Ghost Town Page 0,77

inside of the roof. "What's with the disco lights?" Michael said, rolling down the window between the driver's compartment and the back.

Eve turned around, and her face brightened. "You like it? I thought it looked really cool. I saw it in a movie, you know, in a limo."

"It's cool," Michael said, and smiled at her. She smiled back. "Can't wait to lie here and watch it with you."

Claire said, "You don't have to wait; it's working now. Look--Oh. Never mind." She blushed, feeling stupid that she hadn't gotten that one in the first second. Eve winked at her.

"Shouldn't you be calling Amelie and getting us some kind of parking permit?" Eve asked. Claire nodded, glad to be off the hook, and made the call. It rang to voice mail, and Claire left her a message. She was just hanging up when she spotted a parked police car out of the window.

Hannah Moses was standing alongside it. Just . . . standing. Looking around.

"Wait," Claire said, and leaned over to grab Shane's shoulder. "Stop. She can get us in; she's got permission to go to Founder's Square anytime she wants."

Shane pulled in behind Hannah's cruiser, and Claire got out to talk to her. She moved fast, because this wasn't a well-lit area, and everything seemed really dark tonight anyway. Even with the hearse's headlights shining, it felt shadowed.

"Hannah!" she said. "We need some help. Can you get us in to see Amelie?"

Hannah turned to look at her, and there was something odd in her body language. She seemed tense and ready to react. She kept her hand near the gun in her holster. "Who are you?" she asked. "Name."

"Oh, crap," Claire said. "You've got it, too."

"Name!" Hannah snapped. "Now!"

"Uh, okay, I'm Claire. Claire Danvers. You know me."

Hannah shook her head. "This is Morganville," she said. "I can't be in Morganville. I was in . . . I was in Kandahar. I was just there." She looked down at her police uniform and shook her head again. "I wasn't wearing this. I'm not a cop. I'm a marine. This can't be happening."

"Hannah, you're having a . . . a flashback, that's all. You're not a marine; you're not in Afghanistan. You're here, in Morganville. You're the chief of police, remember?"

Hannah just looked at her as if Claire were crazy.

"Look at what you're wearing," Claire said. "Police uniform. Why would somebody kidnap you, bring you here, and change your clothes? What sense does that make?"

"It doesn't," Hannah admitted. "None of this makes any sense. I need to call in." "Call in where?"

"To my commanding officer."

"Hannah, you're not in the marines now! You don't have a commanding officer!"

Hannah didn't seem to hear her this time. "They'll think I'm AWOL. I need to tell them what happened." Then she looked around again, and the look in her face was a little desperate. "Except I don't know what happened."

"I just told you! Flashback!"

"This isn't a combat flashback!"

"No, it's . . ." Lying, Claire figured, was now the only way to go. "You've been drugged. You have to believe me. You live here, in Morganville. You're the chief of police."

Hannah was shaking her head--not as if she didn't believe it, but as if she didn't want to believe it. "I'm not going back to Morganville. No way in hell am I signing up for that."

But you did, Claire started to say, then held it back. She didn't know why Hannah had changed her mind; maybe something had happened to her while she was in Afghanistan, or since she came back from there. But whatever it was, in Hannah's mind, it hadn't happened yet.

"I know this is hard," Claire said. "But we need your help. Really. All you have to do is call in permission for us to go into Founder's Square. Would you do that?"

"I don't know you people," Hannah said. "And you're driving around in a damn hearse. It doesn't exactly make me want to trust you. . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she blinked as the hearse's doors opened, and Michael and Eve got out. "You're . . . you're the Glass kid. The guitar player. I remember you. And--" Hannah did an absolute double take, the most surprised Claire had ever seen her. "Eve? What the hell did you do to yourself? Have your parents seen how you look?"

Claire exchanged a mute second of stares with her friends, and Eve finally said, "Ah, yeah, they've seen it. I've been dressing like this