A nine-year-old should never have to think his way out of a killing storm alone, because a nine-year-old should never be in one.

But when the door stayed shut, my son did not lie down.

He went looking for someone who would help him, and he kept looking until he fell, and it was that same refusal to give up, I think, that kept him alive until the headlights found him.

Chapter 9 — Arthur Walks In

I was still on my knees beside my son when the curtain of the trauma bay was shoved roughly aside, and Arthur Vance walked in.

He was wearing a heavy black wool coat, and his gray hair was damp from the rain, and he carried himself with the same posture he carried everywhere, the posture of a man who has spent decades in boardrooms being the most important person in the room and has come to consider it the natural order of things.