“Adrenaline,” Bruce said.
“Yeah,” she said. A smile crossed her face. “You were totally badass.”
He grinned. “You weren’t so bad with that spray can.”
Now she was laughing. “Oh my God, my heart was going like crazy, just waiting to shoot him in the face!”
Up ahead, above the tree line, they could see the top of the town’s water tower, the words GARRETT ISLAND painted in ten-foot-high letters on the side. They were approaching a cross street.
Bruce, suddenly subdued, said, “I hope I didn’t make a mistake back there.”
“What?”
“Throwing that gun into the woods.”
“He’ll never find it,” Katie said.
“Not worried about him. It could be someone else. A kid. I don’t like guns. I just wanted to get rid of it. Wasn’t thinking.”
Katie nodded. “When this all blows over, we’ll go back and find it, okay?”
Bruce thought about that and nodded. “Deal.” A smile crossed his lips. “Please tell me you actually know how to read a map?”
Katie slapped the tops of her knees and shrieked. “I know! You could just hear him starting to lose his mind, thinking I was the dumbest girl on this entire island.”
“You convinced me,” Bruce said.
“Oh, thanks for that,” Katie said, turning to look at him, flashing him a huge, admiring smile.
But it disappeared instantly. Her eyes went wide and she screamed: “BRU—”
The Arrival, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, but actually coming out of the cross street as they sped past it, broadsided the Cadillac, hitting it squarely on Bruce’s door.
Everything went black.
Thirty-Six
Joe Bridgeman sat behind the desk in the administrator’s office and looked at the open laptop that had belonged to Arrival CEO Lisa Carver. Although he’d done his best to present himself as calm and clearheaded in front of Sandra, he was churning inside. The events of the last couple of hours still had not sunk in. The cars going haywire. His mother nearly becoming one of their victims. Daniella’s grisly death.
Sandra’s confrontation with Albert Ruskin. The man’s attempt to flee.
And now he was staring at this laptop screen. Wondering how Sandra could think he might be able to figure this out, how to stop this.
Right. No big deal. Let me just roll up my sleeves and turn into Steve Jobs.
He wiggled and stretched his fingers above the keyboard, a pianist getting ready to begin playing a concerto.
Then he heard a moan.
Joe got out of the chair and came around the desk to where Albert Ruskin lay on the floor. There was blood coming from the back of his head, where he’d whacked it on the edge of the desk. Joe got down on one knee next to the man.
Ruskin opened one eye and managed to focus on Joe. “What... where...”
“You fell,” Joe said.
“You... pushed me.”
Joe nodded regretfully. “You fell and hit your head. You probably have a concussion.”
Ruskin got up on one elbow and, with his free hand, touched the back of his head, then looked at his bloody hand. “Shit,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Joe. “Mr. Ruskin, it’s time to cut the bullshit. Do you know how to disable the virus?”
“What?” Ruskin was still in a mental fog, although he’d now managed to open his other eye.
“When I get into Lisa Carver’s computer, what do I do about the virus? Is there some kind of fail-safe procedure?”
“You still think I had something to do with it,” Ruskin said. “I didn’t. I’m not working with Kyle. Never even met the man.”
Gently, Joe said, “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want to stop this. It’s gotten out of hand. I’m sure it was never anyone’s intention that things would get this bad. Someone wanted to gum up the works, make Lisa Carver look like a fool, but it got out of control. Does that sound about right to you?”
Ruskin blinked a couple of times. “I suppose so.”
“So, the virus. How can it be disabled? How can we make the cars stop?”
Ruskin started to shake his head, then winced. The movement was painful. He looked again at his bloody hand. “I need a doctor. I need to get to a hospital.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see what we can do about that. But how can we make the cars stop doing what they’re doing?”
“I honestly don’t know. I talked to tech support... to see if they could pull the plug on the network. They hadn’t found a way. And if it’s ransomware, it’s out of our hands. You have to pay the money, trust that the hackers, whoever they are, will turn control back over to us.”
“I don’t think it’s ransomware,” Joe said.
“Huh?” Ruskin said, squinting at him. “How would you know?”
“I just don’t think it is,” he said. “If we could get back into the computer, we might be able to do something.”
“But even if there was a way, the laptop’s gone back to sleep. It’s password-protected.”
“You must know it, being her personal assistant and all?”
“No, she never trusted me with it. So all this talk... about shutting everything down, it’s pointless.”
Joe nodded. “I’m not worried about the password. It’s shutting down the Arrivals I need help with.”
Ruskin’s brow wrinkled. “How can you not be worried about the password? Did you read her mind this morning?”
“No,” Joe said. “I had another way.” He paused. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Ruskin. But if you can’t advise me on the shutdown, I think we’re done.”
Now Ruskin looked even more puzzled. “How—”
He was unable to finish the question. Joe yanked, suddenly, on the arm Ruskin had been using to prop himself up. The man hit the floor. Quickly, Joe put his hands on the man’s head, grasping it like a melon, raised it six inches off the floor and then slammed it down on the floor.
Hard.
The sound as his skull shattered ricocheted through Joe’s gut. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. But he was in up to his eyeballs now and he had to make sure the deed was done.
So, he placed his palm over Ruskin’s mouth, and used his thumb to pinch the man’s nose shut. He pressed and squeezed as hard as he could, and the fact that he wasn’t encountering any resistance was a good sign.
Ruskin must already be dead.
After a minute, during which he looked over his shoulder every couple of seconds in case Sandra returned, he took his hand away, stood and got himself back in the chair in front of the laptop.
Thirty-Seven
Katie had a dream.
She is with her dad, at the beach they used to go to on Cape Cod, before the family moved to Garrett Island. Her father, in a pair of bright red trunks, is running down to the incoming surf, waving at her to join him.
She was just a little kid when they went to Cape Cod, but in the dream, she is her current age. A big girl, although in the dream she has a brilliant pink plastic pail and an equally luminous green shovel, making the most rudimentary of sand castles, the kind she made when she was four or five.
“Come on!” her dad shouts, still waving, the seawater breaking around his ankles. “The water’s fine!”
Katie hears a voice. It’s her mother’s, although she doesn’t see her in the dream. She says, sternly, “Do as your father says.”
Now the water is up to her father’s knees as he continues to stride in, like a soldier intent on marching his way to Europe. So Katie gets up and runs, barefoot, toward the ocean, her feet shifting with each step on the hot sand.
“Coming, Daddy!” she cries. “I’m coming!”