Lake Silence

CHAPTER 70

Vicki

Watersday, Sumor 8

“Are you having trouble figuring out where to shelve these?” Julian asked, eyeing the books on the top shelf of the cart.

“No, no trouble.”

“Then . . .” He reached for one of the books.

“If you didn’t want me to look at the books, you shouldn’t have asked me to dust the shelves.” Helping Julian in the store for the past couple of days showed me why I could never work in the bookstore on a regular basis. I’d buy all the stock. “That’s the first pass. I’ll shelve the ones I’m putting back.”

He considered the books. “Do you have a prejudice against authors whose names begin with . . .”

I raised my arm and stretched as far as I could without falling off the top step of the three-step stool, demonstrating that some books were not within the reach of a short person, which was why I hadn’t selected titles written by authors whose names began with the first few letters of the alphabet.

Did Julian offer to find a taller stool or even a ladder? No, he did not. He just grinned.

“I’m going to the bank,” he said. “It’s a little early for lunch, but I could pick up a pizza while I’m out and about. Does that have any appeal?”

“That sounds good. Thanks. Oh. Could you stop at the general store and pick up more carrots? I cut up the last ones for the Sproingers’ treat this morning.” I glanced at the books on the cart. “I’ll put some of them back. Promise.”

“No need. If I paid you for helping me these past couple of days, I think we’d end up even.”

I wasn’t sure about being even, but I didn’t argue because I really didn’t want to put any of them back. They were an escape from a shaky future. Maybe I should throw away all caution and look into going out west where you could apply to live in a town that was being repopulated. You had to be willing to work with the terra indigene, but I could do that. And leaving the Northeast should put enough distance between me and Yorick.

Of course, I had no idea how a human applied to live in one of those towns, but Ilya Sanguinati might know. I’d slipped my medical information under his office door, including the name of the physician in Hubbney. No reason I couldn’t stuff the query about those towns under the door as well.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Julian hesitated and rubbed the back of his neck. “Something doesn’t feel right today.”

“In the village?”

“On Main Street. I’m not sensing anything stronger than that. Don’t always sense more than that until the trouble is almost at the door, so to speak.” He looked at me, his gray eyes dark with worry. “I’ll lock the back door when I leave. You have your mobile phone?”

“In my purse, which is in the break room.”

“Get it. Keep it closer.”

Now I was worried. “Should I warn Ineke to stay away from the shops today?”

Another hesitation. Then he offered a grim smile. “Better safe than sorry, right?”

Not really what I wanted to hear. “Right.”

I followed Julian to the back of the store and listened as he locked the back door. Then I dashed into the break room, fetched my mobile phone, and called Ineke. She couldn’t insist that her guests stay away from the shops on Main Street, but she assured me that she and Paige and Dominique would stay at the boardinghouse. After promising to call with regular updates—we made a lame joke about calling it the Julian Report— I ended the call and immediately made another one. This time I got an answering machine.

“This is Silence Lodge. Please leave your name and . . .” Yada yada ya.

I left a message for Ilya, then went back to dusting the shelves, setting my mobile phone on the book cart so that it was in easy reach.

I wasn’t sure how long Julian had been gone—I’d gotten a bit distracted reading the cover copy of a few books—when I heard someone fumbling with the lock on the back door. Figuring he had his hands full and that was the reason for the fumbling, I had just stepped off the stool, intending to help him, when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. “That was fast.”

Except it wasn’t Julian.

Before I could grab the mobile phone and even try to call for help, Detective Swinn shoved me against the bookcase, one forearm pinning me while his other hand rested on his service weapon.

“You’re coming with me. You’re not going to make a fuss or call any attention to us. Say it. Say it.”

I couldn’t say anything at that moment.

“If you don’t say it, if you don’t promise not to make a fuss, we’ll wait right here, and when Julian Farrow returns I will shoot him in the face. Not through the brain. I won’t kill him. I’ll shoot his face off. You got that, fireplug? He’ll spend the rest of his life with no eyes, no nose, no mouth. He’ll be fed through a tube, and it will be your fault.”

Swinn would do it. He wanted to shoot Julian, whether I cooperated or not. The only way to keep Julian from getting hurt was to go with Swinn and hope I would find a way to escape before he . . . hurt me.

Coward. I didn’t even want to think the word “kill.” He wasn’t taking me somewhere to hurt me, and we weren’t going somewhere for a chat. Yorick and his pals had decided I was a problem that needed to go away, and Swinn had been sent to fetch me.

Shoot-out in Sproing. It sounded like a frontier story, but I could picture the reality just fine. Shots fired on Main Street. Grimshaw running out of the police station, not seeing Swinn, a fellow cop, as a threat until it was too late.

Was Swinn’s arrival the wrongness Julian had sensed, or was it something worse, something more like what I was imagining? Except I could prevent what I was imagining.

“Say it,” Swinn growled.

“I won’t make a fuss.” At least not while we were in the village.

Swinn grabbed my arm and pulled me out the back door and over to the cruiser parked behind the bookstore.

“You stole a Bristol police car?”

“Borrowed. Get in.”

He aimed his service weapon at me and kept it trained on me while he circled to the driver’s side and got in. The windows were up; no one would hear if I tried to call for help. But the handful of Sproingers who visited the bookstore were at the edge of the parking area. Seeing me, they made the happy face. I made a sad face.

They hopped toward the cruiser.

Swinn drove off quickly enough to startle the Sproingers, then with more control as he turned onto Main Street and headed out of the village.