“Or something did.” Clay hoped it was only Boyle.
Mo popped the liftgate and Clay leaned out to enter the gate code. The minivan sped uphill until the dark house, and the empty fountain in front, came into shadowy view. Clay crawled out and spat liberally into the flowerbed that Essie had never trimmed. “Want me to stick around?” Mo offered. The edge in his voice suggested it was a good idea.
“It’s over now.” Clay kept his faced turned, hoping Mo wouldn’t read the lie. Whatever was waiting inside the house, Clay wasn’t going to get anyone else hurt. His pulse beat double time in his head, but he felt no fear, only a sense of anticipation that whatever was going to happen, it would be over and done with by dawn. “Go and find your sister.”
“Better lock your gates anyway,” Mo warned.
Probably too late for that, Clay thought. He waited for Mo to pull out, but Savy’s brother lingered, his mind busy behind his bloodshot eyes. “The Generator. They’re not ever going to find who did it. You know that, right?”
“I just assume they’ll pin it on me. I was somewhere else at the time, but with no one to corroborate it.”
“You were with me. Weren’t you? We were playing cards out in Sun Valley Park and I was demolishing your rock-star ass. As usual.” Mo’s stare was unblinking. “And I’ll make sure I’m stone-sober when I tell them that.”
“Mo, don’t—”
“You said you owe me, dog. I’ll cash in by asking you to keep yourself alive. Keep making music. And if you… you ever see a way…” Mo winced. “…to get my sister out of what she did—you promise you’ll try.”
“I promise.”
Mo dropped the minivan in gear and spun around in the driveway. He met Clay’s eyes as he drove by the other way and Clay understood how little hope they both had of saving the woman they both loved. “I’ll do everything I can,” Clay said, but the van was already gone.
29
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
The house smelled of dead fire. The rooms were unlit, empty, his father still at the work (or who-knew-where), Essie out stalking the streets (or devil-knew-where). Clay locked and chained the front door and almost tripped over the guitar case waiting for him three paces into the foyer. The Rickenbacker. Boyle’s Rickenbacker. His Rickenbacker—back from the repair shop at long last. But who had accepted delivery? For now, Clay skirted the question and hurried to the familiar alarm panel. Every last zone was disabled. Even the gate cams had gone dark. For all Clay knew the whole property was teeming with boogiemen, hungry for a piece of his mortal (and exquisitely sore) flesh. Quickly he armed the perimeter, switched on the eyes over the gate and the sensors hidden on tree limbs and under birdbaths around the house.
Nothing set them off, at least not right away.
Over tonight, Clay’s mind insisted. But did it make sense or was that only the logic of a brain recently concussed? What if the plot was to wait him out instead? Let days, months, a year go by, and when Clay began to feel safe again, that was when the wild horses would come to drag him away. Could he live like that? Paranoid and jumping at shadows? As an endgame, leaving him alone would be a lot more vicious than coming for him.
And where was Boyle? Clay stepped onto the back porch, just beyond the reach of the first motion sensor. He started to call out, but his words fell mute.
He had not yet seen the remains of the Generator. The fire department had doused the flames, but left the scene as was. Burnt lumber and debris lay everywhere, piled and scattered. One black wall still stood, as if in defiance; parked against it was the half-melted remains of the Crossroads pinball machine, the Steve McQueen-esque protagonist leering out from the backglass.
Tears pricked his eyes. Most of the world knew the Generator as the site of an infamous tragedy, but for Clay it had been a sanctuary for a time, a place of salvation through music. Now it felt like a physical part of him had been destroyed.
“Roc? Where are you?” Clay’s voice didn’t carry, taxed as it was from the show and the beatdown. Still, why wasn’t Boyle chomping at the bit for a reunion? Especially when he’d last seen Clay running for his life?
The answer settled on him like a cold, wet blanket. Because someone else is here. Waiting for us to reunite.
So they could be dealt with together.
Yes—Clay could feel the eyes now.
His first glance was instinctually toward the swimming pool. The surface was smooth, unblemished, but there was another shape in the depths, eerily reminiscent of the one Karney had made squatting in the deep end. The perfect place to lie in wait, away from the sensors.
Clay crept to the pool switches and flicked them on, one after another. The water lit with its aqua-glow. The submerged shadow receded. There was nothing in the water but leaves and a liberal dusting of ash from the fire. Clay relaxed a little.
The alarm burst on, splitting the night in two.
Had Clay set it off himself?
No. The light near the orange trees popped on.
Was it Boyle? It had never been a problem in the confines of the Generator, but was his presence strong enough to trip the sensors? He remembered Deidre approaching him on the porch the night he’d impersonated Boyle, how tangibly real her presence had felt on the air.
Another sensor tripped and Clay caught sight of something running. Running flat out. No ghost. The body was visible for a second, gone the next. Whoever it was knew the weak spots in the yard, enough to manipulate them.
The sensor right beside the porch lit up, and in the grass there was the gathering thump of feet. Clay
