Lisa lingered in an aisle stocked with canned vegetables, and she cast a discreet eye at the man at the ATM. He was medium height and strongly built, probably in his thirties. He had pale skin that was almost ivory white and wore his blazing red hair cut very short, with matching stubble on his chin and upper lip. Tiny circular sunglasses with auburn lenses hid his eyes. She could see an array of odd scars on his forearms, like cuts made by a razor blade. Despite the chill of the day, he wore jeans and nothing but a tight-fitting white T-shirt.
He never looked over at her. Not once. And yet his presence enveloped her like a cloud of menace.
Lisa rushed to gather up what she needed. She chose a couple of prepackaged sandwiches from the refrigerated deli area and a bag of spicy chips and two cans of Coke. Balancing all of it in her hands, she ducked back to the end of the aisle again for another quick glance. The man at the ATM was gone. She checked the next aisle, and the next aisle after that, but she didn’t see him anywhere. He’d disappeared, but she hadn’t heard the jingle of the market door.
Where was he?
Out of instinct, as the hair on the back of her neck stood up, Lisa spun around. There he was, not even six feet away, staring at her from behind his sunglasses. As soon as he saw her turn, he switched his gaze to the shelves, focusing on diapers and baby formula. But he didn’t strike her as a man with a baby. No, he was watching her, and now he knew that she was watching him, too.
Lisa brought her items to the cash register. The people who had been there when she came into the store hadn’t moved, and their conversation died away again as they saw her. They cleared a path for her to check out, and as the cashier scanned her items, she glanced over her shoulder to see if the man in the auburn sunglasses was following her. She didn’t see him, but she knew he hadn’t left the store. She paid in cash and waited impatiently as the bearded cashier bagged what she’d purchased.
“Here you are, Ms. Power,” he said. And then, as he watched her look toward the back of the store for the tenth time, he asked, “I don’t mean to pry, but is everything okay?”
“What? Oh, yes.”
“Are you sure? I mean, we heard that—”
“Everything’s fine!” she said lightly, interrupting him, because she didn’t want any mention of Purdue with the ginger-haired man hovering within earshot. “It’s just one of those days where I feel like I’ve forgotten something. I don’t want to have to make another trip back here later. Anyway, this is a very nice store. I’m sorry I haven’t been in here more before now.”
“Well, we’d love to see you anytime.”
“Thank you!”
Lisa bunched the plastic bag in her fist, smiled pleasantly at the other customers, and pushed through the door with another clang of the bell. She ducked her head into her chest and walked quickly down the sidewalk toward her pickup. She was almost at the truck when she heard the bell jingling again, but she didn’t look behind her. She knew who it was. She knew it was him. She practically ran for her door, climbed inside, and fumbled with the key to start the engine.
Next to her, Purdue began to get up, but she hissed at him. “No, not yet, stay down, stay down!”
She swung the wheel and pulled away from the curb. As she did, she stole a glance into the truck’s rearview mirror. She could see the ginger man in front of the market door, following her truck as she drove away. He had something in his hand. A phone. She didn’t want to seem in a hurry, but as soon as the road curved and the market disappeared from sight, she accelerated hard. At the next intersection, she made a sharp right turn.
“What’s going on?” Purdue asked from the floor of the truck.
“Stay down; I’ll tell you in a minute.”
She turned into the first driveway on the cross street and steered the truck behind a green farmhouse, where it was invisible from the road. She got out of the truck and ran back to the corner of the house, giving her a view toward the road through a band of trees. She didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later, a white Malibu sped into view. It slowed at the intersection, and from where she was, she was able to recognize the man with the auburn sunglasses at the wheel. He paused, studying the cross street, and she ducked out of sight until she heard his engine gun. When she looked back, she saw the sedan disappearing eastward at high speed.
Lisa jogged back to the pickup. She headed the other way in the truck, back toward the main north-south highway.
“Okay, come on up,” she told Purdue.
The boy clambered into the seat again. “What happened? Why did I have to hide?”
“There was a man in the market. I didn’t want him to see you, and I was worried that he might be following me.”
“Was he?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. If he was, hopefully I lost him.” She stared across the truck at Purdue. “If I describe him to you, can you tell me if he sounds familiar to you? Like you know him from somewhere?”
“Okay.”
“A muscular man, not too tall. Very pale skin, short red hair, red beard. Scars on his forearms.”
Purdue said nothing, but the color vanished from his face.
“Purdue?” Lisa asked urgently. “Are you okay?”
“He was one of the men. He was there.”
“You know him? Who is he?”
“The other men called him Liam. He looked just like you said.”
“There were other men? What do you remember about them?”
The boy’s brow furrowed as he tried to puzzle it out. “There were four of them. Two policemen. They had uniforms and badges. And an old man. He was the boss. But the man with the red hair was there, too.”
“Where?” Lisa asked. “Where did this happen? Where were you?”
“By the water,” Purdue replied. “I remember we were all by the water. That’s where they killed the man.”
12
Lisa leaned over the bridge railing above the torrent surging through the Lake Bronson Dam. The current erupted into white foam as it squeezed into the narrow channel of the river. The noise was as loud as thunder. She held Purdue’s hand and watched his face, which looked awestruck at the tumbling water. That was the strange balance of being a child. One minute you could be remembering something terrible, and the next you could be staring at a river without a care in the world.
They wandered to the south end of the bridge. The reservoir on the other side of the dam was calm and gray. The cold rain from the clouds had begun hardening into sleet. Her pickup was parked not far away in one of the campgrounds of the state park.
“What do we do now?” Purdue asked as they crossed the road.
“We’ll hang out here until Will calls me back,” Lisa replied. “Depending on what he says, we can decide what to do next.”
“Are you scared?”
“Scared? No, why should I be scared when I’ve got a big strong man like you to protect me?”
Purdue giggled.
She led him past an empty fishing dock that jutted into the quiet water, and then they followed a path into the trees, which were a palette of reds and yellows. The rain was lighter in the woods, but the shadows around them made the afternoon in the park feel like night.