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could possibly ever see the light of day again,” Augustus said. “I’m sure they boxed it all right up like in Raiders , and it’s probably sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting for me to conveniently knock it over in a sequel.” He shook his head. “No, man. Cavanagh was connected everywhere, not just here in the U.S. His companies were international. Who knows where he sent that stuff? He was planning to ‘activate’ the whole world at some point, after all.”
    “This is a weird string of coincidences, though,” I said. “Cunningham gets on a plane to Minneapolis? And just happens to be a newly transformed meta? Who goes nuclear at the airport? I mean, any link of that chain could have fallen apart. What if Cunningham hadn’t lost control in the line?”
    “What if he’d lost it on the plane?” Augustus asked as he got in the passenger seat.
    “What if he’d never lost it at all?” I asked.
    “Fifty-odd people would still be alive,” Augustus said, “and Cunningham’s cheap-ass shoes wouldn’t have been ruined first by dog crap, then by unseasonable thousand-degree temps.”
    I slipped behind the wheel, let my fingers slide across the faux leather. I loved this car. “I wouldn’t tell that joke in public if I were you.”
    “Too soon?”
    “Little bit,” I said. “I’ve had to hold back a few myself. If Cunningham’s gotten ‘activated,’ as you put it, I don’t think there was intentional malice behind this incident.”
    “So you’re not calling it an attack?”
    “I shoot someone in the head, it’s an attack,” I said. “Sienna shoots someone in the head, it’s Tuesday.” He didn’t laugh. “You give someone meta powers and put them on a plane to Minneapolis? Kind of a half-assed way to go about it. I mean, if you want to cause chaos, sending Cunningham to a bigger airport would have been a start. JFK, LaGuardia, Atlanta? MSP is small fish—”
    “Small pond,” Augustus said then, when he caught my eye, looked chastened. “He’s the fish. Your analogy was crap. I fixed it.”
    “Point is,” I said, “this is so clumsy it makes a nerdy rom-com trope heroine look as deft as a ballet dancer by comparison. I don’t think this was an attack. It’s a misfire at best, an accident by any other name.” I waved my hand at the house. “I’m forming an opinion of this guy based on the file and his mother, and it reads like this: Benjamin Cunningham wouldn’t say shit if his lips were overflowing with the stuff. If he hadn’t had these powers, what do you bet he would have just imploded emotionally and sat down for a good cry?”
    “I don’t know this dude like you apparently do,” Augustus said. “Thought your talent was controlling the wind, not reading minds.”
    “I knew a mind reader for a while,” I said, smirking. “Dr. Quinton Zollers. He taught me some things.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Augustus looked jaded, wasn’t biting with much enthusiasm. “Like what?”
    I started the car, listened to the Challenger’s engine give off a throaty roar. “Like that you should never ascribe to malice what could better be attributed to stupidity.”
    “That’s called Hanlon’s Razor,” Augustus said with a frown. “Sounds like your friend didn’t have an original thought of his own.”
    I waited, just a beat for it to set in before I delivered the punch line. “Well, that is kind of what a telepath is known for, isn’t it?” He didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.

8.
Benjamin
    From down the block, Benjamin watched them leave in their yellow Challenger. He could see the other government car, too, the sedan that was staking out the street. It was a weird feeling, seeing elements out of a spy movie plopped down into his own life. Benjamin had lived on this street his entire life. He knew every car, every neighbor, and most of their friends. A black town car would have stood out around here even if he hadn’t known the area this well.
    Benjamin had parked in