Chapter 34

Salome was surprised when the chief of police invited her and Jamie to a meeting with him. She was even more surprised that he believed everything she had said a day ago when she made the call. She had expected them to be amused or to reply to her with a kinder variant of ‘go fuck yourself, you crazy unpatriotic bitch,’ but she had not expected this.

Jamie, though, was beside himself with excitement. When she had told him about the invitation, he had literally leaped for joy. “This is it, babe. We’ve saved them!” he had said over and over and over again until Salome, too, got infected with his optimism. It seemed too good to be true, like a dream or some type of miracle, but she wasn’t complaining: she could use a few miracles herself.

They drove to the station (well, Jamie was driving; she was on the phone with a geek she had contracted to try and track Rose and Joe – no such luck). The sky ahead was forget-me-not-blue, and the sun was a smudge of grease in the sky.