streets. When Shannon went out, that meant that they beat the homeless men with fists and batons, and threw them into vans. The vans were driven away and none of the homeless men have been seen since.'
Bill pounded his fist against the counter. '_Goddamn_ it!'
Ginny put a hand on his arm. 'She wants out.'
'And we want her out. But what the hell can we do about it?'
The pipes shuddered as Shannon started the shower in the bathroom.
'She has something she wants to show you,' Ginny said. 'She's going to bring it out after she takes a shower.'
'What is it?'
'I'm not supposed to say. She wants to show you herself.'
'Come on.'
'All right. Don't tell her I told you. It's _The Employee's Bible_.'
'_The Employee's Bible_?'
'She had to smuggle it out of The Store and she's really nervous about it.
I guess it's a book they're given when they get hired. It's forbidden for outsiders to see it.'
Bill felt a rush of excitement. 'It probably explains all about The Store,' he said.
Ginny nodded.
'This may give us some info we can use.'
Shannon came into the living room after finishing her shower, dry-eyed and wearing a bathrobe. She handed him a black-bound book and sat on the couch. She wouldn't meet his eyes, would only look at her hands, which were twisting and bunching the robe in her lap. 'We're not supposed to show this to anyone. It's for Store employees only. But I thought you'd want to see it.'
_The Employee's Bible_.
Bill flipped through the pages, scanning the subheadings: THE STORE IS
YOUR HOME. BECOMING ONE OF US. DEALING WITH TRAITORS. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.
TERMINATION PROCEDURES.
Shannon nervously twisted the robe material. 'I'm not supposed to bring that home. It's not supposed to leave The Store.'
He continued looking through the book. It was appalling, frightening, both its words and the accompanying drawings making his skin crawl. But he'd been hoping for more. Weaknesses. Trade secrets. Achilles' heels. It seemed to be mostly propaganda, ham-handed attempts at intimidation, and there was not really anything that could be used against The Store. Even the references to what he knew were illegal acts were couched in careful language, carrying another, more innocent, meaning.
'I work tomorrow,' she said. 'I have to bring it back.'
He nodded, turned to the index, scanned the entries. 'School's going to be starting in a few weeks. What's going to happen then? Are they going to let you quit?'
'They're cutting down my hours. But I can't quit. My work contract runs through October. The end of October.'
'That's only two more months,' Ginny offered.
'Two more months of sweeps? Two more months of . . .' She shook her head.
'Forget it.'
'Maybe there's something in here,' Bill said. 'Some loophole we could exploit. Maybe we can get you out of there.'
'They're smarter than we are,' Shannon said dejectedly. 'There aren't going to be any loopholes.'
She was right. If there were any, he couldn't find them, but he scanned as many of the book's pages as he could into his PC before giving it back to her.
He'd study it more carefully tomorrow, see if he couldn't come up with something.
He wished Ben was here. And Street. Three heads were always better than one.
Both Shannon and Ginny went to bed early, but he wasn't tired, couldn't sleep, was too wound up, and after kissing Ginny good night, he remained in his office until well after midnight, faxing and E-mailing messages to Arizona's two senators, to their local assemblyman, to the county Board of Supervisors, to the Better Business Bureau, to the Federal Trade Commission, to the FBI, to the Commerce Department, to anyone he could think of. He even sent a fax to The Store's corporate office in Dallas, addressing it to Newman King himself, detailing his complaints and suspicions, his problems with The Store, demanding that his daughter be released from the involuntary servitude in which The Store illegally and unconstitutionally held her.
Ginny was asleep and snoring when he finally crawled into bed, and he put his arm around her and cupped her breast. She stirred, moaned, backed against his hardening penis. He wanted to make love to her. It had been over a week since they'd done it, but he restrained himself, moved his hand down to her belly, closed his eyes, and concentrated on falling asleep. He wanted to do it, but they couldn't. They had no protection. He had no condoms, and she was out of spermicide for her diaphragm.
They'd have to go to The Store tomorrow and buy some.
THIRTY
1
There was a faculty meeting the week before school started, and Ginny called up various friends on the staff to see if any of them needed a ride.
None of them wanted to go with her.
She'd been afraid of that -- it was the real reason she'd called, to gauge the mood of her coworkers -- but instead of intimidating her, making her nervous about showing up, it angered her, fortified her, and she was determined not to cave in to any sort of pressure.
She drove alone to Juniper Elementary, took a seat at the front of the assembly room. The other teachers filed in, took their seats, talking among themselves, but there remained a circle of empty seats around her, an artificial barrier that none of the other faculty would cross.
Until Meg sat down next to her.
Ginny had never been more grateful to anyone in her life, and though she had never really liked Meg, though 'coworker' had always been a more accurate description of their relationship even than 'acquaintance,' she reached out and spontaneously hugged the other teacher.
The older woman smiled. 'I guess we misfits have to stick together.'
Ginny smiled back. 'So where are you shopping these days?'
Meg burst out laughing.
'So what happened here?' Ginny asked. 'Why did they all jump ship?'
'I don't know. I've never been privy to their thoughts, never shared their confidences. You were always closer to the rest of the staff than I was.'
'Until I suddenly became a leper.'
'You have standards,' Meg said. 'You have integrity. You and I may have totally different teaching techniques. We may disagree on almost everything. But one thing we have in common is that we stand up for what we believe in. And we don't back down in the face of adversity. I've always admired that about you.'
Ginny was genuinely touched. 'Thank you.'
'The rest of our fellow teachers are easily corruptible sheep.'
'And so are the kids and their parents,' Ginny said.
Meg nodded. 'It's going to be a long year.'
The principal came out then, walking to the front of the assembly room, and those teachers who were standing took their seats, everyone growing quiet.
'There are going to be some changes this year at Juniper Elementary,' the principal said after making a few introductory remarks. 'And I'm very excited about them. I hope you will be, too.' He explained that the teachers' union, the district, and The Store had just finished hammering out an agreement by which Juniper's elementary, junior high, and high schools would be privately rather than publicly funded, on a trial basis, for this school year, The Store volunteering to foot the town's educational bill in exchange for a few small concessions.
'Firstly,' he said, 'there will be new textbooks. As we all know, our current books are embarrassingly out of date and woefully inadequate. The Store will be providing us with new texts that we will be required to use.' He
