Orin blasphemed something unintelligible and snared one whipping ankle. He braced one of his legs against the seat and the other against the truck’s frame and lunged back for all he was worth, which was maybe two hundred pounds—which was enough to get him halfway to where he wanted to be.
Ryan’s legs and most of his ass came sliding out, but he still hung on to the gear shift, to the window frame, to the seat belt—to anything he could hold.
“You’ve almost got him!” Pete said, but wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy about it.
Especially not when he saw the kid’s slipping hand reach for the glove compartment. He jabbed at it until it popped open, and inside Pete saw something he didn’t want to see. It was black, and about palm-sized, and it gleamed under the dome light.
“No way,” he said, and he brought his own revolver up. “Don’t do it, kid, don’t you fucking do it! Or I’ll shoot!”
But Ryan didn’t hear or didn’t listen, or he didn’t care. He pushed his fingers into the glove box.
So Pete fired.
The kick surprised him. He hadn’t fired a gun since before he went into the joint, and the little leap moved his wrist, sending the shot wild. He’d been aiming for the boy’s hand, or the box itself—anything inside it.
What he hit instead was the side of Orin’s neck.
Orin reeled back, releasing Ryan’s feet and clutching at the bloody spray that gushed from beneath his ear.
“Holy fuck!” the kid in the truck exclaimed, and he sounded more panicked than before, when he was only hurt from the wreck. “Holy fuck!” he said again, like he couldn’t believe whatever he was seeing.
“Stay there!” Pete insisted, pointing the gun at the kid but keeping his distance.
He approached Orin, who dropped himself down against the fender, then the tire, until his rear hit the pavement and he was forced to stop his descent. Orin was panting, and holding his neck so tight he was choking himself with the effort.
Pete didn’t even know a body could hold so much blood, much less lose it in such a quantity and at such a speed. Orin’s clothes were saturated; he could’ve wrung them out and filled a bucket. Pete pulled off the hurt man’s mask and used it to try to wipe the spot. But the spot was everywhere.
Orin gagged, and sighed, and his grip on himself loosened.
“Holy fuck,” Ryan said again.
He’d removed himself from the cab by then, and was hobbling backwards away from the pair. In his hand the boy held a cell phone, which was surely what he’d been reaching for in the glove box.
Pete swung the gun around, and in the dim light of the overhead cab bulb, he saw that the kid was bleeding from the thigh. Pete had only fired once, but what had grazed Orin in the wrong spot must’ve kept going and landed in Ryan.
“You stay right there,” he commanded.
The kid hesitated. He checked to see how far he was from cover, and from his truck. He glanced down at the phone in his hand.
“Hold it right there!”
Pete was frantic with rage and fear. The gun wasn’t holding steady, and the DJ on the too-loud radio had a voice like a jack-hammer. Orin was dead, or if he wasn’t, he would be. Everything had unraveled. Everything had come undone. So much for Pete and his ideas. So much for getting help. So much for his first accomplice.
“Don’t you try it! I said, don’t you try it!”
Ryan tried it.
16
The Recovery
“We’d better do it quick,” Dana said. “I’ve got to head back to Greensboro tomorrow afternoon. With or without Tripp there are contractual obligations to be met and work to be done.”
We all got quiet, because anything else seemed disrespectful. None of us knew how to respond, but she tried not to keep us on the spot about it.
“Look, stop looking so morose every time I bring him up. This isn’t your problem, your grief. Don’t feel like you need to share it with me. You’re not going to make it better.” She pulled her hands up to her face and breathed into them for a minute, collecting herself or simply hiding from us temporarily.
“Okay then,” I said, mostly to break up the awkwardness. “This afternoon. We’ll go out to the Bend and see if we can find him.”
Jamie was dubious. “Shouldn’t we wait until tonight? Doesn’t all this spooky stuff have to go down after sundown?”
Benny butted in so I didn’t need to. “I don’t see why. Didn’t the ghosts that started all this—I mean, the ones that came out on Decoration Day—didn’t they appear in the middle of the day?”
“Correct, my friend,” I told him.
“And you don’t think Green Eyes will be any different?”
“Why would he be? If anything, he’s something more substantial than a spirit. I think he might be easier to spot in daylight than one of the battlefield pointers.”
“Allow me to note”—Jamie flipped a thumb towards the window—“that we’ve only got a few more hours of daylight anyway.” He was right. The sun had hit that sharp, yellow slant that means the day is closer to ending than beginning.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Wow. I didn’t realize we’d been here so long. But there’s time. Is everybody in?”
I knew Dana was, so I didn’t even give her a glance. The boys looked less sure of the project.
“I have to work,” Benny complained.
“I don’t have to work,” Jamie admitted. “But I don’t know about this.”
Benny looked horrified by the thought that someone he called a friend might think that this wasn’t a great idea. “Why not? I’m already composing an excuse to get out of work. Do I look sick to you? Here—look down my throat. Does it look red?”
“Ew.”
“Good. I might be coming down with strep throat. I can’t possibly drive a cab with strep throat. Eden, can I see your cell phone? I’ve got a call to make.”
My purse was on the floor beside me. I picked it up with my foot and retrieved my phone from inside it. “Here you go.” I tossed it to him. “Jamie, that leaves you. Except…” Something dawned on me. I knew for a fact that he wasn’t too chicken to come ghost-hunting with us, and that left only one obvious reason that he wouldn’t want to. “You’ve got a date, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You’re joking.” Benny rolled his eyes. “You’d give up the chance to shake hands with one of the most famous spooks in the South for the prospect of a little action?”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, he wouldn’t.” I answered for him. “Probably. But if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”
“Thanks, I know. But if things end early, or if she’s game for adventure, I’ll give you a call. You’ll leave your phone on?”
“Yeah,” I said out of reflex, then realized I didn’t mean it. If we ended up out on the battlefield in the dark again, he could forget it. “Give us a call if your night gets boring. But the rest of us are going to hit the Bend. Right?”
Dana and Benny both signified agreement, and we reached for our respective belongings.
“Drop me off at the ’Friar’s?” Jamie was polite enough to ask, and not assume.
I said sure, and we packed ourselves back into my car. The Nugget’s backseat isn’t the most spacious in the world, but the boys sucked it up and didn’t fight over “shotgun” out of deference to Dana. I didn’t think they would do as much for me, were the shoe on some other foot, but that was all right. I appreciated the fact they were going out of their way to be nice to her.
After leaving Jamie at the door of our favorite coffeehouse, Benny wanted to stop for drinks and I needed gas anyway, so we ran by a Favorite Market and filled up all around. Then we stopped in at the hotel where Dana was staying and loaded up enough electronic equipment to stuff a U-Haul. I wasn’t entirely sure it would all fit, but we got the bulk of it into my trunk.
Finally, we rolled down the windows and drove out to Moccasin Bend.
By the time we got there it was after six. As I’d noticed during my midnight run to pick up Malachi, there weren’t any places to turn off or park anywhere past the entry sign, and there was a big stretch of road between the entrance and the tip of the peninsula.
We had no idea where to begin looking, so we idled beside the same sign where I’d hunted for my brother not long before.
“We can’t park here,” Dana observed. I agreed with her wholeheartedly, but I didn’t know where else to take us.
Benny squeezed himself forward between the bucket seats up front. “We could pretend we have car trouble. Throw on the hazard lights and pull over.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “But what if someone comes along and tries to help, and we’ve wandered off?”
“Could we leave a note?”
Dana reached for her bag and pulled out a notebook. “We could leave a note. It could say something about how we’ve walked out to the nearest gas station. We passed one back…back a while ago. Maybe a mile ago.”
“But if anyone stopped to read the note and then tried to help us, they’d double back and notice that we weren’t walking towards the gas station.”
“Oh, seriously,” I said. “What are the odds that someone would go to all that trouble? Southern hospitality has its limits, you know. Let’s leave the thing with the hazards on, and walk it.”
I pulled off to the side of the road, well into the grass—but not so far that we’d have trouble pulling out again. I turned on the hazard lights, and we climbed out.
“We should split up,” Dana suggested.
Benny looked at her like she’d just suggested we go skinny dipping. “Are you serious? Have you ever seen a horror movie in your life?”
“Benny—” I tried to head him off.