She frowned but didn’t respond to his harshness.
“You’re the boy’s guardian,” she said. “And you know that he won’t fare well in this place. I can tell that. You understand the danger and—”
“I told you to stop it,” he said. “You want to talk truth, lady, I’ll talk it with you, but I’m not inclined to sit here and listen to foolishness.”
“Of course not. You’ve tried long and hard to block the things you need to hear. At some point you’re going to have to listen.”
“What I will listen to is you explaining what happened to Walter Sorenson and what’s going on inside that…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t even get his mouth closed, just knelt there slack-jawed, staring into the dark of the sheriff’s car.
The glittering silver handcuffs were now resting on thin shafts of bone.
“What?” she said, and he raised his eyes, hoping to see those sculpted, full lips. A skull stared back at him.
No words came. The skull tilted and studied him, then said, in a soft and sad voice, “It’s happened now, hasn’t it? He’s told them. It’s done.”
Arlen couldn’t answer.
She said, “You can see it in me. You truly have gifts beyond measure.”
Finally, he spoke. Said, “Lady, you’ve got to get out of that car.”
The skull shook slowly back and forth. “No.”
“Yes. You have got to get out of that car and—”
“They’ll find me,” she said. “And it will end the same for me, only it will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won’t initiate such things.”
“Lady,” he said, “Gwen, you’ve got to understand something. They’re going to kill you.”
“They always were,” she said. “It just took some time to confirm it.”
He couldn’t bear to look at the skull anymore. He pulled out his matchbook and struck a match and leaned into the car, held it close to her. In the flickering light, flesh spread like butter over the bones and she was whole again. Whole except for the whirling pools of gray smoke where her eyes belonged.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving. We’re going to run. All three of us. I’ll get the boy up here and we’ll run.”
“You can’t run from them,” she said. “I hope you understand that. You’re going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.”
“Quiet,” he said. “We’re going now.” The match had burned down to his fingers, and he shook it out and reached for the door handle.
“No!” she said, and she took the handle in her bone fingers and pulled back against his efforts.
“Get out of the car!”
“Leave me,” she hissed.
“I won’t. Get out of the damn car.”
He got the door partially opened, but then, with surprising strength, she slammed it back. The sound of metal on metal rang out loud in the still night. She said, “Hide. Now.”
He did not argue this time. He knew that he could not. He dropped to the grass and rolled forward, toward the Plymouth, as the front door of the Cypress House banged open and footsteps slapped onto the porch and someone called for a lantern. It was still dark back by the cars, and Arlen wriggled forward until he was entirely beneath the Plymouth. He was there when Tolliver tramped past him, nothing showing but a pair of boots and the angled glow of a lantern.
“You were told not to move,” the sheriff was saying. “Not to make a sound. Think you’ll be able to take so much as a step, chained like that?”
She was chained to the car, Arlen realized. Maybe at the feet. She couldn’t have run if she wanted to.
“We’re about done, darling,” Tolliver said, his voice so rich with mocking menace that Arlen clenched his teeth together, willing down the urge to roll out from under the Plymouth and start swinging. There were more men inside. All of them probably armed.
“We’ll be on our way soon. We’ll be taking you home. But if you move again, make a sound again, I’ll put a bullet in your beautiful face. Understand?”
There was a long pause, and then Tolliver passed the Plymouth a second time. Arlen waited until he’d heard his boots on the porch and the sound of the door closing, and then he slid back out from under the car. He crept around to the sheriff’s car and stared in at her. The skull face regarded him.
“They’re going to need you,” the woman named Gwen said. “Paul and Rebecca. You can’t leave them here. They need you.”
There were loud voices inside again. She looked in that direction, then back to him, and said, “Go. You can’t be caught here. Go now.”