“Let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure! Guess who said that one: Harry, Ron, or Hermione?”
“Ron?”
“Dumbledore, man! I told you, Dumbledore always gets the best quotes!”
Zig laughed as the bees buzzed behind him. “By the way, Andy, I was thinking about work,” he said, stepping out into the night. “When you’re ready for it, what’re your thoughts about Delaware?”
Epilogue
Dulles, Virginia
It took patience to find him.
Actually, that wasn’t true. All it took was Nola’s license plate, which gave him her car, which gave him her 2011 entry-level Dodge, an Avenger. From there, the Mopar system did the rest.
Tired of losing sales to LoJack, both Dodge and Chrysler introduced the Mopar tracking system in 2010, complete with silver and gold plans that gave you unlimited nationwide tracking, for both location and speed.
What most consumers didn’t know, however, was that there was a base plan as well—no monthly fee—though good luck finding a dealer who’d tell you. As a result, to this day, there were tens of thousands of Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep owners who had no idea their used cars were still sending trackable signals wherever they went.
From there, all it took was patience—and some friends in law enforcement. Fortunately, Roddy had both.
“And he’s been here how long?” Roddy asked.
“I think at least . . .” Nurse Odessa flipped open the medical chart. She was a young oval-faced Honduran woman with hazel eyes and a trim figure, like a runner. “Yup, yup . . . he got here when my son was born, nearly two years ago.”
Roddy nodded as they turned the corner in the empty, fluorescent-lit hallway. The only decorations were three framed portraits of white men in front of American flags. Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Sergeant Major of the Army. The photos were the only indication that this was a military facility—you’d never know it if you drove by.
From the outside, the Fairfax Manor Rehabilitation Center was like every other forgettable glass-and-concrete office building this close to Dulles Airport—designed to be overlooked. There wasn’t even a sign out front. But again, Roddy knew where he was going.
“That kinda day, huh?” Nurse Odessa asked, eyeing Roddy’s police uniform and the federal warrant he was still holding in his hand.
Roddy forced a grin that wasn’t nearly as warm as he thought it was.
As they headed down the hallway, he saw that most of the rooms were filled. On their right was a Saudi Arabian professor getting chemo and state-of-the-art treatment in exchange for information about a former student who now lived in Tehran. In another room was an Asian woman—an Army Ranger out of North Carolina—who’d had four of her fingers cut off when the Chinese government accused her （correctly） of being embedded in a robotics plant in Beijing.
The U.S. government had facilities like this all over the globe. When undercover soldiers and secret squirrels make the wrong enemies, you can’t just send them to emergency rooms or even military bases. Instead, you need a place that specializes in keeping them safe—and out of sight.
“M?tley Crüe?” Roddy asked, hearing the music at the end of the hallway.
“Def Leppard,” the nurse replied as “Pour Some Sugar on Me” pounded in the distance.
According to some doctors—or at least the ones at Fairfax Manor—the best way to help someone with a traumatic brain injury was to play songs that remind them of something they love. A reason to come back.
“Apparently this was his band,” Odessa explained, reaching the end of the hallway—room 113—as Def Leppard insisted they were sticky sweet, from their head to their feet.