Deke Marlowe was fifty-four years old, had a gray beard down to his sternum, and had eaten Sunday pie at the Hollow Creek Diner for six years running β always apple, always heated, always with a slice of cheddar on the side the way his daddy had taught him. He was also, as Carol happened to know, a twenty-year member of the Iron Mesa Riders, and the kind of man who had once spent an entire afternoon helping Marisol change her tire in the rain without being asked.
Carol told him about booth nine. She told him fast and low, the way you talk when you're afraid of being overheard: the girl, the bruise, the three bites, the no-phone, the she'll have the cheeseburger, the look. She told him her hands were shaking.
"They still shaking?" Deke asked.
Carol looked down at her free hand. It was steady now. Steady as stone. "No."
"Then trust it," Deke said. "Your mama's eye never lied to me neither. You called 911?"
"Not yet. I don't have β Deke, it's all feeling. There's nothing I can point to."
"Feelings are data," Deke said. "My old lady says that. She's usually right and I'm usually in the doghouse for forgetting. Here's what we're gonna do. You call 911 right now and you tell them exactly what you told me. Then you go back to work like it's a normal Friday. I'm making some calls."
"Deke β"
"Carol." His voice dropped into something low and serious. "You did right calling me. Now let me do what I do. And Carol? Don't you go being a hero in there. You hear me? You wait. You watch. That's your job tonight."
He hung up before she could argue.
Carol stood at the register with the dead phone in her hand and the rain hammering the roof, and then she did the hardest thing she'd done all night: she dialed 911.
"Hollow Creek Diner, Route 89," she told the dispatcher, and gave her name, and described what she'd seen, and hated how thin it sounded out loud β a bruise, no phone, three bites of a cheeseburger. The dispatcher was professional and kind and said a unit would come by when one was available, and Carol understood the translation: we'll get there when we get there, and it won't be soon, not on a Friday night in the rain.
She hung up and went back to work like it was a normal Friday.
It was not a normal Friday. At nine-fifteen Vince stood up and went to the restroom β the hall past the kitchen, Carol noted, her heart hammering β and the moment he was out of sight, Carol was at booth nine with the coffee pot like she'd been shot from a bow.
"Honey," she said quietly, not looking at the girl, refilling Jesse's cup. "Are you okay? Blink twice for no."
The girl β Elena β didn't blink twice. She didn't blink at all. She stared at the tabletop with her hands folded, and Jesse stared at Carol with wide, terrified eyes, and his hand went to his left ear and stayed there.
"Please," Jesse whispered. "Please don't."
And Carol understood, in that instant, that Jesse was nineteen or twenty years old and in over his head and drowning, and that he was begging her not because he was protecting Vince but because he was afraid of him.
"Okay," Carol said softly. "Okay, honey. It's okay."
She walked away as Vince came back down the hall, and he looked at her, and she smiled the professional smile, and he sat down, and the night went on.
At nine-forty her cell phone buzzed in her apron pocket. A text from a number she didn't know: Parking lot in 10. Don't come out. Just watch the road. β D
Carol's breath caught. She looked at the windows. The rain was coming down harder now, if that was possible, a solid gray curtain beyond the glass. She couldn't see the road at all.
She went to the pie case and pretended to rearrange the slices, and watched the road through the rain-streaked glass, and at nine-fifty-one she saw the first headlight.
Then the second. Then the tenth. Then she stopped counting, because there were too many, a river of headlights pouring down Route 89 out of the black rain, and the sound came through the glass and the walls and the roof β a low rolling thunder that wasn't thunder, that went on and on and on, bike after bike after bike, and Carol put her hand over her mouth and felt the tears come hot and sudden.
Walt looked up from his crossword. "Well," he said mildly. "Would you look at that."
Vince Carrow looked up too. He went to the window. He stood there for a long moment, watching the headlights multiply in the rain, and Carol watched his hands.
They weren't still anymore.