Rader didn’t answer.
Kerri said, ‘Oh, I get it.’
He glanced at her again, passing under a bridge. Darkness filling the car a few seconds. Above the road now, both sides, were thinly-spaced trees, and ahead was another sign pointing to Ohio.
‘I really do get it,’ she said. ‘If I wasn’t sorry, then you’d know exactly what to do with me. That seems very you, somehow.’
‘You don’t know me at all.’
Kerri smiled.
‘What?’ Rader said.
‘I’m getting under your skin.’
‘Go ahead, think that way.’ He kept driving.
‘Thanks for rescuing me,’ she said. ‘First you plunge me into danger, then you save me from it.’
‘I wanted something from you. It seemed worth the hassle.’
‘Who are you working for?’
Rader ignored it.
‘You’re up to something in there, and I just get the feeling...’
‘Leave it at that,’ he said.
She shrugged.
‘One more thing,’ Rader said. ‘And this isn’t the first time I’ve asked someone this today. Other than money, what’s your deal with Skylar?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Try me.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Try me.’
‘We’re hoping to get rich,’ she said.
‘It’s as simple as that?’
‘Simple as that.’
‘So he’s your mark.’
‘My what?’
Rader shook his head. ‘You thought you stood a chance?’
‘We’ve done it before.’
‘With a guy like that?’
‘That would be telling.’
‘You know what I think?’ Rader said. ‘I think you’re possibly the best of a bad bunch, and that’s not saying much. I think a man like Skylar would eat you alive.’
‘Think you could do any better?’
Rader’s eyes found her in the dark.
‘So, that’s what you’re doing,’ she said.
‘I didn’t say that. Anyone could do a better job.’
‘Thanks.’
He said nothing.
Kerri said, ‘You know where he lives?’
‘Skylar?’
‘Skylar. Correct,’ Kerri said. ‘You see, no one knows. They all think he lives at the hotel.’
‘And he doesn’t.’
‘You thought that too, didn’t you?’ She smiled at him, shaking her hair the way she did earlier in the bar.
‘So you know, for real?’
She nodded. ‘Sure, I do.’
‘Okay,’ Rader said, ‘where does he live?’
‘Just to be clear: you thought he lived on the hotel grounds, just like everybody else does?’ Kerri was still smiling.
Rader said, ‘I’ve been in town less than a day. How about you?’
‘A little longer. Too long.’
Rader drove under more trees, denser now, the sky hidden by overhanging boughs.
‘You want to tell me?’ he said.
‘Why would you care?’ Kerri said, and shook her hair again. ‘No, I’ll tell you. It might not do either of us any good, but I feel like talking. He lives not a million miles from where we are right now.’
Rader listened, but she didn’t say anything else. ‘Where, exactly?’ he said.
‘You actually drove straight past about three minutes ago. Everybody does. You have to know what you’re looking for.’
He drew in on a narrow stretch, a river flowing on the other side of a moss-covered wall. Beyond, the ground sloped up through the trees to meet the sky. Rader backed up, turning the Shelby around and driving under the branches. After a moment, he’d passed only a narrow trail climbing into the woods.
‘Keep going,’ she said.
A quarter mile later he passed another, almost identical trail, this one on level ground.
‘You just went straight past,’ she said.
‘He doesn’t access his house with that.’
‘I didn’t say he did, but it’s a quick way up to take a look at it,’ Kerri said, ‘if you’re interested.’
Rader pulled over on the roadside and they got out and began walking back. It had been a long time since he’d seen any traffic at all, and he could hear every sound they made in the windless night. Kerri, without shoes, got there first, ducking under low branches and stepping onto a dry, dusty trail that zigzagged for ten paces until it disappeared at a stream. Ahead the ground climbed steeply.
‘I’ll wait here,’ she said.
Rader stepped across the slow-moving water, and scrambled up a slope of grass and rocks and trees. Every step seemed to scent the air with something fungal or vegetal, rarely sweet. Toadstools were clustered by logs, and webs gleamed against the moonlight from branches. Sometimes he would hear a scampering sound to his left or right; he saw only shadows. Rader took several more thigh-aching steps, and then he was high above the stream on a treeless tract below dark-gray battlements.
Finding a large rock, he placed it on the point at which he’d gained the summit. Then he walked slowly forward as moonlight spilled down on a flat and stony surface, water passing somewhere just ahead. The battlements loomed tall and dark in the near distance, and stretched far to his right, tapering out of sight on the left. He stepped back a few paces, moving along the edge of the slope until he saw the pointed roof of a turret, its single window bathed silver in the moonlight.
Now he moved forward again, finding the river in the shadow of the battlements that towered ten feet away on the other side. Rader stood there on the edge of the silvery light that washed down across the stony surface behind him, and listened for any sound at all. He heard nothing, and moved along the bank until he reached a great wooden door that looked designed to admit carriages in another age. But there was no bridge, no track of any kind; this was America, and the castle most likely dated from the 1920s, when millionaire eccentrics from steel or coal were creating mock-European follies that some didn’t live to see.
Rader peered at the wall beside the frame and found an inscription carved in Gothic script: Castle Marquis. Then he turned back, along the river in the moonlight until he saw the rock he’d left at the head of the slope back down into the woods.
It took a few minutes to descend. Kerri was standing there waiting for him.
‘Now you believe me,’ she said. ‘I gave you something back, at least. Something useless maybe, but still something. Does that make us even?’
‘You’re getting there.’
They walked back through the trail to the road.
‘My feet hurt,’ she said. ‘I need a bath. I smell of the woods.’
The Shelby was just ahead now.
Rader stepped in first, waiting for her. He was thinking about the case, and got back out whilst Kerri opened up and curled against the seat. Rader walked a few paces and called Jill again.
‘You’re safe?’ Jill said. ‘How did things get bad so fast up there?’
‘A lot of people trying to get rich.’
‘Do you still want the case?’
‘For another day, or two,’ Rader said. ‘That’s as far ahead as I’ll give it.’