On that point, Frank agreed.
He watched with a chef’s satisfaction as she demolished the omelet. When she was finished, he took the plate and cleaned it, Lois objecting all the while.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked finally as he dried the plate.
“Better,” she replied. “More myself.”
She looked better. Her eyes clearer. Her color returning. Her movements more assured. “Good, because we need to talk. About Calvin. About you.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Cal’s stuck in Reno.”
“No, Lois, he’s not.”
Her face was a mask of innocent surprise, brittle and unconvincing as a porcelain doll’s. “Oh, are the flights back on schedule? If so, there’s every chance he’s in the air by now. In fact, he’ll probably be here any minute-and he’ll doubtless think me a fool for letting a stranger spend the night.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Lois, I was in your master bath last night. I saw the pills, the knife. I heard Cal’s message.”
“I…I don’t…”
Lois didn’t finish her sentence. She couldn’t. Because when her mask slipped, it shattered. What began as a slight tremor in her hands as she raised them to her face in shock and horror became a series of violent, choking sobs that racked her body. It was as if she’d just heard Calvin’s final message for the first time, not simply replayed it in her mind.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, and she released it in keening wails, her mouth wide open, her eyes clenched shut, the cords of her neck straining from the effort. Tears and snot streaked her face. These were not dignified widow’s tears; this was the ugly cry of a woman who’d had her heart ripped out. Frank recognized the difference because he’d put his share of husbands and fathers in the ground.
Unconsciously, Lois drew her knees upward, primal instinct reducing her to a wounded animal, curling into a fetal position for protection. Frank reacted without thinking and was glad of it. She would have fallen off her stool if he hadn’t rushed around the island to catch her.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her close while she shuddered from grief. He said nothing, just squeezed with all he had and let her cry. There was no point in saying anything-she was beyond the comfort of words.
Eventually, her cries subsided. Her breathing slowed. Her body stilled. Frank released her and was pleased to see she stayed upright. She dabbed her eyes with her pajama sleeve and wiped it across her nose like a child. Her eyes were bloodshot and glistened with tears.
A hysterical laugh escaped her lips. It startled Frank, and worried him too. He hoped he hadn’t pushed her to some kind of psychotic break. “What’s so funny?”
“I just remembered an old joke my mama used to tell, is all.”
“A joke.” Not questioning, exactly, but skeptical.
“That’s right. It was about a righteous man and a terrible storm. Town officials warned him the river that ran beside his house was going to overrun its banks and ordered him to evacuate, but he refused. ‘I put my faith in God,’ he said. ‘If I’m in danger, He will protect me.’
“As the storm raged and the waters rose, his neighbors loaded up their car and said, ‘We’re headed to higher ground, and we’ve got room for you-come with us!’ But the man declined. ‘I’m in no danger. God will save me,’ he said.
“The river breached its banks and lapped against his porch. A man in a canoe paddled by. ‘Hurry into my canoe! I’ll take you to safety!’ But the man said, ‘No, thanks. God will save me.’
“As the floodwaters rose higher, the man retreated inside and was eventually forced onto his roof. A helicopter spotted him and lowered down a rescuer who shouted, ‘Grab my hand so I can pull you up!’ But still, the man refused. ‘God will save me!’ he said. Shortly after, he was swept away and drowned.
“When he reached heaven, the man said angrily to God, ‘I put my faith in You-how could You just let me die?’ And God said, ‘My son, I sent you a car, a canoe, and a helicopter. What more were you looking for?’”
She laughed again, the sort of raw, guffawing laughter that strikes at funerals and is only encouraged by attempts to suppress it. Frank tried his best to smile politely, although he thought that as jokes went, this one was pretty weak. When Lois saw his pained half-smile, it only made her laugh harder.
“I know,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Mama must’ve told that joke a thousand times, and I never found it funny either!”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“Because it occurred to me that you’re my goddamn helicopter. And now I can’t get my Mama’s smug-ass voice saying ‘What more were you looking for?’ out of my head.”
“You saying you believe all that ‘God works in mysterious ways’ bullshi-er, stuff?”
That elicited a fresh peal of laughter from Lois. “No!” she said. “That’s the point! Mama dragged my ass to Sunday service every week until I went away to college, and it never meant a thing to me. But here you are, and thanks to you, here I am. Now, maybe I’m just grasping because”-and here her smile faltered, a deep reservoir of sadness peeking through-“because of Cal, but to me, it feels like fate. And if that’s the case, when I finally do pass through the Pearly Gates, that old biddy’s never going to let me hear the end of it.”
“I hope you’re right about all that,” Frank said, and he meant it. Not because he much believed-he’d seen so many senseless acts of violence in his life, he figured the universe was either random or outright cruel-but because he liked the notion that in his useless, fucked-up life, he might’ve done one good thing, if only by accident.
“I do too. But either way, thank you.”
“Anytime,” he said.
The moment was interrupted by an unexpected sound: the melodic tinkle of glass breaking. It happened so quickly and with no evident cause that at first Frank thought he had imagined it. But then Ella growled, her hackles rising, and a matte-black cylinder skittered down the hallway from the living room into the kitchen.
“Get down!” Frank yelled. He threw himself at Lois, knocking her off her stool. She shrieked as they fell and was silenced when the landing knocked the wind from her lungs.
A half a second later, the room was filled with blinding light, followed by a firework pop so loud that Frank’s ears ran warm with blood. He collapsed, disoriented, atop Lois, who struggled to get free.
Then, as one, the front and back doors imploded with a brittle snap of wood-not that Frank or Lois could hear or see-and armed men in riot gear stormed the house.
25.
AS HENDRICKS SCALED the Lincoln Boulevard on-ramp toward the Golden Gate Bridge tollbooths, the Homeland Security agent stationed at its top looked him up and down. The man’s expression was inscrutable, thanks to a pair of sport sunglasses, and his gloved palms rested on the butt of his MP5 assault rifle, which hung from a tactical sling across his chest.
Hendricks was flushed and short of breath. Because of the hike across the Presidio, he told himself, although he worried it was more than that. Sweat beaded on his brow. His skin crawled. His wound itched like crazy. He worried he’d look like he was going for a weapon if he scratched at it. He worried he’d look shifty if he didn’t.
The stolen.45 rested heavily in the pocket of his cargo pants. After a brief internal debate, he’d elected not to move it to his waistband once he made it onto Presidio grounds. Now he regretted that decision. He had no intention of using it against law enforcement, but damn if having it within easy reach wouldn’t offer him some comfort now.
The route to the bridge had taken him down Pilots’ Row, a neighborhood of Colonial Revivals originally built for army aviators. He caught glimpses of the bridge through the trees to his left as he walked, but he couldn’t see it in any detail. When he climbed the on-ramp, the trees dropped away. The view that greeted him was heartbreaking and confounding. Even as tense as he was, marching into the densest concentration of law enforcement agents this side of the Hoover Building, he couldn’t help but stare.