Chapter Twelve

The man with the gun had a crew cut–type haircut that showed him to be mostly gray haired; he had a pink pudgy sort of face and he wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He squinted at Sophie—angry, bitter, and unforgiving. He delivered a scoffing chuckle.

“I thought that damned Maury finally pickled his brain about you coming back here to kill us.”

“Me?”

“Course he couldn’t go to the cops after ya got to Cliff, but he didn’t have to make a beeline over to my place so you could follow him straight to me.”

“Got to Cliff?”

He wrapped a wad of Billy’s blond hair around his hand and dug his fingers into the back of his head to keep it tight, pulling him sideways and tipping his head at her to pass in front of them. She did, her gaze unwavering. The man pushed his hostage a step closer to her, she backed away and he took another step forward. They were heading for the back of her vehicle.

“All you had to do was wait out the cops.” She couldn’t tell if Billy had done something or not, but the man gave his hair a sharp jerk that made him grimace. Her clammy hands trembled. “They’d pull out eventually, you knew that, and you’d have an open shot at me. Figured I’d strike first—you weren’t expectin’ that, now were ya?”

“Me? Look, I think you’ve made a mistake. I don’t even know who you—” She made eye contact with Billy as her voice trailed off.

The man peaked an eyebrow. “Finish.”

“I—I was going to say I didn’t know who you are but . . . now I’m guessing you’re Frank Lanyard.” If she was the hub of the wheel, then he was the missing spoke.

He pursed his lips and motioned with his head for her to turn the other corner of her car to the rider’s side. “You’re smarter than her anyway.”

“Who?” Keep him talking, distracted—wasn’t that one of the safety tips? “Her who? Did you . . . Is Maury Weims dead?”

“That ain’t gonna work on me, sweetheart. Can’t blame me for this here, what’s going on. This time it’s your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Stop repeatin’ what I say and actin’ like it’s a question, pretendin’ you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I’m not pretending. What are you saying?”

“Open the door.” She followed his line of vision to the rider’s side front door. It did occur to her to pull it open in such a way as to position it between her and him, to take another shot at running for help . . . but he had Billy. “Now the other.”

Opening the back door put her in a makeshift cage of sorts, trapping her between the front door, the car next to them, and the off chance of freedom if she chose scrambling over the seats to the opposite door without getting shot. She stuffed the photocopies under the seat to free her hands.

Frustrated, she went back to distraction. “Please. Tell me what this is about?”

“You.” And with that he took a vicious strike at Billy’s head with the heavy dark metal in his hand.

“No!” She cried out as the life in Billy’s eyes left and his thin body crumpled. “Oh God! Billy!” A flash flood of blood rivered down over his eye and cheek, angling toward his mouth as his head lolled to the left. “Billy. You killed him?” Instinctively she pushed against the door, tipping him and Billy off balance—but only for a second or two. “He’s bleeding. Are you crazy?”

“Shut up! And you better think twice about giving me any more grief, girl. I’m up to my neck in this mess, so it makes no difference to me. I can drop him here and put a bullet in his head—up to you,” he said as he began to first tip Billy onto the backseat and then shove him in completely. “See? Still breathin’.” His smirk was spine chilling. “This here’s a McCarren?”

Sophie nodded.

“You best be careful. His mama’ll skin you alive if you get him killed, missy.”

Elizabeth was waiting.

“Hop in. You’re driving.”

“Where to? Where are we going?”

Hope gasped its second breath. If they drove by the Crabapple Café there was a chance, a slim one, that Elizabeth might be watching out the window for her. If not, Drew will show up at the café to rescue her from his mother . . . and call to check on her.

Shoot.

With the gun now pointed in her general direction from outside the back door, she did all she could to make it look more awkward than it was to climb over the center console to the driver’s seat. She glanced back at Billy, lying on his side, bleeding on her soft gray pleather interior, breathing. Slipping her hand inside her roomy handbag, she said, “Please. Billy needs help. Can’t we leave him on the hood of that car so someone will find him?”

“And wake him up so he can set the cops on us? I don’t think so. What’s that you’re doin’?”

“Nothing. Moving my purse out of the way.” She slid into the driver’s seat.

“Hell.” He slammed the back door closed against the bottoms of Billy’s feet, bending his legs at the knee. “Give me that damn thing.” Grabbing her bag, he flung it at the back window of the Jeep, spilling the contents in a short, noisy clatter.

Turning to look back at Billy again, while Frank Lanyard climbed in next to her, was the perfect opportunity to stuff her cell phone under her left hip, which would, hopefully, muffle any rings, dings, or pings that might occur if Drew tried to contact her. It might take a while for him to get nervous when there’s no response, but once he was, the cops were going to need her phone on and in one piece to track the GPS inside.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Directions,” she snapped.

Instantly, fear stomped down hard on the anger creeping in around the edges of her emotions. One clever move with a cell phone did not an escape artist make. She and Billy had a long way to go . . . if they were lucky . . . and keeping a civil tongue in her head would, no doubt, be helpful.

“Which way out of the lot,” she asked, trying on submissive and finding it itchy. “Right or left?”

“Right.”

“Fine.” Glancing back at Billy as she twisted the key in the ignition, she couldn’t see his face, only the passive in and out of his torso as he slept. The fist in her stomach tightened and turned. It was in her to cry, but there were no tears as yet. She swallowed, but the back of her throat felt stuffed with cotton as she pulled out of the parking lot.

In the few blocks it took to get to Main Street, she went through every scenario she could come up with: speeding, a deliberate accident, jamming on the brakes and leaping from the car while in motion—maybe a daring combination of moves. But every idea produced a red flag: Billy . . . or telegraphing the move by releasing the seat belt . . . or accidental discharge of the gun and the consequences for failure. It wasn’t looking good.

They were parked at the stop sign, next to Lonny’s place, when he jerked the gun, now aimed in the neighborhood of her liver, indicating a left turn at Main. Looking both ways to make a safe crossing, she noticed her passenger staring at the Service and Tire—hard—a spastic tic in his cheek going wild. Was he angry he hadn’t managed to kill Lonny, too?

Her grandfather. The idea of it felt like a size fourteen dress on a size two body—too big and shapeless and yet— He tried to kill my grandfather, too?

With even more determination, she solidified her plan to give Elizabeth her one best split second of seeing them as they drove by the Crabapple Café. Seeing, realizing something was wrong when she doesn’t stop, and calling for help. It was all she had.

Odd, the things you think about while you’re driving toward death.

For instance, it made sense to Sophie that with a lethal weapon so nearby, one’s awareness of something as small as a leg itch would be suspended for more important considerations . . . like the way a gunshot face would ruin her open casket funeral.

Problem was: she needed an itch at the moment.

Another thing? Frank Lanyard and his gun weren’t as intimidating in a moving vehicle; he wasn’t going to shoot her while she was driving, right?

So Sophie dropped her left hand to rub her knee and then put it back on the wheel as she started counting . . . Eddy’s Eatery, Granny’s Attic. She scratched below her knee, then put her hands back to ten and two on the wheel. They passed Lemming’s Plumbing and poor Maury Weims’s drugstore—she tilted a bit to scratch lower on her leg—Betty’s Boutique and Clearfield Credit Union . . . and she shivered watching the big window front of the Crabapple Café coming up. She asked her mother for help.

Amazed at her perfect timing, she bent low, close to the steering wheel, reached for her ankle, turned her face toward the café and pretended to lean unintentionally on the horn.

Her smug delight lasted barely two seconds before Lanyard’s gun crashed down on her right shoulder—she went blind from the pain, and the screaming cry she produced was unlike anything she’d heard before.

She ground her teeth to the shatter point against the intense throbbing, then glared at her captor.

“It was an accident!”

“Like hell.” He kept looking back to see if she’d disturbed the evening quiet of Clearfield.

One glance in her rearview mirror and doom settled inside her. She was going to die.

And was this the reason her real mother had suffered so, clung to life with all her might and oh-so reluctantly let go? To be on the other side to greet her daughter a year later, like Lonny said? She was torn between intense relief and the utter unfairness of it . . . and guilt. If Lonny was right, her mother—her real mother—paid the ultimate price in the most excruciating way for simply taking her into her heart as an infant and loving her. Her heart felt shredded. The pain blotted out the discomfort in her shoulder.

They were far enough outside town that there were fewer and fewer places to pull over or turn around, so when she spotted a deserted exit for a gravel county road, she took it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Frank bellowed in tense disbelief. “Keep to the road. Drive on.”

“No.” Flint. Flint! “I’m— We’re going to lay Billy right here, out of the way but close enough to the road to be seen.”

“The hell we are.”

“He needs help and this isn’t a discussion.” She may have been out of her mind at the moment, but it wasn’t all gone. She went silent when the big black gun pressed against her forehead.

“Maybe you are as crazy as she was.”

“Who?” she whispered, then realized she didn’t care anymore. It was about survival now and she had a better chance of it . . . they both had a better chance if Billy wasn’t with them. “Billy hasn’t done anything. Your beef is clearly with me. I’ll go with you. Quietly. If we leave Billy here.”

He shook his head, bent his elbow to tip the gun toward the roof. “Let me explain this to ya. You don’t get a say. You and old Cubeck made your choices. You two started all this. Now it’s my turn. And I choose for you to disappear so you can’t do to me what you did to my old buddies. This is self-defense.”

“Disappear or die?” His shrug was indifferent. She sneered. “Self-defense. If this was self-defense, you wouldn’t be keeping Billy hostage. And you’d be out in the open, defending yourself for everyone to see. Not scurrying off to . . . wherever we’re scurrying off to, like the filthy rodent you are.” She’d started out calm but ended up a little insane again. “I never even met Arthur Cubeck. And I didn’t do anything to your buddies!”

He puckered his lips up and tipped his head thoughtfully. With no change in his expression he simply lowered the barrel of his gun over the back of her seat at Billy. Hope waned. Stupid. She’d tipped her hand and he saw that she cared about Billy’s life.

Not that she cared more about Billy’s life than her own—she was no martyr—but she cared enough that he was leverage.

“Here’s what I’ll do for ya, honey.” His voice was thick with disdain. He drew a large, crumpled white handkerchief from his back pocket—clean or not, that remained a question mark. “You tie his hands up with this. Take your shirt off and cover his face with it. He don’t see me, he lives.”

“If he doesn’t bleed to death, you mean.” Her mind flashed back to the three of them in the hospital parking lot. Billy couldn’t have seen him with that grip in his hair . . . but he’d tried and Lanyard jerked at the roots.

She looked through his glasses into callous brown eyes and suspected he was lying about letting Billy live, but she couldn’t take the chance. It might be the only chance Billy had.

Plus, it was time. Time for Drew to discover her gone. Time to think of another plan for escape. Time for the cops to find them. More time to live. Maybe even time for Lanyard to come to his senses, change his mind—but she wasn’t feeling that lucky.

“Fine.” She retrieved her phone while snatching the rag from his hand, refusing to think about what it had been used for, and jerked on the door handle to get out. Once again she felt the urge to run as she tucked the cell into the back pocket of her denim skirt—but she still couldn’t picture herself being faster than a speeding bullet.

Opening the back door, it was Billy’s pallor that jumped out at her first, sending a cold chill to the tips of her fingers and toes. She shivered, muttered something incoherent as she reached out to touch his cheek. Warm. There was a strong pulse in his neck and an easy rhythm to his breathing. A slight thaw came as she noted the dry blood cracking on his face and the dark clot congealing in his matted hair.

She heard a car coming up the road and froze. Was Lanyard crazy enough to kill her with a witness? Her gaze shifted toward him. He peaked his brows as if to ask her the same question and made a point of stabbing Billy’s ribs with the barrel of his gun. Something evil and dark seeped like black extra-heavy crude oil into the crevices between her fear and her anger; and though she’d had no experience with it until this moment, she recognized it immediately: pure hatred.

Her shoulders drooped in defeat as she listened to her freedom pass behind her. She glanced over her left shoulder—because she had to—but the driver gave no indication of having noticed them. She refused to peek at her captor; simply couldn’t give him the satisfaction and rejected the idea of giving up.

Her one best chance was still to come. She’d wait and watch for it.

Both of Billy’s arms were in front; hands near his knees and too far from where she stood. A glance at Lanyard caught his gaze on her chest—she wished him dead a thousand times over—unbuttoned the front of her soft cotton top and shucked it off . . . so, so, so grateful she’d gone with a pretty, feminine aqua-colored cami instead of an overtly sexy bra for Drew’s seduction.

Was he missing her yet?

She took great care in lifting Billy’s head off the backseat—trying to ignore the way the blood pulled at his skin before giving it up. She inserted half her shirt below his head and just as carefully put it to rest again before drawing the other half of the shirt down over his eyes, leaving his nose and mouth uncovered so he could get all the air he needed.

Job half done, she looked up for a sign to move on to his hands. Once her gaze caught Lanyard’s, he deliberately raked his gawking eyes slowly down her satin-covered breasts, took his time, let them creep back up to hers. It was a sexless stare designed to humiliate her. And it did.

“Tie it up. Tight.”

“What?”

“The shirt. Unless you want him to wiggle out of it and die.”

She didn’t. Pulling the excess material to the top side of his head, opposite his wound, she calculated that it might not be such a bad thing to do. It would keep him as safe as possible and put pressure on his wound. She put herself into the task and tied a sturdy knot over his parietal bone—on the order of the rosette wraps she’d fashioned for her mom after she lost her hair to chemotherapy. From another world she watched as she gave it a satisfied pat before backing off to close the door.

Another car, a pickup truck, came around the long curve in the road. She sensed Lanyard watching her but was overwhelmed by the urge to stand and observe the driver as he passed. His eyes never left the road as he passed.

Were they invisible?

Walking around the back of the car to get to the other door and gain access to Billy’s hands, it was important to let Frank Lanyard know she wasn’t afraid of him, that she was keeping her end of the deal and there would be a penalty to pay if he didn’t keep his—she had no idea what yet, but it was worth a good bluff.

In fact, everything she did was becoming very worth it.

With her most insolent expression in place, she looked fiercely through the back window, prepared to face the nose of his gun without a flinch. He wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he had his arm between the seats reaching for Billy. She rushed to wrench open the door.

“Do not touch him!” Impulse made her swipe at his hand as he pulled it back after checking the fit of Billy’s blindfold. “Keep your hands off him. You said if he couldn’t see you, he’d be safe. You’ve hurt him enough already. Don’t touch him.”

“Who has the gun here, honey?” He simpered at her and tried once more to debase her with his eyes.

This time it didn’t work. The top drawer of her bureau at home was bulging with skimpy lingerie that made this particular cami seem more like a parka. Her glare was defiant. He gave it a mild test, but surprised her by turning away in what looked inexplicably like regret. He rolled back in the seat to face front. “She didn’t know when to give up, either.”

She took her time tying Billy’s hands together—and assuming Frank Lanyard would test for slack, and hoping Billy would be in less danger if he couldn’t get loose, she trussed them good and tight. Touching his warm hands, the steady pulse in his wrist, and watching his easy breathing encouraged her to be optimistic. Resentful, too, of the fifty-fifty chance he had of seeing tomorrow.

“You son of a bitch!” The belated realization was like a kick in the gut. “He heard me say your name! You knew. You had no intention of—”

“Keep it up.” He sighed, seeming almost resigned to her being a pain in his ass. “It doesn’t really matter to me when I kill him, you know.”

Looking up at the top half of Lanyard’s head above the seat back, she got the impression his attention was mostly elsewhere. A quick scan of the back of the car that she kept vacuumed and clutter-free turned up no weapons—shocker!—and backing silently away from the door, she found nothing on the ground that was solid enough to do damage but stones no larger than peach pits.

After another expectant and disappointing examination of the road behind them, there was nothing else she could think of to do but get back in the driver’s seat. . . .

She settled in. The leather seat having lost all warmth from the heat of the day was cold against her bare back—a reminder to stay cool and wait for her chance. She reached for her seat belt like it still mattered, like she’d be a cautious, law abiding, well-behaved kindergarten teacher until her last breath was drawn.

And that would be okay, she decided out of the blue with a burst of pride. There were so many worse things to be. She looked at Frank Lanyard.

“So what is it you think Mr. Cubeck told me? Who’s this ‘her’ you keep referring to?” she asked, turning the key to start the car again. Habit had her checking her mirrors—and the lights telegraphing the presence of yet another car coming at them got her thinking of a rescue again. She lit up her own headlights.

“What’s that you’re doin’?”

“Headlights. Sun’s almost set. We’ll draw more attention without them than with them on.” But if she left the high beams on, she’d annoy everyone who went by—someone could be fostering a good case of road rage and chase them down. You never knew.

“Don’t push me, girl. I mean it. I’m in no mood for tricks.”

Satisfied with the way her headlights flashed back at them from the rearview mirror in the car ahead, she pulled back onto the road behind it. She gunned the engine to keep up, but the other driver was already up to the speed limit and was well away from them in no time. She’d get the next one.

In the silence that followed, she took stock of their surroundings—a house here and there, sometimes two or three grouped together between patches of woods and a few open fields; mostly county roads but the occasional rack of mailboxes indicated homes farther along . . . one abandoned shop of some sort.

Where were all the speed traps when you needed a cop?

Frank Lanyard was a loud breather, especially in the silence, as she realized that he hadn’t answered her question.

Apparently, the quiet was what she’d needed because that’s when it happened. That’s when she understood. That’s when the puzzle pieces began to fall from out of nowhere and started snapping into place. Click. Click. Click. She frowned into the twilight, winced as an achy chill pushed up each side of her neck, through her jaw, into the temples on both sides of her head. It pulsed. Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Oh, no. It’s Lonora, isn’t it?” She didn’t know why she put the question mark on that—she already knew the answer. “She’s what this is about. She is, isn’t she?”

Lonny’s words gnawed at her mind. . . . The first time I saw my Cora. She was a sailor’s delight with eyes the color of a noon sky in midsummer.

Right. That was it. Only she wasn’t a sailor’s delight because he was fresh out of the navy, it was that old adage. How’d it go? “Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” Red. Like her hair. Like Lonora’s hair. Like Cora’s hair. That’s how Maury Weims first recognized her at the drugstore, and he told Cliff Palmeroy. Though Lonora’s face had finer, more delicate contours, their similarities were bold enough to set any phasmophobe on their ear—no wonder Maury Weims thought she was a ghost. Her hair, her smile, maybe a dozen other tiny things is why she’d seemed so familiar to Jesse. The people at Arthur Cubeck’s funeral hadn’t been peeking and whispering because she was a stranger in a strange circumstance in their town—she was a vaguely familiar-looking stranger in a strange circumstance in their town.

“I’m right, aren’t I? This is all about her.”

“Pay attention there,” he growled as the car swerved on the road. “Watch what you’re doin’ or you’ll end up in the back with him.” He jerked his head toward Billy and then let it loll the other way. “Ha. That idiot Maury said you and the young doc had something going on, not this one here.” He paused. “Course you could be boinkin’ ’em both.”

Sophie knew five-year-olds who had more talent for the art of distraction in their little fingers than Frank Lanyard had in his whole hulking body.

“I look like her, don’t I? I saw a picture.” She came up short. Her thoughts became a slideshow: I’ll be twenty-seven in August . . . November 12, 1985 . . . disappearance of Lonora Elizabeth Campbell is being termed “suspicious” by police. . .

“You had something to do with it. The night she went missing . . . you knew where she was.”

She didn’t know when to give up, either . . . rushed to be treated. . .

“You hurt her. There were cuts and bruises. It was in the newspaper.”

Tell me what this is about? Her throat closed. You!

“It is me. Oh God. It is me. You beat that little girl. Lonora. You raped her, didn’t you? You did! You pig! Oh God. Oh God! . You’re him—the father . . . my father . . . the sperm donor.” Even she could hear her voice cracking with hysteria. “Aren’t you?”

“How the hell should I know?” he shouted back.

What did that mean? He’d know if he had sex with her, right? There were ten more questions, bitter and sticky on her tongue, but before she could spit them out, he said, “Turn left up there. Beyond that sign.”

“No!” Did she say that out loud? Yeah, she did. “No. Not until you tell me. I want to know.” He lifted the gun off his lap. “Oh, sure. Shoot me! Go ahead. If you’re my father I think I want to die.”

“Settle down!” His loud voice set her back, in spite of her anger . . . and no minor amount of disgust. “Watch the road. And you damned well will turn up ahead there.”

She slowed down, squealing her tires on the hard ninety-degree turn she made with equal amounts of fear and anger bubbling in her stomach. Her headlights hit the sign—it was decorative, announcing the entrance to the Calvin B. Harvey Park and Arboretum. She flew onto a dark, unlit tar-and-gravel road that almost immediately slanted uphill.

“Knock it off!” he bellowed in her right ear. She did—but only because she was scaring herself.

“Now,” he said, calmer. “We’ll talk . . . if you don’t drive us off the damn road first. Seems you don’t know as much as Maury thought you did. Christ, girl, who taught you how to drive?”

“My real dad, that’s who. My real dad who loves me and will hunt you down like a dog for this. My real dad who’ll—who’ll . . . well, I don’t think he’ll kill you with his bare hands because he’s kind and sweet and wonderful and my mom was a pacifist, but he’ll make sure you’re caught and suffer forever in prison.” Her chin quivered and tears of regret gathered in her eyes for calling him the worst father in the whole world when he nixed that stupid Canadian ski trip with Mike Fullerton in seventh grade. “My real dad held me when I was sick and gave me a standing ovation for my performance as the entire grain group in the food pyramid on Health Day, and told me I was too good for Paul Lyton anyway, and let me sleep on his shoulder while he watched my mom die . . . my real mom. That’s what dads do. Real dads. They don’t—”

“Shut the hell up!” he bellowed, reaching for the dash as the car veered and came back. “I know what dads do.”

Her gasp was loud and ended in an ack. “You have children? Other children?” She blinked hard to clear away her unshed tears. “And you’d do this to me? I have brothers and sisters? Which? Brothers or sisters? Both? I bet they don’t know what you’re doing right now, do they? I bet they’ll be real proud when they find out. And they will find out. My real dad will make sure of that. And they’ll believe him because people like you can’t hide what they truly are, and they’ll hate you. Hate you! They won’t visit you in prison, they—”

“Christ! Will you shut the fuck up before I stick my boot in your mouth?” He shifted his weight in the seat, agitated, and glared at her in disbelief . . . and maybe a little awe. When the sound of their voices dissipated, he snapped, “You are not my kid.”

“I’m not?” Tears pooled in her eyes once again—a couple slipped out unnoticed.

“No.”

After a whole minute she sniffed and asked, “But this is still about Lonora, right?” One slow, reluctant nod. “And you know who hurt her, right? And about me.” A long, deep inhale of air and a shrug. “That’s a maybe. Right?”

“Keep to the right up here at the Y.”

Sophie was so confused now, her brain felt like rubber; the synapses kept firing but they weren’t penetrating, weren’t being picked up.

There was another ornamental sign at the Y—left for the picnic grounds; they were heading for the arboretum.

“This is where you took her. This is where it happened.” Her laugh was pure derision. “The Arboretum? Really? You’re taking me back to the scene of the crime? You’re a walking cliché, Frank. Plus, I feel I should tell you that a different wooded area, a bit less cultivated, would make it harder to find my remains.”

Who was she? Truly, she was beginning to think she’d passed to another realm altogether. Sticking up for a defenseless, unconscious Billy was one thing. This was more. More than flint, more than rabid teacher. Snapping, prodding, baiting, and screaming at a man intent on killing her was . . . well, crazy. Was that it? Was it more than fear and confusion? Had she lost her mind?

She glanced at Frank Lanyard. It was dusk; the dash lights cast shadows over his face, flashed across the surface of his glasses. He appeared distracted—thinking—or perhaps rethinking.

Gradually she began to speculate on the possibility that she wasn’t recklessly pushing her luck after all—but that her limits had been extended. He was allowing her to be mouthy and rude because . . . why? He owed her that much? Because it wouldn’t last much longer as she was about to die? Or maybe . . . was he beginning to see that he’d made a huge mistake, that she hadn’t killed his friends?

No. He already knew she didn’t kill them because he killed them. Obviously. When she showed up looking so like Lonora, he panicked; and thinking his friends would rat him out, he killed them. And now, she was the last bit of evidence to be eliminated.

He seemed pretty certain that he hadn’t fathered her—that meant one of the others did. Not that that mattered now. He was there. He knew. He was guilty. And she was going to die.

Her mind raced as she slowed to take the first bend in the zigzaggy road to the top of the hill, and didn’t speed up again. I like my steaks medium rare—pink not bloody. I want four babies—maybe eight. I’ve never been to an aquarium. I prefer blue ink to black and socks to slippers when my toes are cold. Those things needed to be in Drew’s book. She needed more time . . . a lot of it. A lifetime worth.

Using a soft, tentative tone that she hoped would sound like his inner voice, she said, “I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion about people before. We all have, right?” She listened to herself swallow and forged on—feeling her way, not at all sure where she was going. “Usually, because we don’t have all the information about them. Or we have wrong information. Somehow that seems worse, doesn’t it? Maybe because it infers some sort of lie, I guess, but it doesn’t have to be . . . a lie, I mean. Just misunderstanding a word or an action can create wrong information.” A quick glance showed him listening but nothing more. “I think we’ve all rushed into situations without thinking them through, too. Impulsively. Emotionally. Especially if we’ve been under a lot of stress.” She kept stopping and checking him, anticipating an explosion. “Boy, you sure would qualify for that, wouldn’t you?” He looked at her. “I get it. I do. I remember high school. The peer pressure and all. Maybe . . . maybe you weren’t there; maybe one of your pals did it and bragged. The stress of keeping a secret like that all these years must have been unbearable for you.” In her ears, her voice wasn’t sympathetic—she adjusted. “I get it. I show up, looking like her, you get anxious. You’re afraid the truth will come out; afraid your friends will say something. You snap under the pressure and start killing them. And I’m still a reminder so—”

“You did that! You killed them.”

“I didn’t. Why would I—how could I? I didn’t even know about Lonora until tonight. But you knew, your friends knew. You killed them and now you’re going to kill me.”

“I didn’t!”

She didn’t believe him for a second. He was, after all, intent on killing her. “Then who did?”

“I don’t know.”

She heard doubt and fear in his tone.

“And they’re not friends.”

“Oh. I thought—”

“Not since high school.”

“Right. You moved away. To Roanoke, which is what? . . . a couple of hours away and that would make it difficult to—”

“I moved to get away from them.”

This was interesting. “Why?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t stand to look at ’em anymore.”

“You fought?”

Another shake of his head as the road opened to a large gravel parking lot. “Pull up over there. There by those fire bushes.”

Did he mean the green fire bushes that wouldn’t turn flame red until fall? Was he so familiar with the park that he could tell one bush from another . . . in the dark?

Oh. Right. November 12, 1985, she recalled. He was remembering the season. Is that where it happened? There by the fire bushes. So close to the parking lot? Well, that was dumb. Why was the scene so important to him if it was out in the open?

Two seconds later she got her answer. A third, much smaller sign came into view off to their left, marking a nature trail; and on their right was a loose gravel utility road blocked off with an orange chain and a metal flag instructing them not to enter—both were considerably more conducive to murder.

Her heart jerked and shifted gears; she felt dizzy. This was so wrong. She wasn’t ready to die. She had too many things left to do—get married, have babies, ride in a hot air balloon, scuba dive in Aruba, vacation in an ice hotel . . . Aunt Leslie promised to teach her how to knit! Clearfield and a senior trip to Montreal with her French class were the farthest she’d ever been from home and she wanted to see all the castles in Germany, climb Machu Picchu and . . . be there for her dad, because he shouldn’t have to lose her, too.

Tears came and spilled down her cheeks but she wasn’t crying, not really—she couldn’t afford to yet. She needed to stay angry, stay strong, stay flint.

“So, um, if Cliff Palmeroy and Maury Weims weren’t your friends anymore, why did Maury go to see you after Cliff was murdered?”

“Damn fool lost it, came over to my house half-cocked and hysterical saying you knew and were plannin’ to kill us all.” He stopped to nod at the steering wheel. “Back ’er up now so the light shines that way.”

“At the path?” So he wouldn’t have to kill her in the dark?

He nodded and continued on, “Now this whole damned thing is going to blow up in my face. The two of them together never did have the sense you could find in a bag of hair. Now cut ’er off and get out.” He lifted the gun off his lap once more. “And don’t try anything.”

Or what? He’d kill her? Didn’t seem like much of a threat until she remembered Billy in the backseat . . . and honestly, she didn’t consider him for very long. She had her own life to save now and she suffered no regret. She’d done what she could for him.

Still and all, she had no plan aside from RUN LIKE HELL. She was about to use Billy to stall Frank for a moment by checking his condition, but changed her mind at the last moment. Lanyard may have forgotten about him for the moment; she couldn’t see any real benefit to reminding him. Besides, the sooner she got out of the car, the sooner she could run—and Billy would slip even farther to the back of Frank’s mind.

She used her left hand to verify that her cell was tucked deep in the back pocket of her denim skirt, and it wasn’t until she reached for the keys in the ignition that she took in the fact that her car—with Billy in the backseat—was Frank Lanyard’s only way back to town.

It was just one thing after another!—and all she wanted was to run.

Well, he wasn’t taking her new car. Period.

Closing her right hand over the key, she turned the engine off and made it seem a reflex to cut the lights at the same time. When he barked at her to leave them on, she used the sound of his voice to remove the key and pass the remote and the two keys attached to it to her left hand, where she held them firm and noiseless against her palm while she turned the lights back on.

“Sorry,” she said, quickly scanning over Frank’s shoulder the wooded area on both sides of the path and the half-lit road they came up on. Her best option was to run away from the light, of course, but not down the utility road, she told herself. She’d head into the woods.

Her strategy was to lock the car doors on the run; and if he was close enough that he might catch her, drop the keys—somewhere she could find them again if she could get back . . . when she got back.

She moved to get out.

“Hold on.”

“What?” she said, short and shocked, so deep into her getaway she’d all but forgotten him. “What. You didn’t say to get out?”

“I changed my mind.” He opened his door and backed out sideways while she peered through the pale light at the nose of his gun, hoping to see his hand shake with uncertainty—or just nerves for that matter—anything but the unwavering determination she saw in it now.

“Look, I know—”

He slammed the door and advanced around the front of the car to her side, his glasses glinting in the headlights. Was this it—her chance? Lock the doors? Were her windows bulletproof? Who thinks to ask that at a car dealership?

That was all she had time for before he yanked open the door, grabbed her arm, and tugged for her to come out. Tears were spontaneous and disregarded by them both. He was as settled on killing her as she was on living—but they shared their terror like a palpable thing. A burden neither of them wanted.

She took her time with the seat belt. Her voice cracked when she spoke. “Look, I know you don’t want to do this. I feel it. And you know I don’t deserve it. Maury Weims jumped to a wrong conclusion about me and you reacted. That’s natural . . . excessive, for sure, but still something we’ve all done.” The belt came loose and rolled back into place. “And . . . and you say you didn’t kill anyone, so you haven’t done anything too awful yet. Kidnapping and assault. That’s all.” Her cheap, flat sandals hit the ground. “And I won’t press charges. I promise. I swear. It’s just assault on Billy and . . . and I bet people beat him up all the time. He can be a real jerk sometimes, you know, and I doubt it’s a secret.”

She took one last look between the seats at Billy—just his knees and some of his hands in truth—and irrationally wished he’d wake up and hug her before she went any farther with Lanyard. The yearning for compassionate and comforting human contact was overwhelming, like a raging fever that made her bones ache and her body shiver.

Lanyard swung the door closed.