“Have you heard back from him?” Mary said.
“No.”
“It’s been what? Three weeks?”
“Yeah.” You’re messing with my calm, woman. Leave me be.
“Have you told Taylor yet?”
“No. Not yet. I will when I need to. She’s too young to understand, anyway.” Yeah, I’m dreading that talk. Mother-of-the-year material, that’s me.
“You know if you need to talk, I’m here for you.” Mary squeezed Suzanne’s shoulder. “Sometimes you kind of keep things bottled up. But you’ve got friends.”
“I know, Mary.” Suzanne sighed. “I know. And I appreciate the invite today. I needed it.”
“Well, I’m not going to pry,” Mary said. “I’m just… worried, I guess, and want to let you know me and Bart are here for whatever.”
“Thanks.”
“Hello, ladies,” Bart said with an atrocious fake English accent from behind the steering wheel. “Are we ready to make way?” The engine rumbled and the boat began to move forward.
A sharp tearing sound split the sky, faint at first but growing to a crescendo. Sonic booms shook Suzanne’s insides and made the boat vibrate. Specs on the horizon resolved into more than twenty fighter jets flying just above the deck, hurtling south at supersonic speed.
“Holy shit!” Bart said from behind.
Suzanne stood and shielded her eyes against the sun with her hand, watching the jets. They were in two separate formations, one low and one slightly higher. She was accustomed to aircraft performing training exercises, but she’d never seen that many fighters in the air at once. Not even close.
The planes flew by at blinding speed, less than a mile away.
“Hang on!” Bart hollered. The boat leaped forward and the bow dipped and slammed between the troths, and then they were beyond the reef and up on a plane and the ride was not quite so bumpy.
Suzanne did not know what the jets meant. Maybe nothing. Then again, she’d watched enough of the news lately to be afraid. Her father had said a few ominous things about stockpiling water and food. She hadn’t seen much of him for the last few months, but he wasn’t one to be alarmist. He was, after all, an admiral in the United States Navy, and not prone to exaggeration.
A few miles away, Suzanne could see other pleasure craft beginning to run back to harbors in the kind of mass exodus that preceded a severe ocean storm. She heard Bart on his radio, but could not hear what he was saying over the roar of the engines and the slapping of the hull. Cool water splashed her face and she tasted the salt. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins, and in spite of herself, she grinned, looking at the rooster tail and the foaming wake.
She faced Mary, who looked terrified, hanging on with both hands to the front of the cooler. Her long curly hair was plastered to the sides of her face and her eyes were scrunched almost shut. Mary’s pendulous breasts jumped and jiggled and her heavy arms quivered.
The boat abruptly slowed, causing Suzanne and Mary to lurch.
“Sorry,” Bart said, leaving the wheel and stepping around to face them.
“What’s happening? Did you find out anything?” Mary asked.
“It’s started. War.”
“You mean—”
“I mean war. Civil war. I’m gonna haul ass back to port. When we get there, we need to head for the base. Suzanne, you can get us all on to the base, right?”
“I don’t know. Probably. It depends on what’s going on, I guess. I don’t even know if Dad is in Key West right now.”
“Well, we should try that first,” Bart said. His face was pinched, tense. Suzanne had never seen him look like that. Not the relaxed beach-bum charter captain just now. The Army Ranger in him coming out.
“Taylor is at your place, right?” Bart said.
“Yeah. With Ginnie.”
“We’ll go there first, get Taylor, and head for the base in your car. Do you know the code for Henry’s weapons safe?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, then. Hold onto your butts.”
Bart stepped up to the console and put the boat into gear and the twin Mercury 250s roared.
Suzanne thought about Henry and wondered where he was just then and what he was doing. She prayed he was safe, and she felt a longing for his arms around her, the steadfast reassurance of his touch. Guilt descended upon her like a coat filled with lead. Irreconcilable differences. I attested to that. God forgive me, and keep my husband safe.
CHAPTER THREE
Second Suns
WASHINGTON, DC
Stephanie James stared at the gridlock, sputtering curses. Her vehicle hadn’t moved more than ten feet in the last hour, and Independence Avenue was a parking lot. Some people had abandoned their vehicles. DC was not a good place to be at the moment.
“Net search,” she said out loud. “News feeds, top stories.”
“Net unavailable at this time,” the car replied in a matter-of-fact female voice.
“Search radio,” Stephanie said.
“Unable to acquire signal,” said the car.
“Call home,” Stephanie ordered.
“Calling. Unable to place call. Please try again later.”
“Arrragh! What can you do, bitch?”
Stephanie loved her car, a super-compact electric that folded up vertically when she had to park. She could plug it in for a recharge at stations all over the downtown area. The car had cost her more than she could afford, but the buttery leather seats and burnished mahogany dashboard still made her smile when she slipped into it after a long day on the Hill.
Just now, though, she felt helpless in her car, and leather seats were no comfort. She’d gone to undergraduate school at Vanderbilt, then law school at Harvard. She banked on the assumption that her time as a congressional aide would serve her well later on when she decided to run for office herself. She had done everything right. She had studied long into the night during college, forgoing spring breaks and parties. She was going places. And now she was stuck in traffic in the middle of Washington, DC, and the country was at war with itself.
Senator Bartram, her boss, had abandoned her with not even a handshake. She’d worked with him for two years, pulling all-nighters fueled by buckets of coffee and Red Bull and faith; she’d believed in him. He was a great man, she had told herself, a visionary and a patriot.
The senator had poked his head into her tiny office before he fled Washington. “Get out of town, Steph,” he’d said. And then he’d literally run from his own office.
“Wait! Senator!”
“No time,” he’d shouted over his shoulder, his suit coat flapping and his shoes echoing on the tile floor. Gone just like that while she stood outside her office feeling foolish.
Senator Bartram represented the great state of Tennessee, and there had been talk of him running for president. He was genteel and dignified, and Stephanie had once been convinced the man was incapable of even sweating. He was that tough and calm. But she’d watched him run out of his own office, probably to hop on a private jet, leaving her and the rest of his staff to fend for themselves. Congressmen and women had scurried from the Hill like rats abandoning a ship.
Now she was stuck in a traffic jam of epic proportion, wondering what she had been thinking when she decided to drive. Most of her fellow staffers had elected to walk. But she couldn’t leave the damn car. Just couldn’t do it.
Helicopters buzzed overhead. She saw drones hovering above the streets. In front of the Lincoln Memorial, soldiers or police, or FEMA, she couldn’t tell from her vantage point, were working to disperse the crowd of protestors that had been camped there for the last few months. The troops were mounted on horses, and it looked like they’d fired tear gas into the crowd. She thought she heard some firecrackers. She gave both middle fingers to the traffic cams mounted on the curb.