Dumas made a noise -- weak and agonized, like a dying creature’s final cry.  Then he swallowed hard and regained control of himself.  He could do this.  For Mari’s sake, he could summon a thin veneer of calm to hold his shattered self together.  He’d done it before.  It would be like his first months in the military, when the swaggering brutality had still been a mask to hide his fear.<br/><br/>So many times he’d prayed for the day when that fear would finally end.  Too late, he realized that what came after it was even worse.<br/><br/>“She told me,” Dumas confessed.  “I didn’t know.  I thought it was Mari.<span style="font-style: italic">Our</span>Mari.  I thought that she...I thought that someone finally…I’m such a fucking idiot!”  Again, Dumas felt himself breaking apart, and bitter laughter spilled through the cracks.  Could he possibly be any more pathetic?  He didn’t even have the balls to tell Chester what had happened.  Dumas wanted to beat the holy crap out of himself.  But since that presented certain physical difficulties, he kicked Mari’s night table so hard that it skidded across the room.<br/><br/>Like a drug that relieves pain even as it slowly poisons, the anger helped.  Dumas’s voice grew steady again.  “Meet me at the intersection of Hatter’s Highway and Hedgehog road.  If we follow her to wherever she’s going, maybe we’ll finally figure out what the hell is going on.”