Chapter 2

He turned left. Remus was a known identity, safe in its predictability and size. But he’d spent the last two months in the tiny Michigan town. The wolves he’d heard in the night indicated he’d become just as known and predictable.

The gas got him to Mecosta, though barely. From the food mart, he picked up a case of bottled water and enough snacks to last him a couple days. Nothing perishable. The pain from the shift was a hurricane buffeting against his joints and muscles, but he had enough drugs stashed away to forgo wasting money he might need later on. He’d be sleeping in the bed of his truck for the foreseeable future.

The teenaged clerk barely looked at Andre when he rung him up, and Andre made sure to keep his head ducked so his shoulder-length hair hid most of his face from the security camera mounted on the wall. If Perry stopped in looking for him, he’d get nothing of use for his hunt. In this neck of the woods, even Andre’s 1981 Ford didn’t stand out enough for anyone to remember.

He swallowed half a dozen ibuprofen with one of the waters before hitting the road again. The truck’s radio had busted before he ever took ownership, but he had an old cassette deck he’d picked up at a Goodwill in Ypsilanti that broke up the monotony of driving. He was stuck with music more than two decades old, but at least he never worried about someone stealing any of it.

Billy Joel was just begging not to shut him out when he rolled into the dusty Amoco station at the outskirts of Mellowbush. The pumps were mix-and-match. One had been upgraded to an ATM model, but the other still had the old rotary numbers flipping down as the cost went up. A large sign mounted from the overhang directed customers to pay inside before pumping, though some creative individual had scratched out a couple doing it doggy-style along the bottom of the chipped white metal, and the smell of pizza wafted from the Little Caesar’s across the street.

So far, Mellowbush was a lot like any of the half-dozen towns he’d stopped at over the last year. As he jogged across the lot to the station’s entrance, he had an odd sense of coming home.

Frigid air-conditioning blasted into his face when he stepped inside, stealing his breath away. Northern Michigan in June wasn’t nearly hot enough to warrant such arctic temperatures, but from the way the rotund cashier fanned himself with a tattered copy of Sports Illustrated’sswimsuit edition, they might as well have been in the tropics.

“Hot enough for you?”

When the man laughed at his own joke, Andre shrugged and smiled. He pulled a sweaty ten out of his wallet and laid it on the counter, then pointed at the truck outside the window.

The cashier followed the line of his finger. “That yours? Looks like the rust’s the only thing holding it together.” Another robust laugh. It was probably a very good thing he could amuse himself because nobody else was likely to be entertained by his stale commentary.

Andre pushed the money closer.

“If you want gas, that’s only goin’ to get you ‘bout two and a half gallons. Depending how low you are, you might not even make it out of town on that.”

Smiling and nodding, Andre retreated to go back out to the pump.

Next to the front door, an explosion of colored flyers fluttered under the force of the overhead vents. The uppermost one was canary yellow with an ornate cross in the upper left corner. The headline, “The Light’s Always on in God’s House,” stopped Andre from stepping outside.

He smoothed down the lower half, scanning over the text. It read like any other promotional material he’d ever seen for a church, reminding people of Sunday service, listing the contact information and address in case somebody needed to be reminded of where it was, but finding it now when he was on the move felt like more than circumstance. It felt like fate, like leaving Remus behind had been the exact right thing he could do.

In a world where right and wrong were as elusive as trapping wind, any sort of sign was welcome.

“You lookin’ for the Lighthouse?” the cashier asked behind him.

Keeping his finger on the flyer, Andre looked back and nodded. He made a sweeping gesture toward the road, hoping the man understood he was asking for directions. Most likely, the only formal sign language the man knew would be the kind that got his ass kicked on a drunk Saturday night.

“Anything worth finding’s on this drag. Just go down to the flashing red, go through, and it’ll be right there on the left.”

Another good sign. Most people went through the rigmarole of assuming Andre was deaf instead of mute before catching on to what his various gestures might mean.