Will was talking about Dobie because there was nothing else to talk about.

He didn’t have a plan. At least, not a plan that would get Sara out of this living hell. He had seen the Structure. There was something new about cardboard boxes. Ten thousand rounds of ammunition covered in brine. Forty armed men. All for an attack that was going to take place somewhere—anywhere—tomorrow.

Will said, “I have a tracker in my holster. I tried to turn it on, but I think the battery shorted. Or maybe we’re too high in the mountains. It doesn’t have a satellite uplink. It works off cellular networks.”

Sara leaned against the door. She laced her fingers through his.

He gripped her hand. “I could shoot a lot of people, but—”

“The children.” Sara knew there was more to it than that. The only way for Will to stop Dash was to keep pretending to be Major Wolfe so that Dash took him on the Mission.

Every ounce of her being was yearning to be away from here, but Sara told Will, “Dash wants me to be his witness, whatever that means. He promised me that I would be freed tomorrow.”

Will was silent, but she felt his skepticism permeate the door.

Sara took a deep breath. “I’m okay up here. He’s not hurting me. No one is hurting me. And there are children—they’re very sick, Will. I thought it was measles; well, it was measles, but now it’s something else. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. People keep falling ill, and I need to stay here to take care of them. Michelle was working on something in a greenhouse. It’s—”

“On the other side of the trail,” Will finished. “I saw it. The thermal tent. There are two guards outside. One in the trees. I don’t know who else is there. I can’t get inside now. Maybe later, but I don’t know.”

Sara felt herself sinking into despair. “Michelle wrote a message on her hand. I found it when I—I found her body.” She bit her lip so the pain would keep her from crying. “She wrote the words ‘black box’.”

“Black box,” he repeated. “Like on an airplane?”

“I don’t know. It could be a bomb. It could be a biological agent.” She told him, “Will, you have to stop them. You can’t worry about me. This is bigger than one person. You must’ve seen what they did at Emory. I know Dash. He’s planning an even more spectacular display. That’s what the Message is. He’s going to murder hundreds, maybe thousands of people.”

Will did not respond. She knew that he had already thought this through, tested the weak spots, looked for the angles. There was no way out of this but forward. He would not be worrying about the danger he was going to face tomorrow. He was agonizing over the thought of leaving Sara.

“It’s okay.” She couldn’t be strong for herself, but she had to be strong for him. “Baby, I’ll be okay.”

Will took a stuttered breath.

“My love.” Sara’s throat tightened into a fist. “I’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay. We’ll get through this. I know we’ll get through this.”

He cleared his throat again. She could feel him doing the same thing that she was doing, trying to hold himself together, to be strong for her.

He said, “Your family prayed for you. Your mom asked me to do it, too. We all bowed our heads. I think I did it right.”

Sara closed her eyes. Her family. They had taken him in.

He said, “Your sister is a touchy kind of person. As in, she touches people. A lot.”

Sara smiled as she imagined the look on Will’s face when he got the full Tessa treatment. “You’re going to have to get used to that.”

“Yeah.” Will sniffed again. “You know I, uh, I need to tell you something else. Confess something else.” He paused, purposefully drawing it out. “I watched the Buffy episode where Giles gets fired for messing with the Cruciamentum.”

Sara made herself play along. “You motherfucker.”

His laugh sounded just as forced. “You’ve been gone for two days. What was I supposed to do?”

Sara let herself revel in the deep pitch of his voice. The roughness was gone. This was her Will.

She asked, “Hey, babe, do you know that song, the one where the guy is, like, you were at a motel bar, but you got too big for your britches and the girl is like, yeah, I was at the bar and it was great, loser, but I’m outta here?”

He cursed under his breath.

“And then he’s like—”

“‘Don’t You Want Me’. Human League. And it was a cocktail bar.”

“Dammit, I was so close.” Sara didn’t have to fake her relief. “Also—”

“Sara, if you fuck up another song, I swear to God I’ll leave.”

She grinned, because everything about this felt so normal. “It’s not another song. It’s that fungus growing on your face.”

“Babe, it’s my disguise.”

“It’s gross, and it has to go.” Sara felt her smile start to falter. She was running out of things to talk about while they tried not to talk about the things that mattered. “Will?”

“What now? You don’t like my outfit?”

She looked down at their hands.

His left. Her right.

She said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me love you.”

He went quiet. His fingers wrapped tightly around her hand.

Sara had railed against him so many times for his silence, but in this precious moment, words were unnecessary. Will’s thumb traced along the inside of her palm. He gently caressed the lines and indentations, then pressed into the pulse at her wrist.

Sara closed her eyes. She leaned her head against the door. She listened to her heartbeat through the peaceful, easy silence until it was time for him to go.

Part Three

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

ONE HOUR BEFORE THE MESSAGE

18

Wednesday, August 7, 8:58 a.m.

Will sat in the back of another van, his AR-15 gripped between his hands. Dobie was on one side of him. Dash was on the other. The three men from Bravo team were on the opposite side of the van. They were suited up in their training gear, including the padded vests that would stop a BB pellet but not a real bullet. Their black hoods were rolled back to fight the heat. Their rifles pointed up at the ceiling. Their holstered guns and sheathed, eight-inch hunting knives tapped the metal floor as the tires rumbled over asphalt.

They were in slow traffic, probably on the interstate. Rush hour stop-and-go. Possibly heading into Atlanta. Possibly not.

Will looked at his watch.

8:58 a.m.

The vans had left the compound two hours ago. Will hadn’t had a chance to return to the clearing. They had practiced infiltrating the fake building until midnight. They had slept together. Pissed together. Eaten breakfast together. The world had closed in. The compound had gone eerily quiet. The sun wasn’t even up when they were told that it was time to prepare for battle.

Gwen had been the only woman to preside over their leaving, feeding them a cold breakfast, blessing them with a prayer as she stood in her white wedding dress. She had read a short verse from her Bible, a warning about destruction being in their midst, oppression and deceit in the streets. Everyone had bowed their heads, clasped together their hands. Gwen’s prayer was nothing like Cathy’s humble request that Sara be returned to her family. Her voice had been filled with hatred and righteous indignation as she commanded God to rid the world of the mongrels and their enablers.

“Blood and soil!” she had screamed, her fist raised.

Every single man but Will had chanted along, “Blood and soil!”

Forty men in total. Armed to the teeth. Clad in black. Sitting in the back of five vans rolling down the interstate toward a scene that would soon erupt into unspeakable violence.

“Fuck.” Dobie shifted on the floor beside Will. He was sullen and confused. He didn’t understand why he had woken up in the woods. He was angry about missing the drills. He was mad at Will for teasing him about it. He was clearly hung over from the Percocet.

He was still a boy, but he was just as willing to commit murder as the rest of the men.

Will looked away from Dobie’s miserable face.

He had seen the aftermath of a mass shooting before. For obvious reasons, the news reporters always fixated on the number of dead, but it was the survivors Will thought about now. The ones with traumatic brain injuries, lost limbs, deep scars, wounds that would not heal. Some of them would live in fear for the rest of their lives. Others would be paralyzed by guilt. They would live, but life as they knew it would be over.

Unless Will could stop it.

“Fuck,” Dobie muttered again. He was looking for attention.

Will kept his voice low, telling the kid, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Shit,” Dobie angrily crossed his arms. “What am I supposed to do, bro, sit behind a cash register at the Kwiki Mart like some raghead?”