Fuck. I have to get out of here.
She’ll throw some clothes in a suitcase, call a cab, go to the bank, and draw out everything she’s got. There might be as much as four thousand dollars. (In her heart, she knows it’s more like three.) From the bank to the bus station. The snow swirling outside her window is supposed to be the beginning of a big storm, and that may preclude a quick getaway, but if she has to wait a few hours at the station, she will. Hell, if she has to sleep there, she will. This is all Brady. He’s set up an elaborate Jonestown protocol of which the rigged Zappits are only a part, and she helped him do it. Freddi has no idea if it will work, and she doesn’t intend to wait around to find out. She’s sorry for the people who might be sucked in by the Zappits, or tipped into attempting suicide by that fucking zeetheend website instead of just thinking about it, but she has to take care of numero uno. There’s no one else to do it.
Freddi makes her way back to the bedroom as rapidly as she can. She gets her old Samsonite from the closet, and then oxygen depletion caused by shallow breathing and too much excitement turns her legs to rubber. She makes it to the bed, sits on it, and lowers her head.
Easy does it, she thinks. Get your breath back. One thing at a time.
Only, thanks to her foolish effort to crash the website, she doesn’t know how much time she has, and when “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” begins to play from the top of her dresser, she utters a little scream. Freddi doesn’t want to answer her phone, but gets up, anyway. Sometimes it’s better to know.
2
The snow remains light until Brady gets off the interstate at Exit 7, but on State Road 79—he’s out in the boondocks now—it starts to come down a little harder. The tar is still bare and wet, but the snow will start to accumulate on it soon enough, and he’s still forty miles from where he intends to hole up and get busy.
Lake Charles, he thinks. Where the real fun begins.
That’s when Babineau’s laptop awakens and chimes three times—an alert Brady programmed into it. Because safe is always better than sorry. He has no time to pull over, not when he’s racing this goddam storm, but he can’t afford not to. Ahead on the right is a boarded-up building with two metal girls in rusting bikinis on the roof, holding up a sign reading PORNO PALACE and XXX and WE DARE TO BARE. In the middle of the dirt parking lot—which the snow is now starting to sugarcoat—there’s a For Sale sign.
Brady pulls in, shifts to park, and opens the laptop. The message on the screen puts a significant crack right down the middle of his good mood.
11:04 AM: UNAUTHORIZED ATTEMPT TO MODIFY/CANCEL ZEETHEEND.COM DENIED
SITE ACTIVE
He opens the Malibu’s glove compartment and there is Al Brooks’s battered cell phone, right where he always kept it. A good thing, too, because Brady forgot to bring Babineau’s.
So sue me, he thinks. You can’t remember everything, and I’ve been busy.
He doesn’t bother going to Contacts, just dials Freddi’s number from memory. She hasn’t changed it since the old Discount Electronix days.
3
When Hodges excuses himself to use the bathroom, Jerome waits until he’s out the door, then goes to Holly, who’s standing at the window and watching the snow fall. It’s still light here in the city, the flakes dancing in the air and seeming to defy gravity. Holly once more has her arms crossed over her chest so she can grip her shoulders.
“How bad is he?” Jerome asks in a low voice. “Because he doesn’t look good.”
“It’s pancreatic cancer, Jerome. How good does anyone look with that?”
“Can he get through the day, do you think? Because he wants to, and I really think he could use some closure on this.”
“Closure on Hartsfield, you mean. Brady fracking Hartsfield. Even though he’s fracking dead.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“I think it’s bad.” She turns to him and forces herself to meet his eyes, a thing that always makes her feel stripped bare. “Do you see the way he keeps putting his hand against his side?”
Jerome nods.
“He’s been doing that for weeks now and calling it indigestion. He only went to the doctor because I nagged him into it. And when he found out what was wrong, he tried to lie.”
“You didn’t answer the question. Can he get through the day?”
“I think so. I hope so. Because you’re right, he needs this. Only we have to stick with him. Both of us.” She releases one shoulder so she can grip his wrist. “Promise me, Jerome. No sending the skinny girl home so the boys can play in the treehouse by themselves.”
He pries her hand loose and gives it a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Hollyberry. No one’s breaking up the band.”
4