They shouldn’t be listening to Max’s advice—Wyatt hadn’t said that yet, but he was going to. Opal looked excited, her cheeks full of blood, which was preferable to zoned and spooky, or conked out in a sickbed. But this talk of occult visions only made her previous erratic behavior seem normal. He didn’t want her encouraged into going off any new deep ends. Twenty years ago—the first time her visions started, right after she came home from the hospital with Adam—Wyatt didn’t know what to make of them. The doctors said posttraumatic stress disorder. They said postpartum depression. But the way she talked didn’t seem post-anything. It felt like a preamble of nightmares to come. Now nightmares landed on their doorstep. He wanted his familiar Opal back, the wife he cherished, the woman he’d fallen in love with and loved even more today.
He wanted everyone to be safe.
It was why he became a cop years ago—to keep others from harm.
He had to be the protector. Being the voice of reason was his job. Maintain the coolest head in the room. He wasn’t about to suggest they dismiss Max outright. Just take his tale with a grain of salt, or a whole shaker for that matter. Apply logic to this mystic business about the powers of a moonstone and it unraveled into superstitious nonsense. It had to.
The Pitch? Murdered witches? A compass to Hell?
These things didn’t belong in any world Wyatt knew.
Maybe he’d get his family to agree on that.
Bad vibes though. Cops, and ex-cops, believe in them. That slug in Wyatt’s pocket hummed with enough ugly energy to make him twitch. Logic doesn’t always work. That’s an uncomfortable truth. He had the bad vibes BAD. He couldn’t deny the gnawing he felt about Henry. Like a rat chewing its way from his gut to his brain. It was Henry who shot him at the Pie Stop. Henry was s-o-r-r-y. Henry was roaming around in a raincoat waving an ax. That’s what the bad vibes were telling him.
It wasn’t over, either.
He’d tussled with two real live dirtbags in the office. They triggered a vibe.
Like a tuning fork, he buzzed.
Normally he would put it down to ordinary weirdness. Coincidences can fool you into believing connections are there that really aren’t. Storms make people strange. Holidays add to it. You have to roll along. Keep calm. Don’t get swept under. But when enough weirdness stacks up, it gives you pause.
Instincts go fuzzy.
Then you’re in danger.
Wyatt doubted himself and he didn’t do that often.
Keeping things simple helped.
So ... if Max wanted to leave the motel .. . fine. Bon voyage. Wyatt liked the man, but he wasn’t going to stop him. The fewer burned-out California kooks running around this town the better.
It was Christmas Eve after all.
Shouldn’t they go upstairs and have dinner? They might gain a better perspective after a home-cooked meal. Enjoy a little peace on Earth. Exchange gifts under a plastic tree. Why the hell not?
Opal asked, “What do you think we should do?”
He didn’t have a chance to respond. The room rocked like a ship at sea. It was an earthquake. Or something sizable had blown up.
Wyatt avoided the window.
He put his ear to the door.
They all heard the gunshots.
Wyatt thought it was four. Spaced apart.
He told them to wait in the room.
But no one listened.
The others filed out behind him. Snow sliced diagonally, the sky churned battleship gray; tart smoke flavored the wind. Together they discovered the dead men in the parking lot. Max had vanished. When they opened his room it was empty, the dog leaping at them like a redheaded lord. Half the block to town was ablaze. Ash mixed with the falling snow.
Wyatt leaned over the dark-clad bodies. Same clothes. Similar builds. He took the knife from the faceless one’s belt.
“These are the two guys from the office.”
He had his Glock down at his side. The bad vibes were crawling on him....
Adam had Ann-Margret by the collar. The Irish setter sniffed the ground, eyes rolling, seeming about to go mad. Fresh tracks mauled the snow. Footprints and tires. Blood congealed into nasty amoebic puddles.
“What’d we do now?” he asked.
“We go up to the apartment,” Wyatt said. “Bring the pooch.”
A siren wailed.
“Here comes a fire truck,” Wyatt said. “At least that’s positive.”
The fire truck halted fifty yards from the conflagration.
More gunshots.
A fireman stumbled into the highway. A figure in black marched behind him and swung a farmer’s scythe. The fireman screamed.
“Get inside,” Wyatt said.
“Where’s Vera?” Opal asked.
“What?”
“She was behind me when we left her room,” Opal said.
The Camaro emerged around the corner of the motel, heading
for the highway, its tires spinning in the slush. The treads grabbed and it pulled away.
“That’s her car,” Adam said.
“I’ll bet she took the stone,” Opal said.
More armed figures gathered on the road.
“Inside now,” Wyatt said. “Go!”