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“Don’t touch it,” Eddie said.
Inside the farmhouse, a phone rang, loud and shrill. We heard it clearly in the summer air. It rang and rang. Ten times. Twelve. Fifteen. Then it stopped.
I glanced around. The driver of the truck had to be somewhere. The nearest stand of trees was over twenty feet away, on the other side of the driveway. Had he run there? Or was he in the house, ignoring the telephone?
Then I felt the cold. It crawled up my belly and my chest. Inside the house, the phone started to ring again.
I turned back to Eddie and there she was, past his shoulder, standing outside the barn. The girl with brown hair parted in the middle. She was so still, and something about her was so cold it made me want to scream. I could see the frayed cuffs of her jeans and the crew neck of her T-shirt. She was staring at us with those eyes. Those eyes—
“April?” Eddie said, looking at my face.
I made my mouth move. “She’s behind you,” I whispered, as if the girl could hear.
Eddie didn’t turn. Instead he closed his eyes, as if some kind of sensation moved through him. “I can feel her staring.”
I was frozen, no more words in my throat.
Finally, Eddie turned. “Hey!” he shouted, as if she was a trespasser on his lawn. “Hey there!” He started walking toward her, and I rounded the truck and followed, my head pounding with fear. I didn’t know who the girl was, but I knew that I didn’t want to get any closer to her. My stomach curdled.
“Hey!” Eddie shouted again, but the girl didn’t answer and she didn’t move. She simply stood there. “What do you want?” he called to her.
If you see her, you’ll be the next one found at the side of the road, Gretchen had said.
“What’s your name?” Eddie said. “Who are you? Maybe you should—”
A man came from the open barn door, sprinting. He ran past the girl, almost as if he didn’t see her, and straight for Eddie. He hit Eddie in a football tackle at top speed, and both men went down.
Eddie didn’t even shout. He bucked and shoved at the man, forcing himself out from under him. The man scrabbled at Eddie, trying to land a punch on his face, trying to get his hands around Eddie’s throat. The girl standing by the barn had vanished.
I looked around for a weapon I could use or could hand to Eddie, but there was nothing. I considered running into the barn and finding something there, but it looked like I wouldn’t have to. Eddie was powerfully strong, and it was becoming clear that the man who was attacking him was much weaker. He was thrashing and fighting, but Eddie was beginning to overpower him.
Eddie pinned the man’s wrists into the dirt. “What the hell do you want?” he roared in the man’s face, enraged. Sweat and dust covered his cheekbones.
The man’s chest was heaving and I could hear the rasp of his breath. It was loud and pained in the silent air, as if he was having an asthma attack. Still he fought Eddie, trying to kick him and pull his wrists free.
He wasn’t much older than Eddie and me, with thinning brown hair and a scraggly beard. He was wearing navy blue work pants and a buttoned flannel shirt. He was taller than Eddie, thinner, not as muscled. His labored breathing made him weak, but he was a vicious fighter. Eddie winced as one of the man’s bony knees hit him in the meat of his thigh.
“Answer me!” Eddie shouted at the man.
In response, the man pulled one of his hands free and latched it to Eddie’s throat, squeezing as hard as he could.
One of Eddie’s fists hit the man’s temple hard. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head.
That’s when I raced up the front steps of the farmhouse, pushed open the unlocked door, and ran for the telephone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Detective Beam was smoking a cigarette. I’d watched him pat his pockets, then set the pack of cigarettes on the table between us. I’d watched him produce a plastic lighter from a different pocket. Finally, I’d watched him light the cigarette and smoke it.
They’d split us up this time. Detective Quentin had taken Eddie, while Detective Beam took me. He had thinning brown hair and a belly that mildly strained the front of his shirt. He was decent enough, and he was probably a good detective, but he didn’t interest me. The cigarettes interested me.
He’d left the lid of the pack flipped open, so I could see the ends of the cigarettes. I could see the edge of the ripped foil. I stared at that foil, knowing exactly how it would feel against my fingers, the way it crumpled so easily and softly that it was a little creepy. There was nothing else in the world, I realized, that felt quite like cigarette pack foil.
“Mrs.Carter, are you listening to me?” Detective Beam asked.
I shook my head. My mother had smoked cigarettes nonstop on that first long drive out of California, that frantic escape. She’d lit one after another. The stench had made my eyes water, but I’d sat in the passenger seat in silence, trying not to cry as the car’s air-conditioning blew an imprecise and unpredictable stream of air somewhere near my face. I’d had my first cigarette at thirteen.
Eddie didn’t smoke, and I’d quit long before I met him. I both loved and hated cigarettes in equal measure. I loved them because of the primitive hit they gave my brain. I hated them because they made me just like my mother.
