'Not the ridicule. I mean the publicity. So long as we turn ourselves in, I'd be surprised if any of this made the courts.' Thomas breathed deep for what seemed the first time in weeks. 'There'll be threats, certainly. But there's a good chance we could simply get away with this.' He smiled, glancing away from the road. 'All thanks to your peculiar choice of evening attire.'

Mia didn't look convinced. 'You don't have family in Alabama,' he said.

The sun was full and low in the east when he dropped Mia off at an Exxon just outside Tarrytown. Everything, the dull-shining pumps, the gum-freckled pavement, possessed the air of cold things warming to the rush of daily life. Cars shot past, roaring as though driving across paste.

'Take care, Tommy,' Mia said, leaning into his window. He glanced at Frankie slumped in the back. 'That goes for him too.'

'I will.' Thomas swallowed at a pang in his throat. 'Remember, lie low for a day or so. Keep away from cameras—anything connected. Then turn yourself in.'

A pensive nod—reluctant even. 'Watch out for that bastard. Remember the Neil you knew is dead.'

Thomas gazed at the man, found himself, in spite of everything, begging with his eyes. 'Tell me this is going to work.'

Mia flinched. For a moment, he managed to smile in reassurance, but his expression faltered, became slack with admission. He looked like someone turned inside out for giving.

'What the fuck do I know, Tommy.'

A numb and breathless nod.

Mia pulled his arms from the door, backed away. 'This is crazy,' he said, his eyes brimming with tears. He pulled a hand through his hair. Though he stood straight and motionless, he looked as though he might be falling. 'Crazy-crazy.'

Thomas clicked the window, watched the tinted glass swallow his Number One Neighbor. He dropped the shift into drive, began pulling away. He didn't notice that Frankie's eyes had popped open.

Not until he began screaming.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

August 31st, 8.26 a.m.

All that separated luck from grace, Thomas's grandmother had told him once, was the sincerity of the prayer beforehand.

Car after car slipped past the shining black BMW, weaving between the elephantine eighteen-wheelers. Beautiful coeds, yakking and laughing on their palmtops. Resentful punks with buttoned lips, staring and scoffing at the German engineered lines. Old women, eyes fixed religiously forward, their hands 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. Sleek mothers. Wizened golfers. Cockpit businessmen. All of them propelled by soundless engines, skating the lines of utterly disconnected lives.

All of them oblivious to the leather-padded sarcophagus that whistled in their midst, sucking up scream after scream.

The road was little more than a whisper, the countryside a wobble, the world a brief windshield glare. Thomas Bible reached back to soothe his only son. Little-boy limbs cringed from his adult hand.

'You are mine, you know.'