Even though the car was still running, there was no answer. She felt the back of her neck prickle, like someone had rested their cold hand there, but she told herself that it was just the wind.
She knocked again.
Mr. Bad Guy, can you come out and play?
She would like nothing more than if some cranky, obviously sleep-deprived driver rolled down the window and chewed her out for waking them up.
A nun or a Buddhist monk might be nice and reassuring.
Anything would have been better than what she was getting, which was still...
Nothing.
She peeled off the padded glove on her right hand, wanting no barrier between her finger and the trigger, just in case. She didn’t know that this would come down to a shootout, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Better safe than sorry.
She knocked a third time, harder and with her bare hand, and finally the dark window rolled down just an inch or so.
That was fine. Nobody was eager to talk to someone with a gun. She just needed to verify that everything here was kosher and that their presence at the gas station had nothing to do with Cooper Dawes.
She tried to channel the pleasant, peaceful voice of the gas station cashier. “Hi. Sorry to bother you folks, but I’m—”
“What?” said a muffled voice from inside the darkness.
Her sense of unease mounted. “I’m a United States Marshal transporting a prisoner. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to ask you a few—”
The window rolled down the rest of the way.
Somehow, her sense of the inside of the car remained the same: dark. Blocked. She couldn’t get a clear fix on what the driver or his passenger looked like, only that they were there. She could see them clearly, she knew she could, but their faces seemed to slide out of her memory the second she looked away.
“There’s no problem, Deputy.” It was the same voice as before: polished, smooth, and slippery as silk. It was like it was wriggling through her ear and into her brain. Gretchen could feel her muscles relax.
But this wasn’t right, this wasn’t right at all—
“You should really just go back to your car. Everything’s fine.”
Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, Gretchen thought.
But her thoughts were melting—all her worries were dissolving away.
Fight it. That was the small voice in her head, the one she had spent her whole life ignoring. Right now it was even smaller than usual, like the stranger’s voice was tightening around it like a boa constrictor and strangling the life out of it.
Fight it. This isn’t right, and you know it. You KNOW it.
“I just want to ask you a few questions.” She was surprised to hear something steely and strong in her voice. “Would you mind telling me—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the stranger said impatiently.
He took off his sunglasses.
She still had trouble noticing the details of the rest of his face, but she had no problem seeing his eyes.
They were bright amber, and the pupils were narrow black slits.
All the light in the world seemed to disappear into the shadows at the center of his eyes. Gretchen felt like she was being pulled into them, and it was a horrifying, sickening sensation, like someone was dragging her off the edge of a cliff. All her questions dried up in her mouth.
It was like anesthesia putting her under.
Into that drugged darkness came the scalpel of his voice, slicing into her: