Chapter 24: Full Signal

The field was forty minutes from the city, past the last streetlight, at the end of a gravel road.

Declan parked beside a wooden fence and turned off the engine.

The dark outside was complete.

There was a moon, thin and low, and more stars than I had seen in my whole life.

"Wait here a second," he said.

He went around to the trunk, and I heard him moving things.

I got out and stood by the fence with my hands in my coat pockets.

I had stood by a fence like this once, holding a phone and waiting for a man to come back.

Nobody had come back that night.

A light came on behind me, warm and yellow.

I turned around.

Declan was setting a brass lamp on the hood of the car, with its cord run to a battery pack on the bumper.

It was the lamp from his office.

"You carried that out here," I said.

"I told you I keep it on for whoever is still working." He straightened. "You were the last one in the building tonight."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"The board chair is going to ask me for a report on this too," he said.

"Put it in writing. Day one."

"Day one was a long time ago, and I've been reporting it to myself ever since."

I took my phone out of my pocket.

The screen lit my hand.

Full signal, every bar, and the little clock said it was a quarter past nine.

I stood there and let myself look at it.

For the first time in my life I could call anyone I wanted and nobody could stop it.

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