Page 4 of The Midnight Knock

“He’s not a monster.”

Jack Allen didn’t deign to answer. He crossed to the front door, tipped his hat. “Be seeing you, Mister Cross.”

How did the man know his name?

How did the man know his name?

Outside, Jack Allen climbed into a vintage black Buick that Ethan had somehow failed to notice in the parking lot until this verymoment. Like everything else about Jack Allen, from the gabardine suit to the matching hat to the old, old eyes, the car was strangely antiquated, or like something out of time entirely.

Jack Allen gunned the engine. Headed north. Toward Fort Stockton. Away from the route he called the Dust Road.

Ethan envied him that luxury, later.

The diner’s back door opened near Ethan’s end of the bar. It let in a flinty older woman and a lingering cloud of cigarette smoke. She wore a black apron, the kind with pockets for pens and order pads. “Sit anywhere, hun,” she said. She didn’t sound thrilled at the idea.

A radio behind the bar had come back to life: Barbara Mandrell, burning the midnight oil. Ethan hadn’t realized the radio had been silent. The clock on the wall said it was 2:03, but it must have been broken. There was no way only a single minute could have passed during that conversation with the gabardine man.

Be seeing you, Mister Cross.

Hunter emerged from the bathroom a moment later, swiping his hands on the seat of his jeans. The rat-faced fry cook emerged from his distant corner of the kitchen, arriving at the short-order window just in time to see Hunter touch Ethan’s elbow.

“You all right?” Hunter said. “You look scared.”

The fry cook sneered. When Ethan said, “I’m fine, I think,” the cook let out a snicker loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the kitchen’s grease.

What a mistake.

There had been times, before they left Ellersby, when Hunter’s opaqueness had split open to reveal a sharp edge, a ruthlessness he’d directed at anyone who didn’t mind their own business. It had gotten tense, once or twice. Sheriff Powell had even pulled Ethan over when he was returning from Walmart alone.Wanted to give you a chance to talk one-on-one, the sheriff said.Just in case you’ve got yourself in a bind with a man you can’t handle.

Ethan had waved this away. It’s not like Hunter ever actually came to blows with anyone. He didn’t start fights. He just ended them.

Was there anything sexier?

Ethan narrowed his eyes at the fry cook. “What’s funny?”

The cook turned up the temperature on the kitchen’s deep fryer, chuckling to himself, ignoring Ethan.

Never raising his voice, Hunter said, “My friend asked you a question.”

“We don’t get a lot of people like y’all out here, stud,” the cook said. “I guess we ain’t used to it.”

The waitress sighed. “Ignore Cleveland. I’ve fired him for worse and he keeps turning up for work.”

Hunter didn’t even glance at her. A dark light had started burning behind his hazel eyes, something Ethan had never seen before. It was like the first flicker of a black fire.

“What do you mean?” Hunter said. “?‘People like us’?”

“You really need me to spell it out for you?” the cook said.

“I guess so. I’m not understanding.”

The rat-faced man looked up from his work. “Then you’re an idiotanda fairy and if I weren’t so busy I’d kick your ass.”

“Christ alive, Cleveland,” the waitress said. “What business is that of yours?”

Hunter stepped away from the bar, murmuring something in Ethan’s ear as he walked by. He proceeded outside.

The fry cook snickered again. “I scare him off that easy?”