Headlights(107)

It’ll be less than two hours back to Denver.

And then all of this is over. Hannah and me going down for this.

And of course it would be this way. How many nights have I stayed up thinking about the Drifters in their cells, about how they were so certain of their innocence? Of course I would end up here too. Maybe if I go, they’ll be let free.

But Hannah.

Silent tears stream down Hannah’s face. She’s thinking of incarceration, of being indoors. Panicking, being in this car now. I understand, through that other-space we share. It was one thing when she shared the car with me, who she’s been close with. Who she … Even now my pinky hurts, and I welcome it. But Tillman’s a stranger to her. A different scent. And he’s now cuffed her twice.

“Can you roll the window down for her?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No can do, bud. You two are gonna sit quietly and do what you’re supposed to for once.”

“What’s happening with the case?” I ask.

Tillman gives me a look through the rearview.

“It’s not us,” I say. “I have nothing to do with the murders, and neither does Hannah. What has Father Sk—Theo Wharton said?”

Tillman sighs, flips on a blinker. After a second, he glances back through the rearview, says, “He got away. We have no idea what happened. By the time I got inside the dome, he was already gone.”

“Are you serious? Tillman, we need to find him. He’s the best lead we’ve got. He’s—”

Maybe the only thing that’ll get Hannah and me out of this.

“All right, brother, we don’t need to do anything. You have lied and broken too many laws to count, you two are in custody, you put Josie in a bad spot knowing what she did about your past and askin’ her not to tell Murphy. And on top of all that…” Tillman’s voice grows in volume. He says, hands gripping the wheel, “Yeah. You know what? If I’m bein’ real honest, and I’m sorry to say it this way, but you’re a real shit partner. You keep everything to yourself, you’re sneaky, distrustful, and frankly just have a real bad attitude. So how about you just sit quiet for once and let me do my job, since you never intended to help or do it with me as a team.”

The car is quiet for a second, aside from his podcast.

I clear my throat.

“You’re right,” I say. “About all that stuff.”

“And furthermore,” he says, his voice louder and angrier than I’ve ever heard it, “you really thought you could just pull up to a jail where they have your dad—who we all just found out was your dad—and not think we’d immediately come to get you?”

“We thought the Wi-Fi was out. Thought you wouldn’t know.”

“Didn’t need Wi-Fi. Just regular freakin’ logic that you’d come here.”

“I just want answers,” I say. “And I thought, stupidly I guess, that I’d have more time.”

“Well, joke’s on you ’cause I was already on my way. And we could have gotten answers together before now if you’d just been any kind of team player.”

I shift, try and sit upright with my arms behind me. “You’re right, Tillman. You’re a good agent—probably better than me. And I’m glad you’re here, and that you got us.”

Hannah shoots me a look at that. Her face is pale, her cuffed hands held over her nose and mouth.

I take a deep breath and say to Nat Tillman words I never thought I would.

“We need your help.”

Tillman shakes his head. “Dude, what are you not getting about this—”

I don’t let myself hesitate, don’t let myself think. The highway carrying us forward.

For the first time as an adult I say, “I see ghosts.”

The words linger in the car, over the voices of the podcast. Tillman is silent.

I clear my throat and say, “I always have, probably always will.”

A long pause, again. Then, Tillman looks back at me through the rearview, says, “You…”

“I didn’t want to admit it to myself, because … I mean, I thought I was insane. Or holding on to some childhood fantasy. I don’t know. But they are literally everywhere. There’s a fucking ghost stegosaurus ahead of us.”

“Ghost … stegosaurus,” Tillman says.

“Let me just tell you. What we’ve found, where we are with things. You’re right that I’ve been a shit partner, and I’ve broken laws, and whatever happens at the end of this, I just want to see the right guy go down. We need your help, Tillman. I’m telling you, it’s not us.”

Tillman deliberates, his podcast playing, driving in the snow. After a long minute, he turns down the volume slightly.

I take that as the best invitation we’re going to get.

I tell him everything. Everything except Hannah’s part in it. She moves to touch my leg with her own, a movement Tillman clocks in the rearview. Every now and then, Tillman asks a clarifying question. I have no idea if he believes us, if he’s really listening to any of this. I wouldn’t be, in his position.

At the end of us telling him everything, there’s a long pause.

Then Tillman says, “So you two both see ghosts, which you didn’t really know were ghosts before, but now you do. There’s a thing called a Witchwalker that wants something from you both—unclear what. Daniel’s been remembering his mom in a river in Aspen for unknown reasons, Father Sky slash Theo Wharton seems to have, if not orchestrated this all, then at least known about everything. And someone’s been trying to frame you both and may have been targeting you two specifically for a long time. Oh and also there’s ghost dinosaurs.”