His assailant had gone out the exterior basement steps and fled through the backyard. A neighbor must have called 911, because they’d only just got out of there before police swarmed the area. Outside Roanoke, they’d dumped their vehicles in a grocery-store parking lot and paid cash for a 1995 Ford Probe.

“Drove it right off the guy’s lawn,” Hendricks said. He was awake and was sitting up on the couch, stretching and yawning.

From there, they’d driven south until they found a cheap rental cabin. They’d stashed Gibson in the trunk and passed themselves off as newlyweds celebrating their first anniversary. The cabin was rented for the month of August. It was isolated. Paid up front in cash, and the landlord lived in Raleigh so was unlikely to stop by unannounced. All in all, it was about as off the grid as one could hope on short notice while transporting an injured person.

“Cell phones?” Gibson asked.

“Duct-taped to the underside of two different eighteen-wheelers,” Hendricks said.

“We’re on burners.” Jenn held up a disposable flip phone. “So now you know our story. Mind telling us how you came to be hanging from a rope?”

“What do we have to eat? I’m starving,” Gibson asked.

“Strained peas? Creamy carrots?”

“Besides baby food.”

“They grow up so fast,” Hendricks said.

Hendricks turned out to be a fine cook. Either that or Gibson was hungrier than he’d ever been in his life. He polished off the eggs, bacon, and hash browns and went back for seconds. And thirds. Jenn came in from the living room and stood in the doorway.

“What was in Charlottesville?” she asked.

Gibson looked at each of them. Where to begin? Without the paternity test or Duke’s thumb drive, there was no proof. How could he ask them to take it on faith? Until the paternity test had been waved in his face, he’d feared that it was his father. How to convince them that Benjamin Lombard was the real enemy? Might as well start at the beginning, he decided, and opened The Fellowship of the Ring to show them Bear’s notes. At least it was something tangible.

“What should she have told you?” Jenn asked, looking up from the book. “What happened at the game?”

He told them about the trip to the baseball game and Bear’s meltdown in the stadium. “I went to Charlottesville for my dad’s diary. I thought maybe it would have the rest of the story.”

“Did it?”

He told them about his dad’s account. The decision to take Suzanne home early. Buying the two Phillies caps.

“Duke bought the cap?” Jenn asked.

Hendricks whistled. “That’s a mind-bender right there.”

He explained the origin of Tom Bombadil and why she’d invented the boyfriend. “It was Lombard,” Gibson said. “That was why she ran. It was Lombard’s baby.”