Half a mile later I answered. “Would that be a problem?”
“Not at all,” he said.
Leaving Ex had been difficult, not just because he’d insisted that he was well enough to come but also because part of me badly wanted him there. We’d gone through so much together that leaving him behind seemed like going to the fight unprepared. It wasn’t true, but it seemed that way.
In point of fact, the list of reasons to leave him behind was as long as my arm. The first one was he’d been shot in the foot a day before, and the rest of them didn’t matter. If things went pear-shaped at the motel where—according to my lawyer—a credit card associated with Jonathan Rhodes had been used to guarantee a room, I couldn’t have him bursting in on his bloody foot and trying to save me. It was a scenario that commanded the ugly place in the Venn diagram where ugly overlapped with plausible.
In the end, he’d agreed to stay with Ozzie if we promised to call him before we headed in and again when we came out. With his hair pulled back, he’d looked like some kind of very severe bird, and I’d seen in the way he held his shoulders and the lines at the sides of his mouth how much it cost him to let me go on alone. I knew how much it meant to him that he protect me, even when he couldn’t. Maybe especially when he couldn’t. Giving the concession of telling him when the parley, if there was a parley, started and ended was a small price. It gave him a sense of being in control when he wasn’t. Not that he’d be able to do anything if it went bad. For one thing, I’d taken the car, and he wouldn’t have been able to rent one before morning. And by morning it was all going to be over.
One way or the other.
The GPS informed me that my turnoff was coming up on the right, and my gut went tighter. It was too soon and it couldn’t happen soon enough. I put on the blinker, watched, and then drifted to the right, turning onto a thin road that was already slick with ice and snow. I slowed the SUV down to thirty and it still felt optimistic.
American Eagle Lodge and Motor Hotel sat half a mile off U.S. 77. Twelve units squatting in an L around a gravel driveway. Except for the lights in the office building and two of the rooms, it would have looked abandoned. It didn’t even have the neon Vacancy/No Vacancy sign that I’d assumed was a guild requirement for creepy old motels.
We were a little over two hours from Wichita, in the middle of nowhere. The land was flat and anyone coming off the highway would be visible from the office, at least, if not the rooms. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t come here to be subtle. I pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. The sudden silence was profound. I rubbed my palms together, but the anxiety lighting up my spine was the kind that came after you’ve already jumped off the high dive. Turning back wasn’t an option for me now. I was just wondering how big the splash was about to be.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket. There were still two bars. Pretty good, considering. I’d already programmed in the number for the hotel. Now I called. It rang four times. Five. Six. I started to wonder if the American Eagle looked on a post-midnight presence as a luxury when I saw a flicker of movement. In the distant office, someone was coming to the desk. From this distance I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but I saw them scoop up the phone, heard the click on the line.
“Hello?” the voice said. A man’s, and slurred with sleep or alcohol or both.
“You have a guest,” I said. “A young man traveling alone. I need to speak with him. It’s an emergency.”
“Miss, we get a lot of young men traveling alone one time and another. I don’t make a practice of waking them up.”
“This is the credit card number he gave you,” I said, and read off the account number, expiration date, and three-digit confirmation code. I went slowly enough that he had time to pull up his records, fast enough that he didn’t have space to interrupt me. “I don’t know which room he’s in, but I need to speak with him, and I need to do it now.”
“Are you with the police?” the man asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But you should put my call through.”
“I can take a message, miss, but it’s pretty late at night.”
I was tempted to make threats. Have him look out his window and turn on my headlights so he could see that I was right there. That even if he called the cops, I’d be there before help could arrive. I wanted to use the Black Sun’s power to scare him into doing what I wanted. Instead, I took a deep breath.
“Please,” I said.
The tiny sigh on the other side of the connection meant I’d won.
“If I get in trouble for this . . .”
“You won’t,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
I watched him make some small movement on his desk. My phone clicked, went quiet, clicked again, and the ringing started. I watched the rooms to see if a light went on, but nothing changed. The ringing stopped. He didn’t speak.
“Jonathan,” I said. “It’s Jayné. We need to talk.”
The sharp intake of his breath was weirdly gratifying. Some part of me liked being the scary one in the scenario, if only because it meant he thought I might be dangerous.
“How did you find me?”
“Bribes,” I said. “There are probably half a dozen people who are going to be a little more corrupt and a lot richer in the new year. Look, don’t freak out on me here.”
“What do you want from me?”
“To talk,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Okay. I’m here. So talk.”
“I think this is more of a face-to-face thing,” I said. He was silent. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead now. You know that, right?”
“You won’t break me,” he said, and I had the sick image of Rhodes downing a bottle of cyanide to avoid being captured by the enemy. That would be just great.
“I want to talk truce,” I said. “We got off on the wrong foot. Mistakes were made. I’m not looking for a higher body count, and I think you aren’t either.”
He was quiet again.
“You know it’s not in me,” I said. “I’m not the Graveyard Child.”
“All right,” he said, the syllables trembling a little. “Okay. I’ll meet with you. But I decide the time and the place.”
“Yeah, that’s not actually going to work for me. I was thinking more like right now.”
A moment later the curtains on the room at the far south end of the motel shifted. It wasn’t much. Just enough for someone to look out. I thumbed on the engine, lighting up the headlights, and then killed it again.
“Hi,” I said.
He laughed, and it wasn’t in victory. I’d heard the I’m-so-fucked laugh coming out of my own throat often enough to recognize it.
“I’m not seeing a lot of options,” he said.
“Make a break for your car and try for an extensive chase sequence,” I said. “Works in the movies.”
The lights went on in his room.
“Come in,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, and dropped the connection. I drove to the parking lot. I didn’t understand why the crunching of gravel against the tires sounded so loud until I realized I hadn’t turned the music back on. Chogyi Jake reached into the backseat and brought up his shotgun. Of all the ones we’d bought at the Walmart, his was the only one left. I put the SUV into park.
“If I don’t call or come out in five minutes,” I said, “or, you know, in the event of bloodcurdling screams . . .”
“I understand.”
I undid my seat belt. It hissed against me as it retracted. Even the smallest thing was grabbing my attention now. It was strange to watch myself being afraid without actually feeling it. I wondered if it was her influence or just where my head was. Or if there was a difference between the two.