would have needed water.
Disquieted but not yet alarmed, Rosa went room to room through the ground floor, calling his name. Her voice echoed off the walls with an eerie hollowness, as if all the furniture had been removed and the windows boarded up and the house abandoned to the merciless progress of time and decay.
As she climbed the stairs and reached the upper floor, Rosa was shouting urgently. “Kipp! Where are you, Kipp?”
Disquiet swelled into a terrible apprehension, a piercing fear that she’d already failed at fulfilling this greatest responsibility of her life. Chamber by chamber, through closets, along corridors, peering under this and behind that, upstairs twice from end to end, downstairs again, front to back, she searched but wasn’t rewarded by the sight, the sound, or any trace of him. Kipp was gone.
25
In the front passenger seat of the Range Rover, safety harness snugged around him, Kipp liked what he smelled of his rescuer.
Kindness, confidence, a hint of soap, the fresh minty scent of chewing gum, the fragrant juice of trodden wild grass on his shoe soles, and very little ear wax, among other things.
No aftershave, no coconut-scented hand sanitizer, no misfired urine anywhere on him.
As they pulled out of the campground toward the state route, the man said, “Thanks to my mom and dad, my name’s Brenaden. If they know what’s good for them, people call me Ben.”
In the campground office, he had told Frank the Hater to cancel the reservation for Hawkins. So he was Ben Hawkins.
“What do people call you?” Ben asked.
Kipp grinned at him.
“You’re the strong, silent type, huh?”
They turned northwest. That was good. The murmuring thoughts of the young boy on the Wire were coming from that direction.
“I’ll think of a name for you. I’m good at names.”
Kipp leaned forward in his harness to sniff the glove box. It contained some kind of cheese crackers.
“But we won’t rush the name thing. Names are important. In my line of work, I have to come up with a lot of memorable names.”
Kipp could smell peanut butter between the cheese crackers in the glove box.
“I write novels,” Ben said. “What line of work are you in?”
To convey certain emotions to Dorothy, Kipp had developed a few special noises. As an expression of amusement, he made a soft rapid panting sound: Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
“I used to be a Navy SEAL. When I signed up for that, I didn’t realize how many people would be shooting at me. So after like eight years, when I was still alive, I decided to change careers.”
Kipp looked away from the glove box, cocked his head, regarded his rescuer with interest.
“Now some book critics snipe at me, but they don’t kill anyone. Though there’s one I suspect has bodies buried in his basement.”
Nature was full of patterns, and life was full of coincidences, and Kipp believed that something like destiny was always at work.
Dorothy loved books.
Kipp got his love of stories from her.
Now here was a writer of stories.
Who was also a warrior. If destiny was real, the warrior part of Ben Hawkins was probably as important as the writer part.
Which meant maybe serious trouble was coming.
“It’s getting late to set up camp.”
On both sides of the highway, the woods filled with gloom.
Ben said, “We’ll find a motel. They might not take dogs, so you’ll have to use your invisibility cloak.”
Kipp issued a heh-heh-heh-heh-heh and squirmed partly free of the harness, so that he could lie on the seat, below window level.
After driving the better part of a minute in silence, and glancing repeatedly at his passenger, Ben said, “There’s something strange about you, Rin Tin Tin.”
Kipp grumbled rather than growled.
“You don’t like that name?”
Again Kipp grumbled.
“Okay, all right. We’ll find a better one, Scooby-Doo.”
Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
26
A meat loaf was finishing in one oven, and a potato-and-cheese casserole appeared nearly ready to come out of the other oven, and on the breakfast table, a platter of muffins glistened under lemon icing. In the refrigerator were a bowl of egg salad, chicken breasts in a marinade, cleaned cauliflower, peeled and sliced carrots.
Verna Brickit, the three-times-a-week housekeeper, who would be perfect casting if Hollywood ever remade the old Ma and Pa Kettle movies, washed dishes, while Megan dried them and put them away.
The two dishwashers were of the generation produced after the latest round of government regulations related to water and energy usage, and very little came out of them clean. The main purpose they served was to fill in what otherwise would have been