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"That’s right, Anthony Not in June, not ever"

Wolgast returned the paper to his jacket pocket Noas bait, so to want The other docun, Wolgast felt certain, when all the he was over; the one in which Anthony Lloyd Carter, Texas inmate 999642, handed one hundred percent of his earthly person, past, present, and future, to Project NOAH-was tucked against it By the tiht, the whole point was not to read it

Carter gave a slow nod "Always liked her Liked her when she was first lady"

Wolgast let the error pass "She’s just one of the people I work for, Anthony There are others You nize some of the names if I told you, but I can’t And they asked me to come and see you, and tell you how et me out? But you can’t tell me what it is?"

"That’s pretty much the deal, Anthony Say no, and I’ll ht It’s that sie opened oncethe tea He’d done as Wolgast had asked, balancing the glass on a saucer with a long spoon beside it and a wedge of lear He placed it all on the counter in front of Carter Carter looked at the glass, his face gone slack That hen Wolgast thought it Anthony Carter wasn’t guilty, at least not in the way the court had spun it With the others, it was always clear right off what Wolgast was dealing with, that the story was the story But not in this case So had happened that day in the yard; the woman had died But there wasat Carter, this was the space into which Wolgast felt his , like a dark room with no s and one locked door This, he kneas the place where he would find Anthony Carter-he’d find him in the dark-and when he did, Carter would show him the key that would open the door

He spoke with his eyes locked on the glass "I jes’ want" he began

Wolgast waited for hiain "What do you want, Anthony? Tell lass and brushed the tips of his fingers against it The glass was cool, and sweating with moisture; Carter drew his hand away and rubbed the beads of water between his thuesture with coast could feel theit in It was as if the sensation of cool water on his fingertips was the key to every ast’s

"I need the ti that happened With the lady"

And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years

"I can give you that tiast said "All the time in the world An ocean of tiot to do?"

Wolgast and Doyle got to George Bush Intercontinental a little after seven; the traffic was murderous, but they still arrived with ninety minutes to spare They dumped the rental and rode the shuttle to the Continental terminal, showed their credentials to bypass security, and ate at the far end of the concourse

Doyle excused hiry, though he knew he’d probably regret this decision later on, especially if their flight got hung up He checked his handheld Still nothing froet the hell out of Texas Just a few other passengers aiting at the gate; a couple of faed into Blu-rays or iPods, a handful ofon laptops Wolgast checked his watch: seven twenty-five By now, he thought, Anthony Carter would be in the back of a van well on his way to El Reno, leaving in his wake a flurry of shredded records and a fading memory that he had ever existed at all By the end of the day, even his federal ID nued; the ue disturbance no bigger than a ripple on the surface of the world

Wolgast leaned back in his chair and realized how exhausted he was It always ca of a fist These trips left hi conscience he always had to apply soood at finding the one gesture, the one right thing to say Aabout his own death, and he boiled down to otten on a stove; to understand hiure out what that dust was made of, as left of him after the rest of his life, past and future, had turned to vapor Usually it was soer or sadness or sha at all; all that ree at the world and all its systeure this out Anthony was like a hu expression of pure puzzlement He actually didn’t knohy he was in Terrell Not that he didn’t understand his sentence; that was clear, and he had accepted it-as nearly all of them did, because they had to All you had to do was read the last words of condemned men to know that "Tell everyone I love them I’m sorry Okay, Warden, let’s do this" Alords to that effect, and chilling to read, as Wolgast had done by the pageful But so for Anthony Carter Wolgast had seen it when Carter touched the side of the glass-before then, even, when he’d asked about Rachel Wood’s husband and said he was sorry without saying it Whether Carter couldn’t remember what had happened that day in the Woods’ yard or couldn’t ast couldn’t be certain Either way, Anthony Carter needed to find this piece of hiood view of the airfield through the ter sharply off the fuselages of parked aircraft The flight ho the sunset, and he’d feel like hiain He never drank or read or slept, just sat perfectly still, breathing the plane’s bottled air and fixing his eyes out theas the ground below hiht back froast’s plane had flown around a store, its roiling interior lit like a creche with jags of lightning A night in Septeht, or Kansas, someplace flat and empty It could have been farther west The cabin was dark; nearly everyone on the plane was sleeping, including Doyle, seated beside hiainst his stubbled cheek For twenty full e of the storast had never seen anything like it, had never felt himself so completely in the presence of nature’s immensity, its planet-sized power The air inside the store, yet here he was, sealed in silence, hurtling along with nothing but thirty thousand feet of e it all as if it were a movie on a screen, avoice to crackle over the interco about the weather, to let the other passengers in on the show, but this never happened, and when they landed in Denver, forty ast never ht, now, that he’d like to call Lila and tell her about it The feeling was so strong, so clear in his mind, that it took a moment for him to realize how crazy this was, that it was just the ti The tiiven it She was a friend of Lila’s from the hospital whom they had visited just a couple of tiray, and large eyes, permanently damp with sympathy She liked to take her shoes off at the start of each visit and sit with her legs folded under her, like a ca, and she spoke so quietly that Wolgast had to lean forward from the sofa to hear her From time to time, she explained in her tiny voice, their , the way she said it; she was si or see soht, for instance, find therocery with a packet of diapers in their cart, or tiptoeing past Eva’s room, as if she were asleep Those would be the hardest moments, the woman explained, because they’d have to relive their loss all over again; but as the months passed, she assured the was, these ast They still happened to him every now and then, even three years after the fact, and when they did, he didn’t mind at all: far froive hiast?"

He turned in his chair The siray suit, the inexpensive but coastin a mirror But the face was new to him

He rose and reached into his pocket to show his ID "That’s ent Williams, Houston field office" They shook "I’ht after all I’ve got a car outside for you"

"Is there a e?"

Williams drew an envelope from his pocket "I think this is probably what you’re looking for"

Wolgast accepted the envelope Inside was a fax He sat and read, then read it again He was still reading when Doyle returned, sipping froast lifted his gaze to Williams "Give us a second, will you?"

Williams moved off down the concourse