“Suck my dick,” Cole answers with a smile. “Again.”
Then he heads for the helicopter with Ed on his heels.
They’ve just flown back over the state line into California when Ed lets out a startled grunt. Since they’ve boarded, he’s been listening to his recording of Cole and Dylan’s conversation with noise-canceling headphones.
A few minutes ago, something inspired him to start a web search on his phone, and now he’s eager for Cole to see the results.
Cole takes the phone.
Instantly he recognizes the face that accompanies the article. It’s like seeing an old college classmate, someone who was familiar to him on a daily basis for a short period of his past but has since vanished from his life entirely. This isn’t one of his Stanford classmates, however.
Her hair’s completely different now, her face longer and more adult. But she’s the girl in the video. “It’s Burning Girl.”
“That explains everything,” Ed says.
“Not everything,” Cole answers.
And Ed says nothing, maybe because he knows Cole’s right.
20
When Luke was in college, he didn’t know the meaning of a day off.
Days off were for other people. People who didn’t have life plans. People who didn’t use wipe-off pens to turn one window of their dorm rooms into a running list of both daily and weekly tasks and objectives.
If he didn’t have class, he was studying or working one of two jobs, or he was in the gym. Holidays, especially the long ones, were spent doing prep work for whatever classes he was planning to take the following semester. It always gave him a thrill to walk into a language course already fluent in basic conversational phrases.
Yeah, how’d that work out for you, hotshot? You’re really wowing Mona with your Mandarin, aren’t you?
He’s not too crazy about days off now, either. Especially since his job feels like a monotonous grind that only uses a third of his available mental energy. When he shelves his badge after a long week, he doesn’t feel the kind of bone-deep exhaustion and satisfaction he associates with hard work.
Instead he feels restless and bored.
A slug of Heineken should help.
When his cell phone rings, he jumps, spilling beer down the front of his shirt. He grabs for it, expecting to see Mona’s name on the caller ID, but he doesn’t recognize the number.
“Howdy, hometown hero,” Marty says when Luke answers.
“OK. We can go with that, I guess.”
“Still want to see Trina?”
Luke stands, brushing beer foam from the front of his T-shirt.
“I’d like to be in touch with her, yeah. But I didn’t say I could—”
“You’re renting the old Hickman place, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Wait. Now?”
“No, not now. Twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, I’m not really ready to receive visitors.”
“Ah, just brush off the Cheetos dust and put the porn away. She’s not expecting high tea, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m not watching porn.”
“And it’s not gonna be visitors plural. Just her. I’m gonna wait outside in case you start wailing on each other.” For some reason, Marty cracks up like this is the funniest joke anyone’s ever made.
“Yeah, or maybe this evening I can meet her in town or something, and we can grab a cup of coffee or a—”
“What’s your problem, Jack? Do you want to make this right or not?” Marty barks. “She’s in town, she doesn’t have much time, and she’s willing to see you. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Why doesn’t she have much time?”
“Ask her yourself. In twenty minutes.”
“Marty—”
“Oh, and by the way, she changed her name. Goes by Charley now.”
“OK.”
“You know, probably because of people like you.”
Marty hangs up.
Luke reaches for his beer and downs the remainder of it. Whoever said you can’t go home again was just engaging in a bunch of wishful thinking.
As Marty drives, Charlotte studies the pill in her palm.
Up close and in broad daylight, she can see the wrongness of it, the lumpiness that suggests it didn’t come off a factory assembly line. In Dylan’s office, she’d been distracted by too many things to notice the strangeness of the pills or the cheapness of their packaging.
“Take it,” Marty says. “Soothe an old man’s nerves.”
“You’re not that old,” she says.
“Come on, Charley. You don’t want me busting in on your old high school bully with guns blazing, do you?”
“I don’t want to waste a pill over something that’s probably not true.”
“What? You got big plans for the rest?”
“We’ve been over this.”
“Not really. I mean, I get it. It’s important. What they can do. Maybe they could help people in the right hands. Only problem is, the hand that gave it to you doesn’t seem like one of those hands.”
“I’m having a hard time believing Luke Prescott is in on this, Marty.”
“You had no idea Dylan was in on it, did you? And you still don’t really have any idea what it even is.”
Ouch.
“Fine.”
She swallows the pill as if it were an Advil and turns her attention to the road.
They’d arrived in darkness early that morning, after which she’d slept until noon, occasionally roused by the sounds of Marty moving about the house, having low conversations with guys who’d dropped by throughout the morning, other sober men he’d enlisted to help protect her. “I’ve kept their secrets. It’s not asking much of them to return the favor,” Marty told her. Each time she woke, this thought comforted her enough to send her back to sleep.
By the time she’d woken up for good, the only one in the kitchen was Marty, hiding his sleeplessness behind a cup of coffee and a warm smile.
It’s just the two of them now as they drive the winding road from Marty’s property to the valley floor. To call his house a mobile home wouldn’t do it justice. It always looks freshly painted, and he long ago added redwood decks on all sides, a vegetable garden, and a row of poplar trees around the perimeter that give a watery luminescence to the dry, grassy hills surrounding his property.
“Marty, I don’t want it to sound like I don’t appreciate what you’re doing.”
“It doesn’t. Now that you took the pill.” He gives her a cockeyed grin.
“No matter what happens, you don’t have to put your life in danger for me.”
“I know. I don’t have to do any of the shit I do. Except, you know, shit. And eat. And sleep. And drink water. I do stuff ’cause I want to. ’Cause it matters to me.”
Because you matter to me, is what he’s saying. She reaches across the gearshift and squeezes his knee briefly to let him know he matters to her, too.
The Hickman place is in the opposite side of the valley from Marty’s, on Lowell Drive, a serpentine street that branches off from State Mountain Road 293. It hugs the inland base of the mountains that stretch all the way to PCH, so there are more trees here than around Marty’s place, and they dapple the large, unfenced lots and their tiny houses with deep pools of shadow. In another hour or so, the sun will disappear behind the Santa Lucia Mountains even though there’s hours to go before dusk.
The old Hickman place, a ranch-style house with a gently sloping roof and a front room that juts out onto its unkempt front lawn, is a ghost of its former self. It used to be one of the nicest homes in town, built and owned for as long as she could remember by the family who started the local drugstore on Center Street. But the store’s gone and so are the Hickmans, including their daughter, Emily, who’d made it a point to invite Charlotte to all the pool parties she had in high school, parties where Charlotte remembers feeling fairly welc
ome and not too openly stared at. Probably because Luke wasn’t there drumming up contempt for her among the other guests. While the oak tree out back is just as impressive as it used to be, and the view beyond just as beautiful, the aboveground pool is long gone, and so’s the tall cast-iron fence to which the family used to tie strings of blue-and-pink balloons.
At first she assumes the man who appears on the stoop can’t be Luke Prescott. He’s too tall, too broad. But of course, she’s comparing him to the high school version, which is nuts.
He’s got the same military-grade buzz cut that makes his sandy-blond hair look like it’s painted on his skull. But his face is wider now, his features more evenly balanced. That constant squinting expression, which always made him look like he was getting ready to say something biting and sarcastic even on those rare occasions he wasn’t, is gone now, and she can’t help but wonder if there were other things she read into his personality based on ephemeral aspects of his physical appearance.
Or you’re cutting him too much slack because this new body of his is something to see. And how’d things go the last time you got distracted by a man’s looks?
Luke gives them a stiff wave and an even stiffer, more awkward smile.
Marty rolls the window down.
“You sure you don’t want come in, Marty?” Luke asks.
“Sure as Sam.”
“Who’s Sam?” he asks.
“It’s just an expression.”
“It is?” Luke asks.
“No,” Charlotte says, stepping from the truck. “It isn’t.”
Marty shoots her an angry look, but it shows her how nervous he is. He really does believe Luke might be some sort of threat, and he’s not sure this is the best way to handle it.
“We’ll be fine,” Charlotte whispers, then gives him a peck on the cheek.
It was a deliberate strategy, surprising Luke in the middle of the day at home like this. Marty insisted on it. And it’s clear Luke is bothered by her sudden arrival. But who wouldn’t be? It’s the inside of his house that’ll tell her the most.
How lived in is it? Is this stay, this new job, temporary?
Like all crazy conspiracy theories, there’s no surefire way to disprove Marty’s idea that Luke might be some sort of secret agent, part of a vast conspiracy that includes Dylan Thorpe and the pills. But the state of Luke’s life might offer up some helpful bits of evidence.
“Charley,” he says with a respectful nod, avoiding her stare.
“Luke,” she answers. “Place looks different.”
“You and Emily were friends?”
“She invited me to some of her parties. We weren’t besties or anything.”
“I see.”
“Believe it or not,” she adds, “I actually got invited places back then.”
She never believes people when they claim their angry words just slipped out. But in this instance, these angry words did, in fact, just slip out. But she managed to hold back the punch line, which would have been something along the lines of Despite your best efforts, you jerk.
“We didn’t have any parties,” he says, but he’s looking at her feet, and his flaring nostrils suggest embarrassment and nervousness.
“That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t talking about your family, I . . .”
“I know what you meant.”
A bird cries somewhere in the distance. A San Francisco–bound jetliner has begun its descent over the valley, and she’d rather stare at it for the remainder of the day than spend another awkward moment on this scraggly front lawn.
“So Marty says you didn’t have much time to see me. What, are you just passing through or something?” Luke finally asks.
“Something like that.”
“You got time for a beer?”
“I got time for a Diet Coke.”
“You always were big on Diet Coke.”
This feels like bait, and she’s not willing to take it. What’s he trying to do? Sell her on the idea that he was always sweet on her and his constant bullying was just his way of dealing with the fact that he liked her? Does anyone really believe that crap anymore? Even if it’s true, how’s she supposed to feel about it now? Grateful for the attention, no matter how negative it was? And if he was paying enough attention to her to know her favorite beverage, could he not see how much his constant insults hurt her?
Somewhere out there, she thinks, there must be a man who wasn’t raised to believe his every cough in a woman’s presence is somehow a gift to her.
If Marty hadn’t sent her here with a clear objective, she might be giving voice to these thoughts, but instead she’s chewing her bottom lip in an effort to keep her expression neutral.
“I don’t have any Diet Coke,” he says.
“OK.”
“I mean, I don’t drink it. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have run out and bought some.”
“I get it. We surprised you.”
“No, that’s fine. I mean, if you’re only in town for a short while, I’m glad you came by.”
“Let’s go inside, Luke.”
His cheeks are ablaze. The sight pleases her, for many reasons, some of them too complicated for her to sort through in this moment.
He gestures to the front door. She follows him into the house.
21
The inside of the house, like the yard, has a hollowed-out feeling that makes memories of those long-ago parties ring in her mind.
The place is mostly empty except for the den, which looks as if a bachelor pad apartment has been slid through the front door intact and then wedged into this one room. There’s a flat-screen TV resting on top of a chest of drawers that looks like it belongs in a dorm. The bookshelves on either side are too small. The hunter-green curtains don’t match the yellow walls, and she doesn’t see the color anywhere else in the house.
Across the entry hall, in the dining room, cardboard boxes are shoved neatly against one wall, three rows deep. There’s no real mess, but it’s clear most of Luke’s belongings are still inside and he just moves between them to retrieve his essentials. In one corner of the room there’s a mostly empty desk and a desktop computer; its wide-screen monitor pulses with a succession of high-definition images. Snowy mountains, sparkling lakes, the peaks of the Scottish Highlands.
When she turns and sees the new alarm panel on the wall behind her, she remembers her own back in Arizona, and the sting of betrayal threatens to distract her.
Luke’s surroundings don’t fit with either of the two scenarios she was on the lookout for: the eruptive mess of someone who’s hit a brick wall in life or the too immaculate, too orderly domicile of someone who hasn’t fully committed to their new home, maybe because they don’t plan to stay for very long.
What she sees is something in between the two: order and a lack of commitment and an awkward marriage of his grad school life and his new, uncertain one. But who is she to try to analyze this house and his stuff in this way? She’s not a detective, for Christ’s sake. This thought gives her a second or two of relief before she remembers that if she’s going to survive the mess she’s currently in, she better acquire the skills of a detective, and quick.
“You like Sprite?” he asks.
“Sure. As long as it’s diet.”
Luke nods and ducks into the kitchen. She doesn’t follow, but she’s got a good vantage point from where she’s standing. Almost nothing on the counters. No blender, no toaster. Just a coffee maker and a stack of mail. The butcher-block table’s too small, just like everything in the house is too small.
He didn’t plan to live here, she thinks. That’s all I can figure.
Luke returns with an open can of Sprite Zero and nothing for himself, which makes her feel awkward and like she shouldn’t take a sip. But he wasn’t out of her sight for more than a second, and would he really drug her with Marty outside? If he did, would she be as immune as she’d been to the vodka and wine she’d guzzled the night before? Or is that something that on
ly happens after Dylan’s wonder drug has been triggered? There’s still a part of her that wants to refer to the drug as Zypraxon, but she’d like to know if the name, like much of what Dylan told her, is complete bullshit.
“So what brought this on?” she asks, gesturing to the room around her.
“I needed a place to live. It’s cheap, believe it or not. Silver Shore was renting it out for some of their foremen on the resort project, but when that fell through, they broke their lease, and Emily was desperate to fill the place. Her dad’s been gone awhile.”
“No, I mean, asking to see me like this.”
“Marty didn’t tell you?”
“He said you were with the sheriff’s department now; that’s all,” she lies.
Luke nods.
This is not a secret agent, she realizes, or if he is, he’s super bad at it, because right now I could cut his discomfort with a knife. And he might thank me if I did.
Then she sees the stack of books on the shelf, the guides to criminal profiling and crime scene investigation. On top of them is a file folder, its thick stack of pages perilously close to sliding free, which suggests he shoved them in their current spot quickly. The top page sports a blaring headline. She can’t see the whole thing, but two of the words she can see make her stomach go cold—Mask Maker.
Tell me he’s not writing a book about serial killers, she thinks. Please, God, tell me he didn’t ask me here for some kind of interview.
“So is Altamira Sheriff’s consulting on the Mask Maker killings?”
“Oh, that. No. That’s just a little weekend reading.”
“Weekend reading?”
“Something to keep my head busy.”
“A little amateur detective work?”
“Yeah.” He stares at the floor. Swallows as if it’s painful. “I guess that’s what I am now. An amateur detective.” He says these last two words with such venom, she’s surprised he doesn’t finish them off by spitting on the floor. Whatever his reasons for getting rejected by the FBI, he’s not exactly repressing his feelings about them.
“Figure you’re here because Marty and I had some words yesterday,” Luke says.
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