The world had begun to spin around Arlen. He was holding his focus on Tolliver’s eyes, but outside of that center everything was in motion, a whirl of trees and sky and colors. This wasn’t like talking to Owen at all. It felt like being lost in a terrible fever.
“Is Wade with them?”
Not yet. But he’ll be riding close soon enough. He’ll see you before the end of your time, and then you’ll wish you’d not come this way.
A high, harsh hum was in Arlen’s ears now, coming in waves, like a pulse, and he squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. When he opened them again, the hum was louder and the world seemed draped with fog. He could see nothing beyond Tolliver’s face, could hear nothing but that hum, and…
Let him go.
It wasn’t Tolliver speaking. A familiar voice, but not Tolliver. Was it Owen Cady? No, it seemed to come from a time much longer ago than that. So familiar, though. So damn familiar. Whose voice was it? How could he-
Let him go.
forget a voice like that, so deep and strong and full of command? He knew its source, knew it well, but here in the fog and the hum everything was lost. If he could only remember the-
Let him go, son.
Isaac? No. It couldn’t be. How could a man so long dead reach and find Arlen now and tell him…
The instruction finally registered. He had to let Tolliver go. He dropped his hands from the sheriff’s head and fell back against the car with a gasp as a searing rod of pain drilled through his chest.
A bullet, he thought. I’ve just been shot.
But there was no bullet, and the pain passed. He closed his eyes and opened them again and drew in a deep breath, and now the world was steady except for a tingle on his hands where Tolliver’s blood stained his skin. He wiped them on his pants, looking down at the dead man and realizing what had nearly happened-Tolliver had been holding him here. Arlen had opened the contact, maybe, but Tolliver had nearly closed it, and that trancelike state that Arlen had entered with Owen could have turned deadly this time. He’d been unable to see anything around him, unable to hear, would have been utterly unable to defend himself if he hadn’t released the body and stepped back. The longer he’d held on to Tolliver, the longer he’d tried to keep that corridor open, the deeper he’d sunk into the trance. He might have stayed there in the road for a long time.
That was his father’s voice. He was damn near certain of it, and somehow it chilled him more than any of the others.
This was a dangerous game. Wasn’t as simple as talking. There was more to it than that, and what Tolliver had said had been the truth-the dead weren’t required to help him. The ability to reach them wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
He stood up now and stepped over the body with the rifle in his hands, scanned the road ahead and the woods and the creek, watching and listening and holding his finger tight against the trigger.
There was no one in sight, no sound that wasn’t natural. He stepped back to the front of the car and put his hand on the hood. The engine was still running, and it was running hot. Tolliver might have come a longer way than Arlen had initially suspected. It could be that the McGraths remained unaware of his presence here. Or it could be that the engine always idled hot, and Arlen’s time was running dangerously short already.
He went through the inside of the car quickly, searching for weapons. There were none except the pistol he’d already taken from the sheriff, but he did find two pairs of handcuffs. There was also a length of tow chain in the back, outfitted with a lock. Arlen hung the handcuffs off the other side of his belt, opposite the pistol, and then stepped back and looked down at the body, saw Tolliver’s big hands stretched open in the dirt and remembered the beating the sheriff had given him in the jail while Solomon Wade leaned against the bars and watched wordlessly.
He’ll be riding close soon enough, Tolliver had said. Wade was on his way.
Arlen thought about that and then turned and studied the trees that grew thick alongside the road on either side of the bridge. There was one limb that was low enough and stout enough for his purposes. He’d have to hurry, though. He reckoned if the McGraths had held Paul alive for this long, they’d continue to do so until Wade arrived, but he couldn’t afford to be caught on the road like this.
He backed the sheriff’s car off the bridge and pulled it far enough away that the road was clear for the convertible, which he drove over the bridge and parked behind the sheriff’s car before climbing out again. It took him only two tries to toss one end of the tow chain over the limb, and then he lowered it until both ends were on the road. It was just long enough. He took one set of handcuffs and wrapped them around Tolliver’s ankles, then fastened them together. Dragged the body over and fastened the chain to the cuffs, then pushed Tolliver’s body into the ditch and went back to the convertible and fastened the free end of the chain to the back bumper. When he climbed in this time, he drove very slowly, pulling forward inch by inch. The chain tightened and began to slide over the tree limb, and then Tolliver’s feet were tugged into the air. There was a short hitch as the chain hung up on something, and Arlen pushed harder on the gas pedal, driving the car into the weedy, rutted ditch. The chain slid free again, and Tolliver’s bulk was hoisted into the air.
He kept the car moving until the sheriff was dangling about four feet over the road, upside down, his body swinging just as Owen Cady’s had. Blood dripped off the corpse and found the muddy road below. It would be the first thing visible for a driver who rounded the bend.
“Come on down, Wade,” Arlen said softly as he got out of the convertible and went back to the sheriff’s car, positioning himself behind the wheel with the rifle across his lap. “Come on down.”
He cast one look in the rearview mirror before he drove on, saw the dark sky and the body swinging in the wind, and the smoke-thicker now, darker-in his own eyes.
He was close.
51
THE ROAD RAN DOWNHILL over the bridge, and the ground on either side grew marshy, black puddles lining the ditches and tangled mangrove roots visible farther out, where the creek curled around and followed the road. He went at least another mile without seeing a thing, and the distance reassured him-it was unlikely that the McGraths had heard anything of the gunfire at the bridge.
Finally the road hooked to the right and narrowed even more, and there he shut off the engine and got out of the car. He couldn’t see a house yet but felt he must be close. For a moment he knelt beside the car and listened and watched. The trees gave him nothing but wind rustle and birdcalls. Water lapped against the shore just through the woods, the creek riding high after the previous day’s downpour. The way the sky looked, another was due soon enough. He wished the rain would begin to fall; it would offer sound cover that he needed. So far, though, the clouds had just continued to build and darken without letting loose. There was occasional thunder, but it was well to the south.
He started forward on foot. It was awkward moving with a rifle in each hand and the pistol and handcuffs on his belt, but he’d rather have all the weapons if it came to that sort of firefight. Empty one Springfield, drop it and pick up the second, empty that and roll on to the pistol. If he ran that dry, too, he probably wouldn’t have much need to reload one way or another.
Here the road was so deeply wooded that it was almost dark. The trees pressed close on every side and the wind roused them to a constant rasping sound that unsettled him because the noise was so damn close. It was one of the things he didn’t like about this part of the country; the leaves were right at your side, not well overhead. A rustle in the leaves fifty feet above you was less disturbing than one ten inches to your left.