Afterward, while Amy checked on Violet and Margaret cleaned up, Jeremy cocked his head at Ethan in a come with me gesture. They went out to the front porch. The street was abandoned, no sign of the chaos that had taken place just hours ago. Almost no sign: Ethan thought he could see a dark stain on the concrete.
Amy was right. The life we knew was olden times.
“Listen, I want to thank you again,” Ethan said. “You saved us there.”
Jeremy nodded. “Wife’s got a big heart.”
“So do you. Thanks.”
The man stepped off the porch and reached behind a drain pipe. He came out with a pint bottle of whiskey, unscrewed the cap and took a pull, then sighed. “Margaret doesn’t like it, but sometimes a man needs a drink.”
“Amen.” Ethan took the offered bottle.
“She your first?”
“Violet? Yes.”
“Changes you, don’t it?”
“Changes everything.”
For a moment they stood listening to night sounds, rustling trees and the sigh of the wind. Ethan took another swig and passed the bottle back.
“It’s a good thing,” Jeremy said. “Fatherhood. I used to do roofing, up spreading tar in the heat of summer, no shade. By June my neck would have cracked and peeled and burned again. I was eighteen, thought that was hard. Then I had children.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? You think you know what you’re getting yourself into, but you have no idea. None at all. Everybody talks about all the overwhelming love, and that’s true, but that’s not really it. It’s the overwhelming everything. The idea that for every second of the next eighteen years, you’re responsible.”
Jeremy took another tip of the bottle, offered it. Ethan shook his head. The man capped the whiskey, then returned it to its hiding place. He stepped back up on the porch and put his hands in his pockets, looked up at the sky. “These are strange days, Will. Maybe the last days.” He turned. “You take care of that little girl, you hear?”
“I will. I’ll do anything I have to.”
“Hear that.” Back inside, Jeremy left them the Coleman, and everyone said their goodnights.
The moment Jeremy and Margaret were out of sight, his wife spun on him. “Okay, what the hell is going on?”
“Amy, I swear to God, I have no idea.”
“They knew your name. Knew that you were a PhD. They said there was a drone looking for you.”
“Yeah.” He bent to spread out the sleeping bag. Amy had already made a nest for Violet, and his daughter lay splayed on her back, arms and legs out, head to one side. “All I can think of is that it has something to do with Abe going missing.”
“So it was the DAR?” She frowned. “But if they wanted to talk to you, why wouldn’t they have just knocked on our door?”
“I’m wondering if they were watching the house, hoping whoever took Abe would come after me.” He sat down, unlaced his boots. “Only, we left, and that surprised them.”
Amy considered it. “But a drone? They must really want to talk to you.”
“I guess,” he said.
“You think they’re after your work.”
“Yeah.”
She settled onto her sleeping bag. “I know how much it means to you, baby. And I know how strict Abe is about his nondisclosure. But this is the government. The DAR. Maybe you should—”
“Right now,” he said, “all I care about is getting us somewhere safe. We’ll deal with the DAR after that.”
She nodded slowly, but she didn’t seem entirely convinced. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t entirely convinced himself.
Ethan turned out the lantern, then crossed his arms behind his head and stared upward. Thinking of burning cars and a line of refugees. Thinking of fireworks and a spatter of blood. Thinking of how close he and Abe were, and whether their own government intended to steal their work from them.
The pistol in his waistband was heavy but strangely comforting.
For the sake of olden times.
CHAPTER 20
The guard was young, with all the screw-you swagger that implied. Which was impressive considering he was kneeling on the floor with a gun to his head.
“You’re both dead.” His voice had a thick West Virginia drawl. “This is a DAR facility. We’ll know who you are, where you live. You may as well give up now.”
“Sweetie,” Shannon said, “I promise you. The DAR already knows who we are.”
She nodded at Kathy Baskoff, and the commando jammed her submachine gun barrel deeper into the guard’s neck. His swagger disappeared. After all, he’d watched Kathy kill his partner without hesitation.
And you have no idea how much she’d like to do the same to you.
Shannon took a roll of silver duct tape from her kit bag and yanked the end free. She wrapped a dozen loops around his wrists, then another dozen across his chest, binding him to the chair.
“We’re go,” she said, then stepped over the body of the other guard and into the cold predawn.
There were engine sounds, and the headlights of four trucks rolling up the hill. Light splashed across the heavy sign that read DAVIS ACADEMY, carved in granite and sitting there like it should have read YALE.
“This was my academy,” Kathy said. “From age eleven to eighteen.”
“I know,” Shannon said. “That’s why I picked you.”
In the dark, the commando’s thin-lipped smile looked carnivorous.
A Jeep and three heavy trucks pulled forward, engines chugging. Shannon waited for them to line up. “All of you, listen.” She had the urge to yell like William Wallace urging the Scots to battle, but she knew the earpiece would carry just fine. “You all know why we’re here. No matter what they call this place, no matter what they pretend so they can sleep at night, every academy is a prison. Some of you, like Kathy, spent time in them. Some of you didn’t. That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that tonight the first is falling. We’re done playing nice.”
She heard whoops through the truck walls.
“Every adult here is complicit. Guard or janitor, they all sat by and watched children be brainwashed and tortured. If they surrender, fine. If not”—she shrugged—“even better.”
The whoops were replaced by laughter.
“But remember. Our first goal is to get every single kid out of here. So check your targets. Don’t pull the trigger unless you’re sure.” She walked to the passenger side of the Jeep, pulled herself up. “Let’s roll.”
“Where to?”
“Administration. There’s someone there I want to talk to.”
Shannon had been planning the attack on Davis Academy for two months. Her penance, a way of making good on her sins. She’d pored over satellite photos, memorized reports written by former “students,” analyzed the list of attendees. She’d even spent a week camped out in the woods near the perimeter, watching vehicles come and go, and she was not a camping girl. After all of that, the inescapable conclusion was that there was simply no way to do it that didn’t put her team—and the children they were rescuing—in serious danger.
For a while, she’d even wrestled with bringing Cooper in on it. His knowledge of DAR systems would be invaluable, and together they were pretty unstoppable. Besides, the sin was his too.
It had seemed such a minor thing at the time. Three months ago, when she was delivering Nick to John Smith, they’d been on the run. They’d been in Chicago, hunted by the DAR, and when they needed a place to sleep, Shannon had suggested a friend’s apartment.