Page 74 of The Midnight Knock

It was Ryan Phan, the man Ethan had seen staring into room 4 from the back porch.

But how did Ethan know his name?

“I think we can clear all of this up right now,” Ryan said, his sneer widening. “Can’t we, Stanley?”

KYLA

She didn’t look up from the stone egg, not even when the door opened and this new man stepped inside. Kyla’s thumb ran again and again along the grooves of the pale rock. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t crazy. She knew where she’d seen stones like this before, where she’d seen carvings just like this.

This pattern was everywhere in her dreams, in the bathroom’s broken mirror. The walls of the dead city were hewn from this same pale rock. They were grooved, all over, in these same fine whorls.

Kyla’s lips were moving, over and over, though no sound came. It was a single thought, repeating without beginning or end, just like the grooves in the egg.

the stone is from the city the stone is from the city the stone is from the city.

That voice—thatalmost-familiar voice—wouldn’t let her go. “You have to remember, Kyla. You have to.”

Elsewhere in the office, a whole drama was playing out. The man who’d just walked inside said he had information on Stanley that would incriminate the big man. Something about the Terra Vista Motel out in Fort Stockton. The new man said he would stay silent if Stanley let him take Penelope back to Mexico. Kyla, distantly, knew the man’s knowledge wasn’t so secret. That it proved nothing.

But she didn’t care. She just stared at the egg.

Hunter said to Stanley, “You were the last person to come to dinner tonight. You had the best opportunity to kill Sarah.”

Stanley said, “I was asleep in my room.”

“Is that where you busted your lip?” Hunter said.

Stanley said nothing.

Ryan said, “Sarah put up a fight, huh, Stanley?”

“You’re insane. I never evenmetSarah before tonight,” Stanley said.

Kyla turned to him, blinking, struggling to keep her head clear. “That’s a lie, Mister Holiday. You’ve been having dinner with her at the steakhouse for the last six weeks.”

The drama resumed. The pain in Kyla’s head was growing worse by the second, but that pain finally felt productive somehow. It reminded Kyla of the way her baby teeth ached the more she used to loosen them. She remembered her tongue prodding at the gap between the tooth and the gum. The piercing, expectant agony as the root began to pull away.

The same thing was happening in Kyla’s mind. Something was coming loose. Something was trying to come back to her.

Stanley was starting to sound frantic. Ryan and Hunter pressed the attack. Fernanda said simply, “I heard a man arguing with Sarah in her room at seven thirty.”

“Did he sound like Stanley?” Ryan said.

Fernanda said carefully, “I am not sure. He might have.”

“That’s a lie!” Stanley said. “I don’t care what pictures you have—that’s a lie and you know it.”

Ethan, Kyla noticed, had yet to say a word.

At the edge of her vision, Kyla saw Hunter nod to Ryan. “Let’s take him somewhere quiet. We can get the truth out of him before midnight.”

Hunter took a step forward, bumping into Kyla. The motion jostled the stone egg and sent it slipping out of her bandaged fingers. The stone struck the wooden floor with a dull crack: a warning shot.

The moment she heard that sound, the block in Kyla’s mind came free with a wet rip, like a tooth tearing free.

All at once, Kyla remembered. She remembered everything.

Stanley started marching toward the door of the office, a veinthump-thump-thumping in his throat. Ryan stepped in Stanley’s way, said, “Where do you think you’re going?”