But the boy opened his eyes. He blinked once, started screaming.

Jar went through the window like a rat down a hole.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Johnny woke to a nightmare stained gray. He saw the sky through glass, then dishwater eyes dashed with blood, fingers tipped with yellow plaster. He knew it was a nightmare because he’d seen it before-same face, same broken nails. Johnny blinked, but nothing changed. The dirty man stood there, fingers going tight, and Johnny realized where he was. The scream tore out of his throat and Burton Jarvis came through the window so fast Johnny barely had time to move. He shoved himself away, but bone-hard fingers caught an ankle. Johnny screamed again and Jar grunted, the sound coming from the same deep, foul place of Johnny’s dreams. Another hand closed around his ankle, and Johnny flew across the seat.

He lashed out with the knife, cut one arm and then the other. Red lines appeared, then opened, and Johnny tried to cut him again; he jerked Johnny so hard his head slammed into the wheel. The door clanked, and then Johnny was on the street. His head struck pavement. A foot slammed down on his hand and the knife clattered away.

He tried to get under the car, but Jar caught him by the neck and flipped him onto his back. Gravel dug into his skull. The fingers squeezed and Johnny felt a long line of ice form on his chest. For an instant, it was that cold, but then the heat came, the pain, and Johnny knew that he’d been cut with his own knife. Jar screamed in his face, dirty words and insanity, ropes of spit. Another cold line opened and turned to fire. Johnny was dying, he knew it. The old bastard was killing him on the street.

The knife flashed. “You like that?”

He cut Johnny again.

And again.

“You like that, you little bastard?”

He was insane, raging; then the sky thundered and he was flying, a red flower on his chest. Sound compressed Johnny’s eardrums, the cotton push of thunder and the wet thump Jar’s body made when it hit pavement. Johnny closed his eyes and saw how the old man had come off the ground, the whiplash that left a strand of spit in the air. None of it made sense, but it hung there-fresh paint on Johnny’s mind-then the pain hit. Johnny sat and agony sheeted his chest. His hand came up stinging red. He looked at his fingers, then away. He saw the bottom of Jar’s feet. A twitch in the old man’s leg.

What happened?

A stone rasped on the street behind Johnny. He saw the gun first, big and black and shaking in fingers squeezed white. They were small fingers, grimed at the nails. Her arms were skinny, the muscles taut and barely able to hold the gun. The muzzle cut wild circles in the air. A dirty blue shirt hung to her knees. Jar’s name was on a patch over the pocket. There was an oil stain and a button missing near the bottom. Handcuffs clattered on her wrists. Her lips bled where she bit them.

She did not look at Johnny as she stepped past him. She looked at Burton Jarvis, whose leg still thumped, whose fingers curled.

Johnny understood. “Tiffany.”

She ignored him. He saw the welts on her legs, the angry gashes under bright cuffs. “Tiffany, don’t.”

Her thumbs found the hammer. Metal clicked twice, and Jar’s leg went still. When Johnny stood, he could see Jar’s face, the eyes wide and silver. The old man’s hand rose. “Don’t,” he said.

Blood rolled from one nostril and trembled on the edge of Tiffany’s lip.

She was going to do it.

“I need to talk to him.” Johnny lifted his hands. “He knows where my sister is.”

Tiffany hesitated. Blood ran from her lip to one perfect tooth. Her arms straightened.

“No,” Johnny said.

But she pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through Jar’s palm and blew through his teeth. The head rose and bounced. The leg went still.

Tiffany sat down on the road and stared into space. She placed the gun beside her as Jar’s blood pooled against her leg. Johnny ran to the old man’s side and dropped to his knees. He grabbed Jar’s shattered head as if he could hold in all of the things that leaked out, but the eyes were dull and empty, the silver turned to lead. For a second, Johnny saw black, and then he screamed. “Where is she?” He screamed the question, kept screaming it, and then he was beating Jar’s head against the road, slamming it until the sound went from hard to wet. Eventually Johnny stopped.

He was too late.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Levi woke disoriented, vision blurred, and it was the sound of a gunshot that woke him. He didn’t think it was close, but sound did funny things on the river. The gunshot could have come from anywhere.

He blinked until his vision cleared. There was the memory of pain, and when he tried to sit, the pain woke up, too. Something sawed at his gut, and when he put his hand there, it came back red. He looked and saw the end of a broken branch sticking out of his stomach. It was as thick as a pool cue, a jagged stump of wood that jutted out on the right side, just below his bottom rib. He put a finger on the rough end of it and felt it move deep inside him. He blinked back tears and tried to pull it out.

The next time he woke up, he knew better, so he left it alone. It hurt when he moved, but not so bad he couldn’t move at all. He had to not think about it-so he thought about not thinking. He struggled to his knees, placed his forehead on the box, and spread out his hands. He asked God for the strength to go another day, to do what needed doing. He felt sure that God would talk to him, but when he opened his eyes, he saw a crow on a limb. Black-eyed and unmoving, it stared at the box, and Levi felt a stab of fear. He didn’t trust the birds. They were too still, too intent on the doings of people. And there were stories about crows, stories from his grandmother’s grandmother, from way back-stories of crows and the souls of the newly dead.

Tales of souls that twisted and burned on the long fall down.

Levi spread his hands and leaned protectively above the box. For a long second, the crow considered him, then flapped to the top of another tree. Its trunk was charred from a lightning strike, and the fork on the river side had gone dead to white. The bird landed among a dozen of its kin, called once, and fell quiet. Not a single feather moved. They looked at Levi, and cold touched his heart. It was a murder of crows on a crown of dead wood. He heard it like a whisper.

A murder of crows.

The voice startled him. It was not God’s voice. It was oily smooth and sweet. It filled his head and put the taste of sugar in his mouth. He tried to stand, and pain ripped through him again as his ankle crumpled. He bit down hard, then rolled onto his back. Hot air rose around him, and when he looked up, the birds took wing in a rustle and flap that made the dead wood groan. Levi gripped the ankle and felt the wrongness of it, the cantaloupe of swollen flesh. It was sprained, maybe broken, and he guessed it must have happened in his dash down the riverbed. He’d not even felt it. But he felt it now; he pushed on his foot and felt the blade in his nerves, so sharp and eager it made him cry.

He looked at a slash of gunmetal sky and heard the same strange whisper.

A murder of crows.

The voice scared him. “Where are you?” he pleaded, and he was talking to God. But no one answered. The sky was empty of crows, and the dead wood still moved, up and down, side to side, long after the birds had gone.

It took Levi an hour to find the courage to try and walk again. When the same blade went off in his ankle, he decided he had to crawl. So that’s what he did, along the bank, upriver, weeping soft as he pulled the box behind him.