Return of the Reaper novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Eden Road

They went down the stairs fast, with Doyle taking the turns first.

Boots pounded overhead, and a man shouted something about the roof.

At the second landing Doyle pulled the gray phone from his pocket and thumbed a single word to the only number in it.

Now.

On the ground floor a steel door opened onto the alley behind the dock.

Headlights swung around the corner, high and wide.

Abel Moss was at the wheel of a long white flatbed tow truck with no company name on the door.

He leaned across the cab and shoved the passenger door open.

"Get in," he said. "All of you."

Noelle climbed up first with Lila in her arms.

Doyle came last and pulled the door shut as the first shots hit the alley wall behind them.

Abel put his foot down.

The truck swung out of Perry Street with its engine roaring, and in the mirror the black brick of the Gaslight Brewery slid away.

Nobody spoke for six blocks.

Lila sat on Noelle's lap in the middle of the bench seat with her face turned into the nurse's shoulder.

She did not look at Doyle.

He kept his hands on his own knees where she couldn't see them.

At the lights on Elmwood, Lila said in a small voice, "Is the man dead?"

Noelle looked at Doyle over her head.

He could have lied.

"Yes," he said.

"Mommy said no more."

"I know she did."

"Did he have a mommy?"

Doyle swallowed.

"Probably," he said. "I'm sorry, baby."

Lila said nothing else.

She closed her eyes, and after a mile or two her breathing slowed.

She fell asleep against Noelle, with one braid across her cheek.

Doyle wanted to put his hand on her hair.

He didn't, because the hand was not clean.

Past Eden, Abel turned off at a mailbox with no name on it and followed a gravel track between two bare fields.

The farmhouse stood at the end, white and square, with a porch light on and a barn leaning behind it.

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