?”

Carter squared his shoulders. “You came here to ask me that?”

“You’re a smart guy, Anthony. No, that’s not the reason.”

“What the reason then?”

Wolgast leaned closer to the glass; he found Carter’s eyes and held them with his own.

“I know about this place, Anthony. Terrell Unit. I know what goes on in here. I’m just making sure you’re being treated properly.”

Carter eyed him skeptically. “Does tolerable, I guess.”

“The guards okay with you?”

“Pincher’s tight with the cuffs, but he’s all right most of the time.” Carter lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug. “Dennis ain’t no friend of mine. Some of the others, too.”

The door opened behind Carter and Doyle entered, bearing a yellow tray from the commissary. He placed the tray on the counter in front of Carter: a cheeseburger and fries, gleaming with grease, resting on waxed paper in a little plastic basket. Beside it sat a carton of chocolate milk.

“Go on, Anthony,” Wolgast said, and gestured toward the tray. “We can talk when you’re done.”

Carter placed the receiver on the counter and lifted the cheeseburger to his mouth. Three bites and the thing was half gone. Carter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and got to work on the fries while Wolgast watched. Carter’s concentration was total. It was like watching a dog eat, Wolgast thought.

Doyle had returned to Wolgast’s side of the glass. “Damn,” he said quietly, “that guy sure was hungry.”

“They got anything for dessert down there?”

“Bunch of dried-up looking pies. Some éclairs looked like dog turds.”

Wolgast thought a moment. “On second thought, skip dessert. Get him a glass of iced tea. Make it nice, too, if you can. Dress it up a little.”

Doyle frowned. “He’s got the milk. I don’t know if they even have iced tea down there. It’s like a barnyard.”

“This is Texas, Phil.” Wolgast suppressed the impatience in his voice. “Trust me, they have tea. Just go find it.”

Doyle shrugged and left again. When Carter had finished his meal, he licked the salt off his fingers, one by one, and sighed deeply. When he picked up the receiver, Wolgast did the same.

“How’s that, Anthony? Feeling better?”

Through the receiver, Wolgast could hear the watery heaviness of Carter’s breathing; his eyes were slack and glazed with pleasure. All those calories, all those protein molecules, all those complex carbohydrates hitting his system like a hammer. Wolgast might just as well have given him a fifth of whiskey.

“Yessir. Thank you.”

“A man’s got to eat. A man can’t live on pancakes.”

A silent moment passed. Carter licked his lips with a slow tongue. His voice, when he spoke, was almost a whisper. “What you want from me?”

“You’ve got it backward, Anthony,” Wolgast said, nodding. “It’s me who’s here to find out what I can do for you.”

Carter dropped his eyes to the counter, the grease-stained wreckage of his meal. “He sent you, didn’t he.”

“Who’s that, Anthony?”

“Woman’s husband.” Carter frowned at the memory. “Mr. Wood. He come here once. Told me he found Jesus.”

Wolgast remembered what Doyle had told him in the car. Two years ago, and it was still on Carter’s mind.

“No, he didn’t send me, Anthony. You have my word.”

“Told him I was sorry,” Carter insisted, his voice cracking. “Told everybody. Ain’t gonna say it no more.”

“No one’s saying you have to, Anthony. I know you’re sorry. That’s why I came all this way to see you.”

“All what way?”

“A long way, Anthony.” Wolgast nodded slowly. “A very, very long way.”

Wolgast paused, searching Carter’s face. There was something about him, different from the others. He felt the moment opening, like a door.

“Anthony, what would you say if I told you I could get you out of this place?”

Behind the glass, Carter eyed him cautiously. “How you mean?”

“Just like I said. Right now. Today. You could leave Terrell and never come back.”

Carter’s eyes floated with incomprehension; the idea was too much to process. “I’d say now I know you’s fooling with me.”

“No lie, Anthony. That’s why we came all this way. You may not know it, but you’re a special man. You could say you’re one of a kind.”

“You talk about me leaving here?” Carter frowned bitterly. “Ain’t make no sense. Not after all this time. Ain’t got no appeal. Lawyer said so in a letter.”

“Not an appeal, Anthony. Better than that. Just you, getting out of here. How does that sound to you?”

“It sound great.” Carter sat back and crossed his arms over his chest with a defiant laugh. “It sound too good to be true. This Terrell.”

It always amazed Wolgast how much accepting the idea of commutation resembled the five stages of grief. Right now, Carter was in denial. The idea was just too much to take in.

“I know where you are. I know this place. It’s the death house, Anthony. It’s not the place where you belong. That’s why I’m here. And not for just anyone. Not these other men. For you, Anthony.”

Carter’s posture relaxed. “I ain’t nobody special. I knows that.”

“But you are. You may not know it, but you are. You see, I need a favor from you, Anthony. This deal’s a two-way street. I can get you out of here, but there’s something I need for you to do for me in return.”

“A favor?”

“The people I work for, Anthony, they saw what was going to happen to you in here. They know what’s going to happen in June, and they don’t think it’s right. They don’t think it’s right the way you’ve been treated, that your lawyer has up and left you here like this. And they realized they could do something about it, and that they had a job they needed you to do instead.”

Carter frowned in confusion. “Cuttin’, you mean? Like that lady’s lawn?”

Jesus, Wolgast thought. He actually thought he wanted him to cut the grass. “No, Anthony. Nothing like that. Something much more important.” Wolgast lowered his voice again. “You see, that’s the thing. What I need you to do is so important, I can’t tell you what it is. Because I don’t even know myself.”

“How you know it’s so important you don’t know what it is?”

“You’re a smart man, Anthony, and you’re right to ask that. But you’re going to have to trust me. I can get you out of here, right now. All you have to do is say you want to.”

That was when Wolgast pulled the warden’s envelope from his pocket and opened it. He always felt like a magician at this moment, lifting his hat to show a rabbit. With his free hand, he flattened the document against the glass for Carter to see.

“Do you know what this is? This is a writ of commutation, Anthony, signed by Governor Jenna Bush. It’s dated today, right there at the bottom. You know what that means, a commutation?”

Carter was squinting at the paper. “I don’t go to the needle?”

“That’s right, Anthony. Not in June, not ever.”

Wolgast returned the paper to his jacket pocket. Now it was bait, something to want. The other document, the one Carter would have to sign-which he would sign, Wolgast felt certain, when all the hemming and hawing was over; the one in which Anthony Lloyd Carter, Texas inmate 999642, handed one hundred percent of his earthly person, past, present, and future, to Project NOAH-was tucked against it. By the time this second piece of paper saw daylight, the whole point was not to read it.

Carter gave a slow nod. “Always liked her. Liked her when she was first lady.”

Wolgast let the error pass. “She’s just one of the people I work for, Anthony. There are others. You might recognize some of the names if I told you, but I can’t. And they asked me to come and see you, and tell you how much they need you.”

“So I do this thing for you, and you get me out? But you can’t tell me what it is?”

“That’s pretty much the deal, Anthony. Say no, and I’ll move on. Say yes, and you can leave Terrell tonight. It’s that simple.”

The door into the cage opened once more; Doyle stepped through, holding the tea. He’d done as Wolgast had asked, balancing the glass on a saucer with a long spoon beside it and a wedge of lemon and packets of sugar. He placed it all on the counter in front of Carter. Carter looked at the glass, his face gone slack. That was when Wolgast thought it. Anthony Carter wasn’t guilty, at least not in the way the court had spun it. With the others, it was always clear right off what Wolgast was dealing with, that the story was the story. But not in this case. Something had happened that day in the yard; the woman had died. But there was more to it, maybe a lot more. Looking at Carter, this was the space into which Wolgast felt his mind moving, like a dark room with no windows and one locked door. This, he knew, was the place where he would find Anthony Carter-he’d find him in the dark-and when he did, Carter would show him the key that would open the door.

He spoke with his eyes locked on the glass. “I jes’ want… ” he began.

Wolgast waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, Wolgast spoke again. “What do you want, Anthony? Tell me.”

Carter lifted his free hand to the side of the glass and brushed the tips of his fingers against it. The glass was cool, and sweating with moisture; Carter drew his hand away and rubbed the beads of water between his thumb and fingers, slowly, his eyes focused on this gesture with complete attention. So intense was his concentration that Wolgast could feel the man’s whole mind opening up to it, taking it in. It was as if the sensation of cool water on his fingertips was the key to every mystery of his life. He raised his eyes to Wolgast’s.

“I need the time… to figure it,” he said softly. “The thing that happened. With the lady.”

And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years…

“I can give you that time, Anthony,” Wolgast said. “All the time in the world. An ocean of time.”

Another moment passed. Then Carter nodded.

“What I got to do?”

Wolgast and Doyle got to George Bush Intercontinental a little after seven; the traffic was murderous, but they still arrived with ninety minutes to spare. They dumped the rental and rode the shuttle to the Continental terminal, showed their credentials to bypass security, and made their way through the crowds to the gate at the far end of the concourse.

Doyle excused himself to find something to eat; Wolgast wasn’t hungry, though he knew he’d probably regret this decision later on, especially if their flight got hung up. He checked his handheld. Still nothing from Sykes. He was glad. All he wanted to do was get the hell out of Texas. Just a few other passengers were waiting at the gate; a couple of families, some students plugged into Blu-rays or iPods, a handful of men in suits talking on cell phones or tapping on laptops. Wolgast checked his watch: seven twenty-five. By now, he thought, Anthony Carter would be in the back of a van well on his way to El Reno, leaving in his wake a flurry of shredded records and a fading memory that he had ever existed at all. By the end of the day, even his federal ID number would be purged; the man named Anthony Carter would be nothing but a rumor, a vague disturbance no bigger than a ripple on the surface of the world.

Wolgast leaned back in his chair and realized how exhausted he was. It always came upon him like this, like the sudden unclenching of a fist. These trips left him physically and emotionally hollowed out, and with a nagging conscience he always had to apply some effort to squash. He was just too damn good at this, too good at finding the one gesture, the one right thing to say. A man sat in a concrete box long enough, thinking about his own death, and he boiled down to milky dust like water in a teapot forgotten on a stove; to understand him, you had to figure out what that dust was made of, what was left of him after the rest of his life, past and future, had turned to vapor. Usually it was something simple-anger or sadness or shame, or simply the need for forgiveness. A few wanted nothing at all; all that remained was a dumb animal rage at the world and all its systems. Anthony was different: it had taken Wolgast a while to figure this out. Anthony was like a human question mark, a living, breathing expression of pure puzzlement. He actually didn’t know why he was in Terrell. Not that he didn’t understand his sentence; that was clear, and he had accepted it-as nearly all of them did, because they had to. All you had to do was read the last words of condemned men to know that. “Tell everyone I love them. I’m sorry. Okay, Warden, let’s do this.” Always words to that effect, and chilling to read, as Wolgast had done by the pageful. But some piece of the puzzle was still missing for Anthony Carter. Wolgast had seen it when Carter touched the side of the glass-before then, even, when he’d asked about Rachel Wood’s husband and said he was sorry without saying it. Whether Carter couldn’t remember what had happened that day in the Woods’ yard or couldn’t make his actions add up to the man he thought he was, Wolgast couldn’t be certain. Either way, Anthony Carter needed to find this piece of himself before he died.

From his seat, Wolgast had a good view of the airfield through the terminal windows; the sun was going down, its last rays angling sharply off the fuselages of parked aircraft. The flight home always did him good; a few hours in the air, chasing the sunset, and he’d feel like himself again. He never drank or read or slept, just sat perfectly still, breathing the plane’s bottled air and fixing his eyes out the window as the ground below him slipped into darkness. Once, on a flight back from Tallahassee, Wolgast’s plane had flown around a storm front so huge it looked like an airborne mountain range, its roiling interior lit like a crèche with jags of lightning. A night in September: they were somewhere over Oklahoma, he thought, or Kansas, someplace flat and empty. It could have been farther west. The cabin was dark; nearly everyone on the plane was sleeping, including Doyle, seated beside him with a pillow tucked against his stubbled cheek. For twenty full minutes the plane had ridden the edge of the storm without so much as a jostle. In all his life, Wolgast had never seen anything like it, had never felt himself so completely in the presence of nature’s immensity, its planet-sized power. The air inside the storm was a cataclysm of pure atmospheric voltage, yet here he was, sealed in silence, hurtling along with nothing but thirty thousand feet of empty air below him, watching it all as if it were a movie on a screen, a movie without sound. He waited for the pilot’s drawling voice to crackle over the intercom and say something about the weather, to let the other passengers in on the show, but this never happened, and when they landed in Denver, forty minutes late, Wolgast never mentioned it, not even to Doyle.

He thought, now, that he’d like to call Lila and tell her about it. The feeling was so strong, so clear in his mind, that it took a moment for him to realize how crazy this was, that it was just the time machine talking. The time machine: that’s the name the counselor had given it. She was a friend of Lila’s from the hospital whom they had visited just a couple of times, a woman in her thirties with long hair, prematurely gray, and large eyes, permanently damp with sympathy. She liked to take her shoes off at the start of each visit and sit with her legs folded under her, like a camp counselor about to lead them in song, and she spoke so quietly that Wolgast had to lean forward from the sofa to hear her. From time to time, she explained in her tiny voice, their minds would play tricks on them. It wasn’t a warning, the way she said it; she was simply stating a fact. He and Lila might do something or see something and have a strong feeling from the past. They might, for instance, find themselves standing in the checkout line of the grocery with a packet of diapers in their cart, or tiptoeing past Eva’s room, as if she were asleep. Those would be the hardest moments, the woman explained, because they’d have to relive their loss all over again; but as the months passed, she assured them, this would happen less and less.

The thing was, these moments weren’t hard for Wolgast. They still happened to him every now and then, even three years after the fact, and when they did, he didn’t mind at all: far from it. They were unexpected presents his mind could give him. But it was different for Lila, he knew.

“Agent Wolgast?”

He turned in his chair. The simple gray suit, the inexpensive but comfortable oxford shoes, the blandly forgettable tie: Wolgast might have been looking in a mirror. But the face was new to him.

He rose and reached into his pocket to show his ID. “That’s me.”

“Special Agent Williams, Houston field office.” They shook. “I’m afraid you won’t be taking this flight after all. I’ve got a car outside for you.”

“Is there a message?”

Williams drew an envelope from his pocket. “I think this is probably what you’re looking for.”

Wolgast accepted the envelope. Inside was a fax. He sat and read, then read it again. He was still reading when Doyle returned, sipping from a straw and carrying a bag from Taco Bell.

Wolgast lifted his gaze to Williams. “Give us a second, will you?”

Williams moved off down the concourse.

“What is it?” Doyle said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

Wolgast shook his head. He passed the fax to Doyle.

“Sweet Jesus, Phil. It’s a civilian.”

FOUR

Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto didn’t know what God wanted. But she knew He wanted something.

As long as she could remember, the world had spoken to her like this, in whispers and murmurs: in the rustling of the palm fronds moving in the ocean wind above the village where she was raised; in the sound of cool water running over rocks in the stream behind her house; even in the busy sounds men made, in the engines and machines and voices of the human world. She was just a little girl, not more than six or seven, when she’d asked Sister Margaret, who ran the convent school in Port Loko, what she was hearing, and Sister laughed. Lacey Antoinette, she said. How you surprise me. Don’t you know? She lowered her voice, putting her face close to Lacey’s. That’s nothing less than the voice of God.

But she did know; she understood, as soon as Sister said it, that she’d always known. She never told anyone else about the voice, the way Sister had spoken to her, as if it was something only the two of them knew, told her that what she heard in the wind and leaves, in the very thread of existence itself, was a private thing between them. There were times, sometimes for weeks or even a month, when the feeling receded and the world became an ordinary place again, made of ordinary things. She believed that this was how the world felt to most people, even those closest to her, her parents and sisters and friends at school; they lived their whole lives in a prison of drab silence, a world without a voice. Knowing this made her so sad that sometimes she couldn’t stop crying for days at a time, and her parents would take her to the doctor, a Frenchman with long sideburns who sucked on candies that smelled like camphor, who poked and peeked and touched her up and down with the ice-cold disk of his stethoscope but never found anything wrong. How terrible, she thought, how terrible to live like this, all alone forever. But then one day she’d be walking to school through the cocoa fields, or eating dinner with her sisters, or doing nothing at all, just looking at a stone on the ground or lying awake in bed, and she’d hear it again: the voice that wasn’t a voice exactly, that came from inside her and also from everywhere around, a hushed whisper that seemed not made of sound but light itself, that moved through as gently as a breeze on water. By the time she was eighteen and entered the Sisters, she knew what it was, that it was calling her name.

Lacey, the world said to her. Lacey. Listen.

She heard it now, all these years later and an ocean away, sitting in the kitchen of the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Memphis, Tennessee.

She’d found the note in the girl’s backpack not long after her mother had left. Something about the circumstances had made Lacey uneasy, and looking at the girl, she realized what it was: the woman had never told her the girl’s name. The girl was obviously her daughter-the same dark hair, the same pale skin and long lashes that curled upward at the ends, as if lifted by a tiny breeze. She was pretty, but her hair needed combing-there were mats in it thick as a dog’s-and she had kept her jacket on the table, as if she were used to leaving places in a hurry. She seemed healthy, if a little thin. Her pants were too short and stiff with dirt. When the little girl had finished her snack, every bite, Lacey took the chair beside her. She asked her if she had anything in the bag she wanted to play with, or a book they could read together, but the little girl, who hadn’t spoken a word, just nodded and passed it from her lap. Lacey examined the bag, pink with some kind of cartoon characters glued on-their huge black eyes reminded her of the girl’s-and remembered what the woman had told her, that she was taking her daughter to school.

She unzipped the bag and inside found the stuffed rabbit, and the pairs of rolled-up underpants and socks and a toothbrush in a case, and a box of strawberry cereal bars, half empty. There was nothing else in the bag, but then she noticed the little zippered pouch on the outside. It was too late for school, Lacey realized; the girl had no lunch, no books. She held her breath and unzipped the pouch. There she found the piece of notebook paper, folded up.

I’m sorry. Her name is Amy. She’s six years old.

Lacey looked at it for a long time. Not the words themselves, which were plain enough in their meaning. What she looked at was the space around the words, a whole page of nothing at all. Three tiny sentences were all this girl had in the world to explain who she was, just three sentences and the few little things in the bag. It was nearly the saddest thing Lacey Antoinette Kudoto had ever seen in her life, so sad she couldn’t even cry.

There was no point in going after the woman. She’d be long gone by now. And what would Lacey do if she found her? What could she say? I think you forgot something. I think you’ve made some mistake. But there was no mistake. The woman, Lacey understood, had done exactly what she’d set out to do.

She folded the note and put it in the deep pocket of her skirt. “Amy,” she said, and as Sister Margaret had done all those years ago in the yard at the school in Port Loko, she positioned her face close to the girl’s. She smiled. “Is that your name, Amy? That’s a beautiful name.”

The girl looked around the room, quickly, almost furtively. “Can I have Peter?”

Lacey thought a moment. A brother? The little girl’s father? “Of course,” she said. “Who is Peter, Amy?”

“He’s in the bag,” the girl stated.

Lacey was relieved-the girl’s first request of her was something simple that she could easily provide. She removed the rabbit from the bag. It was velveteen plush, worn smooth in shiny patches, a little boy rabbit with beady black eyes and ears stiffened by wire. Lacey passed it to Amy, who placed it roughly on her lap.

“Amy,” she began again, “where did your mother go?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“How about Peter?” Lacey asked. “Does Peter know? Could Peter tell me?”

“He doesn’t know anything,” Amy said. “He’s stuffed.” The little girl frowned sharply. “I want to go back to the motel.”

“Tell me,” Lacey said. “Where is the motel, Amy?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Is it a secret?”

The girl nodded, her eyes fixed on the surface of the table. A secret so deep she couldn’t even say it was a secret, Lacey thought.

“I can’t take you there if I don’t know where it is, Amy. Is that what you want? To go to the motel?”

“It’s on the busy road,” the girl explained, tugging at her sleeve.

“You live there with your mother?”

Amy said nothing. She had a way of neither looking nor speaking, of being alone with herself even in the presence of another person, that Lacey had never encountered. There was something even a little frightening about it. When the girl did this, it was as if she, Lacey, were the one who had vanished.

“I have an idea,” Lacey declared. “Would you like to play a game, Amy?”

The girl eyed her skeptically. “What kind?”

“I call it secrets. It’s easy to play. I tell you a secret, and then you tell me one. Do you see? A trade, my secret for your secret. How does that sound?”

The girl shrugged. “Okay.”

“All right then. I’ll start. Here is my secret. One time, when I was very young, like you, I ran away from home. This was in Sierra Leone, where I come from. I was very cross at my mother, because she wouldn’t let me go to see a carnival without doing my lessons first. I was very excited about this carnival, because I had heard they did tricks with horses, and I was crazy about horses. I bet you like horses too, don’t you, Amy?”

The girl nodded. “I guess.”

“Every girl like horses. But me-I was in love with them! To show her how mad I was, I refused to do my lessons, and she sent me to my room for the night. Oh, I was so angry! I stamped around the room like a crazy person. Then I thought, If I run away, she’ll be sorry she has treated me this way. She’ll let me do what I like from now on. I was very foolish, but that is what I believed. So that night, after my parents and my sisters were asleep, I left the house. I didn’t know where to go, so I hid in the fields behind our yard. It was cold and very dark. I wanted to stay there all night, and then in the morning I would be able to hear my mother crying my name when she woke up and found I wasn’t there. But I couldn’t do this. I stayed in the field a little while, but eventually I was too cold and frightened. I went back home and got into bed, and nobody ever knew I was gone.” She looked at the girl, who was watching her closely, and did her best to smile. “There-I’ve never told anyone that story, not until now. You are the first person I’ve told in my life. What do you think of that?”

The girl was watching Lacey attentively now. “You just… went home?”

Lacey nodded. “You see, I wasn’t so angry anymore. And in the morning, it all seemed like a dream I’d had. I wasn’t even sure it had actually happened, though now, many years later, I know that it did.” She patted Amy’s hand encouragingly. “Now it is your turn. Do you have a secret to tell me, Amy?”

The girl lowered her face and said nothing.

“Even a little one?”

“I don’t think she’s coming back,” said Amy.

The police officers who took the call, a man and a woman, got nowhere either. The female officer, a heavyset white woman with a cropped haircut like a man’s, spoke to the girl in the kitchen, while the other officer, a handsome black man with a smooth, narrow face, took a description of the mother from Lacey. Did she seem nervous? he asked her. Was she drunk, on drugs? What was she wearing? Did Lacey see the car? On and on he went, but Lacey could tell he was asking only because he had to; he didn’t think the girl’s mother would turn up, either. He recorded her answers with a tiny pencil on a pad of paper that, as soon as she’d finished, he returned to the breast pocket of his uniform. In the kitchen, a flash of light: the woman officer had taken Amy’s picture.

“Do you want to call Child Protection, or should we do it?” the policeman asked Lacey. “Because, seeing as how you are who you are, it might make sense if we waited. No use putting her into the system right away, especially over the weekend, if you don’t mind keeping her here. We can put out a description of the woman and see if we get anywhere. We’ll also put the girl in the missing child database. The mother might come back, too, though if she does, you should keep the girl here and call us.”

It was a little past noon; the other sisters were all due back at one o’clock from the Community Pantry, where they’d passed the morning stocking shelves and dispensing boxes of canned goods and cereal, spaghetti sauce, and diapers. They did this every Tuesday and Friday. But Lacey had been nursing a head cold all week-even after three years in Memphis, she still hadn’t adapted to the damp winters-and Sister Arnette had told Lacey to stay home, no use making herself sicker. It was like Sister Arnette to make a decision like this, even though Lacey had woken up feeling perfectly well.

Looking at the officer, she made a quick decision. “I will do it,” she said.

Which was how, when the sisters returned, it happened that Lacey failed to tell them the truth about the girl. This is Amy, she told them, as they were taking off their coats and scarves in the hall. Her mother is a friend, and she was called away to visit a sick relative, and Amy will be spending the weekend with us. It surprised her, how easily the lie came; she had no practice with deceit, and yet the words had assembled themselves quickly in her mind and found their way to her lips without effort. As she spoke she glanced at Amy, wondering if she would expose her, and she saw a flicker of agreement in the girl’s eyes. She was, Lacey understood then, a girl used to keeping secrets.

“Sister,” said Sister Arnette, speaking with her old woman’s air of perpetual disapproval, “I’m glad to see that you are offering our help to this girl and her mother. But it is also true that this is something you should have asked me about.”

“I’m very sorry,” Lacey said. “It was an emergency. It will only be until Monday.”

Sister Arnette looked appraisingly at Lacey, then down at Amy, who was standing with her back pressed to the pleats of Lacey’s skirt. While she did this, Sister Arnette removed her gloves, one finger at a time. Cold air from outside still swirled in the close space of the hallway.

“This is a convent, not an orphanage. This isn’t a place for children.”

“I understand, Sister. And I am very sorry. It simply couldn’t be helped.”

Another moment passed. Dear Lord, Lacey thought, help me to like this person more than I do, Sister Arnette, who is imperious and thinks much of herself, but is Your servant, as I am.

“All right,” Sister Arnette said at last, and sighed irritably. “Until Monday. She can use the spare room.”

It was then that Sister Lacey wondered why: why she had lied, and why the lie had come so easily, as if it weren’t a lie in the larger sense of things-true and things-untrue. Her story was also full of holes. What would happen if the police returned, or telephoned, and Sister Arnette discovered what she’d done? What would happen Monday, when she had to call the county? And yet she felt no fear about these matters. The girl was a mystery, sent to them by God-and not even to them, but to her. To Lacey. It was her job to figure out what the answer to this mystery was, and by lying to Sister Arnette-not necessarily a lie, she told herself; who was to say the mother hadn’t gone to visit a sick relative after all?-she had given herself the time required to unravel it. So perhaps that was why the lie had come so easily; the Holy Spirit had spoken through her, inspired her with the flame of a different, deeper sort of truth, and what it had said was that the girl was in trouble and needed Lacey to help her.

The other sisters were pleased; they never had visitors, or at least very rarely, and these were always religious-priests, other sisters. But a little girl: this was something new. The minute Sister Arnette had climbed the stairs to her room, they all began to talk. How did Sister Lacey know the girl’s mother? How old was Amy? What did she like to do? To eat? To watch? To wear? They were so excited they scarcely noticed how seldom Amy spoke, that in fact she said nothing at all; Lacey did the talking. For dinner, Amy would like hamburgers and hot dogs-these were her favorites-with potato chips, and chocolate-chip ice cream. She enjoyed coloring and crafts, and liked to watch movies with princesses in them, and rabbits if they had anything like that at the store. She would need clothes; her mother, in her haste, had forgotten the little girl’s suitcase, she was so frazzled by her own mission of mercy (to Arkansas, near Little Rock; the little girl’s grandmother was diabetic, with heart trouble), and when she’d said she would go home for it, Lacey had insisted no, she could easily manage. The lies poured forth so gracefully upon ears so willing to believe that, within the hour, all the sisters seemed to have a slightly different version of the same story. Sister Louisa and Sister Claire took the van to Piggly Wiggly for the hamburgers and hot dogs and chips, then to Walmart, for clothing and movies and toys; in the kitchen, Sister Tracy set about planning the evening meal, announcing that not only could they expect the promised hamburgers and hot dogs and ice cream, but to go with the ice cream, a three-tier chocolate cake. (They always looked forward to Fridays, Sister Tracy’s night to cook. Her parents owned a restaurant in Chicago; before she’d entered the Sisters, she had trained at Cordon Bleu.) Even Sister Arnette seemed to catch the spirit, sitting with Amy and the other sisters in the den to watch The Princess Bride while dinner was prepared.

Through it all, Sister Lacey set her mind on God. When the movie, which everyone agreed was wonderful, ended, and Sister Louise and Sister Claire took Amy to the kitchen to show her some of the toys they’d bought at Walmart-coloring books, crayons and paste and construction paper, a Barbie Pet Shop Kit that had taken Sister Louise fifteen minutes to free from the prison of its plastic package with all of its little parts, the combs and brushes for the dogs and the tiny dishes and the rest-Lacey climbed the stairs. In the silence of her room she prayed on this mystery, the mystery of Amy, listening for the voice that would sweep through her, filling her with the knowledge of His will; but as she lifted her mind to God, all that came to her was the feeling of a question with no certain answer. This, she knew, was another way God could speak to a person. His will was elusive most of the time, and although this was frustrating, and it would be nice if, from time to time, He chose to make His intentions more explicit, this wasn’t how things worked. Though most of the sisters prayed in the little chapel behind the kitchen, and Lacey did this too, she reserved her most earnest, searching prayers for this time alone in her room, not even kneeling but sitting at her desk or on the corner of her narrow bed. She’d put her hands in her lap, close her eyes, and send her mind out as far as she could-since childhood, she had imagined it as a kite on a string, lifting higher as she let the line out-and wait to see what happened. Now, sitting on the bed, she sent the kite as high as she dared, the imaginary ball of string growing smaller in her hand, the kite itself just a speck of color far above her head, but all she felt was the wind of heaven pushing upon it, a force of great power against a thing so small.

After dinner, the sisters returned to the living room to watch a program on TV, a hospital show they had been following all year, and Sister Lacey took Amy upstairs to prepare for bed. It was eight o’clock; usually all the sisters were in bed by nine, to rise at five for morning devotions, and it seemed to Lacey that these were the kind of hours a girl of Amy’s age could also keep. She gave Amy a bath, scrubbing her hair with raspberry shampoo and working in a dollop of conditioner for the tangles, then combing it all out so it was straight and glossy, its rich black hue deepening with each pull of the comb, before taking her old clothing downstairs to the laundry. By the time she returned Amy had put on the pajamas Sister Claire had bought that afternoon at Walmart. They were pink, with a pattern of stars and moons with smiling faces, and made of a material that rustled and shone like silk. When Lacey entered the room, she saw that Amy was looking at the sleeves with a bewildered expression; they were too long, flopping clownishly over her hands and feet. Lacey rolled them up; while she watched, Amy brushed her teeth and put her toothbrush back in its case and then turned from the mirror to face her.

“Do I sleep in here?”

So many hours had passed since she’d heard the girl’s voice that Lacey wasn’t sure she’d heard the question correctly. She searched the little girl’s face. The question, strange as it was, made sense to her.

“Why would you sleep in the bathroom, Amy?”

She looked at the floor. “Mama says I have to be quiet.”

Lacey didn’t know what to make of this. “No, of course not. You’ll sleep in your room. It’s right next to mine, I’ll show you.”

The room was clean and spare, bare-walled with just a bed and a bureau and a small writing table, not even a rug on the floor to warm it, and Lacey wished she had something to make it nice for a little girl. She thought that, tomorrow, she would ask Sister Arnette if she could buy a small rug to put by the bed, so Amy’s feet wouldn’t have to touch the cold floorboards in the mornings. She tucked Amy under the blankets and sat on the edge of the mattress. Through the floor she could hear the faint rumble of the television downstairs, and the tick of pipes expanding behind the walls, and outside, the wind fingering the March leaves of the oaks and maples and the soft hum of evening traffic on Poplar Avenue. The zoo was two blocks behind the convent, at the far end of the park; on summer nights when the windows were open, they could sometimes hear the colabus monkeys, whooping and screeching in their cages. This was a strange and wonderful thing for Lacey to hear, so many thousands of miles from home, but when she had visited the zoo she’d discovered it was an awful place, like a jail; the pens were small, the cats were kept in barren cages behind walls of Plexiglas, the elephants and giraffes wore chains on their legs. All the animals looked depressed. Most could barely be bothered to move at all, and the people who came to see them were loud and boorish and let their children throw popcorn through the bars to make the animals notice them. It was more than Lacey could bear, and she had left quickly, close to tears. It broke her heart to see God’s creatures treated so cruelly, with such coldhearted indifference, for no purpose.

But now, sitting on the edge of the bed, she thought that it might be something Amy would like. Perhaps she’d never been to a zoo at all. As long as there was nothing Lacey could do to ease the animals’ suffering, it didn’t seem sinful, a second wrong piled on top of the first, to bring a little girl who had so little happiness in her life to see them. She would ask Sister Arnette in the morning about this, when she asked about the rug.

“There now,” she said, and adjusted Amy’s blanket. The girl was lying very still, almost as if she were afraid to move. “All safe and sound. And I’m just next door if you need anything. Tomorrow we’ll do something fun, you’ll see. The two of us.”

“Can you leave the light on?”

Lacey told her she would. Then she leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. The air around her smelled like jam, from the shampoo.

“I like your sisters,” Amy said.

Lacey felt herself smiling; with everything that had happened, she had somehow failed to anticipate this misunderstanding. “Yes. Well. It’s difficult to explain. You see, we’re not actual sisters, not how you mean. We do not have the same parents. But we are sisters nonetheless.”

“But how can you be?”

“Oh, there are other ways to be sisters. We are sisters in spirit. We are sisters in the eyes of God.” She jostled Amy’s hand. “Even Sister Arnette.”

Amy frowned. “She’s cranky.”

“So she is. But it’s just her way. And she’s glad you’re here. Everyone is. I don’t think we even realized how much we were missing, until you came here.” She touched Amy’s hand again and rose. “Now, enough talk. You need your sleep.”

“I promise I’ll be quiet.”

At the doorway, Lacey stopped. “You do not have to be,” she said.

That night Lacey dreamed; in the dream she was a little girl again, in the fields behind her house. She was huddled under a low palm bush, its long fronds like a tent around her, licking the skin of her arms and face, and her sisters were there, too, though not exactly; her sisters were running away. Behind them she heard men or, rather, she felt them, their dark presences; she heard the pop of gunfire and her mother’s voice, yelling, screaming, telling them, Run away, children, run as fast as you can, though she, Lacey, was frozen in place with fear; she seemed to have turned into some new substance, a kind of living wood, and couldn’t move a muscle. She heard more popping, and with the pops came flashes of light, severing the darkness like a blade. At those instants she could see everything around her: her house and the fields and the men moving through them, men who sounded like soldiers but weren’t dressed like soldiers, who swept the ground before them with the barrels of their rifles. The world appeared to her this way, in a series of still pictures; she was afraid but could not look away. Her legs and feet were wet, not cold but curiously warm; she realized she had urinated on herself, though she did not remember doing this. In her nose and mouth she tasted bitter smoke, and sweat, and something else, which she knew but could not name. It was the taste of blood.

Then she felt it: someone was near. It was one of the men. She could hear the rattle of his breaths in his chest, his searching footsteps; she could smell the fear and anger wicking off his body like a glowing vapor. Don’t move, Lacey, said the voice, fierce and burning. Don’t move. She closed her eyes, not even daring to breathe; her heart was beating so hard inside her, it was as if that’s all she was now, a beating heart. His shadow fell upon her, passing over her face and body like a great black wing. When she opened her eyes again he was gone; the fields were empty, and she was alone.

She awoke with a start, terror coursing through her. But even as she realized where she was, she felt the dream breaking up inside her; it turned a corner and darted out of sight. The touch of leaves on her skin. A voice, whispering. A smell, like blood. But now even that was gone.

Then she felt it. Someone was in the room with her.

She sat up abruptly and saw Amy standing in the doorway. Lacey glanced at the clock. It was just midnight; she had slept only a couple of hours.

“What is it, child?” she said softly. “Are you all right?”

The little girl stepped into the room. Her pajamas shimmered in the light of the streetlamp outside Lacey’s window, so that her body seemed draped with stars and moons. Lacey wondered for a moment if the girl was sleepwalking.

“Amy, did you have a bad dream?”

But Amy said nothing. In the darkness, Lacey couldn’t see the child’s face. Was she crying? She pulled the bedcovers aside to make room for her.

“It’s all right, come here,” Lacey said.

Without a word, Amy climbed into the narrow bed beside her. Her body was giving off waves of heat-not a fever, but nothing ordinary, either. She was glowing like a coal.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Lacey said. “You’re safe here.”

“I want to stay,” the girl said.

Lacey realized she didn’t mean the room, or Lacey’s bed. She meant permanently, to live. Lacey didn’t know how to respond. By Monday she would have to tell the truth to Sister Arnette; there was simply no avoiding it. What would happen after that-to both of them-she didn’t know. But she saw it now, clearly: by lying about Amy, she had wrapped their fates together.

“We’ll see.”

“I won’t tell anyone. Don’t let them take me away.”

Lacey felt a shiver of fear. “Who, Amy? Who will take you away?”

Amy said nothing.

“Try not to worry,” Lacey said. She put her arm around Amy and pulled her close. “Now sleep. We need our rest.”

But in the dark, for hours and hours, Lacey lay awake, her eyes wide open.

It was a little after three A.M. when Wolgast and Doyle reached Baton Rouge, where they turned north, toward the Mississippi border. Doyle had driven the first shift, taking the wheel from Houston to a little east of Lafayette, while Wolgast tried to sleep; shortly after two they’d stopped at a Waffle House off the highway to change places, and since then, Doyle had barely stirred. A light rain was falling, just enough to mist the windshield.

To the south lay the Federal Industrial District of New Orleans, which Wolgast was glad to avoid. Just the thought of it depressed him. He had visited Old New Orleans once before, on a trip to Mardi Gras with friends from college, and been instantly taken by the city’s wild energy-its pulsing permissiveness, its vivid sense of life. For three days he’d barely slept, or felt the need to. One early morning he found himself in Preservation Hall-which was, despite its name, little more than a shack, hotter than the mouth of hell-listening to a jazz sextet playing “St. Louis Blues” and realized he’d been up for almost forty-eight hours straight. The air of the room was as tumescent as a greenhouse; everyone was dancing and shuffling and clapping along, a crowd of people of all ages and colors. Where else could you find yourself listening to six old black men, none of them a day under eighty, playing jazz at five o’clock in the morning? But then Katrina hit the city in ’05, and Vanessa a few years later-a full-blown Category 5 that roared ashore on 180-mile-per-hour winds, pushing a storm surge thirty feet tall-and that was the end of that. Now the place was little more than a giant petrochemical refinery, ringed by flooded lowlands so polluted that the water of its fouled lagoons could melt the skin right off your hand. Nobody lived inside the city proper anymore; even the sky above it was off-limits, patrolled by a squadron of fighter jets out of Kessler AFB. The whole place was ringed by fencing and patrolled by Homeland Security forces in full battle dress; beyond the perimeter, radiating outward for ten miles in all directions, was the N.O. Housing District, a sea of trailers once used for evacuees but now serving as a gigantic human storage facility for the thousands of workers who made the city’s industrial complex hum day and night. It was little more than a giant outdoor slum, a cross between a refugee camp and some frontier outpost from the Wild West; among law enforcement, it was generally known that the murder rate inside the N.O. was completely off the charts, though because it wasn’t officially a city of any kind, not even part of any state, this fact went mostly unreported.

Now, not long before sunup, the Mississippi Border Checkpoint appeared ahead of them, a twinkling village of lights in the predawn darkness. Even at this hour, the lines were long, mostly tanker trucks headed north to St. Louis or Chicago. Guards with dogs and Geiger counters and long mirrors on poles moved up and down the lines. Wolgast pulled in behind a semi with Yosemite Sam mud flaps and a bumper sticker that read: I MISS MY EX-WIFE, BUT MY AIM IS IMPROVING.

Beside him, Doyle stirred, rubbing his eyes. He sat up in his seat and looked around. “Are we there yet, Dad?”

“It’s just a checkpoint. Go back to sleep.”

Wolgast pulled the car out of line and drew up to the nearest uniform. He rolled down the window and held up his credentials.

“Federal agents. Any way you can wave us through?”

The guard was just a kid, his face soft and spotted with pimples. The body armor bulked him up, but Wolgast could tell he was probably no more than a welterweight. He should be back at home, Wolgast thought, wherever that was, snug in bed and dreaming of some girl in his algebra class, not standing on a highway in Mississippi wearing thirty pounds of Kevlar, holding an assault rifle over his chest.

He eyed Wolgast’s credentials with only vague interest, then tipped his head toward a concrete building sitting off the highway.

“You’ll have to pull over to the station, sir.”

Wolgast sighed with irritation. “Son, I don’t have time for this.”

“You want to skip the lines, you do.”

At that moment, a second guard stepped into their headlights. He turned his hips to their vehicle and unslung his weapon. What the fuck, Wolgast thought.

“For Pete’s sake. Is that really necessary?”

“Hands where we can see them, sir!” the second man barked.

“For crying out loud,” Doyle said.

The first guard turned toward the man in the headlights. He waved his hand to tell him to lower his weapon. “Cool it, Duane. They’re feds.” The second man hesitated, then shrugged and walked away.

“Sorry about that. Just pull around. They’ll have you out fast.”

“They better,” Wolgast said.

In the station, the OD took their credentials and asked them to wait while he phoned in their ID numbers. FBI, Homeland Security, even state and local cops; everybody was on a centralized system now, their movements tracked. Wolgast poured himself a cup of sludgy coffee from the urn, took a few halfhearted sips, and tossed it in the trash. There was a No Smoking sign, but the room reeked like an old ashtray. The clock on the wall said it was just past six; in about an hour the sun would be coming up.

The OD stepped back to the counter with their credentials. He was a trim man, nondescript, wearing the ash gray uniform of Homeland Security. “Okay, gentlemen. Let’s get you on your merry way. Just one thing: the system says you were booked to fly to Denver tonight. Probably just an error, but I need to log it.”

Wolgast had his answer ready. “We were. We were redirected to Nashville to pick up a federal witness.”

The duty officer considered this a minute, then nodded. He typed the information into his computer. “Fair enough. Raw deal, they didn’t fly you. That must be a thousand miles.”

“Tell me about it. I just go where I’m told.”

“Amen, brother.”

They returned to their car, and a guard waved them to the exit. Moments later they were back on the highway.

“Nashville?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast nodded, fixing his eyes on the road ahead. “Think about it. I-55 has checkpoints in Arkansas and Illinois, one just south of St. Louis and one about halfway between Normal and Chicago. But you take 40 east across Tennessee, the first checkpoint is all the way across the state, at the I-40 and 75 interchange. Ergo, this is the last checkpoint between here and Nashville, so the system won’t know we never went there. We can make the pickup in Memphis, cross into Arkansas, bypass the Oklahoma checkpoint by driving the long way around Tulsa, pick up 70 north of Wichita, and meet Richards at the Colorado border. One checkpoint between here and Telluride, and Sykes can handle that. And nowhere does it say we went to Memphis.”

Doyle frowned. “What about the bridge on 40?”

“We’ll have to avoid it, but there’s a pretty easy detour. About fifty miles south of Memphis there’s an older bridge across the river, connects to a state highway on the Arkansas side. The bridge isn’t rated for the big tankers coming up from the N.O., so it’s passenger cars only and mostly automated. The bar-code scanner will pick us up, and so will the cameras. But that’s easy to take care of later if we have to. Then we just work our way north and pick up I-40 south of Little Rock.”

They drove on. Wolgast thought about turning on the radio, maybe getting a weather report, but decided against it; he was still alert, despite the hour, and needed to keep his mind focused. When the sky paled to gray, they were a little north of Jackson, making good time. The rain stopped, then started again. Around them the land rose in gentle swells like waves far out to sea. Though it seemed like days ago, Wolgast was still thinking about the message from Sykes.

Caucasian female. Amy NLN. Zero footprint. 20323 Poplar Ave., Memphis, TN. Make pickup by Saturday noon latest. No contact. TUR. Sykes.

TUR: travel under radar.

Don’t just catch a ghost, Agent Wolgast; be a ghost.

“Do you want me to drive?” Doyle asked, cutting the silence, and Wolgast could tell from his voice that he’d been thinking the same thing. Amy NLN. Who was Amy NLN?

He shook his head. Around them, the day’s first light spread over the Mississippi Delta like a sodden blanket. He tapped the wipers to clear the mist away.

“No,” he said. “I’m good.”

FIVE

Something was wrong with Subject Zero.

For six days straight he hadn’t come out of the corner, not even to feed. He just kind of hung there, like some kind of giant insect. Grey could see him on the infrared, a glowing blob in the shadows. From time to time he’d change positions, a few feet to the left or right, but that was it, and Grey had never seen him actually do this. Grey would just lift his face from the monitor, or leave containment to get a cup of coffee or sneak a smoke in the break room, and by the time he looked again, he’d find Zero hanging someplace else.

Hanging? Sticking? Hell, levitating?

No one had explained a goddamn thing to Grey. Not word one. Like, for starters, what Zero actually was. There were things about him that Grey would say were sort of human. Such as, he had two arms and two legs. There was a head where a head should be, and ears and eyes and a mouth. He even had something like a johnson dangling down south, a curled-up little seahorse of a thing. But that’s where the similarities stopped.

For instance: Subject Zero glowed. In the infrared, any heat source would do that. But the image of Subject Zero flared on the screen like a lit match, almost too bright to look at. Even his crap glowed. His hairless body, smooth and shiny as glass, looked coiled-that was the word Grey thought of, like the skin was stretched over lengths of coiled rope-and his eyes were the orange of highway cones. But the teeth were the worst. Every once in a while Grey would hear a little tinkling sound on the audio, and know it was the sound of one more tooth dropped from Zero’s mouth to the cement. They rained down at the rate of half a dozen a day. These went into the incinerator, like everything else; it was one of Grey’s jobs to sweep them up, and it gave him the shivers to see them, long as the little swords you’d get in a fancy drink. Just the thing if, say, you wanted to unzip a rabbit and empty it out in two seconds flat.

There was something about him that was different than the others, too. Not that he looked all that different. The glowsticks were all a bunch of ugly bastards, and over the six months Grey had been working on Level 4, he’d gotten used to their appearance. There were little differences, of course, that you could pick up if you looked hard. Number Six was a little shorter than the others, Number Nine a little more active, Number Seven liked to eat hanging upside down and made a goddamn mess, Number One was always chatting away, that weird sound they made, a wet clicking from deep in their throats that reminded Grey of nothing.

No, it wasn’t something physical that made Zero stand out; it was how he made you feel. That was the best way Grey could explain it. The others seemed about as interested in the people behind the glass as a bunch of chimps at the zoo. But not Zero: Zero was paying attention. Whenever they dropped the bars, sealing Zero on the back side of the room, and Grey squeezed into his biohazard suit and went in through the air lock to clean up or bring in the rabbits-rabbits, for Christsakes; why did it have to be rabbits?-a kind of prickling climbed up his neck, like his skin was crawling with ants. He’d go about his work quickly, not even really looking up from the floor, and by the time he got out of there and into decon, he’d be glazed with sweat and breathing hard. Even now, a wall of glass two inches thick between them and Zero hanging so that all Grey could see was his big glowing backside and spreading, clawlike feet-Grey could still feel Zero’s mind roving around the dark room, trolling like an invisible net.

Still, Grey had to say it wasn’t a bad job on the whole. He’d certainly had worse in his life. Most of the time all he did was just sit there through an eight-hour shift, penning his way through a crossword and checking the monitor and logging in his reports, what Zero ate and didn’t eat and how much of his piss and shit went down the drain, and backing up the hard drives when they maxed out with a hundred hours of video footage of Zero doing nothing.

He wondered if the others weren’t eating, either. He thought he’d ask one of the techs about that. Maybe they’d all gone on some kind of hunger strike; maybe they were just tired of rabbits and wanted squirrel instead, or possum, or kangaroo. It was funny to think it, given the way the glow-sticks ate-Grey had let himself watch this only once, and that was one time too many; it had practically turned him into a vegetarian-but he had to say there was something fussy about them, like they had rules about eating, starting with the whole business with the tenth rabbit. Who knew what that was about? You gave them ten rabbits, they’d eat only nine, leave the tenth just where it was, like they were saving it for later. Grey had owned a dog once who was like that. He’d called him Brownbear, for no particular reason; he didn’t look especially bearish, and he wasn’t even really brown but kind of a mellow tan color, with flecks of white on his muzzle and chest. Brownbear would eat exactly half his bowl each morning, then finish it at night. Grey was usually asleep when this happened; he’d wake up at two or three A.M. to the sound of the dog in the kitchen, cracking the kibble on his molars, and in the morning, the dish would be sitting empty in its spot by the stove. Brownbear was a good dog, the best he’d ever had. But that was years ago; he’d had to give him up, and Brownbear would be long dead by now.

All the civilian workers, the sweeps and some of the technicals, were housed together in the barracks at the south end of the compound. The rooms weren’t bad, with cable and a hot shower, and no bills to pay. Nobody was going anywhere for a while, that was part of the deal, but Grey didn’t mind; everything he needed he had right here, and the pay was good, right up there with oil-rig money, all piling up in an offshore account with his name on it. They weren’t even taking out any taxes, some kind of special arrangement for civilians employed under the Federal Emergency Homeland Protection Act. A year or two of this, Grey figured, and as long as he didn’t piss away too much at the commissary on smokes and snacks, he’d have enough socked away to put some serious mileage between himself and Zero and all the rest of them. The other sweeps were an okay bunch, but he preferred to keep to himself. In his room at night, he liked to watch the Travel Channel or National Geographic, picking places he’d go when this was all over. For a while he’d been thinking Mexico; Grey figured there’d be plenty of room, since about half the country seemed to have emptied out and was now standing around the parking lot of the Home Depot. But then last week he’d seen a program on French Polynesia-the water blue like he’d never seen blue before, and little houses on stilts sitting right out over it-and now was giving that some serious consideration. Grey was forty-six years old and smoked like a fiend, so he figured he had only about ten good years left to enjoy himself. His old man, who’d smoked like he did, had spent the last five years of his life in a little cart sucking on a tank, until he’d done the big face-plant just a month before his sixtieth birthday.

Still, it would have been nice to get off the grounds every now and then, even just to have a look around. He knew they were in Colorado someplace, from the license plates on some of the cars, and every now and again somebody, probably one of the officers or else the scientific staff, who came and went as they chose, would leave a copy of The Denver Post lying around; so it was no big secret, really, where they were, no matter what Richards said. One day after a heavy snowfall, Grey and some of the other sweeps had gone up to the roof of the barracks to shovel it off, and Grey could see, rising above the line of snowy trees, what looked like some kind of ski resort, with a gondola inching up the hillside and a slope with tiny figures carving down it. It couldn’t have been more than five miles from where he stood. Funny, with a war on and the world the way it was, everything in such a mess, to see a thing like that. Grey had never skied in his life, but he knew there’d be bars and restaurants too, out there beyond the wall of trees, and things like hot tubs and saunas, and people sitting around talking and sipping glasses of wine in the steam. He’d seen that on the Travel Channel, too.

It was March, still winter, and there was plenty of snow on the ground, which meant that once the sun went down the temperature fell like a rock. Tonight a nasty wind was blowing too, and trudging back to the barracks with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his chin tucked into the neck of his parka, Grey felt like his face was getting slapped a hundred times over. All of which made him think some more about Bora-Bora, and those little houses on stilts. Never mind Zero, who apparently had lost his taste for fresh Easter Bunny; what Zero ate and did not eat was none of Grey’s business. If they told him to serve eggs Benedict on toast points from now on, he’d do it with a smile. He wondered what a house like that would cost. With a house like that, you wouldn’t even need plumbing; you could just step to the rail and do your business, any time of the day or night. When Grey had worked rigs in the Gulf, he’d liked to do that, in the early morning or late at night when no one was around; you had to mind the wind, of course, but with a breeze pushing at your back, few pleasures in life compared to taking a leak off a platform two hundred feet over the Gulf and watching it arc into the air before raining down twenty stories into the blue. It made you feel small and big at the same time.

Now the whole oil industry was under federal protection, and it seemed like practically everybody he knew from the old days had disappeared. After that Minneapolis thing, the bombing at the gas depot in Secaucus, the subway attack in L.A. and all the rest, and, of course, what happened in Iran or Iraq or whichever it was, the whole economy had locked up like a bad transmission. With his knees and the smoking and the thing on his record, no goddamn way they were taking Grey in Homeland, or anywhere else. He’d been out of work most of a year when he’d gotten the call. He’d thought for sure it was more rig work, maybe for some foreign supplier. They’d somehow made it sound that way without actually saying it, and he was surprised when he’d driven to the address and found it was just an empty storefront in an abandoned strip mall near the Dallas fairgrounds, with white soap smeared on the windows. The place had once housed a video store; Grey could still make out the name, Movie World West, in a ghostly formation of missing letters on the grimy stucco over the door. The place next to it had been a Chinese restaurant; another, a dry cleaner’s; the rest, you couldn’t say. He’d driven up and down in front a couple of times, thinking he must have had the address wrong and reluctant to climb from the air-conditioned cab of his truck for some pointless goose chase, before he’d stopped. It was about a hundred degrees out, typical for August in north Texas but still nothing you could ever get used to, the air thick and dirty-smelling, the sun gleaming like the head of a hammer coming down. The door was locked but there was a buzzer; he rang and waited a minute as the sweat started to pool under his shirt, then heard a big ring of keys jangling on the other side and the clunk of the unlocking door.

They’d set up a little desk and a couple of file cabinets in the back; the room was still full of empty racks that had once held DVDs, and a lot of tangled wires and other junk was hanging from open spaces in the droppanel ceiling. Leaned against the rear wall of the store was a life-size cardboard figure, coated with a film of dust, of some movie star Grey couldn’t place, a bald black dude in wraparounds, with biceps that bulged under his T-shirt like a couple of canned hams he was trying to smuggle out of a supermarket. The movie was nothing Grey remembered, either. Grey filled out the form but the people there, a man and a woman, barely seemed to look at it. While they typed into the computer they asked him to pee in a cup and then gave him a polygraph, but that was standard stuff. He did his best not to feel like he was lying even when he was telling the truth, and when they asked him about the time he’d done at Beeville, as he knew they would, he told them the story straight out: no way to hide it with the wires, and it was a matter of record besides, especially in Texas, with the website you could go to and see everybody’s faces and all the rest. But even this seemed not to be a problem. They seemed to know a lot about him already, and most of their questions had to do with his personal life, the stuff you couldn’t learn except by asking. Did he have friends? (Not really.) Did he live alone? (When hadn’t he?) Did he have any living family? (Just an aunt in Odessa he hadn’t seen in about twenty years and a couple of cousins he wasn’t even sure he knew the names of.) The trailer park where he was living, up in Allen-who were his neighbors? (Neighbors?) And so on, in that vein. Everything he told them seemed to make them happier and happier. They were trying to hide it, but you could see it on their faces, plain as the words in a book. When he decided they weren’t police, he realized he’d been thinking maybe they were.

Two days later-by which time he realized he’d never learned the names of the man and the woman, couldn’t even have said what they looked like-he was on the plane to Cheyenne. They’d explained the money and the part about not being able to leave for a year, which was all right by him, and made it clear that he shouldn’t tell anybody where he was going, which, in fact, he couldn’t; he didn’t know. At the airport in Cheyenne he was met by a man in a black tracksuit, whom he’d later come to know as Richards-a wiry guy no more than five foot six with a permanent scowl on his face. Richards walked him to the curb; two other men, who must have come in on different flights, were standing by a van. Richards opened the driver’s door and returned with a cloth bag the size of a pillowcase. He held it open like a mouth.

“Wallets, cell phones, any personal stuff, photographs, anything with writing on it, right down to the pen you got at the bank,” he told them. “I don’t care if it’s a fucking fortune cookie. In it goes.”

They emptied their pockets, hoisted their duffels into the luggage rack, and climbed in through the side. It was only when Richards closed the door behind them that Grey realized the windows were blacked out. From the outside the vehicle looked like an ordinary van, but inside it was a different story: the driver’s compartment was sealed off, the passenger compartment nothing but a metal box with vinyl bench seats bolted to the floor. Richards had said they were allowed to trade first names but that was all. The other two men were Jack and Sam. They looked so much like Grey he might have been staring into a mirror: middle-aged white guys with buzz cuts and puffed red hands and workingman’s tans that stopped at the wrists and collar. Grey’s first name was Lawrence, but he’d barely ever used it. It sounded odd coming from his mouth. As soon as he said it, shaking hands with the one named Sam, he felt like somebody different, like he’d boarded the plane in Dallas as one person and landed in Cheyenne as another.

In the dark van, it was impossible to tell where they were going, and a little nauseating. For all Grey knew, they were just circling the airport. With nothing to do or see, they all fell asleep soon enough. When Grey woke up he had no sense of the hour. He also had to pee like a jackrabbit. That was the Depo. He rose from his seat and rapped his knuckles on the sliding panel at the front of the compartment.

“Yo, I gotta stop,” he said.

Richards slid the window open, affording Grey a view through the van’s windshield. The sun had set; the road ahead, a two-lane blacktop, was dark and empty. In the distance he glimpsed a purple line of light where the sky met a mountain ridge.

“I need to take a leak,” Grey explained. “Sorry.”

In the passenger compartment behind him, the other men were rousing. Richards reached onto the floor and passed Grey a clear plastic bottle with a wide mouth.

“I gotta pee in this?”

“That’s the idea.”

Richards closed the window without another word. Grey sat back down on the bench and examined the bottle in his hand. He figured it was big enough. But the thought of taking his equipment out in the van, right in front of the other men, like this was no big deal, made all the muscles around his bladder clamp like a slipknot.

“No way I’m using that,” the one named Sam said. His eyes were closed; he was sitting with his hands folded at his lap. His face wore a look of intense concentration. “I’m just holding it.”

They rode a little farther. Grey tried to think of something that could keep his mind off his bursting bladder, but this only made matters worse. It felt like an ocean sloshing around inside him. They hit a pothole and the ocean crashed against the shoreline. He heard himself groan.

“Hey!” he said, banging on the window again. “Hey in there! I’ve got an emergency!”

Richards opened the panel. “What is it now?”

“Listen,” Grey said, and pushed his head through the narrow space. He lowered his voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “I can’t. Seriously. I can’t use the bottle. You’ve got to pull over.”

“Just hold it, for fucksake.”

“I’m serious. I’m begging you. I can’t… I can’t go like this. I have a medical condition.”

Richards sighed with irritation. Their eyes met quickly in the rearview, and Grey wondered if he knew. “Stay where I can see you and no looking around. I fucking mean it.”

He pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. Grey was muttering under his breath, “C’mon, c’mon… ” Then the door opened and he was out, sprinting away from the rumbling light of the van. He stumbled down the embankment, each second ticking off like a bomb between his thighs. Grey was in some kind of pasture. A sliver of moon was up, wicking the tips of the grass with an icy glow. He had to get at least fifty feet away, he figured, maybe more, to do the thing right. He came to a fence line and despite his knees and the pressure of his bladder he was up and over it like a shot. He heard Richards’s voice behind him yelling for him to stop, fucking stop right now, goddamnit, and then he heard Richards yelling at the other men to do the same. Dewy grass swished against Grey’s pant legs, drenched the toes of his boots. A dot of red light was skipping across the field in front of him, but who knew what that was. He could smell cows, feel their presence around him, somewhere in the field. A fresh surge of panic pressed upon him: what if they were watching?

But it was too late, he simply had to go, there was no way he could wait another second. He stopped where he was and unzipped his fly and peed so hard into the darkness he moaned with relief. No tepid arc of gold: the water shot out of him like the contents of a busted hydrant. He peed and peed and peed some more. God almighty, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world, peeing like this, like a great plug had been pulled out of him. He was almost glad he’d waited so long.

Then it was over. His tank was dry. He stood a moment, feeling the cool night air on his exposed flesh. An immense calm filled him, an almost heavenly well-being. The field stretched around him like a vast carpet, creaking with the sound of crickets. He lit a Parliament from the pack in his shirt pocket, and as the smoke hit his lungs he tipped his face to the horizon. He’d barely noticed the moon before, a rind of light, like a fingernail trimming, suspended over the mountains. The sky was full of stars.

He turned to look in the direction he’d come. He could see the headlights of the van where it was parked by the side of the road, and Richards waiting there in his tracksuit, something bright and shiny in his hand. Grey climbed the fence in time to see Jack emerging from the field as well, then spied Sam crossing the roadway from the far side. They all converged on the van at the same instant.

Richards was standing in the conical glare of the headlights, his hands on his hips. Whatever he had been holding was gone from sight.

“Thanks,” Grey said over the sound of the idling engine. He finished the last of his cigarette and tossed it on the pavement. “I really had to go.”

“Fuck you,” Richards said. “You have no idea.” Jack and Sam were looking at the ground. Richards tipped his head at the open door of the van. “All of you, in. And not one more fucking word.”

They took their seats in chastened silence; Richards started the engine and pulled back onto the roadway. That was when Grey realized it. He didn’t have to look at them to know. The other two, Jack and Sam: they were just like him. And something else. The thing Richards had been holding, which Grey guessed was now tucked away inside the waistband of his tracksuit or stashed in the glove compartment; that little dancing light in the grass, like a single dot of blood.

One more step, Grey knew, and Richards would have shot him.

Once a month, Grey took a shot of Depo-Povera, and every morning a little dot of a pill, star-shaped, of spironolactone. Grey had been following this regimen for a little over six years; it was a condition of his release.

And the truth was, he didn’t mind. He didn’t have to shave as much, there was that. The spironolactone, an antiandrogen, decreased the size of the testicles; since he’d begun taking it, he could shave every second or third day, and his hair was finer and less coarse, like when he was a boy. His skin was clearer and softer, even with the smoking. And of course there were the “psychological benefits,” as the prison shrink had called them. Things didn’t get to him the way they had, the way a feeling could twist inside him for days at a time, like a piece of glass he’d swallowed. He slept like a rock and never remembered his dreams. Whatever it was that made him pull over the truck that day, fifteen years ago-the day that started the whole thing-was long gone. Whenever he sent his mind back there, to that period of his life and all that came after, he still felt bad about it. But even this feeling was indistinct, a picture out of focus. It was like feeling bad about a rainy day, something no one could have helped.

The Depo, though, played hell with his bladder, because it was a steroid. As for not wanting anybody to see him, he guessed that was just part of the way his mind worked now. The shrink told him about this, and like everything else, it had come to pass exactly as he’d said. The inconveniences were slight, but Grey spent a certain amount of time looking away from things. Kids, for one, which was why he’d taken so well to rig work. Pregnant women. Highway rest stops. Most of what was on television-programs he’d watched before without a second thought, not just sexy things but things like boxing or even the news. He wasn’t allowed within two hundred yards of a school or day-care center, which was fine by him-he never drove if he could help it between the hours of three and four and would go blocks out of his way just to avoid a school bus. He didn’t even like the color yellow. It was all a little weird, and certainly nothing he could explain to anyone, but it sure beat the hell out of prison. More than that: it beat the way he lived before, always feeling like he was a bomb that was about to go off.

If his old man could see him now, he thought. With the way he felt on the meds, Grey might even have been able to see his way to forgiving him for the things he’d done. The prison shrink, Dr. Wilder, had spoken a lot about forgiveness. Forgiveness was just about his all-time, number one favorite word. Forgiveness, Wilder explained, was the first step on a long road, the long road of recovery. It was a road, but sometimes it was a door; and only by going through this door could you make peace with your past, and face the inner demon, the “bad you” inside the “good you.” Wilder used his fingers a lot while he was talking, making little quotation marks in the air. Grey thought Wilder was basically full of shit. Probably he said the same crap to everybody. But Grey had to admit Wilder had a point with the “bad you” stuff. The bad Grey was real enough, and for a time, most of his life in fact, the bad Grey was really the only Grey there was. So that was the best thing about the meds, and why he planned to go on taking them the rest of his life, even after the court-ordered ten years were over: the bad Grey was nobody he ever wanted to meet again.

Grey trudged to the barracks through the snow and ate a plate of tacos in the commissary before returning to his room. Tuesday was Bingo Night, but Grey couldn’t work up a head of steam over that; he’d played a couple of times and come up at least twenty dollars down, and the soldiers always won, which made him think it was rigged. It was a stupid game anyway, really just an excuse to smoke, which he could do for free in his room. He lay on his bed, propped a couple of pillows behind his head and an ashtray on his stomach, and flipped on the television. A lot of the stations were blacked out; no CNN, no MSNBC, no GOVTV or MTV or E!-not that he ever looked at those stations anymore-and where commercials would have been the screen went blue for a minute or two until the program came back on. He surfed through the channels until he came to something interesting, a show on the War Network about the Allied invasion of France. Grey had always liked history, had even done pretty well in it back in school. He was good with dates and names, and it seemed that if you kept these straight in your head, the rest was just fill-in-the-blank. Stretched out on his bed, still wearing his coveralls, Grey watched and smoked. On the screen, GIs were tumbling onto the beaches by the boatload, blasting away and dodging shells and hurling their grenades. Behind them, out to sea, huge guns poured fire and thunder onto the cliff sides of Nazi-occupied France. Now that, Grey thought, was a war. The footage was jittery and out of focus half the time, but in one shot Grey could clearly see an arm-a Nazi arm-reaching out from the slotted window of a pillbox that some nice American kid had just used a flamethrower on. The arm was all burned up and smoking like a chicken wing left on a barbecue grill. Grey’s old man had done two tours as a medic in Vietnam, and he wondered what he would have said about a thing like that. Grey sometimes forgot that his father was a medic; when Grey was a kid, the guy hadn’t so much as put a Band-Aid on his knee, not once.

He smoked a last Parliament and turned off the television. Two days ago, the one named Jack and the one named Sam had up and left, not a word to anyone, so Grey had agreed to take a double shift. This would put him back on Level 4 by 06:00. It was a shame, those guys leaving like they had; unless you worked the full year, you forfeited the money. Richards had let it be known in no uncertain terms that this development did not make him one goddamn bit happy, and if anybody else was thinking of skipping, they had better think about this long and hard-very long and hard, he had said, giving the room a long, slow scan, like a pissed-off gym teacher. He gave this little speech in the dining hall during breakfast, and Grey locked his eyes on his scrambled eggs the whole time. He figured what happened to Sam and Jack was none of his business, and in any event the warning didn’t apply to him: he, for one, wasn’t going anywhere, and it wasn’t like he’d been friends with those guys, not really. They’d talked a bit about this and that, but it was really just passing the time, and their leaving meant more money for Grey. An overtime shift was an extra five hundred; you pulled three in a week, they gave you an extra hundred as a bonus, too. As long as the money kept rolling in, filling up his account with all those zeros lined up like eggs in a carton, Grey would sit there on the mountaintop until the last cat was hung.

He peeled off his coveralls and doused the light. Pellets of snow were blowing against his window, a sound like sand shaking in a paper sack; every twenty seconds the blinds flared as the beacon on the west perimeter swung across the glass. Sometimes the drugs made Grey restless or he got leg cramps, but a couple of ibuprofen usually did the trick. He sometimes got up in the middle of the night to smoke or take a leak, though usually he slept straight through. He lay in the dark and tried to calm his thoughts but found himself thinking about Zero again. Maybe it was the burned-up Nazi arm; he couldn’t seem to push the image of Zero from his mind. Zero was a prisoner of some kind. His table manners weren’t anything to brag about, and it was nothing nice to look at, the business with the rabbits. Still, food was food and Zero wasn’t having any of it. All he did was hang there like he was sleeping, though Grey didn’t think he was. The chip in Zero’s neck broadcast all kinds of data to the console, some of which Grey understood and some of which he didn’t. But he knew what sleep looked like, that it looked different from being awake. Zero’s heart rate was always the same, 102 beats per minute, give or take a beat. The technicians who came into the control room to read the data never said anything about this, just nodded and checked off the boxes on their handhelds. But 102 seemed mighty awake to Grey.

And the other thing was, Zero felt awake. There Grey went again, thinking about how Zero made him feel, which was nuts, but even so. Grey had never had much use for cats, but this was the same kind of thing. A cat sleeping on a step wasn’t really sleeping. A cat sleeping on a step was a coiled spring waiting for a mouse to totter along. What was Zero waiting for? Maybe, Grey thought, he was just tired of rabbit. Maybe he wanted Ding Dongs, or a bologna hoagie, or turkey tetrazzini. For all Grey could tell, the guy would have eaten a piece of wood. With choppers like that, there pretty much wasn’t anything he couldn’t bore right through.

Ugh, Grey thought with a shudder, the teeth, and that was when he knew he had to do something else to make himself sleep besides just lying there, stewing in his thoughts. It was already midnight. Six A.M. would jump out at him like a jack-in-the-box before he knew it. He rose and took a couple of ibuprofen, smoked a cigarette and emptied his bladder again for good measure, then slid back between the covers. The spotlights grazed the windows once, twice, three times. He made an effort to close his eyes and imagine the escalator. This was a trick Wilder had taught him. Grey was what Wilder called “suggestible,” meaning he was easily hypnotized, and the escalator was the thing Wilder had used to do this. You imagined being on an escalator, slowly going down. It didn’t matter where the escalator was, an airport or mall or whatever, and Grey’s escalator wasn’t anyplace in particular. The point was, it was an escalator, and you were on it, alone, and the escalator went down and down and down, headed toward the bottom, which wasn’t a bottom in the ordinary sense of being the end of something but a place of cool, blue light. Sometimes it was one escalator; sometimes it was a series of shorter escalators that descended one floor at a time with turns in between. Tonight it was just the one. The mechanism clicked a little under his feet; the rubber handrail was smooth and cool to the touch. Riding the escalator, Grey could feel the blueness waiting below him, but he didn’t avert his gaze to look at it, because it wasn’t a thing you saw; it came from inside you. When it filled you up and took you over, you knew you were asleep.

Grey.

The light was in him now, but it wasn’t blue; that was the funny thing. The light was a warm orange color, and throbbing like a heart. Part of his brain said, You are asleep, Grey; you are asleep and dreaming. But another part, the part that was actually in the dream, took no mind of this. He moved through the pulsing orange light.

Grey. I am here.

The light was different now, golden; Grey was in the barn, in the straw. A dream that was a memory, but not exactly: he had straw all over him from rolling around in it, sticking to his arms and face and hair, and the other boy was there, his cousin Roy, who wasn’t his real cousin, but he called him that; and Roy was covered too, and laughing. They’d been rolling around, fighting, sort of, and then the feeling of it changed, the way a song changed. He could smell the straw, and his own sweat mixing with Roy’s, all of it combining in his senses to make the smell of a summer afternoon as a boy. Roy was saying, quietly, It’s okay, take off them jeans, I’ll take mine off too, ain’t nobody coming. Just do like I do, I’ll show you how it’s done, it’s the best feeling in the world. Grey knelt beside him in the straw.

Grey. Grey.

And Roy was right; it was the best feeling. Like climbing a rope in gym class only better, like a big sneeze building inside him, starting from down low and climbing up through all the hallways and alleyways and channels inside him. He closed his eyes and let the feeling rise.

Yes. Yes. Grey, listen. I am coming.

But it wasn’t just Roy with him, not anymore. Grey heard the roar and then the footsteps on the ladder, like the song changing again. He saw Roy one last time from the corner of his eye and he was all burned up and smoking. His father was using the belt, the heavy black one, he didn’t need to see it to know, and he buried his face in the straw as the belt fell across his bare back, slapping and ripping, again, again; and then something else, deeper, tearing at him from the inside.

You like this, is this what you like, I’ll show you, be quiet now and take it.

This man-he wasn’t his father. Grey remembered now. It wasn’t just the belt he was using and it wasn’t his father who was using it; his father had been replaced by this man, this man named Kurt who’ll be your daddy now, and by this feeling of being torn up inside, the way his real father had torn himself up in the front seat of his truck on the morning it had snowed. Grey couldn’t have been more than six years old when it happened. He awoke one morning before anyone else was up and about, the light of his bedroom floating with a glowing weightlessness, and right away he knew what had called him out of sleep, that snow had fallen in the night. He threw the cover aside and yanked back the drapes of his window, blinking into the smooth brightness of the world. Snow! It never snowed, not in Texas. Sometimes they got ice but that wasn’t the same, not like the snow he saw in books and on TV, this wonderful blanket of whiteness, the snow of sledding and skiing, of snow angels and snow forts and snowmen. His heart leapt with the wonder of it, the pure possibility and newness of it, this marvelous, impossible present waiting outside his window. He touched the glass and felt the coldness leap onto his fingertips, a sudden sharpness, like an electric current.

He hurried from the window and quickly drew on jeans, thrust his bare feet into sneakers, not even bothering to tie the laces; if there was snow outside, he had to be out there in it. He crept from his room and down the stairs to the living room. It was Saturday morning. There’d been a party the night before, folks over to the house, lots of talk and loud voices that he’d heard from his room, and the smell of cigarettes that even now clung to the air like a greasy cloud. Upstairs, his parents would sleep for hours.

He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. The air was cool and still, and there was a smell to it, like clean laundry. He breathed it in.

Grey. Look.

That was when he saw it: his father’s truck. Parked like it always was in the drive, but something was different. Grey saw a splash of dark red, like a squirt of spray paint, on the driver’s window, darker and redder because of the snow. He considered what he was seeing. It seemed like it might be some kind of joke-that his father had done something to tease him, to play a game, to give him something funny and strange to see when he got up in the morning before anybody else was awake. He descended the stairs of the porch and stepped across the yard. Snow filled his sneakers but he kept his eyes locked on the truck, which gave him a worried feeling now, like it wasn’t the snow that had called him out of sleep but something else. The truck was running, pushing a gray smear of exhaust onto the snowy drive; the windshield was fogged with heat and moisture. He could see a dark shape pressed against the window where the redness was. His hands were little and he had no strength but still he’d done it, he’d opened the door of the truck; and as he did, his daddy tumbled past him and onto the snow.

Grey. Look. Look at me.

The body had landed face-up. One eye was pointed up at Grey, but really at nothing; Grey could tell that right off. The other eye was gone. So was that whole side of his face, like something had turned it inside out. Grey knew what dead was. He’d seen animals-possums and coons and sometimes cats or even dogs-broken to pieces on the side of the road, and this was like that. This was over and out. The gun was still in his daddy’s hand, the finger curling through the little hole the way he’d showed Grey that day on the porch. See now, see how heavy it is? You never ever point a gun at anyone. There was blood everywhere too, mixed in with other stuff, like bits of meat and white pieces of something smashed, all over his daddy’s face and jacket and the seat of the truck and the inside of the door, and Grey smelled it, so strong it seemed to coat the insides of his mouth like a melting pill.

Grey, Grey. I am here.

The scene started changing then. Grey felt movement all around him, like the earth was stretching; something was different about the snow, the snow had started moving, and when he lifted his face to look, it wasn’t snow he saw anymore but rabbits: thousands and thousands of fluffy white rabbits, all the rabbits in the world, bunched so closely together that a person could walk across the yard and never touch the ground; the yard was full of rabbits. And they turned their soft faces toward him, pointed their little black eyes at him, because they knew him, knew what he had done, not to Roy but to the other ones, the boys with their knapsacks walking home from school, the stragglers, the ones who were alone; and that was when Grey knew that it wasn’t his daddy anymore, lying in the blood. It was Zero, and Zero was everywhere, Zero was inside him, ripping and tearing, emptying him out like the rabbits, and he opened his mouth to scream but no sound came.

Grey Grey Grey Grey Grey Grey Grey.

In his office on L2, Richards was sitting at his terminal, his mind deep inside a game of free cell. Hand number 36,592, he had to admit, was squarely kicking his ass. He’d played it a dozen times already, coming close but never quite figuring out how to build his columns, how to clear out all the aces when he needed to, to free up the red eights. In that sense it reminded him a little of game 14,712, which was all about the red eights, too. It had taken him most of a day to crack that one.

But every game was winnable. That was the beauty of free cell. The cards were dealt, and if you looked at them right, if you made the right moves, one after the other, sooner or later the game was yours. One victorious click of the mouse and all the cards sailed up the columns. Richards never got tired of it, which was good, because he still had 91,048 games to go, counting this one. There was a twelve-year-old kid in Washington State who claimed to have won every hand, in order-including 64,523, the death’s head of free cell-in just under four years. That was eighty-eight games a day, every day, including Christmas, New Year’s, and the Fourth of July, so assuming the kid took a day off every now and again, to do kid things or even just come down with a good case of the flu, the real number was probably more like a hundred. Richards didn’t see how that was possible. Didn’t he ever go to school? Didn’t he have homework? When did the little bastard sleep?

Richards’s office, like all the underground spaces of the compound, was little more than a fluorescent box, everything pumped in and filtered. Even the light felt recycled. It was a little after two-thirty in the morning, but Richards got by on less than four hours of sleep a night, he had for years, so he paid this no mind. On the wall above his station, three dozen time-stamped monitors displayed every nook of the compound, from the guards freezing their asses off at the front gate to the vacant mess hall with its empty tables and dozing drink dispensers, to the subject containment areas, two floors below him, with their glowing, infectious cargo, and, farther down, through another fifty feet of rock, to the nuclear cells that powered it all and would keep the lights on, the juice flowing, for a hundred years, give or take a decade. He liked having everything where he could see it at a glance, where he could read it like the cards. Sometime between five and six A.M. they’d be taking a delivery, and he figured he might as well just stay up all night for that. Subject processing took a couple of hours at the most; he could grab a few winks at his desk afterward if he had to.

Then, on the computer screen, he saw the answer. It was right there, under the six: the black queen he needed to move the jack and free up the two and so on. A couple of clicks and it was over. The cards shot up the screen like a pianist’s fingers flying over the keys.

Do you want to play again?

You’re goddamn right he would.

Because the game was the world’s natural state. Because the game was war, it always was, and when wasn’t there a war on, somewhere, to keep a man like Richards in good employ? The last twenty years had been kind to him, a long run at the table with nothing but good news from the cards. Sarajevo, Albania, Chechnya. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. Syria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Chad. The Philippines and Indonesia and Nicaragua and Peru.

Richards remembered the day-that glorious and terrible day-watching the planes slam into the towers, the image repeated in endless loops. The fireballs, the bodies falling, the liquefaction of a billion tons of steel and concrete, the pillowing clouds of dust. The money shot of the new millennium, the ultimate reality show broadcast 24-7. Richards had been in Jakarta when it happened, he couldn’t even remember why. He’d thought it right then; no, he’d felt it, right down to his bones. A pure, unflinching rightness. You had to give the military something to do of course, or they’d all just fucking shoot each other. But from that day forward, the old way of doing things was over. The war-the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more-the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are-would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn’t notice and couldn’t remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees-the subjects hadn’t changed, they never would, all coming down, after you’d boiled away the bullshit, to somebody’s quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where-but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

Which was why NOAH had made a certain sense, back when it all started. Richard had been with the project since the beginning, since his first communiqué from Cole, rest in peace, you little shit. He’d known it was something important when Cole actually came to see him in Ankara, five years ago. Richards was waiting at a table by a window when Cole strolled in, swinging a briefcase that probably had nothing in it but a cell phone and a diplomatic passport. He was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt under his khaki suit, a nice touch, like something out of Graham Greene. Richards almost laughed. They ordered a pot of coffee and Cole got started, his smooth face animated with excitement. Cole was from a little town in Georgia, but all those years at Andover and Princeton had tightened up the muscles in his jaw, making him sound like Bobby Kennedy channeling Robert E. Lee. The boy had nice-looking teeth, too, Ivy League teeth, straight as a fence and so white you could read by them in a dark room. So, Cole began, think of the A-bomb, how it changed everything just to have it. Until the Russians set off their own in ’49, the world was ours to do as we liked; for four years it was Pax Americana, bay-by. Now of course everybody and his uncle was cooking one up in his basement, and at least a hundred rust-bucket Soviet-era warheads were floating around on the open market and those were just the ones we knew about, and of course Pakistan and India had burst the cherry with all their bullshit-thanks a bunch, fellas, you made incinerating a hundred thousand people over diddly-squat just another day at the office of the deputy undersecretary of the War on Terr-rah.

But this, Cole said, and sipped his coffee. Nobody else could do this. This was the new Manhattan Project. This was bigger than that. Cole couldn’t go into details, not yet, but for the sake of context, think of the human form itself, weaponized. Think of the American Way as something truly long-term. As in permanent.

Which was why Cole had come to see him. He needed somebody like Richards, he explained, someone off the books, but not only that. Someone practical, with practical skills. People skills, you might say. Maybe not right away, but in the coming months, as the pieces gathered to form the whole. Security was paramount. Security was at the absolute top of Cole’s list. That’s why he had come all this way and put on this ridiculous luau shirt. To get the buy-in. To get this piece of the puzzle nailed down.

All well and good if things had gone according to plan, which they hadn’t, not by a long shot, starting with the fact that Cole was dead. A lot of people were dead, in fact, and some-well, it was hard to say just what they were. Only three people had come out of that jungle alive, not counting Fanning, who was already well on his way to being… well, what? More than Cole had bargained for, that was for sure. There might have been more survivors, but the order from Special Weapons was clear: anybody who didn’t make it to the dust-off was bacon with a side of toast. The missile that screamed in over the mountains had made sure of that. Richards wondered what Cole would have said if he’d known he wouldn’t be one of them.

By then-by the time Fanning was safely locked away, Lear was on-site in Colorado, and everything that had happened in South America had been wiped from the system-Richards had learned what it was all about. VSA, for Very Slow Aging. Richards had to hand it to whoever had dreamed up that one. VSA: Very Silly Abbreviation. A virus or, rather, a family of viruses, hidden away in the world, in birds or monkeys or sitting on a dirty toilet seat somewhere. A virus that could, with the proper refinements, restore the thymus gland to its full and proper function. Richards had read Lear’s early papers, the ones that had gotten Cole’s attention, the first one in Science and the second in Journal of Paleovirology, hypothesizing the existence of “an agent that could significantly lengthen human life span and increase physical robustness and has done so, at select moments, throughout human history.” Richards didn’t need a PhD in microbiology to know that it was risky stuff: vampire stuff, though no one at Special Weapons ever used the word. If it hadn’t been written by a scientist of Lear’s stature, a Harvard microbiologist no less, it all would have sounded like something from the Weekly World News. But still, something about it hit a nerve. As a kid Richards had read his share of such stories, not just the comic books-Tales from the Crypt and Dark Shadows and all the rest-but the original Bram Stoker, and seen the movies too. A bunch of silliness and bad sex, he knew that even then, and yet wasn’t there something about them that struck a deep chord of recognition, even of memory? The teeth, the blood hunger, the immortal union with darkness-what if these things weren’t fantasy but recollection or even instinct, a feeling etched over eons into human DNA, of some dark power that lay within the human animal? A power that could be reactivated, refined, brought under control?

That was what Lear had believed, and Cole too. A belief that had taken them into the Bolivian jungle, looking for a bunch of dead tourists. A bunch of, as it had turned out, undead tourists-Richards disliked the word but couldn’t think of a better one, undeadness being, in the end, a pretty solid descriptor of the condition-who had killed-ripped apart, really-what was left of the research team, all except for Lear, Fanning, one of the soldiers, and a young graduate student named Fortes. If not for Fanning, the whole thing would have been a total loss.

Lear: you had to feel for the guy. Probably he still thought he was trying to save the world, but he’d sold that dream up the river the minute he’d gotten into bed with Cole and Special Weapons. And truth be told, it was hard to say what Lear was thinking these days; the guy never came off L4, slept down there in his lab on a sweaty little cot and took his meals off a hot plate. He probably hadn’t seen the sun in a year. Back at the start, Richards had done a little extra digging, and come up with a number of interesting tidbits, Exhibit A being Lear’s wife’s obituary in the Boston Globe-dated just six months before Cole had come to see him in Ankara, a full year before the Bolivia fiasco. Elizabeth Macomb Lear, age forty-one. BA Smith, MA Berkeley, PhD Chicago. Professor of English at Boston College, associate editor of Renaissance Quarterly, author of Shakespeare’s Monsters: Bestial Transformation and the Early Modern Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2009). A long battle with lymphoma, et cetera. There was a picture, too. Richards wouldn’t have said Elizabeth Lear was a knockout, but she’d been pretty enough, in a slightly undernourished way. A serious woman, with serious ideas. At least there weren’t any kids involved. Probably the chemo and radiation had ruled this out.

So, really, when it came down to it: how much of Project NOAH was really just one grieving man sitting in a basement, trying to undo his wife’s death?

Now, five years later and who knew how many hundreds of millions down the rathole, all they had to show for their troubles were about three hundred dead monkeys, who knew how many dogs and pigs, half a dozen dead homeless guys, and eleven former death row inmates who glowed in the dark and scared the shit out of absolutely everybody. Like the monkeys, the first human subjects had all died within hours, blazing with fever, bleeding out like busted hydrants. But then the first of the inmates, Babcock, had survived-Giles Babcock, as bullshit crazy a man as ever walked the earth; everyone on L4 called him the Talker, on account of the fact that the guy couldn’t shut up even for a second, not before and not after-followed by Morrison and Chávez and Baffes and the rest, each refinement making the virus progressively weaker, so the inmates’ bodies could combat it. Eleven vampires-why not use the word?-who weren’t much good to anyone, as far as Richards could tell. Sykes had confessed that he wasn’t sure you could actually kill them, short of shooting an RPG down their throats. VSA: Vampires, Say Aaaah. The virus had turned their skin into a kind of protein-based exoskeleton, so hard it made Kevlar look like pancake batter. Only over the breastbone, a strike zone about three inches square, was this material thin enough to penetrate. But even that was just a theory.

And the sticks were just crawling with virus. Six months ago, a technician had been exposed; nobody could quite figure out how. But one minute he was fine, the next he was puking onto his faceplate and seizing on the floor of the decon chamber, and if Richards hadn’t seen him twitching on the monitor and sealed the level, who knew what might have happened. As it was, all he’d had to do was purge the chamber and watch the man die, then call for cleanup. He thought the tech’s name was Samuels, or Samuelson. It didn’t matter. The scrubbers showed up clear of virus, and after a seventy-two-hour quarantine, Richards had unsealed the level.

He didn’t wonder for a second that he’d pull the plug, if and when the time came. The Elizabeth Protocol: Richards had to hand it to whoever had come up with the name, if it was somebody’s idea of a joke. Though of course there was no doubt in Richards’s mind who that somebody was. The name was pure Cole-vintage Cole, you might say, since Cole was Cole no more. Beneath that smarmy country club exterior had always lain the heart of a true Machiavellian cutup. Elizabeth, for Christsakes. Only Cole would have actually named it for the guy’s dead wife.

Richards could feel it now; the whole thing was adrift. Part of the problem was the sheer boredom of it all. You couldn’t drop eighty men onto a mountainside with nothing to do but count rabbit skins and ask them to stay put and keep their mouths shut forever.

And then there were the dreams.

Richards had them, too, or thought he did. He never quite remembered. But he sometimes woke up feeling like something strange had happened in the night, as if he’d taken an unplanned trip and only just returned. That’s what had happened with the two sweeps who’d gone AWOL. The castrati had been Richards’s idea, and for a time it had worked out nicely; you’d never meet a more docile bunch of fellows, mellow as the Buddha every one, and when the game was finally over, nobody that anyone was ever going to miss. The two sweeps, Jack and Sam, had gotten out of the compound by stuffing themselves into a couple of garbage bins. When Richards tracked them down the next morning-holed up in a Red Roof by the interstate twenty miles away, just waiting to be caught-that’s all they could talk about, the dreams. The orange light, the teeth, the voices calling their names from the wind. They were just fucking berserk with it. For a while he just sat on the edge of the bed and let them talk it out: two middle-aged sex offenders with skin soft as cashmere and testicles the size of raisins, blowing their noses on their hands, blubbering like kids. It was touching in a way, but you could listen to something like that for only so long. Time to go, boys, Richards said, it’s all right, nobody’s mad at you, and he drove to a place he knew, a pretty spot with a view of a river, to show them the world they’d be leaving, and shot them in the forehead.

Now Lear wanted a kid, a girl. Even Richards had to pause and think about that. A bunch of homeless drunks and death row inmates were one thing, human recyclables as far as Richards was concerned-but a kid? Sykes had explained that it had to do with the thymus gland. The younger it was, he’d told Richards, the better it could fight off the virus, to bring it to a kind of stasis. That was what Lear had been working toward-all the benefits without the unpleasant side effects. Unpleasant side effects! Richards had to allow himself a laugh at that. Never mind that in their former, human lives, the glowsticks had been men like Babcock, who’d cut their mothers’ throats for bus fare. So maybe that had something to do with it, too: Lear wanted a clean slate, somebody whose brain hadn’t filled up with junk yet. For all Richards knew, he’d come asking for a baby next.

And Richards had gotten the goods. A few weeks of trolling until he’d found the right one: Caucasian Jane Doe, approximately age six, dumped like a bad habit at a convent in Memphis by a mother who was probably too strung out to care. Zero footprint, Sykes had told him, and this girl, this Jane-Doe-approximately-age-six, wouldn’t have parted a summer breeze. By Monday, though, she would be in the care of Social Services and you could just kiss her six-year-old backside goodbye. That left a forty-eight-hour window for the grab, assuming the mother didn’t return to claim her, like a piece of lost luggage. As for the nuns, well, Wolgast would find a way to handle them. The guy could sell sunlamps in a cancer ward. He’d proved that well enough.

Richards turned from his screen to eyeball the monitors. All the children were snug in their beds. Babcock looked like he was jabbering away as usual, his throat bobbing like a toad’s; Richards flicked on the audio and listened for a minute to the clicks and grunts, wondering, as he always did, if it added up to something: “Let me out of here” or “I could go for some more rabbits right about now” or “Richards, the first thing I’m doing when I get out of here is coming for you, brother.” Richards himself spoke a dozen languages-the usual European ones, but also Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Russian, Tagalog, Hindi, even a little Swahili-and sometimes, listening to Babcock on the monitor, he got the distinct feeling that there were words in there somewhere, chopped up and scrambled, if only he could teach his ears to hear them. But listening now, all he heard was noise.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Richards turned to find Sykes standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee. He was wearing his uniform but his tie was undone and the flaps of his jacket hung open. He brushed his hand through his thinning hair and spun a chair around to straddle it, facing Richards.

“Right,” Sykes said. “Me neither.”

Richards thought to ask him about his dreams but decided against it: the question was moot. He could read the answer in Sykes’s face.

“I don’t sleep,” Richard said. “Not much, anyway.”

“Yeah, well.” Sykes shrugged. “Of course you don’t.” When Richards didn’t say anything, he tipped his head toward the monitors. “Everything quiet downstairs?”

Richards nodded.

“Anyone else going out for a walk in the moonlight?”

He meant Jack and Sam, the sweeps. It wasn’t Sykes’s style to be sarcastic, but he had a right to be steamed. Garbage bins, for Christsakes. The sentries were supposed to inspect everything coming in or out, but they were just kids, really, ordinary enlisted. They acted like they were still in high school because that’s pretty much all they knew. You had to keep riding them, and Richards had let things slide.

“I’ve spoken to the OD. It’s not a conversation he’s going to forget.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance want to tell me what happened to those guys?”

Richards had nothing to say about that. Sykes needed him, but there was no way he’d ever bring himself to like him or, for that matter, approve of him.

Sykes stood and stepped past Richards to the monitors. He adjusted the gain and zoomed in on the one showing Zero.

“They used to be friends, you know,” he said. “Lear and Fanning.”

Richards nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

“Yeah. Well.” Sykes took in a deep breath, his eyes still locked on Zero. “Hell of a way to treat your friends.”

Sykes turned to point his eyes at Richards, still sitting at his terminal. Sykes looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his eyes, squinting in the fluorescent light, were cloudy. He appeared, for a moment, like a man who had forgotten where he was.

“What about us?” he asked Richards. “Are we friends?”

Now, that was a new one on Richards. Sykes’s dreams had to be worse than he’d thought. Friends! Who cared?

“Sure,” Richards said, and allowed himself a smile. “We’re friends.”

Sykes regarded him for another moment. “On second thought,” he said, “maybe that’s not such a hot idea.” He waved the idea away. “Thanks anyway.”

Richards knew what was bothering Sykes: the girl. Sykes had a couple kids of his own-two grown boys, both West Point like the old man, one at the Pentagon doing something with intelligence, another with a desert tank unit stationed in Saud-and Richards thought maybe there were grandkids somewhere in the mix, too; Sykes had probably mentioned this in passing, but it wasn’t the sort of thing they usually talked about. Either way, this thing with the girl wasn’t going to sit well with him. Truthfully, Richards didn’t really give a damn what Lear wanted, one way or the other.

“You really should get some shut-eye,” Richards said. “We’ve got intake in”-he checked his watch-“three hours.”

“Might as well just stay up.” Sykes moved to the door, where he turned and gave his weary gaze to Richards again. “Just between us, and if you don’t mind my asking, how’d you get him here so fast?”

“It wasn’t hard.” Richards shrugged. “I got him on a troop transport out of Waco. Bunch of reservists, but it counts as a federal corridor. They landed in Denver a little after midnight.”

Sykes furrowed his brow. “Federal corridor or not, it’s too quick. Any idea what the rush is all about?”

Richards couldn’t say for sure; the order had come from the liason at Special Weapons. But if he had to guess, he would have bet it had something to do with the sweaty cot and soup-encrusted hot plate and a year without sunshine or fresh air, with the bad dreams and the Red Roof and all the rest of it. Hell, if you looked at the situation carefully-something he’d long since stopped bothering to do-it probably all went back to the bookishly pretty Elizabeth Macomb Lear, long battle with cancer, et cetera, et cetera.

“I called in a favor and had the purge done from Langley. Systemwide, soup to nuts. From a big-box perspective, Carter is already nobody. He couldn’t buy a pack of gum.”

Sykes frowned. “Nobody’s nobody. There’s always someone who’s interested.”

“Maybe so. But this guy comes close.”

Sykes lingered another moment at the doorway, saying nothing, both of them knowing what the silence was about. “Well,” he concluded, “I still don’t like it. We have a protocol for a reason. Three prisons, thirty days, then we bring him in.”

“Is that an order?” A joke; Sykes couldn’t give him an order, not really. That he could was a pretense Richards only indulged.

“No, forget it,” Sykes said, and yawned into the back of his hand. “What would we do, return him?” He rapped the side of the door with his hand. “Call me when the van gets here. I’ll be upstairs, not sleeping.”

Funny thing: when Sykes was gone, Richards found himself wishing he’d hung around. Maybe they were friends, in a sense. Richards had been on bad jobs before; he knew there was a moment when the tone changed, like a quart of milk left out on the counter too long. You found yourself talking as if nothing mattered, like the whole thing was already over. That was when you got to actually liking people, which was a problem. Things fell apart fast after that.

Carter was nobody unusual, just another con with nothing but his life to trade away. But the girl: what could Lear want with a six-year-old girl?

Richards returned his attention to the monitors and picked up the earphones. Babcock was back in the corner, chattering away. It was funny: something about Babcock always gnawed at him. It was as if Richards was his, like Babcock owned a piece of him. He couldn’t shake the feeling. Richards could sit and listen to the guy for hours. Sometimes he’d fall asleep at the monitors, still wearing the earphones.

He checked his watch again, knowing that he shouldn’t but unable to stop himself. It was just past three. He wasn’t in the mood for another hand of cards, never mind that little bastard in Seattle, and the hours of waiting for the van to pull into the compound suddenly opened before him like a mouth that could swallow him whole.

There was no fighting it. He adjusted the volume and settled back to listen, wondering what the sounds he heard were trying to tell him.

SIX

Lacey awoke to the sound of rain, fanning into the leaves outside her window.

Amy.

Where was Amy?

She rose quickly, threw on her robe, and hurried down the stairs. But by the time she reached the bottom, her panic had eased; surely the child had simply gotten out of bed in search of breakfast, or to watch TV, or simply to have a look around. In the kitchen Lacey found the girl sitting at the table, still in her pajamas, forking bites of toaster waffle into her mouth. Sister Claire was sitting at the head of the broad table, dressed in sweats from her morning jog through Overton Park, holding a steaming mug of coffee and reading the Commercial Appeal. Sister Claire wasn’t actually a sister yet, just a novitiate. The shoulders of her sweatshirt were dappled with rain; her face was moist and flushed.

She put the paper down and smiled at Lacey. “Good, you’re up. We’ve already had our breakfast, right, Amy?”

The little girl nodded, chewing. Before she’d joined the order, Sister Claire had sold houses in Seattle, and as Lacey took a place at the table, she saw what the sister had been reading: the real estate section. If Sister Arnette had seen this, she would have been annoyed, might even have given one of her impromptu speeches about the distractions of material life. But the clock on the stove said it was a little after eight; the other sisters would be next door at Mass. Lacey felt a stab of embarrassment. How could she have slept so late?

“I went to early services,” Claire said, as if answering her thoughts. Sister Claire often went to the 6:00 A.M. before her daily jog, which she referred to as a visit to “Our Lady of Endorphins.” Unlike the rest of the sisters, who had never been anything else, Claire had lived a whole life outside the order: been married, made money, owned things, like a condo and nice shoes and a Honda Accord. She hadn’t felt the call until she was in her late thirties and divorced from the man she once referred to as “the worst husband in the world.” Nobody knew the details except perhaps Sister Arnette, but Claire’s life was a source of wonder to Lacey. How was it possible for a person to have two lives, so very different from each other? Sometimes Claire would say something like “Those are cute shoes” or “The only real good hotel in Seattle is the Vintage Park,” and for a moment all the sisters would be stunned into a silence that was one part disapproval, one part envy. It was Claire who had gone to shop for Amy, the unstated implication being that she was the only one of them who really knew how to do this.

“If you hurry you can still make it to the eight o’clock,” Claire offered. Though of course it was too late; Claire’s real meaning, Lacey understood, was something else. “I can watch Amy.”

Lacey looked at the girl. Her hair was disordered from sleep, but her skin and eyes were bright, rested. Lacey ran the tips of her fingers through the girl’s bangs. “That’s very kind of you,” Lacey said. “Perhaps, today, just this once, because Amy is here-”

“Say no more,” Sister Claire said and, laughing, halted Lacey’s words with a hand. “I’ll cover for you.”

The looming day assembled in Lacey’s mind. Sitting at the table, she remembered her plan for the zoo. When did it open? What about the rain? It would be best, she thought, to be out of the house before the other sisters returned. Not only because they would wonder why she hadn’t come to Mass; they might also start to ask questions about Amy. The lie had worked so far, but Lacey felt its softness, like a floor of rotten boards beneath her feet.

When Amy had finished her waffles and a tall glass of milk, Lacey led her back upstairs and got her quickly into her clothes: a fresh pair of jeans, stiff with newness, and a T-shirt with the word SASSY stenciled on it, the letters outlined with sequins. Only Sister Claire would have possessed the courage to choose something like that. Sister Arnette wouldn’t like the shirt, not at all-if she saw it she’d probably sigh and shake her head as she always did, souring the air of the room-but Lacey knew the shirt was perfect, just the sort of thing a little girl would want to wear. The sequins made the shirt special, and surely that’s what God would want for a child like Amy: some happiness, however small. In the bathroom she wiped the syrup off Amy’s cheeks and brushed out her hair, and when this was done she dressed herself, in her usual pleated gray skirt and white shirt and veil. Outside, the rain had stopped; a warm, unhurried sun was gathering in the yard outside. The day would be hot, Lacey guessed, a blast of warmth sailing in from the south behind the cold front that had pushed rain over the house all night.

She had a little cash, enough for tickets and a treat, and the zoo, of course, was something they could walk to. They stepped outside, into air that had begun to swell with heat and the sweetness of wet grass. The bells of the church had begun to bong out the hour; Mass would be ending at any moment. She led Amy quickly through the garden gate, through the tart aroma of herbs, the rosemary and tarragon and basil that Sister Louise tended so carefully, into the park, where people were already gathering for the first warm day of spring, to taste the sun and feel it on their skin: young people with dogs and Frisbees, joggers plodding along the paths, families staking out shady tables and barbecue pits. The zoo stood at the north end of the park, flanked by a broad avenue that cleaved the neighborhood like a blade. On the far side, the big houses and wide, princely lawns of old Midtown were forgotten, replaced by shotgun shacks with broken-down porches and half-assembled cars melting into the packed-dirt yards. Young men floated up and down the streets like pigeons, roosting on this corner or that and then moving on, all of it benumbed with idleness and vaguely ominous. Lacey should have felt better about this neighborhood than she did, but the blacks who lived there were different from Lacey, who had never been poor, at least not in the same way. In Sierra Leone her father had worked for the ministry; her mother kept a car and driver for shopping trips to Freetown and the polo matches at the fairgrounds; one time they’d attended a party where the president himself had danced a waltz with her.

At the edge of the zoo the air changed, smelling of peanuts and animals. A line had already formed at the entrance. Lacey purchased their tickets, counting out her change to the penny, then took Amy’s hand again and led her through the turnstile. The little girl was wearing her backpack with Peter Rabbit inside; when Lacey had suggested that it could remain at the house, she had seen, quickly, in the flash of the girl’s eyes, that this wasn’t even a question. The bag was nothing she could leave.

“What do you want to see?” she asked. Twenty feet from the entrance, they found a kiosk with a large map, blocked out in colors for different habitats and species. A white couple was examining it, the man with a camera swinging from a lanyard around his neck, the woman gently pushing a stroller back and forth; the baby, buried in a mound of pink fabric, was asleep. The woman glanced at Lacey and regarded her, momentarily, with suspicion: what was a black nun doing with a little white girl? But then she smiled, a little too forcibly-a smile of apology, of retraction-and the couple moved away down the path.

Amy peered at the map. Lacey didn’t know if she could read, but there were pictures beside the words.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Bears?”

“What kind?”

The girl thought a moment, scanning the images. “Polar bears.” Her eyes warmed with anticipation as she spoke; the idea of the zoo, of seeing the animals, was something the two of them now shared. It was just as Lacey had hoped. As they’d stood there, more people had come through the gate; suddenly the zoo was humming with visitors. “Also zebras and elephants and monkeys.”

“Wonderful,” Lacey said, and smiled. “We will see them all.”

At a snack stand they bought a bag of peanuts and made their way into the zoo’s interior, its rich zone of sounds and smells. As they approached the polar bear tank they heard laughter and splashing and shouts of hilarious terror, a mixture of voices both young and old. Amy, who had been holding Lacey’s hand, released it suddenly and dashed ahead.

Lacey made her way between the shoulders of the people who had gathered at the bear tank. She found Amy standing with her face just inches from the glass that gave an underwater view of the bears’ habitat-a curious sight in the Memphis heat, with rocks painted to look like ice floes and a deep pool of Arctic blueness. Three bears were basking in the sun, lounging like gigantic rugs by a fire; a fourth was paddling in the water. While Amy and Lacey watched he swam right up to them and, fully submerged, bumped his nose on the glass. The people around her gasped; a jolt of pleasurable fear shot down Lacey’s spine, into her feet and fingertips. Amy reached out and touched the sweating glass, inches from the bear’s face. The bear opened his mouth, showing his pink tongue.

“Careful there,” a man behind them warned. “They may look cute, but to them you’re just lunch, little girl.”

Startled, Lacey turned her head, searching for the source of the voice. Who was this man, to try to scare a child like that? But none of the faces behind her returned her look; everyone was smiling and watching the bears.

“Amy,” she said softly, and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Perhaps it’s best not to tease them.”

Amy seemed not to hear her. She leaned her face closer to the glass. “What’s your name?” she asked the bear.

“There now, Amy,” Lacey said. “Not so close.”

Amy stroked the glass. “He has a bear name. It’s something I can’t pronounce.”

Lacey hesitated. Was it a game? “The bear has a name?”

The girl looked up, squinting. A knowing light was in her face. “Of course he does.”

“He told you this.”

The pool erupted with a tremendous splash. The crowd drew a sharp intake of breath. A second bear had leapt into the water. He-she?-paddled through the blue toward Amy. So now there were two, bumping the glass just inches from her face, their bodies big as automobiles, their white fur rippling in the underwater currents.

“Will you look at that,” someone said. It was the woman Lacey had seen at the kiosk. She was standing beside them, holding her infant up to the glass by the armpits, like a doll. The woman, whose long hair was stretched away from her face by a tight ponytail, was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and flip-flops. Lacey could discern, through the folds of her shirt, the still-loose belly of her pregnancy. The husband was behind them, guarding the empty stroller and holding the camera.

“I think they like you,” the woman said to Amy. “Look, sweetie,” she sang, and jiggled the infant, making her arms flap like a bird’s. “See the bears. See the bears, sweetie. Honey, take the picture. Take… the… picture.”

“I can’t,” said the man. “You’re not looking the right way. Turn her around.”

The woman sighed irritably. “Come on, just take it while she’s smiling, is that so hard?”

Lacey was watching this when it happened: a second splash, and then, before she could turn her head, a third. She felt the glass bulge beside her. A ridge of water crested the lip and began to fall, everyone aware of what was happening but powerless to act.

“Look out!”

The icy water hit Lacey like a slap, filling her nose and mouth and eyes with the taste of salt, hurling her back from the glass. A chorus of screams erupted all around. She heard the baby’s cry, and then the mother yelling, Get away, get away! Bodies banged against her; Lacey realized she’d closed her eyes, against the stinging salt. She tumbled backward, her feet catching and tripping, and fell onto a pile of people. She waited for the sound of the glass breaking, the slam of the tank’s unleashed water.

“Amy!”

She opened her eyes to find a man looking at her, his face inches from her own. It was the man with the camera. Around her the crowd had fallen silent. The glass had held after all.

“Sorry,” the man said. “Are you all right, Sister? I must have tripped.”

“Goddamnit!” The woman was standing over them, her clothing and hair soaked through. The baby was screaming against her shoulder. Her face was furious. “What did your kid do?”

Lacey realized she was talking to her.

“I’m sorry-” she began. “I don’t-”

“Look at her!”

The crowds had backed away from the tank, all eyes locked on the little girl with the backpack who was kneeling before it, her hands on the glass, and the four bear faces crowded against it.

Lacey climbed to her feet and moved quickly. The little girl’s head was bowed, water still raining from her drenched hair onto her knees. Lacey saw that her lips were moving, as if in prayer.

“Amy, what is it?”

“That girl’s talking to the bears!” a voice cried, and a buzz of wonder went up from the crowd. “Look at that!”

Cameras began to click. Lacey crouched beside Amy. With her fingers she pulled the dark strands of the girl’s hair away from her face. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, mixed in with all the water from the tank.

“Tell me, child.”

“They know,” Amy said, her hands still pressed to the glass.

“What do the bears know?”

The girl raised her face. Lacey was stunned; never had she seen such sadness in a child’s expression, such knowing grief. And yet, as she searched Amy’s eyes, she saw no fear. Whatever Amy had learned, she had accepted it.

“What I am,” she said.

Sister Arnette, sitting in the kitchen of the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, had decided to do something.

It was 9:00, it was 9:30, it was 10:00; Lacey and the girl, Amy, had not returned from wherever they had gone. Eventually Sister Claire had surrendered the story: that Lacey had skipped Mass, and that the two of them had left shortly thereafter, the girl with her backpack; Claire had heard them leave and then watched from the window as they made their way through the back gate, to the park.

Lacey was up to something. Arnette should have known.

The story about the girl didn’t wash, she’d known that right away; or, if not known exactly, then certainly she had felt it, a kernel of suspicion that had grown overnight into the certainty that something was not right. Like Miss Clavel, in the Madeline books, Sister Arnette knew.

And now, just like in the story: one of the little girls was gone.

None of the other sisters knew the truth about Lacey. Even Arnette hadn’t learned the full story until the office of the superior general had forwarded the psychiatric report. Arnette remembered hearing something about it on the news, all those years ago, but wasn’t something like that always happening somewhere, especially in Africa? Those awful little countries where life seemed to mean nothing, where His will was the strangest and most unknowable of all? It was heartbreaking, horrifying, but the mind could take in only so much, so many stories of this kind, and Arnette had forgotten all about it; and now here was Lacey, under her care, no one else knowing the truth; Lacey, who, she had to admit, was in nearly every way a model sister, if a little self-contained, perhaps a little too mystical in her devotions. Lacey said, and no doubt believed, too, that her father and mother and sisters were still in Sierra Leone, going to palace balls and riding their polo ponies; since the day she’d been found hiding in a field by the U.N. peacekeepers who had turned her over to the sisters, Lacey had never said otherwise. It was a mercy, of course; it was God’s own mercy, protecting Lacey from the memory of what had happened. Because after the soldiers had killed her family, they hadn’t simply gone away; they’d stayed with Lacey in the field, for hours and hours, and the little girl they’d left for dead might just as well have been dead, if God hadn’t protected her by washing her mind of these events. That He had chosen not to take her at that instant was simply an expression of His will, and nothing for Arnette to question. It was a burden, this knowledge, and the worry that came with it, for Arnette to bear in silence.

But now there was the girl. This Amy. Polite to a fault, quiet as a ghost, but wasn’t there something rather obviously wrong with the whole situation? Something completely unbelievable? Now that she thought about it, Lacey’s explanation made less than no sense. She was friends with her mother? Impossible. Except for daily Mass, Lacey barely set foot outside the house; how she would have come into contact with such a woman, let alone a woman who would trust her with her daughter, Arnette could not explain. Because there was no explanation; the story was a lie. And now the two of them were gone.

Sitting in the kitchen at 10:30, Sister Arnette knew what she had to do.

But what would she say? Where would she start? With Amy? None of the other sisters seemed to know anything. The girl had arrived when Lacey was alone in the house, as she often was; Arnette had tried many times to coax her out, for their days at the Pantry and also on small trips, to the store and what-have-you, but always Lacey declined, her face at such instances radiating a kind of cheerful blankness that put the question instantly to rest. No thank you, Sister. Perhaps another day. Three, four years of this, and now the girl had appeared out of nowhere, Lacey claiming to know her. So if she called the police, the story would have to start there, she understood, with Lacey, and the story of the field.

Arnette picked up the phone.

“Sister?”

She turned: Sister Claire. Claire, who had just come into the kitchen, still in her sweat suit, when she should have changed for the day by now; Claire, who had sold real estate, who’d been not only married but also divorced; who still kept a pair of high-heeled shoes and a black cocktail dress hanging in her closet. But that was an altogether different problem, not the one she was thinking about now.

“Sister,” Claire said, her voice concerned, “there’s a car in the driveway.”

Arnette hung up the phone. “Who is it?”

Claire hesitated. “They look… like police.”

Arnette reached the front door just as the bell was ringing. She drew back the curtain of the side window to look. Two men, one maybe in his twenties, the other older but still somebody she thought of as a young man, the pair of them looking like funeral directors in dark suits and ties. Police, but not exactly. Something serious, official. They were standing in the sunshine at the bottom of the steps, away from the door. The older one saw her and smiled in a friendly way but didn’t say anything. He was nice-looking but unremarkable, with a trim physique and a pleasant, well-shaped face. A bit of gray fanned away at the temples, which shimmered faintly with perspiration in the sun.

“Should we open it?” Claire asked, standing behind her. Sister Louise had heard the bell and come downstairs as well.

Arnette took a deep breath to calm herself. “Of course, Sisters.”

She opened the door but left the screen closed and latched. The two men stepped forward.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

The older one reached into his breast pocket and produced a small billfold. He opened it and in a flash she saw the initials: FBI.

“Ma’am, I’m Special Agent Wolgast. This is Special Agent Doyle.” Just like that, the billfold was gone, returned to the insides of his suit coat. She saw a scrape on his chin; he had cut himself shaving. “Sorry to disturb you like this on a Saturday morning-”

“It’s about Amy,” Arnette said. She couldn’t explain it: she’d just blurted it out, like he’d somehow made her do this. When he didn’t reply, she continued, “It is, isn’t it? It’s about Amy.”

The older agent-his name had already slipped her mind-glanced past Arnette at Sister Louise, sending her a quick, reassuring smile before returning his eyes to Arnette.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s correct. It’s about Amy. Would it be all right if we came in? To ask you and the other ladies a couple of questions?”

Which was how they came to be standing in the living room of the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy: two large men in dark suits, smelling of masculine sweat. Their hulking presence seemed to change the room, make it smaller. Except for the occasional repairman or a visit from Father Fagan from the rectory, no other men ever came into the house.

“I’m sorry, Officers,” Arnette said, “could you tell me your names again?”

“Of course.” That smile again: confident, ingratiating. So far, the young one hadn’t said a single word. “I’m Agent Wolgast, this is Agent Doyle.” He glanced around. “So, is Amy here?”

Sister Claire cut in. “Why do you want her?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you ladies everything. But you should know, for your own safety, that Amy is a federal witness. We’re here to place her under protection.”

Federal protection! Arnette’s chest tightened with panic. It was worse than she had thought. Federal protection! Like something on TV, on those police shows she didn’t want to watch but sometimes did, because the other sisters wanted to.

“What did Lacey do?”

The agent’s eyebrows lifted with interest. “Lacey?”

He was trying to pretend that he knew, to open a space for her to talk so he could draw information out of her; Arnette could see this clearly. But of course that’s just what she’d done; she’d given them Lacey’s name. No one had said anything about Lacey except Arnette. Behind her, she could feel the other sisters’ silence pressing upon her.

“Sister Lacey,” she explained. “She told us Amy’s mother was a friend.”

“I see.” He glanced at the other agent. “Well, perhaps we’d better talk to her as well.”

“Are we in any danger?” Sister Louise said.

Sister Arnette turned to her with a silencing scowl. “Sister, I know you mean well. But let me handle this, please.”

“I wouldn’t say danger, not exactly,” the agent explained. “But I think it would be best if we could speak to her. Is she in the house now?”

“No.” This was Sister Claire. She was standing defiantly, her arms crossed over her chest. “They left. At least an hour ago.”

“Do you know where they went?”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then, within the house, the telephone rang.

“Please excuse me, gentlemen,” Arnette said.

She retreated to the kitchen. Her heart was pounding. She was grateful for the interruption, as it could give her a chance to think. But when she answered the phone, the voice on the other end was no one she recognized.

“Is this the convent? I know I’ve seen you ladies over there. You’ll have to pardon my calling like this.”

“Who is this?”

“Sorry.” He was speaking in a rush, his voice distracted. “The name’s Joe Murphy. I’m head of security at the Memphis Zoo.”

There was some kind of commotion in the background. For a moment he spoke to someone else: Just open the gate, he said. Just do it, now.

Then he was back on the line. “Do you know anything about a nun who might be over here with a little girl? A black lady, dressed like you all do.”

A buzzing weightlessness, like a swarm of bees, filled Sister Arnette. On a perfectly pleasant morning, something had happened, something terrible. The door to the kitchen swung open; the agents stepped into the room, trailed by Sister Claire and Sister Louise. Everyone was staring at her.

“Yes, yes, I know her.” Arnette was trying to keep her voice low but knew this was pointless. “What is it? What’s going on?”

For a moment the line was muffled; the man at the zoo had placed his hand over the receiver. When he lifted his hand she heard yelling, and crying children, and behind it, something else: the sound of animals. Monkeys and lions and elephants and birds, screeching and roaring. It took Arnette a moment to realize that she wasn’t just hearing these sounds over the phone; they were coming through the open window, too, traveling clear across the park into the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” she pleaded.

“You better get over here, Sister,” the man said. “This is the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Lacey, breathless and running, soaked to the bone: she was carrying Amy now, clutching the little girl to her chest, the girl’s legs clamped tightly around her waist, the two of them lost in the zoo, its maze of pathways. Amy was crying, sobbing into Lacey’s blouse-what I am, what I am-and other people were running, too. It had started with the bears, whose movements had grown more and more frantic until Lacey had pulled Amy away from the glass, and then, behind them, the sea lions, who began to hurl themselves in and out of the water with manic fury; and as they turned and dashed back toward the zoo’s center, the grassland animals, the gazelles and zebras and okapis and giraffes, who broke into wild circles, running and charging the fences. It was Amy who was doing it, Lacey knew-something about Amy. Whatever had happened to the polar bears was happening to everything now, not just the animals but the people too, a ring of chaos widening over the entire zoo. They passed by the elephants and at once she felt their size and force; they stomped the ground with their immense feet and lifted their trunks to trumpet into the Memphis heat. A rhino charged the fence, a huge noise like a car crashing, and began, furiously, to bang it with his massive horn. The air was suddenly swollen with these sounds, great and terrible and full of pain, and people were tearing about and calling out to their children, pushing and shoving and pulling, the crowds parting for Lacey as she raced ahead.

“That’s her!” a voice rang out, and the words struck Lacey from behind-hit her like an arrow. Lacey spun to see the man with the camera, pointing a long finger right at her. He was standing beside a security guard in a pastel yellow jersey. “That’s the kid!”

Still clutching Amy, Lacey turned and ran, past cages of shrieking monkeys, a lagoon where swans were honking and flapping their huge, useless wings, tall cages erupting with the cries of jungle birds. Terrified crowds were pouring out of the reptile house. A group of panicked schoolchildren in matching red T-shirts stepped into Lacey’s path and she twisted around them, nearly falling but somehow staying upright. The ground before her was littered with the debris of flight, brochures and small articles of clothing and blobs of melting ice cream stuck to paper. A group of men tore past, breathing hard; one was carrying a rifle. From somewhere, a voice was saying, with robotic calm, “The zoo is now closed. Please move quickly to the nearest exit. The zoo is now closed… ”

Lacey was going in circles now, looking for a way out, finding none. Lions were roaring, baboons, meerkats, the monkeys she’d listened to from her bedroom window on summer nights. The sounds came from everywhere, filled up her mind like a chorus, ricocheting like the sound of gunfire, like the gunfire in the field, like her mother’s voice crying from the doorway: Run away, run away as fast as you can.

She stopped. And that was when she felt it. Felt him. The shadow. The man who wasn’t there but also was. He was coming for Amy, Lacey knew that now. That’s what the animals were telling her. The dark man would take Amy to the field where the branches were, the ones Lacey had watched for hours and hours as she lay and looked at the sky as it paled from night to morning, hearing the sounds of what was happening to her and the cries coming from her mouth; but she had sent her mind away from her body, up and up through the branches to heaven, where God was, and the girl in the field was someone else, nobody she remembered, and the world was wrapped in a warm light that would keep her safe forever.

The stinging taste of salt was in her mouth, but it wasn’t just the water from the tank. She was weeping now, too, watching the path through the shimmering curtain of her tears, holding Amy fiercely as she ran. Then she saw it: the snack stand. It appeared before her like a beacon, the snack stand with the big umbrella where she had bought the peanuts, and beyond it, standing open like a mouth, the wide gate of the exit. Guards in their yellow jerseys were barking into their walkie-talkies and waving people frantically through. Lacey took a deep breath and moved into the crowd, holding Amy to her chest.

She was just a few feet from the exit when a hand gripped her arm. She turned sharply: one of the guards. With his free hand he gestured over her head to someone else, his grip tightening.

Lacey. Lacey.

“Ma’am, please come with me-”

She didn’t wait. With a shove she pushed forward with all the strength she had left, felt the crowd bending. Behind her she heard the grunts and cries of people falling as she broke free, and the guard calling out for her to stop; but they were through the gate now, Lacey tearing down the pathway into the parking lot and the sound of sirens drawing near. She was sweating and breathing hard and knew that at any moment she could fall. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter. Away, she thought, away. Run as fast as you can, children. Away with Amy, away.

Then, from behind her, somewhere in the zoo, she heard a rifle shot. The sound cleaved the air, freezing Lacey in her tracks. In the sudden silence of its aftermath a van pulled up, skidding to a stop in front of her. Amy had gone limp against her chest. It was their van, Lacey saw, the one the sisters used, the big blue van they drove to the Pantry and to run errands. Sister Claire was driving, still in her sweats. A second vehicle, a black sedan, pulled in behind them as Sister Arnette burst from the van’s passenger seat. Around them the crowds were streaming past, cars were zooming out of the lot.

“Lacey, what in the world-”

Two men emerged from the second vehicle. Darkness poured off them. Lacey’s heart clenched, her voice stopped in her throat like a cork. She didn’t have to look to know what they were. Too late! All lost!

“No!” She was backing away. “No!”

Arnette gripped her by the arm. “Sister, get ahold of yourself!”

People were pulling at her. Hands were trying to wriggle the child free. With every ounce of strength Lacey held fast, squeezing the child to her chest. “Don’t let them!” she cried. “Help me!”

“Sister Lacey, these men are from the FBI! Please, do as they ask!”

“Don’t take her!” Lacey was on the ground now. “Don’t take her! Don’t take her!”

It was Arnette, after all; it was Sister Arnette who was taking Amy from her. As it had been in the field, Lacey kicking and fighting and screaming.

“Amy, Amy!”

She shook with a huge sob then, the last of her strength leaving her body in a rush; a space opened around her as she felt Amy lifted away. She heard the girl’s small voice crying out to her, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey, and then the muffling clap of the car’s doors as Amy was sealed away inside. She heard the sound of an engine, wheels turning, a car pulling away at high speed. Her face was in her hands.

“Don’t take me, don’t take me,” she was sobbing. “Don’t take me, don’t take me, don’t take me.”

Claire was beside her now. She put an arm around Lacey’s shaking shoulders. “Sister, it’s all right,” she said, and Lacey could tell she was crying, too. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

But it wasn’t; she wasn’t. No one was safe, not Lacey or Claire or Arnette or the woman with the baby or the guard in his yellow shirt. Lacey knew that now. How could Claire tell her everything was all right? Because it wasn’t all right. That was what the voices had been saying to her all these years, since that night in the field when she was just a girl.

Lacey Antoinette Kudoto. Listen. Look.

In her mind’s eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last, bitter hours of cruelty and sorrow, and terrible, final flights; death’s great dominion over all, and, at the last, the empty cities, becalmed by the silence of a hundred years. Already these things were coming to pass. Lacey wept, and wept some more. Because, sitting on the curb in Memphis, Tennessee, she saw Amy too; her Amy, whom Lacey could not save, as she could not save herself. Amy, time-stilled and nameless, wandering the forgotten, lightless world forever, alone and voiceless, but for this:

What I am, what I am, what I am.

SEVEN

Carter was someplace cold; that was the first thing he could tell. They took him off the plane first-Carter had never been on a plane in his life and would have liked to have had a window seat, but they’d stuffed him in the back with all the rucksacks, his left wrist chained to a pipe and two soldiers to watch him-and as he stepped onto the stairs leading down to the tarmac, the cold hit his lungs like a slap. Carter had been cold before, you couldn’t sleep under a Houston freeway in January and not know what cold was, but the cold here was different, so dry he could feel his lips puckering. His ears had clogged up, too. It was late, who knew how late exactly, but the airfield was lit like a jailyard; from the top of the stairs, Carter counted a dozen aircraft, big fat ones with huge doors dropped open at the back like a kid’s pajamas, and forklifts moving to and fro along the tarmac, loading pallets draped with camo. He wondered if maybe they were going to make some kind of soldier out of him, if that’s what he’d traded his life for.

Wolgast: he remembered the name. It was funny how he’d found himself trusting the man. Carter hadn’t trusted anyone in a long, long time. But there was something about Wolgast that made him think the man knew the place he was in.

Carter’s wrists and feet were shackled, and he made his way gingerly down the stairs, minding his balance, one soldier ahead of him, one behind. Neither had spoken a word to him or even to each other that Carter could tell. He was wearing a parka over his jumpsuit, but it was unzipped for the chains, and the wind cut through him easily. They led him across the field toward a brightly lit hangar where a van was idling. The door slid open as they approached.

The first soldier poked him with his rifle. “In you go.”

Carter did as he said, then heard a small motor whir and the door closed behind him. At least the seats were comfortable, not like the hard bench on the plane. The only light was from a little bulb in the ceiling. He heard two thumps on the door and the van pulled away.

He’d dozed on the plane and wasn’t tired enough to sleep more. With no windows and no way to tell the time, he had no sense of distance or direction. But he’d sat still for whole months of his life; a few hours more wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He let his mind go blank for a while. Time passed, and then he felt the van slowing. From the other side of the wall that sealed him from the driver’s compartment came the muffled sound of voices, but Carter didn’t know what it was all about. The van lurched forward and stopped again.

The door slid open to show two soldiers stamping their feet in the cold, white boys wearing parkas over their fatigues. Behind the soldiers, the brightly lit oasis of a McDonald’s throbbed in the gloom. Carter heard the rush of traffic and figured they were by a highway somewhere. Though it was still dark, something about the sky felt like morning. His legs and arms were stiff from sitting.

“Here,” one of the guards said and tossed him a bag. He noticed then that the other guard was biting into the last of a sandwich. “Breakfast.”

Carter opened the bag, which contained an Egg McMuffin and a disk of hash browns wrapped in paper and a plastic cup of juice. His throat was bone dry from the cold, and he wished there was more of the juice, or even just water to drink. He drained it quickly. It was so sugary it made his teeth tingle.

“Thank you.”

The soldier yawned into his hand. Carter wondered why they were being so nice. They didn’t seem at all like Pincher and the rest of them. They were wearing sidearms but didn’t act like this was anything.

“We’ve got a couple of hours yet,” the soldier said as Carter finished eating. “You need to make a pit stop?”

Carter hadn’t peed since the plane, but he was so dried out he didn’t figure there was much in him to go with. He’d always been like that, could hold it for hours and hours. But he thought about the McDonald’s, the people inside, the smell of food and the bright lights, and knew he wanted to see it.

“I reckon so.”

The soldier climbed into the van, his heavy boots clanging on the metal floor. Crouching in the tiny space, he removed a shiny key from a pouch on his belt and unlocked the shackles. Anthony could see his face up close. He had red hair and wasn’t no more than twenty, give or take.

“No funny stuff, understand?” he told Anthony. “We’re not really supposed to do this.”

“No sir.”

“Here, zip up your coat. It’s fucking freezing out here.”

They led him across the parking lot, one on either side but not touching him. Carter couldn’t remember when he’d gone anywhere without somebody else’s hand on him someplace. Most of the cars in the lot had Colorado plates. The air smelled clean, like Pine-Sol, and he felt the presence of mountains around him, pressing down. There was snow on the ground, too, piled high against the edges of the lot and crusted with ice. He’d only seen snow once or twice in his life.

The soldiers knocked on the bathroom door, and when nobody answered, they let Carter inside. One came in while the other watched the door. There were two urinals, and Carter took one. The soldier who was with him took the other.

“Hands where I can see ’em,” the soldier said, and laughed. “Just kidding.”

Carter finished up and stepped to the sink to wash. The McDonald’s he remembered from Houston were pretty dirty, especially the restrooms. When he was living on the street, he used to use one up in Montrose to wash up once in a while, until the manager caught on and chased him away. But this one was nice and clean, with flowery-smelling soap and a little potted plant sitting beside the sink. He washed his hands, taking his time, letting the warm water flow over his skin.

“They got plants in McDonald’s now?” he asked the soldier.

The soldier gave him a puzzled look, then burst into laughter. “How long you been away?”

Carter didn’t know what was so funny. “Most my life,” he said.

When they exited the bathroom, the first soldier was standing in line, so the three of them waited together. Neither had so much as laid a hand on him. Carter took a slow look around the room: a couple of men sitting alone, a family or two, a woman with a teenage boy who was playing a handheld video game. Everyone was white.

They got to the counter and the soldier ordered coffee.

“You need anything else?” he asked Carter.

Carter thought a moment. “They got iced tea here?”

“You got iced tea?” the soldier asked the girl behind the counter.

She shrugged. She was loudly chewing gum. “Hot tea.”

The soldier looked at Carter, who shook his head.

“Just the coffee.”

The soldiers were Paulson and Davis. They introduced themselves when they got back to the van. One was from Connecticut, the other one from New Mexico, though Carter got them confused, and he didn’t figure it made much difference, since he’d never been to either place. Davis was the one with the red hair. For the rest of the drive they left open the little window that connected the two compartments in the van; they left the shackles off, too. They were in Colorado, like he’d guessed, but whenever they came to a road sign the soldiers told him to cover his eyes, laughing like this was a big joke.

After a time they got off the interstate and took a rural highway that wound tight against the mountains. Sitting on the front bench of the passenger compartment, Carter could view a bit of the passing world through the windshield. Snow was piled steeply against the roadsides. There were no towns at all that Carter could see; only once in a while did a car approach them from the other direction, a blaze of light followed by the splash of melted snow as it passed. He’d never been anyplace like this, that had so few people in it. The clock on the dash said it was a little after six A.M.

“Cold up here,” Carter said.

Paulson was driving; the other one, Davis, was reading a comic book.

“You got that right,” said Paulson. “Colder’n Beth Pope’s back brace.”

“Who Beth Pope?”

Paulson shrugged, peering over the wheel. “Girl I knew in high school. She had, what’s that thing, scoliosis.”

Carter didn’t know what that was, either. But Paulson and Davis thought it was funny enough. If the job Wolgast had for him meant working with these two, he’d be glad to do it.

“That Aquaman?” Carter asked Davis.

Davis passed him a couple of comic books from the pile, a League of Vengeance and an X-Men. It was too dark to read the words, but Carter liked looking at the pictures, which told the story anyway. That Wolverine was a badass; Carter had always liked him, though he always felt sorry for him, too. It couldn’t be no fun having all that metal in your bones, and somebody he cared about was always dying or getting killed.

After another hour or so Paulson pulled the van over. “Sorry, dude,” he told Carter. “We’ve got to lock you up again.”

“’Sall right,” Carter said, and nodded. “I appreciate the time.”

Davis climbed out of the passenger seat and came around back. The door opened to a blast of cold air. Davis redid the shackles and pocketed the key.

“Comfortable?”

Carter nodded. “How much longer we got to go?”

“Not much,” he said.

They drove on. Carter could tell they were climbing now. He couldn’t see the sky but guessed it would be light soon. As they slowed to cross a long bridge, wind buffeted the van.

They had reached the other side when Paulson met his eyes through the rearview. “You know, you don’t seem like the others,” he said. “What you do, anyway? You don’t mind my asking.”

“Who the others?”

“You know. Other guys like you. Cons.” He swiveled his head to Davis. “Remember that guy, Babcock?” He shook his head and laughed. “Christ on a stick, what a whack job.” He looked at Carter again. “He wasn’t like you, that guy. I can tell you’re different.”

“I ain’t crazy,” Carter said. “Judge said I wasn’t.”

“But you did somebody, right? Else you wouldn’t be here now.”

Carter wondered if talking like this was something he had to do, if it was part of the deal. “They said I killed a lady. But I didn’t mean to.”

“Who was she? Wife, girlfriend, something like that?” Paulson was still grinning at him in the rearview, his eyes flashing with interest.

“No.” Carter swallowed. “I cut the lady’s lawn.”

Paulson laughed and glanced at Davis again. “Listen to this. He cut the lady’s lawn.” He looked at Carter through the mirror again. “Little guy like you, how’d you do it?”

Carter didn’t know what to say. He had a bad feeling now, like maybe they’d been nice to him just to mess with his head.

“Come on, Anthony. We got you a McMuffin, right? Took you to the bathroom? You can tell us.”

“For fucksakes,” Davis said to Paulson. “Just shut up. We’re almost there, what’s the point?”

“The point is,” Paulson said, and drew in a breath, “I want to know what this guy did. They all did something. Come on, Anthony, what’s your story? You rape her before you did her? Was that it?”

Carter felt his face go hot with shame. “I wouldn’t never do that,” he managed.

Davis turned to Carter. “Don’t listen to this douche bag. You don’t have to say anything.”

“Come on, the dude’s retarded. Can’t you see that?” Paulson eyed Carter eagerly through the mirror again. “I bet that’s what happened, isn’t it? I bet you fucked the nice white lady whose lawn you were cutting, didn’t you, Anthony?”

Carter felt the air stick in his throat. “I ain’t… sayin’… no more.”

“You know what they’re going to do with you?” Paulson asked. “You thought maybe this was all a free ride?”

“Goddamnit. Zip your mouth,” Davis said. “Richards will have both our asses for this.”

“Yeah, fuck him too,” Paulson said.

“Man… said I got a job,” Anthony managed. “Said it was important. Said… I special.”

“Special.” Paulson snickered over the word. “You’re special, all right.”

They drove on in silence. Carter looked at the floor of the van, feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach. He wished now he’d never eaten the McMuffin. He’d begun to cry. Didn’t know when he’d done that last. Nobody had ever said anything about raping the woman, not that he recalled. They’d asked about the girl but he’d always said no, which was the God’s truth, he swore it. The little thing weren’t no more than five year old. He’d just been trying to show her a toad he found in the grass. He thought she’d like to see something like that, something tiny, like she was. That’s all he’d meant to do, nice. Ain’t nobody ever done things like that for him when he was a boy. C’mere honey, I got something to show you. Just a little bit of a thing, like you.

At least he’d known what Terrell was, what was going to happen to him there. Nobody’d said nothing about raping the lady, Mrs. Wood. That day in the yard, she’d gone just flat-out crazy on him, screaming and hitting, telling the little girl to run, and it wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in, he’d just been trying to make her calm down, tell her nothing had happened, he’d go away and never come back if that’s what she wanted. He’d been okay with that, and okay with the rest too, when it came down to it. But then Wolgast had showed up and told him he didn’t have to go to the needle after all, turning Carter’s mind in another direction, and now look where he was. There weren’t no sense in any of it. It made him sick and shaky to his bones.

He lifted his head to find Paulson grinning at him. The whites of his eyes widened.

“Boo!” Paulson slapped the wheel and burst into laughter, like he’d just told the best joke of his life. Then he slammed the window shut.

Wolgast and Doyle were somewhere in South Memphis now, working their way out of the city’s suburban ring through a warren of residential streets. The whole thing had gone bad from the start. Wolgast had no idea what in the hell had been going on at the zoo, the whole place was going berserk, and then the woman, the old nun, Arnette, had just about tackled the other one, Lacey, to get the girl out of her hands.

The girl. Amy NLN. She couldn’t have been more than six years old.

Wolgast had been ready to pull the plug but then she’d let the girl go, and the old one handed her off to Doyle, who carried her to the car before Wolgast could get in another word. After that, there was nothing to do but get out of there as fast as they could before the locals showed up and started asking questions. Who knew how many witnesses there’d been; it had all happened too fast.

He had to dump the car. He had to call Sykes. He had to get them out of Tennessee, all in that order, and he had to do it now. Amy was lying across the backseat, facing away, clutching the stuffed rabbit she’d gotten out of her backpack. Sweet Jesus, what had he done? A six-year-old girl!

In a dreary neighborhood of apartments and strip malls, Wolgast pulled into a gas station and shut off the engine. He turned to Doyle. The two of them hadn’t spoken since the zoo.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Brad, listen-”

“Are you crazy? Look at her. She’s a kid.”

“It just kind of happened.” Doyle shook his head. “Everything was so crazy. Okay, maybe I fucked up, I admit that. But what was I supposed to do?”

Wolgast breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. “Wait here.”

He stepped from the car and punched in the code for Sykes’s secure line. “We’ve got a problem.”

“You have her?”

“Yes, we have her. She’s a child. What the fuck.”

“Agent, I know you’re angry-”

“You’re goddamn right I’m angry. And we had about fifty witnesses, starting with the nuns. I feel like dropping her off at the nearest cop shop.”

Sykes was silent a moment. “I need you to focus, Agent. Let’s just get you out of state. Then we’ll figure out what happens next.”

“Nothing’s going to happen next. This is not what I signed on for.”

“I can hear you’re upset. You have a right to be. Where are you?”

Wolgast took a deep breath, bringing his anger under control. “At a gas station. South Memphis.”

“Is she all right?”

“Physically.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Are you threatening me?” But even as he said the words, Wolgast knew, with a sudden, icy clarity, what the situation was. The moment to break ranks had passed, at the zoo. They were all fugitives now.

“I don’t have to,” Sykes said. “Wait for my call.”

Wolgast clicked off the phone and stepped into the station. The attendant, a trim Indian man in a turban, was sitting behind the bulletproof glass, watching a church show on TV. The girl was probably hungry; Wolgast got some peanut butter crackers and some chocolate milk and took it to the counter. He was looking up, noticing the cameras, when his handheld buzzed at his waist. He paid quickly and stepped outside.

“I can get you a car out of Little Rock,” Sykes said. “Somebody from the field office can meet you if you give me an address.”

Little Rock was at least two hours. Too long. Two men in suits, a little girl, a black sedan so plain it couldn’t have been more obvious. The nuns had probably given the plate number, too. There was no way they could go through the scanner on the bridge; if the girl had been reported as a kidnap victim, the Amber Alert system would be activated.

Wolgast looked around. Across the avenue he saw a used-car lot, strings of multicolored banners fluttering above it. Most of the cars were junk, old gas guzzlers nobody could afford to fill anymore. An old-style Chevy Tahoe, ten years if it was a day, was parked to face the street. The words EASY FINANCING were stenciled on the windshield.

Wolgast told Sykes what he wanted to do. At the car he gave Doyle the milk and crackers for Amy and jogged across the avenue. A man with huge eyeglasses and a flapping comb-over stepped from the trailer as Wolgast approached the Tahoe.

“A beaut, isn’t she?”

He got the man down to six grand, which was nearly all the cash he had left. Sykes would have to see to the money question, too. Because today was a Saturday, the paperwork on the Tahoe wouldn’t hit the DMV computers until Monday morning. By then, they’d be long gone.

Doyle followed him to an apartment complex about a mile away. Doyle parked the car in back, away from the road, and carried Amy to the Tahoe. Not perfect, but as long as Sykes got somebody to ghost the car by the end of the day, they’d be untraceable. The inside of the Tahoe smelled too strongly of lemon air freshener, but it was otherwise clean and comfortable, and the mileage on the odometer wasn’t bad, a little over ninety thousand.

“How much cash do you have?” he asked Doyle.

They put their money together: they had a little over three hundred dollars left. It would cost at least two hundred bucks to fill the tank, but that would get them to western Arkansas, maybe as far as Oklahoma. Somebody could meet them with cash, and a new vehicle too.

They crossed back into Mississippi and turned west toward the river. The day was clear, just a few clouds ribboning the sky. In the backseat, Amy was motionless as a stone. She hadn’t touched the food. She was just a little bit of a thing, a baby. The whole thing gave Wolgast a sick feeling in his stomach-the Tahoe was a rolling crime scene. But for now he had to get them out of the state. Beyond that, Wolgast didn’t know.

By the time they were approaching the bridge it was nearly one o’clock.

“You think we’re okay?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast kept his eyes straight ahead. “We’ll find out.”

The gates were open, the guardhouse unmanned. They sailed through easily, across the wide girth of the muddy river, swollen with spring runoff. Below them, a long line of barges pushed obliviously northward against the foaming current. The scanner would log their vehicle signature, but the car would still be registered to the dealer. It would take days to sort it all out, to check the video stream and connect them to the girl and the car. On the far side, the road reclined to the open fields of the western floodplain, sodden with moisture. Wolgast had thought about the route carefully; they wouldn’t hit a good-sized town until they were nearly to Little Rock. He set the cruise control for fifty-five, the posted limit, and headed north again, wondering how it was that Sykes had known just what he’d do.

By the time the van bringing Anthony Carter pulled into the compound, Richards was asleep in his office, his head on his desk. His com buzzed to wake him; it was the guardhouse, telling him Paulson and Davis were outside.

He rubbed his eyes, brought his mind into focus. “Bring him straight in.”

He decided to let Sykes sleep. He stood and stretched, called for a member of the medical staff and a security detail to meet him, then put on his jacket and took the stairs up to ground level. The loading dock stood at the rear of the building, on the south side, facing the woods and, beyond that, the river gorge. The compound had once been some kind of institute, a retreat for corporate executives and government officials. Richards was a little vague on the history. The place had been closed up for at least ten years before Special Weapons had taken it over. Cole had ordered the Chalet dismantled piece by piece to excavate the lower levels and build the power plant; they’d then rebuilt the exterior almost exactly as it had been.

Richards stepped into the gloom and cold. A wide roof was suspended over the concrete dock, keeping the surface clear of snow and obstructing the view from the rest of the compound. He checked his watch: 07:12. By now, he figured, Anthony Carter would be a psychological wreck. With the other subjects, there had been time for adjustment. But Carter had been plucked straight off death row and landed here in less than a day; his mind would be tumbling like a dryer. The important thing in the next two hours was to keep him calm.

The space swelled with the headlights of the approaching van. Richards descended the steps as the security detail, two soldiers wearing sidearms, jogged in out of the snow. Richards told them to keep their distance and leave their weapons holstered. He’d read Carter’s file and doubted he’d be violent; the guy was basically as gentle as a lamb.

Paulson killed the engine and climbed from the van. There was a keypad on the van’s sliding door; he punched in the numbers and Richards watched it draw slowly open.

Carter was sitting on the front bench. His head was tipped forward, but Richards could see that his eyes were open. His hands, shackled, lay folded in his lap. Richards saw a crumpled McDonald’s bag on the floor at his feet. At least they’d fed him. The window between the compartments was closed.

“Anthony Carter?”

No response. Richards called his name again. Nothing, not a twitch. Carter seemed completely catatonic.

Richards stepped back from the door and pulled Paulson aside. “Okay, you tell me,” he said. “What’s the story?”

Paulson gave a stagy, “who me?” shrug. “Beats me. Dude’s just fucked up or something.”

“Don’t bullshit me, son.” Richards turned his attention to the other one, with the red hair: Davis. He was holding a sheaf of comic books in his hand. Comic books, for the love of God. For the thousandth time, Richards thought it: these were kids.

“What about you, soldier?” he asked Davis.

“Sir?”

“Don’t play stupid. You got anything to say for yourself?”

Davis’s eyes darted toward Paulson, then back to Richards. “No, sir.”

He’d deal with these two later. Richards stepped back toward the van. Carter hadn’t moved a muscle. Richards could see that his nose was running; his cheeks were streaked with tears.

“Anthony, my name is Richards. I’m the head of security at this facility. These two boys aren’t going to bother you anymore, you hear me?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Paulson pleaded. “It was just a joke. Hey, Anthony, can’t you take a joke?”

Richards turned sharply to face them again. “That little voice in your head, telling you to shut the fuck up? That’s the voice you should be listening to right about now.”

“Aw, come on,” Paulson whined. “The dude’s mental or something. Anyone can see that.”

Richards felt the last of his patience run out of him like the last drops of water from a leaky bucket. The hell with it. Without speaking he withdrew his weapon from its spot at the base of his spine. A long-slide Springfield.45 that he used mostly for show: a huge gun, a hilarious gun. But despite its bulk, it rode comfortably, and in the predawn light of the loading area, its titanium casing radiated with the menace of its perfect mechanical efficiency. In a single motion Richards popped the safety with his thumb and chambered a round, grasping Paulson by the belt buckle to pull him close, then shoved the muzzle into the soft V of flesh below his chin.

“Don’t you understand,” Richards said quietly, “that I’d shoot you right here just to put a smile on this man’s face?”

Paulson’s body had gone rigid. He was trying to cast his eyes toward Davis, or maybe the security detail, but was facing the wrong way. “What the fuck?” he sputtered against the clenching muscles of his throat. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up against the muzzle of the gun. “I’m cool, I’m cool.”

“Anthony,” Richards said, his eyes still fixed on Paulson’s, “it’s your call, my friend. You tell me. Is he cool?”

From the van, a long silence. Then, quietly: “’Sall right. He cool.”

“You’re sure now? Because if he isn’t, I want you to tell me. You get the last word on this.”

Another pause. “He cool.”

“You hear that?” Richards said to Paulson. He released the soldier’s belt and pulled his weapon away. “The man says you’re cool.”

Paulson looked like he was about to cry for his mama. On the loading dock, the security detail burst out laughing.

“The key,” Richards said.

Paulson reached into his belt and passed it to Richards. His hands were trembling; his breath smelled like vomit.

“Go on now,” Richards said. He shot a look at Davis, holding his pile of comic books. “You too, junior. The both of you, get the fuck out of here.”

They scrambled off into the snow. In the few minutes since the van had pulled up, the sun had lifted from behind the mountains, giving the air a pale glow. Richards bent into the van and undid Carter’s shackles.

“You okay? Those boys hurt you anywhere?”

Carter rubbed his damp face. “They didn’t mean nothing.” He swung his feet from the bench and lowered himself stiffly onto the ground. He blinked and looked around. “They gone?”

Richards said they were.

“What this place?”

“Fair question.” Richards nodded. “All in time. You hungry, Anthony?”

“They fed me. McDonald’s.” Carter’s eyes found the security detail, standing on the dock above them. His expression told Richards nothing. “What about them?” he asked.

“They’re here for you. You’re the guest of honor, Anthony.”

Carter narrowed his eyes at Richards. “You really shoot that guy if I’d said to?”

Something about Carter made him think of Sykes, standing in his office with that lost look on his face, asking him if they were friends.

“What do you think? You think I would have?”

“I wouldn’t know what to think.”

“Well, just between us, no. I wouldn’t have. I was just fooling with him.”

“I thought you was.” Carter’s face broke into a grin. “Thought it was funny, though. You doing him like you did.” He shook his head, laughing a little, and looked around again. “What happen now?”

“What happens now,” Richards said, “is we get you inside, where it’s warm.”

EIGHT

By nightfall they were fifty miles past Oklahoma City, hurtling west across the open prairie toward a wall of spring thunderheads ascending from the horizon like a bank of blooming flowers in a time-lapse video. Doyle was fast asleep in the Tahoe’s passenger seat, his head wedged into the space between the headrest and the window, cushioned against the bumps in the road by a folded jacket. At times like this, Wolgast found himself envying Doyle, his powers of oblivion. He could turn his own lights off like a ten-year-old, put his head down and sleep virtually anywhere. Wolgast’s fatigue was deep; he knew the smart thing would have been to pull off and change places, catch a few winks himself. But he had driven the whole distance from Memphis, and the feel of the wheel in his hands was the only thing that made him think he still had a card to play.

Since his call to Sykes, their only contact had taken place in a truck-stop parking lot outside Little Rock, where a field agent had met them with an envelope of cash-three thousand dollars, all in twenties and fifties-and a fresh vehicle, a plain-wrapper Bureau sedan. But by then Wolgast had decided he liked the Tahoe and wanted to keep it. He liked its big, muscular eight-cylinder engine and swishy steering and bouncy suspension. He hadn’t driven anything like it in years. It seemed a pity to send a vehicle like that into the crusher, and when the agent offered him the keys to the sedan, he waved them off imperiously, without a second thought.

“Is there anything on the wires about us?” he’d asked the agent-a fresh recruit with a face pink as a slice of ham.

The agent frowned with confusion. “I don’t know anything about it.”

Wolgast considered this. “Good,” he said finally. “You’ll want to keep it that way.”

The agent had then taken him around to the sedan’s trunk, which sprang open to meet them. Inside was the black nylon duffel bag he hadn’t asked for but still expected.

“Keep it,” he said.

“You sure? I’m supposed to give it to you.”

Wolgast shifted his gaze toward the Tahoe, parked at the edge of the lot between two dozing semis. Through the rear window, he could see Doyle but not the girl, who was lying down on the backseat. He really wanted to get moving; whatever else was true, sitting still was not an option. As for the bag, maybe he needed it and maybe he didn’t. But the decision to leave it behind felt right.

“Tell the office anything you want,” he said. “What I could really use is some coloring books.”

“I’m sorry?”

Wolgast would have laughed if he were in the mood. He put his palm on the lid of the trunk and pushed it closed. “Never mind,” he said.

The bag held guns, of course, and ammunition, and maybe a couple of armored vests. Probably there’d be one in there for the girl, too; there was a company in Ohio that was making them for kids now, since that thing in Minneapolis. Wolgast had caught a segment about it on the Today show. They were actually making a Zylon snapsuit for infants. What a world, he thought.

Now, Little Rock six hours behind them, he was still glad he’d declined the bag. Whatever happened, happened; part of him wanted to be stopped. Outside Little Rock, he’d actually let the speedometer drift up to eighty, only dimly aware of what he was doing-that he was daring some state trooper or even a local cop sitting behind a billboard to call the whole thing off. But then Doyle had told him to slow down-Yo, chief, shouldn’t you ease off the pedal a bit?-and his mind had snapped back into focus. He’d actually been playing out the scene in his mind: the flashing lights and a single, tart bleep of the siren; pulling the truck over to the side and placing his open hands on the wheel, lifting his eyes to the rearview to watch the officer calling in the plate number on his radio. Two grown men and a minor in a vehicle with temporary Tennessee tags: it wouldn’t take long to put the whole thing together, to connect them to the nun and the zoo. Whenever he imagined the scene, he couldn’t see beyond that moment, the cop with one hand on his mike, the other resting on the butt of his weapon. What would Sykes do? Would he say he’d ever even heard of them? No, he and Doyle would go into the shredder, just like Anthony Carter.

As for the girl: he didn’t know.

They’d skirted the Oklahoma City limits to the northeast, dodging the Interstate 40 checkpoint and bisecting I-35 on an anonymous rural blacktop, far from any cameras. The Tahoe lacked a GPS, but Wolgast had one on his handheld. Guiding the steering wheel with one hand, nimbly thumbing away on the handheld’s tiny keys with the other, he let their route evolve as they went, a patchwork of county and state roads, some gravel or even just hard-packed dirt, to carry them gradually north and west. Now, all that lay between them and the Colorado border were a few small towns-towns with names like Virgil and Ricochet and Buckrack-half-abandoned oases in a sea of tallgrass prairie with little to show for themselves but a mini-mart, a couple of churches, a grain elevator and, between them, the miles of open plain. Flyover country: the word it made him think of was eternal. He guessed it looked much the same as it always had, the way it would go on looking just about forever. A man could disappear into a place like this without hardly trying, live his life without one soul to notice.

Maybe, Wolgast thought, when this was all over, he’d come back. He might need a place like that.

Amy was so quiet in the backseat it might have been possible to forget she was there at all, if not for the fact that everything about her being there was wrong. A six-year-old girl. Goddamn Sykes, Wolgast thought. Goddamn the Bureau, goddamn Doyle, and goddamn himself while he was at it. Lying across the wide backseat with her hair spilled over her cheek, Amy looked as if she were sleeping, but Wolgast didn’t think she was; she was pretending, watching him like a cat. Whatever had happened in her life so far, it had taught her how to wait. Whenever Wolgast had asked her if she needed to stop to use the bathroom or get something to eat-she hadn’t touched the crackers and milk, warm and spoiled by now-the lids of her eyes had lifted with a feline quickness at the sound of her name, meeting his gaze in the mirror for a single second that went through him like a three-foot icicle. Then she’d shut them again. He hadn’t heard her voice since the zoo, more than eight hours ago.

Lacey. That was the nun’s name. Who’d held on to Amy like death itself. When Wolgast thought about that awful human tug-of-war in the parking lot, everyone yelling and screaming, the memory twisted in his gut with an actual physical pain. Hey, Lila, guess what? I stole a kid today. So now we’ll each have one, how about that?

Doyle was rousing in the passenger seat. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his expression blank and focusless. His mind, Wolgast knew, was reassembling his awareness of where he was. He looked back at Amy quickly, then turned to face forward again.

“Looks like some weather ahead,” he said.

The thunderheads had risen to a boil, blocking the sunset and sinking them into a premature darkness. At the horizon, beneath a shelf of clouds, a haze of rain was falling through a band of golden sunlight onto the fields.

Doyle leaned forward to examine the sky through the windshield. His voice was quiet. “How far away you think that is?”

“I guess about five miles.”

“Maybe we should get off the road.” Doyle checked his watch. “Or turn south for a while.”

Two miles later, they passed an unmarked dirt road, its edges lined with barbed-wire fencing. Wolgast stopped the car and backed up. The road crested a gentle rise and vanished into a line of cottonwoods; probably there was a river on the other side of the hill, or at least a gully. Wolgast checked the GPS; the road wasn’t on it.

“I don’t know,” Doyle said, when Wolgast showed him. “Maybe we should look for something else.”

Wolgast turned the wheel of the Tahoe and headed south. He didn’t think the road was a dead end; there would have been postal boxes at the intersection if it were. Three hundred yards later, the road narrowed to a single lane of rutted dirt. Beyond the tree line they crossed an old wooden bridge that spanned the creek Wolgast had foreseen. The evening light had gone a sallow green. He could see the storm rising above the horizon in his rearview mirror; he knew, from the blowing tips of the ditch grass on either side, that it was following them.

They had traveled another ten miles when the rain started to fall. They’d passed no houses or farms; they were in the middle of nowhere, with no cover. First just a few drops, but then, within seconds, a downpour of such force that Wolgast couldn’t see a thing. The wipers were useless. He pulled to the edge of the ditch as a huge gust of wind buffeted the car.

“What now, chief?” Doyle asked over the racket.

Wolgast looked at Amy, still pretending to sleep in the backseat. Thunder roiled overhead; she didn’t flinch. “Wait, I guess. I’m going to rest a minute.”

Wolgast closed his eyes, listening to the rain on the roof of the Tahoe. He let the sound wash through him. He’d learned to do this during those months with Eva, to rest without quite giving himself over to sleep, so that he could rise quickly and go to her crib if she awakened. Scattered memories began to gather in his mind, pictures and sensations from other times in his life: Lila in the kitchen of the house in Cherry Creek, on a morning not long after they’d bought the place, pouring milk into a bowl of cereal; the cold dousing of water as he dove from the pier in Coos Bay, the sounds of his friends’ voices above him, laughing and urging him on; the feeling of being very small himself, no more than a baby, and the noises and lights of the world around him, all of it letting him know he was safe. He had entered sleep’s antechamber, the place where dreams and memories mingled, telling their strange stories; yet part of him was still in the car, listening to the rain.

“I have to go.”

His eyes snapped open; the rain had stopped. How long had he slept? The car was dark; the sun had set. Doyle was twisted at the waist, turned to face the backseat.

“What did you say?” Doyle asked.

“I have to go,” the little girl stated. Her voice, after hours of silence, was startling: clear and forceful. “To the bathroom.”

Doyle looked at Wolgast nervously. “Want me to take her?” he said, though Wolgast knew he didn’t want to.

“Not you,” Amy said. She was sitting up now, holding her rabbit. It was a floppy thing, filthy with wear. She eyed Wolgast in the mirror, lifted her hand and pointed. “Him.”

Wolgast undid his seat belt and stepped from the Tahoe. The air was cool and still; he could see, to the southeast, the last of the storm receding, leaving in its wake a dry sky the color of ink, a deep blue-black. He hit the key fob to unlock the passenger door and Amy climbed out. She had zipped the front of her sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over her head.

“Okay?” he asked.

“I’m not doing it here.”

Wolgast didn’t say anything about not wandering off; there seemed no point. Where would she go? He led her fifty feet down the roadway, away from the lights of the Tahoe. Wolgast looked away while she stood at the edge of the ditch and pulled down her jeans.

“I need help.”

Wolgast turned. She was facing him, her jeans and underpants bunched around her ankles. He felt his face warm with embarrassment.

“What do you need me to do?”

She held out both her hands. Her fingers felt tiny in his own; her palms were moist with childlike heat. He had to hold tightly as she leaned back, giving him nearly all her weight, to position herself in a crouch, suspending her body out over the ditch like a piano swinging from a crane. Where had she learned to do this? Who else had held her hands this way?

When she was done he turned around so she could pull her pants back up.

“You don’t have to be afraid, honey.”

Amy said nothing; she made no motion to return to the Tahoe. Around them, the fields were empty, the air absolutely still, as if caught between breaths. Wolgast could feel it, the emptiness of the fields, the thousands of miles they spread in every direction. He heard the front door of the Tahoe open and slam closed; Doyle, going off to take a leak himself. Far off to the south, he heard a distant echo of thunder rolling away and, in the clear aural space behind it, a new sound-a kind of tinkling, like bells.

“We can be friends if you want,” he ventured. “Would that be okay?”

She was a strange girl, he thought again; why hadn’t she cried? Because she hadn’t, not since the zoo, and she’d never asked for her mother, or said she wanted to go home, or even back to the convent. Where was home for her? Memphis, maybe, but he had the feeling it wasn’t. No place was. Whatever had happened to the girl had taken the idea of home away.

Then, “I’m not afraid. We can go back to the car if you want.”

For a moment she just looked at him, in that evaluating way of hers. His ears had adjusted to the silence, and he was certain now that it was music he was hearing, the sound distorted by distance. Somewhere, down the road they were driving on, somebody was playing music.

“I’m Brad.” The name felt bland and heavy in his mouth.

She nodded.

“The other man? He’s Phil.”

“I know who you are. I heard you talking.” She shifted her weight. “You thought I wasn’t listening, but I was.”

A spooky kid. And smart, too. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she was sizing him up with her eyes, using the silence to appraise him, to draw him out. He felt as if he were speaking with somebody much older, though not exactly. He couldn’t put his finger on what the difference was.

“What’s in Colorado? That’s where we’re going, I heard you say it.”

Wolgast wasn’t sure how much to say. “Well, there’s a doctor there. He’s going to look at you. Like a checkup.”

“I’m not sick.”

“That’s why, I think. I don’t… well, I don’t really know.” He winced inwardly at the lie. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Don’t keep saying that.”

He was so taken aback by her directness that for a moment he said nothing. “Okay. That’s good. I’m glad you’re not.”

“Because I’m not afraid,” Amy declared, and began walking toward the lights of the Tahoe. “You are.”

A few miles later, they saw it up ahead: a domelike zone of thrumming light that sorted, as they approached, into discrete, orbiting points, like a family of constellations spinning low against the horizon. Just as Wolgast figured out what he was seeing, the road ended at an intersection. He turned on the overhead light and checked the GPS. A line of cars and pickup trucks, more than they had seen in hours, was passing on the highway, all headed in the same direction. He opened his window to the night air; the sound of music was unmistakable now.

“What is that?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast said nothing. He turned west, threading into the line of traffic. In the bed of the pickup ahead of them, a group of teenagers, about a half dozen, were sitting on bales of hay. They passed a sign that read, HOMER, OKLAHOMA, POP. 1,232.

“Not so close,” Doyle said, referring to the pickup. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

Wolgast ignored him. A girl, spotting Wolgast’s face through the windshield, waved at him, the wind blowing her hair around her face. The lights of the fair were growing clearer now, as were the signs of civilization: a water tank on stilts, a darkened farm-implements store, a low-slung modern building that was probably a retirement community or health clinic, set back from the highway. The pickup pulled off into a Casey’s General Store, its lot bustling with cars and people; the kids were up and out of the bed before the vehicle had even stopped, rushing to meet their friends. Traffic on the roadway slowed as they entered the little town. In the backseat, Amy was sitting up, looking through the windows at the busy scene.

Doyle turned around. “Lie down, Amy.”

“It’s all right, let her look.” Wolgast raised his voice so Amy could hear. “Don’t listen to Phil. You look all you want, honey.”

Doyle leaned his head toward Wolgast’s. “What are you… doing?”

Wolgast kept his eyes ahead. “Relax.”

Honey. Where had that come from? The streets teemed with people, all walking in the same direction, carrying blankets and plastic coolers and lawn chairs. Many were holding small children by the hand or pushing strollers: farm people, ranch people, dressed in jeans and overalls, everyone in boots, some of the men wearing Stetson hats. Here and there Wolgast saw wide puddles of standing water, but the night sky was crisp and dry. The rain had pushed through; the fair was on.

Wolgast flowed with the traffic to the high school, where a marquee-style sign read, BRANCH COUNTY CONSOLIDATED HS: GO WILDCATS: SPRING FLING, MARCH 20-22. A man in a reflective orange vest waved them into the lot, where a second man directed them to extra parking in a muddy field. Wolgast shut off the engine and glanced at Amy through the rearview; her attention was directed out the window, toward the lights and sounds of the fair.

Doyle cleared his throat. “You’re kidding, right?”

Wolgast twisted in his seat. “Amy, Phil and I are going to step outside for a second to talk. Okay?”

The little girl nodded; suddenly, the two of them had an understanding, one Doyle wasn’t part of.

“We’ll be right back,” said Wolgast.

Outside, Doyle met him at the back of the Tahoe. “We’re not doing this,” he said.

“What’s the harm?”

Doyle lowered his voice. “We’re lucky we haven’t seen a local yet. Think about it. Two men in suits and a little girl-you think we won’t stand out?”

“We’ll separate. I’ll take Amy. We can change in the car. Go get yourself a beer, have some fun.”

“You’re not thinking clearly, boss. She’s a prisoner.”

“No, she’s not.”

Doyle sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I? She’s a kid, Phil. A little girl.”

They were standing very close; Wolgast could smell the staleness on Doyle, after hours in the Tahoe. A group of teenagers walked past, and for a moment they fell silent. The parking lot was filling up.

“Look, I’m not made of stone,” Doyle said quietly. “You think I don’t know how fucked up this is? It’s all I can do not to throw up out the window.”

“You seem pretty relaxed, actually. You slept like a baby the whole way from Little Rock.”

Doyle frowned defensively. “Fine, shoot me. I was tired. But we are not taking her on a bunch of kiddie rides. Kiddie rides are not part of the plan.”

“One hour,” Wolgast said. “You can’t leave her cooped up in a car all day without a break. Let her have a little fun, blow off some steam. Sykes doesn’t have to know a thing about it. Then we’ll get back on the road. She’ll probably sleep the rest of the way.”

“And what if she takes off?”

“She won’t.”

“I don’t know how you can be so sure.”

“You can shadow us. If anything happens, there’s two of us.”

Doyle frowned skeptically. “Look, you’re in charge. It’s your call. But I still don’t like it.”

“Sixty minutes,” Wolgast said. “Then we’re gone.”

In the front seat of the Tahoe, they wriggled into sport shirts and jeans while Amy waited. Then Wolgast explained to Amy what they were going to do.

“You have to stay close,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone. Do you promise?”

“Why can’t I talk to anyone?”

“It’s just a rule. If you don’t promise, we can’t go.”

The girl thought a moment, then nodded. “I promise,” she said.

Doyle hung back as they made their way to the entrance of the fairgrounds. The air was sweet with the smell of frying grease. Over the PA system a man’s voice, flat as the Oklahoma plain, was calling out numbers for bingo. B… seven. G… thirty. Q… sixteen.

“Listen,” Wolgast said to Amy, when he was sure Doyle was out of earshot. “I know it might seem strange, but I want you to pretend something. Can you do that for me?”

They stopped on the path. Wolgast saw that the girl’s hair was a mess. He crouched to face her and did his best to smooth it out with his fingers, pushing it away from her face. Her shirt had the word SASSY on it, outlined with some kind of glittery flakes. He zipped up her sweatshirt against the evening’s chill.

“Pretend I’m your daddy. Not your real daddy, just a pretend daddy. If anyone asks, that’s who I am, okay?”

“But I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. You said.”

“Yes, but if we do. That’s what you should say.” Wolgast looked over her shoulder to where Doyle was waiting, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a windbreaker over his polo shirt, zipped to the chin; Wolgast knew he was still armed, that his weapon lay snug in its holster under his arm. Wolgast had left his weapon in the glove compartment.

“So, let’s try it. Who’s the nice man you’re with, little girl?”

“My daddy?” the girl ventured.

“Like you mean it. Pretend.”

“My… daddy.”

A solid performance, Wolgast thought. The kid should act. “Attagirl.”

“Can we ride on the twirly?”

“The twirly. Which one’s the twirly, sweetheart?” Honey, sweetheart. He couldn’t seem to stop himself; the words just popped out.

“That.”

Wolgast looked where Amy was pointing. In the air beyond the ticket booth he saw a huge contraption with rotating disks at the end of each arm, spinning out its riders in brightly colored carts. The Octopus.

“Of course we can,” he said, and felt himself smile. “We can do whatever you want.”

At the entrance he paid for their admission and moved down the line to a second booth to buy tickets for the rides. He thought she might want to eat, but decided to wait; it might, he reasoned, make her feel sick on the rides. He realized he liked thinking this way, imagining her experience, the things that would make her happy. Even he could feel it, the excitement of the fair. A bunch of broken-down rides, most of them probably dangerous as hell, but wasn’t that the point? Why had he said only an hour?

“Ready?”

The line for the Octopus was long but moved quickly. When their turn to board came, the operator stopped them with a raised hand.

“How old is she?”

The man squinted skeptically over his cigarette. Purple tattoos snaked along his bare forearms. Before Wolgast could open his mouth to answer, Amy stepped forward. “I’m eight.”

Just then Wolgast saw the sign, propped on a folding chair: NO RIDERS UNDER SEVEN YEARS OF AGE.

“She don’t look eight,” the man said.

“Well, she is,” Wolgast said. “She’s with me.”

The operator looked Amy up and down, then shrugged. “It’s your lunch,” he said.

They climbed into the wobbling car; the tattooed man pushed the safety bar against their waists. With a lurch the car rose into the air and abruptly halted so other riders could board behind them.

“Scared?”

Amy was pressed against him, her sweatshirt drawn up around her face in the cold, both hands clutching the bar. Her eyes were very wide. She shook her head emphatically. “Uh-uh.”

Four more times the car lifted and stopped. At its apex, the view took in the whole fairgrounds, the high school and its parking lots, the little town of Homer beyond, with its grid of lighted streets. Traffic was still streaming in from the county road. From so far up, the cars seemed to move with the sluggishness of targets in a shooting gallery. Wolgast was scanning the ground below for Doyle when he felt the car lurch again.

“Hold on!”

They descended in a spinning, plunging rush, their bodies pressing upward against the bar. Screams of pleasure filled the air. Wolgast closed his eyes against the force of their descent. He hadn’t been on a carnival ride in years and years; the violence of it was astonishing. He felt Amy’s weight against his body, pushed toward him by the car’s momentum as they spun and fell. When he looked again, they were dipping close to the ground, skating just inches above the hard-packed field, the lights of the fair whirling around them like a rain of shooting stars; then they were vaulted skyward once more. Six, seven, eight times around, each rotation rising and falling in a wave. It took forever and was over in an instant.

As they began their jerking descent to disembark, Wolgast looked down at Amy’s face; still that neutral, appraising gaze, yet he detected, behind the darkness of her eyes, a warm light of happiness. A new feeling opened inside him: no one had ever given her such a present.

“So how was that?” he asked, grinning at her.

“That was cool.” Amy lifted her face quickly. “I want to go again.”

The operator freed them from the bar; they returned to the back of the line. Ahead of them stood a large woman in a flowered housedress and her husband, a weather-beaten man in jeans and a tight western shirt, a fat plug of tobacco pouched under his lip.

“Aren’t you the cutest,” she proclaimed, and looked warmly at Wolgast. “How old is she?”

“I’m eight,” Amy said, and slipped her hand into Wolgast’s. “This is my daddy.”

The woman laughed, her eyebrows lifting like parachutes catching the air. Her cheeks were clumsily rouged. “Of course he’s your daddy, honey. Anyone can see that. It’s just as plain as the nose on your face.” She poked her husband in the ribs. “Isn’t she the cutest, Earl?”

The man nodded. “You bet.”

“What’s your name, honey?” the woman asked.

“Amy.”

The woman shifted her eyes to Wolgast again. “I’ve got a niece just about her age, doesn’t speak half so well. You must be so proud.”

Wolgast was too amazed to respond. He felt as if he were still on the ride, his mind and body caught in some tremendous gravitational force. He thought of Doyle, wondering if he was watching the scene unfold from somewhere in the crowds. But then he knew he didn’t care; let Doyle watch.

“We’re driving to Colorado,” Amy added, and squeezed Wolgast’s hand conspiratorially. “To visit my grandmother.”

“Is that so? Well, your grandmother’s very lucky, to have a girl like you come to visit.”

“She’s sick. We have to take her to the doctor.”

The woman’s face fell with sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear it.” She spoke with quiet earnestness to Wolgast. “I hope everything’s all right. We’ll keep you in our prayers.”

“Thank you,” he managed.

They rode the Octopus three more times. As they moved into the fairgrounds in search of dinner, Wolgast couldn’t spot Doyle anywhere; either he was shadowing them like a pro or he had decided to leave them alone. There were a lot of pretty women around. Maybe, Wolgast thought, he’d gotten distracted.

Wolgast bought Amy a hot dog and they sat together at a picnic table. He watched her eat: three bites, four bites, then it was gone. He got her a second and, when that was gone, a funnel cake, dusted with powdered sugar, and a carton of milk. Not the most nutritious meal, but at least she had the milk.

“What’s next?” he asked her.

Amy’s cheeks were spattered with sugar and grease. She reached up to wipe them with the back of her hand, but Wolgast stopped her. “Use a napkin,” he said, and handed one to her.

“The carousel,” she said.

“Really? Seems pretty tame after the Octopus.”

“They got one?”

“I’m sure they do.”

The carousel, Wolgast thought. Of course. The Octopus was for one part of her, the grown-up part, the part that could watch and wait and lie with confident charm to the woman in the line; the carousel was for the other Amy, for the little girl she really was. Under the spell of the evening, its lights and sounds and the still-churning part of him that had ridden the Octopus four times in a row, he wanted to ask her things: who she really was; about her mother, her father if she had one, and where she was from; about the nun, Lacey, and what had happened at the zoo, the craziness in the parking lot. Who are you, Amy? What brought you here, what brought you to me? And how do you know I’m afraid, that I’m afraid all the time? She took his hand again as they walked; the feel of her palm against his own was almost electrical, the source of a warm current that seemed to spread through his body as they walked. When she saw the carousel with its glowing deck of painted horses, he felt her pleasure actually pass from her body into his.

Lila, he thought. Lila, this was what I wanted. Did you know? It’s all I ever wanted.

He handed the operator their tickets. Amy picked a horse on the outer rim, a white Lipizzaner stallion frozen in mid-prance, grinning a bright row of ceramic teeth. The ride was almost empty; it was past nine o’clock, and the youngest children had gone home.

“Stand next to me,” Amy commanded.

He did; he placed one hand on the pole, another on the horse’s bridle, as if he were leading her. Her legs were too short to reach the stirrups, which dangled freely; he told her to hold tight.

That was when he saw Doyle, standing not a hundred feet away, beyond a row of hay bales that marked the edge of the beer tent, talking energetically to a young woman with great handfuls of red hair. He was telling a story, Wolgast could see, gesturing with his cup to make some point or pace a punch line, inhabiting the role of the handsome fiber-optic salesman from Indianapolis-just as Amy had done with the woman in line, spinning out the detail of the sick grandmother in Colorado. It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person. Beneath his feet, the carousel’s wooden decking shuddered as its gears engaged; with a burp of music from speakers overhead, the carousel began to move as the woman, in a gesture of practiced flirtatiousness, tossed back her head to laugh, while at the same time reaching out to touch Doyle, quickly, on the shoulder. Then the deck of the carousel turned and the two of them were gone from sight.

Wolgast thought it then. The sentences were as clear in his mind as if written there.

Just go. Take Amy and go.

Doyle’s lost track of time. He’s distracted. Do it.

Save her.

Around and around they went. Amy’s horse bobbed up and down like a piston. In just these few minutes, Wolgast felt his thoughts gather into a plan. When the ride was over, he would take her, glide into the darkness, the crowds, away from the beer tent and out the gate; by the time Doyle realized what had happened, they’d be nothing but an empty space in the lot. A thousand miles in every direction; they’d be swallowed whole into it. He was good, he knew what he was doing. He’d kept the Tahoe, he saw, for just this reason; even back then, standing in the parking lot in Little Rock, the germ of the idea had lain inside him, like a seed about to break open. He didn’t know what he’d do about finding the girl’s mother, but he’d figure that out later. He’d never felt anything like it, this blast of clarity. All his life seemed to gather behind this one thing, this singular purpose. The rest-the Bureau, Sykes, Carter, and the others, even Doyle-was a lie, a veil his true self had lived behind, waiting to step into the light. The moment had come; all he had to do was follow his instincts.

The ride began to slow. He didn’t even look in Doyle’s direction, not wanting to jinx this new feeling, to scare it away. When they reached a complete stop, he lifted Amy from her horse and knelt so they were eye to eye.

“Amy, I want you to do something for me. I need you to pay attention to what I’m saying.”

The girl nodded.

“We’re leaving now. Just the two of us. Stay close, don’t say a word. We’re going to be moving quickly, but don’t run. Do just as I say and everything will be fine.” He searched her face for comprehension. “Do you understand?”

“I shouldn’t run.”

“Exactly. Now let’s go.”

They stepped from the deck; they’d come to rest on the far side, away from the beer tent. Wolgast hoisted her quickly over the fence that surrounded the ride, then, bracing his hand on a metal post, vaulted over himself. No one seemed to notice-or maybe they did, but he didn’t look back. With Amy’s hand in his he strode briskly toward the rear of the fairgrounds, away from the lights. His plan was to circle around to the main gate or else find another exit. If they moved quickly, Doyle would never notice until it was too late.

They came to a tall chain-link fence; beyond it stood a dark line of trees and, farther still, the lights of a highway, hemming the high school’s playing fields to the south. There was no way through; the only route was around the perimeter, following the fence back to the main entrance. They were moving through unmown grass, still wet from the storm, soaking their shoes and pants. They reemerged back near the food stands and the picnic table where they had eaten. From there, Wolgast could see the exit, just a hundred feet away. His heart was thumping in his chest. He paused to quickly scan the scene; Doyle was nowhere.

“Straight out the exit,” he told Amy. “Don’t even look up.”

“Yo, chief!”

Wolgast froze. Doyle came jogging up behind them, pointing at his watch. “I thought we said an hour, boss.”

Wolgast looked at him, his bland midwestern face. “Thought we’d lost you,” he said. “We were just coming to look for you.”

Doyle glanced quickly over his shoulder toward the beer tent. “Well, you know,” he said. “Got caught up in a little conversation.” He smiled, a little guiltily. “Nice folks around here. Real talkers.” He gestured at Wolgast’s water-stained slacks. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

For a moment, Wolgast said nothing. “Puddles.” He did his best not to look away, to hold Doyle in his gaze. “The rain.” There was one other chance, maybe, if he could somehow distract Doyle on the way to the Tahoe. But Doyle was younger and stronger, and Wolgast had left his weapon back in the car.

“The rain,” Doyle repeated. He nodded, and Wolgast saw it in the younger man’s face: he knew. He’d known all along. The beer tent was a test, a trap. He and Amy had never been out of sight, not for a second. “I see. Well, we have a job to do. Right, chief?”

“Phil-”

“Don’t.” His voice was quiet-not menacing, merely stating the facts. “Don’t even say the words. We’re partners, Brad. It’s time to go.”

All Wolgast’s hopefulness collapsed inside him. Amy’s hand was still in his; he couldn’t bear even to look at her. I’m sorry, he thought, sending her this message through his hand. I’m sorry. And together, Doyle following five paces behind them, they moved through the exit toward the parking lot.

Neither of them noticed the man-the off-duty Oklahoma state trooper who, two hours before, had seen the wire report on a girl kidnapped by two Caucasian males at the Memphis Zoo, before clocking out and heading off to the high school to meet his wife and watch his kids ride the bumper cars-following them with his eyes.

NINE

I was called… Fanning.

All that day the words sat on his lips: when he awoke at eight, as he bathed and dressed and ate his breakfast and sat on the bed in his room, flipping through the channels and smoking Parliaments, waiting for the night to come. All day long, this was what he heard:

Fanning. I was called Fanning.

The words meant nothing to Grey. The name wasn’t one he knew. He’d never met anybody named Fanning, or anything like Fanning, not that he could remember. Yet somehow, while he’d slept, the name had taken up residence in his head, as if he’d gone to sleep listening to a song played over and over, the lyrics digging a rut into his brain like a plow, and now part of his mind was still in that rut and couldn’t get out. Fanning? What the hell? It made him think of the prison shrink, Dr. Wilder, and the way he’d led Grey down into a state deeper than sleep, the room he called forgiveness, with the slow tap-tap-tap of his pen on the table, the sound snaking inside him. Now Grey couldn’t pick up the channel changer or scratch his head or light a smoke without hearing the words, their syncopating rhythm building a backbeat to every little thing he did.

I(flick)… was(light)… called(draw)… Fanning(exhale).

He sat and smoked and waited and smoked some more. What the hell was wrong with him? He felt different, and the change was no good. Antsy, out of sync with himself. Usually he could just sit still and do virtually nothing while he let the hours pass-he’d learned to do that well enough in Beeville, letting whole days slip by in a kind of thoughtless trance-but not today. Today he was jumpy as a bug in a pan. He tried to watch TV, but the words and the images didn’t even seem related to each other. Outside, beyond the windows of the barracks, the afternoon sky looked like old plastic, a washed-out gray. Gray like Grey. A perfect day to snooze away the hours. Yet here he was, sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, waiting for the afternoon to be over, his insides buzzing like a paper harmonica.

He felt like he hadn’t slept a wink, too, though he’d somehow snoozed straight through his alarm at 05:00 and missed his morning shift. It was OT, so he could make up some excuse-that it was all a mix-up or he’d simply forgotten-but he was going to hear about it either way. He was on again at 22:00. He really needed to nap, to store up some shut-eye for another eight hours of watching Zero watching him.

At 18:00 he pulled on his parka to walk across the compound to the commissary. Sunset was an hour off but the clouds were hanging low, sponging up the last of the light. A damp wind cut through him as he trudged across the open field between the barracks and the dining hall, a cinder-block building that looked like it had been built in a hurry. He couldn’t see the mountains at all, and on days like this it sometimes felt to Grey as if the compound were actually an island-that the world came to a stop, tipping into a black sea of nothingness, somewhere beyond the end of the long drive. Vehicles came and went, delivery trucks and step vans and Army five-tons loaded with supplies, but the place they came from and then went back to, wherever that was, might have been the moon for all Grey knew. Even his memory of the world was beginning to fade. He hadn’t been past the fence line in six months.

The commissary should have been busy at this hour, fifty or more bodies filling the room with heat and noise, but as he stepped through the door, unzipping his parka and stamping the snow off the soles of his shoes, Grey surveyed the space and saw just a few people scattered at the tables, alone and in small groups, not more than a dozen all told. You could tell who did what by what they wore-the med staff in their scrubs and rubber clogs; the soldiers in their winter camos, hunched over their trays and scooping the food into their mouths like farmhands; the sweeps in their UPS-brown jumpsuits. Behind the dining hall there was a lounge with a ping-pong table and air hockey, but nobody was playing or watching the big-screen television either, and the room was quiet, just a few murmuring voices and the clink of glass and flatware. For a while the lounge had held some tables with computers, sleek new vMacs for email and whatnot, but one morning in the summer, a tech crew had wheeled them all out on a dolly, right in the middle of breakfast. Some of the soldiers had complained, but it hadn’t done any good; the computers never returned, and all that remained to say they’d been there were a bunch of wires dangling from the wall. Taking them away had been some kind of a punishment, Grey figured, but he didn’t know what for. He’d never bothered with the computers himself.

Despite the nervous feeling in his body, the smell of warm food made him hungry-the Depo gave him such a voracious appetite it was a wonder he wasn’t heavier than he was-and he filled his tray as he moved down the line, his mind savoring the thought of the meal to come: a bowl of minestrone, salad with croutons and cheese, mashies and pickled beets, a slab of ham with a ring of dried-out pineapple sitting on it like a citrus tiara. He topped it all off with a wedge of lemon pie and a tall glass of ice water and carried everything back to the corner to an empty table. Most of the sweeps ate alone like he did; there wasn’t much you were allowed to actually talk about. Sometimes a whole week would pass without Grey saying so much as boo to anyone except the sentry on L3 who clocked him in and out of Containment. There had been a time, not that many months ago in fact, when the techs and medical staff would ask him questions, things about Zero and the rabbits and the teeth. They’d listen to his answers, nodding, maybe jot something down on their handhelds. But now they just picked up the reports without a word, as if the whole matter of Zero had been settled and there was nothing new to learn.

Grey moved through his meal methodically, course by course. The Fanning thing was still running through his mind like a news crawl, but eating seemed to calm it some; for a few minutes he almost forgot it was there. He was finishing the last of the pie when someone stepped up to his table: one of the soldiers. Grey thought his name was Paulson. Grey had seen him around, though the soldiers had a way of all looking the same in their camos and T-shirts and shiny boots, their hair so short their ears stuck out like somebody had pasted them to the sides of their heads as a joke. Paulson’s cut was so tight Grey couldn’t have said what color his hair really was. He took a chair at right angles to Grey and spun it around to straddle it, smiling at him in a way that Grey wouldn’t have described as friendly.

“You fellows sure like to eat, don’tcha?”

Grey shrugged.

“You’re Grey, right?” The soldier narrowed his eyes. “I’ve seen you.”

Grey put down his fork and swallowed a bite of pie. “Yeah.”

Paulson nodded thoughtfully, like he was deciding if this was a good name or not. His face wore an outward expression of calm, but there was something effortful about this. For a moment his eyes darted to the security camera hanging in the corner over their heads, then found Grey’s face again.

“You know, you fellas don’t say much,” Paulson said. “It’s a little spooky, you don’t mind my saying so.”

Spooky. Paulson didn’t know the half of it. Grey said nothing.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” Paulson lifted his chin toward Grey’s plate. “Don’t let me interrupt. You can go on and finish while we talk.”

“I’m done,” Grey said. “I have to go to work.”

“How’s the pie?”

“You want to ask me about the pie?”

“The pie? No.” Paulson shook his head. “I was just being polite. That would be an example of what’s called small talk.”

Grey wondered what he wanted. The soldiers never said word one to him, and here was this guy, Paulson, giving him etiquette lessons like the cameras weren’t looking straight at them.

“It’s good,” Grey managed. “I like the lemon.”

“Enough with the pie. I couldn’t give two shits about the pie.”

Grey gripped the sides of his tray. “I gotta go,” he said, but as he started to rise, Paulson dropped a hand on his wrist. Grey could feel, in just that one touch, how strong the man was, as if the muscles of his arms were hung on bars of iron.

“Sit. The fuck. Down.”

Grey sat. The room suddenly felt empty to him. He glanced past Paulson and saw that this was so, or nearly: most of the tables were empty. Just a couple of techs on the far side of the room, sipping coffee from throw-away cups. Where had everybody gone?

“You see, we know who you fellas are, Grey,” Paulson said with a quiet firmness. He was leaning over the table, his hand still on Grey’s wrist. “We know what you all did, is what I’m saying. Little boys, or whatever. I say God bless, each to his own gifts. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You follow me?”

Grey said nothing.

“Not everybody feels the way I do, but that’s my opinion. Last time I checked it was still a free country.” He shifted in his chair, bringing his face even closer. “I knew a guy, in high school? Used to put cookie dough on his joint and let the dog lick it off. So you want to nail some little kid, you go right ahead. Personally I don’t get it, but your business is your business.”

Grey felt ill. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “I really gotta go.”

“Where do you have to go, Grey?”

“Where?” He tried to swallow. “To work. I have to go to work.”

“No you don’t.” Finally releasing Grey’s wrist, Paulson took a spoon from Grey’s tray and began to twirl it on the tabletop with the point of his index finger. “You’ve got three hours till your shift. I can tell time, Grey. We’re chatting here, goddamnit.”

Grey watched the spoon, waiting for Paulson to say something else. He suddenly needed a smoke with every molecule of his body, a force like possession. “What do you want from me?”

Paulson gave the spoon a final spin. “What do I want, Grey? That’s the question, isn’t it? I do want something, you’re right about that.” He leaned toward Grey, making a “come closer” gesture with his index finger. His voice, when he spoke, was just above a whisper. “What I want is for you to tell me about Level Four.”

Grey felt his insides drop, like he’d placed a foot on a step that wasn’t there.

“I just clean. I’m a janitor.”

“Pardon me,” Paulson said. “But no. I don’t buy that for a second.”

Grey thought again of the cameras. “Richards-”

Paulson snorted. “Oh, fuck him.” He looked up at the camera, gave a little wave, then slowly rotated his hand, clenching all but his middle finger. He held it that way for a few seconds.

“You think anybody’s actually watching those things? All day, every day, listening to us, watching what we do?”

“There’s nothing down there. I swear.”

Paulson shook his head slowly; Grey saw that wild look in his eyes again. “We both know that’s bullshit, so can we please? Let’s be honest with each other.”

“I just clean,” Grey said weakly. “I’m just here to work.”

Paulson said nothing. The room was so quiet Grey thought he could hear his own heart beating.

“Tell me something. You sleep okay, Grey?”

“What?”

Paulson’s eyes narrowed with menace. “I’m asking, do… you… sleep… okay?”

“I guess,” he managed. “Sure, I sleep.”

Paulson gave a little fatalistic laugh. He leaned back and rocked his eyes toward the ceiling. “You guess. You guess.”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me this stuff.”

Paulson exhaled sharply. “Dreams, Grey.” He pushed his face close to Grey’s. “I’m talking about dreams. You fellas do dream, don’t you? Well, I sure as hell dream. All goddamn night long. One after the other. I am dreaming some crazy shit.”

Crazy, Grey thought; that just about summed the situation up, right there. Paulson was crazy. The wheels weren’t on the road anymore, the oars were out of the water. Too many months on the mountain, maybe, too many days of cold and snow. Grey had known guys like that in Beeville, fine when they got there but who, before even a few months had gone by, couldn’t string two sentences together that made a lick of sense.

“Want to know what I dream about, Grey? Go on. Take a guess.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Take a fucking guess.”

Grey looked down at the table. He could feel the cameras watching-could feel Richards, somewhere, taking all of this in. He thought: Please. For godsakes. No more questions.

“I don’t… know.”

“You don’t.”

He shook his head, his eyes still averted. “No.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Paulson said quietly. “I dream about you.”

For a moment neither spoke. Paulson was crazy, Grey thought. Crazy crazy crazy.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “There’s really nothing down there.”

He made to leave again, waiting to feel Paulson’s hand on his elbow, stopping him.

“Fine,” Paulson said, and gave a little wave. “I’m done for now. Get out of here.” He twisted in his chair to look up at Grey, standing with his tray. “I’ll tell you a secret, though. You want to hear it?”

Grey shook his head.

“You know those two sweeps who left?”

“Who?”

“You know those guys.” Paulson frowned. “The fat ones. Dumbshit and his friend.”

“Jack and Sam.”

“Right.” Paulson’s eyes drifted. “I never did get the names. I guess you could say the names didn’t come with the deal.”

Grey waited for Paulson to say something else. “What about them?”

“Well, I hope they weren’t friends of yours. Because here’s a little bulletin. They’re dead.” Paulson rose; he didn’t look at Grey as he spoke. “We’re all dead.”

It was dark, and Carter was afraid.

He was somewhere down below, way down; he’d seen four buttons on the elevator, the numbers running backward, like the buttons in an underground garage. By the time they’d put him in there on the gurney, he was woozy and feeling no pain-they’d given him something, some kind of shot that made him sleepy but not actually asleep, so he’d felt it a little, what they were doing to the back of his neck. Cutting there, putting something in. Restraints on his wrists and feet-to make him comfortable, they said. Then they’d wheeled him to the elevator and that was the last thing he remembered, the buttons, and somebody’s finger pushing the one that said L4. The guy with the gun, Richards, had never come back like he’d promised.

Now he was awake, and though he couldn’t say for sure, he felt like he was down, way down in the hole; he was still bound at the wrists and ankles and probably his waist, too. The room was cold and dark, but he could see lights blinking somewhere, he couldn’t tell how far, and hear the sound of a fan blowing air. He couldn’t remember much of the conversation he’d had with the men before they’d brought him down. They’d weighed him, Carter remembered that, and done other things like any doctor would do, taking his blood pressure and asking him to pee in a cup and tapping his knees with the hammer and peering inside his nose and mouth. Then they’d put the tube in the back of his hand-that hurt, that hurt like hell, he remembered saying so, God damn-and hooked the tube up to the bag on the hanger, and the rest was all a blur. He recalled a funny light, glowing bright red on the tip of a pen, and all the faces around him suddenly wearing masks, one of them saying, though he couldn’t tell which one, “This is just the laser, Mr. Carter. You may feel a little pressure.” Now, in the dark, he remembered thinking, before his brain had gone all watery and far away, that God had played one last joke on him and maybe this was his ride to the needle after all. He’d wondered if he’d be seeing Jesus soon or Mrs. Wood or the Devil his own self.

But he hadn’t died, all he’d done was sleep, though he didn’t know how long. His mind had drifted for a while, out of one kind of darkness and into another, like he was walking through a house without lights; and with nothing to look at now, he had no way to get his bearings. He couldn’t tell up from down. He hurt all over and his tongue felt like a balled-up sock in his mouth, or some strange furry animal, burrowing there. The back of his neck, where it met his shoulder blades, was humming with pain. He lifted his head to look around, but all he could see were some little points of light-red lights, like the one on the pen. He couldn’t tell how far away they were or how big. They could have been the lights of a distant city for all he knew.

Wolgast: the name floated up to his mind out of the darkness. Something about Wolgast, that thing he’d said, about time being like an ocean and his to give. I can give you all the time in the world, Anthony. An ocean of time. Like he knew what was in the deepest place of Carter’s heart, like they hadn’t just met but had known each other for years. Nobody had talked to Anthony like that for as long as he could remember.

It made him think of the day that had started it all, like the two were of a piece. June: it was June; he remembered that. June, the air under the freeway sizzling hot, and Carter, standing in a wedge of dirty shade and holding his cardboard sign over his chest-HUNGRY, ANYTHING WILL HELP, GOD BLESS YOU-had watched as the car, a black Denali, drew up to the curb. The passenger window opened: not just the usual crack, so whoever was inside could pass him a few coins or a folded bill without their fingers even touching his, but gliding all the way down in a single, liquid motion, so that Carter’s reflection in the window’s dark tint fell like a curtain in reverse-like a hole had opened in the world, revealing a secret room within. The hour was just noon, the lunchtime traffic building on the surface roads and on the West Loop, which banged in a tight rhythm over his head, like a long clicking line of freight cars.

“Hello?” the driver was calling. A woman’s voice, straining over the roar of cars and the echoing acoustics under the freeway. “Hello there? Sir! Excuse me, sir!”

As he stepped forward to the open window, Carter could feel the cool air of the inside of the car on his face; could smell the sweet smokiness of new leather and then, closer still, the scent of the woman’s perfume. She was leaning toward the passenger window, her body straining against her seat belt, sunglasses perched on top of her head. A white woman, of course. He’d known that even before he looked. The black Denali with its shining paint job and huge gleaming grille. The eastbound lane on San Felipe, connecting the Galleria with River Oaks, where the big houses were. The woman was young, though, younger than he would have thought for a car like that, thirty at the most, and wearing what looked like tennis clothes, a white skirt and top that matched, her skin moist and shining. Her arms were lean and strong and coppered by the sun. Straight hair, blond with streaks of a darker color, pulled back from the planes of her face, her delicate nose and well-cut cheekbones. No jewelry he could see except a ring, a diamond fat as a tooth. He knew he shouldn’t look any closer, but he couldn’t stop himself; he let his eyes skim through the back of the car. He saw a baby seat, empty, with brightly colored plush toys hanging over it and beside it a large shopping bag that was made of paper but looked like metal. The name of the store, Nordstrom, was written on the bag.

“Whatever you can give,” Carter muttered. “God bless you.”

Her purse, a fat leather satchel, was resting on her lap. She began tossing the contents out onto the seat: a tube of lipstick, an address book, a tiny, jewel-like phone. “I want to give you something,” she was saying. “Would a twenty be enough? Is that what people do? I don’t know.”

“God bless you now.” The light, Carter knew, was about to change. “Whatever you can do.”

She withdrew her wallet just as, behind them, they heard the first impatient honk. The woman turned her head quickly at the sound, then looked up at the traffic signal, now green. “Oh, damnit, damnit.” She was frantically riffling through the wallet, a huge thing the size of a book, with snaps and zippers and compartments crammed with slips of paper. “I don’t know,” she was saying, “I don’t know.”

More honking, and then, with a roar, the vehicle behind her, a red Mercedes, accelerated to jam itself across the middle lane, cutting off an SUV. The driver of the SUV slammed on his brakes and leaned on his horn.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the woman kept saying. She was looking at the wallet like it was a locked door she couldn’t find the key to open. “It’s all plastic in here, I thought I had a twenty, maybe it was a ten, oh goddamnit, goddamnit… ”

“Hey, asshole!” A man leaned his head from the window of a big pickup, two cars back. “Can’t you see the light? Get out of the road!”

“’Sall right,” Anthony said, backing away. “You should go.”

“You heard me?” the man cried. More long blasts of the horn. He waved a bare arm out the window. “Get outta the fucking way!”

The woman arched her back to look into the rearview. Her eyes grew very wide. “Shut up!” she cried bitterly. She hit the steering wheel with her fists. “Jesus, just shut up!”

“Lady, move your fucking car!”

“I wanted to give you something. That’s all I wanted. Why should it be so hard, just to do this one thing, I wanted to help… ”

Carter knew it was time to run. He could see how the rest was going to unfold: the car door flying open; the furious footsteps coming toward him; a man’s face pressed close to Carter’s, sneering-You bothering this lady? What you think you’re doing, fella?-and then more men, who knew how many, there were always plenty of men when the time came, and no matter what the woman said, she wouldn’t be able to help him, they’d see what they wanted to see: a black man and a white woman with a baby seat and shopping bags, her wallet open in her lap.

“Please,” he said. “Lady, you got to go.”

The door of the pickup swung open, disgorging a huge red-faced man in jeans and a T-shirt, with hands big as catcher’s mitts. He’d crush Carter like a bug.

“Hey!” he yelled, pointing. His big round belt buckle gleamed in the sunshine. “You there!”

The woman lifted her eyes to the mirror and saw what Carter did: the man was holding a gun. “Oh my God, oh my God!” she cried.

“He’s carjacking her! That little nigger’s stealing her car!”

Carter was frozen. It was all bearing down on him, a furious roar, the whole world honking and shouting and coming to get him, coming to get him at last. The woman reached quickly across the passenger seat and opened the door.

“Get in!”

Still he couldn’t move.

“Do it!” she shouted. “Get in the car!”

And for some reason, he did. He dropped his sign and got in fast and slammed the door behind him. The woman hit the gas, jumping the light, which had turned from green to red again. Cars swerved all around them as they rocketed through the intersection. For a second Carter thought they were going to crash for sure and closed his eyes tight, bracing himself for the impact. But nothing happened; everybody missed.

It was, he thought, the damnedest thing. They shot out from under the freeway into sunshine again, the woman driving so fast, it was like she’d forgotten he was there. They hit some railroad tracks and the Denali bounced so high he felt his head actually touch the ceiling. It seemed to jar her, too; she hit the brakes, too hard, sending him pitching forward against the dash, then turned the wheel and pulled into a parking lot with a dry cleaner’s and a Shipley Do-Nuts. And without looking at Anthony or saying a word to him, she dropped her head onto the steering wheel and began to cry.

He’d never seen a white woman cry before, not up close, just movies and TV. In the sealed cabin of the Denali, he could smell her tears, like melting wax, and the clean smell of her hair. Then he realized he could smell himself, too, which he hadn’t done in a long time, and the smell was nothing good. It was bad, really bad, like spoiled meat and sour milk, and he looked down at his body, his dirty hands and arms and the same T-shirt and jeans he’d worn for days and days, and felt ashamed.

After some time she lifted her face off the wheel and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Anthony.”

For a moment, Carter wondered if maybe she was going to drive him straight to the police. The car was so clean and new he felt like a big dirty stain sitting there. But if she could smell him, she didn’t show it any.

“I can get out here,” Carter said. “I’m sorry to have caused you trouble like I did.”

“You? What did you do? You didn’t do anything.” She took in a long breath, tilted her head back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. “Jesus, my husband’s going to kill me. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Rachel, what were you thinking?”

She seemed angry, and Carter guessed she was waiting for him to just get out on his own. They were a few blocks north of Richmond; from there he could catch a bus back to the place he’d been sleeping, a vacant lot down on Westpark beside the recycling center. It was a good spot, he’d had no trouble there, and if it rained the people at the center let him sleep in one of the empty garages. He had a little over ten dollars on him, some bills and change from his morning under the 610-enough to get home with, and buy something to eat.

He put his hand on the door.

“No,” she said quickly. “Don’t go.” She turned toward him. Her eyes, puffy from crying, searched his face. “You have to tell me if you meant it.”

Carter drew a blank. “Ma’am?”

“What you wrote on the sign. What you said. ‘God bless you.’ I heard you say it. Because the thing is,” the woman said, not waiting for his answer, “I don’t feel blessed, Anthony.” She gave a haunted laugh, showing a row of tiny, pearl-like teeth. “Isn’t that strange? I should, but I just don’t. I feel awful. I feel awful all the time.”

Carter didn’t know what to say. How could a white lady like her feel awful? In the corner of his eye, he could see the empty baby seat in back, with its bright array of toys, and he wondered where the child was now. Maybe he should say something about her having a baby, how nice that must be for her. Folks liked having babies in his experience, women especially.

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said. She was staring vacantly out the windshield toward the doughnut shop. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to say anything. I probably just seem like some crazy woman.”

“You seems all right to me.”

She laughed again, bitterly. “Well that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the thing. I seem all right. You can ask anybody. Rachel Wood has everything a person could want. Rachel Wood seems perfectly all right… ”

For a minute they just sat there, the woman quietly crying and staring woefully into space, Carter still wondering if he should get out of the car or not. But the lady was upset, and it felt wrong to leave her like that. He wondered if she wanted him to feel sorry for her. Rachel Wood: he guessed that was her name, that she was talking about herself. But he couldn’t say for sure. Maybe Rachel Wood was a friend of hers, or somebody who was looking after the baby. He knew he’d have to go sooner or later. Whatever mood had taken her would pass, and she’d figure out she’d just about gotten herself shot for this smelly nigger who was sitting in her car. But for the moment, the feel of cool air on his face from the dashboard vents and the woman’s strange, sad silence were enough to keep him where he was.

“What’s your last name, Anthony?”

The question wasn’t one he could remember anybody asking him. “Carter,” he said.

What she did next surprised him more than anything that had happened so far. She turned in her seat and, looking right at him with a clear gaze, offered him her hand to shake.

“Well,” she said, her voice still etched with sadness, “how do you do, Mr. Carter. I’m Rachel Wood.”

Mr. Carter: he liked that. Her hand was small but she shook like a man, her grip strong. He felt-but he couldn’t think of the words for it. He watched to see if she’d wipe her hand off, but she made no move to do this.

“Oh my God!” Her eyes widened with amazement. “My husband’s going to have a heart attack. You can’t tell him about what happened back there. I mean it. You absolutely can’t.”

Carter shook his head.

“I mean, it’s not his fault he’s such a complete and total asshole. He just wouldn’t see it the way we do. You have to promise, Mr. Carter.”

“I won’t say nothing.”

“Good.” She nodded briskly, satisfied, and pointed her eyes out the windshield again, her smooth brow furrowing thoughtfully. “Doughnuts. Now, I don’t know why I stopped here of all places. You probably don’t want doughnuts, do you?”

Just the word made a blast of saliva wash down the insides of his mouth. He felt his stomach growl. “Doughnuts is all right,” Carter said. “The coffee’s good.”

“But they’re not a real meal, are they?” Her voice was firm; she’d decided something. “A real meal is what you need.”

That was when Carter realized what the feeling was. He felt seen. Like all along he’d been a ghost without knowing it. It came to him all of a sudden that she meant to take him with her, take him home. He’d heard about folks like her but never believed it.

“You know, Mr. Carter, I think God put you under that freeway today for a reason. I think he was trying to tell me something.” She put the Denali in gear. “You and I are going to be friends. I can just feel it.”

And they were friends, just like she’d said. That was the funny thing. He and this white lady, Mrs. Wood, with her husband-old enough to be her father, though Carter almost never saw him-and her big house under the live oaks with its thick lawn and hedges, and her two little girls-not just the baby but the older one too, cute as a bug like her sister was, the two of them like something in a picture. He felt it right down to the marrow, the deepest part of him. They were friends. She’d done things for him that no one ever had; it was as if she’d opened the door to her car and inside was a whole big room, and in that room were people, and voices saying his name and food to eat and a bed to sleep on and all the rest. She’d gotten him work, not just her yard but other houses, too; and wherever he went, people called him Mr. Carter, asking him if maybe he could do something a little extra today, because they were having folks over: blowing leaves off the patio or painting a set of chairs or pulling leaves from the gutters, or even walking a dog every now and again. Mr. Carter, I know you must be busy, but if it’s not too much trouble, could you…? And always he said yes, and in the envelope under the mat or the flowerpot they’d leave an extra ten or twenty, without his having to ask. He liked these other folks, but the truth was they didn’t matter to him; he did it all for her. Wednesdays, the best day of the week-her day-she’d wave to him from a window as he wheeled the mower from the garage, and sometimes, lots of times, come out of the house when he was done and cleaning up-she didn’t leave the money under the mat like the others, but put it in his hand-and maybe sit for a spell with cold glasses of tea on the patio, telling him things about her life, but asking him about his, too. They’d talk like real people, sitting in the shade. Mr. Carter, she’d tell him, you’re a godsend. Mr. Carter, I don’t know how I ever got one thing done without you. You’re the piece of the puzzle that was missing.

He loved her. It was true. That was the mystery, the sad and sorrowful mystery of it all. As he lay now in the dark and cold, he felt the tears coming, rising all the way from his gut. How could anybody ever say he’d done anything to Mrs. Wood when he’d loved her like he did? Because he knew. Knew that even though she smiled and laughed and went about her business, shopping and playing her tennis and taking trips to the salon, inside of her was an empty place, he’d seen it that first day in the car, and his heart went out to this, like he could fill it for her just by wanting to. The days when she didn’t come out to the yard, more and more as time went by, he’d catch sight of her, sometimes, sitting on the sofa for hours, letting the baby just cry and cry because she was wet or hungry, but not moving a muscle: it was like all the air had gone out of her. Some days he didn’t see her at all, and he guessed she was deep in the house somewhere, being sad. He’d do extra things on those days, trimming the hedges just so, or picking weeds out of the walk, hoping if he waited long enough she’d come out with the tea. The tea meant she was all right, that she’d gotten through another day of feeling awful like she did.

And then that afternoon in the yard-that terrible afternoon-he found the older girl, Haley, alone. It was December, the air raw with dampness, the pool full of winter leaves; the little girl, who was in kindergarten, was wearing her blue school shorts and a collared blouse but nothing else, not even shoes, and sitting on the patio. She was holding a doll, a Barbie. Didn’t she have school today? Carter asked, and she shook her head, not looking at him. Was her mama around? Daddy’s in Mexico, the girl stated, and shivered in the cold. With his girlfriend. Her mama wouldn’t get out of bed.

He tried the door but it was locked, and rang the bell and then he called up to the windows, but no one answered. He didn’t know what to make of the little girl, outside alone like that, but there was lots he didn’t know about people like the Woods, not everything they did made sense to him. All he had was his dirty old sweater to give the girl, but she took it, wrapping it around herself like a blanket. He got to work on the lawn, thinking maybe the noise of the mower would wake up Mrs. Wood and she’d remember her little girl was outside alone by the pool, that she’d accidentally locked the door somehow. Mr. Carter, I don’t know how it happened, I fell asleep somehow, thank God you were here.

He finished the lawn, the girl watching him silently with her doll, and got the skimmer from the garage to clean the pool. That was when he found it, along the edge of the path: a baby toad. Weren’t no bigger than a penny. He was lucky he’d missed it with the mower. He bent to pick it up; it weighed nothing in his hand. If he hadn’t been looking at it with his own eyes he’d have said his hand was empty, that’s how light it was. Maybe it was the girl watching him from the patio, or else Mrs. Wood sleeping behind him in the house; but it seemed, right then, like the toad could set things right somehow, this tiny thing in the grass.

– C’mere, he said to the girl. C’mere, I’ve got something to show you. Just a little baby of a thing, Miss Haley. A little baby thing like you.

He turned then to find Mrs. Wood, standing in the yard behind him, not ten feet away; she must have come out the front, because he hadn’t heard a sound. She was wearing a big T-shirt, like a nightgown, her hair all whichaway around her face.

– Mrs. Wood, he said, why there you are, glad to see you’re up now. I was just about to show Haley here-

Get away from her!

But it wasn’t Mrs. Wood, not the one he knew. Her eyes were gone all wild and crazy. She looked like she didn’t know who he was.

– Mrs. Wood, I just meant to show her something nice-

Get away! Get away! Run, Haley, run!

And before he could say another word she’d shoved him, hard, with all her strength; he tumbled backward, his foot tangled on the skimmer where he’d left it on the pool deck. He reached out, a reflex, his fingertips catching and holding the front of her shirt; he felt his weight taking her with him, nothing he could do to stop it, and that was when they fell into the water.

The water. It hit him like a fist, his nose and eyes and mouth filling with it, with its awful chemical taste, like demon’s breath. She was under and over and all around him as they sank, their arms and legs twisted around each other’s like a net; he tried to free himself but she held fast, dragging him down and down. He couldn’t swim, not a stroke, he could sort of bob along if he had to but even that scared him, and he had no strength to stop her. He craned his head to find the shining surface of the water where it met the air, but it could have been a mile away. She was pulling him down, into a world of silence, as if the pool were an inverted piece of sky, and that was when he figured it: that was where she wanted to go. That’s where she’d been headed, all along, since that day under the freeway when she had stopped her car and said his name. Whatever had kept her in that other world, the one above the water, had finally snapped, like the string of a kite, but the world was upside down, and now the kite was falling. She pulled him into a hug, her chin against his shoulder, and for an instant he glimpsed her eyes through the swirling water and saw they were full of a terrible, final darkness. Oh please, he thought, let me. I’ll die if you want me to, I would die for you if you asked, let me be the one to die instead. All he had to do was breathe. He knew that as clear as he knew his own name, but try as he might he couldn’t make himself do this; he had lived his life too long to give it up by will alone. They hit the bottom with a soft thump, Mrs. Wood still holding him, and he felt her shoulders twitch when she took the first breath. She took another, and then a third, the bubbles of the last air in her lungs rising beside his ear like a whispered secret-God bless you, Mr. Carter-and then she let him go.

He didn’t remember getting out of the pool, or what he’d said to the little girl. She was crying loudly and then stopped. Mrs. Wood was dead, her soul was nowhere around anymore, but her empty body slowly made its way to the surface, taking its place among the floating leaves he’d meant to clean. There was a kind of peacefulness to everything, a terrible brokenhearted peacefulness, like something that had gone on too long had finally found a way to finish. Like he’d begun to disappear again. It might have been hours or minutes before the neighbor lady came, and then the police, but by that time he knew he wouldn’t tell a soul what had happened, the things he’d seen and heard. It was a secret she had given him, the final secret of who she was, and he was meant to keep it.

Carter decided it was all right, what was going to happen to him now. It felt inevitable. Maybe Wolgast had lied, or maybe he hadn’t, but the work of Carter’s life was over; he knew that now. Nobody was going to ask him again about Mrs. Wood. She was just a thing in his mind, like some part of her had passed straight into him, and he wouldn’t have to tell nobody about it.

The air around him broke with a hissing sound, like air leaking from a tire, and a single green light appeared on the far wall where a red one used to be; a door swung open, bathing the room in a pale blue light. Carter saw he was lying on a gurney, wearing a gown. The tube was still threaded into his hand, and looking at the place where it pulled at his skin under the tape made it hurt fiercely again. The room was larger than he’d guessed, nothing but pure white surfaces except for the place where the door had opened and a few machines on the far wall that looked like nothing he knew.

A figure was standing in the doorway.

He closed his eyes and leaned back, thinking, All right now. All right. I’m ready. Let them come.

“We have a situation.”

It was just past ten P.M. Sykes had appeared at the door of Richards’s office.

“I know,” Richards said. “I’m on it.”

The situation was the girl, the Jane Doe. She wasn’t a Jane Doe anymore. Richards had gotten the news off the law enforcement general feed a little after nine. The girl’s mother was a suspect in a shooting, something at a fraternity house; the boy she’d shot was the son of a federal circuit judge. The gun, which she’d left at the scene, had led local police to a motel near Graceland, where the manager-a list of priors that filled two pages-had ID’d the girl from the photograph the cops had taken of her on Friday, at the convent where the mother had dumped her. The nuns had spilled their story, and something else that Richards didn’t know what to make of-some kind of disturbance at the Memphis Zoo-before one of them had picked out Doyle and Wolgast from a surveillance video taken the night before at the I-55 checkpoint north of Baton Rouge. Local TV had gotten the story in time for the evening news, when the Amber Alert had gone out.

Just like that, the whole world was looking for two federal agents and a little girl named Amy Bellafonte.

“Where are they now?” Sykes asked.

On his terminal, Richards called up the satellite feed and pointed his viewer at the states between Tennessee and Colorado. The transmitter was in Wolgast’s handheld. Richards counted eighteen hot points in the region, then found the one that matched the number of Wolgast’s tracking tag.

“Western Oklahoma.”

Sykes was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Do you think he knows yet?”

Richards recalibrated the viewer, zooming in.

“I’d say so,” he said, and showed Sykes the data stream.

Target velocity, 120 kph.

Then, a moment later:

Target velocity, 133 kph.

They were on the run now. Richards would have to go get them. Locals were involved, maybe state cops. It was going to be ugly, assuming he could even reach them in time. The chopper was already inbound from Fort Carson; Sykes had made the call.

They took the rear stairs to L1 and stepped outside to wait. The temperature had risen since sunset. A thick fog was ascending in loose coils under the lights of the parking circle, like dry ice at a rock concert. They stood together without talking; there was nothing to say. The situation was more or less a complete and total screwup. Richards thought of the photograph, the one that was all over the wires. Amy Bellafonte: beautiful fountain. Black hair falling straight to her shoulders-it looked damp, like she’d been walking in the rain-and a smooth, young face, still with some baby fat fluffing her cheeks; but beneath her brow, dark eyes with a knowing depth. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt zipped to her throat. In one hand she was clutching some kind of toy, a stuffed animal. It might have been a dog. But the eyes: the eyes were what Richards kept coming back to. She was looking straight at the camera as if to say, See? What did you think I was, Richards? You think nobody in the world loves me?

For a second, just one, he thought it. It brushed him like a wing: the wish that he were a different kind of person, that the look in a child’s eyes meant something to him.

Five minutes later they heard the chopper, a pulsing presence coasting in low over the wall of trees to the southeast. It made a single, searching turn, dragging a cone of light, then dropped toward the parking lot with balletic precision, shoving a wave of shuddering air under its blades. A UH-60 Blackhawk with a full armament rack, rigged for night reconnaissance. It seemed like a lot, for one little girl. But that was the situation in which they now found themselves. They held their hands over their brows against the wind and noise and swirling snow.

As the chopper touched down, Sykes seized Richards’s elbow.

“She’s a kid!” he said over the din. “Do this right!”

Whatever that meant, Richards thought, and stepped briskly away, toward the opening door.

TEN

They were moving quickly now, Wolgast at the wheel, Doyle beside him, thumbing away furiously on his handheld. Calling in to let Sykes know who was in charge.

“No goddamn signal.” Doyle tossed his handheld onto the dash. They were fifteen miles outside of Homer, headed due west; the open fields slid endlessly away under a sky thick with stars.

“I could have told you that,” Wolgast said. “It’s the back side of the moon out here. And why don’t you watch your language?”

Doyle ignored him. Wolgast lifted his eyes quickly to the rearview to find Amy looking back at him. He knew she felt it too: they were joined together now. From the moment they’d stepped off the carousel, he’d cast his lot with her.

“How much do you know?” Wolgast asked. “I don’t suppose it matters now if you tell me.”

“As much as you do.” Doyle shrugged. “Maybe more. Richards thought you might have problems with this.”

When had they spoken? Wolgast wondered. While he and Amy were on the rides? That night in Huntsville, when Wolgast had gone back to the motel to call Lila? Or was it before?

“You should be careful. I mean it, Phil. A guy like that. Private security contractor. He’s little more than a mercenary.”

Doyle sighed irritably. “You know what your problem is, Brad? You don’t know who’s on your side here. I gave you the benefit of the doubt back there. All you had to do was bring her back to the car when you said you would. You’re not seeing the whole picture.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

A filling station appeared ahead of them, a glowing oasis in the gloom. As they approached, Wolgast eased off the gas.

“Christ. Don’t stop,” Doyle said. “Just drive.”

“We’re not going to get very far without gas. We’re down to a quarter tank. This could be the last station for a while.”

If Doyle wanted to be in charge, Wolgast thought, at least he would have to act like it.

“Fine. But just the gas. And both of you stay in the car.”

They pulled up to the pump. After Wolgast shut off the engine, Doyle reached across and withdrew the keys from the ignition. Then he opened the glove box and removed Wolgast’s weapon. He released the clip, buried it in the pocket of his jacket, and returned the empty gun to the glove box.

“Stay put.”

“You might want to check the oil too.”

Doyle exhaled sharply. “Jesus, anything else, Brad?”

“I’m just saying. We don’t want to break down.”

“Fine. I’ll check it. Just stay in the car.”

Doyle stepped around the back of the Tahoe and began to fill the tank. With Doyle out of the car, Wolgast had a moment to think, but unarmed and without the keys, there wasn’t much he could do. Part of him had decided not to take Doyle completely seriously, but for the moment, the situation was what it was. He pulled the lever under the dash; Doyle moved to the front of the Tahoe and lifted the hood, momentarily shielding the cabin from view.

Wolgast twisted around to face Amy.

“Are you okay?”

The girl nodded. She was holding her knapsack in her lap; the well-stroked ear of her stuffed rabbit was peeking through the opening. In the light of the filling area, Wolgast could see a bit of powdered sugar still on her cheeks, like flecks of snow.

“Are we still going to the doctor?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“He has a gun.”

“I know, honey. It’s all right.”

“My mother had a gun.”

Before Wolgast could assemble a response, the hood of the Tahoe slammed closed. Startled, he turned sharply in time to see three state police cruisers, lights on, tearing past the filling station in the opposite direction.

The passenger door of the Tahoe opened to a gust of damp air. “Shit.” Doyle handed Wolgast the keys and swiveled in his seat to look at the cruisers as they passed. “You think that’s about us?”

Wolgast angled his head to watch the cruisers through the side-view mirror. They were doing at least eighty, maybe more. It could have been something ordinary, a wreck or a fire. But his gut told him it wasn’t. He counted off the seconds, watching the lights recede into the distance. He had reached twenty by the time he was certain they were turning around.

He turned the key, felt the engine roar to life.

“That’s us all right.”

Ten o’clock, and Sister Arnette couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even close her eyes.

Oh, it was awful, just awful, everything that had happened-first the men coming for Amy, how they had deceived her, deceived everyone, though Sister Arnette still didn’t understand how they could be both FBI and also kidnappers; and then that terrible thing at the zoo, the shouts and screams and everyone running, and Lacey holding on to Amy the way she had, refusing to let go; and the hours they’d spent at the police station, the whole rest of the day, not treated like criminals exactly but certainly not spoken to in a way that Sister Arnette was accustomed to, all of it vaguely accusing, the detective asking them the same questions over and over again; and then the reporters and camera trucks lined up on the street outside the house, huge spotlights filling the front windows as the evening wore on, the phone ringing nonstop until finally Sister Claire had thought to unplug it.

The girl’s mother had killed someone, a boy. That’s what the detective had told her. The detective’s name was Dupree, a young fellow with a prickly little beard, and he spoke to her courteously, a bit of old New Orleans in his voice, which meant he was probably Catholic, calling her dawlin’ and cher; but wasn’t that what Sister Arnette had thought of the other two when they’d appeared at the door? Wolgast and the younger, good-looking one? Whose faces she had seen again on the grainy video Dupree showed her, from someplace in Mississippi, taken when-she guessed-they thought no one was looking? That they were nice men because they looked nice? And the mother, Detective Dupree told her, the mother was a prostitute. “A prostitute is a deep pit; she hides and waits like a robber, looking for another victim who will be unfaithful to his wife.” Proverbs, chapter 23. “For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.”

Hold of hell. The very words made Sister Arnette shudder in her bed. Because hell was real, that was a fact; it was a real place, where souls in torment writhed in agony forever and ever. That’s the kind of woman Lacey had let into their kitchen, who had stood in their very house not more than thirty-six hours ago: a woman who had hold of hell. The woman had ensnared this boy somehow-Arnette didn’t want to imagine that part-and then shot him, shot him with a gun in the head, and then given her girl to Lacey while she made her escape, a girl who had who-knew-what inside her. For it was true: there had been something… unearthly about her. It wasn’t nice to think it, but there it was. How else to explain what had happened at the zoo, all the animals running and making a ruckus?

The whole situation was awful. Awful awful awful.

Arnette tried to make herself sleep, but this accomplished nothing. She could still hear the thrum of the vans’ generators, could see, through the veil of her closed eyes, the ravenous glow of their spotlights. If she turned on the TV she knew what she’d find: reporters with their microphones, speaking in earnest tones and gesturing behind them toward the house where Arnette and the other sisters now attempted to sleep. The scene of the crime, they’d call it, of the latest development in this breaking story of murder and kidnapping, and federal agents somehow involved-though Dupree had forbidden, absolutely forbidden the sisters from talking about this part to anyone. When the sisters had returned home in the police van that had carried them back from the station, all of them wordless with exhaustion, to find the TV trucks, at least a dozen, lined up at the curb in front of the house like a circus train, it was Sister Claire who’d noticed that they weren’t just the local Memphis network affiliates but came from as far away as Nashville and Paducah and Little Rock, even St. Louis. As soon as they’d turned into the driveway the reporters had swarmed the van, pointing their lights and cameras and microphones and barking their furious, incomprehensible questions. These people had no decency. Sister Arnette was so frightened she began to shake. It had taken two police officers to move the reporters off the property-Can’t you see they’re nuns? Whaddaya wanna go bothering a buncha nuns for? All of you just back it up, right now-so the sisters could walk safely into the house.

Yes, hell was real, and Arnette knew where it was. She was in it, right now.

After that they’d sat together in the kitchen, none of them hungry but still needing to be somewhere-everyone except Lacey, whom Claire had taken straight upstairs to her room to rest. It was odd: of all of them, Lacey seemed the least shaken by the events of the afternoon. She’d barely uttered a word for hours, not to the sisters and not to Dupree, either, just sat with her hands in her lap, tears rolling down her cheeks. But then a funny thing had happened; the officers showed them the videotape from Mississippi, and when Dupree froze the image on the two men, Lacey stepped forward and looked, hard, at the monitor. Arnette had already told Dupree that that was them, she’d had a good look and there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that the men on the screen were the same two who had come to the house and taken the girl; but the expression on Lacey’s face, which was something like surprise but not exactly-the word Arnette thought of was astonishment-made them all wait.

“I was wrong,” Lacey said finally. “It isn’t… him. He is not the one.”

“Which him, Sister?” Dupree asked gently.

She lifted a finger to the older of the two agents, the one who’d done all the talking-though it was the younger one, Arnette recalled, who’d actually taken Amy and put her in the car. In the image, he was looking straight up at the camera, holding a disposable cup in his hand. The time signature on the bottom right corner of the screen said that it was 06:01 on the same morning the two of them had come to the convent.

“Him,” Lacey said, and touched the glass.

“He didn’t take the girl?”

“He most assuredly did, Detective,” Arnette declared. She turned and looked at Sister Louise and Sister Claire, who nodded their assent. “We’re all agreed to that. Sister is just upset.”

But Dupree was not deterred. “Sister Lacey? What do you mean he’s not the one?”

Her face was shining with conviction. “That man,” she said. “Do you see?” She turned and looked at all of them. She actually smiled. “Do you see? He loves her.”

He loves her. What to make of that? But these were the only words Lacey had offered on the matter, as far as Arnette was aware. Did she mean to imply that Wolgast actually knew the girl? Could he have been Amy’s father? Was that what all this was about? But it didn’t explain what had occurred at the zoo, a terrible thing-a child had actually been trampled in the chaos and was in the hospital; two of the animals, a cat of some kind and one of the apes, had been shot-or the dead boy at the college, or any of the rest of it. And yet for the remainder of the afternoon at the station, in and out of various offices, telling their story, Lacey had sat quietly, smiling that strange smile, as if she knew something no one else did.

It all went back, Arnette believed, to what had happened to Lacey so long ago, as a little girl in Africa. Arnette had confessed the whole thing to the sisters, as they sat in the kitchen waiting for the hour when they could go to bed. She probably shouldn’t have, but she’d had to tell Dupree; once they were back at the house, it had all just kind of come out. An experience like that didn’t ever leave a person, the sisters agreed; it went inside them and stayed forever. Sister Claire-of course it was Sister Claire, who had gone to college and kept a nice dress and good shoes in her closet as if at any moment she’d get an invitation to a fancy party-knew a name for it: post-traumatic stress disorder. It made sense, Sister Claire said; it added up. It explained Lacey’s protective feelings for the girl, and why she never went out of the house, and the way she seemed separate from all of them, living among them but also not, as if a part of her were always elsewhere. Poor Lacey, to carry such a memory inside her.

Arnette checked the clock: 12:05. Outside, the roar of the generators had ceased at last; the camera crews had all gone home. She drew back the covers and breathed a worried sigh. There was no denying it. All of this was Lacey’s fault. Arnette would never have given the girl to those men if Lacey hadn’t lied to them all in the first place, and yet now it was Lacey who was fast asleep, while she, Arnette, was lying in bed awake. The other sisters, couldn’t they see that? But probably they were all sleeping, too. It was only she, Arnette, who was sentenced to a night of pacing the halls of her mind.

Because she was worried. Deeply worried. Something didn’t add up, no matter what Sister Claire said. He’s not the one. He loves her. That strange, knowing smile on Lacey’s lips. Dupree had questioned Lacey closely, asking her what this meant, but all Lacey had done was smile and say these words again, as if they explained everything. And it flew straight in the face of the facts. Wolgast was the one: everyone was agreed on that point. Wolgast and the other man, the one who had taken the girl, whose name Arnette remembered now was Doyle, Phil Doyle. Where they had taken the girl and why-well, no one had told Arnette anything. She sensed Dupree was puzzled too, the way he kept posing the same questions over and over, clicking his pen, frowning incredulously and shaking his head, making phone calls, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

And then, despite all these concerns, Arnette felt her mind begin to loosen, the images of the day unwinding inside her like a spool of thread, pulling her down into sleep. Tell us again about the parking lot, Sister. Arnette in the little room with the mirror that wasn’t a mirror-she knew that. Tell us about the men. Tell us about Lacey. Arnette was facing the glass; over Dupree’s shoulder she could see her face reflected there, an old face, lined by time and exhaustion, its edges wrapped by the gray cloth of her veil so that it seemed disembodied somehow, floating in space; and behind it, on the other side of the glass, above and around her, she detected the presence of a dark form, watching her. Who was behind her face? She could hear Lacey’s voice now, too, Lacey in the parking lot, crazy Lacey who seemed apart from all of them, sitting on the ground and clutching the girl fiercely; Arnette was standing above her, and Lacey and the girl were crying. Don’t take her. Her mind followed the sound of Lacey’s voice, down into a dark place.

Don’t take me, don’t take me, don’t take me…

A bolt of anxiety hit her chest; she sat upright, too fast. The air of the room seemed lighter, as if all the oxygen had leaked away. Her heart was hammering. Had she fallen asleep? Was she dreaming? What in the world?

And then she knew, knew it for a fact. They were in danger, terrible danger. Something was coming. She didn’t know what. Some dark force had come loose in the world, and it was sweeping toward them, coming for them all.

But Lacey knew. Lacey, who’d lain in the field for hours, knew what evil was.

Arnette tore from the room, into the hall. To be sixty-eight, and consumed by such terror! To give your life to God, to His loving peace, and come to such a moment! To lie with it in the dark all alone! A dozen steps to Lacey’s door: Arnette tried the handle but the door refused her; it was locked from the inside. She pounded the door with her fists.

“Sister Lacey! Sister Lacey, open this door!”

Then Claire was at her side. She was wearing a T-shirt that seemed to glow in the dark hall; her face was smeared with a penumbra of bluish cream. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Sister Lacey, open this door this instant!” Silence, still, from the far side. Arnette seized the handle and shook it like a dog with a rag in his teeth. She pounded and pounded. “Do as I say right now!”

Lights coming on, the sounds of doors and voices, a great commotion all around her. The other sisters were in the hallway now too, their eyes wide with alarm, everyone talking at once.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know-”

“Is Lacey all right?”

“Somebody call 911!”

“Lacey,” Arnette was yelling, “open this door!”

A huge force gripped her, pulling her away. Sister Claire: it was Sister Claire who had grabbed Arnette from behind, seizing her by her arms. She felt her diminishment, how her strength, against Sister Claire’s, was nothing.

“Look-Sister’s hurt herself-”

“Dear Lord in heaven!”

“Look at her hands!”

“Please,” Arnette sobbed. “Help me.”

Sister Claire released her. A reverent hush had fallen over them all. Crimson ribbons were running down Arnette’s wrists. Claire took one of Arnette’s fists and gently unclenched it. The palm was filled with blood.

“Look, it’s just her fingernails,” Claire said, and showed them. “She dug into her palms with her fingernails.”

“Please,” Arnette begged, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Just open the door and see.”

No one knew where the key was. It was Sister Tracy who thought to get the screwdriver from the toolbox under the kitchen sink and wedge it into the lock. But by the time this happened, Sister Arnette had already figured out what they’d find.

The bed that had never been slept in. The curtains of the open window shifting in the evening air.

The door swung open on an empty room. Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto was gone.

Two A.M. The night was moving at a crawl.

Not that it had begun well for Grey. After his run-in with Paulson in the commissary, Grey had returned to his room in the barracks. He still had two hours to kill until his shift, more than enough time to think about what Paulson had said about Jack and Sam. The only upside was that it sort of took his mind off the other thing, that funny echo in his head, but still it was no good, just sitting around feeling worried, and at a quarter to ten, just about ready to jump out of his skin, he put on his parka and crossed the compound to the Chalet. Under the lights of the parking area he treated himself to one last Parliament, gulping down the smoke, while a couple of doctors and lab techs, wearing heavy winter coats over their scrubs, exited the building and got into their cars and drove away. Nobody so much as waved at him.

The floor by the front door was slick with melted snow. Grey banged his boots clean and stepped to the desk, where the sentry took his badge and ran it through the scanner and waved him to the elevator. Inside, he pushed the button for Level 3.

“Hold the elevator.”

Grey’s insides jumped: Richards. An instant later he stepped briskly into the car, a cloud of cold air from outside still clinging to his nylon jacket.

“Grey.” He pushed the button for L2 and quickly checked his watch. “Where the fuck were you this morning?”

“I overslept.”

The doors slid closed and the car began its slow descent.

“You think this is a vacation? You think you can just show up when you feel like it?”

Grey shook his head, his eyes cast down at the floor. Just the sound of the man’s voice could make his backside clench like a fist. No way Grey was going to look at him.

“Uh-uh.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

Grey could smell the nervous sweat coming off himself, a rancid stink, like onions left too long in a crisper drawer. Probably Richards could smell it too.

“I guess.”

Richards sniffed and said nothing. Grey knew he was deciding what to do.

“I’m docking you for two shifts,” Richards said finally, keeping his eyes forward. “Twelve hundred bucks.”

The doors slid open on L2.

“Don’t let it happen again,” Richards warned.

He exited the elevator and strode away. As the doors closed behind him, Grey released the breath he realized he’d been holding in his chest. Twelve hundred bucks-that hurt. But Richards. He made Grey more than a little jumpy. Especially now, after the little speech Paulson had given in the mess. Grey had begun to think maybe something had happened to Jack and Sam, that they hadn’t just flown the coop. Grey remembered that dancing red light in the field. It had to be true: something had happened, and Richards had put that light on Jack and Sam.

The doors opened on L3, giving a view of the security detail, two soldiers wearing the orange armband of the watch. He was well below ground now, which always made him feel a little claustrophobic at first. Above the desk was a big sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. BIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR HAZARDS PRESENT. NO EATING, DRINKING, SMOKING. REPORT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS TO THE OD. This was followed by a list of what sounded like a bad case of stomach flu, only worse: fever, vomiting, disorientation, seizures.

He gave his badge to the one he knew as Davis.

“Hey, Grey.” Davis took his badge and ran it under the scanner without even looking at the screen. “I got a joke for you. How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, you wanna go ride bikes?” Davis laughed and slapped his knee. The other soldier frowned; Grey didn’t think he understood the joke, either. “Don’t you get it?”

“’Cause he likes to ride bikes?”

“Yeah, ’cause he likes to ride bikes. He’s got ADD. It means he can’t pay attention.”

“Oh. I get it now.”

“It’s a joke, Grey. You’re supposed to laugh.”

“It’s funny,” Grey managed. “But I gotta get to work.”

Davis sighed heavily. “Okay, hold your horses.”

Grey stepped back into the elevator with Davis. From around his neck Davis took a long, silver key and placed it in a slot beside the button for L4.

“Have fun down there,” Davis said.

“I just clean,” Grey said nervously.

Davis frowned and shook his head. “I don’t want to know anything about it.”

In the locker room on L4, Grey switched out his jumpsuit for scrubs. Two other men were there, sweeps like him, one named Jude and one named Ignacio. On the wall, a large whiteboard listed the duties of each worker for the shift. They dressed together without speaking and exited the room.

Grey had drawn the lucky straw: all he had to do was mop the halls and empty the trash, then babysit Zero for the rest of the shift, to see if he ate anything. From the storage closet he fetched his mop and supplies and got to work; by midnight he was done. Then he went to the door at the end of the first corridor, ran his card through the scanner, and stepped inside.

The room, about twenty feet square, was empty. On the left side, a two-stage air lock led into the containment chamber. Going through took at least ten minutes, more on the return trip, when you had to shower. To the right of the air lock was the control panel. It was all a bunch of lights and buttons and switches, most of which Grey didn’t understand and wasn’t supposed to touch. Above it was a wall of reinforced glass, dark, which looked out on the chamber.

Grey took a seat at the panel and examined the infrared. Zero was kind of huddled in the corner, away from the gates, which had been left open when the last shift had brought in the rabbits. The galvanized cart was still there, sitting in the middle of the room, with its ten open cages. Three of the rabbits were still inside. Grey looked around the room. The others were all scattered about, untouched.

At a little after one A.M. the door to the corridor opened, and one of the techs stepped in, a large Hispanic man named Pujol. He nodded at Grey and looked at the monitor.

“Still not eating?”

“Uh-uh.”

Pujol made a mark on the screen of his handheld. He had one of those complexions that made it look as if he hadn’t shaved even when he had.

“I was wondering something,” Grey said. “How come they don’t eat the tenth one?”

Pujol shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe they’re just saving it for later.”

“I had a dog who did that,” Grey volunteered.

Pujol made more marks on his handheld. “Yeah, well.” He lifted one broad shoulder in a shrug; the information meant nothing to him. “Call the lab if he decides to eat.”

After Pujol left, Grey wished he’d thought to ask him some of the other questions on his mind. Like, why rabbits at all, or how Zero stuck to the ceiling like he sometimes did, or why just sitting there had begun to make Grey’s skin crawl. Because that was the thing with Zero, more even than with the rest of them; being with Zero felt like being with an actual person in the room. Zero had a mind, and you could feel that mind working. Five more hours: Zero hadn’t moved an inch since Grey had gotten there. But the readout below the infrared still gave his heartrate at 102 bpm, same as when he was moving about. Grey wished he’d thought to bring a magazine to read or maybe a crossword book, to help him stay alert, but Paulson had rattled him so bad he’d forgotten. He also wanted a smoke. A lot of guys snuck them in the john, not just the sweeps but also the techs and even a doctor or two. It was generally understood that you could smoke there if you had to and weren’t gone more than five minutes, but Grey didn’t want to push his luck with Richards, not after their run-in in the elevator.

He leaned back in the chair. Five more hours. He closed his eyes.

Grey.

Grey’s eyes flew open; he sat upright.

Grey. Look at me.

It wasn’t a voice he was hearing, not exactly. The words were in his head, almost like something he was reading; the words were someone else’s, but the voice was his own.

“Who’s that?”

On the monitor, the glowing shape of Zero.

I was called Fanning.

Grey saw it then, like somebody had opened a door in his head. A city. A great city thrumming with light, so many lights it was as if the night sky had fallen to earth and wrapped itself around all the buildings and bridges and streets. Then he was stepping through the door and he felt and smelled where he was, the hardness of cold pavement under his feet, the dirt of exhaust and the smell of stone, the way the winter air moved in channels around the buildings so there was always a breeze on your face. But it wasn’t Dallas, or any other city he’d ever been to; it was someplace old, and it was winter. Part of him was sitting at the panel on L4 and another part was in this other place. He knew his eyes had closed.

I want to go home. Take me home, Grey.

A college, he knew, though why would he think such a thing, that this was a college he was seeing? And how would he know this was New York City, where he’d never been in his life, had seen only in pictures, and that the buildings around him were the buildings of a campus: offices and lecture halls and dormitories and labs. He was walking along a path, not really walking but somehow moving down it, and people were flowing past him.

See them.

They were women. Young women, bundled in heavy woolen coats and scarves tucked up tight to their throats, some with hats pulled down over their heads, rich handfuls of young hair flowing like shawls of silk from under these compressive domes onto their smoothly rounded shoulders, into the cold air of New York City in winter. Their eyes were bright with life. They were laughing, books tucked under their arms or pressed to their slender chests, talking in animated voices to one another, though the words were nothing he could hear.

They’re beautiful. Aren’t they beautiful, Grey?

And they were. They were beautiful. Why had Grey never known this?

Can’t you feel them, walking past, can’t you smell them? I never get tired of smelling them. How the air behind them sweetens as they pass. I used to just stand and breathe it in. You smell them too, don’t you, Grey? Like the boys.

– The boys.

You remember the boys, don’t you, Grey?

He did. He remembered the boys. The ones walking home from school, sweating in the heat, bookbags sagging from their shoulders, their damp shirts clinging to them; he remembered the smell of sweat and soap of their hair and skin, and the damp crescent on their backs where their bookbags had pressed against their shirts. And the one boy, the boy trailing behind, now taking the shortcut down the alley, the quickest way home from school: that boy, his skin bronzed from the sun, his black hair pressed to the back of his neck, his eyes cast down at the sidewalk, playing some game with the cracks so that he didn’t notice Grey at first, the pickup moving slowly behind him, then stopping. How alone he seemed-

You wanted to love him, didn’t you, Grey. To make him feel that love?

He felt a great, sleeping thing lumbering to life inside him. The old Grey. Panic swelled his throat.

– I don’t remember.

Yes you do. But they’ve done something to you, Grey. They’ve taken that part of you away, the part that felt love.

– I don’t… I can’t…

It’s still there, Grey. It’s just hidden from you. I know, because that part was hidden in me, too. Before I became what I am.

– What you are.

– You and I, we’re the same. We know what we want, Grey. To give love, to feel love. Girls, boys, it’s all the same. We want to love them, as they need to be loved. Do you want it, Grey? Do you want to feel that again?

He did. He knew it then.

– Yes. That’s what I want.

I need to go home, Grey. I want to take you with me, to show you.

Grey saw it again, in his mind’s eye, rising up around him: the great city, New York. All around him, humming, buzzing, its energies passing through each stone and brick, following unseen lines of connectedness into the soles of his feet. It was dark, and he felt the darkness as something wonderful, something he belonged to. It flowed into him, down his throat and into his lungs, a great, easeful drowning. He was everywhere and nowhere all at once, moving not over the landscape but through it, into and out of it, breathing the dark city that was also breathing him.

Then he saw her. There she was. A girl. She was alone, walking the path between the school buildings-a dormitory of laughing students; a library of quiet hallways, its wide windows fogged by frost; an empty office where a lone cleaning woman, listening to Motown on headphones, bent to rinse her mop in a wheeled bucket. He knew it all, he could hear the laughter and the sounds of quiet studying and count the books on the shelves, he could hear the words of the song as the woman with the bucket hummed along, whenever you’re near… uh-uh… I hear a symphony-and the girl, ahead on the pathway, her solitary figure shimmering, pulsing with life. She was walking straight toward him, her head tipped against the wind, her shoulders lifted in a delicate hunch beneath her heavy coat to tell him she was holding something in her arms. The girl, hurrying home. So alone. She had stayed out late, studying the words of the book she held to her chest, and now she was afraid. Grey knew he had something to tell her, before she slipped away. You like this, is that what you like, I’ll show you. He was lifting, he was rising up, he was falling down upon her-

Love her, Grey. Take her.

Then he was ill. He rocked forward in his chair and in a single spasm released the contents of his stomach onto the floor: the soup and salad, the pickled beets, the mashies and the ham. His head was between his knees; a long string of spittle was swinging from his lips.

What the hell. What the goddamn.

He eased himself upright. His mind began to clear. L4. He was on L4. Something had happened. He couldn’t remember what. An awful dream of flying. He’d been eating something in the dream; the taste was still in his mouth. A taste like blood. And then he’d puked just like that.

Puking, he thought, and he felt his stomach drop-that was bad. Very very bad. He knew what he was supposed to watch for. Vomiting, fever, seizures. Even a hard sneeze out of nowhere. The signs were everywhere, not just in the Chalet but the barracks, the dining hall, even in the johns: “Any of the following symptoms, report immediately to the duty officer… ”

He thought of Richards. Richards, with his little dancing light, and the ones named Jack and Sam.

Oh crap. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.

He had to move fast. No one could find it, the big puddle of puke on the floor. He told himself to calm down. Steady, Grey, steady. He checked his watch: 02:31. No way he was waiting another three and a half hours. He got to his feet, stepping around the mess, and quietly opened the door. A quick peek down the hall: not a soul in sight. Speed, that was the thing; get it done fast and then get the hell out. Never mind the cameras; Paulson probably had that right-how could somebody be watching every minute of the day and night? In the supply closet he got a mop and began to fill a bucket in the sink and poured in a cup of bleach. If anybody saw him he could say he’d spilled something, a Dr Pepper or a cup of coffee, which he wasn’t supposed to have, though people did. He’d spilled a Dr Pepper. Couldn’t be sorrier. That was what he’d say.

He also wasn’t really sick, he could tell, not the way the signs made it sound. He was sweating under his shirt, but that was just the panic. As he watched the bucket fill and then hoisted it, reeking of chlorine, from the deep well of the sink, his body was telling him so in no uncertain terms. Something else had made him toss, something in the dream. The sensation was still in his mouth, not just the taste-a too warm, sticky sweetness that seemed to coat his tongue and throat and teeth-but the feel of soft meat yielding under his jaws, exploding with juice. Like he’d bitten into a rotten piece of fruit.

He yanked a few yards of paper towel off the dispenser, got a hazard bag and gloves from the cabinet, and carted it all back to the room. The mess was too big just to mop it, so he got on his knees and did his best to soak it up with the towels, pushing the bigger pieces into clumps he could pick up with his fingers. He put it all into the bag and cinched it tight, then spread water and bleach over the floor, working in circles. There were some chunks of something on his slippers and he wiped those off, too. The taste in his mouth was different now, like something spoiled, and it made him think of Brownbear, whose breath got like that sometimes; it was the only thing bad about him, how he’d come back to the trailer reeking of week-old roadkill and stick his face right up close to Grey’s, smiling that dog smile he had, his gums pulled back at his molars. Grey couldn’t hold it against him, Brownbear being just a dog, though he didn’t like that smell one bit, and not in his own mouth like it was now.

In the locker room he changed quickly, shoved his scrubs in the laundry bin, and rode the elevator up to L3. Davis was still there, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the desk, reading a magazine, his boots bobbing to some song playing on little earphones tucked in the sides of his head.

“You know, I don’t know why I even look at this stuff anymore,” Davis said loudly over the music. “What’s the point? I’m never getting off this iceball.”

Davis dropped his feet to the floor and held up the cover of the magazine for Grey to see: two naked women in a winding embrace, their mouths open and the tips of their tongues just touching. The magazine was called Hoteez. Their tongues looked to Grey like slabs of muscle, something you’d put on ice in a deli case. The sight sent a fresh current of nausea churning through him.

“Oh, that’s right,” Davis said when he saw Grey’s expression. He plucked the buds from his ears. “You guys don’t like this stuff. Sorry.” Davis sat forward and wrinkled his nose. “Man, you stink. What is that?”

“I think I ate something bad,” Grey said cautiously. “I gotta go lie down for a while.”

Davis flinched with alarm; he pushed away from the desk, widening the gap between them. “Don’t fucking say that.”

“I swear that’s all it is.”

“Jesus Christ, Grey.” The soldier’s eyes were wide with panic. “What are you trying to do to me? You got a fever or anything?”

“I just tossed is all. In the can. I think maybe I ate too much. I just need to get off my feet for a bit.”

Davis took a second to think, eyeing Grey nervously. “Well, I’ve seen you eat, Grey. All you guys. You shouldn’t shovel it in like that. And you don’t look so hot, I’ll say that. No offense, but you look like crap. I really should call this in.”

They’d have to seal the level, Grey knew. That meant Davis would be stuck down here, too. As for what would happen to him, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to think about it. He wasn’t really sick, he knew that much. But there was something wrong with him. He’d had bad dreams before, but nothing that ever made him puke.

“You’re sure?” Davis pressed. “I mean, you’d tell me if there was something really wrong with you?”

Grey nodded. A drop of sweat slithered the length of his torso.

“Man, what a fucking day.” Davis sighed resignedly. “All right, hang on.” He tossed Grey the elevator key and freed his com from his belt. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, okay?” He spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is the sentry on three? We need a relief worker-”

But Grey didn’t stay to listen. He was already in the elevator, gone.

ELEVEN

Somewhere west of the town of Randall, Oklahoma, a few miles south of the Kansas border, Wolgast decided to surrender.

They were parked inside a car wash, off a rural blacktop the number of which he’d long forgotten. It was almost dawn; Amy was fast asleep, curled like a cub on the backseat of the Tahoe. Three hours of driving hard and fast, Doyle calling out a route he quickly assembled off the GPS, a line of lights flashing in the distance behind them, sometimes fading when they made a turn but always reassembling, picking up their trail. It was just after two A.M. when Wolgast had seen the car wash. He took a chance and pulled in. They’d sat in the dark and listened to the cruisers fly past.

“How long do you think we should wait?” Doyle asked. All his bluster had left him.

“A while,” Wolgast said. “Let them put some distance between us.”

“That’ll just give them time to set up roadblocks at the state line. Or double back when they realize they’ve lost us.”

“You have a better idea I’d like to hear it,” Wolgast said.

Doyle thought a moment. The big scrub brushes hanging over the windshield made the space in the car seem closer. “Not really, no.”

So they’d sat. At any second Wolgast expected the car wash to blaze with light, to hear the amplified voice of a state cop telling them to come out with their hands up. But this hadn’t happened. They had a signal now, but it was analog and wouldn’t encrypt, so there was no way to tell anyone where they were.

“Listen,” Doyle said. “I’m sorry about what happened back there.”

Wolgast was too tired to engage. The fair seemed like days ago. “Forget about it.”

“You know, the thing is, I really liked my job. The Bureau, all of it. It’s all I ever wanted to do.” Doyle took a deep breath and fingered a bead of condensation on the passenger window. “What do you think’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

Doyle frowned acidly. “Yeah you do. That guy, Richards. You were right about him.”

The windows of the car wash had begun to pale. Wolgast checked his watch; it was a little before six. They’d waited as long as they could. He turned the key to the Tahoe and backed out of the car wash.

Amy awoke then. She sat upright and rubbed her eyes, looking about. “I’m hungry,” she announced.

Wolgast turned to Doyle. “How about it?”

Doyle hesitated; Wolgast could see the idea taking shape in his mind. He knew what he was really saying: it’s over.

“Might as well.”

Wolgast turned the Tahoe around and headed back in the direction they’d come, into the town of Randall. The main thoroughfare didn’t amount to much, not more than a half dozen blocks long. An air of abandonment hung over the street; most of the windows were papered over or smeared with soap. Probably there was a Walmart not far away, Wolgast thought, or some other big store like that, the kind that wiped little towns like Randall right off the map. At the end of the block, a square of light spilled onto the sidewalk; a half dozen pickups were angled at the curb.

“Breakfast,” he declared.

The restaurant was a single, narrow room with a drop ceiling stained by years of cigarette smoke and airborne grease. A long counter stood to one side, facing a line of padded, high-backed booths. The air smelled of boiled coffee and fried butter. A few men in jeans and workshirts were seated at the counter, their broad backs hunched over plates of eggs and cups of coffee. The three of them took a booth in the back. The waitress, a middle-aged woman, broad across the middle and with clear gray eyes, brought over coffee and menus.

“What can I get for you gentlemen?”

Doyle said he wasn’t hungry and would stick to coffee. Wolgast looked up at the woman, who was wearing a name tag: LUANNE. “What’s good, Luanne?”

“It’s all good if you’re hungry.” She smiled noncommittally. “The grits aren’t bad.”

Wolgast nodded and passed his menu to her. “Sounds fine.”

The woman looked at Amy. “For the little one? Whatcha want, honey?”

Amy lifted her eyes from the menu. “Pancakes?”

“And a glass of milk,” Wolgast added.

“Coming right up,” the woman said. “You’ll like ’em, honey. Cook does them up special.”

Amy had brought her backpack into the restaurant. Wolgast walked her back to the ladies’ room to clean up. “You need me to come in with you?”

Amy shook her head.

“Wash your face and brush your teeth,” he said. “And comb your hair, too.”

“Are we still going to the doctor?”

“I don’t think so. We’ll see.”

Wolgast returned to the table. “Listen,” he said quietly to Doyle. “I don’t want to drive into a roadblock. Something could go wrong.”

Doyle nodded. The meaning was plain. All that firepower, anything could happen. Next thing you knew, the Tahoe was riddled with rounds and everyone was dead.

“What about the district office in Wichita?”

“Too far. I don’t see how we could get there. And at this point, I’m thinking no one’s going to say they ever heard of us. This is all off the books.”

Doyle gazed down into his coffee cup. His face was drawn, defeated, and Wolgast experienced a blast of sympathy for him. None of this was what he’d bargained for.

“She’s a good kid,” Doyle said. He sighed hard through his nose. “Fuck.”

“This will go better with the locals, I think. You decide what you want to do. I’ll give you the keys if you want. I’m going to tell them everything I know. It’s our best chance, I think.”

“Her best chance, you mean.” Doyle didn’t say this accusingly; he was merely stating a fact.

“Yes. Her best chance.”

Their food arrived as Amy returned from the restroom. The cook had done the pancakes up to look like a clown face, with whipped cream from a can and blueberries for the eyes and mouth. Amy poured syrup over all of it and dug in, alternating huge bites with gulps of milk. It was good to watch her eat.

Wolgast left the table when they were done and went back to the little hall off the restrooms. He didn’t want to use his handheld, and it was back in the Tahoe in any event; he’d seen a pay phone back there, a relic. He dialed Lila’s number in Denver, but the phone just rang and rang, and when it went to voice mail he couldn’t think of what to say and hung up. If David got the message, he’d just erase it anyway.

When he returned to the table, the waitress was clearing away their plates. He took the check and stepped to the register to pay. “Is there a police station anywhere around here?” he asked the woman as he handed her the money. “Sheriff’s office, something like that?”

“Three blocks down the way,” she said, sliding his money into the register. “But you don’t have to go that far.” She slammed the drawer with a ka-ching. “Kirk over there’s a sheriff’s deputy. Ain’t that right, Kirk?”

“Aw, leave off, Luanne. I’m eating.”

Wolgast looked down the length of the counter. The man, Kirk, was poised over a plate of French toast. He had a jowly face and thick, weather-beaten hands and was dressed as a civilian, in snug Wranglers wedged under his belly and a grease-stained Carhartt jacket the color of burnt toast. A little town like this, probably he worked about three different jobs.

Wolgast stepped over to him. “I need to report a kidnapping,” Wolgast said.

The man turned on his stool. He wiped his mouth on a napkin and looked at Wolgast incredulously. “What are you talking about?” His face was unshaven; his breath smelled of beer.

“See that girl over there? She’s the one everyone is looking for. I’m guessing you saw something about it on the wire.”

The man glanced over at Amy, then back at Wolgast. His eyes widened. “Shit. You’re kidding. The one from over in Homer?”

“He’s right,” Luanne said brightly. She was pointing at Amy. “I saw it on the news. That’s the girl. You’re the one, ain’t you, sweetheart?”

“I’ll be damned.” Kirk hoisted himself off his stool. The room had grown quiet; everyone was watching now. “Staties are looking for her all over. Where’d you find her?”

“We’re the ones who took her, actually,” Wolgast explained. “We’re the kidnappers. I’m Special Agent Wolgast, that’s Special Agent Doyle. Say hi, Phil.”

Doyle waved listlessly from the booth. “Howdy.”

“Special agents? You mean FBI?”

Wolgast withdrew his credentials and put them on the counter for Kirk to see. “It’s hard to explain.”

“And you took the girl.”

Wolgast said so again. “We’d like to surrender to you, Deputy. As long as you’re done with your breakfast.”

Somebody, one of the other men at the counter, snickered.

“Oh, I’m done all right,” Kirk said. He was still holding Wolgast’s credentials, studying them like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I’ll be dipped. Holy goddamn.”

“Go on, Kirk,” the other man said, and laughed. “Arrest them if that’s what they want. You do remember how to do that, don’t you?”

“Just hold the phone, Frank. I’m thinking.” Kirk looked sheepishly at Wolgast. “Sorry, it’s been a while. I mostly dig wells. Not much goes on around here, except a little drunk and disorderly, and half the time that’s me. I don’t even have handcuffs or nothing.”

“That’s all right,” Wolgast said. “We can loan you some.”

Wolgast told him to impound the Tahoe, but Kirk said he’d have to come back for it later. They surrendered their weapons and all piled into the cab of Kirk’s pickup to drive the three blocks to town hall, a two-story brick building with a date, 1854, in large block letters set over the front door. The sun was up now, washing the town in a flat, muted light. As they stepped from the truck, Wolgast could hear birds singing from a stand of poplars that were just budding out. He felt a kind of airy happiness that he recognized as relief. On the drive over, pressed into the truck’s cab, he’d held Amy on his lap. He knelt by her now and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Whatever this man tells you to do, I want you to do it, all right? He’s going to put me in a cell, and probably I won’t see you for a while.”

“I want to stay with you,” she said.

He saw her eyes had filmed with tears, and Wolgast felt a lump lodge in his throat. But he knew he was doing the right thing. The Oklahoma state police would swarm down on the place pretty fast once Kirk called in the collar, and Amy would be safe.

“I know,” he said, and did his best to smile. “Everything’s going to be okay now. I promise.”

The sheriff’s office was located in the basement. Kirk hadn’t handcuffed them after all, seeing how cooperative they were being, and he walked them around the side of the building and led them down the steps into a low-ceilinged room with a couple of metal desks, a gun case full of shotguns, and banks of file cabinets pushed against the walls. The only illumination came from a couple of high windows, welled from the outside and clotted with old leaves. The office was empty; the woman who manned the phones didn’t come in until eight o’clock, Kirk explained, turning on the lights. As for the sheriff, who knew where he was. Probably out driving around someplace.

“To tell you the truth,” Kirk said, “I’m not even sure I’d book you right. I better try to get him on the radio.”

He asked Wolgast and Doyle if they’d mind waiting in a cell. They had only the one, and it was mostly full of cardboard boxes, but there was room enough for the two of them. Wolgast said that would be fine. Kirk took them back to the cell, unlocked the door, and Wolgast and Doyle stepped inside.

“I want to go into the cell too,” Amy said.

Kirk frowned in disbelief. “This is the strangest kidnapping I ever heard of.”

“It’s fine,” Wolgast said. “She can wait with me.”

Kirk considered this a moment. “Okay, I guess. At least until my brother-in-law gets here.”

“Who’s your brother-in-law?”

“John Price,” he said. “He’s the sheriff.”

Kirk got on the radio, and ten minutes later a man in a tight-fitting khaki uniform came striding through the door to the office and marched straight back to the cell. He was small, with a boy’s slenderly muscled frame, and he stood not more than five foot four, even on the heels of his cowboy boots, which looked to Wolgast like they were something fancy-lizard maybe, or ostrich. He probably wore the boots to give him a little extra height.

“Well, holy crap,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. He was looking them over with his hands on his hips. There was a little bit of paper on his chin where he’d cut himself, shaving in a hurry. “You guys are feds?”

“That’s right.”

“Ain’t this a can of peas.” He turned to Kirk. “Whatcha got the girl in the cell for?”

“She said she wanted to.”

“Jesus, Kirk. You can’t put a little kid in there. Did you book the other two?”

“I wanted to wait for you to get here.”

Price sighed with exasperation. “You know,” he said, and rolled his eyes, “you really got to work on your confidence, Kirk. We’ve talked about this. You let Luanne and all them others bust on you too much.” When Kirk said nothing, he continued. “Well, might as well get on the horn. I know they’re looking all over hell and earth for this one.” He looked at Amy. “You okay, girl?”

Amy, who was sitting on the concrete bench next to Wolgast, gave a little nod.

“She said she wanted to,” Kirk repeated.

“I don’t care what she said.” Price took a key from a compartment on his belt and unlocked the cell. “Come on, girly,” he said, and extended a hand. “Jail cell’s no place for you. Let’s get you a pop or something. And Kirk, get Mavis on the phone, will you? Tell her we need her over here pronto.”

When they were alone again, Doyle, who was slouched on the concrete bench, tipped his head back, closing his eyes. “For Christsakes,” he moaned. “It’s like an episode of Green Acres.”

About half an hour passed; Wolgast could hear Kirk and Price talking in the other room, deciding what to do, whom to call first. The state police? The DA’s office? So far, they hadn’t even booked them yet. But it was all right; this would happen in due course. Wolgast heard the door open and then a woman’s voice, talking to Amy, telling her what a pretty girl she was and asking her what her rabbit’s name was, and would she maybe like an ice cream, the store around the corner was opening in just a few minutes, she’d be glad to go and get her one. All of it just as Wolgast had foreseen when, sitting in the Tahoe in the darkened car wash, he’d decided to turn himself in. He was glad he’d done it, so glad it surprised him, and the cell, which he guessed was the first of many in his life, didn’t seem so bad. He wondered if that was how Anthony Carter had felt, if he had said to himself, This is my life from now on.

Price stepped up to the cell, holding the key. “Staties on the way,” he said, rocking on his heels. “You all must have stirred up some real hornet’s nest from the sound of it.” He tossed a pair of cuffs through the bars. “I’m thinking you all know how to use these.”

Doyle and Wolgast cuffed themselves; Price opened the cell and led them back to the office. Amy was sitting in a folding metal chair by the reception desk, her backpack on her lap, eating an ice cream sandwich. A grandmotherly woman in a green pantsuit was sitting beside her, showing her a coloring book.

“He’s my daddy,” Amy told the woman.

“This one here?” the woman said, turning her head. She had dark, drawn-on eyebrows and a rigid helmet of raven-black hair-a wig. She looked at Wolgast quizzically, then back at Amy. “This man here’s your daddy?”

“It’s all right,” Wolgast said.

“That’s my daddy,” Amy repeated. Her voice was stern, correcting. “Daddy, we have to go right now.”

Price had taken out a fingerprinting kit; behind them, Kirk was setting up a screen and camera, to take their mug shots.

“What’s that about?” Price asked him.

“It’s a long story,” Wolgast managed.

“Daddy, now.”

Wolgast heard the door to the office open behind him. The woman lifted her face. “Help you?”

“Hey, good morning,” said a man’s voice. There was something familiar about it. Price was holding Wolgast’s right hand by the wrist, to roll his fingers in the ink. Then Wolgast saw the expression on Doyle’s face, and he knew.

“This the sheriff’s office?” Richards was saying. “Hey, everyone. Whoa, are those things real? That’s a lot of guns. Here, I’ve got something to show you.”

Wolgast swiveled in time to see Richards shoot the woman in the forehead. One shot, close range, muffled to a clap by the long bore of the suppressor. She rocked back in her chair, her eyes startled open, her wig askew on her head. A delicate frond of blood wet the floor behind her. Her arms lifted and then fell again, into stillness.

“Sorry,” Richards said, wincing a little. He stepped around the desk. The room was filled with the acrid odor of gunpowder smoke. Price and Kirk were frozen with fear where they stood, their jaws hanging open. Or perhaps it wasn’t fear they were feeling, but mute incomprehension. As if they’d stepped into a movie, a movie that made no sense.

“Hey,” Richards said, taking aim, “stand still. Just like that. Superduper.” And Richards shot them too.

No one moved. It had all happened with a curious, dreamlike slowness but was over in an instant. Wolgast looked at the woman, then at the two bodies on the floor, Kirk and Price. How surprising death was, how irrevocable and complete, how much itself. At the reception desk, Amy’s eyes were locked on the dead woman’s face. The girl had been sitting just a few feet away when Richards had shot her. Her mouth was open, as if she were about to speak; blood was running down her forehead, seeking out the deep creases of her face, fanning across it like a river delta. Clutched in Amy’s hand were the melting remains of her half-eaten ice cream sandwich; probably some of it was actually in her mouth at that moment, coating her tongue with its sweetness. A strange thing, but Wolgast thought it: for the rest of her life, the taste of ice cream would recall this image.

“What the fuck!” Doyle said. “You fucking shot them!”

Price had hit the floor face-down behind his desk. Richards knelt by his body and patted his pockets until he found the key to the handcuffs, which he tossed to Wolgast. He waved his gun listlessly at Doyle, who was eyeing the glass case of shotguns.

“I wouldn’t,” Richards cautioned, and Doyle sat down.

“You’re not going to shoot us,” Wolgast said, freeing his hands.

“Not just now,” Richards said.

Amy had begun to cry, her breath hiccuping in her chest. Wolgast gave the key to Doyle and picked her up and held her tightly to his chest. Her body went limp against his own. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It was all he could think to say.

“This is very touching,” Richards said, handing Doyle the little backpack of Amy’s belongings, “but if we don’t leave now, I’m going to be shooting a lot more people, and I feel like I’ve had a very full morning already.”

Wolgast thought of the coffee shop. It was possible everybody there was dead too. Amy hiccuped against his chest; he could feel her tears soaking his shirt. “Goddamnit, she’s a kid.”

Richards frowned. “Why does everybody keep saying that?” He motioned with his weapon toward the door. “Let’s go.”

The Tahoe was waiting outside in the morning light, parked beside Price’s cruiser. Richards told Doyle to drive and sat in the backseat with Amy. Wolgast felt completely helpless; after all he’d done, the hundreds of decisions he’d made, there was nothing left to do but obey. Richards directed them out of town, to an open field where an unmarked helicopter with a lean black body was waiting. At their approach its wide blades began to turn. Wolgast heard the wail of sirens in the distance, coming closer.

“Let’s be quick now,” Richards said, motioning with his weapon.

They climbed into the helicopter and were airborne almost instantly. Wolgast held Amy tight. He felt as if he were in a trance, a dream-a terrible, unspeakable dream in which everything he’d ever wanted in his life was being taken away from him, while all he could do was watch. He’d had this dream before; it was a dream in which he wanted to die but couldn’t. The copter banked steeply, opening a view of the sodden field and beyond, at its edge, a line of police cars, moving fast. Wolgast counted nine. In the cockpit Richards pointed out the windshield and said something to the pilot that made him bank the other way, then guide the chopper into a hovering position. The cruisers were coming closer now, within just a few hundred yards of the Tahoe. Richards motioned for Wolgast to pick up a headset.

“Watch this,” he told him.

Before Wolgast could answer there was blinding flash of light, like a gigantic camera going off; a concussive thump rocked the chopper. Wolgast gripped Amy by the waist and held on. When he looked out the window again, all that remained of the Tahoe was a smoking hole in the earth, big enough to fit a house in. He heard Richards laughing through the headset. Then the helicopter banked once more, the force of its acceleration pressing them into their seats, and took them all away.

TWELVE

That he was dead was a fact. Wolgast accepted it, as he accepted any fact of nature. When everything was over-in whatever manner this occurred-Richards would take him to a room somewhere, give him the same cool, final look he’d given Price and Kirk-like a man performing some simple test of accuracy, lining up a cue ball or tossing a piece of wadded paper into the trash-and that would be the end of it.

It was possible Richards would take him outside to do it. Wolgast hoped he would, someplace he could see trees and feel the touch of sunlight on his skin, before Richards put a bullet in his head. Maybe he’d even ask. Would you mind? he’d say. If it’s not too much trouble. I’d like to be looking at the trees.

He’d been at the compound for twenty-seven days. By his count it was the third week of April. He didn’t know where Amy was, or Doyle. They’d been separated the minute they landed, Amy hustled away by Richards and a group of armed soldiers, Wolgast and Doyle with a coterie of their own-but then they’d been split up, too. Nobody had debriefed him, which at first struck him as strange, but when enough time had passed, Wolgast understood the reason. None of it had officially happened. Nobody was going to debrief him because his story was just that, a story. The only remaining question for him to puzzle over was why Richards hadn’t just shot him in the first place.

The room they’d locked him in was like something in a cheap motel, though plainer: no carpet on the floor, no drapes on the lone window, heavy institutional furniture, bolted down. A tiny closet of a bathroom with a floor as cold as ice. A tangle of wires on the wall where a TV had once been. The door to the hall was thick and opened with a buzz from the outside. His only visitors were the men who brought him his meals: silent, hulking figures wearing unmarked brown jumpsuits who left his trays of food on the small table where Wolgast passed most of each day, sitting and waiting. Probably Doyle was doing the same thing, assuming Richards hadn’t shot him already.

The view wasn’t anything, just empty pine forest, but sometimes Wolgast would stand and look out there for hours, too. Spring was coming. The woods were sodden with melting snow, and from everywhere came the sound of running water-dripping from the roofs and branches, running down the gutters. If he stood on his toes, Wolgast could just make out a fence line through the trees, and figures moving along it. One night at the beginning of the fourth week of his imprisonment, a heavy rainstorm blew through. The force of it was practically biblical; thunder rocked over the mountains all night long, and in the morning he looked out his window and saw that winter was over, rinsed away by the rain.

For a while he’d tried to talk to the men who brought him his meals and, every other day, a clean set of surgical scrubs and slippers for him to wear, even just to ask them their names. But none had offered so much as one word in reply. They moved heavily, their movements clumsy and imprecise, their expressions benumbed and incurious, like the living dead in some old movie. Corpses gathering outside a farmhouse, moaning and tripping over their feet, wearing the tattered uniforms of their forgotten lives: he’d loved such films when he was a boy, not understanding how true they really were. What were the living dead, Wolgast thought, but a metaphor for the misbegotten march of middle age?

It was possible, he understood, for a person’s life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more instance in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas and, for whatever reason, made them your own. That was the truth he’d learned on the carousel with Amy, though the thought had been building in him for a while, most of a year, in fact. Wolgast had more than enough time now to think this over. You couldn’t look into the eyes of a man like Anthony Carter and fail to see how this worked. It was as if, that night in Oklahoma, he’d had his first real idea in years. His first since Lila, since Eva. But Eva had died, three weeks short of her first birthday, and since that day he’d walked the earth like the living dead, or a man holding a ghost, the empty space in his arms where Eva had been. That’s why he’d been so good with Carter and the others: he was just like them.

He wondered where Amy was, what was happening to her. He hoped she wasn’t lonely and afraid. More than hoped: he held the idea with the fierceness of a prayer, trying to make it so with his mind. He wondered if he’d ever see her again, and the thought made him rise from his chair and go to the window, as if he might find her out there, in the shifting shadows of the trees. And more hours would somehow go by, the passage of time marked only by the changing light from the window and the comings and goings of the men with his meals, most of which he barely touched. All night long he slept a dreamless sleep that left him dazed in the morning, his arms and legs heavy as iron. He wondered how much longer he had.

Then, on the morning of the thirty-fourth day, someone came to see him. It was Sykes, but he was different. The man he’d met a year ago was all spit and polish. This man, though he was wearing the same uniform, looked like he’d slept under a highway overpass. His uniform was wrinkled and stained; his cheeks and chin were glazed with gray stubble; his eyes were as bloodshot as a boxer’s after a few rounds of a badly mismatched fight. He sat heavily at the table where Wolgast was. He folded his hands, cleared his throat, and spoke.

“I’m here to ask a favor.”

Wolgast hadn’t uttered a word in days. When he tried to answer, his windpipe felt half-closed, thickened from disuse; his voice emerged as a croak.

“I’m done with favors.”

Sykes drew in a long breath. A stale smell was rising off him, dried sweat and old polyester. For a moment he let his eyes drift around the tiny room.

“Probably this all seems a little… ungrateful. I admit that.”

“Fuck yourself.” It pleased Wolgast enormously to say this.

“I’m here about the girl, Agent.”

“Her name,” Wolgast said, “is Amy.”

“I know her name. I know a great deal about her.”

“She’s six. She likes pancakes and carnival rides. She has a toy rabbit named Peter. You’re a heartless prick, you know that, Sykes?”

Sykes withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his coat and placed it on the table. Inside were two photographs. One was a picture of Amy, taken, Wolgast guessed, at the convent. Probably it was the same one that had gone out with the Amber Alert. The second was a high school yearbook photo. The woman in the picture was obviously Amy’s mother. The same dark hair, the same delicate arrangement of the facial bones, the same deep-set, melancholy eyes, though suffused, at the instant that the shutter opened, with a warm, expectant light. Who was this girl? Did she have friends, family, a boyfriend? A favorite subject in school? A sport she loved and was good at? Did she have secrets, a story of herself that no one knew? What did she hope her life would become? She was positioned at a three-quarter angle to the camera, looking over her right shoulder, wearing what looked like a prom dress, pale blue; her shoulders were bare. At the bottom of the photo was a caption: “ Mason Consolidated High School, Mason, IA. ”

“Her mother was a prostitute. The night before she left Amy at the convent, she shot a trick on the front lawn of a frat house. For the record.”

Wolgast wanted to say, So? How was any of that Amy’s fault? But the image of the woman in the photograph-not even really a woman, just a girl herself-belayed his anger. Maybe Sykes wasn’t even telling the truth. He put the photo down. “What happened to her?”

Sykes lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “No one knows. Gone.”

“And the nuns?”

A shadow skittered across Sykes’s face. Wolgast could tell that he’d hit the mark without even meaning to. Jesus, he thought. The nuns, too? Had it been Richards or somebody else?

“I don’t know,” Skyes answered.

“Look at you,” Wolgast said. “Yes, you do.”

Sykes said nothing more about it, his silence telling Wolgast, This line of conversation is over. He rubbed his eyes and returned the photos to their envelope and put it away.

“Where is she?”

“Agent, the thing is-”

“Where’s Amy?”

Sykes cleared his throat again. “That’s the reason I’m here, you see,” he said. “The favor. We think Amy may be dying.”

Wolgast wasn’t allowed to ask any questions. He wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone, or look around, or step from Sykes’s line of vision. A detail of two soldiers led him across the compound, through the damp morning light. The air felt and smelled like spring. After almost five weeks in his room, Wolgast found himself taking deep, hungry breaths. The sun was painful to his eyes.

Once they were in the Chalet, Sykes took him down an elevator, four floors. They exited onto an empty hallway, Spartan and white, like a hospital. Wolgast guessed they were fifty feet belowground, maybe more. Whatever Sykes’s people kept down here, they wanted at least that much dirt separating it from the world above. They came to a door marked MAIN LAB, but Sykes passed it without slowing his stride. More doors, and then they came to the one Sykes wanted. He slid a card through the reader and opened it.

Wolgast found himself in some kind of observation room. On the other side of the broad window, in dim, blue light, Amy’s small form lay on a hospital bed, alone. She was connected to an IV, but that was all. Beside her bed was a plastic chair, empty. From tracks on the ceiling hung a group of color-coded hoses, coiled like the pneumatic hoses at a garage. Otherwise the room was bare.

“This is him?”

Wolgast turned to see a man he hadn’t noticed before. He was wearing a lab coat and green scrubs, like Wolgast’s.

“Agent Wolgast, this is Dr. Fortes.”

They nodded without shaking hands. Fortes was young, not even thirty. Wolgast wondered if he was an MD or something else. Like Sykes, Fortes appeared exhausted, physically spent. His skin was oily, and he needed a haircut and a shave. His glasses looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a month.

“She has an embedded chip. It transmits vitals to the panel here.” Fortes showed him: heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, temperature. Amy’s was 102.6.

“Where?”

“Where what?” The doctor’s eyes floated with incomprehension.

“Where’s the chip?”

“Oh.” Fortes looked at Sykes, who nodded. Fortes pointed at the back of his own neck. “Subcutaneous, between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. The power source is pretty nifty, actually, a tiny nuclear cell. Like the kind on satellites, only much smaller.”

Nifty. Wolgast shuddered. A nifty nuclear power source in Amy’s neck. He turned to Sykes, who was watching with a look of caution.

“Is this what happened to the others? Carter and the rest.”

“They were… preliminary,” Sykes said.

“Preliminary to what?”

He paused. “To Amy.”

Fortes explained the situation: Amy was in a coma. No one had expected this, and her fever was too high and had gone on too long. Her kidney and liver values were depressed.

“We were hoping you could talk to her,” Sykes said. “This sometimes helps with patients in a prolonged state of unconsciousness. Doyle tells us that she’s pretty… bonded with you.”

A two-stage air lock connected them to Amy’s room. Sykes and Fortes led him into the first chamber. An orange biosuit was hanging on the wall, the empty helmet tipped forward, like a man with a broken neck. Sykes explained how it worked.

“You’ll need to put this on, then wrap all seams with duct tape. The valves at the base of the helmet connect to the hoses in the ceiling. They’re color-coded, so that should be obvious. When you come back through, you need to shower in the suit, then shower again without it. There are instructions on the wall.”

Wolgast sat on the bench to remove his slippers. Then he stopped.

“No,” he said.

Sykes looked at him and frowned. “No what?”

“No, I’m not wearing it.” He turned and faced Sykes squarely. “It’s not going to help if she wakes up and sees me in a space suit. You want me to go in there, I go as I am.”

“That’s not a good idea, Agent,” Sykes warned.

His mind was made up. “No suit or no deal.”

Sykes glanced at Fortes, who shrugged. “It could be… interesting. In theory, the virus should be inert by now. On the other hand, it might not be.”

“The virus?”

“I guess you’ll find out,” Sykes said. “Let him in on my authority. And, Agent, once you’re in, you’re in. I can’t guarantee anything beyond that. Is that clear?”

Wolgast said it was; Sykes and Fortes stepped from the air lock. Wolgast realized he hadn’t expected them to say yes. At the last instant Wolgast called back to them. “Where’s her backpack?”

Fortes and Sykes exchanged another private look. “Wait here,” Sykes said.

He returned a few minutes later with Amy’s knapsack. The Powerpuff Girls: Wolgast had never really looked at it, not closely. Three of them, their images made of a rubbery plastic glued onto the rough canvas of the pack, fists raised and flying. Wolgast unzipped it; some of Amy’s things were missing, such as her hairbrush, but Peter was still inside.

He fixed his gaze on Fortes. “How will I know if it’s not… inert?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Fortes said.

They sealed the door behind him. Wolgast felt the pressure drop. Above the second door, the light switched from red to green. Wolgast turned the handle and stepped inside.

A second room, longer than the first, with a fat drain in the floor and a sunflower-head shower, activated by a metal chain. The light in here was different; it had a bluish cast, like autumn twilight. A sign on the wall bore the instructions Sykes had indicated: a long list of steps that ended in nakedness, standing above the drain, rinsing the mouth and eyes and then clearing the throat and spitting. A camera peered down at him from a corner of the ceiling.

He paused at the second door. The light above it was red. A keypad was affixed to the wall. How would he go through? Then the light switched from red to green, as the first had done-Sykes, from outside, overriding the system.

He paused before opening the door. It looked heavy, made of gleaming steel. Like a bank vault, or something on a submarine. He couldn’t say exactly why he’d insisted on not wearing the biosuit, a decision that now seemed rash. For Amy, as he’d said? Or to tease out some information, however meager, from Sykes? Either way, the decision had felt right to him.

He turned the handle, felt his ears pop as the pressure dropped again. He drew in a lungful of air, holding it in his chest, and stepped through.

Grey had no idea what was happening. Days and days of this: he’d report for his shift, ride the elevator down to L4-nothing had happened after that first night; Davis had covered for him-change in the locker room and do his work, cleaning the halls and bathrooms, then step into Containment, and step out six hours later.

All perfectly normal, except that those six hours were a blank, like an empty drawer in his brain. He’d obviously done the things he was supposed to, filed his reports and backed up the drives, moved the rabbit cages in and out, even exchanged a few words with Pujol or the other techs who came in. And yet he couldn’t remember any of it. He’d slide his card to enter the observation room and the next thing he knew his shift was over and he was coming out the other side.

Except for little things: fleeting things, small but bright somehow, little bits of recorded data that seemed to catch the light like confetti as they fluttered down through his mind throughout the day. They weren’t pictures, nothing as clear and straightforward as that, and nothing he could hold on to. But he’d be sitting in the commissary, or back in his room, or crossing the yard to the Chalet, and a taste would bubble from the back of his throat, and a queer juicy feeling in his teeth. Sometimes it struck him so hard it actually made him freeze in his tracks. And when this happened, he’d think of funny things, unrelated, a lot of which had to do with Brownbear. Like the taste in his mouth would push a button that would start him up thinking about his old dog, who, truth be told, he hadn’t really thought about much at all until recently, not for years and years, until that night he’d had that dream in Containment and tossed all over the floor.

Brownbear and his reeking breath. Brownbear dragging something dead, a possum or raccoon, up the front steps. That time he got into a nest of bunnies under the trailer, tiny little balls of peach-colored skin, not even covered with fur yet, and crunched them one by one, their little skulls popping between his molars, like a kid sitting in the movies with a box of Whoppers.

Funny thing: he couldn’t say for sure Brownbear had actually done that.

He wondered if he was sick. The sign over the sentry station on L3 made him nervous, in a way it hadn’t before. It seemed to be talking right to him. ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS… One morning, returning from breakfast, he’d felt a tickle in this throat, like maybe he was getting a cold; before he knew it he’d sneezed hard into his hand. His nose had been running a little ever since. Then again, it was spring now, still cold at night but rising into the fifties or even sixties during the afternoon, and all the trees were budding out, a faint haze of green, like a spatter of paint over the mountains. He’d always been allergic.

And then there was the quiet. It took Grey a while to notice what this was. Nobody was saying anything-not just the sweeps, who never spoke much to begin with, but the techs and soldiers and doctors, too. It wasn’t like it happened all at once, in a day or even a week. But slowly, over time, a hush had settled over the place, sealing down on it like a lid. Grey had always been more of a listener himself-that’s what Wilder, the prison shrink, had said about him: “You’re a good listener, Grey.” He’d meant it as a compliment, but mostly Wilder was just in love with the sound of his own voice and happy to have an audience. Still, Grey missed the sound of human voices. One night in the commissary he counted thirty men hunched over their trays, and not one of them was saying a word. Some weren’t even eating, just sitting in their chairs, maybe nursing a cup of coffee or tea and staring into space. Like they were half asleep.

One thing: Grey was fine in the shut-eye department. He slept and slept and slept, and when his alarm went off at 05:00, or noon if, as likely as not, he’d been on the late shift, he’d roll over in bed, light a smoke from the pack on the nightstand, and stay still for a few minutes, trying to decide if he’d dreamed or not. He didn’t think he had.

Then one morning he sat down at a table in the commissary to eat-French toast stamped with butter, a couple of eggs, three sausages, and a bowl of grits on the side; if he was sick it sure hadn’t killed his appetite any-and when he lifted his face to take his first bite, a dripping slab of toast just inches from his lips, he saw Paulson. Sitting there, right across from him, two tables away. Grey had caught sight of him once or twice since their conversation, but not up close, not like this. Paulson was sitting over a plate of eggs he hadn’t touched. He looked like shit, his skin stretched so tight over his face you could see the edges of his bones. For an instant, just one, their eyes met.

Paulson looked away.

That night, checking in for his shift, Grey asked Davis, “You know that guy Paulson?”

Davis wasn’t his usual cheerful self these days. Gone were the jokes and the dirty magazines and the headphones with their buzz saws of leaking music. Grey wondered what in hell Davis did all night at the desk; though it was also true that Grey didn’t know what he himself was doing all night, either.

“What about him?”

But Grey’s question stopped right there; he couldn’t think what else to ask.

“Nothing. Just wondering if you knew him was all.”

“Do yourself a favor. Stay away from that asshole.”

Grey went downstairs and got to work. It wasn’t until later, running a scrub brush around a toilet bowl on L4, that he thought of the question he’d meant to ask.

What is he so afraid of?

What is everyone so afraid of?

They were calling him Number Twelve. Not Carter or Anthony or Tone, though he was so sick now, lying alone in the dark, that those names and the person they referred to seemed like somebody else, not him. A person who had died, leaving only this sick, writhing form in his place.

The sickness felt like forever. That’s the word it made him think of. Not that it would last forever; more that he was sick with time itself. Like the idea of time was inside him, in each cell of his body, and time wasn’t an ocean, like somebody had told him once, but a million tiny wicks of flame that would never be extinguished. The worst feeling in the world. Someone had told him he’d be feeling better soon, much better. He’d held on to those words for a while. But now he knew they were a lie.

He was aware, dimly, of movements around him, the comings and goings, the pokings and prickings of the men in the space suits. He wanted water, just a sip of water, to slake his thirst, but when he asked for this, he heard no sound from his lips, nothing except the roaring and ringing in his ears. They’d taken a lot of his blood. It felt like whole gallons of it. The man named Anthony had sold his blood from time to time; he’d squeeze the ball and watch the bag fill up with it, amazed at its density, its rich red color, how alive it looked. Never more than a pint before they gave him the cookies and the folded bills and sent him on his way. But now the men in the suits filled bag after bag, and the blood was different, though he couldn’t say just how. The blood in his body was alive but he didn’t think it was only his own anymore; it belonged to someone, something, else.

It would have been good to die about now.

Mrs. Wood, she’d known that. And not just about herself but about Anthony too, and when he thought this, for a second he was Anthony again. It was good to die. There was a lightness in it, a letting go, like love.

He tried to hold on to this thought, the thought that made him still Anthony, but bit by bit it slipped away, a rope pulled slowly through his hands. How many days had passed he couldn’t tell; something was happening to him, but it wasn’t happening quick enough for the men in the suits. They were talking and talking about it, poking and prodding and taking more of his blood. And he was hearing something else now, too: a soft murmur, like voices, but it wasn’t coming from the men in the suits. The sounds seemed to come from far away and from inside him all at once. Not words he knew but words nonetheless; it was a language he was hearing, it had order and sense and a mind, and not just one mind: twelve. Yet one was more than the others, not louder but more. The one voice and then behind it the others, twelve in sum. And they were speaking to him, calling to him; they knew he was there. They were in his blood and they were forever, too.

He wanted to say something back.

He opened his eyes.

“Drop the gate!” a voice cried out. “He’s flipping!”

The restraints were nothing, like paper. The rivets popped from the table and shot across the room. First his arms and then his legs. The room was dark but hid nothing from his eyes, because the darkness was part of him now. And inside him, far down, a great, devouring hunger uncoiled itself. To eat the very world. To take it all inside him and be filled by it, made whole. To make the world eternal, as he was.

A man was running for the door.

Anthony fell on him swiftly, from above. A scream and then the man was silent in wet pieces on the floor. The beautiful warmth of blood! He drank and drank.

The one who’d told him he’d be feeling better soon: he wasn’t wrong, after all.

Anthony Carter had never felt better in his life.

Pujol, that dumb fuck, was dead.

Thirty-six days: that was how long it had taken Carter to flip, the longest since they’d begun. But Carter was supposed to be the meanest of the lot, the last stage before the virus reached its final form. The one the girl had gotten.

Richards personally didn’t care one way or another about the girl. She would survive or she wouldn’t. She would live forever or die in the next five minutes. Somewhere along the way, the girl had become beside the point, as far as Special Weapons was concerned. They had Wolgast in there with her now, talking to her, trying to bring her around. So far he was fine, but if the girl died, this wouldn’t make a lick of difference.

What the hell had Pujol been thinking? They should have dropped the gate days ago. But at least now they knew what these things could do. The report from Bolivia had indicated as much, but it was another thing to see it with your own eyes, to watch the video feed of Carter, this little twig of a man with an IQ not much more than 80 on a good day and scared of his own shadow, launch himself twenty feet through the air, so fast it was as if he were moving not through space but around it, and rip a man from crotch to jowls like a letter he couldn’t wait to open. By the time it was all over-about two seconds-they’d had to blast Carter with the lights, to push him back to the corner so they could drop the gate.

They had the twelve now, thirteen counting Fanning. Richards’s job was done, or nearly. The order had just come through. Project NOAH was graduating to Operation Jumpstart. In a week, they’d be moving the sticks to White Sands. After that, it would be out of Richards’s hands.

The ultimate bunker busters. That’s what Cole had called them, way back when, when it was all just a theory-before Bolivia and Fanning and all the rest. Just imagine what one of these things could do, say, in the mountain caves of northern Pakistan, or the eastern deserts of Iran, or the shot-up buildings of the Chechen Free Zone. Think high colonic, Richards: a good cleaning out from the inside.

Maybe Cole would have wised up eventually. But in his absence, the idea had acquired a life of its own. Never mind that it violated about half a dozen international treaties that Richards could think of. Never mind that it was just about the stupidest idea he’d ever heard of in his life. A bluff, probably; but bluffs had a way of being called. And did anyone seriously think, for one goddamn second, that you could contain one of these things to the caves of northern Pakistan?

He felt bad for Sykes, and not a little worried. The guy was a wreck, had barely come out of his office since word had come down from Special Weapons. When Richards had asked him if Lear knew, Sykes had given a long, wretched-sounding laugh. Poor guy, he’d said. He still thinks he’s trying to save the world. Which, the way things are playing out, might need saving after all. I can’t believe this is even on the table.

Armored trucks would transport the sticks to Grand Junction; from there, they’d be moved by train to White Sands. As for Richards: once everything had been brought to its proper conclusion, he was giving serious consideration to buying property in, say, northern Canada.

The sweeps would be the first to go. The techs and most of the soldiers, too, starting with the ones who were the most screwed up, like Paulson. After that day on the loading dock, Richards had checked his file. Paulson, Derrick G. Age twenty-two. Enlisted straight out of high school in Glastonbury, Connecticut; a year in the sands, then back stateside. No record, and the guy was smart; he had an IQ of 136. No question he could have gone to college, or OCS. He’d been on-site now for twenty-three months. He’d been disciplined twice for sleeping on watch and once for unauthorized use of email, but that was all.

What bothered him was that Paulson knew, or believed he did; Richards had sensed it right off. Not in anything Paulson had done or said, but in the look on Carter’s face when Richards had opened the van’s door-like the poor guy had seen a ghost, or worse. Nobody except the scientific staff and the sweeps set foot on Level 4. With nothing else to do but stand around in the snow, a certain amount of idle conjecture among the enlisted was inevitable, loose talk around the mess table. But Richards had the feeling in his gut that whatever Paulson had said was more than just gossip.

Maybe Paulson was dreaming. Maybe they all were.

If Richards was dreaming these days, it was about the nuns. He hadn’t cared for that part very much at all. Way back when, so long ago it seemed like a different life entirely, he’d gone to Catholic school. A bunch of withered old bitches who liked to slap and hit, but he’d respected them; they meant what they said and did it. So shooting nuns went against the grain. Most of them had just slept through it. But there was one who’d woken up. The way she opened her eyes made him think she’d been expecting him. He’d done two of them already; she was the third. She opened her eyes in bed and he saw, in the pale light coming through the window, that she wasn’t some dried-up seahorse like the others but young, and not bad-looking. Then she closed her eyes and murmured something, a prayer probably, and Richards shot her through a pillow.

He’d come up one nun short. Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, the crazy one. He’d read her psych workup from the diocese. Nobody would believe her story, and even if they did, the chain was broken in western Oklahoma with a bunch of dead cops shot by rogue FBI agents and a ten-year-old Chevy Tahoe you’d need tweezers and about a thousand years to reassemble.

Still, he hadn’t liked shooting that nun.

Richards was sitting in his office, watching the security monitors. The time stamp read 22:26. The sweeps were in and out of Containment with the rabbit carts, but nobody was having any of it. The fast had started with Zero but had spread to the others since Carter had shown up, maybe a couple of days after. This was a puzzler, but in any event, if Special Weapons had its way, the sticks would all be eating soon enough. By which time Richards hoped he’d be ice-fishing on Hudson Bay or digging out snow for an igloo.

He looked at the monitor for Amy’s chamber. There was Wolgast, sitting at her bedside. They’d brought in a little portable toilet with a nylon curtain, and a cot where he could sleep. But he hadn’t slept at all, just sat in the chair by her bed day after day, touching her hand, talking to her. What he was saying, Richards didn’t care to know. And yet he’d find himself watching them for hours, almost as much as he watched Babcock.

He turned his attention to Babcock’s chamber. Giles Babcock, Number One. Babcock was hanging upside down from the bars, his eyes, that weird orange color, shooting straight at the camera, his jaws quietly working, chewing the air. I am yours and you are mine, Richards. We are all meant for someone, and I am meant for you.

Yeah, Richards thought. Fuck you, too.

Richards’s com buzzed against his waist.

“This is the front gate,” the voice on the other end said. “We’ve got a woman out here.”

Richards examined the monitor that showed the guardhouse. Two sentries, one holding the com to his ear, the other with his weapon unslung. The woman was standing just outside the circle of light around the hut.

“So?” he said. “Get rid of her.”

“That’s the thing, sir,” the sentry said. “She won’t go. She doesn’t look like she has a car, either. I think she actually walked.”

Richards was looking hard at the monitor. He saw the sentry drop the com to the ground and unsling his weapon.

“Hey!” Richards heard him say. “Get back here! Stop or I’ll fire!”

Richards heard the pop of his weapon. The second soldier took off running into the dark. Two more shots, the sound muffled through the com where it lay in the mud. Ten seconds passed, twenty. Then they stepped back into the light. Richards could tell from their body language that they’d lost her.

The first sentry retrieved his com and looked up into the camera.

“Sorry. She got away somehow. You want us to go look for her?”

Jesus. This was all Richards needed. “Who was she?”

“Black woman, some kind of accent,” the sentry explained. “Said she was looking for someone named Wolgast.”

He didn’t die. Not right away and not as the days went by. And on the third day, he told her the story.

– There once was a little girl, Wolgast told her. More little even than you. Her name was Eva, and her mother and father loved her very much. The night after she was born, her father took her from her bassinet in the room at the hospital where they were all sleeping and held her, her bare skin against his own, and from that moment on she was inside him, really and truly. His girl was inside him, in his heart.

Somebody was probably watching, listening. The camera was over his shoulder. He didn’t care. Fortes came and went. He took her blood and changed her bags, and Wolgast talked, through the hours of the third day, telling it all to Amy, the story he’d told no one.

– And then something happened. It was her heart. Her heart, you see-he showed her the place on his chest where this was-began to shrink. While around her, her body grew, her heart did not, and then the rest of her stopped growing too. He would have given her his heart if he could, because it was hers to begin with. It had always been, and always would be, hers. But he couldn’t do this for her, he couldn’t do anything, no one could, and when she died, he died with her. The man that he was, was gone. And the man and the woman couldn’t love each other anymore, because their love was nothing but sadness now, and missing their little girl.

He told her the story, told it all. And when the story was ending, the day was ending with it.

– And then you came, Amy, he said. Then I found you. Do you see? It was like she’d come back to me. Come back, Amy. Come back, come back, come back.

He lifted his face. He opened his eyes.

And Amy opened hers, too.

THIRTEEN

Lacey in the woods: she moved at a crouch, darting tree to tree, putting distance between herself and the soldiers. The air was cold and thin, sharp in her lungs. She stood with her back against a tree and let herself breathe.

She wasn’t afraid. The soldiers’ bullets were nothing. She’d heard them ripping through the underbrush, but they hadn’t even come close. And so small! Bullets-how could bullets hurt a person? After the long distance she’d traveled, against such odds, how could they hope to scare her away with something as meager as that?

She peeked around the barrel-like trunk. She could see, through the undergrowth, the glow of the sentry hut, hear the two men talking, their voices carrying easily across the moonless night. Black woman, some kind of accent, and the other one saying over and over, Shit, he’s going to have our ass for this. How the fuck did we miss her? Huh? How the fuck! You didn’t even fucking aim!

Whoever they were talking to on the phone, they were afraid of him. But this man-Lacey knew he was nothing, no one. And the soldiers, they were like children, without minds of their own. Like the ones in the field, so long ago. She remembered how, through the long hours, they’d done and done. They’d thought they were taking something from her-she could see it in the dark smiles streaked across their mouths, taste it in their sour breath on her face-and it was true, they had. But now she’d forgiven them and taken this thing back, which was Lacey herself, and more besides. She closed her eyes. But you are a shield around me, O LORD, she thought:

You bestow glory on me and lift up my head.

To the LORD I cry aloud

and he answers me from his holy hill.

Selah.

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.

I will not fear the tens of thousands

drawn up against me on every side.

Arise, O LORD!

Deliver me, O my God!

Strike all my enemies on the jaw;

break the teeth of the wicked.

She was moving through the trees again. The man on the other end of the sentry’s phone: he would send more soldiers to hunt her down. And yet a feeling like joy was coursing through her-a new, nimble energy, richer and deeper than anything she’d felt in her life. It had been building through the weeks as she made her way to-well, where? She didn’t know what it was called. In her mind it was simply the place where Amy was.

She’d taken some buses. She’d ridden awhile in the back of someone’s truck with two Labrador retrievers and a crate of baby pigs. Some days she’d awakened wherever she was and known it was a day to walk, just walk. From time to time she ate or, if it felt right, knocked on a door and asked if it would be all right if she slept in a bed. And the woman who answered the door-for it was always a woman, no matter what door Lacey knocked on-would say, Of course, come right in, and lead her to a room with a bed all made up and waiting, without saying one more word about it.

And then one day she was climbing a long mountain road, the glory of God in the sunshine all around her, and knew that she’d arrived.

Wait, the voice said. Wait for sunset, Sister Lacey. The way will show you the way.

And so it did: the way showed the way. More men were pursuing her now; each footfall, each snap of a twig, each breath was as a gunshot, louder than loud, telling Lacey where they were. They were spread out behind her in a wide line, six of them, pointing their guns into the darkness, at nothing, at a place where Lacey had stood but stood no longer.

She came to a break in the trees. A road. To the left, two hundred yards distant, stood the sentry hut, bathed in its halo of light. To the right the road turned into the trees and descended sharply. From somewhere far below, was the sound of the river.

Nothing about this place revealed its meaning to her; and yet she knew to wait. She dropped and pressed her belly against the forest floor. The soldiers were behind her, fifty yards, forty, thirty.

She heard the low, labored sound of a diesel engine, its pitch dropping as the driver downshifted to ascend the final rise. Slowly it pushed its light and noise toward her. She rose to a crouch as its headlights burst over the crest of the hill. Some kind of Army truck. The pitch of the engine changed as the driver shifted again and began to gather speed.

Now?

And the voice said: Now.

She was up and running with all her might, aiming her body at the rear of the truck. A wide bumper and, above it, an open cargo area, concealed by swaying canvas. For a moment it seemed as if she’d moved too late, that the truck would race away, but in a burst of speed she caught it. Her hands found the lip of the gate, one bare foot and then the other left the road. Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, airborne: she was up and over and she was rolling in.

Her head hit the floor of the cargo compartment with a thump.

Boxes. The truck was full of boxes.

She scrambled to the front, against the rear wall of the cab. The truck slowed again as it approached the sentry hut. Lacey held her breath. Whatever happened now would happen; there was nothing she could do.

The hiss of air brakes; the truck jerked to a halt.

“Let me see the manifest.”

The voice belonged to the first sentry, the one who’d told Lacey to stop. The man-boy with his gun. She could discern, from the angle of his voice, that he was standing on the running board. The air suddenly tanged with cigarette smoke.

“You shouldn’t smoke.”

“Who are you, my mother?”

“Read your own manifest, dickhead. You’re carrying enough ordnance to blow us all halfway to Mars.”

A snickering laugh from the passenger seat.

“It’s your funeral. You see anyone down the road?”

“You mean, like a civilian?”

“No, I mean the abominable snowman. Yes, a civilian. A black woman, about five-six, wearing a skirt.”

“You’re kidding.” A pause. “We didn’t see anyone. It’s dark. I don’t know.”

The sentry climbed down from the running board. “Hang on while I check the back.”

Don’t move, Lacey, the voice said. Don’t move.

The canvas flaps opened, closed, opened again. A beam of light shot into the back of the truck.

Close your eyes, Lacey.

She did. She felt the beam of the flashlight rake her face: once, twice, three times.

You are a shield around me, O Lord-

She heard two hard pounds on the side of the truck, right beside her ear.

“Clear!”

The truck pulled away.

Richards wasn’t one bit happy. The crazy nun-what the blue fuck was she doing here?

He decided not to tell Sykes. Not until he knew more about it. He’d sent six men. Six! Just fucking shoot her! But they’d come back with nothing. He’d sent them back out, around the perimeter. Just find her! Put a bullet in her! Is that so hard?

The business with Wolgast and the girl had gone on too long. And Doyle-why was he still alive? Richards checked his watch: 00:03. He retrieved his weapon from the bottom drawer of his desk and checked the load and tucked it against his spine. He left his office and took the back stairs to Level 1 and exited through the loading dock.

Doyle was stashed over in civilian housing; the room had belonged to one of the dead sweeps. The sentry at the door was dozing in his chair.

“Get up,” Richards said.

The soldier jerked awake. His eyes floated with incomprehension; he didn’t look like he knew where he was. When he saw Richards standing above him, he rose quickly to attention. “Sorry, sir.”

“Open the door.”

The soldier keyed in the code and stepped away.

“You can go,” Richards said.

“Sir?”

“If you’re going to sleep, do it in the barracks.”

A look of relief. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

The soldier jogged down the catwalk, away. Richards pushed the door open. Doyle was sitting on the end of the bed, his hands folded in his lap, looking at the empty square on the wall where the TV had once been. An untouched tray of food rested on the floor, exuding a faint smell of rotting fish. As Doyle lifted his face, a thin smile creased his lips.

“Richards. You fuck.”

“Let’s go.”

Doyle sighed and slapped his knees. “You know, he was right about you. Wolgast, I mean. I was just sitting here thinking, When is my old friend Richards going to pay me a visit?”

“If it was up to me, I would have come sooner.”

Doyle looked like he was about to laugh. Richards had never seen such a good mood in a man who had to know what was about to happen to him. Doyle shook his head ruefully, still smiling. “I should have gone for those shotguns.”

Richards withdrew his weapon and thumbed the safety. “It would have saved some time, yes.”

He led Doyle across the compound, toward the lights of the Chalet. It was possible Doyle would take off running, but how far would he get? And, Richards wondered, why hadn’t he asked about Wolgast or the girl?

“Tell me one thing,” Doyle said, as they reached the parking area. A handful of cars were still there, belonging to the lab’s night shift. “Is she here yet?”

“Is who here?”

“Lacey.”

Richards stopped.

“So she is,” Doyle said, and chuckled to himself. “Richards, you should see your face.”

“What do you know about it?”

It was strange. A cool, blue light seemed to be shining from Doyle’s eyes. Even in the ambient glow of the parking lot, Richards could see it. Like looking into a camera at the moment the shutter opened.

“Funny thing, but you know?” Doyle said, and lifted his gaze toward the dark shapes of the trees. “I could hear her coming.”

Grey.

He was on L4. On the monitor, the glowing shape of Zero.

Grey. It’s time.

He remembered then, remembered all of it at last: his dreams and all those nights he’d spent in Containment, watching Zero, listening to his voice, hearing the stories he told. He remembered New York City and the girl and all the others, every night a new one, and the feel of the darkness moving through him and the soft joy in his jaw as he flew down upon them. He was Grey and not Grey, he was Zero and not Zero, he was everywhere and nowhere. He rose and faced the glass.

It’s time.

It was funny, Grey thought. Not funny ha-ha but funny strange, the whole idea of time. He’d thought it was one thing but it was actually another. It wasn’t a line but a circle, and even more; it was a circle made of circles made of circles, each lying on top of the other, so that every moment was next to every other moment, all at once. And once you knew this you couldn’t unknow it. Such as now, the way he could see events as they were about to unfold, as if they’d already happened, because in a way they had.

He opened the air lock. His suit hung limply on the wall. He had to close the first door to open the second, the second to open the third, but there was nothing that said he had to put the suit on, or that he had to be alone.

The second door, Grey.

He stepped into the inner chamber. Above his head, the showerhead hung like the face of some monstrous flower. The camera was watching him, but no one was on the other side; he knew that. And he was hearing other voices now, not just Zero’s, and he knew who these were, too.

The third door, Grey.

Oh, it was such happiness, he thought. Such relief. This letting go. This putting down and away. Day by day he’d felt it happening, the good Grey and the bad Grey coming together, forming something new, something inevitable. The next new Grey, the one who could forgive.

I forgive you, Grey.

He turned the wide handle. The gate was open. Zero uncurled before him in the dark. Grey felt his breath on his face, on his eyes and mouth and chin; he felt his hammering heart. Grey thought of his father, on the snow. He was weeping, weeping with happiness, weeping with terror, weeping weeping weeping, and as Zero’s bite found the soft place on his neck where the blood moved, he knew at last what the tenth rabbit was.

The tenth rabbit was him.

FOURTEEN

It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.

“What did you say?” Richards said, and then he heard-both of them heard-the sound of the alarm. The one that was never, ever supposed to ring, a great, atonal buzzing that ricocheted across the open compound so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Security breach. Subject Containment, Level 4.

Richards turned quickly to look toward the Chalet. A quick decision: he swung around to point his gun at the spot where Doyle had stood.

Doyle was gone.

Goddamn, he thought, and then he said it: “Goddamn!” Now there were two of them on the loose. He quickly scanned the parking lot, hoping for a shot. Lights came on everywhere, bathing the compound in a harsh, artificial daylight; he heard shouts from the barracks, soldiers running.

No time to deal with Doyle now.

He raced up the steps of the Chalet, past the sentry who was yelling at him, something about the elevator, and took the stairs to L2, his feet barely touching the steps. The door to his office was open. He quickly scanned the monitors.

Zero’s chamber was empty.

Babcock’s chamber was empty.

All of the chambers were empty.

He hit the audio feed. “Sentries, Level Four, this is Richards. Report.”

Nothing, not a word in reply.

“Main Lab, report. Somebody tell me what the fuck is going on down there.”

A terrified voice came through: Fortes? “They let them out!”

“Who? Who let them out?”

A blast of static, and Richards heard the first screams coming over the audio, and gunshots, and more screams-the screams men made when they died.

“Holy fuck!” Another blast of static. “They’re all loose down here! The fucking sweeps let them all go!”

Quickly Richards called up the monitor for the sentry post on L3. A broad mural of blood was on the wall; the sentry, Davis, was slumped on the floor below it, his face pressed to the tiles, as if he were probing the ground for a lost contact. A second soldier stepped into view and Richards saw that it was Paulson, holding a.45. Behind him, the doors to the elevator stood open. Paulson looked straight into the camera as he holstered the gun and removed the grenade from his pocket, then two more. He pulled the pins, using his teeth, and rolled them into the elevator. Then he took one more look at Richards, who saw his empty eyes, drew the.45, raised it to the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.

Richards reached for the switch to seal the level, but it was too late. He heard the explosion, ripping through the elevator shaft, and then a second blast of sound as what was left of the car went sailing to the bottom, and all the lights went out.

At first Wolgast didn’t know what he was hearing; the sound of the alarm was so sudden, so completely alien, that for a moment it obliterated all thought. He rose from his chair beside Amy’s bed and tried the door, but of course it wouldn’t open; they were sealed inside. The alarm rang and rang. A fire? No, he reasoned, over the din in his ears, it was something else, something worse. He looked up at the camera where it hung in the corner.

“Fortes! Sykes, goddamnit! Open this door!”

He heard the pop of automatic-weapon fire, muffled by its passage through the thick walls. For an instant he thought hopefully of rescue. But of course that was out of the question; who would rescue them?

And then, before he could generate another thought, there was a great concussive bang, and a terrible roar that ended in a second bang, louder than the first, bringing with it a deep, sonorous trembling, like an earthquake, and the room plunged into darkness.

Wolgast froze. The blackness was total, an overwhelming absence of light, completely disorienting. The alarms had stopped. He felt a blind urge to run, but there was nowhere to go. The room seemed to expand and to be closing in upon him, all at once.

“Amy, where are you? Help me find you!”

Silence. Wolgast drew a deep breath and held it. “Amy, say something. Say anything.”

He heard, behind him, a soft moan.

“That’s it.” He turned, listening hard, trying to calibrate the distance and direction. “Do it again. I’ll find you.”

His mind began to focus, his initial panic giving way to a sense of purpose, the task at hand. Cautiously Wolgast took a step forward toward her voice, then another. A second moan, barely audible. The room was small, not twenty feet square, so how could it be that Amy should seem so far away from him in the dark? He heard no more gunfire, no sounds at all from outside. Only the soft notes of Amy’s breathing, summoning him.

Wolgast had reached the foot of her bed and was feeling his way along its metal rails when the emergency lights came on, two beams that shot from the corners of the ceiling over the door. Barely enough to see by, but enough. The room was the same; whatever was happening outside, it had yet to reach them. He sat by Amy’s bed and felt her forehead. Still warm, but her fever was down, her skin a little damp. With the power out, her IV pump had stopped. He wondered what to do, and decided to disconnect her. Perhaps this was wrong, but he didn’t think so. He had watched Fortes and the others change the drip enough times to know the ritual. He adjusted the clamp, sealing off the flow of liquid, and withdrew the long needle from the rubber stopper at the top of the tube buried in the skin of her hand. With the IV disconnected there was no reason to leave the port in place; he removed this also, pulling it gently away. The wound didn’t bleed, but to be sure, he covered it with gauze and tape from the supply cart. Then he waited.

The minutes passed. Amy shifted restlessly on the bed, as if she were dreaming. Wolgast had the curious intuition that somehow, if he could see her dreams, he’d know what was happening outside. But part of him wondered if any of it mattered now. They were well belowground, sealed away. They might as well have been locked in a tomb.

Wolgast had all but resigned himslf to their abandonment when he heard, behind him, a hiss of equalizing pressure. His hopes soared; someone had come after all. The door swung open to reveal a solitary figure, backlit, his face draped in shadow, wearing only street clothes. As the man stepped under the beams of the emergency lights, Wolgast saw somebody entirely new to him. The stranger had long hair, wild and unkempt, shot with streaks of gray, and a coarse beard that climbed halfway up his cheeks; his lab coat was rumpled and stained. He approached Amy’s bedside with the preoccupied air of an accident victim, or the bystander to some terrible calamity. He’d done nothing so far even to acknowledge Wolgast’s presence.

“She knows,” he mumured, gazing at Amy. “How does she know?”

“Who the hell are you? What’s going on out there?”

Still the man ignored him. An otherworldly feeling seemed to radiate off his entire person, an almost fatalistic calm. “It’s strange,” he said after a moment. He sighed deeply and touched his beard, sweeping his eyes over the barren room. “All of this. Is this… what I wanted? I wanted there to be one, you see. Once I saw, once I knew what they were planning, how it would all end, I wanted there to be at least one.”

“What are you talking about? Where’s Sykes?”

At last the stranger seemed to take notice of him. He regarded Wolgast closely, his face tightening with a sudden frown. “Sykes? Oh, he’s dead. I rather think they’re all dead, don’t you?”

“What do you mean dead?”

“Dead, gone, in pieces probably. The lucky ones, anyway.” He gave his head a slow shake of wonder. “You should have seen it, the way they swooped down from the trees. Like the bats. We really should have seen that coming.”

Wolfgast felt completely lost. “Please. I don’t know… what you’re talking about.”

The stranger shrugged. “Well, you will. Soon enough, I’m sorry to say.” He looked at Wolgast again. “My manners. You’ll have to excuse me, Agent Wolgast. It’s been a while for me. I’m Jonas Lear.” He gave a rueful smile. “You could say I’m the person in charge around here. Or not. Under the circumstances, I rather think nobody’s in charge anymore.”

Lear. Wolgast searched his memory, but the name meant nothing. “I heard an explosion-”

“Quite right,” Lear interrupted. “That would have been the elevator. Now, my guess would be it was one of the soldiers. But I was locked in the freezer, so I didn’t see that part.” He sighed heavily and cast his eyes around the room once more. “Not a moment of great heroism, was it, Agent Wolgast, locking myself in the freezer? You know, I really wish there was another chair in here. I’d like to sit down. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I sat down.”

Wolgast shot to his feet. “Jesus. Take mine. Just please, tell me what’s going on.”

But Lear shook his head, his greasy hair swaying. “There’s no time, I’m afraid. We have to be going. It’s all over, isn’t it, Amy?” He looked down at the girl’s sleeping form and gently touched her hand. “Over at last.”

Wolgast could stand it no more. “What’s over?”

Lear lifted his face; his eyes were full of tears.

“Everything.”

Lear led them down the corridor, Wolgast carrying Amy in his arms. The air smelled burnt, like molten plastic. As they turned the corner toward the elevator, Wolgast saw the first body.

It was Fortes. There wasn’t much left. His body looked smeared, like it had been hit and dragged by something huge. Pooling blood glistened under the throb of the emergency lights. Beyond Fortes was another one, or so Wolgast thought. It took him a moment to understand he was looking at more of Fortes, just a different part of him.

Amy’s eyes were closed, but Wolgast did his best to cover them anyway, pressing her face to his chest. Beyond Fortes lay two more bodies, or three, he couldn’t tell. The floor was slick with blood, so much blood that he felt his feet sliding on it, the grease of human remains.

The elevator was blown away, nothing more than a hole, its darkened interior lit by the dancing sparks of broken wiring. Its heavy metal doors had shot across the hallway, caving in the opposite wall. Under the angular light of the emergency beams, Wolgast could see two more dead men, soldiers, crushed by pieces of the door. A third was propped against the wall, seated like a man taking a siesta, except he was resting in a pool of his own blood. His face was drawn and dessicated; his uniform hung limply on his frame, as if it were a size too large.

Wolgast tore his gaze away. “How do we get out of here?”

“This way,” Lear said. The fog had lifted from him; he was pure urgency and purpose now. “Quickly.”

Down another corridor. Doors stood open all up and down its length-heavy metal doors, identical to the one that led to Amy’s chamber. And on the floor of the hallway, more bodies, but Wolgast didn’t-couldn’t-count. The walls were riddled with bullet holes, cartridges lay all over the floor, their brass casings gleaming.

Then a man stepped through one of the doors. Not stepped: stumbled. A big soft man, like the ones who’d delivered Wolgast’s meals to his room, though his face was not familiar. He was holding a hand to a deep gash on his neck, the blood flowing through and around his fingers where they pressed into his flesh. His shirt, a white hospital tunic like Wolgast’s, was a glistening bib of blood.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He looked at the three of them, then up and down the hall. He seemed not to notice the blood or, if he did, not to care. “What happened to the lights?”

Wolgast didn’t know what to say. A wound like that-the man should be dead already. Wolgast couldn’t believe he was even standing.

“Oooo,” the bleeding man said, wobbling on his feet. “I gotta sit down.”

He slid heavily to the floor, his body seeming to cave in on itself, like a tent without poles. He took a long breath and looked up at Wolgast. His body shuddered with a deep twitch.

“Am I… asleep?”

Wolgast said nothing. The question made no sense to him.

Lear touched his shoulder. “Agent, leave him. There’s no time.”

The man licked his lips. He’d lost so much blood he was becoming dehydrated. His eyes had started to flutter; his hands lay loosely, like empty gloves, on the floor at his sides.

“Because I’m here to tell you, I’ve been having the worst goddamn dream. I said to myself, Grey, you are having the worst dream in the world.”

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Wolgast said.

The man considered this and shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”

He twitched again, a hard spasm, as if he’d been hit by a jolt of current. Lear was right-there was nothing to do for him. The blood from his neck had darkened to a deep blue-black. Wolgast had to get Amy away.

“I’m sorry,” Wolgast said. “We have to go.”

“You think you’re sorry,” the man said, and let his head rock back against the wall.

“Agent-”

But Grey’s mind already seemed elsewhere. “It wasn’t just me,” he said, and closed his eyes. “It was all of us.”

They hurried on, to a room with lockers and benches. A dead end, Wolgast thought, but then Lear withdrew a key from his pocket and opened a door marked MECHANICALS.

Wolgast stepped inside. Lear was on his knees, using a small knife to pry loose a metal panel. It swung free on a pair of hinges, and Wolgast bent to look inside. The opening wasn’t more than a yard square.

“Straight on, about thirty feet, and you’ll come to an intersection. A tube leads straight up. There’s a ladder inside for maintenance. It goes all the way to the top.”

Fifty feet at least, climbing a ladder in pitch blackness holding Amy, somehow, in his arms. Wolgast didn’t see how he could do it.

“There has to be another way.”

Lear shook his head. “There isn’t.”

The man held Amy while Wolgast entered the duct. Seated, his head bent low, he’d be able to pull Amy along, holding her by the waist. He backed in until his legs were straight; Lear positioned Amy between them. She seemed to be poised on the edge of awareness now. Through her thin gown, Wolgast could still feel the warmth of her fever rising off her skin.

“Remember what I said. Ten yards.”

Wolgast nodded.

“Be careful.”

“What killed those men?”

But Lear didn’t answer. “Keep her close,” he said. “She’s everything. Now go.”

Wolgast began to scooch away, one hand clutching Amy by the waist, the other pulling them deeper into the duct. It was only when the panel sealed behind him that he realized that Lear had never meant to come with them.

The sticks were everywhere now, all over the compound. Richards could hear the screams and the gunfire. He took extra clips from his desk and ran upstairs to Sykes’s office.

The room was empty. Where was Sykes?

They had to establish a perimeter. Push the sticks back inside the Chalet and throw the switch. Richards stepped from Sykes’s office, his gun raised.

Something was moving down the hall.

It was Sykes. By the time Richards got to him, he had slumped to the floor, his back propped against the wall. His chest was heaving like a sprinter’s, his face sheened with sweat. He was holding a wide tear on his lower arm, just above the wrist, from which blood was running freely. His gun, a.45, lay on the floor near his upturned palm.

“They’re all over the place,” Sykes said, and swallowed. “Why didn’t he kill me? The son of a bitch looked right at me.”

“Which one was it?”

“What the fuck does that matter?” Sykes shrugged. “Your pal. Babcock. What is it with you two?” A deep tremor moved through him. “I don’t feel so good,” he said, and then he vomited.

Richards jumped away, but too late. The air tanged with the stench of bile, and something else, elemental and metallic, like turned earth. Richards felt the wetness through his pants, his socks. He knew without looking that Sykes’s vomitus was full of blood.

“Fuck!”

He raised his weapon at Sykes.

“Please,” Sykes said, meaning no, or maybe yes, but either way, Richards figured he was doing Sykes a favor when he pointed the barrel at the center of his chest, the sweet spot, and then he squeezed the trigger.

Lacey saw the first one come out an upper window. So quick! Like light itself! How a man would move if he were made of light! It was up and over in an instant, vaulting off the roof into space, sailing through the air above the compound, alighting in a stand of trees a hundred yards away. A man-sized flash of throbbing luminescence, like a shooting star.

She’d heard the alarm as the truck pulled into the compound. The two men in the cab had argued for a minute-should they just drive away?-and Lacey had used this moment to climb out the back and scurry into the woods. That was when she’d seen the demon flying from the window. The treetops where he landed absorbed his weight with a shudder.

Lacey saw what was about to happen.

The driver of the truck was opening the truck’s rear gate. Ordnance, the sentry had said-guns? The truck was full of guns.

The treetops moved again. A streak of green fell toward him.

Oh! Lacey thought. Oh! Oh!

Then there were more of them, pouring out of the building, through its windows and doors, launching themselves into the air. Ten, eleven, twelve. And soldiers too, everywhere, running and yelling and shooting, but their bullets did nothing; the demons were too fast, or else the bullets were harmless against them; one by one the demons fell upon the soldiers and they died.

This was why she had come-to save Amy from the demons.

Quickly, Lacey. Quickly.

She stepped from the edge of the woods.

“Halt!”

Lacey froze. Should she raise her hands? The soldier appeared from the woods where he’d been hiding, too. A good boy, doing what he thought was his duty. Trying not to be afraid, though of course he was; she could feel the fear coming off him, like waves of heat. He didn’t know what was about to happen to him. She felt a tender pity.

“Who are you?”

“I am no one,” Lacey said, and then the demon was upon him-before he could even point his weapon, before he could finish the word he was speaking as he died-and Lacey was running toward the building.

By the time they got to the base of the tube, Wolgast was sweating and breathing hard. A faint light was falling down upon them. Far above, he could see the twin beams of an emergency light and, farther still, the stilled blades of a giant fan. The central ventilation shaft.

“Amy, honey,” he said. “Amy, you have to wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open and closed again. He guided her arms around his neck and stood, felt her feet clamping around his waist. But he could tell she had no strength.

“You have to hold on, Amy. Please. You have to.”

Her body tightened in reply. But still, he’d have to use one of his arms to support her weight. This would leave only one hand free to pull them up the ladder. Jesus.

He turned and faced the ladder, set his foot onto the first rung. It was like a problem on a standardized test: Brad Wolgast is holding a little girl. He has to climb a ladder, fifty feet, in a poorly lit ventilation shaft. The girl is semiconscious at best. How does Brad Wolgast save both their lives?

Then he saw how he could do it. One rung at a time, he’d use his right hand to pull them up, then hook that same elbow through the ladder, balancing Amy’s weight on his knee while he changed hands and moved up another rung. Then the left hand, then the right, and so on, moving Amy’s weight between them, rung by rung to the top.

How much did she weigh? Fifty pounds? All suspended, at the moment he changed hands, by the strength of a single arm.

Wolgast began to climb.

Richards could tell from the shouts and the shooting that the sticks were outside now.

He’d known what was happening to Sykes. Probably it would happen to him too, since Sykes had puked his goddamn infected blood all over him, but he doubted he’d live long enough for this to matter. Hey, Cole, he thought. Hey, Cole, you weasel, you little shit. Was this what you hand in mind? Is this your Pax Americana? Because there’s only one outcome I can see here.

There was just one thing Richards wanted now. A clean exit, with a good showing at the last.

The front entrance of the Chalet was all broken glass and bullet holes, the doors ripped half off their hinges, hanging kitty-corner. Three soldiers lay dead on the floor; it looked as if they’d been shot by friendly fire in the chaos. Maybe they’d actually shot one another on purpose, just to hustle things along. Richards raised his hand and looked at the Springfield -why would he think this would do any good? The soldiers’ rifles would be no use either. He needed something larger. The armory was across the compound, behind the barracks. He’d have to make a run for it.

He looked out the door, across the open ground of the compound. At least the lights were still on. Well, he thought. Better now than later, since probably there would be no later. He took off at a run.

The soldiers were everywhere, scattered, running, shooting at nothing, at one another. Not even pretending to make an organized defense, let alone an assault on the Chalet. Richards ran full tilt, half-expecting to be hit.

Richards was halfway across the compound when he saw the five-ton. It was parked at the edge of the lot, at a careless angle, its doors open. He knew what was inside it.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to make it across the compound after all.

“Agent Doyle.”

Doyle smiled. “Lacey.”

They were on the first floor of the Chalet, in a small, cramped room of desks and file cabinets. Doyle had been waiting there since the shooting had started, hidden beneath a desk. Waiting for Lacey.

He stood.

“Do you know where they are?”

Lacey paused. There were scratches on her face and neck, and bits of leaves caught in her hair.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“I… heard you,” Doyle said. “All these weeks.” Something huge was breaking open inside him. His throat choked with tears. “I don’t know how I did that.”

She took his hands in hers. “It wasn’t me you heard, Agent Doyle.”

At least Wolgast couldn’t look down. He was sweating hard now, his palms and fingers slick on the rungs as he pulled them farther up. His arms were trembling with exertion; the crooks of his elbows, where he held each rung when he traded hands, felt bruised to the bone. There was a moment, he knew, when the body simply reached its limits, an invisible line that, once crossed, could not be uncrossed. He pushed the thought aside and climbed.

Amy’s arms, crossed behind his neck, held firm. Together they ascended, rung by rung by rung.

The fan was closer now. Wolgast could feel a thin breeze, cool and smelling of night, spilling over his face. He craned his neck to scan the sides of the tube for an opening.

He saw it, ten feet above him: beside the ladder, an open duct.

He’d have to push Amy in first. Somehow he’d have to manage his own weight on the ladder and hers as well, while he swung her out from the ladder and into the duct; then he’d climb in himself.

They reached the opening. The fan was higher than he’d thought, another thirty feet above their heads at least. He guessed they were somewhere on the first floor of the Chalet. Maybe he was supposed to go higher, find another exit. But his strength was nearly gone.

He positioned his right knee to take Amy’s weight and reached his left hand out. A featureless wall of cool metal met his fingertips, smooth as glass, but then he found the edge. He drew his hand back. Three more rungs should do it. He took a deep breath and ascended, positioning the two of them just above the duct.

“Amy,” he rasped. His mouth and throat were dry as bone. “Wake up. Do your best to wake up, honey.”

He felt her breathing change against his neck as she tried to rouse.

“Amy, I’m going to need you to let go when I say. I’ll hold you. There’s an opening in the wall. I need you to try to get your feet into it.”

The girl gave no reply. He hoped she had heard him. He tried to imagine how this was going to work, exactly-how he was going to get her inside the duct and then himself-and couldn’t. But he was out of options. If he waited any longer, he’d have no strength for any of it.

Now.

He pushed with his knee, lifting Amy up. Her arms released his neck and with his free hand he took her by the wrist, suspending her over the tube like a pendulum, and then he saw the way: he released his other hand, let her weight pull him away and to his left, toward the hole, and then her feet were inside it, she was sliding into the tube.

He began to fall. He’d been falling all along. But as he felt his feet lose contact with the ladder, his hands madly scrabbling at the wall, his fingers found the lip of the duct, a thin metal ridge that bit into his skin.

“Whoa!” he cried, his voice ricocheting down the length of the shaft. He seemed to be clinging to the side of the shaft by will alone; his feet were dangling in space. “Whoa now!”

How he did it he couldn’t have explained. Adrenaline. Amy. That he didn’t want to die, not yet. He pulled with all his might, his elbows bending slowly, drawing himself inexorably upward-first his head and then his chest and then his waist and finally the rest of him, sliding into the duct.

For a moment he lay still, gulping air into his lungs. He lifted his face then and saw a light ahead-some kind of opening in the floor. He twisted himself around and held Amy as he’d done before, scooting along on his backside, clutching her by the waist. The light grew stronger as they moved toward it. They came to a slatted grate.

It was sealed, screwed shut from the outside.

He wanted to cry. To come so close! Even if he’d been able to reach through the narrow slats, somehow, to find the screws with his fingers, he had no tools, no way to open it. And going back-impossible. He’d spent the last of his strength.

He heard movement below them.

He pulled Amy tight. He thought of the men they’d seen-Fortes, the soldier in the pool of blood, the one called Grey. It wasn’t how he wanted to die. He closed his eyes and held his breath, willing the two of them into absolute silence.

Then a voice, quiet and searching: “Chief?”

It was Doyle.

One of the lockers was already resting on the ground at the rear of the truck. It looked like somebody had been unloading and then, in a panic, dropped it. Richards searched quickly inside the cargo compartment and found a tire iron.

The hinge gave way with a bright snap. Inside, cradled in beds of foam, lay a pair of RPG-29s. He lifted the rack to find, beneath it, the rockets: finned cylinders, about half a meter long, tipped with tandem-charge HEATs, capable of penetrating the armor of a modern battle tank. Richards had seen what they could do.

He’d placed the requisition when the order had come through to move the sticks. Better safe than sorry, he’d thought. Vampires, say aaah.

He fixed the first rocket to the launcher. With a twist it issued the satisfying hum that meant the warhead was armed. Thousands of years of technical advancement, the whole history of human civilization, seemed contained within that sound, the hum of an arming HEAT. The 29 was reusable, but Richards knew he’d only get one shot. He hoisted it to his shoulder, lifted the sighting mechanism into position, and stepped away from the truck.

“Hey!” he yelled, and, at precisely that moment, the sound of his voice streaming away into the gloom, a cold shudder of nausea burbled from his gut. The ground beneath him swayed, like the deck of a boat at sea. Beads of sweat were popping out all over. He felt the urge to blink, a random current from the brain. So. It was happening quicker than he’d thought. He swallowed hard and took two more steps into the light, swinging the RPG toward the treetops.

“Here, kitty, kitty!”

An anxious minute passed as Doyle scrabbled through various drawers until he found a penknife. Standing on a chair, he used the blade to undo the screws. Wolgast lowered Amy into Doyle’s arms, then dropped to the floor himself.

He didn’t at first know whom he was seeing.

“Sister Lacey?”

She was holding the sleeping girl against her chest. “Agent Wolgast.”

Wolgast looked at Doyle. “I don’t-”

“Get it?” Doyle lifted his eyebrows. He was, like Wolgast, wearing scrubs. They were too large, hanging loosely on his body. He gave a little laugh. “Trust me, I don’t get it either.”

“This place is full of dead men,” Wolgast said. “Something… I don’t know. There was an explosion.” He couldn’t explain himself.

“We know,” Doyle said, nodding. “It’s time for us to go.”

They stepped from the room into the hall. Wolgast guessed they were somewhere near the rear of the Chalet. It was quiet, though they could hear scattered pops of gunfire from outside. Quickly, without speaking, they made their way to the front entrance. Wolgast saw the dead soldiers sprawled there.

Lacey turned to him. “Take her,” she said. “Take Amy.”

He did. His arms were still weak from his ascent up the ladder, but he held her hard against him. She was moaning a little, trying to wake up, fighting the force that was keeping her in twilight. She needed to be in a hospital, but even if he could get her to one, what would he say? How would he explain any of this? The air near the doors was wintry cold, and in her thin gown Amy shivered against him.

“We need a vehicle,” Wolgast said.

Doyle ducked out the door. A minute later he returned, holding a set of keys. He’d gotten a gun from somewhere, too, a.45. He took Wolgast and Lacey to the window and pointed.

“The one all the way down, at the edge of the lot. The silver Lexus. See it?”

Wolgast did. The car was a hundred yards away, at least.

“Nice ride like that,” Doyle said, “you’d think the driver wouldn’t just leave the keys under the visor.” Doyle pressed them into Wolgast’s hand. “Hold on to these. They’re yours. Just in case.”

It took Wolgast a moment. Then he understood. The car was for him, for him and Amy. “Phil-”

Doyle held up his hands. “That’s how it has to be.”

Wolgast looked at Lacey, who nodded. Then she stepped toward him. She kissed Amy, touching her hair, and then she kissed him, too, once, on the cheek. A deep calm and a feeling of certainty seemed to radiate through his entire body from the place where she had kissed him. He’d never felt anything like it.

They stepped from the door, Doyle leading them. Together they moved quickly under the cover of the building. Wolgast could barely keep up. He heard more gunfire from somewhere, but it didn’t seem aimed at them. The shots seemed to be going up and away, into the trees, at the rooftops; random shots, like some kind of sinister celebration. Each time it happened he’d hear a scream, a moment of silence, and then the shooting would start up again.

They reached the corner of the building. Wolgast could see the woods beyond it. In the other direction, toward the lights of the compound, lay the parking area. The Lexus waited at the end, facing away, no other cars around it for cover.

“We’ll just have to make a run for it,” Doyle said. “Ready?”

Wolgast, panting, did his best to nod.

Then they were up and racing toward the car.

Richards felt him before he saw him. He turned, swinging the RPG like a vaulter’s pole.

It wasn’t Babcock.

It wasn’t Zero.

It was Anthony Carter.

He was in a kind of crouch, twenty feet away. He lifted his face and twisted his head, looking at Richards appraisingly. There was something doglike about it. Blood glistened on Carter’s face, his clawlike hands, his sworded teeth, row upon row. A kind of clicking sound was coming from his throat. Slowly, in a gesture of languid pleasure, he began to rise. Richards put Carter’s mouth in his sights.

“Open up,” Richards said, and fired.

He knew, even as the grenade shot from the tube, the force of its ejection pushing Richards backward, that he’d missed. The place where Carter had stood was empty. Carter was in the air. Carter was flying. Then he was falling, down upon Richards. The grenade went off, taking out the front of the Chalet, but Richards heard this only vaguely-the noise receding, fading to some impossible distance-as he experienced the sensation, utterly new to him, of being torn in half.

The explosion hit Wolgast as a white sheen, a wall of heat and light that slapped the left side of his face like a punch; he was lifted from the ground and felt Amy fall away. He hit the pavement and rolled and rolled again before coming to rest on his back.

His ears were ringing; his breath felt like it was stuck in a tube, far down in his chest. Above him he saw the deep, velvety blackness of the night sky, and stars, hundreds and hundreds of stars, and some of them were falling.

He thought: Falling stars. He thought: Amy. He thought: Keys.

He lifted his head. Amy was lying on the ground a few yards away. The air was full of smoke. In the flickering light of the burning Chalet, she looked as if she might be sleeping-a character in a fairy tale, the princess who had fallen asleep and couldn’t wake. Wolgast rolled himself onto all fours and frantically patted the ground for the keys. He could tell one of his ears was messed up; it was like a curtain had fallen over the left side of his face, absorbing all sound. The keys. The keys. Then he realized they were still in his hand; he’d never let them go to begin with.

Where were Doyle and Lacey?

He went to where Amy lay. The fall didn’t seem to have hurt her any, or the explosion, as far as he could tell. He put his hands under her arms and hoisted her over his shoulder, then made for the Lexus as fast as he could.

He bent to ease Amy in, laying her across the backseat. He got in himself and turned the key. The headlights blazed across the compound.

Something hit the hood.

Some kind of animal. No: some kind of monstrous thing, throbbing with a pale green light. But when he saw its eyes, and what was inside them, he knew that this strange new being on the hood was Anthony Carter.

Carter rose as Wolgast found the gearshift and plunged it into reverse and gunned the engine. Carter fell away. Wolgast could see him in the lights of the Lexus, rolling on the ground and then, in a series of movements almost too quick for the eye, launching himself into the air, gone.

What in the name of-

Wolgast stomped the brake, turning the wheel hard to the right. The car spun and spun and came to rest, pointed at the driveway. Then the passenger door opened: Lacey. She climbed in quickly, saying nothing. There were streaks of blood on her face, her shirt. She was holding a gun in her hand. She looked at it, amazed, and dropped it on the floor.

“Where’s Doyle?”

“I do not know,” she said.

He put the car back into drive and hit the accelerator.

Then he saw Doyle. He was running toward the Lexus at an angle, waving the.45.

“Just go!” he was yelling. “Go!”

A concussive thump on the roof of the car, and Wolgast knew it was Carter. Carter was on the roof of the Lexus. Wolgast hit the brakes again, sending all of them lurching forward. Carter tumbled onto the hood but held on. Wolgast heard Doyle firing, three quick shots. Wolgast saw a round actually strike Carter in the shoulder, a quick spark of impact. Carter seemed barely to notice.

“Hey!” Doyle was yelling. “Hey!”

Carter turned his face, saw Doyle. With a compressive twitch of his body he launched himself into the air as Doyle got off a final shot. Wolgast turned in time to see the creature that had once been Anthony Carter fall upon his partner, taking him in like a giant mouth.

It was over in an instant.

Wolgast stamped on the accelerator, hard. The car shot over a strip of grass, the wheels digging and spinning, then hit the pavement with a screech. They barreled down the long drive away from the burning Chalet, through the hallway of the trees, everything streaming past. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour.

“What the hell was that?” Wolgast said to Lacey. “What was that!”

“Stop here, Agent.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

“They will catch us. They will follow the blood. You must stop the car now.” She put her hand on his elbow. Her grip was firm, insistent. “Please. Do as I ask.”

Wolgast drew the Lexus to the side of the road; Lacey turned to face him. Wolgast saw the wound in her arm, a clean shot just below the deltoid.

“Sister Lacey-”

“It is nothing,” Lacey said. “It is only flesh and blood. But I’m not to go with you. I see that now.” She touched his arm again and smiled-a final smile of benediction, sad and happy at once. A smile at the trials of a long journey, now ended.

“Take care of her. Amy is yours. You will know what to do.” Then she stepped from the car and slammed the door before Wolgast could say another word.

He lifted his eyes to the rearview and saw her running the way they’d come, waving her arms in the air. A warning? No, she was calling them down upon her. She didn’t get a hundred feet before a swoop of light shot from the trees, and then another, and then a third, so many Wolgast had to look away, and he hit the accelerator and drove away as fast as he could without looking back again.