Page 130 of Forever Dark
“Why?”
Pruitt’s fingers pressed harder against the keyboard stand.
“Because instruments don’t ask what happened to you.”
That was the first fully honest sentence he had spoken.
The phone in Connor’s pocket buzzed again.
Damn, forgot to call Selena back.But he ignored it.He felt he was onto something.In many ways, he was enjoying the chase.
The room had changed now.Not by much.A degree here, a degree there.Enough for Connor to trust the old instincts that had kept him alive through traffic stops, domestic disputes, and one meth cook in a barn who had tried to hug him while reaching for a knife.
“I still come back to that fire…”
Pruitt’s throat moved as he swallowed.“Leave… leave me alone.”
“Sounds likesomethingburned.Are you sure no one was there?”
Pruitt’s hands had begun moving again, not with music now but with tremor.His whole body seemed built for retreat, for shrinking from conflict, for folding inward until louder men filled the space around him and no one thought to ask what the quiet one might be carrying.
When he finally spoke, the words came low.
“It was an accident.”
Connor believed, at least, that Pruitt believed that.
“Tell me about it.”
Pruitt shook his head.“No.”
“Because you can’t or because you know I’ll see that it points to something worse?”
“It points nowhere.”
Connor held his gaze.“Then prove it.Tell me about it.”
For a second Connor thought the man might bolt.
“This has nothing,” he said again, quieter now, “to do with those women.”
Connor did not answer right away.
Through the thin motel wall came the thud of a door closing in another room.A truck started outside.The world kept moving.Inside Room 12, something had begun to come loose, but not enough yet.Not nearly enough.
Connor let one more moment pass, then reached for the phone in his pocket.
Selena’s missed calls glowed on the screen like a warning.
He looked back at Nolan Pruitt, at the trembling hands and the hunted eyes and the name that had finally surfaced in the room like something dragged up from the bottom of dark water.
Then the radio on his shoulder crackled.
“Connor, come in.It’s Pruitt… Do not go in alone…”
Selena.
The sound was enough.
