Sandra and Bose exchanged glances. Bose said, “How often did this happen, Ariel?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once or twice a year when he was younger.”

“Was it ever serious? Did he get hurt, did he hurt anyone else?”

“No…”

“Whatever you can tell us might help us find him.”

“I don’t see how.” Pause. “Well. Once he hit the Lewisson boy hard enough he had to get stitches over his eye. Other times it was just scuffles. Maybe a black eye or two. Sometimes Orrin got the worst of it. Sometimes not.” She added, “He always felt bad about it afterward.”

“Okay, thank you,” Bose said. “Anything else Orrin talked about this morning that you can recall? Anything at all, even if it seems unimportant.”

“No. Just the weather, like I said. He was interested in the weather report coming over the radio in the coffee shop. They’re calling for heavy rain tonight. That excited him. ‘I guess it’s tonight,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s the night.’”

“Any idea what he meant by that?”

“Well, he always did like storms. You know. The thunder and all.”

*   *   *

Bose convinced Ariel to stay in her room, “otherwise I’ll end up looking for the both of you.” And Ariel had calmed down enough to see the sense in it.

“You’ll call me, though, right? Soon as you know anything?”

“I’ll call you whether we know anything or not.”

Back in the motel lobby, Bose talked to the desk clerk for a few minutes. Orrin had been waiting for the downtown bus, the clerk said. No, he hadn’t actually seen Orrin get on. Just noticed him waiting out there. Skinny guy in torn jeans and a yellow T-shirt standing in the sun by the side of the road. “Begging for heat stroke in this weather, if you ask me. Those buses only come along every forty-five minutes.”

“So what do we do?” Sandra asked when Bose had finished.

“Depends. Maybe you want to stay here with Ariel?”

“Or maybe I don’t.”

“I can think of a couple of places we might look.”

“You’re saying you know where he went?”

“I have an idea or two,” Bose said.

Chapter Twenty-Three. Sandra and Bose

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ALLISON’S STORY

Isaac Dvali explained how he’d turned off the Network surveillance. Turk sat warily still, watching Isaac, watching me.

“It’s true,” I said when Isaac finished, and I told him the rest of it: that I’d talked to Isaac days ago, that Isaac knew about our plan, and that (at least for the moment) the Network couldn’t hear a word we said.