“He didn’t tell me anything,” Gemma said. She didn’t dare risk turning around. “I read about you. I read about you and about your girl—Brandy-Nicole. She disappeared when she was just a baby.” Harliss whimpered. “I know you think that the Home Foundation had something to do with it. But I’m telling you, Pete and I don’t know anything. We’re just as confused as you are—”
“Bullshit.” The word was an explosion. Pete winced and Gemma bit her lip, trying not to cry. “Your dad was in it up to his neck. Don’t tell me you don’t know. It was all because of Haven. It was his fault they needed money. It was his fault they started grabbing kids in the first place. Your dad knew. He fucking knew all about it.” Rick Harliss took the gun from Pete’s head for just a second, just long enough to wipe his nose on his sleeve. Before Gemma could do anything, or even contemplate doing anything, it was back. “They took her from me.”
“Please,” Gemma said. “We can help you. We’ll get people to listen to you. But please just let us go. . . .”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. He did sound sorry. They were coming up on an exit for Randolph. He gestured to it with the gun. “Pull off here. This is far enough.”
He directed them to a Super 8 motel. They climbed out of the car. Gemma first, carefully, conscious of the gun angling in her direction as if it were a live thing, a dog snapping at its tether, trying to get loose. Pete and Rick Harliss left the car together. Rick kept his gun, now concealed inside his sweatshirt pocket, trained on Pete’s back. He herded Pete and Gemma together, forcing them to walk side by side directly in front of him, so they shuffled awkwardly toward the lobby together, bumping elbows. Rick Harliss kept stepping on Gemma’s heel. It would have been funny if it weren’t so awful.
“Some knight I am,” Pete said quietly. He found Gemma’s hand and squeezed. When he tried to let go, she interlaced their fingers instead. “I’m sorry, Gemma.”
She almost couldn’t speak. “You’re sorry?” She shook her head. “This is all my fault.”
“Quiet,” Harliss said as they jostled together through the door. Gemma felt like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing around a tiny space. She was sure the receptionist would notice something was wrong—she was desperately hoping for it—and kept trying to telegraph desperation through her eyes. He’s got a gun. He’s got a gun.
But the receptionist was flipping through a magazine and barely even glanced up at them.
“Can I help you?” She had long pink nails with faded decals on them. Sunflowers.
“We need a room.” Harliss pulled out some crumpled twenties and placed them on the counter.
“One or two?”
“Just one.”
The receptionist briefly lifted her eyes but they only went to the money before dropping back to the magazine, seemingly exhausted. “Room’s forty-five a night.”
“It says forty out front.”
“Rates went up.”
“Don’t you think you should change the sign, then?”
There was a plastic fern in the corner, cheap blue wall-to-wall carpeting on the floor, a gun at their backs. Gemma felt the same way she did when she was dreaming—so much was true and familiar and then there was always some weird element distorted or inserted, a talking bird, the ability to fly. Finally Harliss forked over another five-dollar bill—Gemma caught herself nearly offering to pay before remembering that Harliss was kidnapping them—and they went bumping and jostling again back into the sunshine. Room 33 was on the second floor, up a narrow flight of cement stairs covered in graffiti, at the far end of the open-air corridor. Not that they could have shouted or banged on a wall, anyway. They appeared to be the only guests at the Super 8.
The room reeked of stale cigarettes. Once they were inside, Rick Harliss bolted and chain-locked the door and drew the blinds. For several long seconds, it was dark enough that Gemma saw bursts of color and patterns blooming in the blackness of her vision. Then Harliss turned on the lamp, its shade yellowed and torn. He sat down on the bed. He removed his gun from his pocket and Gemma drew in a breath. But to her surprise he placed it in the bedside table, on top of the Bible, and closed the drawer.
“I told you,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Sit.” He gestured to the second twin bed. “Come on, sit,” he said again, raking his fingers through his thinning hair, so it stood up. Gemma remembered that he’d been handsome at one point. Strange that time could do that to a person, just work like a hacksaw on them.
Gemma and Pete moved to the bed together, as if they were tethered by an invisible cord. Once they were sitting, they were separated from Harliss by only a few feet of space, and Gemma noticed the cheapness of his jacket and oiliness of his skin and the way his fingernails were picked raw, and found herself feeling not scared of him anymore but just sorry for him. She realized in that second she actually believed he didn’t want to hurt them. She was sure he wouldn’t even be able to if he tried.
“I told you,” she said, speaking gently, as if he were a child. “We know even less than you do. That’s why I came down here. Because I didn’t know anything. Because I was in the dark about Haven.”
“Huh. That’s funny.” Harliss laughed without smiling. “I’d think you’d have wanted to know all about it.”
Gemma’s hairs stood up. She felt in the room a subtle shift—an electric stillness. “What do you mean?”