Gino's brows lifted. "I thought those two were a hot item."
"It's hard to date when you live two hundred miles apart."
"What's wrong with phone sex?"
"I didn't ask."
"Christ, I hope she didn't dump him for a suit."
"We didn't get into particulars."
"Did you call Grace?"
"No answer on her cell. I left a message." Magozzi eyed Gino's deep-fried-thing-on-a-stick. "What the hell is that?"
"Dill pickle."
"That's disgusting."
"Like you would know."
WHEN GRACE FINISHED checking all the phone lines, she walked back to the street in front of the cafe and stood there for a moment, listening. The only sounds she heard were Annie's and Sharon's muffled voices coming from inside, but when she turned to look, the glare of the sun bouncing off the big plate-glass windows nearly blinded her.
They looked up when Grace pushed open the screen door. Annie and Sharon were sitting at the counter, sipping from soda cans taken from the glass-fronted cooler, Annie waving her cell phone, trying to find a signal. "This piece of crap is hopeless. Doesn't work outside, doesn't work inside. . . . You find anybody, darlin'?" She handed Grace a bottled water and tucked the useless phone back in her purse.
Grace shook her head, opened the bottle, and took a quick drink before she spoke. "Someone cut all the phone lines."
"What?"
"Right below the feeder boxes. On the cafe, the gas station, and the house."
All three were silent for a moment.
Sharon finally said, "Kids, maybe."
"Maybe."
Annie was watching Grace's face. "What are you thinking, Grace?"
"That we should get out of here."
Annie sighed, took a last drink from her soda can, and pushed herself up off the stool. She went over to the cooler, grabbed three bottles of water, and set one on the counter in front of Sharon.
"What's this for?"
"Tuck it in your bag, darlin'. It's mighty hot out there, and it appears we're going to be doing a little more walking."
"You're kidding, right? According to the map in the gas station, it's at least another ten miles to the next town, and that's after we hoof it all the way back to the truck. Can't a couple of techno-whizzes like you fix the phone lines?"
"It's a twenty-five-pair cable," Grace replied. "That's a lot of splicing. It might take a couple hours."
"By which time the people who live here will probably be back from wherever they went and will be happy to give us a ride. In the meantime, we've got food and drink and a place to get out of the sun. . . ."
Annie looked at Sharon as if she'd lost her mind, forgetting for a moment that not everyone in the free world knew that when Grace said "we should get out of here," it was like a Seeing Eye dog jerking a blind person out of the way of a runaway bus. "We should leave now."
"Okay," Sharon continued, trying to be reasonable. "How about this. You and Grace stay here, start working on the phones, and in the meantime, just to cover all our bets, I'll start walking, maybe get lucky and catch a ride. No offense, Annie, but it's over ninety out there, and I'm guessing aerobics isn't your . . ."
"Quiet." Grace had moved quickly, almost soundlessly, over to the screen door, where she stood with her eyes closed and her concentration focused in a cone of awareness that headed left past the gas station, around the curve that disappeared into the woods. What she'd heard had been nothing specific, nothing immediately identifiable- just a faint, muted roaring sound that didn't belong.
"Something's coming" was all she had time to say.
HAROLD WITTIG slammed the gearshift into park and draped his wrists over the pickup's steering wheel, his lips tightened in annoyance. He lifted one arm and wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve, promising himself for the hundredth time that he was going to junk this damn truck and get one of the big new Fords with an air conditioner that would turn a two-dollar whore frigid. Damn, it was hot, and the day had been one disaster after another.
First a flat tire on the way into Rockville this morning, then Fleet Farm hadn't had Tommy's birthday bike assembled and they'd had to wait two hours while a couple doofuses fumbled around with Allen wrenches and a forty-page instruction manual, then Jean got her period and made him run into the store to buy a box of Tampax and he thought he'd die right there at the checkout when the pretty young cashier had smiled sweetly and said, "Just the Tampax? Is that it?" and now this. Christ, what a day.
He glared out the dusty windshield at the empty jeep on the side of the road and the two orange-and-white sawhorses topped with blinking yellow lights, blocking both lanes. Two men stood in front of the roadblock, wearing camouflage and combat boots and the earnest expressions of little boys playing soldier. M16s that Harold dearly hoped weren't loaded with live rounds were slung over their shoulders. The way his luck was running today, one of them would probably walk up to the truck and shoot him in the head.
Jean was leaning forward in her seat, as if another inch closer to the windshield would make the reason for the peculiar roadblock perfectly clear. Her face was dewy with the heat, and her lips were folded in on each other in that slightly alarmed expression she always wore when something didn't make sense. "What are they? Soldiers?"
"Looks like. Probably Guard."
"What are they doing? Why do they have the road blocked off?" Her voice was rising up the scale as a seed of panic germinated, and Harold knew her imagination was already running wild, manufacturing improbable scenarios of tornadoes, floods, riots, and any of the other disasters that brought the National Guard out into the civilian world.
"Relax, honey." He laid a comforting hand on her knee. "They're just weekend warriors, and they've got to practice somewhere." But the truth was that he felt a little tickle of unease on the back of his own neck as one of the young men headed toward the driver's side of the truck. This one was fair and freckled and sporting a brand-new sunburn, but he had the bearing down pat: straight back, clipped movements, and that tucked chin you see only in the posture of a military man at attention. "Afternoon. What's up, soldier?"
The soldier stepped right up to Harold's open window, his rifle now casually at his side, and gave them a friendly nod. "Afternoon, sir, ma'am. I'm afraid the road's closed temporarily. We're detouring traffic up to County S-"
"What do you mean, the road's closed? Why?"
"Military maneuvers, sir. Your tax dollars at work."
Jean breathed a sigh of relief, then felt irritation rise to fill the empty space where panic had lived just a moment before. She'd been prepared to deal with catastrophe, but not inconvenience. She brushed a clump of damp blond curls from her forehead and started fanning her face with the Fleet Farm sale flyer. "What do you mean, military maneuvers?" she snapped at the young soldier, and Harold had to smile as the man's brows shot up in surprise, almost pitying him for being stupid enough to put a roadblock between Jean and her shower on the first day of her period. "We live on this road and there were no military maneuvers going on here when we left this morning."
Harold started to give the soldier an apologetic grin, but something in the man's face made his smile falter. The stoic, soldierly countenance was suddenly gone, replaced by a ripple of confusion and maybe even a little fear, and that made him nervous. Men in uniform weren't supposed to be confused or fearful, and when they were, bad things happened. "Uh . . , you say you live on this road, ma'am?"
"That's right. About a half a mile the other side of Four Corners. The big farm on the left. And now we'll thank you to move that little barrier out of the way so we can get home to our son."
The soldier was very still for a moment, then he took a breath and put the tough face back on. "I'm very sorry, ma'am, but I can't do that. We have orders not to let anyone by."