Chapter 5: Night Cart

The man with the gas can drove away at ten past four, and Heidi and I stayed behind the woodpile until the engine was gone.

Neither of us talked on the road back.

At the hospital she parked in the staff lot and gripped the wheel.

"I'm going to go be an intern for ninety minutes," she said. "I'll try to look like someone who hasn't seen a fire. Don't do anything alone."

I wrote on her phone: HE HAS MY BODY.

"I know," Heidi said. "Don't do anything alone."

I did it alone.

The basement lift opened on the same buzzing corridor, and a man in a navy security jacket stood at the far end with a coffee.

He was tall and broad, with short brown hair, and he leaned against the wall with his weight on one shoulder.

He straightened when he saw me.

"Hattie," he said. "Hey. I thought they'd sent you home."

I held up the mop and shrugged.

His eyes went to my sleeves.

"You smell like a campfire."

I looked down.

There was soot across the cuff of Hattie's uniform and a streak of it on my wrist.

I rubbed it with my thumb, and he watched me do it.

"Somebody's burning something out on Quarry Road," he said. "I heard it on the scanner. Did you see it from the bus?"

I nodded, and it felt like a lie I would have to carry.

His name tag said J. DRAPER.

He had the face of a man who had not slept in a week, and he kept the coffee in his left hand.

The knuckles of his right hand were scabbed over, a long dark seam across them.

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