Panic(76)

She didn’t say good-bye to Lily. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it. It wasn’t a big deal.

She’d be home in a few hours, tops.

She had just turned out of the driveway when she felt her phone buzz. She ignored it, but the calls started up again right away. And then a third time. She pulled over and fished her phone from her pocket.

Nat. As soon as she picked up, she knew something was very, very wrong.

“Heather, please,” Nat was saying, even before Heather said hello. “Something bad is going to happen. We have to stop it.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Heather could hear Nat sniffling. “Calm down. Start at the beginning.”

“It’s going to happen tonight,” Nat said. “We have to do something. He’ll end up dead. Or he’ll kill Ray.”

Heather could barely follow the thread of the conversation. “Who?”

“Dodge,” Nat wailed. “Please, Heather. You have to help us.”

Heather sucked in a deep breath. The sun chose that moment to break through the clouds completely. The sky was streaked with fingers of red, the exact color of new blood.

“Who’s us?”

“Just come,” Nat said. “Please. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”





dodge

DODGE DROVE PAST THE GULLY JUST AFTER SIX O’CLOCK. The car Bishop had lent him—a Le Sabre that Dodge knew could never be returned—was old and temperamental, and drifted to the left whenever he didn’t correct it. It didn’t matter. Dodge didn’t need it for very long.

He parked on the side of the road on one side of the straightaway that had been selected for the challenge. The road was pretty dead—maybe people were discouraged by the bad weather. Dodge was glad. He couldn’t risk being spotted.

It didn’t take long. It was surprisingly easy—kid stuff, which was ironic, especially considering that Dodge had failed chemistry twice and wasn’t exactly a science guy. Funny how easily you could look this shit up online. Explosives, bombs, Molotov cocktails, IEDs . . . anything you wanted. Learning how to blow someone up was easier than buying a frigging beer.

Earlier, he’d dissolved a bit of an old Styrofoam cooler in some gasoline and poured the whole mixture into a mason jar. Homemade napalm—easy as making salad dressing. Now he carefully duct-taped a firecracker to the outside of the jar and nestled the whole thing down into the engine bay. Not too close to the exhaust manifold—he needed to get through the challenge with Heather first. And he would drive carefully, make sure the engine didn’t get too hot.

Then the car would go to Ray. Ray would gun it, and the firecracker would ignite, and the jar would shatter, discharging the explosives.

Kaboom.

All he had to do now was wait.

But almost immediately, he got a text from Heather. Need to pick u up. Emergency. We have to talk.

And then: Now.

Dodge cursed out loud. Then he had a sudden fear: she was going to back out. That would ruin everything. He wrote her back quickly. Corner of Wolf Hill and Pheasant. Pick me up.

Coming, she wrote back.

He walked circles while he waited for her, smoking cigarettes. He had been calm before, but now he was filled with anxiety, a crawling, itching sensation, as though spiders were scurrying under his skin.

He thought of Dayna in the hospital bed as he’d first seen her after the accident—wide-eyed, a little blood and snot crusted above her mouth, saying, “I can’t feel my legs. What happened to my legs?” Getting hysterical in the hospital room, trying to stand, and landing instead in Dodge’s lap.

He thought of Luke Hanrahan, driving off with fifty grand; and the night Dodge had stood outside the Hanrahans’ house with a baseball bat and been too afraid to act.

And by the time Heather pulled up, he felt a little better.



Heather wouldn’t tell him anything in the car. “What’s this about?” he asked her.

But she just kept repeating, “Just hold on. Okay? She’ll want to tell you herself.”

“She?” His stomach flipped.

“Nat,” she said.

“Is she okay?” he asked. But Heather just shook her head, indicating she would say no more. He was getting annoyed now. This was a bad time; he needed to focus. His stomach was tight with nerves. But at the same time he was flattered that Heather needed him—flattered, too, that Nat might have asked to see him. And they still had two hours before full dark. More than enough time.

There were two cars in Nat’s driveway, one of them a battered Chevy truck he didn’t recognize. He wondered if this was some kind of intervention for her and got that crawling feeling under his skin again.

“What’s going on?” he asked again.

“I told you,” Heather said. “She’ll want to explain it herself.”

The door was unlocked. Weirdly, although the light was rapidly fading outside, there were no lamps on in the house. The air was dull and gray, lying like a textured blanket over everything, smudging out details. Walking into Nat’s house, Dodge had the feeling he used to get in church: like he was trespassing on sacred ground. There was wood everywhere, lots of nice-looking furniture, things that screamed money to him. But not a sound.

“Is she even here?” he asked. His voice sounded overloud.