Page 29

And then, like that, it disappears. He breathes out, settles back in his seat. “What year were you born?”

I roll my eyes. “You know that question is not nearly as interesting when it’s about me.”

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, smiles a little. “It’s interesting enough.”

Jesus fuck, why is my heart fluttering around like that? I tug down on my shirt. “1998,” I mutter.

“Just a baby,” he says with a grin.

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” I snap. “I went to college.”

“And now you go to parties hoping to get arrested.” Victor’s still smiling, and I know he’s teasing me, and it ought to annoy the shit out of me, but it just makes my heart flutter even more. “A good use of a college degree.”

I roll my eyes. “What would you know about it? You haven’t even been to the East Coast.”

“Not true. I went to Connecticut once.”

“Once!”

“Yeah, back in the seventies.” He shakes his head, eyes on the road. “It was a mistake.”

“Yeah, why? Spent too much at a farmer’s market?”

“Got myself killed.”

He says it casually, the way Hunters always seem to talk about their deaths. “Is that why you never want to leave Colorado?” I ask. “Every time you do, you get killed?”

He doesn’t smile, though, which I half-expected him to. Or half-hoped. He just keeps staring at the road. “No,” he says. “I don’t want to leave because—because everything that matters is here.” He looks at me again, turns his head and looks at me, and my face flares hot.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I mutter.

“Yeah,” he mutters, looking back ahead. “Everything that matters is here.”

12

VICTOR

We stop in Foleytown for lunch. Calling it a town is really too generous—it’s a post office and some houses and a diner called Gertrude’s All Nighter that I know for a fact doesn’t have a camera because a year or two back I hunted a cop down here and slit his throat in the parking lot. He’d come snooping at the Gas and Go and saw just enough that I knew he was coming back with reinforcements.

When I tell Penelope all of this, she gives me a long, interested look. “So you’re a cop-killer.”

“Aren’t we all,” I respond.

She grins at that, and I feel something knotting up in my heart. I like her. I still don’t want to admit it, particularly, but I do like her.

Mary, I tell myself. Stay focused on Mary.

Lunch is pleasant enough. The waitress mostly ignores us. Penelope orders a patty melt with onion rings, and I have the same. It’s greasy and salty and reminds me of the years I spent traveling, mostly around the middle part of the country—although I did eventually wind up in Connecticut, just like I told her. It was back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when there were human serial killers everywhere. I used to follow their stories in the papers and copy their murders, adding bodies to their tallies. I had been so listless back then, listless and lonely, and I thought leaving my mountain—leaving Mary’s grave—would help. I thought pretending to be someone else, even just for the span of one kill, would help, too.

It didn’t. I was still myself. Still the man who failed Mary.

When the waitress brings our ticket, I grab it before Penelope can. She scowls at me. “I’ve got money.”

“I bet I have more,” I respond, slapping down a pair of twenties. “You can get dinner.”

I have no intention of letting her pay for dinner, but it does mollify her.

When we step out of the diner, it’s much, much colder than when we went in, and the wind practically tears the door out of Penelope’s hands. Thick grey clouds have moved over the mountain, crowding the trees, and I can smell the metallic crispness of incoming snow on the blustery wind. “Shit,” I mutter.