Luke fell asleep with his head on the table, cradled on his arms, and as much as Caleb wanted to stay awake, he didn’t last past twenty minutes. He was startled when a hand fell on his shoulder and shook him awake. It was the lady who ran the restaurant. Maggie. “Come on, boys, I live right next door. Let’s get you a bed to rest in.”

Caleb looked to his mom for permission and got a nod.

Maggie’s house looked a lot like the Emersons’ house back in Arlington, complete with the low ceilings and rounded archways. The most prominent color was red, but there were some blues and greens and browns thrown in, too. The furniture looked old and soft and impossibly inviting.

“You boys can go up to a bedroom, or just crash here on the couches.”

Caleb was ready to curl up on the floor like a dog. “The couch is fine,” he said.

Luke stumbled to the closest of the two overstuffed two-seater couches and was out in three seconds. Caleb thought that maybe his brother never actually woke up, but rather just stumbled from the restaurant to the house while in a coma.

Caleb kicked off his shoes, lay back on the facing sofa and then was out.

* * *

McCrea watched in wonder as Victoria Emerson worked the crowd like a magician working the stage. Without any official authority to do anything, she’d taken charge merely by speaking up. Perhaps it was akin to consultant syndrome, where an outsider with a briefcase is presumed to be smarter than the workforce that hired her, but he thought there was something more. Victoria had a way about her that exuded honesty. Caring.

But he had no doubt that she would have killed that guy George out on the street if he’d hung on to that rifle for five seconds longer. But then it was over, and people were willing to listen to her. In just the last couple of hours, her stock had gone up quite a bit in his mind.

At first, he was annoyed that she’d appointed Copley and him as de facto chiefs of police, but then he understood her rationale—if, in fact, she understood it herself. Again, it was the fact that they were outsiders. They could be trusted to be fair—free, as they were, from the petty jealousies and competitions that develop among neighbors over time. The fact that he and Copley both wore uniforms didn’t hurt.

Still, he was surprised when Victoria called him out toward the end of the meeting to address the room. He considered unslinging his M4, but decided not to. As he addressed the room, he kept his hand loosely draped over the rifle’s pistol grip.

“Before you ask, I’ll tell you straight out that I don’t know any more about what’s happening on the world stage than what Vicky has already told you.”