She didn’t finish it. She stopped walking and just stood there looking away into the dark.
If there was anything consoling to say to her, she’d probably heard it fifty times from others, years back. Probably none of it had helped, even then. Dryden said nothing at all. He put a hand on her shoulder instead. She responded by taking her hands back out of her pockets, turning and wrapping her arms around him. He held her against himself, his jaw resting atop her head.
When she spoke again, it was in a whisper that sounded strained, like glass bent almost to breaking. “Why someone would use those machines for anything other than good … What the fuck is wrong with people?”
Dryden held on to her and didn’t try answering.
*
They went back inside five minutes later. In the hallway that led to their rooms, Marnie stopped and faced him.
She said, “Eversman keeps choppers on standby. I wonder if he’s got a security detail in the guesthouse.”
“I wondered the same thing.”
“I’d only feel a little safer if he did.” She paused. Then: “Want to crash on my floor? Two guns are better than one, right?”
*
Tired as he’d been all day, sleep eluded him now. He lay on the floor beside Marnie’s bed, with the pillow and blanket from his own room.
They actually had three guns—her Glock and Claire’s two Berettas. Dryden had both of them loaded and ready on the floor beside him.
They talked for a while and then went quiet. In the darkness he listened to her breathing, wondering if she was asleep. He didn’t think so.
Then she moved. She reached to the nightstand above him, and he heard the click of a latch and a plastic lid falling open. He saw the pale glow of a tablet screen, and then Marnie touched it, and the familiar static rolled out into the room.
She looked down and met his eyes. “Is this an addiction?”
“Feels like one,” he said.
She nodded and reached to shut the thing off.
“Don’t,” Dryden said.
“Why not?”
“Because you want it on. And so do I.”
She held her position for a moment, propped up on one elbow, looking down at him. Then she rolled onto her back again, and Dryden pictured her lying there the same way he was, staring at the ceiling in the milky light.
*
Ten minutes later she really did seem to fall asleep.
Dryden didn’t.
He lay awake for what felt like hours, listening to song fragments breaking through the static. He heard a news report about a traffic accident on I-80 north of Sacramento—no deaths, minor injuries. He heard a test of the emergency broadcast system, covering the townships of Jasper and Willis and the greater San Benito County listening area. He heard two minutes of live coverage of a tractor pull competition.
He thought of something Marnie had said earlier:
What do we actually know? If you step back from it, we have exactly seven pieces of information.
One future in which Hayden Eversman became president.
Six in which he was killed, time and time again.
Thinking it over, Dryden finally drifted away.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Mangouste stepped out the back door again. Into the night. He crossed to the rear of his property and passed through the gate, into the forest with its rhythmic sounds and its cool humidity.
He went to the clearing where the machinery was buried. Where the bass drone of its geothermal power supply hummed up through the ground, into his bones.
He stood there until the chill of the night had saturated him and set his muscles shuddering.
He thought of the problems that had plagued him for the past three days. Little steel burrs impeding the clockwork of his plans.
All those problems would be settled by tomorrow afternoon. Claire Dunham and the people she had turned to—they would be settled.
Mangouste smiled as the shivering became intense, and at last turned and left the clearing. Back through the gate. Back across the rear yard. Past the pool, dimly lit and rippling in the night wind. In through the back door of the giant brick house. His wife stood at the sink, getting a glass of water, her eyes heavy with sleep.
“Hayden, come to bed,” Ayla said.
PART FIVE
SUNDAY, 11:30 A.M.–6:30 P.M.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Claire Dunham steadied her binoculars and took in the front of Myrtle’s from a quarter mile away. The place was open for business but was nearly empty. Half an hour before noon on a Sunday, all its regulars were probably still asleep; it wasn’t the sort of establishment that drew tourists.