Famous Last Words

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, cursing, and death.

“It is June 21, the longest day of the year, and the hottest so far, too, even at eight o’clock in the morning. The sun is as sharp and yellow as a lemon drop. Cam turns her face to it, apricating in it. Huge flowers have bloomed in the street, big and open happy faces nodding as Cam walks by.”

The first chapter of the text establishes the setting, a hot summer day in June that Cam finds comforting. The weather reflects her mood—initially happy and content despite Luke’s absence—an illusion that will be shattered by the hostage crisis, launching the text’s thematic exploration of Appearance Versus Reality.

“[Lambert] is unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice, and some battle line is drawn, right there in a meeting room full of books. He has played his full house of evidence, and Cam says nothing, holding her own cards, a shitty, low-scoring hand.”

McAllister uses the metaphor of a card game to describe Cam’s interaction with the police, adding a calculated tension to their back-and-forth over the siege. In Cam’s mind, she has a “low-scoring hand”—yet she plays the cards that she has to protect her husband and keep some control over the situation.

“A small movement at the top of the screen, near the table, and then he walks forward purposefully, holding the gun out in front of him with straight arms. […] Niall pauses it, rewinds, but he can’t make out that small movement right at the start. He watches again.”

McAllister uses this moment in which Niall notes Luke’s “small movement” in the warehouse, to foreshadow a deeper truth about the hostage situation. He rewatches the same tiny gesture each time, emphasizing it as a clue to unraveling the mystery of what happened in the warehouse.