I held on, tumbling backward through my history with Glenna, released from the bleak gravity of now, momentarily weightless and free, riding a wave of pure exhilaration, because joined to Glenna it was so easy to fool the present with the past, to trade my terror for delight.

“Remember?” she whispered as her knees came up, but before I could reply, she began to move with a fierce and deliberate rhythm that was as recognizable to me as the beating of my own heart, and she crooked an arm over my neck and pulled my head down and said breathlessly, “Remember I remember,” and so, as we had, long ago, in this room, we comforted each other with the erotic wisdom of our flesh.

Chapter 32

“DAD!” ALEX CALLED out, waving at me as he hurried through the crowded concourse at Dulles. “Over here, Dad!”

Glenna and I were on the moving sidewalk, but it was too slow, so I got off and dashed toward my son, weaving between the arriving and departing passengers as if I were running back a kickoff. People were staring at me and stepped aside to let me pass, but I almost collided with a young man who walked out of Brooks Brothers. He reminded me of Biff with his candy-striped, button-down shirt and striped tie, and I passed the duty-free shop, a newsstand, and a Starbucks, the line backed up onto the concourse and the air suffused with the aroma of brewing coffee.

I held out my arms, and Alex was a step away from me when I woke up alone on the couch, feeling the joy of the dream draining out of me and the sadness flooding in. Glenna must have covered me with the fleece blanket, and I lay there in the dark, drifting in and out of sleep. I dreamed about summer mornings when I’d awake in this room with the breeze coming through the windows as refreshing as cool silk on my skin, while I listened to the symphony of crickets outside, their steady, peaceful chirping like a metronome keeping time for the world.

The chirping grew louder and louder in my dream, unnerving me enough that I woke up, blinking against the light shining through the bay window and realizing that the chirping was coming from my iPhone.

I snatched the phone off the stack of journals on the floor and read the screen. It was my NSA friend. Sitting up as if I’d mainlined a double espresso, I tapped the ANSWER button and said, “What’d they find?”

“A blood trail.”

I felt sick. “Where?”

“Leading out of a cave.”

“Were they both hit in the ambush?”

“How the hell—”

“Goddamnit, you—”

“We don’t know,” he said.

“No bodies?”

“No bodies. There was a bloody pressure bandage in the cave.”

“They have a first-aid kit?”

“We’re hoping,” he said.

“Water?”

“Hoping about water.”

“But no water?” I asked.

“You do understand that you’re not on the need-to-know list?”

“If—”