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never heard of you.”
    â€œNo?” He looked resigned and a little saddened. “I’ve written for the Boston papers and the New York City papers.”
    â€œAnd I read the papers. I’ve never heard of you. So, what do you write?”
    â€œTreason—according to the British. Well, actually, I haven’t written in quite some time. I wound up being a soldier. I went to war, but I was being hanged for treason.”
    â€œWhat war?” she asked sharply.
    â€œYou should have read a few of my pieces. Some were considered brilliant. Rousing. I’m not a warmonger, not at all. But the colonies couldn’t be used like a Royal Exchequer forever. If we’re to pay taxes, then representation must be absolutely fair. I tried to explain what was happening to us, and why it’s so important that we part ways with Great Britain. I wrote about a central government, and about the rights of each colony. Even General George Washington read what I was writing.”
    Lunatic.
    â€œOkay,” she said calmly. “So—you were a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Right before I found you on the road?”
    â€œRight before you struck me down,” he reminded her.
    So that was it. In a sneaking and conniving way, he was going to bleed her for what she had done to him.
    â€œRight before I struck you down, yes. You were a soldier. In the Revolutionary War? ”
    His eyes hadn’t wavered from her face. She was making a point of keeping them on the road now, but her peripheral vision allowed her to be keenly aware of his steady assessment.
    â€œYes. Where am I?”
    â€œGloucester, Massachusetts,” she snapped. “Almost at my house. But I can take a detour to the police station or the mental hospital.”
    â€œI’m very sorry. Truly. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
    â€œFine. We’ll start over. What were you doing in the twenty-first century?” she demanded. “The twenty- first? ” he asked her.
    She let out a long sigh. “Yes, the twenty- first. ”
    â€œWho won?” he asked.
    She was startled by the sudden intensity in him; she didn’t just hear it in his voice, but felt it in the constriction of his body as he leaned closer to her.
    â€œWho won?” he demanded again. He was even closer. Practically breathing down her neck.
    Lunatic. Serial killer. A madman–serial killer. She needed to humor him.
    â€œThe United States of America. And the federal forces won the Civil War, too.”
    He hunched back into the passenger’s seat. “Thank God… Civil War?”
    â€œThe American Civil War, or the War Between theStates, or, as it was referred to in the South, the War of Northern Aggression. We are one country.”
    He stared out the window at the white world beyond the car. “How sad, how excruciatingly sad. We won the Revolution, and fought a civil war.”
    â€œAll war is sad.”
    â€œAnd there is a war now?” he asked sharply.
    She hazarded a glance at him. “The War on Terror,” she said. “Oh, there have been lots of wars. Before the Civil War, the War of 1812—those pesky Brits again, though we’re just like this now.” She crossed her fingers for him with her right hand, keeping the left firmly on the wheel. “Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and all kinds of actions. Actually, I don’t think there has been a time when some part of the world hasn’t been involved in an action of some kind.”
    â€œAmazing,” he said.
    â€œRight. War is amazing.”
    â€œMan’s inability to refrain from it is amazing,” he said softly.
    She couldn’t hate him. Okay, so he was seriously more than just daft. There was a dignity to the tone of his voice, and a certain sincerity in too many of his words. Maybe she had hit him on the head, and he believed everything that he