“I’m not the only one they have to worry about.” Lucy raises her voice over the music throbbing in the rain, in the trees. “Don’t fuck with us!” she shouts up to a rabid sky, and I imagine the FBI agents inside her house where Hozier must be deafening.

I was born sick, but I love it …

Then Lucy’s palatial timber home instantly goes dark. I can’t see a single light on. Her smart house is computerized. There are no switches in the walls. The FBI isn’t controlling the audio system. Or the lights. Janet is. Of that I have no doubt, and Lucy is laughing in the hammering rain and music as if this is the funniest day of her life.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen …

“Tell Marino to meet me at the truck.” I head toward the driveway, my wet shirt coldly plastered to my back. “You can’t stay here. For a lot of reasons you, Janet and Desi absolutely can’t.” I talk over splashing water and Hozier worshipping like a dog at the shrine of your lies. “You need to move in with us for a while,” I yell back at Lucy. “I don’t want to argue about it.”

Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

RAIN POUNDS THE METAL ROOF AS IF A MAD DRUMMER is on top of us. The early afternoon is dark. It feels like dawn or dusk. It feels like the world is about to end.

I’m coming out of my skin. Something is sliding, rolling around in the back of my big white truck as I drive in the monsoon. The object is hard and metallic. It moves a short distance, hits something then stops and rolls again depending on which way I turn or if I slow down or speed up. I can hear it clearly through the partition that separates the cab from the boxy body, and there was no such noise this morning before I parked by Lucy’s gate. It started minutes ago as we lumbered around a hairpin curve.

CLANK CLANK CLANK.

“We need to see what the hell that is.” Marino has said this several times but there’s nothing I can do.

There was no place to pull over earlier and we’re on Route 2 now in heavy rain and Friday traffic. The visibility is abysmal. Everybody has their lights on as if it’s night, and even if I wanted to detour there’s nothing here. Just the highway and a big mud hole of a construction site on my right and three lanes of cars and trucks on my left. I’m mindful of the day slipping away. I seem to have very little control over anything including my time.

“I can’t pull over right now.” I tell Marino the same thing I did when he first suggested it.

“It sounds like rebar rolling around.”

“It can’t be.”