He undid two more buttons, exposing a milky white chest decorated with a few gray hairs, reached around to his back, and pulled on something, creating a Velcro-tearing sound. He yanked out the padding and tossed it down onto the floor. His now exposed stomach was wet with perspiration.

Kyle did up the button, tucked in his shirt, got himself resettled, and looked at Katie. “Like the show?”

“So who are you, really?” she asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you’re wearing a disguise, sort of. So you must be pretending to be someone you aren’t.”

“I told you my name. Ben Stapleton.”

“Show me some ID,” she said.

“You’re hardly in a position to be asking.”

“If you’ve got ID that proves it, it shouldn’t be a big deal to show me,” Katie said, persisting.

He dug into his pocket and found the ID badge he’d been provided by the Arrival corporation. “There,” he said, waving it in front of her.

“That’s bullshit,” Katie said. “Think you could get a passport with that? What else ya got?”

Kyle glared at her.

“There are plenty of places on the island you could ride this out,” she said. “But you’re having a shit fit about getting away. And you’ve got a gun and a disguise.” Katie stared at him for several more seconds, thinking.

Finally, she said, “Did you, like, rob a Garrett Island bank while everyone was freaking out about the cars? Is your fake tummy stuffed with cash?”

Kyle said nothing.

“Orrrrr,” she said, still thinking, “you’re, like, some bad guy with a phony identity, you’ve been hiding out on the island for ages, but now with all kinds of police and stuff coming here to stop the cars, they’ll find you? Is it something like that?”

“Just shut up,” he said.

Another theory occurred to her. “Orrrrr,” she said again, more slowly this time, “you have something to do with it.”

Kyle blinked and twitched his cheek, but still said nothing.

Katie noticed.

She said to Bruce, “What’s it mean, when they say someone has a tell?”

Bruce glanced her way, gave her a look that asked, What are you talking about? But what he said was, “Like in cards. When someone’s lying, or bluffing, they do something. Lick their lips, or touch their nose, or something.”

Katie nodded. “I thought it was something like that.” She trained her eyes on Kyle again. “So, you do have something to do with what’s happening.”

Bruce, hands at ten and two, kept the car moving at sixty as he glanced into the rearview mirror to gauge the hitchhiker’s reaction.

“That’s ridiculous,” Brandon Kyle said.

Katie continued to stare. “What did you do?”

“I did nothing.”

“What did you do?” she asked again.

“Stop looking at me.”

“I’ll stop looking at you if you tell me what you did.”