“Do you see how treacherous it is if you believe you can divine her fantasies?” I hear the high-pitched whine of the drill turning on.

I WAIT FOR THE SHARP THUNDEROUS CRACK, the billowing black explosion. But there’s nothing.

“I know the formula for defining who and what she is and does,” Benton is saying. “And she thinks she can do the same with us.”

“But she can’t.” I roll up my window and shove the gear into reverse. “She can’t possibly, not accurately. She doesn’t have a Rosetta stone that can help her decipher people like us no matter what she believes in her wildest delusions. Carrie is missing too many moral pieces. A conscience for example.”

“Don’t ever undersell her shrewdness, Kay,” Benton says.

“And don’t you undersell her malignancy, her sickness. She isn’t us.” I back up and nose out, driving away as I wait for the worst to happen. “And she can’t possibly think and feel exactly like us.”

“Meaning she’s capable of miscalculating.”

“As are we,” I reply, and he doesn’t argue but he doesn’t agree with me either.

I can’t hear the drill bit grinding through metal anymore as I drive away slowly through the flooded River Basin, looking in my rearview mirror. I watch Marino until he’s a small figure I can scarcely recognize. Then he’s gone as we round a bend and I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

“Sickness?” Benton returns to that. “You know better than to assume she’s crazy.”

“I’m referring to her physical health.” I may never see Marino alive again.

For an instant I’m too upset to speak. I can barely breathe as I listen for the noise of the world coming to an end. Not the entire world. But mine. Will it be a big bang or a whimper? How does death announce itself when it’s our turn at last? Of all people I should know. But I don’t. Not today. Not like this.

“What about her health?” Benton asks me again, and I can’t abide what I believe he’s done.

“Ernie detected trace amounts of copper in the dust bunny, the fletching,” I reply. “He says it permeates the samples I collected.”

“I guess it could be from the copper arrow,” Benton says but his mind is going through something else, making another dangerous calculation that will probably turn out wrong. “Staying there is what she expects us to do.”

“As opposed to what we’re actually doing, which is driving away and waiting for Marino to die?” Bile is coming up the back of my throat.