Doctor Sleep: A Novel

Besides, the goodbyes going on in Rose’s EarthCruiser that night were of an especially intimate sort.
    She lay with her fingers laced together behind her head and watched Crow dress. “You visited that store, right? District X?”
    “Not me personally, I have a reputation to protect. I sent Jimmy Numbers.” Crow grinned as he buckled his belt. “He could’ve gotten what we needed in fifteen minutes, but he was gone for two hours. I think Jimmy’s found a new home.”
    “Well, that’s good. I hope you boys enjoy yourselves.” Trying to keep it light, but after two days of mourning Grampa Flick, climaxed by the circle of farewell, keeping anything light was an effort.
    “He didn’t get anything that compares to you.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “Had a preview, did you, Henry?”
    “Didn’t need one.” He eyed her as she lay naked with her hair spread out in a dark fan. She was tall, even lying down. He had ever liked tall women. “You’re the feature attraction in my home theater and always will be.”
    Overblown—just a bit of Crow’s patented razzle-dazzle—but it pleased her just the same. She got up and pressed against him, her hands in his hair. “Be careful. Bring everyone back. And bring her .”
    “We will.”
    “Then you better get a wiggle on.”
    “Relax. We’ll be in Sturbridge when EZ Mail Services opens on Friday morning. In New Hampshire by noon. By then, Barry will have located her.”
    “As long as she doesn’t locate him .”
    “I’m not worried about that.”
    Fine, Rose thought. I’ll worry for both of us. I’ll worry until I’m looking at her wearing cuffs on her wrists and clamps on her ankles .
    “The beauty of it,” Crow said, “is that if she does sense us and tries to put up an interference wall, Barry will key on that.”
    “If she’s scared enough, she might go to the police.”
    He flashed a grin. “You think? ‘Yes, little girl,’ they’d say, ‘we’re sure these awful people are after you. So tell us if they’re from outer space or just your ordinary garden variety zombies. That way we’ll know what to look for.’ ”
    “Don’t joke, and don’t take this lightly. Get in clean and get out the same way, that’s how it has to be. No outsiders involved. No innocent bystanders. Kill the parents if you need to, kill anyone who tries to interfere, but keep it quiet.”
    Crow snapped off a comic salute. “Yes, my captain.”
    “Get out of here, idiot. But give me another kiss first. Maybe a little of that educated tongue, for good measure.”
    He gave her what she asked for. Rose held him tight, and for a long time.
    15
    Dan and John rode in silence most of the way back to the motel in Adair. The spade was in the trunk. The baseball glove was in the backseat, wrapped in a Holiday Inn towel. At last John said, “We’ve got to bring Abra’s folks into this now. She’s going to hate it and Lucy and David won’t want to believe it, but it has to be done.”
    Dan looked at him, straight-faced, and said: “What are you, a mind-reader?”
    John wasn’t, but Abra was, and her sudden loud voice in Dan’s head made him glad that this time John was driving. If he had been behind the wheel, they very likely would have ended up in some farmer’s cornpatch.
    ( NOOOOO! )
    “Abra.” He spoke aloud so that John could hear at least his half of the conversation. “Abra, listen to me.”
    ( NO, DAN! THEY THINK I’M ALL RIGHT! THEY THINK I’M ALMOST NORMAL NOW! )
    “Honey, if these people had to kill your mom and dad to get to you, do you think they’d hesitate? I sure don’t. Not after what we found back there.”
    There was no counterargument she could make to this, and Abra didn’t try . . . but suddenly Dan’s head was filled with her sorrow and her fear. His eyes welled up again and spilled tears down his cheeks.
    Shit.
    Shit, shit, shit .
    16
    Early Thursday morning.
    Steamhead Steve’s Winnebago, with Snakebite Andi currently behind the wheel, was cruising eastbound on I-80 in western Nebraska at a perfectly legal sixty-five miles an hour. The first streaks of dawn had just begun to show on the horizon. In Anniston it was two hours later. Dave Stone was in his bathrobe making coffee when the phone rang. It was Lucy, calling from Concetta’s Marlborough Street condo. She sounded like a woman who had nearly reached the end of her resources.
    “If nothing changes for the worse—although I guess that’s the only way things can change