The young bearded guy stood up. Eric Lofland. “I’ve got a question,” he said.

“Then raise your hand and wait to be called on,” Victoria said. “Order is important at times like these. In fact, there’s never been a time when order is more important.”

Eric rolled his eyes and raised his hand.

Victoria asked, “Major McCrea, do you wish to take a question at this time?”

“Sure.” Even he thought the formality was a bit too much. “Go ahead . . . Eric, right?”

“Yeah. We know who she is, but why are you here?”

“That’s a fair question.” McCrea gave a forty-thousand-foot overview of his mission to deliver the congresswoman to the United States Government Relocation Facility. When he was done, the faces looking back at him displayed various colors of emotion, from confusion to amazement.

Eric’s head was cocked so far to the side that his ear nearly touched his shoulder. “You mean to tell us that y’all coulda been safe from all this, but you chose not to be?”

“Let me answer that,” Victoria said. “Major McCrea never had a space inside the bunker. Neither did my children, nor anyone else’s children. In fact, it’s likely that the major’s entire family was killed in last night’s attack.” She gave that a few seconds to sink in.

“I’ve never believed myself to be any better or more important than anyone else,” she continued. “Sitting in comparative luxury and being well fed while every constituent of every member of Congress was suffering didn’t seem right to me at all. They can run the place just fine without me.”

When the audience clapped—albeit without a lot of enthusiasm—McCrea realized that Victoria was campaigning right there, whether she knew it or not. Perhaps the humble brag came naturally to people in her line of work.

When the floor returned to McCrea, he said, “As Vicky explained earlier, there’s every reason to believe that violence, in one form or another, is coming our way. We don’t welcome it and we don’t seek it. We say prayers that I’m wrong. But we need to be prepared for it. Does the name Jeffrey Grubbs mean anything to any of you?”

No one raised their hand, but several looked away, a sure sign in McCrea’s book that there was news to be hidden. “He’s got a pretty heavy mountain accent,” he went on. “About five-ten, maybe one eighty-five. Beard. Looks tough as leather.”

Carol Robinson, the pregnant lady at his left, tentatively raised her hand and McCrea called on her. “They’re old-school stillers and meth cookers. Bad, bad folk. They live up in the woods a few miles from here.”

“But they know better than to come into town,” George said. “He’s a kid toucher, too, but never been nabbed for it. Him and his are as white trash as white trash gets.”