CHAPTER 44

We got you? ” Molly shouted. “We got you? Are you really selfcentered enough to believe that any of this is about you? ”

“It’s only about me because you keep putting me in the middle of it, ” Noah said. “You people could have killed me, for God’s sake, so maybe you can forgive me for taking this personally. ”

“Hollis stayed with you every minute until they came for you; he made sure you were okay. I’m so sorry you’ve got a headache now, but nobody tried to kill you. ”

“That’s just great to hear. You know, you people are really incredible. My father told me this morning that something is going to happen that’s going to change everything, and I’m thinking, okay, a big stock market correction, or another war going hot in South Asia or the Middle East, or a couple of planes crashing into buildings like the last time everything changed forever. And your mother asked me to help you get away to somewhere safe”‑ he held up the paper in his hand‑ “and idiot that I am, I let you lead me right to the last place on earth we should go. ”

“I’m here to stop this thing if I can. ”

“Well, you can’t! ” he shouted over her. “Open your eyes, for God’s sake. They’ve got everything, and you’ve got nothing. All you’re going to do is get us both arrested or killed or put into an unmarked hole in the middle of the desert. ”

“I have to try. ”

“You don’t have to try. I told you, we can both ride this thing out. I can’t believe I’m hearing myself say this, but I still want to help you, Molly. That cabin in the woods that you talked about, wherever you want to go until this blows over, I can still make that happen. ”

“How dare you dangle that in front of me again! What do you think, that I don’t want it? That I don’t want you? Don’t you think I’m scared, and I dream some nights about getting away and never having another worry about the people like your father and what they’re trying to turn this world into? ”

“As bad as it would be to let me take care of you, it’s better than dying for nothing, isn’t it? ”

Molly’s expression changed. She took a deep breath and then spoke in a much more measured tone. “Before we got off the plane you told me that you got it; you said you finally understood what I was about. ”

“I do. ”

“No, you don’t, Noah. You have no idea. You think knowing the truth is enough? A lot of people know the truth, and nothing changes. So today, after twenty‑ eight years of drifting through life and taking everything from this country and never giving anything back, today you tell me you’ve finally seen the light and that’s supposed to mean something to me? ”

“Doesn’t it? ”

“Once you know the truth, ” Molly said, “then you’ve got to live it. That’s all I’m trying to do. ”

He saw her look up at the rearview mirror, and something froze in her.

Noah turned to look through the back window. The visibility must have stretched for miles and miles, and way back at the edge of what the eye could see, a tiny line of strobing police lights had appeared.

She was driving as hard and fast as she had before, but there was something in her face, in her eyes, that he hadn’t seen before. Molly was afraid. And he knew then that she wasn’t afraid of the police, or of going to prison; she wasn’t afraid of getting killed in her cause; she wasn’t even afraid of Arthur Gardner. She was afraid only that her fight was over.

There’d been turning points in his life that he’d seen coming months away, but this one appeared in an instant. He was safely on one side of it a second before, just being who he’d always thought he was, and then he blinked and he was on the other, waking up to realize who he was going to be.

Up ahead he could see that the road narrowed onto a short bridge over a shallow chasm, which ran across the terrain for several hundred yards.

You see the truth, and then you have to live it, she’d said. It was too late, maybe, and too little, but he knew what he needed to do.

“Slow down, ” Noah said. “I’m getting out. ”

“What? ”

“Don’t stop, just let me out. ” He cracked the door and the wind whipped inside, and she let her foot off the gas and braked until the car had slowed to the point where he might just survive if he stepped out onto the road whizzing by under them. There was no way to be sure if she understood what he was doing; no time to explain. Maybe he’d never know, but like she’d said, none of this was really about Noah Gardner.

He took a last look at Molly. There were tears in her eyes but she kept them firmly fixed on the way ahead.

“Good‑ bye, ” Noah said.

She answered, but so quietly and privately that the words clearly weren’t intended to reach him. If they were never to see each other again, it seemed, this was just something that she must have wanted read into the record. Wishful thinking, maybe, but he felt he knew in his heart exactly what she’d said.

I love you, too.

He opened the door and dropped to the pavement, rolling and bouncing and banging along for what seemed like the length of a soccer field. At last he stopped, and he watched for a few seconds as the car he’d left picked up speed again and began to recede toward the horizon.

He tried to stand but the pain prevented it, so he crawled to the center line and knelt there in the middle of the narrow bridge, hands up and out so he’d be more visible, watching the line of cars with flashing lights fast approaching.

Maybe they’ll stop in time, and maybe they won’t, Noah thought, but either way he’d slow them down. Other than that, he knew only two things: Molly Ross was still fighting, and that despite what was bearing down on him ahead, he wasn’t afraid.

By the time the lead car had skidded to a stop he could feel the heat on his face from its headlights. Some of the vehicles behind were backing up and their drivers were trying to find a way around the bottleneck, but off the road the sand was too soft for traction and those who’d gone into the gully were stuck, their tires spinning uselessly.

He looked up and saw five uniformed men approaching, their guns drawn. They were all shouting orders he couldn’t really understand.

And then they disappeared, as did the rest of the world, in a silent split‑ second flash of bright white light from behind him. It was so bright that it crossed the senses. He could feel it on his back, he could hear the light and smell it. When his vision returned Noah saw the officers standing in the road where they’d been, some covering their eyes, but most looking past him, blank‑ faced, their hands hanging down at their sides.

He turned to look back over his shoulder, in the direction Molly had gone, and miles away he saw the rising mushroom cloud, a massive, roiling ball of fire ascending slowly into the evening sky. The expanding circle of a shock wave was tearing across the desert toward them, toward everything in all directions, and a few seconds later it arrived with a crack of thunder and the sudden gust of a hot summer wind.

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