“I don’t believe it. Historyexistsbecause people worked together, and they did it in larger and larger groups that became cities and then civilization. Fear and violence are always overthrown.”
His arms firmed around her. “Dictators use fear. Fear of others, fear of people with different ideas.”
“Fear only works for a while. Hitler led Germany for twelve years before he destroyed it from the inside and committed suicide. Mary Varvara Bell is corralling a herd of resentful bulls. The minute the gate is open, they’ll bolt and trample her.”
Blaze leaned back and studied her, his pale blue eyes searching and looking straight into hers.“Interesting.”
What, that a farm girl understood bovine psychology? “What’s interesting?”
He looked out the wide window over the field of gray needles as if he didn’t want her to read what was written in his eyes.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just an idea.”
* * *
The breakneck speedat which terror turned to anger, and then anger turned to boredom in the closed white room was embarrassing.
Within twenty minutes, Sarah was lying on her back on the bed, tossing the useless ingot of unresponsive metal that was her phone into the air and catching it before it smashed her face.
Blaze stood over by the window, watching the traffic and city as if he were divining tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. He’d taken off his shoes and was barefoot, his toes buried in the white shag rug that took up most of the floor.
A thick bulge looped around his thigh under his blood-stained pants where he’d tied a towel to stop the bleeding from where he’d been shot. He’d assured her that it was just a little gunshot, pretty much a flesh wound, but worry consumed her.
For a while.
He was walking on it all right.
And the three white walls and one window overlooking Manhattan didn’t change.
The walls were white, the bed was white, and the rug was white like a psychiatric ward.
Sarah just kept tossing and snatching her stupid phone out of the air.
After that Twist dude had put his evil malware on it, most of her apps didn’t work.
Basically, all the good ones.
The texting utility and all the social media and direct-message apps were dead.
Hundreds of DMs had probably come in from people who needed their tarot cards read and a little encouragement from Madam Belova, and she couldn’t even text them back. All those people who needed help were just hanging in the wind out there, helpless, and Sarah couldn’t even offer them a hand.
When she looked at her notifications, her friends in Kalona had been desperately trying to tell her about black SUVs rolling down I-80 toward Kalona. She’d just ignored the texts and voicemail pings in the storm of DMs wanting tarot card readings.
Dang. Her Kalona community had tried to protect her, but their signal had been too weak in the SnipSnap noise.
She also couldn’t play Candy Smush or online cards with anybody, and her app to read naughty stories on her favorite serial fiction site was darkened and didn’t respond to her frantic taps on the screen.
Even her attempt to download a free novel from the Big River store didn’t work.
They might as well have not given it back to her.
So she laid on the bed, tossing it into the air. If it couldn’t be a phone, it could be a stupid-looking ball.
She was catching it lower on its fall each time, seeing how late she could catch it without smashing into her face and breaking her nose.
A knock banged the door, and she rolled off the other side of the bed onto the floor like Blaze had instructed.
The shag rug came up at her fast, and she barely got her hands out in front of her to keep from breaking her nose on the floor.
