“You should leave right now. I think you’re in danger.” The words sounded clipped, like he didn’t have enough breath to say them fully.

“What’s going on? What happened?” She reached a hand toward him, and he flinched backward a little. He took his hand away from his head, and a trickle of dark blood ran down his cheek.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“Am I?” He looked at the palm of his hand, streaked in blood. “Oh,” he said, then his knees buckled, and he fell into the motel room.

Caitlin reached out, trying to break his fall, but he hit the carpeted floor hard, his head bouncing. And then he was still.

Chapter 27

Now

“Do you know where Kennewick Hospital is?”

“I don’t,” Caitlin said.

“You can follow us if you like.”

“Okay, sure,” Caitlin said to one of the very young, very unconcerned EMTs after Harry had been strapped onto a gurney and wheeled into the back of the ambulance outside her motel. Two preteens a few units down had watched the whole ordeal from just outside their door, their parents occasionally poking their heads out to take a look.

After Harry had collapsed into her room, Caitlin rolled him over, and he’d come to, his eyes wide with surprise and confusion. She took a look at the side of his head. His hair was dark and sticky with blood; there was an inch-long gash just above his right ear, the area around it puffing up.

“I’m calling 911,” she said.

“It’s okay. I just fell and hit my head,” Harry said, beginning to sit up.

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling 911.”

While they waited for the ambulance, Caitlin crouched and talked with Harry, now sitting against the wall.

“What happened?” she asked.

“There was a man. He was watching you.”

“What do you mean?”

Harry’s brow creased, and his eyes seemed to empty out, as though he’d forgotten what he was about to say. Then he lightly shook his head, and said, “I came here to see you. I walked, actually, because I didn’t want Alice to hear me start the car, and when I got here there was a man standing”—he pointed straight up with the index finger of his left hand—“a man standing over near the woods.”

“Where? On the other side of the parking lot, by the picnic tables?” Caitlin could picture what Harry was talking about. It was really just a cluster of pine trees that separated the parking lot from Route 1A.

“Yeah, he was by the picnic tables in the dark. But I could see him, and he was watching your window.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I watched him for a while.”

“Where were you?”

“I was hiding behind a truck that was parked near the office.” His brow creased again like he wasn’t trusting his own words.

“Could you see who it was?”