Rory rattled off the address and Lake said that it would take her at least an hour to get there. She told Rory to lock all the doors and windows and to call her on her cell if she had any problem. And if she felt in danger to call 911.
By five forty-five the bus still hadn’t arrived. Lake was torn about what to do. If she split now, Will would be upset, and yet she was anxious to get to Rory’s. Finally, at six, just as she was firing up the engine of the car, an old yellow school bus waddled into the parking lot. Will was one of the first to trip down the steps, and after scanning the parking lot for his mother’s car, he bounded toward it and climbed in. A counselor waited outside.
Will’s silky blond hair was still damp and his cheek bore the crease from a nap on the bus. He seemed more than happy to see her, and also hyper, on a sugar high from the junk food he’d probably consumed at the water park.
“I went on the log ride five times, Mom. My clothes were soakin’.”
“It was fun, huh?”
“Yeah, awesome.”
“And what about tonight? What’s planned for later?”
“We’re having pizza. They ordered like a hundred pies.”
“Excellent.”
“Yeah, we were supposed to have a cookout but it’s gonna rain. There’s gonna be this big thunderstorm.”
As he glanced out of the car window, clearly wondering what he was missing up the hill, Lake stole a nervous look at her watch.
“Why don’t I let you catch up with your friends now?” she said. “I just wanted to be sure to say hi.”
“Okay, bye, Mom.” He offered her a tight hug and flashed his crooked grin. “Tell Smokey I said hi.”
She’d been on the road just ten minutes when the rain started, big fat drops that pelted the roof of the car and seemed to explode on the windshield. She needed to call Rory with an update but she didn’t dare take a hand off the wheel. At the first chance she pulled off the road and into the parking lot of one of the caboose restaurants Jack had loved to mock. It was growing dark, and through the streams of rain the blue and white lights from the restaurant sign undulated eerily. This was one of the times of year she’d never loved being up here—when the days grew shorter and there was an utter forlornness in the air.
Rory picked up on the first ring. There had been no more hang-ups, she said, but with night coming, she was feeling more and more scared. Lake explained how far behind schedule she was.
As she pulled onto the road again, barely able to see, a sense of dread began to build in her. What if someone had seen Rory take the files? What if Levin—or whoever—decided to dispatch the man with the knife to retrieve them? Lost in her thoughts, Lake jumped in her seat when a clap of thunder rocked the car.
The rain was coming down in torrents now and at times she had to plunge the car through huge pools of water that had formed on the blacktop of the two-lane road. Things were better on the interstate, and yet more than a few cars had pulled onto the shoulder to wait out the storm. Lake kept going, feeling she had no choice. As it was, she wouldn’t reach Rory’s until after eight.
Three-quarters of the way there, the rain stopped as quickly as it had started. She picked up the pace and the GPS recalculated her arrival time. When she was just fifteen minutes away, she peered through the windshield, surprised at what she saw. Rather than the suburban sprawl she’d expected, she was in horse country. The roads were lined with split-rail fences, and occasionally through the dark she caught sight of a huge house set back from the road and lit up like a cruise ship. She remembered that Rory had said she lived in an old gatehouse.
As soon as she pulled into the driveway she understood why Rory felt so afraid. The house was down a long driveway and there wasn’t another house in view—not even the main estate house that the gatehouse must have once been a part of.
After turning the car off, Lake twisted her body and surveyed the area. Rory’s gatehouse, she saw, was two stories and made of stone. The first floor