Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(29)

He may be a high school dropout, and he’s had some minor run-ins with the cops, but he’s never going to get into the kind of trouble that will land him in a place like this, no matter what his mother thinks. No way, Jose.

“I need to drop this off for one of the corrections officers,” he tells the guard, who looks warily at him through the window.

“What is it?”

Robbie shrugs and holds out the bag. “It’s his lunch. He forgot it. His wife asked me to leave it for him. His name’s Chuck Nowak. See? His initials are right here on the bag.”

“You can’t just—”

“Please, sir,” Robbie cuts in, because the person who’s paying him to do this told him to be polite, “it’s just a sandwich and a bag of chips and an apple . . . See for yourself. It’s not going to blow up or anything.”

“But who—”

“Look, you can give it to him or not. No skin off my nose. I’ve got to get going.” Robbie sets the bag on the ledge beneath the guard’s window, turns around, and strides quickly to his waiting car.

His heart is racing. He half expects the guard to come running after him, or the bag to blow up, even, despite what he said.

Yeah, it’s a sandwich, chips, an apple, a drink. He made sure of that before he agreed to drive the damned thing up here. Still . . . you never know.

No one in his right mind pays a total stranger two hundred bucks to deliver a bag lunch—with explicit instructions for Robbie to keep his hood up and tied so tightly that his face is barely visible.

For that matter, no one in his right mind goes around wearing a woman’s clothing, a wig, and makeup.

But again, that’s no skin off Robbie’s nose. If Chuck Nowak the prison guard wants to pass off a freaking drag queen as his wife, that’s fine with Robbie. It’s all fine with Robbie, just as long as he gets paid.

He tears back down to the main road and drives a couple of miles to the secluded spot where he agreed to meet the so-called Mrs. Nowak.

The car is parked there, headlights off.

Robbie turns off his own headlights, but not the engine. Take the money and run—that’s the plan. He doesn’t feel like hanging around in the woods with a cross-dressing freak for one second longer than necessary.

He strides over to the driver’s side of the other car, expecting the door to open.

It doesn’t.

Maybe the freak fell asleep waiting.

Robbie reaches the car and raps on the window. “Hey,” he calls—then realizes that the driver’s seat is empty.

Maybe he . . . she . . . it got out to take a leak.

Maybe the whole thing is some kind of joke.

Maybe—

A twig snaps behind him.

Robbie whirls around to see the freak standing there.

But he never sees the blade that slices through the air and into his jugular vein, and he never hears the words, “Sorry, kid,” whispered into the darkness before the stranger drags him deep into the woods where he’ll never be found.

Frowning, Chuck hangs up—again—on Cora’s cell phone voice mail. The first time, five minutes ago, he left a message.

“Babe, what’s up with this lunch you left me? This is your bag. I had mine. Call me.”

The second time, maybe three minutes ago, his message was terse: “Cora. Call me when you get this.”

Between those two calls, and the one he just made, he called the home number, too. It went right into voice mail.

Is that because she drove out here to Fallsburg? If she had, she wouldn’t be back home yet.

But Paul down at the guardhouse assured him that it wasn’t Cora who dropped off the lunch bag. It was some kid who said she’d sent him.

None of this makes sense.

Chuck’s heart races as he again regards the blue insulated bag that bears his initials—and Cora’s. Sitting beside it on the break room table is the identical bag he’d grabbed when he left the house.

His hand shakes as he reaches inside to remove the contents. He and Paul went through the bag down at the guardhouse, too, just making sure it really does contain food.

Now, Chuck lays it all out on the table.

First, a bottle of Poland Spring sparkling water with lemon essence—there were three left in the six-pack in the fridge back home when he packed his lunch earlier. He took one. This, presumably, is one of the two that remained.

The next two items are also duplicated in the lunch he packed himself: a green Granny Smith apple—one a day keeps the doctor away; the fridge is full of them—and a snack bag of Snyder’s pretzels, which he buys in bulk at BJ’s; there were at least a dozen bags left in the cupboard.

Then there’s the hero sandwich.

His own sandwich is peanut butter and jelly made on Wonder bread, but this—this doesn’t sit well with him.

No, not at all.

He puts the sandwich on the table and dials Cora’s phone again with a forefinger shaking so badly he can barely guide it to the numbers.

This time, it rings only once before a brisk “Hello?”

“Cora!” he blurts, even though he knows in the split second he says it—even in the split second he heard the voice—that it isn’t her.

“Who?”

He jerks the phone away from his ear, looks at the screen, and sees that he dialed a wrong number. With a curse, he disconnects the call. Painstakingly, he redials.