Pr—

Oh. Bathroom. Head.

If they think I’ve got dope they’ll think I’m trying to dump it.

But Eddie understood that part didn’t matter. They wouldn’t exactly break down the door, because that might scare the passengers. And they’d know you couldn’t flush two pounds of coke down an airline toilet and leave no trace. Not unless the voice was really telling the truth . . . that there was some safe place. But how could there be?

Never mind, damn you! MOVE!

Eddie moved. Because he had finally come alive to the situation. He was not seeing all Roland, with his many years and his training of mingled torture and precision, could see, but he could see the faces of the stews—the real faces, the ones behind the smiles and the helpful passing of garment bags and cartons stowed in the forward closet. He could see the way their eyes flicked to him, whiplash quick, again and again.

He got his bag. He got his jacket. The door to the jetway had been opened, and people were already moving up the aisle. The door to the cockpit was open, and here was the Captain, also smiling . . . but also looking at the passengers in first class who were still getting their things together, spotting him—no, targeting him—and then looking away again, nodding to someone, tousling a youngster’s head.

He was cold now. Not cold turkey, just cold. He didn’t need the voice in his head to make him cold. Cold—sometimes that was okay. You just had to be careful you didn’t get so cold you froze.

Eddie moved forward, reached the point where a left turn would take him into the jetway—and then suddenly put his hand to his mouth.

“I don’t feel well,” he murmured. “Excuse me.” He moved the door to the cockpit, which slightly blocked the door to the first class head, and opened the bathroom door on the right.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to exit the plane,” the pilot said sharply as Eddie opened the bathroom door. “It’s—”

“I believe I’m going to vomit, and I don’t want to do it on your shoes,” Eddie said, “or mine, either.”

A second later he was in with the door locked. The Captain was saying something. Eddie couldn’t make it out, didn’t want to make it out. The important thing was that it was just talk, not yelling, he had been right, no one was going to start yelling with maybe two hundred and fifty passengers still waiting to deplane from the single forward door. He was in, he was temporarily safe . . . but what good was it going to do him?

If you’re there, he thought, you better do something very quick, whoever you are.

For a terrible moment there was nothing at all. That was a short moment, but in Eddie Dean’s head it seemed to stretch out almost forever, like the Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy Henry had sometimes bought him in the summer when they were kids; if he were bad, Henry beat the shit out of him, if he were good, Henry bought him Turkish Taffy. That was the way Henry handled his heightened responsibilities during summer vacation.