Page 22 of The Midnight Knock

The girl looked ill at ease, so distracted by her own thoughts she hardly noticed Kyla and Fernanda until she almost collided with them on the porch. “Oh. Hi. What are y’all doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Kyla said. “Did you come with Stanley?”

“No. He’s sleeping.” The girl blinked. “Oh, you mean to here. Yes. He took me from Mexico.”

“What were you doing in Mexico?”

Before Penelope could reply, Fernanda’s face went pale. Plucking the key from Kyla’s hand, she stepped back into their room. “I need the restroom again. I will catch up with you at dinner.”

And without another word, Fernanda vanished, leaving Kyla alone with the desert and Penelope Holiday and the strange house in the distance and the towering black mountain behind it.

A hard wind blew over the porch. Penelope whispered, almost to herself, “It’s not really anifquestion. It’s more awhoquestion.”

Kyla shivered. “What?”

“It’s something my sister said.” The girl started down the porch. “When you consider all the people stuck here tonight and all the trouble we’re in, it’s not really a question ofifsomeone is going to get hurt. It’swho.”

ETHAN

The motel’s cafe was a long bowling alley of a room. A few wooden booths at one end, a well-stocked bar at the other. A steaming silver buffet waited, empty, against the wall opposite the doors and windows.

Ethan and Hunter arrived a few minutes before seven thirty and were greeted by a crash of dishes from around a cornered hallway. Thomas the twin stood behind the wooden bar, seemingly oblivious to the commotion. He polished a glass with a spotless white rag and nodded to the wall of liquors behind him, looking for all the world like the proprietor of an Old West saloon. “What’ll it be, sirs?”

Without hesitating, Ethan said, “Whiskey. Ice. Water.”

Hunter proceeded to a corner booth in the back of the bar. He didn’t drink.

A few minutes ago, back in their room, Hunter had awoken from a doze and dressed and said, “We should get something to eat. It’s been a long day.” He’d given Ethan a small, sad smile. “No thanks to me.”

Hunter had been different all night. Shortly after they got to their room, Ethan had needed space, the chance to think—whatever the man might say, Ethan knew for a fact that Hunter had recognized Sarah Powers when she’d walked into the office with the camera around her neck—and so Ethan had climbed into the shower, losing himself in a cloud of steam, and tried to work out what it could all mean.

Because he was certain about something else: Sarah Powers had never gotten her car repaired in Ellersby, Texas. The story she’d told about needing a new engine fan for her Ford Taurus was horse crap.

But in that case, how had Sarah recognized Ethan in the first place?

He hadn’t come to any conclusions by the time Hunter had shouted through the bathroom door, “I’m going out for a smoke.” Ethan had rolled his eyes. He’d thought he’d broken Hunter of that habit.

Clearly not. The man must have smoked half a pack. Around six forty-five he’d come back to their room, where Ethan had been sitting on their bed, clad in the only change of clothes they’d dared to bring from Ellersby, still trying to work through what all of this could mean.

Trying to work out what the hell kind of mess Hunter had gotten them into, and how they were going to get out of it.

But then Ethan had seen the look on Hunter’s face. Hunter poked his head around the corner of the room’s short back hall, his shirt already off and bundled up in his hands. He looked at Ethan with an expression of absolute tenderness—a gentle sort of concern so vulnerable it almost bordered on fear—and sniffed the shirt and said, “Sorry about the smell. At least it fixed my headache.”

“Glad to hear it. Where’d you get the cigarettes?”

“Just on the road. Want me to rinse off any of your clothes?”

The question had been surprising. Hunter was tidy enough, always cleaned up after himself around the house, but in the six weeks they’d been together the man had never volunteered to do something as banal as laundry. “Don’t sweat it.”

That gentle concern still hadn’t left Hunter’s face. His hazel eyes had practically sparkled with it. “Are you sure?”

Ethan nodded, baffled by this change in such a hard, hard man. For all his powers of empathy, he had absolutely no idea what to make of it.

“All right, then,” Hunter said. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to ask you something.”

And then he’d stepped into the shower, leaving a whiff of menthol smoke in his wake. Ethan had listened as Hunter scrubbed himself down, shook out his hair, scrubbed his clothes and twisted them dry. He’d listened to Hunter cough and cough and cough. Ethan rolled his eyes again. The cigarette might have helped Hunter’s headache, but had the man stopped to ask what it would do for his lungs?

As Hunter finished up in the shower, Ethan had heard a soft choking noise from the pipes of the bathroom, heard the spray of the shower’s jets dribble down to nothing.God, he thought. Don’t tell him the motel was running low on water.