Page 44 of The Midnight Knock

“But then how did Sarah recognize you?”

Ethan held in a shiver. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for ages.”

HUNTER

A few minutes earlier, Hunter followed Fernanda into room 7 as the generator stuttered. Darkness closed over the motel. Every nerve in his body started firing. His hand was behind his back, wrapped around the Python, before Fernanda even appeared to realize what had happened. Hunter twisted the lock of the back door and leaned against it, hard, in case any of those things out in the desert decided to get too close.

He waited.

The generator sputtered back on—or tried to. A weak half-light reigned over the motel, a gloaming of mercury vapor, and from beside him Hunter heard Fernanda let out a startled gasp. She was pressed against the wall, staring at the room’s bed, her body stiff with fear.

Hunter followed her gaze. He, too, went very tense.

They weren’t alone.

Two women lay on the bed. One was wearing nothing but an old-fashioned garter belt. The other woman was completely naked. Their hairstyles were out-of-date: a bob for one, a short beehive for the other. The two women were kissing, madly. Touching each other. Breathing hard, but they didn’t appear to make a sound.

The woman with the beehive opened her eyes. It was just a little blink, like she was coming up for air. She closed them.

She opened them again, wide. She stared over her companion’s shoulder at Hunter and Fernanda with the same shock with which they were staring at her. The other woman turned, saw them for herself, scrambled to pull the blanket over her bare body.

The woman screamed, but her open mouth remained silent as a cry in a nightmare.

The lights came back up. The women dissipated like smoke.

Hunter said nothing.

Fernanda shuddered. The roll of Sarah’s film, draped over her neck, whispered against her long hair. “You saw them too.”

Hunter said nothing.

Fernanda said, “Are we losing our minds?”

“I hope not,” Hunter said. “We don’t have time.”

Hunter had his doubts about Fernanda. He wasn’t sure he could count on this girl if trouble hit the fan. (Case in point: in all the chaos of the last couple minutes, she’d never once reached for her gun.) Fernanda seemed strung out on adrenaline, wrecked by a very long day.

The good news was that Hunter didn’t exactly need her help. For most of the night, he’d had a pretty clear idea of everything that had happened at the motel since he and Ethan had arrived. He knew who had killed Sarah Powers, and how, and why.

He also knew that the odds of anyone finding conclusive proof of the killer’s guilt would be next to impossible, meaning all of this was a waste of time.

“Go search the bathroom,” Hunter told Fernanda, mostly to keep her out of his hair. “The toilet. Under the vanity. Everywhere.”

“For what?”

“Anything that might have been stolen out of Sarah’s room. Guns. Money.” He hesitated. “The satellite phone. Or just anything out of the ordinary.”

“You are not afraid of what we just saw?”

“I’ve seen weirder.”

“Weirder thanthat?”

Hunter frowned, if only to himself. He thought about one of his last nights in Huntsville, listening to the horrors being whispered about in the cell next door. The last night of The Chief.

Tell Sarah—

Tell Sarah, the mountain—