“But there’d always be the risk of someone digging him up by accident.”
“I do have a tendency to return when you least expect it,” said Shanks, chuckling.
They stopped at the rear of the Charger and Milo turned him so that Shanks’s back was to the car. Amber noticed that all of their bags had been taken out of the trunk and were now in a pile on the ground.
The trunk opened silently, red light spilling out.
“So we’ll take him with us,” Milo said. “It’ll be inconvenient for a few weeks, but the car will eventually digest him.”
“What?” said Shanks, his face going slack, and then Milo shoved him backwards.
Amber’s eyes played a trick on her then. For one crazy instant, it looked like Shanks was sucked into the trunk as the trunk itself enveloped him, the lid slamming closed like a great black jaw. Shanks kicked and battered and yelled from inside, and then all that noise turned down, like the Charger was slowly muting him.
Amber blinked. “Whoa.”
Glen was frowning. “Did you see that? Did I see that? What the hell was that?”
Amber looked at Milo. “Were you serious? About the car digesting him?”
Milo trailed a hand lovingly over the Charger’s contours. “She’s a beast,” he said.
THEY DROVE OUT OF SPRINGTON, parked behind a billboard, and Milo took out the maps while Amber examined Shanks’s brass key.
“Could we use that?” Glen asked, now sharing the back seat with their bags. “It took Shanks wherever he wanted to go, right? Can we use it?”
“He said only he controls where it leads,” Amber said, trying to read the tiny writing along its side. She gave up. “I doubt he’d want to help us.” She tossed it into the glove compartment and took out the iPad, started tapping.
Glen let a few moments go by before speaking again.
“I don’t mean to whinge,” he said, “but I am really uncomfortable with there being a serial killer in the boot.”
“In the what?” said Amber.
“Trunk,” Milo translated.
“Can he get me?” Glen asked. “What’s separating me from him? Is it this seat? Upholstery and foam? What if he still has his knife? Does he have his knife? We didn’t take it from him, did we? He might be burrowing through to me right now.”
“You’re safe,” said Milo absently. “The car will take care of him.”
“And that’s another thing I’m uncomfortable with,” Glen began, but Amber interrupted.
“Cascade Falls,” she said, list on the screen. “There’s one in Virginia, one in Michigan …” She frowned. “No, wait, those are waterfalls. I think. Well, they might be waterfalls and towns. What one do you think Shanks was talking about?”
“Found it,” said Milo, laying the map across the steering wheel. “Cascade Falls, Oregon.”
“How do you know that’s the one Gregory Buxton grew up in?”
“It feels right.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what we’re going on?”
“You’re on the blackroads, Amber. You’ve got to learn to trust your instincts.”
“If you’re sure …” A moment later, she had called up images of a sleepy little town beside a lake. “The town of Cascade Falls. Less than ten thousand people. How long will it take us to get there?”
“Don’t know,” said Milo, folding away the map. “Two thousand miles … Four days, maybe. Get there some time on Saturday.”
Amber adjusted the bracelets on her wrist, sneaking a peek at the scars there: 406 hours left. Take four days away from that, and it would leave her with …
She scrunched up her face.
“What’s wrong?” Milo asked.
“Nothing,” she mumbled. “Doing math.”
Three hundred and ten hours. Which was … thirteen days, or thereabouts. Just under two weeks. Fully aware that time was slipping away from her, and equally aware that there was nothing she could do about it, Amber nodded. “Okay then, we better get going. Unless you want to find somewhere to sleep?”
She was quietly pleased when Milo shook his head. “Too wired after all that drama. I’ll drive until morning, then we’ll pull in somewhere for a few hours. That okay with you?”
“That’s cool.”
“I’ll be dead by Oregon,” Glen said quietly from the back seat.
She turned, but his face was in shadow. “Aw, listen, Glen …”
“Maybe I should go somewhere fun for my last few days, and let you go on without me.” She could see the edge of a sad smile. “You’ve been to Disney World, Amber – do you think that’d be a good place to die?”
“I’ve … never really thought about it.”
“Maybe on one of the rollercoasters,” Glen said. “Or on that other ride, what’s the really annoying one?”
“It’s a small World.”
“That’s it. Go in alive, come out dead. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? I wonder how many people die in theme parks every year.”
“I don’t know,” said Amber. “But I do know that the chances of someone actually getting injured in the Orlando parks is, like, one in nine million or something.”
“Wow. That’s not bad. So someone dying on It’s a small World would be pretty rare, then?”
“Well, yeah … You’re moving very slow and not a whole lot happens. Are you sure that’s where you want to spend your last few days, though? Isn’t it a bit …”
“Tacky?” said Milo.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say. I was just wondering if it’d be better for you to spend time with your family.”
“My family hates me,” Glen said. “Why do you think I wanted to come here so badly?”
“I’m sure they don’t hate you,” said Amber.
“They might,” said Milo.
Amber ignored him.
