“Thank you, but I better get the girls home. Their mother will be waiting.” And delivering her children was only his first job tonight. Howie had rattled off a to-do list with machine-gun rapidity just before stepping into the glare of the television lights, and item number two meant racing back to Cap City, making calls （and calling in favors） as he went. Back in harness, which was good—a lot better than chalking tires on Midland Street—but this part was going to be hard.
The girls were in a room that, judging from the stuffed fish leaping on the knotty pine walls, had to be Tom Mattingly’s man-cave. On the huge flatscreen, SpongeBob was capering in Bikini Bottom, but with the sound muted. The girls Alec had come to pick up were huddled on the sofa, still wearing their Golden Dragons tee-shirts and baseball caps. They were also wearing black and gold facepaint—probably applied by their mother a few hours ago, before the previously friendly world had reared up on its hind legs and bitten a hole in their family—but the younger had cried most of hers off.
The older girl saw a strange man looming in the door and hugged her weeping sister tighter. Although Alec had no kids himself, he liked them fine, and Sarah Maitland’s instinctive gesture hurt his heart: a child protecting a child.
He stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped before him. “Sarah? I’m a friend of Howie Gold’s. You know him, don’t you?”
“Yes. Is my father all right?” Her voice was little more than a whisper, and husky from her own tears. Grace never looked at Alec at all; she turned her face into the hollow of her big sister’s shoulder.
“Yes. He asked me to take you home.” Not strictly true, but this was hardly the time for splitting hairs.
“Is he there?”
“No, but your mother is.”
“We could walk,” Sarah said faintly. “It’s only up the street. I could hold Gracie’s hand.”
Against the older girl’s shoulder, Grace Maitland’s head went back and forth in a gesture of negation.
“Not after dark, hon,” Jamie Mattingly said.
And not tonight, Alec thought. Not for many nights to come. Days, either.
“Come on, girls,” Tom said with manufactured （and rather ghoulish） good cheer. “I’ll see you out.”
On the stoop, under the porch light, Jamie Mattingly looked paler than ever; she had gone from soccer mom to cancer patient in three short hours. “This is awful,” she said. “It’s like the whole world turned upside down. Thank God our own girl is away at camp. We were only at the game tonight because Sarah and Maureen are best buds.”
At the mention of her friend, Sarah Maitland also began to cry, and that got her sister cranked up again. Alec thanked the Mattinglys and led the girls to his Explorer. They walked slowly, heads down and holding hands like children in a fairy tale. He had cleared the front passenger seat of its usual load of crap, and they sat in it squeezed together. Grace once more had her face socked into the hollow of her sister’s shoulder.
Alec didn’t bother trying to buckle them in; it was no more than two tenths of a mile to the circle of light illuminating the sidewalk and the Maitland lawn. There was only a single crew left in front of the house. They were from the Cap City ABC affiliate, four or five guys standing around and drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups in the shadow of their truck’s satellite dish. When they saw the Explorer turn into the Maitland driveway, they scrambled into action.
Alec powered down his window and spoke to them in his best halt-and-put-your-hands-up voice. “Not one camera! Not one camera on these children!”
That stopped them for a few seconds, but only a few. Telling media blowflies not to film was like telling mosquitoes not to bite. Alec could remember when things had been different （back in the antique days when a gentleman still held the door for a lady）， but that time was gone. The lone reporter who had elected to stay here on Barnum Court—a Hispanic guy that Alec recognized vaguely, the one who was partial to bowties and did the weather on weekends—was already grabbing his mic and checking the power pack on his belt.
The front door of the Maitland house opened. Sarah saw her mother there and started to get out. “Wait one, Sarah,” Alec said, and reached behind him. He had taken a couple of towels from the downstairs bathroom before leaving his house, and now he handed one to each girl.
“Put these over your faces, except for your eyes.” He smiled. “Like bandits in a movie, okay?”
Grace only stared at him, but Sarah got it, and draped one of the towels over her sister’s head. Alec swept it over Grace’s mouth and nose while Sarah fixed her own towel. They got out and hurried through the harsh light from the TV truck, holding the towels closed below their chins. They didn’t look like bandits; they looked like midget Bedouins in a sandstorm. They also looked like the saddest, most desperate kiddos Alec had ever seen.