'No, Tom,' she interrupted. 'You can't cross these people, not in any of the old ways, and certainly not by running to the papers. This is the twenty-first century, for Chrissakes. Their net-scrubbers can comprehend and collate a billion conversations a second. And the effectiveness of their tools doubles every eighteen months, while we humans just stay the same. Watch the news. There's only martyrs now. That's the only way left.. Everything else is just the appearance of conflict.'

Thomas opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. What was she saying? That he was living in a police state? Measures had been taken, certainly, but there was no way—

'Tom, we're all that's been given, and all that you're gonna get. So if you're serious about finding Neil—serious about saving Frankie—you need to get a handle on yourself. You call us second-stringers? Maybe so. But so far you've been little more than dead weight to this investigation. You hear me? Dead. Weight.'

Thomas blinked, as shamed by his own 'second-stringer' comment as by her accusation. He lowered his face into his hands. Women, it seemed, were often desperate in their anger, as though pained by the suspicion that men needed less and so had less to lose. But not always. Sometimes they lashed out with a certainty indistinguishable from honesty—absolute honesty.

For men, honesty was always a matter of degree.

Sam's expression was inscrutable, her demeanor relentless, so different from the hesitancy and ambitiousness that had characterized her until now.

I raped her, Thomas thought.

No, something different. And the same.

'Look, Tom,' she said. 'I'm a spaced chick. It's like I'm continually at war with the urge to please whatever guy I happen to be attracted to. And you know what? I usually find it simple. With most guys, everything can be boiled down to feed me, fuck me, or flatter m—'

'How about,' Thomas found himself saying, 'marry me?'

I'm losing my mind …

Sam looked away, blinking. 'That's just the condensed version,' she said.

Neil was doing this. Neil. Neil. Neil.

'You're scaring me, Tom. I mean, you're so fucking complicated. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say… Christ, I don't even know what my own motives are anymore.'

Miraculously, it seemed, she was kneeling before him, resting her chin on his naked knee. So beautiful…

Take a step back Think clear. Think straight.

She was right. He knew she was right. Somehow he'd let self-pity get the upper hand. Somehow, he'd allowed himself to start mourning his son.

Mourning when he should have been fighting.

He breathed deep, pressed his palms down to his knees. 'I'm suffering what's called a major depressive episode,' he said, clearing phlegm from his throat. 'A common response to bereavement'—he swallowed—'characterized by morbid thoughts, despondency, irregular sleep…'

A sense of worthlessness.