“This is the front gate,” the voice on the other end said. “We’ve got a woman out here.”

Richards examined the monitor that showed the guardhouse. Two sentries, one holding the com to his ear, the other with his weapon unslung. The woman was standing just outside the circle of light around the hut.

“So?” he said. “Get rid of her.”

“That’s the thing, sir,” the sentry said. “She won’t go. She doesn’t look like she has a car, either. I think she actually walked.”

Richards was looking hard at the monitor. He saw the sentry drop the com to the ground and unsling his weapon.

“Hey!” Richards heard him say. “Get back here! Stop or I’ll fire!”

Richards heard the pop of his weapon. The second soldier took off running into the dark. Two more shots, the sound muffled through the com where it lay in the mud. Ten seconds passed, twenty. Then they stepped back into the light. Richards could tell from their body language that they’d lost her.

The first sentry retrieved his com and looked up into the camera.

“Sorry. She got away somehow. You want us to go look for her?”

Jesus. This was all Richards needed. “Who was she?”

“Black woman, some kind of accent,” the sentry explained. “Said she was looking for someone named Wolgast.”

He didn’t die. Not right away and not as the days went by. And on the third day, he told her the story.

– There once was a little girl, Wolgast told her. More little even than you. Her name was Eva, and her mother and father loved her very much. The night after she was born, her father took her from her bassinet in the room at the hospital where they were all sleeping and held her, her bare skin against his own, and from that moment on she was inside him, really and truly. His girl was inside him, in his heart.

Somebody was probably watching, listening. The camera was over his shoulder. He didn’t care. Fortes came and went. He took her blood and changed her bags, and Wolgast talked, through the hours of the third day, telling it all to Amy, the story he’d told no one.

– And then something happened. It was her heart. Her heart, you see-he showed her the place on his chest where this was-began to shrink. While around her, her body grew, her heart did not, and then the rest of her stopped growing too. He would have given her his heart if he could, because it was hers to begin with. It had always been, and always would be, hers. But he couldn’t do this for her, he couldn’t do anything, no one could, and when she died, he died with her. The man that he was, was gone. And the man and the woman couldn’t love each other anymore, because their love was nothing but sadness now, and missing their little girl.

He told her the story, told it all. And when the story was ending, the day was ending with it.

– And then you came, Amy, he said. Then I found you. Do you see? It was like she’d come back to me. Come back, Amy. Come back, come back, come back.

He lifted his face. He opened his eyes.

And Amy opened hers, too.

THIRTEEN

Lacey in the woods: she moved at a crouch, darting tree to tree, putting distance between herself and the soldiers. The air was cold and thin, sharp in her lungs. She stood with her back against a tree and let herself breathe.

She wasn’t afraid. The soldiers’ bullets were nothing. She’d heard them ripping through the underbrush, but they hadn’t even come close. And so small! Bullets-how could bullets hurt a person? After the long distance she’d traveled, against such odds, how could they hope to scare her away with something as meager as that?

She peeked around the barrel-like trunk. She could see, through the undergrowth, the glow of the sentry hut, hear the two men talking, their voices carrying easily across the moonless night. Black woman, some kind of accent, and the other one saying over and over, Shit, he’s going to have our ass for this. How the fuck did we miss her? Huh? How the fuck! You didn’t even fucking aim!

Whoever they were talking to on the phone, they were afraid of him. But this man-Lacey knew he was nothing, no one. And the soldiers, they were like children, without minds of their own. Like the ones in the field, so long ago. She remembered how, through the long hours, they’d done and done. They’d thought they were taking something from her-she could see it in the dark smiles streaked across their mouths, taste it in their sour breath on her face-and it was true, they had. But now she’d forgiven them and taken this thing back, which was Lacey herself, and more besides. She closed her eyes. But you are a shield around me, O LORD, she thought:

You bestow glory on me and lift up my head.

To the LORD I cry aloud

and he answers me from his holy hill.

Selah.

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.

I will not fear the tens of thousands

drawn up against me on every side.

Arise, O LORD!

Deliver me, O my God!

Strike all my enemies on the jaw;

break the teeth of the wicked.

She was moving through the trees again. The man on the other end of the sentry’s phone: he would send more soldiers to hunt her down. And yet a feeling like joy was coursing through her-a new, nimble energy, richer and deeper than anything she’d felt in her life. It had been building through the weeks as she made her way to-well, where? She didn’t know what it was called. In her mind it was simply the place where Amy was.

She’d taken some buses. She’d ridden awhile in the back of someone’s truck with two Labrador retrievers and a crate of baby pigs. Some days she’d awakened wherever she was and known it was a day to walk, just walk. From time to time she ate or, if it felt right, knocked on a door and asked if it would be all right if she slept in a bed. And the woman who answered the door-for it was always a woman, no matter what door Lacey knocked on-would say, Of course, come right in, and lead her to a room with a bed all made up and waiting, without saying one more word about it.

And then one day she was climbing a long mountain road, the glory of God in the sunshine all around her, and knew that she’d arrived.

Wait, the voice said. Wait for sunset, Sister Lacey. The way will show you the way.

And so it did: the way showed the way. More men were pursuing her now; each footfall, each snap of a twig, each breath was as a gunshot, louder than loud, telling Lacey where they were. They were spread out behind her in a wide line, six of them, pointing their guns into the darkness, at nothing, at a place where Lacey had stood but stood no longer.

She came to a break in the trees. A road. To the left, two hundred yards distant, stood the sentry hut, bathed in its halo of light. To the right the road turned into the trees and descended sharply. From somewhere far below, was the sound of the river.

Nothing about this place revealed its meaning to her; and yet she knew to wait. She dropped and pressed her belly against the forest floor. The soldiers were behind her, fifty yards, forty, thirty.

She heard the low, labored sound of a diesel engine, its pitch dropping as the driver downshifted to ascend the final rise. Slowly it pushed its light and noise toward her. She rose to a crouch as its headlights burst over the crest of the hill. Some kind of Army truck. The pitch of the engine changed as the driver shifted again and began to gather speed.

Now?

And the voice said: Now.

She was up and running with all her might, aiming her body at the rear of the truck. A wide bumper and, above it, an open cargo area, concealed by swaying canvas. For a moment it seemed as if she’d moved too late, that the truck would race away, but in a burst of speed she caught it. Her hands found the lip of the gate, one bare foot and then the other left the road. Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, airborne: she was up and over and she was rolling in.