The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,77

the only route was around the perimeter, following the fence back to the main entrance. They were moving through unmown grass, still wet from the storm, soaking their shoes and pants. They reemerged back near the food stands and the picnic table where they had eaten. From there, Wolgast could see the exit, just a hundred feet away. His heart was thumping in his chest. He paused to quickly scan the scene; Doyle was nowhere.

“Straight out the exit,” he told Amy. “Don’t even look up.”

“Yo, chief!”

Wolgast froze. Doyle came jogging up behind them, pointing at his watch. “I thought we said an hour, boss.”

Wolgast looked at him, his bland midwestern face. “Thought we’d lost you,” he said. “We were just coming to look for you.”

Doyle glanced quickly over his shoulder toward the beer tent. “Well, you know,” he said. “Got caught up in a little conversation.” He smiled, a little guiltily. “Nice folks around here. Real talkers.” He gestured at Wolgast’s water-stained slacks. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

For a moment, Wolgast said nothing. “Puddles.” He did his best not to look away, to hold Doyle in his gaze. “The rain.” There was one other chance, maybe, if he could somehow distract Doyle on the way to the Tahoe. But Doyle was younger and stronger, and Wolgast had left his weapon back in the car.

“The rain,” Doyle repeated. He nodded, and Wolgast saw it in the younger man’s face: he knew. He’d known all along. The beer tent was a test, a trap. He and Amy had never been out of sight, not for a second. “I see. Well, we have a job to do. Right, chief?”

“Phil—”

“Don’t.” His voice was quiet—not menacing, merely stating the facts. “Don’t even say the words. We’re partners, Brad. It’s time to go.”

All Wolgast’s hopefulness collapsed inside him. Amy’s hand was still in his; he couldn’t bear even to look at her. I’m sorry, he thought, sending her this message through his hand. I’m sorry. And together, Doyle following five paces behind them, they moved through the exit toward the parking lot.

Neither of them noticed the man—the off-duty Oklahoma state trooper who, two hours before, had seen the wire report on a girl kidnapped by two Caucasian males at the Memphis Zoo, before clocking out and heading off to the high school to meet his wife and watch his kids ride the bumper cars—following them with his eyes.

NINE

I was called … Fanning.

All that day the words sat on his lips: when he awoke at eight, as he bathed and dressed and ate his breakfast and sat on the bed in his room, flipping through the channels and smoking Parliaments, waiting for the night to come. All day long, this was what he heard:

Fanning. I was called Fanning.

The words meant nothing to Grey. The name wasn’t one he knew. He’d never met anybody named Fanning, or anything like Fanning, not that he could remember. Yet somehow, while he’d slept, the name had taken up residence in his head, as if he’d gone to sleep listening to a song played over and over, the lyrics digging a rut into his brain like a plow, and now part of his mind was still in that rut and couldn’t get out. Fanning? What the hell? It made him think of the prison shrink, Dr. Wilder, and the way he’d led Grey down into a state deeper than sleep, the room he called forgiveness, with the slow tap-tap-tap of his pen on the table, the sound snaking inside him. Now Grey couldn’t pick up the channel changer or scratch his head or light a smoke without hearing the words, their syncopating rhythm building a backbeat to every little thing he did.

I(flick) … was(light) … called(draw) … Fanning(exhale).

He sat and smoked and waited and smoked some more. What the hell was wrong with him? He felt different, and the change was no good. Antsy, out of sync with himself. Usually he could just sit still and do virtually nothing while he let the hours pass—he’d learned to do that well enough in Beeville, letting whole days slip by in a kind of thoughtless trance—but not today. Today he was jumpy as a bug in a pan. He tried to watch TV, but the words and the images didn’t even seem related to each other. Outside, beyond the windows of the barracks, the afternoon sky looked like old plastic, a washed-out gray. Gray like Grey. A perfect day to snooze away