Kyla
Once she and Fernanda had reached the motel, of course, they’d discovered they had much bigger problems than a little guilt.
A walnut door stood in the back wall of the office. Closed.
The man’s name was Thomas. The woman was Tabitha.
Judging by the way they spoke, the twins had clearly spent way too long in each other’s company.
“I’m afraid we’re out of gas,” Thomas was saying to the shorter boy.
His sister Tabitha said, “We’ve been waiting on a delivery for days—”
“Almost a week,” Thomas said. “But—
The twins had given Kyla and Fernanda the same exact speech when the girls had arrived an hour ago:
But we’ve been promised fuel will come in the morning.
Tomorrow.
Finally.
At last.
Now, however, when Kyla stepped back into the office, the twins’ shared brain seemed to glitch out.
Thomas and Tabitha both turned to stare at Kyla and Fernanda, clearly aghast, like this was some absurd interruption.
Unfathomable. Absolutely unprecedented. Kyla had the strangest feeling she was an actress who’d missed her cue and stumbled onstage during a production that had been rehearsed a hundred times without her.
Kyla blinked. She knew she’d never get used to these people. “Sorry. I just came to see if we could get some towels.”
Thomas turned to Tabitha. Tabitha frowned at Thomas.
Thomas said, “Towels?”
“Yes,” Kyla said. “Towels. There’s none in our bathroom.”
“Oh,” Thomas said.
“I see,” Tabitha said.
“We must have been—”
“Distracted,” Tabitha said. “When we were cleaning your room.”
Thomas nodded. “Right. Distracted.”
“We’ll take some to your room.”
“It was our mistake.”
“Our pleasure to make it right,” Tabitha said.
“Yes. Our pleasure,” Thomas said.
Now it was Kyla and Fernanda’s turn to trade concerned frowns. The green backpack—the biggest reason the girls had gotten into this mess in the first place—was in their room. It was hidden under a mattress, sure, but that didn’t mean much.
“That’s all right,” Kyla said. “Just bring them here. We’ll wait.”
Even if that means sharing an office with two boys who have every right to hate us, Kyla thought. It was safer than letting anyone anywhere near room 5.
“Of course,” Thomas said.
“One moment,” Tabitha said.
The twins came around the desk in unison, making for the door, filing between Kyla and Fernanda and leaving a smell of fusty soap in their wake.
Frosted glass stood on either side of the office’s door.
The pair’s blurry silhouettes hurried past the glass, moving with a purpose, their heads bowed together like they were locked in some furtive conversation.
Kyla raised an eyebrow at Fernanda. Fernanda nodded, clearly just as confused by the twins’ gravitas. “They are only towels.”
The white boys from the side of the road didn’t seem to care about any of this. The shorter one leaned his weight against the desk, toed the duffel bag at his feet. “Thanks for the ride.”
There was a hard flatness in his voice. A dangerous edge.
Kyla said nothing. What was there to say?
The shorter boy went on. “I’m surprised to still see y’all here. You were in an awful fucking hurry.”
Kyla bristled. Fernanda was more contrite. “I apologize. We were dangerously low on fuel. We were afraid the car might not even make it this far.”
“And look at all the good that did you.”
The shorter boy looked ready to say more, but the taller one turned from where he stood by the fire. He looked at Kyla. He studied her the same way he had by the side of the road. Kyla saw, again, that flicker of fear in him.
She was probably imagining things, but she thought he saw the same thing in her.
“I get it,” the taller boy said. “It’s dangerous out here. There’s no telling what kind of people could be looking for a ride.”
When Kyla heard the boy speak, she realized what was going on between the pair. The taller boy’s voice was high and soft. Obvious. The shorter one was watching him with an intensity no one would give a mere friend. Something protective about him. Something adoring.
The boys were an item. Way out here. Maybe the new millennium was bringing progress. Imagine.
Kyla said, “For what it’s worth, I felt bad about it. I’m sorry.”
The taller boy gave her a smile, just a little twitch of the mouth, before his face darkened again with whatever had him so scared.
Kyla went to warm herself with him near the fire.
Her eye glanced over the bric-a-brac arranged on the mantelpiece: a deer’s antler, a framed photograph of the mountain out back, a pair of grooved white rocks the size and shape of chicken eggs.
The shorter boy spoke. “Are they telling the truth? Is the motel really out of gas?”
“Yes,” Kyla said. “I checked it myself. That pump is bone-dry.”
The shorter man had turned to fix Kyla with a curious stare. “Why didn’t you believe them?”
“I…” Kyla hesitated. “I’m not sure. I guess I didn’t want to believe them.”
“You didn’t want to be stuck here either. Just like us.” The taller boy studied her, and Kyla had the uncanny feeling he understood something about her—saw something decent in her—that she’d never seen within herself.
She wondered if she’d ever find it.
The taller boy said, “So y’all paid for a room?”
“The twins gave us one,” Kyla said. “Free of charge. They were upset we were stranded here. They’ll probably do the same thing for y’all.”
The shorter boy said, “Does that strike anyone else as strange?”
Fernanda said, “It is better than freezing to death in our car.”
“Fair point.” The shorter boy let out a rough bark of a cough, covered his mouth, thumped his chest. It sounded like he had something gnarly in his lungs.
Kyla said, “You sick?”
The shorter boy wiped his lips with the back of his hand, rubbed his temples like he had a headache. “Not with anything you can catch.”
“It sounds like we’re all going to be stuck here together for the night.” The taller boy was clearly eager to change the subject.
Kyla said, “Looks that way.”
“Well, I’m Ethan,” the taller boy said. “This is Hunter.”
“Kyla,” she said. “And Fernanda.”
The boy called Hunter frowned. Kyla suspected he didn’t like having his name in the picture. Judging by the way Fernanda twitched, she was probably feeling the same thing.
“For what it’s worth, we’re not the only guests here,” Kyla said. “Whoever drives that Range Rover is staying in the room next to us.”
Hunter said, “Five guests in one night? No wonder the twins forgot your towels. This is probably the busiest they’ve been in years.”
Ethan said, “That Rover doesn’t belong to the twins?”
Kyla said, “I doubt it. Room four is definitely occupied. The twins mentioned it when we got here.”
Ethan frowned deeper. “So where’s their car? There’s no way the twins could survive way out here without a vehicle.”
Hunter said, “Maybe they have it parked at the old house out back. Right along with their horse and buggy.”
Despite the warmth of the fire, Ethan and Kyla both shivered at the same exact time. Kyla didn’t know why, but the thought of going anywhere near that old house filled her with a dread she could neither name nor explain.
What was taking the twins so long with those towels?
A creak from the porch outside dragged them all from their thoughts.
A woman in her late thirties stepped into the office.
She had olive skin and very black hair tied up in a ponytail.
She wore the kind of comfortable outerwear a well-off traveler would take on a camping trip: tall brown leather riding boots, gray cashmere sweater, black vest trimmed with fox fur.
A camera hung around her neck. It looked expensive.
A large knife in a leather sheath rode on the woman’s hip.
At the sight of the woman, Kyla had to clench her jaw, otherwise it would have fallen open in shock. What are the fucking odds? She knew this chick. The woman’s name was Sarah Powers, and she’d lately become great friends with none other than Frank O’Shea, the great and the terrible.
This could be bad. This could be very bad.
For her part, Sarah Powers showed no sign of recognizing Kyla (thank God). The woman turned a polite smile on them all. “Afternoon. Y’all out of gas too?”
Only Ethan replied. With a slow nod, he said, “That’s your Rover?”
“It is. I can’t believe I ran dry. I thought I’d left Stockton with a full tank.”
Kyla turned away, looking at Fernanda, wondering if maybe they should forget about the towels and get back to their room.
Fernanda, for her part, seemed unbothered, which made sense.
She would have never met Sarah Powers, seeing as Sarah had only ever come to the steakhouse.
In all the time she’d lived in America, Fernanda had never been allowed to leave Frank’s house.
Sarah Powers herself still showed no interest in either of the girls. She took a few steps toward the coffee maker in the corner of the office, rubbing her hands like everyone else, only to hesitate mid-step when she neared Ethan. She looked at the boy, looked at him again.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “But is your last name Cross?”
Ethan went stiff, his eyes widening in surprise. A few steps behind Sarah, still standing at the desk, Hunter’s face tightened, and he eased a hand behind his back. Kyla had spent enough time serving steaks to men like this to know what that meant.
Hunter was reaching for a gun.
Sarah Powers noticed none of this. Staring at Ethan with an expression of mounting surprise, she said, “This is going to sound crazy, but I think I knew your mother.”