was swishing against the windows. Fun weather to drive in, if you could get the right car.
He became aware, as he neared the governor’s office at the end of the empty hallway, of his heartbeat. Heavy and somehow thick, yes, but perfectly calm and even.
Michael mentally replayed what he was going to say if Jopek was there, then knocked twice on the double doors, lightly. Ron’s voice echoed in his head: You always want to knock on my door, Mikey. Because then I can come out. ’Cause this is Ron’s den, and believe me when I say: You can’t come in.
“But hey, Ron, if I did that, how would I have stolen the money to pay for, uh, running away?” Michael whispered.
He waited there a few seconds more, feeling that anticipation like waiting for a game to load the next, last level. Then he opened the door.
Stormy half-light poured through the great plate of glass on the opposite wall.
Whatever Michael had expected a governor’s office to look like, this wasn’t it.
It wasn’t oval; it was about as big as his principal’s office; there was an American flag, and a West Virginian, but they lay tipped, crisscrossed, on the floor. Maps spilled off a humble desk and across the carpet. He recognized a map of Charleston: like Hank’s, almost all the streets had been X’d out in red.
There were no cots or couches in here, not even a rumple of blankets on the floor. I guess he doesn’t sleep, Michael thought, half-joking. But the thought made him uneasy.
Michael went to the governor’s desk and got his first surprise of the day. He had expected—he wasn’t sure what. A struggle, anyway, before finding the extra keys.
CAPT. H. C. JOPEK, he saw, stitched in fraying black thread on one end flap. The shoulder strap snaked lazily over the top, which yawned wide, like an open mouth.
The captain’s canvas bag.
No, I don’t pray, he thought. But sometimes? My prayers come true, anyway.
Michael opened the flap, and heard, unmistakably, a muffled key-jangle somewhere inside the bag.
He palmed aside a Playboy, and all at once, he became aware that he had left the door to the office open. He suddenly imagined Captain Jopek hiding behind the door, crouched there like a dark troll beneath the bridge of a castle, and now Michael’s palms broke sweat and he plunged his hands deeper into the bag but he only found one old walkie-talkie, three maps, no keys. Don’t freak out, he thought, but the keys weren’t in any of the side compartments, either, and Michael thought, Oh God, I just imagined the jangle. He swallowed. Noticed a tiny, zipped pocket on the front of the bag. And when he opened it and slid his hand inside, he finally did hear the sound of the keys, yes, but another sound, too, not the keys and definitely not imaginary.
“Reckoned I’d find ya here.”
The light through the window seemed to go cold on his clothes. Don’t spin, Michael thought. Don’t scream.
“Hi!” he said, turning. There was a method to moments when you’ve been caught. You didn’t want your smile to look too guilty and give away the extent of trickery. But then again, looking not guilty, when you’re obviously off-limits, rang alarm bells, too.
“Got a secret, Mike,” Jopek said. The captain’s bright, excited face shone like a searchlight. And for a horrifying second, Michael thought Jopek was questioning whether he had a secret.
“Don’t you got an itch for what it is?” the captain said.
Why isn’t he asking why I’m here? Michael thought, but said, “Absolutely. What’s up, sir?”
“I was on the walkie this morning, tryin’ to raise up the units, out there in radio land.” Jopek grinned at his wit. He walked closer, halved the distance between them. “And do you know what, fella? There I am with my coffee like always, and this mornin I did get a call. From some mountain folks who had tales to tell.”
Jopek’s smile crackled, so wide it looked as if his flesh could split.
“Mikey, c’mon, you know what I’m gonna say, ha-ha! I got in touch with the soldiers you saw, boy!”
A round rim of his bike tire, flying over the edge of the world, had seemed to suck free of gravity. The same feeling as now: cliff-fall vertigo.
Made it come true, Michael thought wildly, his vision puckering dizzily at the edges. I made it real. He kept his smile, but he could not stop the blood from boiling to his cheeks.