of Zelda and Loeffler that she'd printed up herself at work. They were passed around to much laughter and admiration.
There was a nervousness behind the bravado. Veronica felt it, and the others probably did too, but no one mentioned it. Veronica left the meeting early, and the next Saturday she stayed in her room. No one came to invite her downstairs, and Nancy never mentioned W O. R. S. E. again.
Donald-whoever he was-had put Veronica off her feed. She left Close Encounters and went home, put a frozen dinner in the micro, and turned on the news. They had a feature story on the Rox, a follow-up on the unsuccessful park ranger raid back in February.
"Admit it," the reporter said to some man in a ranger uniform. "Those kids could have done a lot worse if they wanted. It was like they didn't even take you seriously. A few people got shot up, but that was all. They made fools out-of you."
"Mister," the ranger said, "you don't know what's out there on that island. It's worse than you could ever imagine. Just pray to God you don't ever find out."
Veronica had saved one photo of Hannah. It had been sitting on an end table, but she'd gotten to where the constant sight of it was a reproach. Now she took it out again and sat down with it in front of the TV She realized she had never cried for Hannah, not once in the sixteen months since her death. With that thought, the tears came.
Jumpers, she thought. They made fools of all of us.
She turned the TV off. She couldn't seem to get herself back together since that man in the restaurant. It was the past come to haunt her. Like all hauntings, it was something she'd brought on herself. It was something she'd left undone. For over a year, she'd been pushing it away, but the questions had been there all this time, fighting to get out.
She walked nervously around the apartment. She wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight, not in this state. She had to do something, no matter how small, to buy off her conscience. She sat down and dialed Nancy's number.
"Hello?"
"Nancy?"
"Yes?"
"It's Veronica." After the odd terms they'd parted on, she didn't know how Nancy would react.
"Yes?" she said again, this time nervous, reluctant.
" I don't mean to bother you.It's just ... there's this question I always wanted to ask you. It's about... it's about Hannah."
"Go on."
Veronica could picture her standing on the faded carpet in the hallway, back stiff, eyes staring straight ahead, waiting for some inevitable ax to fall. "Ichiko told me W O. R. S. E. paid for Hannah's lawyer. I just wanted to know... I mean ... how did you know she was in jail?"
"You mean, did she use her one phone call to call us, instead of you? Is that what you're asking?"
"I guess so. I mean, she told me she was through with all of that."
"She was. She didn't call us. Latham, Strauss did."
"They called you?"
"It was Latham himself. He said they would provide Hannah an attorney free of charge, but they didn't want that fact to get out. They wanted us to say we were paying for it. It wasn't an offer I was willing to refuse at the time."
"How did he know where to find you?"
"I have no idea."
"Really? You don't have any ties to Latham?"
"We'd talked about targeting Latham for an action. Believe me, it was as much a surprise to us as it was to you." After a few seconds, Veronica said, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Life goes on. You know?"
"I know," Veronica said.
When she hung up, her hands were shaking. Latham. She's seen him on TV: elegant suits, razor-cut hair, eyes as cold as a winter sky. Jerry's brother was the Strauss in Latham, Strauss, and he'd told her stories about him. He was so inhuman that Jerry's brother had wondered if maybe he was a secret wild card, that the virus had somehow killed all his emotions. Just the idea that he could somehow be mixed up in Hannah's death was terrifying. It was like opening up a tiny box and finding everything in the world inside it.
There was nothing left to do that night. She went to bed but didn't sleep. Instead she lay awake, seeing Latham and Hannah. And Nancy.
When snow fell on Long Island, it stayed. It had lawns to pike up in and kids to make snowmen out of