Gracie hit the brakes. Sandra let out a short scream as the car came to an abrupt halt, pitching her briefcase from the back seat and down into the footwell. Out of the corner of her eye she saw why Gracie had done what she did. A deer had darted across the road. It went past in a flash, disappearing into the woods at the side of the road, its back legs kicking high into the air as it leapt over a crumbling wire fence.

“Jesus!” Sandra said. “Nice going, Gracie.”

There was a deer “harvest” every year on the island—a nice way, Sandra thought, of saying “slaughter.” But the animals were a major carrier of ticks, and the incidence of Lyme disease was up, so there hadn’t been much public outcry about reducing the size of the herd. There were believed to be about five hundred of them on the island, about fifty per square mile. She’d read recently in the Garrett Gazette that more than seven hundred had been killed this year.

The car started to move again and, seconds later, was turning into the community center parking lot. Gracie got as close as she could to the main doors without actually driving up on the sidewalk.

“You have reached your destination,” Gracie said.

“Great. Open up.”

The back door slid open. Sandra reached down and retrieved the briefcase. “Find a place to park, Gracie. See you later.”

Sandra got out. A second after the door closed, the car, without a passenger, moved over to the parking lot and slipped into a spot between two other Arrivals. One of them, she noted, bore the logo of the Garrett Island Police on the side. Even the cops had had their regular rides replaced. Joe had told her that only one traditional island cop car had remained on the island, and that was because it was in the shop for service. About the only vehicles on the entire island that were still actually driven by real people were the fire trucks and the island ambulance.

She smiled inwardly at seeing the police car. So, she thought, Joe is here.

“Hey, about time!”

Sandra whirled around. Given that her thoughts at that moment had been of Joe, she half expected it to be him, but was not surprised when she saw that it was Albert Ruskin. She’d had countless Zoom chats with the assistant to Arrival president Lisa Carver, plenty of FaceTime discussions on her phone. But this was their first in-person face-to-face.

It struck her, almost instantly, how he was just as unpleasant in the flesh. He wore a permanent expression of disapproval, as if, as a child, his face had frozen at the moment he was being force-fed broccoli.

“Hi,” she said.