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that was enough. As he reached toward the open glove compartment, he felt a small sting on the side<br />
of his neck.<br />
Bug bit me, he thought, and then slumped sideways, his eyes rolling up to the whites.<br />
Crow opened the door and shoved the driver across the seat. The old guy’s head bonked the<br />
passenger-side window. Crow lifted limp legs over the transmission hump, batting the glove<br />
compartment closed to make a little more room, then slid behind the wheel and slammed the door.<br />
He took a deep breath and looked around, ready for anything, but there was nothing to be ready for.<br />
Richland Court was dozing the afternoon away, and that was lovely.<br />
The key was in the ignition. Crow started the engine and the radio came on in a yahoo roar of Toby<br />
Keith: God bless America and pour the beer. As he reached to turn it off, a terrible white light<br />
momentarily washed out his vision. Crow had very little telepathic ability, but he was firmly linked<br />
to his tribe; in a way, the members were appendages of a single organism, and one of their number had<br />
just died. Cloud Gap hadn’t been just misdirection, it had been a fucking ambush.<br />
Before he could decide what to do next, the white light came again, and, after a pause, yet again.<br />
All of them?<br />
Good Christ, all three? It wasn’t possible . . . was it?<br />
He took a deep breath, then another. Forced himself to face the fact that yes, it could be. And if so,<br />
he knew who was to blame.<br />
Fucking steamhead girl.<br />
He looked at Abra’s house. All quiet there. Thank God for small favors. He had expected to drive<br />
the truck up the street and into her driveway, but all at once that seemed like a bad idea, at least for<br />
now. He got out, leaned back in, and grabbed the unconscious geezer by his shirt and belt. Crow<br />
yanked him back behind the wheel, pausing just long enough to give him a patdown. No gun. Too<br />
bad. He wouldn’t have minded having one, at least for awhile.<br />
He fastened the geezer’s seatbelt so he couldn’t tilt forward and blare the horn. Then he walked<br />
down the street to the girl’s house, not hurrying. If he’d seen her face at one of the windows—or so<br />
much as a single twitch of a single curtain—he would have broken into a sprint, but nothing moved.<br />
It was possible he could still make this work, but that consideration had been rendered strictly<br />
secondary by those terrible white flashes. What he mostly wanted was to get his hands on the<br />
miserable bitch that had caused them so much trouble and shake her until she rattled.<br />
5<br />
Abra sleepwalked down the front hall. The Stones had a family room in the basement, but the kitchen<br />
was their comfort place, and she headed there without thinking about it. She stood with her hands<br />
splayed out on the table where she and her parents had eaten thousands of meals, staring at the<br />
window over the kitchen sink with wide blank eyes. She wasn’t really here at all. She was in Cloud<br />
Gap, watching bad guys spill out of the Winnebago: the Snake and the Nut and Jimmy Numbers. She<br />
knew their names from Barry. But something was wrong. One of them was missing.<br />
(WHERE’S THE CROW DAN I DON’T SEE THE CROW!)<br />
No answer, because Dan and her father and Dr. John were busy. They took the bad guys down, one<br />
after the other: the Walnut first—that was her father’s work, and good for him—then Jimmy<br />
Numbers, then the Snake. She felt each mortal injury as a thudding deep in her head. Those thuds,<br />
like a heavy mallet repeatedly coming down on an oak plank, were terrible in their finality, but not<br />
entirely unpleasant. Because . . .<br />
Because they deserve it, they kill kids, and nothing else would have stopped them. Only—