Chapter Seven: The Knock
He told her the rest. The file in his truck. The bond company. The way a skip worked — how you didn't chase the man, you learned his shape and waited for the shape to appear somewhere. How Derek had been careful for two weeks, and how careful men always made one mistake, which was believing that careful was the same thing as invisible.
Nikki listened the way she'd listened on the kitchen floor — all the way through, not interrupting, her hands around the mug going cold.
"So now what," she said, when he was done.
"Now we wait," Max said. "He's circling. The call to the bond office means he's working the river angle. He'll find the bridge. He'll find where the car went in. And then he'll start walking the banks looking for where it came out."
"Here."
"Here," Max said. "Sooner than I'd like."
She nodded, slow, like she was filing it somewhere she could reach it later. "And when he gets here?"
Max looked at her for a long moment. "Then I lie to him," he said. "Better than I've ever lied to anybody."
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The knock came two days later, at dusk.
Three raps, heavy, the kind of knock that assumed the door would open. Nikki was in the back bedroom with the door shut — they'd rehearsed it that morning, twice, the way you rehearse something you hope you'll never have to do. Don't make a sound. Don't come out until I say your name. Not my voice through the door. My voice in the room, saying your name.
Max checked the window first. One man on the porch. Tall. Built like a door himself. Hands in his jacket pockets, rocking back on his heels like he had all the time in the world.
Max knew the face from the file. Knowing it and seeing it were different things. In the file, Derek was a photograph. On the porch, he was a weather system.
Max opened the door.
"Evening," he said. Easy. Neighborly. A man with nothing in his house worth hiding.
Derek looked him over the way men like him looked everybody over — inventory. Threat assessment. "Evening. Sorry to bother you. I'm looking for a car."
"A car."
"Blue sedan. Went off the bridge up the road, maybe a week back, in the storm." Derek's eyes moved past Max, into the house — the kitchen, the hallway, the closed bedroom door at the end of it. Max didn't block the look. Blocking the look was what guilty men did. "Somebody told me at the gas station you had a tow truck out here."
"Had one out, yeah." Max leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. Relaxed. Bored, even. "Found it hung up on the rocks about half a mile down. River took the front end half off. It's sitting behind my shed if you want to look at it."
Derek's eyebrows went up. "You towed a wreck out of the river."
"Seemed like the thing to do." Max shrugged. "Figured some kid stole it, joyrode it, dumped it in the drink. Happens out here more than you'd think. I was going to get it running, find the owner. Be a good neighbor."
It was a good lie. The best lies were. It had a tow truck in it, and a shed, and a man being decent for no particular reason — all true, all verifiable, all pointed carefully away from the one true thing, which was the girl in the back bedroom holding her breath.
"Mind if I take a look?" Derek said.
"Help yourself. Around the side."
Max didn't follow him. That was the other thing guilty men did — hovered. He went back inside, left the door open, put the kettle on. Let the man walk around his property unescorted. Let him find exactly what was there to find: a dead blue sedan with a crushed front end, river mud still in the wheel wells, going nowhere.
A minute later Derek was back at the door. His face had changed — something in it had gone quieter. Disappointed.
"That's the one," he said. "Was there — did you see anybody with it? Driver?"
"Nobody around when the truck pulled it out," Max said. "River was still running high. If somebody walked away from that, they walked away fast." He poured water into a mug. Didn't offer one to Derek. "You lose a car, friend?"
"My girlfriend's." The word came out flat. Practiced. "She took off about a week ago. I've been — we're trying to work some things out, and she just left. I'm worried about her."
Max nodded like a man hearing something sad and ordinary. "Rough."
"Yeah." Derek's eyes went past him again, down the hall to the closed bedroom door. "You live here alone?"
The question landed soft, but Max felt it land. "Mostly," he said. "Brother crashes here sometimes. He's on the road right now."
Derek nodded. He didn't believe it or disbelieve it — Max could see him filing it, the way you'd file a thing you might come back to. "Well. If you hear anything — anybody asking about a girl, or if she turns up looking for the car — I'd appreciate a call." He pulled out his phone. "What's your number? I'll give you mine."
Max gave him the number. The real one. That was the thing about lying to men like Derek — you told the truth about everything except the one thing that mattered, so that everything he checked came back clean.
"I'll keep an eye out," Max said.
"Appreciate it." Derek stepped back onto the porch. Paused. "You seem like a straight shooter. Can I ask you something straight?"
"Shoot."
"You didn't see a girl. Anywhere. In a week."
Max met his eyes and didn't blink. "I see deer. I see the mailman. I haven't seen a girl."
Derek held his gaze a beat longer, then nodded — once, sharp — and walked to his truck. Max watched him go, watched the taillights shrink down the gravel road toward town, and stood in the doorway until the sound of the engine was gone.
Then he closed the door. Locked it. Walked down the hall and knocked twice on the bedroom door, soft.
"Nikki," he said, through the wood. "It's me. He's gone."
The door opened. She was standing there white-faced, her hands twisted in the hem of her shirt, and the first thing she said was:
"He's going to the hotel in town. Isn't he."
Max stared at her. "How did you—"
"Men like him don't sleep in their trucks when there's a bed to be bought," she said. "He'll get a room. He'll sit in it. And he'll try her phone."
"Her phone," Max said slowly.
Nikki's hand went to her pocket. Came out empty. Her face did something complicated — surprise, then a slow, dawning horror.
"It's in the kitchen," she whispered. "On the counter. I forgot — Max, I forgot I had it on me. It's been on this whole time."
They looked at each other. From the kitchen counter, faint and cheerful and terrible, came the soft chime of an incoming text.
Max moved.