End Game

Book 6: Jonathan Grave Thriller

by John Gilstrap

Genres: Action & Adventure; Political Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

The son of a government scientist must be found at any cost in this taut political thriller that "starts off explosively and keeps on rolling" (Joe Hartlaub, BookReporter).



Deep in the American Heartland, a team of assassins goes to work. In short order, a Chechen scientist and double agent for the US government is dead. But the team didn't exactly finish the job. The man's teenage son is still alive. In possession of crucial and potentially lethal information, he's now on the run—and off the grid.



The feds know who to call: Jonathan Grave and his elite rescue team at Security Solutions. Their mission is simple: find the boy and keep his information out of the wrong hands. But simple doesn't mean easy. The boy has a bodyguard with unusual talents, and she's not giving up without a fight. Only by bringing them both back alive can Grave expose the traitor in the highest levels of power—and prevent an all-out nuclear war.

Release date: June 24, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 448

Sample

The pounding on the front door meant trouble, a staccato beat delivered by a heavy hand. It bore the urgency of a neighbor with news that the house was on fire. In the living room, just fifteen feet away, the pounding ripped Jolaine’s attention away from her computer search for the best business schools. In one year, her life would look a hell of a lot different than it did now.

She uncurled her legs from beneath her, placed her laptop on the end table, and edged toward the foyer. It was, after all, her job to answer the door, just as it was her job to deal with the emotional turmoil that defined fourteen-year-old Graham, who was supposed to be steeped in homework by now—homework that she knew he wouldn’t be doing because he was one of those kids whose four-oh average came with zero effort. He ranked among the biggest reasons why next year would look so different.

Her heart hammered at least as loudly as the fist on the door as her bare feet crossed from carpet to marble. She considered ignoring it. At nearly ten o’clock, was there really an obligation to answer? The fact that she was separated from her nearest weapon by two flights of thirteen stairs didn’t help at all. Why hire a bodyguard and then forbid said bodyguard to be armed in the house?

The pounding continued. “Bernard!” a voice yelled from beyond the door. “For God’s sake, let me in!”

Jolaine had nearly reached the door when Mr. Mitchell—Bernard—barked, “No!” He’d appeared on the steps behind her.

Startled by the sharpness of his tone, she whirled and was even more surprised to see that he’d armed himself with a tiny MAC-10 automatic pistol. Dressed in the kind of pajamas that she’d seen only in old television shows—light blue with dark blue piping—he held the weapon at the ready, but with the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, his finger clear of the trigger guard. His apparent familiarity with the firearm startled her.

“Step away, Jolaine,” he said as he hurried down the stairs. “I’ll get it.” By the time he reached the foyer, Sarah, his wife, had started down behind him. Her nighttime attire consisted of gray sweats.

Nothing about this was right. Mrs. Mitchell never appeared downstairs after nine. Jolaine took two giant steps backward, into the living room archway.

As the pounding grew more desperate, Bernard Mitchell slowed his gait.

“Bernard!” the visitor yelled. “There’s no time!”

Bernard cast a glance back at Sarah. From Jolaine’s angle, she couldn’t see his face, but the reaction he got from his wife was at once heartbreaking and terrifying. It was a look of surrender, of inevitability. Jolaine fought the urge to ask because in just a few seconds, she would see for herself.

The man on the outside was still pounding when Bernard pulled open the door without even a peek through the peephole. With his MAC-10 pressed to his shoulder, he looked ready for war. Jolaine calculated her escape route.

The instant the door separated from the jamb, a little nothing of a man spilled inside onto the marble floor. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, he had a mop of gray hair, but all Jolaine saw in the first seconds was the blood. The front of his clothes shimmered in it, and as he collapsed onto the stone, spatters dotted the tiles.

“Gregory!” Bernard yelled. If Jolaine was any judge, this was not the man that he’d been expecting.

On the steps, Sarah made a yipping sound and glided to the foyer as Bernard cleared the man’s legs from the threshold and closed the door.

“God, what happened?”

“They know,” the man gasped. “I’m so sorry. They know.” Jolaine detected an Eastern European accent, and as he spoke, he passed a bloody slip of paper to Bernard. “Here it is, Bernard. I’m so, so sorry.”

Mr. Mitchell’s hands trembled as he lifted Gregory’s shirt, presumably to find the source of the bleeding. Jolaine looked away. She’d seen enough bullet wounds to recognize the damage at a glance, and she didn’t care to see any more.

“Call an ambulance,” Mr. Mitchell commanded.

Jolaine spun around and hurried toward the phone in the kitchen.

“No!” Sarah said. “Jolaine, go upstairs and get Graham out of the house.”

Jolaine froze. She understood the words, but they made no sense. To get him out meant to take him somewhere, and she hadn’t a clue where that might be.

“Gregory needs a doctor,” Bernard said. His voice broke.

“He needs an undertaker,” Sarah corrected. She fired a look at Jolaine. “Graham. Now.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” Jolaine said. She heard the stress in her own voice—the borderline panic—and the sound upset her. This was not the time to lose control.

“Not your concern,” Sarah snapped. Her face was a mask of something awful. If Jolaine had encountered the same expression in Jalalabad, she would have assumed the presence of a suicide vest. “Do your job, Jolaine. Take my son to safety.”

Jolaine wanted to ask for more details, but realized that they were irrelevant, at least for now. Everything about this screamed urgency of the highest order. Graham had to be roused and dressed. That was step one, and given his personality, it was a big step. Step two and beyond were for later.

The man on the floor was doomed; of that, Sarah was correct. His skin looked like gray construction paper with hints of blue around his nose and mouth. As Jolaine passed him on her way to the stairs, she made a point of not stepping on the blood.

She was living a nightmare. The nightmare. This was what she’d been hired to do, and this was why they ran all their emergency drills, though Bernard had never said why, and Jolaine had always sensed that it was all about an overinflated sense of self-worth. She’d never really bought into any of it.

Her job was to protect Graham while at the same time never cluing him in to the fact that he needed protection. She had a hard time believing that he’d never caught a glimpse of her weapon as she drove him to and from school, or wondered why he needed an au pair at his age, but he’d never said anything—at least not to her—so she’d assumed him to be as clueless as he pretended to be. He had a hell of a surprise in store. First, she had to haul his skinny, cranky ass out of bed and get him dressed.

The silver light of the television disappeared from under Graham’s door as Jolaine approached. It was, she knew, anything but a coincidence, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him sprawled on his stomach, feigning sleep. She slapped the wall switch and right away missed the days of the incandescent lightbulbs with their instantaneous illumination.

“Graham!” she barked. “Get up. Get dressed.”

He made a grumbling sound, and Jolaine realized that she’d misplayed her hand. If she’d ordered him to go to sleep, he’d have leaped out of bed. She didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for this. She grabbed the sheet at the line where it draped beneath his bare shoulders and stripped it down to his ankles. Given his recent adolescent obsessions, she felt relief when she saw the flash of blue boxer shorts.

“Hey!” He whirled to face her. “What the hell—”

“We need to leave. Now.”

“Get out of my room! You can’t just—”

Jolaine planted her hand on his chest and pushed him down into the mattress. “Listen to me, Graham,” she said. “A man has been shot and is dying downstairs in the foyer. Your parents are terrified. You and I are leaving this house in one minute. You can be dressed and cooperative or naked and unconscious. I don’t care which.” She bounced him once to emphasize the point, and then she left for her own room on the third floor.

Her space in the attic had been converted into the nicest apartment she’d ever lived in. The stairway terminated in the middle of what she thought of as her living room. Two gabled windows provided an impressive view of rural Indiana. Her living room led to a tiny yet fully functional kitchen, beyond which were the bathroom and bedroom. Paranoid of being photographed in her sleep or in the shower—Graham was a budding photojournalist—she kept the doors locked all the time.

This was a bugout, and as with all such things, clothing didn’t count. Only weapons and ammo counted. She pulled open the nightstand to reveal her daily carry weapon, a reduced-size Glock 27 chambered in .40-caliber Smith & Wesson. In a single motion, she stripped off her Indiana University T-shirt—when in Rome, right?—and stretched her elastic Kangaroo holster around her rib cage. Having done it a thousand times, her hands knew exactly what to do. Five seconds later, when the two straps were secured, she holstered the pistol under her left armpit and shoved two spare ten-round mags into their designated pockets at midline. With the T-shirt back on, no one would know that she was armed.

She moved to her closet. Ignoring the temptation of the suitcase and clothes, she instead reached to the top shelf, where her Colt M4 lay snug in its case. She pulled it down, swung it to the floor, and worked the zipper. The aroma of gun solvent and oil enveloped her and brought an odd sense of calm. She lifted the carbine by its pistol grip and eased the charging handle back to reveal the ass end of the bullet she already knew was there. That round, combined with the others in the curved magazine, ensured a full load of thirty 5.56 millimeter bullets.

Reaching back into the bag, she grabbed two more thirty-round mags, leaving another five in the bag for later. She zipped up the gun bag and stood, slipping the two mags into her back pockets, then reached back to the top shelf for her bugout bag—a tactical vest festooned with pockets that held still more ammo, plus some rudimentary first-aid supplies, a flashlight, two knives, a thousand dollars in cash, and the kind of stuff that she figured she might need if she needed to keep Graham and herself alive for a couple of days on the run.

Jolaine shrugged into the vest without fastening it, battle-slung her M4 across the front of her body, then lifted the gun bag and headed back downstairs for Graham.

He’d managed to find a pair of jeans, but he remained shirtless and barefoot. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going.”

“But I’m not—what the hell are you wearing?”

“Your one minute is up,” Jolaine snapped. “Grab something for your feet. We’re getting out of here.”

“Just another minute—”

Jolaine grabbed his biceps and pulled. This was about survival. If she had to beat him senseless to save his life, she was perfectly willing to cross that line.

“Let me go!”

Jolaine ignored him, just as she ignored the distant sense of satisfaction that came with hurting him a little. Adolescent angst and anger had hit Graham with staggering force over the past twelve months, turning him into a monster.

Not quite five-nine, the kid weighed nothing, so when Jolaine pulled, he followed. She worked out, he played video games.

Why was she being such a bitch?

Okay, Jolaine was always a bitch, but that was part of her job, and at some corner of his brain, Graham realized that he brought that side out of her, but this was at a whole new level. He yelled as her fingernails stuck into the soft, sensitive flesh of his armpit, but she didn’t seem to care. As he dug his heels into the carpet to slow her down, she merely squeezed tighter and pulled harder. He had no idea that she was that strong.

“Are you serious?” he asked. “Are we really leaving?” And what was with all the military crap she was wearing?

Graham wasn’t even sure his feet touched the stairs as he more or less flew to the first floor. That’s when he saw the blood. That’s when it all became real. The man on the floor writhed in agony. “They know,” the guy said. “Oh, God, they know, they know . . .”

Mom and Dad were arguing about something—they seemed really angry—but if Graham could hear the words beyond the thrumming of fear in his head, he couldn’t understand them. They came out as random sounds: fight, die, kill. He even heard his own name in the mix. He tried to pull away from Jolaine, to be with his parents, but her grip was like iron.

“Mom!” he yelled.

Sarah’s head snapped up, but her face wasn’t the face he was used to seeing. Her eyes had a dead set to them, like a doll’s eyes, and her mouth was set in a tight little line. “Get out,” she said. “Go with Jolaine.”

“Where?”

“I love you, Graham. Never forget that.”

That was the line that triggered the panic in his gut. So simple, yet so final. Of course she loved him. She was his mother. Why would she think that he would assume anything else? Her words had a finality about them that made him want to cry.

He started to say, “I love you, too,” but before the words could form, the front door burst open, as if propelled by explosives, and a bunch of men dressed in black flooded into the foyer. His dad shot one of them in the head at point-blank range, and the air turned red.

At the sound of the bursting door and the gunshot, Jolaine pushed Graham to the ground and planted a knee in his back to keep him there while she brought her M4 to bear. The collapsed stock plate found her shoulder and her finger found the trigger without thought. She popped one of the invaders with a shot to his chin that all but sheared his head from his shoulders. It always sucked to be one of the first people through the door.

Then the enemy adapted and the shooting started in earnest. Sarah and Bernard both dove for cover as the front wall and windows exploded in the fusillade of incoming rounds. Within two seconds, Jolaine realized that she needed to leave while there was still some chance of getting out alive. If they hadn’t done so already, the attacking forces would soon surround the house, making escape impossible.

Do your job.

Easing the pressure on Graham’s back, Jolaine grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled him first to his knees and then to his feet. “We’re going out through the kitchen,” she said softly into his ear.

“But what about—” The rest of his question was lost in the next volley of gunfire.

Jolaine focused on the solution, not the problem. That was the secret to surviving any emergency. What was done, was done. Her only chance for mission success was to push all of that away, and concentrate on the single goal of guiding Graham to safety. Everything else, including her own survival, was secondary.

The focused commitment calmed her. The cacophony of the gunfight became so much background noise as she focused on their exit. The car keys were on the peg beside the garage door, just where they were supposed to be. She snatched them up with her right hand and switched them to her left to keep her dominant hand free.

The door to the garage opened with a thump and a hollow echo as she pushed it open. She noted in an instant that the exterior doors were still closed, but scanned the area for threats anyway before pushing Graham through the opening. “Get in the Beamer,” she said, gesturing to the late-model BMW 740Li that sat in the closest bay of the three-car garage.

“We can’t leave them,” Graham objected.

“Would you rather die with them?” Jolaine heard the words before she’d considered them, and regretted the coldness of her tone. She closed the door behind them. In case Graham had any designs on changing plans, Jolaine kept her left hand on his shoulder as they negotiated the four steps down to the concrete floor of the garage, steering him toward the car. Her right hand stayed clasped to the grip of her M4 as she moved backward and sideways to keep the muzzle trained on the door she’d just exited. “Climb in the backseat and get on the floor,” she said.

Graham tried to wriggle free. “They’re killing my parents!”

“Your parents are fighting back,” Jolaine snapped. “And they want you out of here. You heard that yourself from your mother.” She turned her attention from the door and the threats that seethed behind it and focused on Graham. In the silver light that passed in through the windows in the garage doors, his eyes glimmered with tears. She felt her heart skip as she considered what he was going through.

Jolaine tried to adopt a less threatening posture. “We need to get out of here. It’s my job to keep you from getting shot. By any means possible. Now get in the backseat and lie on the floor.” As an afterthought: “Okay?”

Graham swiped at his eyes with his forearm and shook his head no. Then he opened the door and climbed inside.

Jolaine unslung her M4 and put it into the car first, then slid into the driver’s seat and pressed the start button.

“You forgot the garage door,” Graham said.

Actually, she hadn’t. Whatever lay beyond those doors was a mystery of the deadliest kind. The last thing she needed to do was give the invaders notice that they were fleeing. With her foot pressed on the brake, she dropped the transmission into reverse and ran the RPMs up high. When the tachometer needle nearly touched the red line, the kitchen door flew open, revealing Sarah in the doorway. Her shirt was wet with blood and her posture showed that she’d been wounded.

“Mom!”

Jolaine released the brake pedal and the Beamer shot backward like a bullet. The garage door blasted from its tracks and collapsed in a twisted tangle onto the driveway. As the car passed over the wreckage, Jolaine winced at the sound of metal on metal as the broken door tore at the undercarriage.

“No!” Graham yelled. “We can’t leave her!” He threw his door open and prepared to jump out.

Jolaine jammed the brakes and reached back for him, “I told you—”

He was already out, rolling on the ground to find his feet. Outside, she saw a black van parked in the grass near the house, its doors open, but with no lights on. At first glance, she saw no people. A heartbeat later, a silhouette appeared at the front door. Jolaine saw the man beckon to his friends.

“Graham, get back here!” He ignored her. “Goddammit.” Jolaine snatched up the M4 from the passenger seat and wielded it like a pistol to fire four rounds through the passenger side window in the direction of the guy on the stoop. The bad guy ducked back inside. She had no idea if she’d hit him, but that wasn’t really the point. She was buying time.

While Graham dashed back toward the garage, Jolaine shouldered her door open and stood. Forming a solid base with her feet spaced wide, she extended the stock with a quick tug, tucked the butt plate into her shoulder, and switched the firing selector to full-auto. She fired a three-round burst toward the front stoop just to keep their heads down, and then pivoted her aim to the four vehicles that were clustered in the front yard. She fired long bursts—five or six rounds—into the fenders and hoods of each, hoping to take out tires or engine blocks, or maybe both. She’d take any advantage she could get.

The bolt locked open when the magazine went dry, and she never broke aim as she fingered the mag release with her trigger finger. She pulled a fresh one from her pocket, slid it into place, and smacked the bolt release to recharge the weapon. Total elapsed time for the change was less than five seconds. Jolaine was astonished at how quickly her skills had returned.

Sarah Mitchell met Graham halfway, stumbling over the wreckage of the garage door and lurching her way toward the BMW.

“Quickly!” Jolaine yelled. The fact that the bad guys were no longer trying to come through the front door told her that they had developed a different plan. Once they got their shit together, the limits of her firepower would spell the end.

Jolaine fought the urge to run forward to help them. Now that they were all exposed, her job was to lay down covering fire.

As the Mitchells closed to within a few feet, Jolaine knew that Sarah was in trouble. Her face was ashen. She was bleeding out somewhere. Graham’s chest was bloody as well, but from the ease of his movement, she could tell that the blood was not his own.

They were out of time.

“In, in, in!” Jolaine yelled. Fifteen seconds ago, she’d never have believed that they could survive this long. Now that they were on the verge of getting away, time had slowed to an agonizing crawl.

Graham pulled the front door open for his mother. “Be careful,” he said.

“Be careful my ass,” Jolaine said. “Sarah, sit down and close your door. Graham, get on the floor of the backseat and keep your head down.”

She saw movement in the darkness on the near side of the house and she reacted without looking, raking the area with a ten-round burst. This business of keeping heads down burned a hell of a lot of ammunition. Thank God there were no neighbors to get caught in the crossfire.

When the family was inside, Jolaine ducked back into the driver’s seat. With the M4 jammed awkwardly across the center console, she didn’t bother to close her door before she pulled the shifter into reverse and stomped on the gas.

The Beamer launched backward across the lawn for thirty feet. She shifted to drive. She heard shots being fired at them, and she felt a couple of rounds thunk into the car somewhere, but no warning lights came on, and no one yelled in pain.

They were on their way. To somewhere.

The emptiness of the Indiana cornfields swallowed the headlight beams, revealing nothing but miles of darkness. “Graham, are you okay?” Jolaine shouted over the wind noise from the shattered passenger window. When he didn’t respond, she wrenched her body around in the driver’s seat to look in the back. The boy was still on the floor, his head wrapped in his arms. “Graham!”

“Make it stop!” he yelled.

“Are you hurt?”

“Why are they doing this?”

“Are you hurt?”

“No! I’m not hurt! Why are they doing this?”

“I don’t know,” Jolaine said. “Mrs. Mitchell? Sarah?” She could smell the blood.

“We can’t go to a hospital,” Sarah said. Her voice was soft. Jolaine didn’t know if it was because she was weak or because she didn’t want Graham to hear.

“How bad are you hit?”

Sarah shook her head. Jolaine saw it as a shift in her silhouette. “It’s not good. I’m hit in my middle.”

“So we do need to go to a hospital.”

“No. That’s where they’ll be looking. The doctors will have to call the police for a bullet wound.”

“Yeah!” Graham said from the back. “We need to call the police.”

“Not for this, sweetie,” Sarah said. “We don’t want the police involved.”

“Where’s Dad?”

Sarah shot a look to Jolaine that said it all. But she didn’t respond.

“Mom?”

“Dad’s staying behind,” Sarah said.

“But he’s okay? He’ll be joining us?”

Silence.

“Mom?”

“Let’s talk about this later, okay, Graham?” Sarah asked.

“Is he okay?”

“Later, Graham.” That tone cut the conversation off at the root.

Jolaine said, “What’s going on, Sarah? Tell me why this is happening.”

With effort that seemed to trigger a spasm of pain, Sarah stretched her leg out to gain access to the front pocket of her jeans and went fishing for something.

“Mom?” Graham said. “Why aren’t you answering?” His voice trembled in a combination of anger, fear, and sadness.

Sarah was holding herself together pretty well, especially with her bullet wound. Since she hadn’t bled out already, and clearly no bones had been clipped, Jolaine had hope for her. But she needed a doctor, and she needed one now.

“I’m sorry, Graham,” Sarah said. “I’m okay, really. I’ve just got a lot of things going through my mind right now.”

“So, are we going to the police?”

“No, not tonight.”

“A hospital, then,” Graham said. “You’re hurt. You’ve been shot.”

Sarah’s hunt through her pocket produced a cell phone. Jolaine was hoping for something else. She wasn’t sure what, but some kind of a solution would have been nice.

“You’re going to make a phone call?” Jolaine said. “How about you answer my question? We’re all in danger here, you know. Not just you.”

Again, Sarah ignored her. The smart phone’s screen bathed her in a silver-blue light that highlighted her pallor. As she swiped at the screen, she left bloody streaks.

“What are you looking for?” Jolaine insisted. Ahead, the twisting country road was an opaque black ribbon.

“I found it,” Sarah declared. She pressed a button and brought her phone to her ear. Whoever she was calling had better be of calm temperament, Jolaine thought. Ten-thirty at night was late for anyone.

“Doctor Jones, please,” Sarah said into the phone. “This is Mrs. Smith.”

Ah, Jolaine thought. They’re spooks. I should have known.

“Four seven four bravo,” Sarah said after a pause. “Gunshot. Serious.” After another pause, Sarah said, “I’m sorry, but I’ll never remember all of that. Let me hand you over to someone who will. Yes, a trusted source.” With that, she handed the Droid across the center console to Jolaine. “This is Doctor Jones,” she said.

Sure it is, Jolaine didn’t say. She brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“What’s your name?” the voice asked from the other side.

“What’s yours?”

“Don’t trifle with me, missy. You already know my name. I am Doctor Jones.”

“Fine,” Jolaine said. “My name is Doe. Jane Doe. Don’t trifle with me, either, Doc. The last few minutes have been really, really intense. I’ve got a seriously injured woman sitting next to me who needs help, and you want to do small talk. Seriously, Doc, who’s trifling whom?”

Five seconds of silence convinced Jolaine that she’d either made her point or driven the doc to hang up. “You sound like you’re part of the Community,” Jones said.

“On the periphery,” Jolaine confessed. “A contractor, never official.”

“I see. How bad are her wounds?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. There’s a lot of blood. She’s pale but she can talk, and she seems to have it together cognitively.”

“Cognitively,” Jones mocked. “That’s a high-dollar word for a grunt.”

“Why did you want to speak with me?” Jolaine pressed. She didn’t have time for bullshit, and she figured the best way to avoid it was to stay away from the bait.

“I want you to bring Mrs. Smith to my clinic. We can care for her here.”

Translation: the Company had a contract with a quick-quack that would keep serious injuries off the grid.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

The doctor laughed. It sounded like genuine amusement. “Well, Jane, you don’t. You can’t. But let’s be honest. You have no option.”

Jolaine didn’t answer.

“All right, then,” Jones said. “I’m going to give you an address. Do you have a GPS system to punch it into?”

“I have my phone.”

“Are you ready to copy the address?”

“Stand by,” Jolaine said. Then into the rearview mirror: “Graham, listen up. Are you listening?”

“To what?”

“Just listen.”

“Who’s Graham?” Jones asked.

“He’s the patient’s son.”

“He can’t stay here.”

“Let’s do that later,” Jolaine said. “Let’s have the address.”

Jones gave an address in Defiance, Ohio, and Jolaine repeated it. “Got it, Graham?”

“Yes,” he said. The kid was blessed with perfect recall—literally, he remembered every word said to him and everything he read.

Jolaine asked the doctor, “How far is that from Antwerp, Indiana?”

“Worst, worst case, thirty minutes.”

Jolaine clicked off, whipped the BMW onto the right-hand shoulder, and hit the brakes.

“What are you doing?” her passengers asked in unison.

“I’m figuring out where we’re going,” she said. “Recite back the address, Graham.” As he regurgitated the house number and street, she entered them into the phone’s navigation program. Good news: fifteen miles, seventeen minutes.

She bet that she could make it in thirteen.

With an utter disregard for speed limits, it actually took twelve. Doctor Jones lived slightly north of nowhere, off a road that was marked only with a caduceus.

“What is this place?” Graham asked.

Jolaine resisted the urge to extinguish her headlights to provide less of a target. To do that would be to commit them to total darkness, which could mean driving into a ditch or a tree.

“It’s the doctor’s house, sweetie,” Sarah said. Her voice had become breathy, and there was a grunt of pain between “house” and “sweetie.” “He’s going to make me all better.”

Sarah often spoke to her son as if he were three years old, and the tone made Jolaine wince.

“Dad’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Don’t talk of such things,” Sarah said. In those words, Jolaine caught the hint of the Eastern European accent that Sarah worked so hard to camouflage. Jolaine thought it was a sign that the woman was becoming weaker.

Jolaine also noted the absence of an answer to the boy’s question. That could mean any number of things, but in Jolaine’s mind, it only meant one: Yes, Graham, your dad is dead.

If there was a paved roadway in here, Jolaine couldn’t see it. Navigating—if that was indeed what she was doing—was mostly a matter of not hitting the surrounding foliage. By default, the road was where a bush or a tree was not.

Judging distance was an exercise in futility, as was assessing the passage of time. After what felt like several long, whole minutes, she saw another caduceus just like the previous one, but this one w