Maybe Pierce would knock them both unconscious and then strangle them. Or beat them to death with the Jeep’s tire iron. Or whatever else he could think of to get the job done fast.

But one way or another, it would happen. The moment Dani and Lauren got there, it would happen. If Sam didn’t get there first.

He ran. Straight out from the suburb. The houses and the streetlight glow fell away behind him. He sprinted to the farthest point at which he could still see in front of him, and then he turned, following the edge of the light—following the outer curve of the subdivision, east and north. That curve would take him all the way up to Truman Avenue, at the far north end of the suburb. From there he could simply follow the road, the same route he and Dani had taken when she first showed him Station 14—two days ago almost to the hour.

Around him, the night was still full of smoke, though it wasn’t as thick out here, farther from the crash site. Still it burned his throat. He breathed it deep anyway and kept running.

He found his thoughts going back over the preceding hours—back to the barn, and the stakeout, and everything that had followed. Every fake detail of it.

From the moment Pierce had been dragged out of the barn, bound with duct tape, the whole thing must have been an act, as absurd as that seemed. It made no sense, unless—

Unless they knew we were out there, watching the place.

He spent about a second wondering how that was possible, and then felt stupid: there were lots of ways. Night vision was an obvious one. Or thermal vision. The kind of people who could afford a helicopter could probably drop a few thousand dollars on a camera system, to secure the location where all their work would be on the line. Where their own lives would be on the line, if they got caught. In hindsight, it would have been strange if they hadn’t set up some system to watch over the place.

So what would Pierce and his men, there inside the barn, have thought when they saw two kids with binoculars surveilling the location, an hour or two before the main event?

What the fuck is this? That’s what they would have thought.

Sure, but then why hadn’t those men done the obvious thing, which was to run out and grab the two of them right there? Why not drag them back into the barn and make them talk?

But the answer to that was pretty obvious:

Because it wouldn’t have worked.