بخش 04 - فصل 29

29

Holly doesn’t ask Hodges why he took the right-hand fork. She’s neurotic, but not stupid. He drives at a walking pace, looking to his left, measuring the lights to his left. When he’s even with them, he stops the SUV and switches off the engine. It’s full dark now, and when he turns to look at Holly, she has the fleeting impression that his head has been replaced by a skull.

“Stay here,” he says in a low voice. “Text Jerome, tell him we’re okay. I’m going to cut through those woods and take him.”

“You don’t mean alive, do you?”

“Not if I see him with one of those Zappits.” And probably even if I don’t, he thinks. “We can’t take the risk.”

“Then you believe it’s him. Brady.”

“Even if it’s Babineau, he’s part of this. Neck-deep in it.” But yes, at some point he has become convinced that Brady Hartsfield’s mind is now running Babineau’s body. The intuition is too strong to deny, and has gained the weight of fact.

God help me if I kill him and I’m wrong, he thinks. Only how would I know? How could I ever be sure?

He expects Holly to protest, to tell him she has to come along, but all she says is, “I don’t think I can drive this thing out of here if something happens to you, Bill.”

He hands her Thurston’s card. “If I’m not back in ten minutes—no, make it fifteen—call this guy.”

“What if I hear shots?”

“If it’s me, and I’m okay, I’ll honk the horn of Library Al’s car. Two quick beeps. If you don’t hear that, drive the rest of the way to the other camp, Big Bob’s Whatsit. Break in, find somewhere to hide, call Thurston.”

Hodges leans across the center console, and for the first time since he’s known her, kisses her lips. She’s too startled to kiss him back, but she doesn’t pull away. When he does, she looks down in confusion and says the first thing that comes into her mind. “Bill, you’re in shoes! You’ll freeze!”

“There’s not so much snow in the trees, only a couple of inches.” And really, cold feet are the least of his worries at this point.

He finds the toggle switch that kills the interior lights. As he leaves the Expedition, grunting with suppressed pain, she can hear the rising whisper of the wind in the fir trees. If it were a voice, it would be mourning. Then the door shuts.

Holly sits where she is, watching his dark shape merge with the dark shapes of the trees, and when she can no longer tell which is which, she gets out and follows his tracks. The Victory .38 that Hodges’s father once carried as a beat cop back in the fifties, when Sugar Heights was still woodland, is in her coat pocket.