Page 2 of The Midnight Knock

And then a noise came that she wasn’t used to. A noise that neither of the twins had ever heard before.

There was a faint, hightinkfrom the bathroom, like the sound of a tooth chipping the rim of a shot glass. A few quick steps and Tabitha stood in the bathroom doorway. Thomas was frozen over the bathtub, blood dripping from the sponge in his hand, face turned to stare over his shoulder. He was just as shocked as her.

A fine crack had appeared in the bathroom’s mirror. It ran from the top edge of the mirror’s frame to the bottom, bending with a subtle arc on the way down.

Somewhere outside, a door slammed shut. Somewhere down the road, the night’s guests were fast approaching.

Here in the bathroom of room 5, Tabitha and Thomas stared at the cracked mirror with a mounting horror.

“That… that…”

“That’s never happened before.”

ETHAN

His mother always warned him to avoid west Texas.Life had a way of falling apart in the desert, she said. But what did his mother know? Ethan’s life had already fallen apart long before he left home.

It couldn’t get any worse, he thought.

At Hunter’s suggestion they took the back roads out of Ellersby, spent their morning on the drowsy highways. “Just in case our exit wasn’t as clean as we think.” The boys would be wanted for arson now. The cops would probably have some questions about the corpse they’d left behind while they were at it.

After eight hours of driving, those back roads ended in the cracked parking lot of a diner in a little desert town called Turner. There were no trees in Turner, no hills, no beauty. Nothing but a few faded buildings, a broken windmill, a great gold-brown emptiness.

And this diner. Lola’s Den. The sign out front advertisedDEEP-FRIED HAPPINESS.

Ethan didn’t want to stop. He was desperate to get out of Texas; the state was so vast it seemed determined to hold on to him. Hunter said he was starving. They hadn’t eaten breakfast.

The boys crossed the diner’s parking lot at a jog. It was two in the afternoon, the sun well up in the sky, but the temperature was barely above freezing. It was February, the dead of winter. Pity they hadn’t packed any cold-weather gear. Maybe it would have been worth the risk. Ethan had never felt a cold like this.

Inside, Lola’s Den was like a lot of Texas: it must have been charming, once. A few booths, a few tables, a bar running in front of the short-order window that opened to the kitchen. Faded and scuffed, all of it, but the diner was warm and smelled like biscuits and was probably the closest thing to home Ethan would find for a long, long time.

A tall man in a gray gabardine suit was the only other customer. He sat at the bar with a cup of coffee, his eyes fixed on the wall, a matching gray hat perched on the stool beside him. The man didn’t looktheir way. Instead, a scrawny fry cook with a hard face studied Ethan and Hunter through the kitchen window. Their presence clearly displeased him. He stared.

Hunter stared back. Hunter never blinked from a fight.

The fry cook turned away, pretending to be busy. Hunter stifled one of his nasty coughs. Thumping his chest, nodding to the bathroom, Hunter said, “I need a piss.”

Ethan stood near the cash register at the closed end of the bar. He never knew, in places like this, if he was supposed to seat himself. A long lull: Ethan alone with the man in the gray suit, both of them watching the clock on the wall. 2:02.

“How old are you, son?”

The man in the gabardine suit had a smooth voice. It was smooth and level—like a preacher, a statesman—but with a hum coursing along under the words, a faint tremor. It almost sounded like he was holding down a laugh.

But a laugh at what?

“Twenty-four, sir,” Ethan said.

The man nodded. “Old enough to know better, then.”

“Pardon?”

“This your first time in the borderlands?”

“The border of what? Mexico’s miles away.” Ethan hesitated. “Ain’t it?”

“I didn’t say Mexico.”

Ethan shot a look at the bathroom door. It was childish of him, but he didn’t want to be alone right now.