The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [102]
We don’t want any more attention drawn to us.
Their rules.
Always.
Although a few people still seemed to reside there, the small village at the end of her journey was like an eastern version of a ghost town. Paint was peeling off most of the dilapidated houses. Foundations were collapsing. Front porches were caving in everywhere in Milton.
Nearly every backyard seemed to overflow with mechanical relics: rusting refrigerators, the shells of automobiles and pickup trucks, bent and twisted machine parts that couldn’t possibly have a function.
As she drove down closer to the Hudson River, the scenery changed for the better. There were larger houses, many of which appeared to be country estates. Birds sang in the trees, which were mostly maples and elms and graceful old evergreens.
Occasionally, the river peeked through drooping leaves, looking blindingly blue, oblivious to anything but its own monolithic beauty.
Following instructions, Sarah finally parked the Land Rover at an overgrown driveway bearing a wrought-iron signpost indicating that the house belonged to a certain J. Kamerer. She could see a large estate house from the road.
The house was off-white, graying in spots, with its paint peeling and chipped, but not beyond the ministrations of a handyman. An acre plot of lawn was overgrown, yet had obviously been shorn once or twice during the summer.
Why had she been asked to come to this place? Is Sam being kept here? she wondered. She climbed out of the Land Rover.
“Hello,” Sarah called. “Hello. Hello there?” she called again, her voice cutting sharply through the screen of summer’s insect buzz, the persistent bird chirping in the woods.
She had been calm on the drive upstate. Her state of distraction had served as a tranquilizer. Now she was aware of how vulnerable she was, standing here and looking around. Where are they holding Sam? her brain screamed.
“Hello?…Hello?…Is anyone there?” Sarah called out again. Still no answer came back.
She wondered if anyone was watching her. She had the disturbing intuition that someone probably was.
Intermittently, a solitary car or pickup truck drove by on the winding country road that had led her to the house. J. Kamerer? She didn’t know anyone by that name. Not that she could remember, anyway.
Finally, Sarah decided to do what she had been told. She slowly walked back to the Land Rover, to fetch her package. What they wanted from her. This was the hardest part yet, harder than she’d imagined when she received the instructions.
When she reached the vehicle, Sarah put her hands down into the front seat. She paused for a moment, trying to calm herself, trying to breathe.
Her writing and research for The Club were there, sitting on the car seat. All other copies had already been destroyed.
She gathered the bundle of papers up in her arms and began to carry it across the front lawn, almost like a small, injured animal.
Sarah understood that she was a loose end for them, no more than that. They didn’t want her book published. It would be embarrassing. That was what this was about. Saving the Midnight Club from discomfort and embarrassment. Preserving their respectability; their invisibility.
Their goddamn rules.
She was almost certain someone was watching. Where were they keeping Sam? Oh, Sam, where are you, baby?
Could he be right here, in this woodsy neighborhood, with all of its somber nooks and dark crannies? Could he be in that house?
Sarah realized she was feeling light-headed and feverish in the summer heat. Blue jays continued to sing from the trees. Crickets and other insects buzzed, almost like an electric current in the air.
Sarah listened for another kind of sound. A human sound? A small, innocent boy’s voice calling her name?
She shuffled unsteadily from the Land Rover, toward the oversized, ramshackle house. Tiny insects seemed to swarm around her. A woodpecker