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.“Where’s the kid and her parents?” he asked, by way of a greeting.“They ate earlier,” Tamara said.“Too early for me.”Take it easy with her, Novack counseled himself.Let her relax.“You mind if I bring my tray here? I hate to eat alone.”Tamara tilted her head slightly.“So do I.”Within a few minutes they were talking about Luke’s escape.“This is going to make me look real bad,” Novack said.“Fisk is going to blame me for letting him get away.”Tamara almost smiled.“He’s locked us into an Army base in the middle of nowhere with whole squads of soldiers to guard it, and he’s going to blame you?”Novack shrugged.“That’s the way the cookie crumbles.The Army’ll blame the colonel, but Fisk’s going to come down on me.Hard.”“You mean you could lose your job?”“Maybe.”She shook her head.“That’s not fair.”He shrugged again.Tamara looked past him.“I’m worried about Luke, out there in the cold all by himself.”She calls him by his first name, Novack realized.Is there something going on between them?“If the soldier boys haven’t found him by now,” he said to her, “he must be halfway to Canada.”Tamara said nothing.“And he left you holding the bag.Left his granddaughter, too.”“Angela’s almost fully recovered.She’ll be fine.”“Yeah, but he took off by himself, looking out for numero uno.”Scowling, she challenged, “How do you think he could manage to get all of us out of here? He did what he had to do.”“Numero uno,” Novack repeated.Suddenly Hightower’s massive form loomed over them, carrying a tray that looked almost toy-sized in his big hands.“Mind if I join you?”“What the hell are you doing here?” Novack yelped.Sitting down wearily next to him, Hightower said, “I’ve been drafted.”Moonlight EncountersNO SIGNAL, THE phone still said.Luke stared up at the half-moon hanging above the crest of the mountains.Enough light to let me walk out here without breaking my neck, he thought.Also enough light to let a helicopter spot me.Maybe I should’ve waited until the moon’s down.No, he decided.There aren’t any helicopters buzzing around, I would’ve heard them.But the farther I get from the woods, the harder it’ll be for me to hide if any choppers come over.Trudging along doggedly, he zipped up his windbreaker and pulled his wool cap from its now-empty pocket.His hands still stung when he tried to grip something, but at least they weren’t bleeding anymore.Okay, he told himself.Keep going until the phone gets clear of the jamming.Far off in the distance he heard a coyote howl.And beyond that, the faint throbbing rumble of an approaching helicopter.* * *HIGHTOWER WAS STILL munching his way through a sizable dinner when Tamara finished her coffee.Pushing back from the table, she said, “I’ve got to get back.”“Sure,” said Novack, getting up from the table also.“I’ll walk you home.”She gave him a cold stare.“I don’t need any company.”“It’s on the way to my room,” Novack said easily.Raising both hands as if to show he wasn’t carrying any weapons, he added, “Honest.”Wordlessly, Tamara turned and headed for the row of pegs by the door, where people had hung their coats.Novack went with her.Hightower looked up from his bowl of chili and watched them go.* * *THE HELICOPTER WAS hovering over the trees.And there was more than one of them, Luke realized.If they head this way they’ll spot me easily.He looked down again at the phone in his fist.Time and date!“It’s working!” Luke shouted into the night.He squatted on the dusty ground and punched up his paper and its foreword.Tap.To ACB.Tap.To his university.Tap.Tap.Tap.To three blogs that he followed.The helicopters were still down by the trees.He could see searchlights flicking back and forth from them.Twitter, he thought.Send the foreword to Twitter.Too long.Chop it in half and send it in three pieces.The searchlights winked off.Luke stared up into the moonlit sky.Why’d they do that?Never mind them.Send the foreword to the university’s Facebook site.And the whole paper to the AAAS.And Science News.One of the choppers was definitely heading his way.Luke ignored its approach as he bent over his phone, sending his paper and its foreword to one Web site after another.* * *TAMARA WALKED ALONGSIDE Novack, never letting him get close enough to touch her.He chatted amiably enough, though.Maybe he doesn’t have any ideas about me, she thought
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