Adam wasn’t sure what had roused him. The only sounds were the shush of his found blanket against the crackling plastic beneath him, and the reassuring rhythm of Harlan’s breathing across the room. Adam had nearly drifted off again when the thought arose, But Harlan’s not in his bed.
It was dark in the old house, but not pitch black. Harlan sat in the sole chair next to the window, chin upon his hand. He’d pulled the curtain to one side, leaning to see out without being seen. A patch of reflected moonlight found its way in through the gap, coming to rest on the bare floor.
“Did I wake you?” Harlan asked, without looking in Adam’s direction.
“I don’t think so. What woke you?”
“An old man’s prostate,” Harlan said.
He was lying. “What do you see?” Adam asked.
“Nothing,” Harlan said. “Just trees. There’s nothing out there to see.”
“That’s not what I meant. What do you see?”
Now Harlan turned to face him in the dark. “Nothing,” he repeated.
He was still lying. Adam knew Harlan had seen something in his mind that, for some reason, he wasn’t willing to voice. But he also knew no amount of pushing would convince Harlan to share before he was ready. “Do you think Teddy meant to leave us here, from the start?” Adam asked.
Adam couldn’t see his face, but the silver of Harlan’s hair showed faintly in the dark. “No. Teddy and I don’t always agree on everything, but he wouldn’t do something like that just to spite me. And he certainly wouldn’t involve you.”
“So you think something happened with Danny and Virgil to trigger him. Could he have been communicating directly with Virgil then? Like a conversation?”
“Maybe,” Harlan said. “Hard to say. It’s something Teddy and I don’t talk about much, the details. After years of Lawrence and everyone else picking away at what we can and can’t do, we tend to want to be private about it.”
So Teddy could have left as a result of something Virgil “told” him. But Adam could conjure another possibility. “You also said Teddy can see the future, that you both can.”
“I did not!” Harlan’s raised voice went raspy. They’d found a couple of gallons of bottled water tucked beneath the sink, but they’d been rationing it, perhaps too cautiously.
“No one can ‘see the future,’” Harlan said, rising and pulling the curtain shut. The room went even darker, and Harlan’s footsteps advanced slowly toward his own cot. “At most, we get glimpses of things that might happen.”
Adam heard springs creak and the mattress crackle as Harlan lay upon it. “Do you ever try to change what’ll happen, because of that glimpse?” Adam asked.
Harlan sighed. “Three a.m. is too goddamned late to be having this kind of conversation.”
“Why, do you have plans for tomorrow?”
“No, but you do,” Harlan said.
“What do you mean?”
Harlan shifted and grunted on his thin mattress, then said, “You managed to hang onto your cell phone, didn’t you?”
Adam had—it had been in his pocket rather than his duffel, which was who-knew-where by now—but how had Harlan known?
“You left it on the goddamned nightstand, Sherlock,” Harlan said, answering the question Adam hadn’t asked aloud. “I have a feeling Teddy’s gonna be too busy to worry about getting us a ride out of here anytime soon. You need to hike up the mountain tomorrow and see if you can reach someone, before we start eating each other’s toes.”
“You’re going to stay here?” The thought made Adam uneasy, but he couldn’t say why.
“Son, do you know how old I am?”
“No, sir.”
“Old enough to pull the age card while you go on walkabout. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, without me slowing you down. Now get some sleep.”
But sleep was elusive. Adam felt split inside. He worried about Aaron Schofield—was the child still alive, and was he whole? Where was Danny now, and what was his endgame? What would happen when Adam returned to Cold Springs—would he be arrested? Would Iris and Harlan? When he thought of JJ, he felt a niggling, inexplicable anxiety, similar to the uneasiness he’d felt at the prospect of Harlan alone tomorrow. Finally, the specter of his father invading—or simply destroying—his mind hung over him.
At the same time, Adam was so exhausted he felt empty inside. And, stranded in this simple house, he was so physically isolated from the seething anxiety the rest of the world represented, it all seemed unreal.
“Harlan, you awake?” he asked.
“What?” As in, what do you want now. Not, what did you say.
“Did you kill Lawrence?”
“Does it matter?”
Adam’s elbow banged against the wall as he put a hand under his head. “I imagine it did to Lawrence. And he was my grandfather.”
Harlan’s sigh felt palpable in the dark, like a wave across Adam’s skin. “No, I didn’t kill him.”
“Virgil thinks you did. He saw it.”
“He doesn’t know what he saw.”
“I know what he saw,” Adam said. “He showed me, multiple times, when he was in my head.”
“And?”
“I can’t decide if he was trying to warn me out of genuine concern, or just to confuse me,” Adam admitted. “Either way, he didn’t want me to trust you.”
“Did it work?”
“Why do you think I can’t sleep?” Adam had meant it as a joke, but neither man laughed.
“Good night,” Harlan said.
Adam rolled over to face the wall, but instead of finding a better sleeping position, something poked him in the ribs. It was his cell phone jammed in his jacket pocket, the cell phone he now recalled tucking there, out of Teddy’s and Harlan’s sight, in a moment of judicious paranoia. And he hadn’t consciously thought about it since. So how had Harlan known he’d kept the phone?