43

The Saturn’s windshield wipers flapped heavily in the strengthening downpour that pounded the roof and obscured the headlights. Shivering, Tori almost missed the motel’s entrance. She turned, drove through rain-churned puddles, and stopped at unit 11. After she and Page ran to the door, Page unlocked it and held it open for her with- out entering.

“Go ahead, take a bath,” he said. “Put on some warm clothes. I’ll drive back to the Rib Palace and get some hot coffee for us.”

“But you’re as cold as I am. Why should I go first? That isn’t fair.”

“The last thing you need is to get sick before your surgery. How about hot soup? You want some?”

Tori barely hesitated. “Yes. That would be great.”

Page hurried back through the drenching rain and got into the car, turning up the heater.

Fifteen minutes later, he returned, setting Styrofoam containers of coffee and soup on the unit’s small table. The bathroom door was closed. Hearing the splash of water in the tub, he quickly took off his dripping clothes. The room didn’t have a closet, but it did have hangers on a rod. He hung his clothes there and dried himself with a blanket he found on a shelf. Even with the blanket draped around him, he couldn’t stop shaking.

He hadn’t packed a lot of clothes and was forced to put on the jeans and shirt he’d worn the night before. They still had the odor of smoke, but at least they were dry.

When Tori came out of the bathroom, she found him huddled under the covers of his bed, trying to keep his fingers steady while he used both hands to grip his container of coffee.

She wore her usual T-shirt and boxer shorts. Her towel-dried hair was combed back. “Your turn.”

“Somehow the idea of getting wet again doesn’t appeal to me. I think I’ll wait until I’m a little warmer.”

“I still feel shaky. What kind of soup did you get?”

“In a place like the Rib Palace, they had only one choice-they call it Fiery Beef.”

“Sounds like exactly what I need.”

She pulled a blanket off her bed, wrapped it around her, and sat at the table, opening the container of soup. Watching her, Page sipped his coffee and felt the hot liquid against his bruised lip. She didn’t say anything all the while she ate, spooning the soup quickly. Then she opened the coffee, and while she drank it, she remained silent. Finally she turned to him, her features strained with confusion. “If it hadn’t been for the storm, I’d have walked forever to try to reach the lights.”

“No,” Page said. “If it hadn’t been for me.”

“I couldn’t resist. They seemed to be calling me.”

He considered what she’d said, then gave her an extremely direct look.

“Let’s pack and get out of here. Not tomorrow. Right now. We can be at your mother’s house by morning. Are you ready to do that?”

Tori lowered her head and didn’t reply, in effect giving him an answer. He remembered what had happened in the field. After what she had said and done to him, he wasn’t about to try to force her to leave. He wasn’t even certain he could force her to leave. So he came to a decision.

“In that case, I need to be a cop a while longer. This has gone way past the point where I can just let things keep controlling us. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

44

Page jerked awake, struck anew by the stark reality of what Tori had told him about her cancer and by what had happened the night before.

So much to adjust to.

Sunlight crept past the cheap drapes, but he didn’t feel at all rested, even though a glance at the bedside clock showed him that the time was 1:14 and that he’d slept another twelve hours.

This time Tori remained in her bed.

Groggy, he went into the bathroom, softly closed the door, and shaved, running the water as little as possible, trying not to make noise.

When he came out, Tori was putting on a pair of slacks.

“Sorry if I woke you,” he said.

“It wasn’t a good sleep.”

“The same with me.” He touched the shirt and jeans that he’d put on a hangar. “Still wet.” He glanced down at the clothes he’d slept in. Wrinkled, they continued to retain the odor of the fire two nights earlier.

“Looks like we need to do some shopping,” Tori concluded.

When they stepped from the room and faced the harsh sunlight, Page was troubled by the number of vehicles streaming past the motel-many more than on the previous day. It took even longer for Tori to find a break in the traffic and steer the Saturn onto the road.

In town, the streets were filled with cars. All the parking spaces were occupied. Tori let Page out in front of a store called the Out – fitter, where there were so many tourists that he had to wait fifteen minutes to pay for new clothes. It took another fifteen minutes to get into a dressing room. He put on a pair of pants, a T-shirt, and a shirt to wear over it-something that would conceal his handgun. When he came out with his old clothes in a shopping bag, he heard a customer talking to a female clerk.

“Do people really see lights around here?”

“Yes,” the clerk answered. “But it’s been years since I went looking for them.”

“Aren’t you curious what they are?” the customer asked.

“When I was a kid. But I got used to them.”

As Page walked toward the front of the store, he heard another customer telling a different clerk, “My wife has diabetes. We heard this place makes miracles happen, like at Lourdes. If she sees the lights, she’ll be cured.”

Page went out to the sidewalk, where Tori was waiting with two sandwiches and two bottles of water from a restaurant next door.

Cured? he thought. Wouldn’t that be nice?

They ate while they walked three blocks to the hospital. There Tori again paused nervously on the hot steps outside the entrance.

“Another day closer to the start of the rest of your life,” Page tried to reassure her.

She took a breath and forced herself to go in.

Upstairs, in the brightly lit hallway, the sharp odor of disinfectant seemed stronger as they walked toward Costigan’s room.

The chief ’s familiar raspy voice came from it, telling someone, “God help us if the next riot spreads to town. How many people were injured?”

“Twenty-three,” a different voice answered. “Twelve got gashed pretty bad on the barbed-wire fence.”

“And the others?”

“Six were almost trampled to death. The rest were hurt in fights.”

Page was uncomfortable eavesdropping. He motioned for Tori to follow him as he stepped into the doorway.

Their footsteps made a man turn in their direction. He was in his fifties, stocky, with a sunburned complexion. His sport coat had a Western cut and a zigzag design over the left and right breast. He wore a large belt buckle and held a cowboy hat.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Page said. “We just wanted to see how Chief Costigan was doing.”

“A lot better, thanks.” Propped up in bed, Costigan looked less gray. His mustache now had some contrast with his skin, and the heart and blood-pressure monitors were gone. The IV tube had been removed from his arm, although the thick bandage remained around his skull. “They say they’ll let me go home tomorrow as long as I remember not to bang my head against anything. This is Hank Wagner. He runs the drugstore in town. More to the point, he’s also our mayor, which, at the moment, he wishes he wasn’t.”

Page shook hands with Wagner.

“Dan Page. This is my wife, Tori.”

“The chief told me about you. You’re the couple who saved those people on the bus Thursday night. You’re the woman who…” Seeing her discomfort, the mayor said, “Well, we’re grateful for what you did. Without your help, the situation could have been even worse.”

He looked at his watch. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get to an emergency town council meeting.”