I rest my weight on my left leg, and the full symphony of pain in my right thigh subsides to a low drumroll, to the slow sawing of a cello. The high pitches are gone, and it’s those that are intolerable. The rest I’ve learned to live with, the quieter, deeper rhythm of hurt.

“Geez Doc.” Marino pauses. “You all right?”

“I’m the same.”

He stares straight up, and we resume walking. “Something fucking weird is going on,” he decides.

He has no idea how weird it is. “It’s serious. That’s for sure,” I reply.

The chopper is a beefy twin-engine Bell 429. Completely blacked out, Apache-ominous, and I note the mounted gyro stabilized camera under the nose, the thermal imaging system or FLIR that looks like a radar dome on the belly. I recognize the special operations platforms known as cargo racks that are designed to move SWAT or members of the FBI’s elitist Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). There are going to be at least half a dozen agents on bench seats inside the cabin, ready to rappel down and swarm the property on command.

“Maybe they’re spying on you,” Marino says, and his comment reminds me of other types of spying that I can’t stop thinking about.

For an instant I see Carrie inside Lucy’s dorm room. I see her piercing eyes and startlingly short bleached hair. I feel her cold-blooded aggression. I sense her as if she’s within reach, and she might be.

“Then they should think of something a little less obvious than a tactical helicopter.” I continue to say one thing while my mind is on another as we follow a circular driveway long enough to jog on.

In the center are acres of meadowland splashed with wildflowers where huge granite sculptures of fantastic creatures seem to wander and make themselves at home. We’ve already walked past a dragon, an elephant, a buffalo, a rhinoceros, and just now a mother bear with her cubs, sculpted from native stone out west somewhere and set in place by a crane. Lucy doesn’t have to worry about anyone stealing her tons of art, and I watch for her as the monotonous noise continues overhead, rotor blades batting air. Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump.

I’m hot and sticky and hurting as I walk, and the sound is maddening. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! I love helicopters except for this one. I feel hateful as if it lives and breathes and we’re personal enemies. Then I do a systems check of myself, concentrating on my hearing, my vision, my breathing, the pain jolting my leg with each step, with each shift of balance.