Page 19 of The Midnight Knock

Whether they did or not, Kyla and Fernanda were gone. No more words: the two girls booked it out of the office without looking back.

The gray minivan was twenty yards away.

Sarah glanced between Ethan and Hunter. “Was it something I said?”

When Ethan didn’t reply, her eyes finally turned to Hunter. They lingered on his face just a second too long.

Hunter turned away, quick, and let himself behind the motel’s desk. A hook board loaded with keys was mounted to the wall, and after a moment to consider the layout of the motel, Hunter helped himself to the key to room 9. He came back around the desk, hefted their heavy duffel bag. Metal rattled inside: the Remington shotgun they’d brought from Ellersby.

Glancing to Ethan, registering the boy’s surprise at the key in his hand, Hunter said, “The twins were going to give us a room anyway, right?”

He didn’t wait for a response. Hunter stepped outside, heard Ethan mumble some sort of goodbye to Sarah Powers. The gray minivan had nearly reached the parking lot. Hunter ignored it. He made his way around the motel’s covered porch, up the building’s left arm and across the main body and then down the right. At the very last door, directly across the parking lot from the office, he unlocked room 9 and let himself inside.

He found the switches for an overhead light, for an old-time grille heater. The room was exactly what he’d expected: a queen bed, a long armoire, a wardrobe, a little table with an easy chair in the corner. Straight across from the front door was a hall that led to a bathroom and another door that let onto the back porch. There was a turquoise coverlet on the bed. Bland brown carpet on the floors.

It would do.

Behind him, Hunter heard the minivan pull to a stop outside the office. One of its doors opened, but before the driver could even step out, Sarah Powers exclaimed from the porch. “Stanley! What a surprise!”

Oh Christ, Hunter thought. As if his headache couldn’t get any worse, he glanced around in time to see Sarah Powers snap a photograph of Stanley Holiday, Frank O’Shea’s right-hand man. What washedoing here?

But then Hunter froze. Really, truly clenched up.

He froze because there was a face watching him from the back of the van. A young face. A girl’s face. The face of a teenage girl with a terrible round scar on her forehead. The scar was a round white disc, the size of a quarter. Even from this distance, he recognized it. He would know it anywhere.

Charon’s coin, his father used to call scars like that.From when death sends you back with a refund.

There was no way this teenage girl in the back of Stan Holiday’s minivan could have survived the damage that had caused that scar. Hunter knew it for a fact.

Yet here she was, staring at Hunter, looking just as frozen with fear as him.

And then Ethan finally made his way along the motel’s porch, breaking Hunter’s gaze. The boy stepped past Hunter into room 9, looked around, then frowned as Hunter closed the door and locked it and crossed the room to check the lock on the back door as well. Ethan turned on the brass lamp on one of the bed’s nightstands. He looked at an old alarm clock and checked the time against his watch. 5:47.

“How do you know her?” Ethan finally said, and for a long, sickening moment, Hunter thought he meant the teenage girl in the van.

“Know who?”

“The lady from the office—Sarah—how do you know her?”

This wasn’t much more of a relief. Hunter tossed the duffel bag on the bed. “Who says I know her?”

“Your eyes. They got real wide for a second when she came inside. They never do that.”

Hunter closed the curtains of the room’s sole window. “Never seen her in my life.”

“You sure? Now you seem nervous.”

“Aren’tyounervous? Something’s wrong with this place. Can’t you feel it?”

Ethan ran his thumb over the coarse fabric that upholstered the easy chair in the corner. “You’re upset by more than just the motel.”

“I already said I don’t know her.”

“Fine. Fine.” Ethan shook his head, puzzled. “It’s just… she was full of crap. That Sarah woman—she was lying through her teeth from the moment she stepped into the office.”

THE WOMAN IN ROOM FOURKYLA

7:30 p.m.