Page 102 of The Midnight Knock

Fernanda looked at the time. It was 2:37.

Ryan led the way outside. The cold was a shock after so long in the cafe. Ryan jumped like he’d just been kicked. “Jesus,” he said, then looked at her funny. “You all right?”

“I will survive.”

They started down the porch. Fernanda realized, as she walked, just how tired she was. Her feet were heavy, her mind getting slow. She’d lived too much for one day. She’d awoken before dawn to snap photographs of Frank’s office. She’d been caught. She’d been chained to a pipe in the operation’s safe house by noon. Kyla’s boyfriend, Lance, one of Frank’s better thugs, had arrived at two o’clock. He had been sent to kill her because Frank did not have the stomach for it.

But Lance had had other ideas. Maybe. Or maybe he had just been trying to calm Fernanda down so she would not struggle.

Fernanda had wondered about this all day. Because Lance hadn’t called her a fool, or threatened her, or gone silently about his work.

He had said,It’s all right. I’m getting you out of here.

If Fernanda had remembered the rest of the story, she would have stopped, right here, and collapsed under the guilt. She did not have time for guilt. Fernanda was going to survive this night. She was going across the border. She was going home to her brother.

The lamps sputtered momentarily, freezing Fernanda and Ryan to their places. Outside, the creatures of the desert let out aSHRIEK.

When the lights recovered, Ryan seemed to make up his mind. “Hey, about this film we’re going to get—you… well, you already know what’s on it.”

But Fernanda hardly heard him. A strange sensation had stirred in her pocket. Earlier, in the office, she had plucked an object from the mantel of the fireplace: a grooved piece of stone, the size and shape of an egg. As the night got busy and their little party had left the office with Tabitha, Fernanda had placed the stone into her jacket, hardly giving it a thought.

But now—now she withdrew the stone. She held it beneath one of the porch’s lights. She stared.

The stone was trembling, very faintly. The tremor in the rock was rhythmic, almost like the pulse of a heart.

“Is it me,” she said, “or is this stone shaking?”

Ryan held out a hand. “May I?”

The sensation of the stone unnerved her. She was almost relieved to get rid of it. Relieved, too, when Ryan clearly felt the same thing she had. At least Fernanda was not losing her mind.

Ryan said, “What in the hell?”

He walked more slowly now, his attention riveted on the stone egg. He swung open a door under the motel’s covered walkway. Over Ryan’s shoulder, Fernanda saw your average storage room. Concrete floors. Metal shelves along the walls.

A bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, beneath which stood an empty chair.

An empty chair.

Ryan’s mind was clearly on the stone egg. Fernanda’s mind had returned to the dark smudges on Sarah’s film. Neither of them registered danger until a moment too late.

Fernanda felt a thump in her back, like a heavy punch. She staggered forward, into Ryan, who stumbled himself and nearly dropped the egg. Fernanda felt a hand grab the collar of her jacket, holding her in place, while another hand reached into the waistband of her jeans and pulled free the gun she’d stuffed there.

Things were moving too fast. Her mind couldn’t keep up. Pain was radiating from the punch in her back, and when she tried to turn, she stumbled again, striking the wall, and agony spread through her. She didn’t realize she was screaming.

She realized that something was jutting from her back, right between her shoulder blades. Something long and sharp, buried to the hilt.

A knife.

She turned enough to see that Stan Holiday was behind her, but it wasn’t Stanley. Not really. The lights of the porch sputtered again, nearly went out, and when they struggled back up Fernanda saw another man’s face over Stanley’s. Superimposed. Like two men occupying the same space in a shot.

The other man, the superimposed man, was the same man she’d seen in each of Sarah’s photographs. He smiled at her now, as he had in Sarah’s film. He opened his mouth to speak.

Whatever she might have expected him to say, it wasn’t this.

“I know you think you’ve hidden him away, but Frank’s operation is well aware of your brother. There are men watching his house right now. Miguel will be dead the minute you cross the border.”

Fernanda hardly had time to register the horror. Stanley—thegabardine man—raised the gun in his hand. A loose, lazy gesture, almost an afterthought.