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For a long moment, neither said anything, then Millie ran a hand through her bangs, let a purple curtain fall between them. From behind it, she said, “I come here sometimes. To watch him.”

“Soren? Why?”

“Because I can’t read him. Sometimes the voices from everyone else, even the people who care about me . . .” She blew a breath. “It’s quiet here. Quiet, but I’m not alone.”

He let that lie amidst the hum of computer fans and the motion of holograms. Finally, he checked the time. “I’m sorry, Millie. I have to go.”

“Oh?” She looked at him. “Going to see Shannon, huh?”

He nodded.

“Are you going to tell her you had sex with Natalie?”

Cooper opened his mouth, closed it. Screened a dozen responses. “You think that’s a mistake?”

“How would I know? I’m eleven.”

He laughed, stood up. Put a hand out as if to touch her, a tentative move, not sure she’d welcome it. When she didn’t flinch, he gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t stay too long, okay?”

“Sure.”

“By the way, you were right. I do feel sorry for Soren.”

“Even though he hurt your son.”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “It won’t stop me. But it doesn’t make what I have to do okay.”

“You see?” she said. “Pure.”

CHAPTER 14

The New Sons of Liberty made it nearly five miles before they heard the voice of God.

Those five miles took seven hours. “There’s a reason,” Ronnie Delgado had said, “Epstein was able to buy half of Wyoming, and it boils down to, ‘It’s a shit heap.’”

Luke Hammond couldn’t disagree, at least not about the part they were walking through. He knew there was purple mountain majesty somewhere, but the landscape here was ugly, rugged, and cold. The uneven ground was easily enough navigated by men on foot, but eighteen-wheelers were built for interstates. It seemed like every couple of hundred yards a truck got stuck, lost a tire to a sinkhole, snapped an axle.

What few roads had existed before New Canaan was built generally cut straight across the state, with hard-pack paths branching off to ranches and mines. Since then Epstein had laid a system of smooth highways, but they all tapered to fortified entrance points. Nothing that the Sons couldn’t have swept aside, but General Miller believed, and Luke concurred, that a direct attack risked unnecessary consequences. There would be plenty of fighting later. Better to make what distance they could bloodlessly, jam the knifepoint of the militia into the body of the Holdfast before they had to fight for every step.

When they heard the voice of God, Luke was walking beside Delgado and dictating a mental e-mail to Josh and Zack. An old habit from when he was overseas frequently. Being career special operations meant he couldn’t be the kind of father who never missed a ball game. But he compensated for it as best he could by spending time with them, speaking honestly and directly, and sharing his experience of the world as if the three of them were adventuring in it together. Through his e-mails to them, the three of them had together reconnoitered a Moroccan bazaar, rare silks sold beside Chinese radios, body odor layered beneath wafts of cumin and sandalwood. Via e-mail, together they’d been stricken dumb by the night sounds of the Salvadoran jungle, a symphony of insects, the mating calls of writhing things, the endless dance of predator and prey lit green by night vision goggles.

How can I describe for you, my fine sons, what it is to march into Wyoming? With rhetoric and speeches? With our grim sense of duty and righteousness?

Better to tell you about aching feet and the hot burn of developing blisters.

About the cacophony that is twenty thousand men picking their way across this crusted moonscape. Conversation, footsteps, and rock skitter, laughter. The steady tap of a rifle stock against a man’s belt. The rumble-chutter of semis crawling at a mile an hour punctuated by the hiss of air brakes. Crisp air, and the smells of dirt and coffee and fart.