“You don’t have to ask us twice,” Rusty says and he and Harold hurry back into the van. “We’ll be a couple blocks from here.” It’s Harold who shouts this. “Just call when you’re ready.”

“Unless you hear a big bang. In that case take to the hills.” Marino starts walking alone toward the Cambridge police cruiser abandoned between huge mounds of sand and gravel.

He pauses. He turns around and stares right at me, and when it’s apparent I’m not climbing back inside my SUV and driving away he gets on his radio. I can’t hear what he says as he walks toward the cruiser with his back to me. But instantly a uniformed officer strides in my direction, a young cop I’ve seen before.

He politely, firmly tells Benton and me that we need to leave the scene now, and when that gets no response he warns us. If we don’t drive away immediately we’ll be interfering with a police investigation. As if he really might haul an FBI agent and a chief medical examiner in handcuffs, and I’m not paying any attention as I watch Marino stop walking again. He turns around and looks back at us as the rain smacks and splashes more slowly. But it seems louder. It seems more ominous.

“GO!” he bellows. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

If it happens he doesn’t want me to see it.

He walks on. Benton and I get back inside the SUV, only this time he’s in front, and we watch in unbearable silence. Marino has reached the rear of the police cruiser now. He’s up to his ankles in mud, and he sets the carrying cases on the highest driest ground he can find, and he opens them. I see him pick up the cordless drill and attach a battery pack. He walks around the trunk, squatting, standing, studying every detail as he determines where to make the hole.

The first bite of the steel drill bit into metal and the car is going to explode.

“It’s not what we think,” Benton says as Marino targets the top of the trunk lid, exactly in the middle. “This isn’t what we think, Kay. It’s what she thinks. This is her fantasy and we’re obliging her by playing it out.”

“Are you suggesting the car isn’t going to blow up? That it’s a bluff?”

“I don’t know the answer. But I do know her. I think it’s a bluff but I couldn’t possibly suggest such a thing. We should leave.”

“Carrie’s fantasy? And you know what that is, Benton? Isn’t it really dangerous to assume you can think and feel like her?”

I’m so worried about Marino I don’t know whether to scream or cry.