The Sun Down Motel(27)

And yet.

We pulled into the parking lot of an all-night Denny’s. I had no idea what direction we’d driven or how long we’d traveled. It felt like minutes and hours at the same time. “Wait here,” Nick said, and got out.

I watched him walk toward the restaurant. My hands were shaking, my back cold with half-dried sweat. He moved with an ease that made my stomach swirl and made me tense at the same time. You don’t know this man, my hopped-up instincts told me. The last time you saw him, he had a gun. His father is a murderer. You’re alone in his car in the middle of the night. I’d left my messenger bag at the motel, with my cell phone and the Mace Heather had given me. I put my hand on the passenger door handle, pressing it experimentally. Of course it gave. I wasn’t locked in. There was no such thing as locking someone in your truck.

Then again, there was no such thing as little boys who vanished or the woman in 216.

I gulped breaths in the quiet of the truck, trying not to let panic overtake me. I could get out, go ask for help in the restaurant. But what kind of help did I want? The police? Did I just want to get out of here? To go home?

Where was home? In that moment, I couldn’t even picture Illinois. I had no idea what it looked like. The only thing I could picture was my apartment with Heather and the Sun Down Motel. Should I call Heather? Would it panic her if I did?

The driver’s door cracked open and I jumped. I hadn’t even seen Nick come back. He swung into the truck, but he didn’t touch the ignition. Instead he handed me a take-out cup and kept one for himself.

I inhaled. It was hot chocolate. I peeked through the gap in the lid and saw there was whipped cream on the top of the drink. I stared for a second, so surprised I didn’t even sip it.

“I didn’t know if you liked coffee,” Nick said. I turned to see him watching me stare at my drink. “I forgot to ask. I figured chocolate was a safe bet.”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice rusty.

He looked at me for another long minute. The harsh light from the restaurant was dimmed by distance and the shadows of the truck’s cab. It made his face look half lit, half sliced with darkness. It was hard to figure out how old he was in this light, even though I knew his age from the newspaper stories—he was twenty-nine. He looked handsome and jaded and a little bit crazy. I probably looked crazy myself, and I’d bet the light glinting off my glasses wasn’t very flattering.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice harsh.

I blinked, surprised. I realized I’d never told him. Well, if he was a serial-killer-slash-date-rapist who specialized in women who had just seen ghosts, it was too late now. I’d just throw my hot drink at him and run. “Carly,” I said, sipping my chocolate. It was heavenly, the whipped cream melting into the hot drink and making it teeth-achingly sweet.

“Carly,” Nick said, “tell me you just saw what I saw.”

“I saw it,” I said. “I saw that little boy. And I saw that . . . woman.” She was a woman, yet she wasn’t. She was something else.

“Jesus.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and I heard the rasp of his beard. He was wearing a dark blue plaid flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and once again no jacket. I realized he must have run straight out of his room when the commotion started.

“You’ve been staying at the motel for weeks,” I said. “Has anything like that happened before?”

“No.” He dropped his hand, stared ahead out the windshield. “There are noises. Always noises, even when the place is empty. There are strange smells, and the door thing. You saw what the doors do. That happens a lot. The lights go on and off. And one night, that woman was on my bed. Sitting on the foot of the bed. I woke up and she was just there, looking at me. The bed didn’t sag or anything—she had no weight. She was there, and then I blinked and she was gone. I could smell her perfume, and something bad. Coppery, like blood. That was about two weeks ago.”

My heart was thumping again just listening. I couldn’t imagine being so close to that woman, so close to whatever she was. “And you stayed?” I asked him, incredulous. “After you saw that, you still stayed?”

“I know. But I have my reasons.”

“Your reasons are crazy, whatever they are,” I said.

But he shook his head. “They’re not.” His voice had the slightest ragged edge to it—you could only hear it if you were listening closely. Whatever his reasons were, he believed in them. “You shouldn’t talk about crazy,” he said. “You know damn well we’re going back there as soon as we finish this drink.”

I opened my mouth, the words ready to go. No way. I’m never going back there again. Forget about my wallet and all my stuff, and forget about the job. Forget about Viv. No freaking way.

But I didn’t say any of it, because he was right. Whatever had gone on at the Sun Down, we’d run away in the middle of it. And damn it, I wanted to know how it had ended.

I wanted to know what the Sun Down looked like right now. Were the ghosts gone?

I tilted my cup and swallowed down some hot chocolate. The whipped cream was like soft, sweet comfort in my throat. I couldn’t reconcile the man next to me with whipped cream. I wiped my mouth and said, “I Googled you.”

He didn’t speak, but I felt him tense in the air between us.