Doctor Sleep: A Novel

fell to the floor and rolled. But providence favors True above rubes, it had always been that way and was now. He got just enough into her. He felt her little handhold on his mind first slip, then fall away. Her hands did the same. She stared at him with shocked, floating eyes.
    Crow patted her shoulder. “We’re going for a ride, Abra. You’re going to meet exciting new people.”
    Incredibly, she managed a smile. A rather frightening one for a girl so young that with her hair piled up under a cap, she could still have passed for a boy. “Those monsters you call your friends are all dead. Theyyy . . .”
    The last word was only an unwinding slur as her eyes rolled up and her knees came unhinged. Crow was tempted to let her drop—it would serve her too right—but restrained the impulse and caught her under the arms instead. She was valuable property, after all.
    True property.
    9
    He had come in through the rear door, snapping back the next-to-useless spring lock with a single downward flick of Henry Rothman’s American Express Platinum Card, but he had no intention of leaving that way. There was nothing but a high fence at the foot of the sloping backyard, and beyond that a river. Also, his transportation was in the other direction. He carried Abra through the kitchen and into the empty garage. Both parents at work, maybe . . . unless they were out at Cloud Gap, gloating over Andi, Billy, and Nut. For now he didn’t give much of a shit about that end of things; whoever had been helping the girl could wait. Their time would come.
    He slid her limp body under a table holding her father’s few tools. Then he thumbed the button that opened the garage door and stepped out, being sure to slap on that big old Henry Rothman smile before he did. The key to survival in the world of rubes was to look as if you belonged, as if you were always on the goodfoot, and no one was better at it than Crow. He walked briskly down to the truck and moved the geezer again, this time to the middle of the bench seat. As Crow turned in to the Stone driveway, Billy’s head lolled against his shoulder.
    “Gettin a little chummy there, aren’t you, oldtimer?” Crow asked, and laughed as he drove the red truck into the garage. His friends were dead and this situation was horribly dangerous, but there was one big compensation: he felt totally alive and aware for the first time in a great many years, the world bursting with color and humming like a powerline. He had her, by God. In spite of all her weird strength and nasty tricks, he had her. Now he would bring her to Rose. A love offering.
    “Jackpot,” he said, and gave the dashboard one hard, exultant hit.
    He stripped off Abra’s backpack, left it under the worktable, and lifted her into the truck on the passenger side. He seatbelted both of his snoozing passengers. It had certainly occurred to him to snap the geezer’s neck and leave his body in the garage, but the geezer might come in handy. If the drug didn’t kill him, that was. Crow checked for a pulse on the side of the grizzled old neck and felt it, slow but strong. There was no question about the girl; she was leaning against the passenger window and he could see her breath fogging the glass. Excellent.
    Crow took a second to inventory his stock. No gun—the True Knot never traveled with firearms—but he still had two full hypos of the noddy-time night-night stuff. He didn’t know how far two would get him, but the girl was his priority. Crow had an idea that the geezer’s period of usefulness might prove to be extremely limited. Oh, well. Rubes came and rubes went.
    He took out his cell and this time it was Rose he hit on the speed dial. She answered just as he had resigned himself to leaving a message. Her voice was slow, her pronunciation slurry. It was a little like talking to a drunk.
    “Rose? What’s up with you?”
    “The girl messed with me a trifle more than I expected, but I’m all right. I don’t hear her anymore. Tell me you have her.”
    “I do, and she’s having a nice nap, but she’s got friends. I don’t want to meet them. I’ll head west immediately, and I’ve got no time to be fucking with maps. I need secondary roads that’ll take me across Vermont and into New York.”
    “I’ll put Toady Slim on it.”
    “You need to send someone east to meet me immediately, Rosie, and with whatever you can lay your hands on that’ll keep Little Miss Nitro pacified, because I don’t have much