“But we’re expected.” She looked to the others, everyone watching her now as if all the progress of their lives depended on this exchange. “We’re guests. Actually,” she said, and she couldn’t suppress a flush of pride, “we’re going to be living here.”

The man just blinked at her. “I guess the Hitchcock boys’ll have something to say about that.” Then, sweeping his eyes over the whole group, he put the car in gear, added, “You take care now,” and drove off.

Everyone looked to her—and why was her heart fluttering? “Yes,” she said, smiling in relief. “This is it.”

Ken and Fitz immediately strode across the street and tried the gate, but it was padlocked, and then the rain that had held off all day began to spatter the pavement and they all had to retreat to the shelter of their cars. “So near,” she said, climbing in and slamming the door behind her, “and yet so far.”

“I don’t know why they couldn’t have left the gate open,” Fitz said, and though he rarely complained, he was complaining now. “I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t know we were coming.”

“I’ll go,” Corey said, and before she could object—But it’s raining—the door sliced open on a cool sweet smell of wet fields and moribund wildflowers and he was across the street and mounting the low wall at the side of the gatehouse. She saw him perched there a moment and then he was gone, racing up the drive through a scrim of rain.

“You think he’ll be all right?” she murmured, turning to Fitz. The main house was a full mile from the gate, or so Dick had said, because that was the way the original owner, a German American industrialist named Dieterich, had wanted it, not simply as a show of elegance and the privilege that came with wealth but for privacy too. Which was ideal for Tim’s purposes—for their purposes—as if they really were on Huxley’s island. But still, a mile was a mile. And it was coming down hard now, ricocheting up off the pavement and churning in the gullies on both sides of the road.

“He’s fifteen,” Fitz said. “He’s been wet before.”

“What’s the world record for a mile?”

“Just under four minutes. But give Corey ten—he’s out of training.”

The windows had steamed up, but she lit a cigarette anyway, just to do something. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get there?” she asked.

“I don’t know—have a drink, I guess.”

“Yeah, me too. But no margaritas—something German, right? What do the Germans drink anyway?”

“Beer.”

“And schnapps—what about schnapps?”