When she caught Martin's eye, she twiddled her fingers at him in an ain't-I-cute way.

"Apparently, I do," he told the kid.

A few hours after the signing in Reading, they lay naked and sweating on the covers of yet another uncomfortable motel bed, this one in Bethlehem. Tish had followed him since she heard about James Barclay's escape. She caught the news while on the late shift at her local hospital, what she called "working a night turn," doing her internship for Duquesne University's School of Nursing.

She caught up with him in Harrisburg. "Worried to hell," she said. She'd taken a couple of days off, making it her mission to protect him. Whether she'd followed him in spite of the way he treated her or because of it, like a beaten puppy too loyal or too stupid not to come running when its master needed help, he didn't know.

Daddy must have done a job on her, he thought.

"Where'd you get that thing, anyway?"

"What? Tansy?"

"You gave your Taser a name?"

"You named your dick, dintcha?"

He grinned. "Fair enough."

"This friend of mine got raped on campus one time." She took a puff off the joint he'd rolled. "After that, it seemed like girls were getting ascared of their own shadows. I didn't wanna be afraid all the time like them all. I asked my daddy what to do, so he got me Tansy."

"It's pretty cool of your father to do that for you."

"That's what dad's do, isn't it? Protect their kids?"

He shrugged, faking indifference. In his house Aunt Norma had protected him. He supposed if his father had been around, it might have been different. But his father had left long before Martin was born, and he'd grown up without a paternal influence at all.

Daddy did a job on me, he thought.

He meant it as a joke but it felt more like self-pity.

"I'm gonna tinkle," Tish said, pushing up from the bed.

He watched her walk, enjoying the sight as the folds beneath her ass cheeks vanished and reappeared. He got up and padded over the coarse carpeting to the bottle of bourbon he'd left beside the two complimentary plastic cups provided by the motel. He thought about throwing on a towel and getting some ice from the machine outside, but his hard-on would be difficult to miss even under the plush fabric. There were at least two families staying here at the Firefly Motor Court.

He poured two fingers and sipped it casually, glancing at Tish's clothes scattered on the floor. The lacy purple bra and mismatched black thong. The black tights and gray wool winter socks. Her boots, long, flat-soled black things she'd kicked off at the door, lying beside his brown leather jodhpur boots.

He turned to the dresser and saw the Gideon's bible had been opened.

It was in the top drawer when he left for the bookstore. He always checked for the Bible. Made sure the phone worked. Checked if there was cable. These were small rituals he performed in every hotel room. Rituals that helped provide the illusion of safety. A sense of home and place.