“We know you were drugged, as children. We know that was done because you witnessed something there at Ashland.” He stepped closer to them, and his eyes took on a look that was close to pleading. “Is there anything you can remember from your time in Ashland? Anything at all?”

Dryden shook his head.

“Nothing,” Danica said.

Grace kept his eyes on them. The pleading look was still there. “You’re absolutely certain?”

“Can you tell us what this is about?” Dryden asked.

“Please,” Danica said. “Why does all this old stuff matter? Why is someone after us now?”

Grace exhaled slowly and looked away again. He ran a hand over his chin, the movement awkward and rough. In the glare of the headlights, Dryden saw a sheen of sweat on the man’s face.

“They’re after you now because it matters now,” he said. He turned and looked at them again. “The accident on the night of July 20, 1989, involved a weapon system that was developed at Ashland. We have no information at all about this weapon—who designed it, what it could do, what became of it later. It could be chemical. It could be a bio-agent. We don’t know. But we have very good reasons to believe someone has managed to reconstitute it, and that it’s about to be used in an attack on a civilian target. We think that attack is coming somewhere inside the United States, anytime in the next twelve hours.”

Danica put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. Dryden felt his stomach tighten.

“The people behind this attack are the same people who’ve been trying to get to you,” Grace said. “The fact that they’re worried about you is the reason we think you can help us. Like whatever you saw back then, all those years ago, there’s some way it points to these people right now. They seem to think so.”

Dryden heard Russell Moss in his head.

You two witnessed some specific event—something none of the rest saw. Whatever it was, it was worse than the accident.

“You’re all they’re scared of,” Grace said. “That has to mean something.”

“But we don’t remember,” Dryden said. “Christ, we just don’t, and there’s no way to change that.”

Grace looked back and forth between the two of them again. “Actually there is,” he said.

PART FOUR

THE CLOUD CHAMBER

JULY 1989

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The morning was hot and humid. The house had air-conditioning, but Sam had it turned off for now. He had most of the windows open to let the breeze blow through. It came in from the south, over the tall grass that covered the slope below the subdivision. He had the house to himself; his dad was at work, wherever that was. Whatever that was.