This voice was nothing like Owen’s had been. Recognizable as Tolliver’s, yes, but changed, gone dark and twisted. As Arlen held the dead sheriff’s head in his hands, the man’s flesh drained of color, went white as sand under moonlight, as if every ounce of blood had been pulled away. Arlen felt a shiver ride through him and nearly dropped Tolliver and stepped back. He held his position, though, swallowed, and said, “I didn’t ask about crossing the bridge. I asked how many they are.”
Don’t understand this game, do you? Tolliver’s ghost whispered. We ain’t all here to help you, friend. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help.
Arlen didn’t say anything. Tolliver’s blood was running with the slope of his torso, dripping down his throat in warm rivulets and caressing the sides of Arlen’s hands.
You’re a good shot, Tolliver said. Tate’s better.
“We’re about to find out,” Arlen said.
Hell, yes, you will. That man’s as natural a killer as I’ve ever seen. More natural than a rattlesnake, more natural than a shark. You ain’t never seen his like. And there isn’t a life that old boy values but his sons. You? You’re partnered up with them that killed one of his sons. I’d call that a death warrant.
The world had begun to spin around Arlen. He was holding his focus on Tolliver’s eyes, but outside of that center everything was in motion, a whirl of trees and sky and colors. This wasn’t like talking to Owen at all. It felt like being lost in a terrible fever.
“Is Wade with them?”
Not yet. But he’ll be riding close soon enough. He’ll see you before the end of your time, and then you’ll wish you’d not come this way.
A high, harsh hum was in Arlen’s ears now, coming in waves, like a pulse, and he squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. When he opened them again, the hum was louder and the world seemed draped with fog. He could see nothing beyond Tolliver’s face, could hear nothing but that hum, and…
Let him go.
It wasn’t Tolliver speaking. A familiar voice, but not Tolliver. Was it Owen Cady? No, it seemed to come from a time much longer ago than that. So familiar, though. So damn familiar. Whose voice was it? How could he—
Let him go.
forget a voice like that, so deep and strong and full of command? He knew its source, knew it well, but here in the fog and the hum everything was lost. If he could only remember the—
Let him go, son.
Isaac? No. It couldn’t be. How could a man so long dead reach and find Arlen now and tell him…
The instruction finally registered. He had to let Tolliver go. He dropped his hands from the sheriff’s head and fell back against the car with a gasp as a searing rod of pain drilled through his chest.
A bullet, he thought. I’ve just been shot.
But there was no bullet, and the pain passed. He closed his eyes and opened them again and drew in a deep breath, and now the world was steady except for a tingle on his hands where Tolliver’s blood stained his skin. He wiped them on his pants, looking down at the dead man and realizing what had nearly happened—Tolliver had been holding him here. Arlen had opened the contact, maybe, but Tolliver had nearly closed it, and that trancelike state that Arlen had entered with Owen could have turned deadly this time. He’d been unable to see anything around him, unable to hear, would have been utterly unable to defend himself if he hadn’t released the body and stepped back. The longer he’d held on to Tolliver, the longer he’d tried to keep that corridor open, the deeper he’d sunk into the trance. He might have stayed there in the road for a long time.
That was his father’s voice. He was damn near certain of it, and somehow it chilled him more than any of the others.
This was a dangerous game. Wasn’t as simple as talking. There was more to it than that, and what Tolliver had said had been the truth—the dead weren’t required to help him. The ability to reach them wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
He stood up now and stepped over the body with the rifle in his hands, scanned the road ahead and the woods and the creek, watching and listening and holding his finger tight against the trigger.
There was no one in sight, no sound that wasn’t natural. He stepped back to the front of the car and put his hand on the hood. The engine was still running, and it was running hot. Tolliver might have come a longer way than Arlen had initially suspected. It could be that the McGraths remained unaware of his presence here. Or it could be that the engine always idled hot, and Arlen’s time was running dangerously short already.
He went through the inside of the car quickly, searching for weapons. There were none except the pistol he’d already taken from the sheriff, but he did find two pairs of handcuffs. There was also a length of tow chain in the back, outfitted with a lock. Arlen hung the handcuffs off the other side of his belt, opposite the pistol, and then stepped back and looked down at the body, saw Tolliver’s big hands stretched open in the dirt and remembered the beating the sheriff had given him in the jail while Solomon Wade leaned against the bars and watched wordlessly.