Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

police."
    "They can't all be in on it. The sheriff's office, the State Highway Patrol, the S.B.I. The devil doesn’t own everybody."
    "Maybe not, but how do you tell?" Walter kept glancing in the rear-view mirror. "We better guess right on the first try, or else we're in even deeper trouble."
    Julia fished in her purse for her cell phone. "Can't we make an anonymous tip?"
    "They screwed with your clock and VCR in ways I can't figure out. You reckon they won't be able to trace a phone call? For all I know they’ve planted a GPS tracker on my Jeep."
    Julia glanced at the cell phone and saw that it had no bars. “Dead.”
    “Not many towers way out here.”
    The logging road widened as the slope became less steep. The forest was a blur of gold, red, and brown as the Jeep gained speed. Julia fastened her seatbelt and held on to the roll bar overhead to keep from being thrown around by the juddering. Walter slowed briefly, engaged the four-wheel drive lever, and accelerated down the muddy road.
    The trees thinned out, and they came to a stretch of pasture bounded by a barbed-wire fence. A few cows gazed at them, not pausing in their cud-chewing. The Jeep crossed a shallow creek that intersected the road.
    "They were after me in Memphis," Julia said over the roar of the engine.
    "On your last trip?" Walter kept his eyes on the road.
    "No. Before I moved here. I didn't know it until recently."
    "What do they want?"
    "I'm not sure. Either to shut me up or finish the job."
    "Job?"
    "My father was one of them. One of the Creeps. When I was four years old . . . "
    She didn't want to tell the story again. She wanted to leave it undisturbed in the basement of her head, to let it gather dust and cobwebs until it was safely insulated, forever lost in shadows. Telling Dr. Forrest was difficult enough, but telling someone she'd only known a few days was impossible. She didn't want Walter to think she was crazy.
    But Walter wasn't exactly unscarred, either. He'd suffered his own loss and harbored his own sorrows. But he still was holding something back, and she realized faith couldn’t be based on logic. She’d either have to trust him or jump from the Jeep and take her chances, and she was out of second chances.
    "What happened when you were four?" Walter asked.
    She studied his face. His jaw was set in determination, as if he were a man with a mission. He'd already made sacrifices for her. If only she could be brave enough, for once in her life, to let somebody reach her. And maybe help him in return.
    Walter stepped on the brakes and the Jeep slid to a stop. "What's wrong?"
    Julia put her hands over her face. "You wouldn't understand."
    Walter grabbed her wrist and pulled one of her hands away from her face. "Listen here, damn it. I don't know what I got myself into. I just might be heading for a bullet, for all I know. I walked through hell to drag you away from the devil and now we're driving into who knows what. Don't tell me I won't understand."
    Julia tried to look away from him, to the rolling hills, pastures dotted with barns, and stretches of woods that surrounded them. But she couldn't escape the magnetism of his anger. She gathered air to speak.
    "They took the ring," she managed to say.
    "Ring? You make it sound like some kind of elf quest or something."
    "They gave me to Satan," Julia said, finally shattering, her tears erupting. But the panic quickly faded, became something new, transmuted into a calm, cleansing anger like lead changed into gold by a philosopher's stone. "My father gave me to the Creeps so they could cut me up as a blood sacrifice and have a party with my body. At least, I think that's what happened."
    It was Walter's turn to look away.
    "My father disappeared that same night," Julia continued, before Walter joined those who judged her a hopeless head case. "The police never solved the case. My injuries went on the record as trauma from trying to climb out my broken bedroom window. I spent the next ten years in foster care, going from home to home, trying to forget anything had ever happened. I got lucky for a teenaged foster kid, was adopted by a kind, well-to-do couple. They died in a car crash when I was nineteen, but left me enough money to finish college and not have to struggle to make ends meet."
    Julia was surprised at herself because the story was falling out so easily. It had taken two years to tell Lance Danner that much about her past. Dr. Forrest had elicited such detail in a few