“You’re not . . . stopping?” Karen gasped.

“I’m hungry as hell,” Skip said. “I didn’t get any dinner. My unc was too worked up to cook anything for me.”

“What was he worked up about?” Eddie said quickly, suspiciously.

It had been a slip, but Skip didn’t worry about it. He parked the car and cut the motor, took the keys from the lock. “Ah, he was going to an A.A. meeting for the first time.”

“I didn’t know he drank,” Eddie said, still curious.

“Well . . .” Skip spoke with mock reluctance. “God knows Unc should have learned better by now, but I think he’s planning some sort of con on those A.A. people. He thinks he’ll get their sympathy, sing them a hard-luck story, maybe cop a little dough.”

“They’ll know right away he’s a phony,” Eddie said positively.

“I don’t see how you can worry about Skip’s uncle and whether he drinks or not and what he’s doing with the A.A. people,” Karen said with frantic urgency. “If we don’t want to be caught . . . just please, please don’t stop here!”

Skip glanced at her. “Well, it’s good to see that you’ve started to collect your marbles. You’re worrying about getting away instead of about the old woman. But you’re right in a way—someone might know you, this close to home. So you stay in the car, and Eddie can stay with you while I go in and have a bite.” He got out, brushed back his hair where the stocking mask had disarranged it, and walked away across the graveled lot.

He sat over a hamburger and coffee, frowning in thought. He couldn’t get the image of the old man in the bus out of his mind. There seemed some sort of carry-over, some connection with himself. A threat.

The old man who swamped dishes in the diner came out and began to clean the counter. Skip watched him, thinking that this old character with the gray face and the white tee shirt resembled in some way the old man on the bus and seeing that the pattern could have been laid out to enfold himself.

In the car Karen was weeping on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie held her, at first loosely and then more closely, feeling the shudders that racked her young bones beneath her flesh.