WARNING! FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY! KEEP 2 YARDS (6 FEET) FROM THE DOME! 1 page

Ollie guessed the signs pointing the other way said the same, and on the other side they might work, because on the other side there would be lots of guys to keep order. Over here, though, there were going to be maybe eight hundred townies and maybe two dozen cops, most of them new to the job. Keeping people back on this side would be like trying to protect a sand castle from the incoming tide.

Her underpants had been wet, and there had been a puddle between her splayed legs. She’d pissed herself either right before she pulled the trigger, or right after. Ollie thought probably after.

He threw a rock.

BONK. Silence.

There was one Army guy close by. He was pretty young. There wasn’t any kind of insignia on his sleeves, so Ollie guessed he was probably a private. He looked about sixteen, but Ollie supposed he had to be older. He’d heard of kids lying about their age to get into the service, but he guessed that was before everybody had computers to keep track of such things.

The Army guy looked around, saw no one was paying him any attention, and spoke in a low voice. He had a southern accent. “Kid? Would y’all stop doing that? It’s drivin me bugshit.”

“Go someplace else, then,” Ollie said.

BONK. Silence.

“Caint. Orders.”

Ollie didn’t reply. He threw another rock, instead.

BONK. Silence.

“Why y’all doin it?” the Army guy asked. He was now just fiddling with the pair of signs he was putting up so he could talk to Ollie.

“Because sooner or later, one of them won’t bounce back. And when that happens, I’m going to get up and walk away and never see this farm again. Never milk another cow. What’s the air like out there?”

“Good. Chilly, though. I’m from South Cah’lina. It ain’t like this in South Cah’lina in October, I can tell you that.”

Where Ollie was, less than three yards from the southern boy, it was hot. Also stinky.

The Army guy pointed beyond Ollie. “Why don’t y’all quit on the rocks and do somethin about those cows?” He said it cay-ows. “Herd em into the barn and milk em or rub soothin shit on their udders; somethin like at.”

“We don’t need to herd them. They know where to go. Only now they don’t need to be milked, and they don’t need any Bag Balm, either. Their udders are dry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. My dad says something’s wrong with the grass. He says the grass is wrong because the air’s wrong. It doesn’t smell good in here, you know. It smells like crap.”

“Yeah?” The Army guy looked fascinated. He gave the tops of the back-to-back signs a tap or two with his hammer, although they already looked well seated.

“Yeah. My mother killed herself this morning.”

The Army guy had raised his hammer for another hit. Now he just dropped it to his side. “Are you shittin me, kid?”

“No. She shot herself at the kitchen table. I found her.”

“Oh fuck, that’s rough.” The Army guy approached the Dome.

“We took my brother to town when he died last Sunday, because he was still alive—a little—but my mom was dead as dead can be, so we buried her on the knoll. My dad and me. She liked it there. It was pretty there before everything got so cruddy. ”

“Jesus, kid! You been through hell!”

“Still there,” Ollie said, and as if the words had turned a valve somewhere inside, he began to weep. He got up and went to the Dome. He and the young soldier faced each other, less than a foot apart. The soldier raised his hand, wincing a little as the transient shock whipped through him and then out of him. He laid his hand on the Dome, fingers spread. Ollie lifted his own and pressed it against the Dome on his side. Their hands seemed to be touching, finger to finger and palm to palm, but they weren’t. It was a futile gesture that would be repeated over and over the following day: hundreds of times, thousands.

“Kid—”

“Private Ames!” someone bawled. “Get your sorry ass away from there!”

Private Ames jumped like a kid who’s been caught stealing jam.

“Get over here! Double time!”

“Hang in there, kid,” Private Ames said, and ran off to get his scolding. Ollie imagined it had to be a scolding, since you couldn’t very well demote a private. Surely they wouldn’t put him in the stockade or whatever for talking to one of the animals in the zoo. I didn’t even get any peanuts, Ollie thought.

For a moment he looked up at the cows that no longer gave milk—that hardly even cropped grass—and then he sat down by his pack. He searched for and found another nice round rock. He thought about the chipped polish on the nails of his dead mother’s outstretched hand, the one with the still-smoking gun beside it. Then he threw the rock. It hit the Dome and bounced back.

BONK. Silence.

At four o’clock on that Thursday afternoon, while the overcast held over northern New England and the sun shone down on Chester’s Mill like a bleary spotlight through the sock-shaped hole in the clouds, Ginny Tomlinson went to check on Junior. She asked if he needed something for headache. He said no, then changed his mind and asked for some Tylenol or Advil. When she came back, he walked across the room to get it. On his chart she wrote, Limp is still present but seems improved.

When Thurston Marshall poked his head in forty-five minutes later, the room was empty. He assumed Junior had gone down to the lounge, but when he checked there it was empty except for Emily Whitehouse, the heart attack patient. Emily was recovering nicely. Thurse asked her if she’d seen a young man with dark blond hair and a limp. She said no. Thurse went back to Junior’s room and looked in the closet. It was empty. The young man with the probable brain tumor had dressed and checked himself out without benefit of paperwork.

Junior walked home. His limp seemed to clear up entirely once his muscles were warm. In addition, the dark keyhole shape floating on the left side of his vision had shrunk to a ball the size of a marble. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a full dose of thallium after all. Hard to tell. Either way, he had to keep his promise to God. If he took care of the Appleton kids, then God would take care of him.

As he left the hospital (by the back door), killing his father had been first on his to-do list. But by the time he actually got to the house—the house where his mother had died, the house where Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins had died—he had changed his mind. If he killed his father now, the special town meeting would be canceled. Junior didn’t want that, because the town meeting would provide good cover for his main errand. Most of the cops would be there, and that would make gaining access to the Coop easier. He only wished he had the poisoned dog tags. He’d enjoy stuffing them down Baaarbie ’s dying throat.

Big Jim wasn’t at home, anyway. The only living thing in the house was the wolf he’d seen loping across the hospital parking lot in the small hours of the morning. It was halfway down the stairs, looking at him and growling deep in its chest. Its fur was ragged. Its eyes were yellow. Around its neck hung Dale Barbara’s dog tags.

Junior closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the wolf was gone.

“I’m the wolf now,” he whispered to the hot and empty house. “I’m the werewolf, and I saw Lon Chaney dancing with the queen.”

He went upstairs, limping again but not noticing. His uniform was in the closet, and so was his gun—a Beretta 92 Taurus. The PD had a dozen of them, mostly paid for with federal Homeland Security money. He checked the Beretta’s fifteen-round mag and saw it was full. He put the gun into its holster, cinched the belt around his shrinking waist, and left his room.

At the top of the stairs he paused, wondering where to go until the meeting was well under way and he could make his move. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t even want to be seen. Then it came to him: a good hiding place that was also close to the action. He descended the stairs carefully—the goddam limp was all the way back, plus the left side of his face was so numb it might have been frozen—and lurched down the hall. He stopped briefly outside his father’s study, wondering if he should open the safe and burn the money inside. He decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He vaguely remembered a joke about bankers marooned on a desert island who’d gotten rich trading each other their clothes, and he uttered a brief yapping laugh even though he couldn’t exactly recall the punchline and had never completely gotten the joke, anyway.

The sun had gone behind the clouds to the west of the Dome and the day had grown gloomy. Junior walked out of the house and disappeared into the murk.

At quarter past five, Alice and Aidan Appleton came in from the back yard of their borrowed house. Alice said, “Caro? Will you take Aidan and I … Aidan and me … to the big meeting?”

Carolyn Sturges, who had been making PB&J sandwiches for supper on Coralee Dumagen’s counter with Coralee Dumagen’s bread (stale but edible), looked at the children with surprise. She had never heard of kids wanting to attend an adults’ meeting before; would have said, if asked, that they’d probably run the other way to avoid such a boring event. She was tempted. Because if the kids went, she could go.

“Are you sure?” she asked, bending down. “Both of you?”

Before these last few days, Carolyn would have said she had no interest in having children, that what she wanted was a career as a teacher and a writer. Maybe a novelist, although it seemed to her that writing novels was pretty risky; what if you spent all that time, wrote a thousand-pager, and it sucked? Poetry, though … going around the country (maybe on a motorcycle) … doing readings and teaching seminars, free as a bird … that would be cool. Maybe meeting a few interesting men, drinking wine and discussing Sylvia Plath in bed. Alice and Aidan had changed her mind. She had fallen in love with them. She wanted the Dome to break—of course she did—but giving these two back to their mom was going to hurt her heart. She sort of hoped it would hurt theirs a little too. Probably that was mean, but there it was.

“Ade? Is it what you want? Because grownup meetings can be awfully long and boring.”

“I want to go,” Aidan said. “I want to see all the people.”

Then Carolyn understood. It wasn’t the discussion of resources and how the town was going to use them as it went forward that interested them; why would it be? Alice was nine and Aidan was five. But wanting to see everybody gathered together, like a great big extended family? That made sense.

“Can you be good? Not squirm and whisper too much?”

“Of course,” Alice said with dignity.

“And will you both pee yourselves dry before we go?”

“Yes!” This time the girl rolled her eyes to show what an annoying stupidnik Caro was being … and Caro sort of loved it.

“Then what I’ll do is just pack these sandwiches to go,” Carolyn said. “And we’ve got two cans of soda for kids who can be good and use straws. Assuming the kids in question have peed themselves dry before dumping any more liquid down their throats, that is.”

“I use straws like mad,” Aidan said. “Any Woops?”

“He means Whoopie Pies,” Alice said.

“I know what he means, but there aren’t any. I think there might be some graham crackers, though. The kind with cinnamon sugar on them.”

“Cinnamon graham crackers rock,” Aidan said. “I love you, Caro.”

Carolyn smiled. She thought no poem she’d ever read had been so beautiful. Not even the Williams one about the cold plums.

Andrea Grinnell descended the stairs slowly but steadily while Julia stared in amazement. Andi had undergone a transformation. Makeup and a comb-out of the frizzy wreck that had been her hair had played a part, but that wasn’t all of it. Looking at her, Julia realized how long it had been since she’d seen the town’s Third Selectman looking like herself. This evening she was wearing a knockout red dress belted at the waist—it looked like Ann Taylor—and carrying a large fabric bag with a drawstring top.

Even Horace was gawking.

“How do I look?” Andi asked when she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Like I could fly to the town meeting, if I had a broom?”

“You look great. Twenty years younger.”

“Thanks, hon, but I have a mirror upstairs.”

“If it didn’t show you how much better you look, you better try one down here, where the light’s better.”

Andi switched her bag to her other arm, as if it were heavy. “Well. I guess I do. A little, anyway.”

“Are you sure you have strength enough for this?”

“I think so, but if I start to shake and shiver, I’ll slip out the side door.” Andi had no intention of slipping away, whether she shook or not.

“What’s in the bag?”

Jim Rennie’s lunch, Andrea thought. Which I intend to feed him in front of this whole town.

“I always take my knitting to town meeting. Sometimes they’re just so slow and dull.”

“I don’t think this one will be dull,” Julia said.

“You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I imagine,” Julia said vaguely. She expected to be well away from downtown Chester’s Mill before the meeting ended. “I have a few things to do first. Can you get there on your own?”

Andi gave her a comical Mother, please look. “Down the street, down the hill, and it’s right there. Been doing it for years.”

Julia looked at her watch. It was quarter to six. “Aren’t you leaving awfully early?”

“Al will open the doors at six o’clock, if I’m not mistaken, and I want to be sure and get a good seat.”

“As a selectwoman, you should be right up there onstage,” Julia said. “If it’s what you want.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Andi switched the bag to her other arm again. Her knitting was inside; so was the VADER file and the.38 her brother Twitch had given her for home protection. She thought it would serve just as well for town protection. A town was like a body, but it had one advantage over the human one; if a town had a bad brain, a transplant could be effected. And maybe it wouldn’t come to killing. She prayed it wouldn’t.

Julia was looking at her quizzically. Andrea realized she’d drifted off.

“I think I’ll just sit with the common folk tonight. But I’ll have my say when the time comes. You can count on that.”

Andi was right about Al Timmons opening the doors at six. By then Main Street, next to empty all day, was filling with citizens headed for the Town Hall. More walked in little groups down Town Common Hill from the residential streets. Cars began to arrive from Eastchester and Northchester, most filled to capacity. No one, it seemed, wanted to be alone tonight.

She was early enough to have her pick of seats, and chose the third row from the stage, on the aisle. Just ahead of her in the second row were Carolyn Sturges and the Appleton children. The kids were gawking wide-eyed at everything and everyone. The little boy had what appeared to be a graham cracker clutched in his fist.

Linda Everett was another early arriver. Julia had told Andi about Rusty being arrested—utterly ridiculous —and knew his wife must be devastated, but she was hiding it well behind great makeup and a pretty dress with big patch pockets. Given her own situation (mouth dry, head aching, stomach roiling), Andi admired her courage.

“Come sit with me, Linda,” she said, patting the spot beside her. “How is Rusty?”

“I don’t know,” Linda said, slipping past Andrea and sitting down. Something in one of those amusing pockets clunked on the wood. “They won’t let me see him.”

“That situation will be rectified,” Andrea said.

“Yes,” Linda said grimly. “It will.” Then she leaned forward. “Hello, kids, what are your names?”

“This is Aidan,” Caro said, “and this is—”

“I’m Alice.” The little girl held out a regal hand—queen to loyal subject. “Me and Aidan … Aidan and I … are Dorphans. That means Dome orphans. Thurston made it up. He knows magic tricks, like pulling a quarter out of your ear and stuff.”

“Well, you seem to have landed on your feet,” Linda said, smiling. She didn’t feel like smiling; she had never been so nervous in her life. Only nervous was too mild a word. She was scared shitless.

By six thirty, the parking lot behind the Town Hall was full. After that the spaces on Main Street went, and those on West Street and East Street. By quarter of seven, even the post office and FD parking lots were loaded, and every almost seat in the Town Hall was taken.

Big Jim had foreseen the possibility of an overflow, and Al Timmons, assisted by some of the newer cops, had put benches from the American Legion Hall on the lawn. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS was printed on some; PLAY MORE BINGO! on others. Large Yamaha speakers had been placed on either side of the front door.

Most of the town’s police force—and all of the veteran cops, save one—were present to keep order. When latecomers grumbled about having to sit outside (or stand, when even the benches had filled up), Chief Randolph told them they should have come earlier: if you snooze, you lose. Also, he added, it was a pleasant night, nice and warm, and later there was apt to be another big pink moon.

“Pleasant if you don’t mind the smell,” Joe Boxer said. The dentist had been in an unrelievedly crappy mood ever since the confrontation at the hospital over his liberated waffles. “I hope we can hear all right through those things.” He pointed at the speakers.

“You’ll hear fine,” Chief Randolph said. “We got them from Dipper’s. Tommy Anderson says they’re state­of-the-art, and he set them up himself. Think of it as a drive-in movie without the picture.”

“I think of it as a pain in my ass,” Joe Boxer said, then crossed his legs and plucked fussily at the crease on his pants.

Junior watched them come from his hiding place inside the Peace Bridge, peeking through a crack in the wall. He was amazed to see so much of the town in the same place at the same time, and gratified by the speakers. He would be able to hear everything from where he was. And once his father got really cranked up, he would make his move.

God help anyone who gets in my way, he thought.

His father’s slope-bellied bulk was impossible to miss even in the growing gloom. Also, the Town Hall was fully powered this evening, and light from one of the windows drew an oblong down to where Big Jim stood on the edge of the jammed parking lot. Carter Thibodeau was at his side.

Big Jim had no sense of being watched—or rather, he had a sense of being watched by everybody, which comes to the same. He checked his watch and saw it had just gone seven. His political sense, honed over many years, told him that an important meeting should always begin ten minutes late; no more and no less. Which meant this was the time to start down the taxiway. He was holding a folder with his speech inside it, but once he got going, he wouldn’t need it. He knew what he was going to say. It seemed to him that he had given the speech in his sleep last night, not once but several times, and each time it had been better.

He nudged Carter. “Time to put this show on the road.”

“Okay.” Carter ran over to where Randolph was standing on the Town Hall steps (probably thinks he looks like Julius-Cotton-Picking-Caesar, Big Jim thought) and brought the Chief back.

“We go in the side door,” Big Jim said. He consulted his watch. “Five—no, four—minutes from now. You’ll lead, Peter, I’ll go second, Carter, you come behind me. We’ll go straight to the stage, all right? Walk confidently—no goshdarn slouching. There’ll be applause. Stand at attention until it starts to taper off. Then sit. Peter, you’ll be on my left. Carter, on my right. I’ll step forward to the podium. Prayer first, then everybody stands to sing the National Anthem. After that, I’ll speak and run the agenda just as fast as poop through a goose. They’ll vote yea on everything. Got it?”

“I’m nervous as a witch,” Randolph confessed.

“Don’t be. This is going to be fine.”

He was certainly wrong about that.

While Big Jim and his entourage were walking toward the side door of the Town Hall, Rose was turning the restaurant van into the McClatchey driveway. Following her was a plain Chevrolet sedan driven by Joanie Calvert.

Claire came out of the house, holding a suitcase in one hand and a canvas carry-bag filled with groceries in the other. Joe and Benny Drake also had suitcases, although most of the clothes in Benny’s had come from Joe’s dresser drawers. Benny was carrying another, smaller, canvas sack loaded with loot from the McClatchey pantry.

From down the hill came the amplified sound of applause.

“Hurry up,” Rose said. “They’re starting. Time for us to get out of Dodge.” Lissa Jamieson was with her. She slid open the van’s door and began handing stuff inside.

“Is there lead roll to cover the windows?” Joe asked Rose.

“Yes, and extra pieces for Joanie’s car as well. We’ll drive as far as you say it’s safe, then block the windows. Give me that suitcase.”

“This is insane, you know,” Joanie Calvert said. She walked a fairly straight line between her car and the Sweetbriar van, which led Rose to believe she’d had no more than a single drink or two to fortify herself. That was a good thing.

“You’re probably right,” Rose said. “Are you ready?”

Joanie sighed and put her arm around her daughter’s slim shoulders. “For what? Going to hell in a handbasket? Why not? How long will we have to stay up there?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.

Joanie gave another sigh. “Well, at least it’s warm.”

Joe asked Norrie, “Where’s your gramps?”

“With Jackie and Mr. Burpee, in the van we stole from Rennie’s. He’ll wait outside while they go in to get Rusty and Mr. Barbara.” She gave him a scared-to-death smile. “He’s going to be their wheelman.”

“No fool like an old fool,” Joanie Calvert remarked. Rose felt like hauling off and hitting her, and a glance at Lissa told her that Lissa felt the same. But this was no time for argument, let alone fisticuffs.

Hang together or hang separately, Rose thought.

“What about Julia?” Claire asked.

“She’s coming with Piper. And her dog.”

From downtown, amplified (and with the bench-sitters outside adding their own voices), came the United Choir of Chester’s Mill, singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

“Let’s go,” Rose said. “I’ll lead the way.”

Joanie Calvert repeated, with a kind of dolorous good cheer: “At least it’s warm. Come on, Norrie, copilot your old mom.”

There was a delivery lane on the south side of LeClerc’s Maison des Fleurs, and here the stolen phone company van was parked, nose out. Ernie, Jackie, and Rommie Burpee sat listening to the National Anthem coming from up the street. Jackie felt a sting behind her eyes and saw that she wasn’t the only one who was moved; Ernie, sitting behind the wheel, had produced a handkerchief from his back pocket and was dabbing at his eyes with it.

“Guess we won’t need Linda to give us a heads-up,” Rommie said. “I didn’t expect them speakers. They didn’t get em from me.”

“It’s still good for people to see her there,” Jackie said. “Got your mask, Rommie?”

He held up Dick Cheney’s visage, stamped in plastic. In spite of his extensive stock, Rommie hadn’t been able to provide Jackie with an Ariel mask; she had settled for Harry Potter’s chum, Hermione. Ernie’s Darth Vader mask was behind the seat, but Jackie thought they’d probably be in trouble if he actually had to put it on. She had not said this aloud.

And really, what does it matter? When we’re suddenly not around town anymore, everybody’s going to have a good idea why we’re gone.

But suspecting wasn’t the same as knowing, and if suspicion was the best Rennie and Randolph could do, the friends and relatives they were leaving behind might be subjected to no more than harsh questioning.

Might. Under circumstances like these, Jackie realized, that was a mighty big word.

The anthem ended. There was more applause, and then the town’s Second Selectman began to speak. Jackie checked the pistol she was carrying—it was her extra—and thought that the next few minutes were probably going to be the longest of her life.

Barbie and Rusty stood at the doors of their respective cells, listening as Big Jim launched into his speech. Thanks to the speakers outside the main doors of the Town Hall, they could hear pretty well.

“Thank you! Thank you, one and all! Thank you for coming! And thank you for being the bravest, toughest, can-do-ingest people in these United States of America!”

Enthusiastic applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen … and kiddies, too, I see a few of those in the audience….”

Good-natured laughter.

“We are in a terrible predicament here. This you know. Tonight I intend to tell you how we got into it. I don’t know everything, but I will share what I know, because you deserve that. When I’ve finished putting you in the picture, we have a brief but important agenda to go through. But first and foremost, I want to tell you how PROUD I am of you, how HUMBLED I am to be the man God—and you—have chosen to be your leader at this critical juncture, and I want to ASSURE you that together we will come through this trial, together and with God’s help we will emerge STRONGER and TRUER and BETTER than we ever were before! We may be Israelites in the desert now—”

Barbie rolled his eyes and Rusty made a jacking-off gesture with his fist.

“—but soon we will reach CANAAN and the feast of milk and honey which the Lord and our fellow Americans will surely set before us!”

Wild applause. It sounded like a standing O. Fairly certain that even if there was a bug down here, the three or four cops upstairs would now be clustered in the PD doorway, listening to Big Jim, Barbie said: “Be ready, my friend.”

“I am,” Rusty said. “Believe me, I am.”

Just as long as Linda’s not one of them planning to bust in, he thought. He didn’t want her killing anyone, but more than that, he didn’t want her to risk being killed. Not for him. Let her stay right where she is. He may be crazy, but at least if she’s with the rest of the town, she’s safe.

That was what he thought before the gunfire started.

Big Jim was exultant. He had them exactly where he wanted them: in the palm of his hand. Hundreds of people, those who had voted for him and those who hadn’t. He had never seen so many in this hall, not even when school prayer or the school budget was under discussion. They sat thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, outside as well as in, and they were doing more than listening to him. With Sanders AWOL and Grinnell sitting in the audience (that red dress in the third row was hard to miss), he owned this crowd. Their eyes begged him to take care of them. To save them. What completed his exultancy was having his bodyguard beside him and seeing the lines of cops—his cops—ranged along both sides of the hall. Not all of them were kitted out in uniforms yet, but all were armed. At least a hundred more in the audience were wearing blue armbands. It was like having his own private army.

“My fellow townspeople, most of you know that we have arrested a man named Dale Barbara—”

A storm of boos and hisses arose. Big Jim waited for it to subside, outwardly grave, inwardly grinning.

“—for the murders of Brenda Perkins, Lester Coggins, and two lovely girls we all knew and loved: Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders.”

More boos, interspersed with cries of “Hang him!” and “Terrorist!” The terrorist-shouter sounded like Velma Winter, the day manager at Brownie’s Store.

“What you do not know,” Big Jim continued, “is that the Dome is the result of a conspiracy perpetrated by an elite group of rogue scientists and covertly funded by a government splinter group. We are guinea pigs in an experiment, my fellow townspeople, and Dale Barbara was the man designated to chart and guide that experiment’s course from the inside! ”

Stunned silence greeted this. Then there was a roar of outrage.

When it had quieted, Big Jim continued, hands planted on either side of the podium, his large face shining with sincerity (and, perhaps, hypertension). His speech lay in front of him, but it was still folded. There was no need to look at it. God was using his vocal cords and moving his tongue.

“When I speak of covert funding, you may wonder what I mean. The answer is horrifying but simple. Dale Barbara, aided by an as yet unknown number of townspeople, set up a drug-manufacturing facility which has been supplying huge quantities of crystal methamphetamine to drug lords, some with CIA connections, all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. And although he hasn’t given us the names of all his co-conspirators yet, one of them—it breaks my heart to tell you this—appears to be Andy Sanders.”

Hubbub and cries of wonder from the audience. Big Jim saw Andi Grinnell start to rise from her seat, then settle back. That’s right, he thought, just sit there. If you’re reckless enough to question me, I’ll eat you alive. Or point my finger at you and accuse you. Then they’ll eat you alive.

And in truth, he felt as if he could do that.

“Barbara’s boss—his control—is a man you have all seen on the news. He claims to be a colonel in the

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 597