Tom Proctor, twelve and thoroughly reliable, slipped into the library at 8:02, bringing with him Jimmy Cole, about whom Harley had been worried. Physically and emotionally fragile since day one, thin and pale to start, fading ever since, Jimmy had been the one most likely to forget the rendezvous or, if he came, to show up wearing the shoes he had been told to leave behind. Responsible Tom thought to look after him, and now the eight of them were gathered.
Harley said, “We’re going through that door over there, into the study, then along the service hall to the laundry and into the garage. I’m going to drive us out of here in the Escalade.”
“You can drive?” asked Jenny Boone.
“I can drive enough.”
Bobby Acuff, always cognizant of the potential for calamity, said, “You don’t have keys, we’re going nowhere without keys, we’re beat already.”
“I know where they keep the keys,” Harley said.