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that.”
    “Why are you calling me?” Her southern twang thickened when she talked to Robinson.
    “I wanted to talk.”
    “That simple. Like you’ve been away on business instead of—I don’t even know how to describe it—”
    “I miss you, Jan. It’s hard out here.” He sounded close to tears. Wells hadn’t understood until now that in addition to everything else, Robinson was simply a spoiled brat.
    “Are you sick?”
    “Been better. But I have a fine doctor taking care of me. Cuban. Viva Fidel. I’m gonna live forever. I’m gonna learn how to fly.”
    “You need to turn yourself in.”
    A hollow laugh from the other end. “Not a good idea.”
    “What do you want?”
    “To talk. To somebody who knows me.”
    “I don’t know you. The day they came to the house, I realized that.”
    Beside Janice, Wells twisted his hands: Steer the conversation if you can. “I hope you’re doing something good now, Eddie. Making up for what you did.”
    Another laugh. “Could say I’m doing a little community service. Helping youngsters in need. I’ve got to go, okay?”
    “Tell me how to get hold of you.”
    “I’ll get hold of you.”
    “Eddie. Are you still in Jamaica? Kingston?” Wells shook his head no, but he was too late.
    “Are they there? On the call?”
    “No, it’s just me. I swear.”
    “Swear on Mark’s grave.”
    She looked at Wells. He nodded.
    “Don’t make me do that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Wells wasn’t sure whether she was talking to him or to Robinson.
    “Do it.”
    “God, Eddie. I swear. It’s just me.” Tears peeped from under her eyelids.
    “Yes. I’m in Jamaica. Montego Bay. I’ll call you again.” Click.
    Janice swung at Wells, her fist glancing off his chest.
    “You shouldn’t have made me say that.”
    Wells was all out of compassion. Her husband was about the most miserable human being alive. She’d just had to lie on her dead son’s grave. He was sorry for her. But that didn’t mean he was responsible for her.
    “You wanted him? We’ll catch him now. Between the trace and what he told you, we’ll have enough. If he reaches out again, let me know.”
    She shrank against the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please don’t go.”
    Wells walked out. He wanted to find a fight, make someone bleed. Instead he got into his Subaru and peeled away, promising himself that Keith Edward Robinson would regret sending those postcards.
     
     
    SEVEN HOURS AND FIVE hundred thirty miles later, Wells turned off I-91 at Boltonville, Vermont. He had sped through the night Cannonball Run— style. Normally, driving soothed his anger, but tonight he gained no relief from the empty asphalt.
    Long ago, in Afghanistan, Wells had converted to Islam. But his faith came and went, pulling away just when he thought he’d mastered it. Of course, no one could master faith. God always hovered around the next curve, the next, the next. The quest to find Him had to be its own reward. Wells understood that much, if nothing more. But tonight the search felt lonelier than ever. He hadn’t seen another vehicle for more than half an hour. As though he were the last man alive.
    He swung right onto Route 302, drove through a little town called Wells River—no relation. Past a shuttered gas station and an empty general store and over a low bridge into New Hampshire. Then Woodsville, a metropolis by the standards of the North Country, with a hospital and a bank and a thousand people clustered in steep-sided wooden houses against the winters. Wells gunned the engine to leave the town behind.
    A few miles on, he swung right, southeast on Route 112, the Kancamagus Highway, impassible in the winter. He was exhausted and driving too fast now, through old forests of fir and pine, the Subaru a blur in the night, sticking low to the road. The next curve, and the next. Wells felt his eyelids slipping. In the dark now, in the night, he began to murmur through pursed lips the shahada, the