He dressed gingerly, grunting through the pain of pulling on a T-shirt. His messenger bag was at the end of the bed, and he went through it to confirm that his laptop was gone, along with his father’s thumb drive. But Billy’s gun remained along with the Phillies cap and The Fellowship of the Ring. Inside he also found the picture of Bear pregnant on the couch. Pregnant with the baby of “Tom B.”

A crazy thought occurred to him. He began flipping back through the pages of the book, back to the beginning. It took a minute, but he found the passage he was looking for and read the familiar words aloud:

“Now, my little fellows, where be you a-going to, puffing like a bellows? What’s the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I’m Tom Bombadil. Tell me what’s your trouble! Tom’s in a hurry now.”

Tears washed down his face, but he was smiling too. A despairing elation. In the margin, in orange pen:

I knew you would.

Gibson laughed aloud and stifled himself with a hand over his mouth. What this brave girl had done. It defied belief. His tears hadn’t stopped, but he felt clearheaded for the first time in as long as he could remember. Clearheaded and angry. He wiped the tears away. He knew what came now.

He put the cap on and, holding the book tight like a catechism, shambled out to the living room. It was small and rustic and smelled like the inside of an old steamer trunk. Hendricks was asleep on a threadbare couch, but his eyes flickered open as Gibson shuffled past. A bulky old TV on a crooked stand was tuned to the news. It was a story about the imminent convention in Atlanta. Although Anne Fleming had not formally conceded, Lombard’s candidacy was assured. Reportedly, the two were scheduled to meet in Atlanta about the possibility of a joint ticket.

Jenn sat at a small table by the window, several handguns and ammunition laid out before her, fieldstripping a Steyr M-A1. He was fairly sure Jenn could do it in the dark, because she never took her eyes off the tiny gap between the curtains that gave her a view of the approach.

“Done lying around?” she asked without looking up.

“Good to see you too.”

She glanced his way and smiled. “You look taller.”

“I don’t feel it. Where are we?”

“North Carolina. Outside Greensboro.”

“Greensboro?”

Jenn and Hendricks caught him up. From the chaos of the lake house shootout to the tracker sewn into his messenger bag that had led them south to Charlottesville and the Cherokee parked outside his childhood home.

“How’d you find us?” she asked.

“Hacked Hendricks’s phone.”

She looked almost impressed; Hendricks not so much.

“Guess that makes us even,” she said.

“Guess it does.”