Abbi didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she whirled on her husband. “Is this why you didn’t want me to come along? So that I could die alone while you’re safely in a bunker?”

Burton Sinclair dipped his head and placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders. Their combined age easily topped a hundred fifty years. “Sweetheart, you’re not going to die. Not of this. No one is. Not if we do our jobs properly. That’s why I have to go inside. Mine is an important job.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Go home,” he said. Then he cast a glance at his military escort. “Or as close to home as you can manage.” He leaned to kiss her, but she spun her head away. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

When Burton Sinclair turned back toward the cordon, Johnson let him pass. Why let the awkwardness fester any more than it had?

“Can we go back to the car?” Victoria asked McCrea. She was already walking that way. “We can discuss this better there.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” McCrea said.

Victoria touched his arm. “Please. The boys don’t need to see this. It’s likely to get ugly. The boys don’t need to see this.” A panic was beginning to build, and panic was an emotion that could spin out of control with frightening speed.

“First Sergeant Copley, make a hole for us back to the vehicle,” McCrea said.

“Mom, are we going to be okay?” Luke asked. He sounded close to tears.

“Just stay close,” she said. She wished she had a better answer.

As they walked back down the hill to the Suburban, colleagues in other cars rolled down their windows or stepped outside of their vehicles to ask what was happening. She answered only once, telling Representative Latasha Washington, of New York, that she, Victoria, had just resigned her seat, but her words seemed to derail things even more.

After that, she ignored the inquiries. She didn’t owe anyone an answer to anything. As they closed to within a few yards of the Suburban, she was surprised that First Sergeant Copley had left it running.

“Keep your weapon at the ready,” McCrea said, just loudly enough to be heard.

“Roger that,” Copley said. As they got to the vehicle, he stopped and turned to face back up the hill. “Got you covered,” he said.

McCrea herded the Emersons back into their previously assigned seats, supervised as they tossed their rucks back in the cargo hold, and covered Copley’s return to the driver’s seat. Then he planted himself back in the shotgun spot.

“Where are we going?” Copley asked.

“Anywhere but here,” McCrea said. “We need to head west. Into the mountains.”

“How do we get off this road?” Copley asked. “It’s jammed.”

“This thing has four-wheel drive for a reason,” McCrea said. “Use it.”