EIGHT

By nightfall they were fifty miles past Oklahoma City, hurtling west across the open prairie toward a wall of spring thunderheads ascending from the horizon like a bank of blooming flowers in a time-lapse video. Doyle was fast asleep in the Tahoe’s passenger seat, his head wedged into the space between the headrest and the window, cushioned against the bumps in the road by a folded jacket. At times like this, Wolgast found himself envying Doyle, his powers of oblivion. He could turn his own lights off like a ten-year-old, put his head down and sleep virtually anywhere. Wolgast’s fatigue was deep; he knew the smart thing would have been to pull off and change places, catch a few winks himself. But he had driven the whole distance from Memphis, and the feel of the wheel in his hands was the only thing that made him think he still had a card to play.

Since his call to Sykes, their only contact had taken place in a truck-stop parking lot outside Little Rock, where a field agent had met them with an envelope of cash—three thousand dollars, all in twenties and fifties—and a fresh vehicle, a plain-wrapper Bureau sedan. But by then Wolgast had decided he liked the Tahoe and wanted to keep it. He liked its big, muscular eight-cylinder engine and swishy steering and bouncy suspension. He hadn’t driven anything like it in years. It seemed a pity to send a vehicle like that into the crusher, and when the agent offered him the keys to the sedan, he waved them off imperiously, without a second thought.

“Is there anything on the wires about us?” he’d asked the agent—a fresh recruit with a face pink as a slice of ham.

The agent frowned with confusion. “I don’t know anything about it.”

Wolgast considered this. “Good,” he said finally. “You’ll want to keep it that way.”

The agent had then taken him around to the sedan’s trunk, which sprang open to meet them. Inside was the black nylon duffel bag he hadn’t asked for but still expected.

“Keep it,” he said.

“You sure? I’m supposed to give it to you.”

Wolgast shifted his gaze toward the Tahoe, parked at the edge of the lot between two dozing semis. Through the rear window, he could see Doyle but not the girl, who was lying down on the backseat. He really wanted to get moving; whatever else was true, sitting still was not an option. As for the bag, maybe he needed it and maybe he didn’t. But the decision to leave it behind felt right.

“Tell the office anything you want,” he said. “What I could really use is some coloring books.”

“I’m sorry?”

Wolgast would have laughed if he were in the mood. He put his palm on the lid of the trunk and pushed it closed. “Never mind,” he said.

The bag held guns, of course, and ammunition, and maybe a couple of armored vests. Probably there’d be one in there for the girl, too; there was a company in Ohio that was making them for kids now, since that thing in Minneapolis. Wolgast had caught a segment about it on the Today show. They were actually making a Zylon snapsuit for infants. What a world, he thought.

Now, Little Rock six hours behind them, he was still glad he’d declined the bag. Whatever happened, happened; part of him wanted to be stopped. Outside Little Rock, he’d actually let the speedometer drift up to eighty, only dimly aware of what he was doing—that he was daring some state trooper or even a local cop sitting behind a billboard to call the whole thing off. But then Doyle had told him to slow down—Yo, chief, shouldn’t you ease off the pedal a bit?—and his mind had snapped back into focus. He’d actually been playing out the scene in his mind: the flashing lights and a single, tart bleep of the siren; pulling the truck over to the side and placing his open hands on the wheel, lifting his eyes to the rearview to watch the officer calling in the plate number on his radio. Two grown men and a minor in a vehicle with temporary Tennessee tags: it wouldn’t take long to put the whole thing together, to connect them to the nun and the zoo. Whenever he imagined the scene, he couldn’t see beyond that moment, the cop with one hand on his mike, the other resting on the butt of his weapon. What would Sykes do? Would he say he’d ever even heard of them? No, he and Doyle would go into the shredder, just like Anthony Carter.

As for the girl: he didn’t know.

They’d skirted the Oklahoma City limits to the northeast, dodging the Interstate 40 checkpoint and bisecting I-35 on an anonymous rural blacktop, far from any cameras. The Tahoe lacked a GPS, but Wolgast had one on his handheld. Guiding the steering wheel with one hand, nimbly thumbing away on the handheld’s tiny keys with the other, he let their route evolve as they went, a patchwork of county and state roads, some gravel or even just hard-packed dirt, to carry them gradually north and west. Now, all that lay between them and the Colorado border were a few small towns—towns with names like Virgil and Ricochet and Buckrack—half-abandoned oases in a sea of tallgrass prairie with little to show for themselves but a mini-mart, a couple of churches, a grain elevator and, between them, the miles of open plain. Flyover country: the word it made him think of was eternal. He guessed it looked much the same as it always had, the way it would go on looking just about forever. A man could disappear into a place like this without hardly trying, live his life without one soul to notice.

Maybe, Wolgast thought, when this was all over, he’d come back. He might need a place like that.

Amy was so quiet in the backseat it might have been possible to forget she was there at all, if not for the fact that everything about her being there was wrong. A six-year-old girl. Goddamn Sykes, Wolgast thought. Goddamn the Bureau, goddamn Doyle, and goddamn himself while he was at it. Lying across the wide backseat with her hair spilled over her cheek, Amy looked as if she were sleeping, but Wolgast didn’t think she was; she was pretending, watching him like a cat. Whatever had happened in her life so far, it had taught her how to wait. Whenever Wolgast had asked her if she needed to stop to use the bathroom or get something to eat—she hadn’t touched the crackers and milk, warm and spoiled by now—the lids of her eyes had lifted with a feline quickness at the sound of her name, meeting his gaze in the mirror for a single second that went through him like a three-foot icicle. Then she’d shut them again. He hadn’t heard her voice since the zoo, more than eight hours ago.

Lacey. That was the nun’s name. Who’d held on to Amy like death itself. When Wolgast thought about that awful human tug-of-war in the parking lot, everyone yelling and screaming, the memory twisted in his gut with an actual physical pain. Hey, Lila, guess what? I stole a kid today. So now we’ll each have one, how about that?

Doyle was rousing in the passenger seat. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his expression blank and focusless. His mind, Wolgast knew, was reassembling his awareness of where he was. He looked back at Amy quickly, then turned to face forward again.

“Looks like some weather ahead,” he said.

The thunderheads had risen to a boil, blocking the sunset and sinking them into a premature darkness. At the horizon, beneath a shelf of clouds, a haze of rain was falling through a band of golden sunlight onto the fields.

Doyle leaned forward to examine the sky through the windshield. His voice was quiet. “How far away you think that is?”

“I guess about five miles.”

“Maybe we should get off the road.” Doyle checked his watch. “Or turn south for a while.”

Two miles later, they passed an unmarked dirt road, its edges lined with barbed-wire fencing. Wolgast stopped the car and backed up. The road crested a gentle rise and vanished into a line of cottonwoods; probably there was a river on the other side of the hill, or at least a gully. Wolgast checked the GPS; the road wasn’t on it.

“I don’t know,” Doyle said, when Wolgast showed him. “Maybe we should look for something else.”

Wolgast turned the wheel of the Tahoe and headed south. He didn’t think the road was a dead end; there would have been postal boxes at the intersection if it were. Three hundred yards later, the road narrowed to a single lane of rutted dirt. Beyond the tree line they crossed an old wooden bridge that spanned the creek Wolgast had foreseen. The evening light had gone a sallow green. He could see the storm rising above the horizon in his rearview mirror; he knew, from the blowing tips of the ditch grass on either side, that it was following them.

They had traveled another ten miles when the rain started to fall. They’d passed no houses or farms; they were in the middle of nowhere, with no cover. First just a few drops, but then, within seconds, a downpour of such force that Wolgast couldn’t see a thing. The wipers were useless. He pulled to the edge of the ditch as a huge gust of wind buffeted the car.

“What now, chief?” Doyle asked over the racket.

Wolgast looked at Amy, still pretending to sleep in the backseat. Thunder roiled overhead; she didn’t flinch. “Wait, I guess. I’m going to rest a minute.”

Wolgast closed his eyes, listening to the rain on the roof of the Tahoe. He let the sound wash through him. He’d learned to do this during those months with Eva, to rest without quite giving himself over to sleep, so that he could rise quickly and go to her crib if she awakened. Scattered memories began to gather in his mind, pictures and sensations from other times in his life: Lila in the kitchen of the house in Cherry Creek, on a morning not long after they’d bought the place, pouring milk into a bowl of cereal; the cold dousing of water as he dove from the pier in Coos Bay, the sounds of his friends’ voices above him, laughing and urging him on; the feeling of being very small himself, no more than a baby, and the noises and lights of the world around him, all of it letting him know he was safe. He had entered sleep’s antechamber, the place where dreams and memories mingled, telling their strange stories; yet part of him was still in the car, listening to the rain.

“I have to go.”

His eyes snapped open; the rain had stopped. How long had he slept? The car was dark; the sun had set. Doyle was twisted at the waist, turned to face the backseat.

“What did you say?” Doyle asked.

“I have to go,” the little girl stated. Her voice, after hours of silence, was startling: clear and forceful. “To the bathroom.”

Doyle looked at Wolgast nervously. “Want me to take her?” he said, though Wolgast knew he didn’t want to.

“Not you,” Amy said. She was sitting up now, holding her rabbit. It was a floppy thing, filthy with wear. She eyed Wolgast in the mirror, lifted her hand and pointed. “Him.”

Wolgast undid his seat belt and stepped from the Tahoe. The air was cool and still; he could see, to the southeast, the last of the storm receding, leaving in its wake a dry sky the color of ink, a deep blue-black. He hit the key fob to unlock the passenger door and Amy climbed out. She had zipped the front of her sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over her head.

“Okay?” he asked.

“I’m not doing it here.”

Wolgast didn’t say anything about not wandering off; there seemed no point. Where would she go? He led her fifty feet down the roadway, away from the lights of the Tahoe. Wolgast looked away while she stood at the edge of the ditch and pulled down her jeans.

“I need help.”

Wolgast turned. She was facing him, her jeans and underpants bunched around her ankles. He felt his face warm with embarrassment.

“What do you need me to do?”

She held out both her hands. Her fingers felt tiny in his own; her palms were moist with childlike heat. He had to hold tightly as she leaned back, giving him nearly all her weight, to position herself in a crouch, suspending her body out over the ditch like a piano swinging from a crane. Where had she learned to do this? Who else had held her hands this way?

When she was done he turned around so she could pull her pants back up.

“You don’t have to be afraid, honey.”

Amy said nothing; she made no motion to return to the Tahoe. Around them, the fields were empty, the air absolutely still, as if caught between breaths. Wolgast could feel it, the emptiness of the fields, the thousands of miles they spread in every direction. He heard the front door of the Tahoe open and slam closed; Doyle, going off to take a leak himself. Far off to the south, he heard a distant echo of thunder rolling away and, in the clear aural space behind it, a new sound—a kind of tinkling, like bells.

“We can be friends if you want,” he ventured. “Would that be okay?”

She was a strange girl, he thought again; why hadn’t she cried? Because she hadn’t, not since the zoo, and she’d never asked for her mother, or said she wanted to go home, or even back to the convent. Where was home for her? Memphis, maybe, but he had the feeling it wasn’t. No place was. Whatever had happened to the girl had taken the idea of home away.

Then, “I’m not afraid. We can go back to the car if you want.”

For a moment she just looked at him, in that evaluating way of hers. His ears had adjusted to the silence, and he was certain now that it was music he was hearing, the sound distorted by distance. Somewhere, down the road they were driving on, somebody was playing music.

“I’m Brad.” The name felt bland and heavy in his mouth.

She nodded.

“The other man? He’s Phil.”

“I know who you are. I heard you talking.” She shifted her weight. “You thought I wasn’t listening, but I was.”

A spooky kid. And smart, too. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she was sizing him up with her eyes, using the silence to appraise him, to draw him out. He felt as if he were speaking with somebody much older, though not exactly. He couldn’t put his finger on what the difference was.

“What’s in Colorado? That’s where we’re going, I heard you say it.”

Wolgast wasn’t sure how much to say. “Well, there’s a doctor there. He’s going to look at you. Like a checkup.”

“I’m not sick.”

“That’s why, I think. I don’t … well, I don’t really know.” He winced inwardly at the lie. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Don’t keep saying that.”

He was so taken aback by her directness that for a moment he said nothing. “Okay. That’s good. I’m glad you’re not.”

“Because I’m not afraid,” Amy declared, and began walking toward the lights of the Tahoe. “You are.”

A few miles later, they saw it up ahead: a domelike zone of thrumming light that sorted, as they approached, into discrete, orbiting points, like a family of constellations spinning low against the horizon. Just as Wolgast figured out what he was seeing, the road ended at an intersection. He turned on the overhead light and checked the GPS. A line of cars and pickup trucks, more than they had seen in hours, was passing on the highway, all headed in the same direction. He opened his window to the night air; the sound of music was unmistakable now.

“What is that?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast said nothing. He turned west, threading into the line of traffic. In the bed of the pickup ahead of them, a group of teenagers, about a half dozen, were sitting on bales of hay. They passed a sign that read, HOMER, OKLAHOMA, POP. 1,232.

“Not so close,” Doyle said, referring to the pickup. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

Wolgast ignored him. A girl, spotting Wolgast’s face through the windshield, waved at him, the wind blowing her hair around her face. The lights of the fair were growing clearer now, as were the signs of civilization: a water tank on stilts, a darkened farm-implements store, a low-slung modern building that was probably a retirement community or health clinic, set back from the highway. The pickup pulled off into a Casey’s General Store, its lot bustling with cars and people; the kids were up and out of the bed before the vehicle had even stopped, rushing to meet their friends. Traffic on the roadway slowed as they entered the little town. In the backseat, Amy was sitting up, looking through the windows at the busy scene.

Doyle turned around. “Lie down, Amy.”

“It’s all right, let her look.” Wolgast raised his voice so Amy could hear. “Don’t listen to Phil. You look all you want, honey.”

Doyle leaned his head toward Wolgast’s. “What are you … doing?”

Wolgast kept his eyes ahead. “Relax.”

Honey. Where had that come from? The streets teemed with people, all walking in the same direction, carrying blankets and plastic coolers and lawn chairs. Many were holding small children by the hand or pushing strollers: farm people, ranch people, dressed in jeans and overalls, everyone in boots, some of the men wearing Stetson hats. Here and there Wolgast saw wide puddles of standing water, but the night sky was crisp and dry. The rain had pushed through; the fair was on.

Wolgast flowed with the traffic to the high school, where a marquee-style sign read, BRANCH COUNTY CONSOLIDATED HS: GO WILDCATS: SPRING FLING, MARCH 20–22. A man in a reflective orange vest waved them into the lot, where a second man directed them to extra parking in a muddy field. Wolgast shut off the engine and glanced at Amy through the rearview; her attention was directed out the window, toward the lights and sounds of the fair.

Doyle cleared his throat. “You’re kidding, right?”

Wolgast twisted in his seat. “Amy, Phil and I are going to step outside for a second to talk. Okay?”

The little girl nodded; suddenly, the two of them had an understanding, one Doyle wasn’t part of.

“We’ll be right back,” said Wolgast.

Outside, Doyle met him at the back of the Tahoe. “We’re not doing this,” he said.

“What’s the harm?”

Doyle lowered his voice. “We’re lucky we haven’t seen a local yet. Think about it. Two men in suits and a little girl—you think we won’t stand out?”

“We’ll separate. I’ll take Amy. We can change in the car. Go get yourself a beer, have some fun.”

“You’re not thinking clearly, boss. She’s a prisoner.”

“No, she’s not.”

Doyle sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I? She’s a kid, Phil. A little girl.”

They were standing very close; Wolgast could smell the staleness on Doyle, after hours in the Tahoe. A group of teenagers walked past, and for a moment they fell silent. The parking lot was filling up.

“Look, I’m not made of stone,” Doyle said quietly. “You think I don’t know how fucked up this is? It’s all I can do not to throw up out the window.”

“You seem pretty relaxed, actually. You slept like a baby the whole way from Little Rock.”

Doyle frowned defensively. “Fine, shoot me. I was tired. But we are not taking her on a bunch of kiddie rides. Kiddie rides are not part of the plan.”

“One hour,” Wolgast said. “You can’t leave her cooped up in a car all day without a break. Let her have a little fun, blow off some steam. Sykes doesn’t have to know a thing about it. Then we’ll get back on the road. She’ll probably sleep the rest of the way.”

“And what if she takes off?”

“She won’t.”

“I don’t know how you can be so sure.”

“You can shadow us. If anything happens, there’s two of us.”

Doyle frowned skeptically. “Look, you’re in charge. It’s your call. But I still don’t like it.”

“Sixty minutes,” Wolgast said. “Then we’re gone.”

In the front seat of the Tahoe, they wriggled into sport shirts and jeans while Amy waited. Then Wolgast explained to Amy what they were going to do.

“You have to stay close,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone. Do you promise?”

“Why can’t I talk to anyone?”

“It’s just a rule. If you don’t promise, we can’t go.”

The girl thought a moment, then nodded. “I promise,” she said.

Doyle hung back as they made their way to the entrance of the fairgrounds. The air was sweet with the smell of frying grease. Over the PA system a man’s voice, flat as the Oklahoma plain, was calling out numbers for bingo. B … seven. G … thirty. Q … sixteen.

“Listen,” Wolgast said to Amy, when he was sure Doyle was out of earshot. “I know it might seem strange, but I want you to pretend something. Can you do that for me?”

They stopped on the path. Wolgast saw that the girl’s hair was a mess. He crouched to face her and did his best to smooth it out with his fingers, pushing it away from her face. Her shirt had the word SASSY on it, outlined with some kind of glittery flakes. He zipped up her sweatshirt against the evening’s chill.

“Pretend I’m your daddy. Not your real daddy, just a pretend daddy. If anyone asks, that’s who I am, okay?”

“But I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. You said.”

“Yes, but if we do. That’s what you should say.” Wolgast looked over her shoulder to where Doyle was waiting, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a windbreaker over his polo shirt, zipped to the chin; Wolgast knew he was still armed, that his weapon lay snug in its holster under his arm. Wolgast had left his weapon in the glove compartment.

“So, let’s try it. Who’s the nice man you’re with, little girl?”

“My daddy?” the girl ventured.

“Like you mean it. Pretend.”

“My … daddy.”

A solid performance, Wolgast thought. The kid should act. “Attagirl.”

“Can we ride on the twirly?”

“The twirly. Which one’s the twirly, sweetheart?” Honey, sweetheart. He couldn’t seem to stop himself; the words just popped out.

“That.”

Wolgast looked where Amy was pointing. In the air beyond the ticket booth he saw a huge contraption with rotating disks at the end of each arm, spinning out its riders in brightly colored carts. The Octopus.

“Of course we can,” he said, and felt himself smile. “We can do whatever you want.”

At the entrance he paid for their admission and moved down the line to a second booth to buy tickets for the rides. He thought she might want to eat, but decided to wait; it might, he reasoned, make her feel sick on the rides. He realized he liked thinking this way, imagining her experience, the things that would make her happy. Even he could feel it, the excitement of the fair. A bunch of broken-down rides, most of them probably dangerous as hell, but wasn’t that the point? Why had he said only an hour?

“Ready?”

The line for the Octopus was long but moved quickly. When their turn to board came, the operator stopped them with a raised hand.

“How old is she?”

The man squinted skeptically over his cigarette. Purple tattoos snaked along his bare forearms. Before Wolgast could open his mouth to answer, Amy stepped forward. “I’m eight.”

Just then Wolgast saw the sign, propped on a folding chair: NO RIDERS UNDER SEVEN YEARS OF AGE.

“She don’t look eight,” the man said.

“Well, she is,” Wolgast said. “She’s with me.”

The operator looked Amy up and down, then shrugged. “It’s your lunch,” he said.

They climbed into the wobbling car; the tattooed man pushed the safety bar against their waists. With a lurch the car rose into the air and abruptly halted so other riders could board behind them.

“Scared?”

Amy was pressed against him, her sweatshirt drawn up around her face in the cold, both hands clutching the bar. Her eyes were very wide. She shook her head emphatically. “Uh-uh.”

Four more times the car lifted and stopped. At its apex, the view took in the whole fairgrounds, the high school and its parking lots, the little town of Homer beyond, with its grid of lighted streets. Traffic was still streaming in from the county road. From so far up, the cars seemed to move with the sluggishness of targets in a shooting gallery. Wolgast was scanning the ground below for Doyle when he felt the car lurch again.

“Hold on!”

They descended in a spinning, plunging rush, their bodies pressing upward against the bar. Screams of pleasure filled the air. Wolgast closed his eyes against the force of their descent. He hadn’t been on a carnival ride in years and years; the violence of it was astonishing. He felt Amy’s weight against his body, pushed toward him by the car’s momentum as they spun and fell. When he looked again, they were dipping close to the ground, skating just inches above the hard-packed field, the lights of the fair whirling around them like a rain of shooting stars; then they were vaulted skyward once more. Six, seven, eight times around, each rotation rising and falling in a wave. It took forever and was over in an instant.

As they began their jerking descent to disembark, Wolgast looked down at Amy’s face; still that neutral, appraising gaze, yet he detected, behind the darkness of her eyes, a warm light of happiness. A new feeling opened inside him: no one had ever given her such a present.

“So how was that?” he asked, grinning at her.

“That was cool.” Amy lifted her face quickly. “I want to go again.”

The operator freed them from the bar; they returned to the back of the line. Ahead of them stood a large woman in a flowered housedress and her husband, a weather-beaten man in jeans and a tight western shirt, a fat plug of tobacco pouched under his lip.

“Aren’t you the cutest,” she proclaimed, and looked warmly at Wolgast. “How old is she?”

“I’m eight,” Amy said, and slipped her hand into Wolgast’s. “This is my daddy.”

The woman laughed, her eyebrows lifting like parachutes catching the air. Her cheeks were clumsily rouged. “Of course he’s your daddy, honey. Anyone can see that. It’s just as plain as the nose on your face.” She poked her husband in the ribs. “Isn’t she the cutest, Earl?”

The man nodded. “You bet.”

“What’s your name, honey?” the woman asked.

“Amy.”

The woman shifted her eyes to Wolgast again. “I’ve got a niece just about her age, doesn’t speak half so well. You must be so proud.”

Wolgast was too amazed to respond. He felt as if he were still on the ride, his mind and body caught in some tremendous gravitational force. He thought of Doyle, wondering if he was watching the scene unfold from somewhere in the crowds. But then he knew he didn’t care; let Doyle watch.

“We’re driving to Colorado,” Amy added, and squeezed Wolgast’s hand conspiratorially. “To visit my grandmother.”

“Is that so? Well, your grandmother’s very lucky, to have a girl like you come to visit.”

“She’s sick. We have to take her to the doctor.”

The woman’s face fell with sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear it.” She spoke with quiet earnestness to Wolgast. “I hope everything’s all right. We’ll keep you in our prayers.”

“Thank you,” he managed.

They rode the Octopus three more times. As they moved into the fairgrounds in search of dinner, Wolgast couldn’t spot Doyle anywhere; either he was shadowing them like a pro or he had decided to leave them alone. There were a lot of pretty women around. Maybe, Wolgast thought, he’d gotten distracted.

Wolgast bought Amy a hot dog and they sat together at a picnic table. He watched her eat: three bites, four bites, then it was gone. He got her a second and, when that was gone, a funnel cake, dusted with powdered sugar, and a carton of milk. Not the most nutritious meal, but at least she had the milk.

“What’s next?” he asked her.

Amy’s cheeks were spattered with sugar and grease. She reached up to wipe them with the back of her hand, but Wolgast stopped her. “Use a napkin,” he said, and handed one to her.

“The carousel,” she said.

“Really? Seems pretty tame after the Octopus.”

“They got one?”

“I’m sure they do.”

The carousel, Wolgast thought. Of course. The Octopus was for one part of her, the grown-up part, the part that could watch and wait and lie with confident charm to the woman in the line; the carousel was for the other Amy, for the little girl she really was. Under the spell of the evening, its lights and sounds and the still-churning part of him that had ridden the Octopus four times in a row, he wanted to ask her things: who she really was; about her mother, her father if she had one, and where she was from; about the nun, Lacey, and what had happened at the zoo, the craziness in the parking lot. Who are you, Amy? What brought you here, what brought you to me? And how do you know I’m afraid, that I’m afraid all the time? She took his hand again as they walked; the feel of her palm against his own was almost electrical, the source of a warm current that seemed to spread through his body as they walked. When she saw the carousel with its glowing deck of painted horses, he felt her pleasure actually pass from her body into his.

Lila, he thought. Lila, this was what I wanted. Did you know? It’s all I ever wanted.

He handed the operator their tickets. Amy picked a horse on the outer rim, a white Lipizzaner stallion frozen in mid-prance, grinning a bright row of ceramic teeth. The ride was almost empty; it was past nine o’clock, and the youngest children had gone home.

“Stand next to me,” Amy commanded.

He did; he placed one hand on the pole, another on the horse’s bridle, as if he were leading her. Her legs were too short to reach the stirrups, which dangled freely; he told her to hold tight.

That was when he saw Doyle, standing not a hundred feet away, beyond a row of hay bales that marked the edge of the beer tent, talking energetically to a young woman with great handfuls of red hair. He was telling a story, Wolgast could see, gesturing with his cup to make some point or pace a punch line, inhabiting the role of the handsome fiber-optic salesman from Indianapolis—just as Amy had done with the woman in line, spinning out the detail of the sick grandmother in Colorado. It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person. Beneath his feet, the carousel’s wooden decking shuddered as its gears engaged; with a burp of music from speakers overhead, the carousel began to move as the woman, in a gesture of practiced flirtatiousness, tossed back her head to laugh, while at the same time reaching out to touch Doyle, quickly, on the shoulder. Then the deck of the carousel turned and the two of them were gone from sight.

Wolgast thought it then. The sentences were as clear in his mind as if written there.

Just go. Take Amy and go.

Doyle’s lost track of time. He’s distracted. Do it.

Save her.

Around and around they went. Amy’s horse bobbed up and down like a piston. In just these few minutes, Wolgast felt his thoughts gather into a plan. When the ride was over, he would take her, glide into the darkness, the crowds, away from the beer tent and out the gate; by the time Doyle realized what had happened, they’d be nothing but an empty space in the lot. A thousand miles in every direction; they’d be swallowed whole into it. He was good, he knew what he was doing. He’d kept the Tahoe, he saw, for just this reason; even back then, standing in the parking lot in Little Rock, the germ of the idea had lain inside him, like a seed about to break open. He didn’t know what he’d do about finding the girl’s mother, but he’d figure that out later. He’d never felt anything like it, this blast of clarity. All his life seemed to gather behind this one thing, this singular purpose. The rest—the Bureau, Sykes, Carter, and the others, even Doyle—was a lie, a veil his true self had lived behind, waiting to step into the light. The moment had come; all he had to do was follow his instincts.

The ride began to slow. He didn’t even look in Doyle’s direction, not wanting to jinx this new feeling, to scare it away. When they reached a complete stop, he lifted Amy from her horse and knelt so they were eye to eye.

“Amy, I want you to do something for me. I need you to pay attention to what I’m saying.”

The girl nodded.

“We’re leaving now. Just the two of us. Stay close, don’t say a word. We’re going to be moving quickly, but don’t run. Do just as I say and everything will be fine.” He searched her face for comprehension. “Do you understand?”

“I shouldn’t run.”

“Exactly. Now let’s go.”

They stepped from the deck; they’d come to rest on the far side, away from the beer tent. Wolgast hoisted her quickly over the fence that surrounded the ride, then, bracing his hand on a metal post, vaulted over himself. No one seemed to notice—or maybe they did, but he didn’t look back. With Amy’s hand in his he strode briskly toward the rear of the fairgrounds, away from the lights. His plan was to circle around to the main gate or else find another exit. If they moved quickly, Doyle would never notice until it was too late.

They came to a tall chain-link fence; beyond it stood a dark line of trees and, farther still, the lights of a highway, hemming the high school’s playing fields to the south. There was no way through; the only route was around the perimeter, following the fence back to the main entrance. They were moving through unmown grass, still wet from the storm, soaking their shoes and pants. They reemerged back near the food stands and the picnic table where they had eaten. From there, Wolgast could see the exit, just a hundred feet away. His heart was thumping in his chest. He paused to quickly scan the scene; Doyle was nowhere.

“Straight out the exit,” he told Amy. “Don’t even look up.”

“Yo, chief!”

Wolgast froze. Doyle came jogging up behind them, pointing at his watch. “I thought we said an hour, boss.”

Wolgast looked at him, his bland midwestern face. “Thought we’d lost you,” he said. “We were just coming to look for you.”

Doyle glanced quickly over his shoulder toward the beer tent. “Well, you know,” he said. “Got caught up in a little conversation.” He smiled, a little guiltily. “Nice folks around here. Real talkers.” He gestured at Wolgast’s water-stained slacks. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

For a moment, Wolgast said nothing. “Puddles.” He did his best not to look away, to hold Doyle in his gaze. “The rain.” There was one other chance, maybe, if he could somehow distract Doyle on the way to the Tahoe. But Doyle was younger and stronger, and Wolgast had left his weapon back in the car.

“The rain,” Doyle repeated. He nodded, and Wolgast saw it in the younger man’s face: he knew. He’d known all along. The beer tent was a test, a trap. He and Amy had never been out of sight, not for a second. “I see. Well, we have a job to do. Right, chief?”

“Phil—”

“Don’t.” His voice was quiet—not menacing, merely stating the facts. “Don’t even say the words. We’re partners, Brad. It’s time to go.”

All Wolgast’s hopefulness collapsed inside him. Amy’s hand was still in his; he couldn’t bear even to look at her. I’m sorry, he thought, sending her this message through his hand. I’m sorry. And together, Doyle following five paces behind them, they moved through the exit toward the parking lot.

Neither of them noticed the man—the off-duty Oklahoma state trooper who, two hours before, had seen the wire report on a girl kidnapped by two Caucasian males at the Memphis Zoo, before clocking out and heading off to the high school to meet his wife and watch his kids ride the bumper cars—following them with his eyes.