“Yes, sir,” I say as the Reverend watches me across the booth—studying me, knocking his knuckles to the tabletop as he weighs teaching me a lesson in manners.
“Ricky is a special person. To me and the town.”
“Yes, sir.”
Obediently, as if we didn’t have any will of our own, the Reverend leads Mom and me toward the exit. Vacillating as he does between menace and jollity, the Reverend sets the tune and we all dance to it. “Don’t be late for those babies!” he cries, giving my mother a hug she’ll treasure for the rest of the night and then sending her outside alone to our car. Before I can follow her out, the Reverend tugs me through a crowd of smiling, gawping sycophants until we reach a man in a motorized chair. He laughs at a table of three middle-aged women I’ve never seen before—they must be from White Eagle or somewhere farther outside of town.
“Ricky, I want you to meet a young friend of mine,” the Reverend says.
Ricky Hannigan lifts his large, round eyes and pivots his chair to me. His neck is bent slightly, pressed against the chair’s headrest. A graying, sallow-faced man, Ricky is slender and, from what I can tell, immobile from the waist down: his slightly tremoring fingers operate a control toggle on his chair. Ricky smiles—a relaxed, warm smile, not the shark’s grin the Reverend gives people. He glances me over before pivoting slowly to the Reverend and muttering, “C…cute.”
Ricky’s dining companions laugh, but the Reverend and I turn scarlet with unease. “It’s nice to meet you,” I say, charging ahead as if the man hadn’t said anything, and I shake his hand, which he grips softly.
“G…” Ricky says, but each syllable requires concentration and determination. “Gentle…man.”
“Good to see you out with your old theater gang,” the Reverend simpers, dipping ever so slightly into contempt. Ricky’s friends harden.
“Hi, Stanny,” one of them says.
Before I can savor the delights of big ol’ scary Reverend Packard being called “Stanny,” he clears his throat and snaps back, “Reverend Packard works fine, thank you. You came all the way from the city to eat at our humble little greasy spoon?”
“For our friend,” another one replies icily.
“Where would we be without friends?” The Reverend swallows hard and pushes me closer to Ricky with his hefty paw. “Anyway, Ricky, you’ll be seeing a lot of Connor this summer. You and your mother will be on his Meals on Wheels route.”
Smiling, Ricky moans appreciatively until a light switches off behind his eyes. His smile collapses. He glances at the Reverend with eyes frozen open in fright. We all stiffen as the mood darkens imperceptibly. “C…Con…?” Ricky asks.
“Connor Major, yes, I mentioned him—”
“No,” he whines. In a blink, he’s crying. Frustrated tears. Two of his friends scramble forward in their booth, reaching across the table to pat his shoulder, but none of us are sure what went wrong.
My name seems to have set him off.
“No what, Ricky?” the Reverend asks, glancing around the diner, petrified of being at the center of this growing tantrum. “You’re all right?”
“NO,” Ricky growls as he winces at the fussing hands of his friends. “Con…nor…”
“Maybe I should take off,” I say, but no one is paying me the slightest attention. Ricky struggles in his chair as his friends and the Reverend fail to calm him. Weeping silently, Ricky finds me through the cluster of people surrounding him. Our eyes lock. A long, pleading glance. I want to run, but how would I explain myself to the Reverend?
“Conn…r…Y…you…can’t…” Ricky pivots again to the Reverend, only this time, his eyes are red, wild, and pumping with fury. The Reverend jumps backward. “No…You kn…know…”
“I know what…?” the Reverend asks desperately.
“YOU…KN…KNOW.” Ricky spins his fury to the other diners—not his friends, but the entirety of the restaurant. Accusing them. Grizzled, impassive faces stare back under the brims of mesh trucker hats. Even Sue has abandoned her watch at the struggling shake maker to approach Ricky. “YOU KN…KN…KNOW. ALL…KNOW.”
“Ricky, you’re frightening everyone—”
“Con—nor…” Energy abandons Ricky as swiftly as it came. He slumps an inch back into his chair, his eyes wandering back to me a final time. I can’t be sure, but his next word sounds like “help.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE INK-BLACK DRINK
TODAY
For hours, Molly and I have been below deck in the Nightlight boat. My shoulders sway heavily in rhythm with the choppy water beneath our hull. Above us, floodlights pierce through the burlap canopy shielding our berth from a rainstorm that, in less than a minute, went from droplets to a downpour that is collecting under my feet in wider and wider puddles. We wait and worry on benches in the lampless lower berth where our kidnappers have stored the rest of their junk: shabbily folded tarps, coils of heavy rope, and open cans of paint. The boat’s chilly iron bench unhinges the skin from my bones, and I have to tug down my gym shorts to better shield my thighs from the cold metal. As I do, my left wrist catches on something hard—handcuffs.
I’m so out of it from the taser, I forgot Briggs cuffed me to a pipe.
Seated across from me, handcuffed to her own bench, Molly stares through a jungle of wet hair. A tiny stream of rainwater overflows from the buckling canopy and drops down the back of her dress. She leaps, cursing wildly and dancing out of the way of the errant water. This is the second time she’s gotten doused from above. Looks like I got the better bench.
“Where’d you come from?” she asks, her voice finally returning.
“Chicago,” I generalize. Outside of Ambrose, no one knows where Ambrose is, so I’m used to answering this question with “Chicago.”
“I’m from Arizona. I was at a party…at my dad’s club…”
“I hope these guys brought you a change of clothes. You’re not dressed for running drills.”
“Drills?”
“The boot camp.”
“We’re going to a boot camp?” Molly’s lips tighten. Something in her tone drops my stomach. “They told me it was a retreat…to learn business management,”—her twitching eyes begin to water—“which was clearly bullshit.” Molly whimpers into her raised arm and moans, “Clearly bullshit, clearly bullshit.” I wish she’d stop because now my guts are swirling through my body like a Chinese dragon.