Okay.

It’s still on.

I had a bad feeling I had accidentally switched it off or the battery was dead, but no, it’s fine. It’s operating. It’s keeping my presence in the telecommunications world unknown at the present time.

I pass a Walmart truck, think of where the other burner phone has ended up. No matter. And still, I know I’m violating lots of tradecraft by taking this major highway to my destination in Texas. Here I’m vulnerable, I can be tracked—hell, maybe I’m being tracked at this very moment via drones, surveillance cameras, passing vans and trucks that secretly belong to the DoD and are part of the grand, unknown domestic surveillance system.

It’s a trade-off. To keep from view and surveillance, I should be taking secondary roads and state roads all the way to Texas, avoid being out in the open on the interstate.

But that would triple my travel time, and that’s what I don’t have.

Time.

My burner phone rings. I switch on the directional and slowly pull over to the side of the road, and then go into the grassy area running parallel to the pavement. No use being parked close to the side of the highway and having some distracted trucker pancake me and my Jeep into steel, blood, and rubber. There’s a thick grove of trees off to the right.

“Cornwall,” I say.

“Amy…ah crap, hold on for a minute, will you?”

It’s Freddy and I’m eager to learn what she’s discovered—if anything—and what I’ll do about it.

A voice from past training comes to me: Intelligence is intelligence. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s information to be used. That is all. Stop trying to weld feelings on something that is inherently neutral.

Intelligence.

I take a breath. All right, then.

“Amy,” comes Freddy’s voice. “Another minute.”

“Sure.”

I need something to distract me from the roaring traffic going by me and the view of the nearby woods and wide fields. My iPhone is in my hand now. I flick through various prompts and screens, and come to a favorite: Last summer on Virginia Beach. Tom in his black swimming trunks, strongly striding his way back in from the water, standing in front of me, his body an okay body—he can’t get rid of those soft handles around those hips—but it’s his damn smile and eyes that still warm me and tug at me.

The sound’s off so I can’t hear the sound of the waves or any other ambient noise, but that’s just fine. In the corner of the screen is Denise in a bright-orange swimsuit—she had asked me earlier, “Why such a bright suit, Mom?” and I never told her the truth, So I can always see you, no matter how far you go—digging at something with a yellow plastic shovel.

Then she dumps out the wet sand in her pail, scoops up a couple of quarts of cold Atlantic water, and starts racing toward her father. She’s giggling and the water is spilling out of the bucket, and something in my voice or attitude must have betrayed me, because Tom looks and sees her approaching, and he stands still.