She responded to me more powerfully than any woman ever had before, but I could not stop thinking about those dead children, about the flames, about the pale, gray worms, and that she knew all about it. It made me furious and sick at the same moment that we were grasping at life.
When my own release finally came, my mind was full of images of murder, and there was no pleasure in it at all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke up without realizing I’d fallen asleep. The gray sunlight was shining on my face, and the bed jostled slightly.
Cynthia was sitting on the other side of the bed with her back to me. She was wrapped in the top sheet. I could see the iron gate on her back. The thing that had made me sick with anger last night now seemed like another unfortunate fact of life in Hammer Bay. Who was I to judge Cynthia? Or anyone? I was not exactly pure myself.
I reached out to her and touched her shoulder. She let me, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t seem angry or resentful. She simply didn’t react. I took my hand away.
“Last night was powerful,” she said in a low voice. “It was wild and strange and very powerful, but I don’t think I’m going to want to do that again. Not ever. It was good. It was great, in fact, but it scared me, too. I don’t want to visit that place again.”
“I understand,” I told her.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
She turned toward me. The look on her face made me ashamed. I wished I could start over again, more gently this time, but her expression said it all. Never again. “I’m sure.”
“Do you want some coffee?”
I nodded. She stood and dropped the sheet. I watched her put on pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I couldn’t help imagining her on the floor, screaming, as black steam jetted from the iron gate on her back. She told me that she would wait for me downstairs and left.
Alone, I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t see or hear anything. I looked inside myself and didn’t recognize what I saw.
I stood and dressed in the clothes I’d tossed onto the floor. My shirt still smelled of gunpowder, and there was a powder-burned hole in the center.
I followed the smell of coffee downstairs. Cynthia stood by the bubbling coffee machine with her phone to her ear. The clock on the wall said it was just after 11 A.M.
She hung up the phone. “You were right,” she said. “Phyllis left me a message asking if I was all right and saying she was sorry her people were so stupid. She offered to pay for any damages.”
“I thought as much.”
“What about you? Is she going to come after you? I could call her and tell her to leave you alone.”
“Thanks, but it’s better if you don’t get mixed up in that any more than you already have.”
“God, I nearly got shot last night. It doesn’t seem real.”
“It will when your next car-insurance bill comes.”
She laughed. I was glad to hear it. We stood beside the counter, about three feet from each other. We didn’t touch.
“How do you like your coffee?” she asked.
“I’ll have it however you’re having it. I don’t care.”
“Soy sauce and horseradish, coming up.”
This time we both laughed. She set our cups on the table, and we sat. I took a sip. It was very dark and very sweet. I liked it.
“So,” she said to me. “You never did tell me why you met with Able Katz.”
“Tell me about the seizures,” I said. “Have you ever had them?”
The remnants of her smile faded away. She stirred her coffee. “Is it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Am I supposed to give you dirt on my family? On my own brother?”
“I think you misread me.”
“It’s just a toy company, for Christ’s sake-“
“I don’t give a damn about the toy company. I don’t care about that.”
“You don’t care about a multimillion-dollar contract for your boss? Isn’t that why you came to town?”
“No, it isn’t. And you should know better than that.” She didn’t respond. “There are strange things happening in town, aren’t there? People being attacked by mysterious packs of dogs, for instance?”
I let her think about that for a minute. She stared at me, trying to guess how much I knew. “Why are you asking about Charles’s seizures? You think it has something to do with the people who have been mauled?”
“I won’t know until I ask.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” she said. She took another sip. “My father had them, and his father, too. Charles has them
