Vic laughed so demanding, so freely, she needed to gasp to get sufficient air into her lungs. “Sorry,” Lou stated. “Probably now not the most suitable choice of phrases. ” Wayne, twenty ft away, became at the stone wall to look again at them. He held a unmarried useless sparkler in a single hand. A ribbon of black smoke drifted from it. He waved. “You return to Colorado and locate me a place,” Vic stated to Lou. She waved again at Wayne. “And on the finish of August, Wayne will fly again, and I’ll be with him. I’d come immediately, yet we’ve obtained the cottage at the lake till the top of August, and he’s nonetheless acquired 3 extra weeks of day camp paid for. ” “And you’ve acquired to complete engaged on the motorcycle,” Lou acknowledged. “Wayne instructed you approximately that? ” “Didn’t simply inform me. He despatched me photographs from his cell. the following. ” Lou tossed her his jacket. The bike jacket was once a major, heavy factor, made up of a few form of black nylonlike artificial and with bony plates sewn into it, Teflon armor. She had notion it was once the best jacket on this planet from the 1st time she positioned her palms round it, 16 years earlier than. front flaps have been lined in light, frayed patches: direction sixty six, SOUL, a Captain the United States defend. It smelled like Lou, like domestic. timber and sweat and grease and the fresh, candy winds that whistled in the course of the mountain passes. “Maybe it will preserve you from getting killed,” Lou stated. “Wear it. ” And at that second the sky above the harbor pulsed with a deep crimson flash. A rocket detonated in an eardrum-stunning clap. The skies opened and rained white sparks. The barrage all started. I-95 TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, VIC DROVE WAYNE AND HOOPER again to Lake Winnipesaukee. It rained the total means, a difficult summer time downpour that rattled at the street and compelled her to maintain to lower than fifty miles an hour. She used to be around the border and into New Hampshire whilst she learned she had forgotten to replenish her prescription for Abilify. It required all her focus to determine the line in entrance of her and remain in her lane. yet no matter if she were checking the rearview reflect, she wouldn't have spotted the auto following at a distance of 2 hundred yards. At evening one set of headlights appears to be like very like the other. Lake Winnipesaukee WAYNE WOKE IN HIS MOTHER’S mattress earlier than HE was once prepared. anything had jolted him out of sleep, yet he didn’t recognize what until eventually it got here again—a tender thump, thump, thump on the bed room door. His eyes have been open, yet he didn’t consider wide awake, a frame of mind that might persist through the day, in order that the issues he observed and heard had the talismanic caliber of items obvious and heard in a dream. every thing that occurred appeared hyperreal and freighted with mystery that means. He didn't consider going to sleep in his mother’s mattress yet was once now not shocked to discover himself there. She frequently moved him to her personal mattress after he nodded off. He permitted that his corporation was once occasionally worthwhile, like an additional blanket on a chilly evening. She used to be no longer in mattress with him now. She as a rule rose prior to him. “Hello? ” he stated, knuckling his eyes. The knocking stopped—then all started back, in a halting, nearly wondering method: Thud?