Page 39 of The Midnight Knock

“Please tell me that’s wrong,” Kyla said.

Ethan followed her eyes. He looked at the clock, the watch on his wrist. He shook his head in surprise. “It’s not wrong.”

“How is that possible?” Kyla said, “It was barely nine o’clock when we came in here. That was twenty minutes ago. A half hour, tops.”

Fernanda lowered the roll of film, very slowly, from the light. “Time has felt strange all evening. I thought… I thought it was just me.”

Hunter said, “I told you this game was rigged. It’ll be midnight any second.”

“Rigged?” Kyla said. “You think the twins are cranking up the speed of time itself?”

“After everything else we’ve seen tonight? Would it really surprise you?” Hunter said.

“Oh, please,” Kyla said.

Ethan said, “That sounds ridiculous, Hunter. You have to know that.”

“Ridiculous?” Hunter said. “It means we have even less time to get ready than we thought.”

“Get ready?” Kyla said. “If the twins are so fucking powerful they can break the rules of Newtonian physics, do you really think that hiding in our rooms is going to protect us from whatever they’ve got planned?”

“I keep trying to tell you: they’re playing a game.” Hunter scowled. “They’ve just never played against me before.”

From any other man, a line like this would have made Kyla snort, but Hunter was clearly not like most other men.

It was Ethan who shook his head. “No. We’re getting somewhere. Maybe the killer didn’t burnallof those photographs. Maybe they saved a few, hid them. And there’s the missing satellite phone: the killer could have stolen it. If we trackthatdown, wouldn’t that be the proof the twins needed?”

“That’s circumstantial,” Hunter said. “It wouldn’t prove much.”

Kyla said, “There’s someone we’re forgetting.”

Ethan nodded. “Penelope.”

“I haven’t seen her since dinner. It’s like the girl vanished the minute the body was discovered. That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

Hunter gestured at the shrouded shape of Sarah Powers. “You think a teenage girl could dothat?”

Kyla shuddered. She sincerely hoped not. “Even if she didn’t kill Sarah, Penelope might have seen something she shouldn’t have. Might have heard it. She grew up around some very bad people. She probably knows when it would be safer to disappear.”

Ethan said, “And she could be in danger. Who knows what other tricks the twins haven’t played yet?”

“I’m sorry, but is that really our problem?” Hunter said.

“That a sixteen-year-old girl is alone on a night like this? In a place like this?” Ethan said. “Yes, I think that’s everyone’s problem.”

Kyla said, “So that’s three things we can look for. The missing photographs from this roll of film. The satellite phone. And Penelope.”

Ethan pulled a pair of room keys from his pocket. They were, Kyla realized, the keys Tabitha had given him back on the office’s porch. One key was marked3. The other,7.

Kyla said, “Stanley and Penelope were staying in number seven. It seems safe to assume that Ryan was in three.”

“And what happens when you don’t find anything in those rooms?” Hunter said.

“We search everywhere. We saw a big maintenance closet earlier, and who knows what’s behind the cafe,” Kyla said.

“And there’s the old house behind the motel. We could search there,” Ethan said, although judging by the way he said it, the boy was just as unenthusiastic about the idea of visiting that old house as Kyla felt.

She couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly, but just the thought of that grand old two-story Victorian—so out of place way out here—filled her with a dread she couldn’t quite name.