بخش 04 - فصل 02

2

The snow remains light until Brady gets off the interstate at Exit 7, but on State Road 79—he’s out in the boondocks now—it starts to come down a little harder. The tar is still bare and wet, but the snow will start to accumulate on it soon enough, and he’s still forty miles from where he intends to hole up and get busy.

Lake Charles, he thinks. Where the real fun begins.

That’s when Babineau’s laptop awakens and chimes three times—an alert Brady programmed into it. Because safe is always better than sorry. He has no time to pull over, not when he’s racing this goddam storm, but he can’t afford not to. Ahead on the right is a boarded-up building with two metal girls in rusting bikinis on the roof, holding up a sign reading PORNO PALACE and XXX and WE DARE TO BARE. In the middle of the dirt parking lot—which the snow is now starting to sugarcoat—there’s a For Sale sign.

Brady pulls in, shifts to park, and opens the laptop. The message on the screen puts a significant crack right down the middle of his good mood.

11:04 AM: UNAUTHORIZED ATTEMPT TO MODIFY/CANCEL ZEETHEEND.COM DENIED

SITE ACTIVE

He opens the Malibu’s glove compartment and there is Al Brooks’s battered cell phone, right where he always kept it. A good thing, too, because Brady forgot to bring Babineau’s.

So sue me, he thinks. You can’t remember everything, and I’ve been busy.

He doesn’t bother going to Contacts, just dials Freddi’s number from memory. She hasn’t changed it since the old Discount Electronix days.