Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"Pardon?"

"He likes you. He gets that possum grin on his face and I know what he's thinking about." "Lay off it, Wyatt," Terry said. Wyatt's hand lay close to her shoulder. The nails were clipped and clean, the fingers as pale and thick and gnarled as turnips. The back of his ring finger touched her skin. She felt herself jerk, as though she had been burned with a piece of ice.

"Mr. Holland got a young'un up at Dr. Voss's place? A boy named Lucas?"

"Yes," Maisey said, looking straight ahead now, watching a lighted gas station slide behind them in the darkness.

"You know who I am, don't you?" Wyatt said at the back of her head.

"No."

"You ever go to Sunday school?"

"Yes."

"Then you know it's a sin to lie."

"Give it a rest, Wyatt," Terry said. The inside of the c

ar became very quiet. Maisey forced herself to turn and look in the backseat. Wyatt was staring at Terry, his head tilted slightly. Terry glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes like two marbles caught inside the glass.

"I'm gonna pull in for gas," Terry said.

"You do that," Wyatt said.

"Wyatt?"

But Wyatt only grinned and didn't answer. "Wyatt?" Terry said again.

"Lend me your comb. This beautiful girl has made me sweat inside my hat," Wyatt said.

Terry pulled off the highway into a truck stop and parked the car by a gas pump. He got out and put the nozzle into the gas tank and began cleaning the windows. He seemed to study Wyatt's face through the glass.

"You want me to pay for it?" Terry asked.

"No, I'm going in. Maybe get us some fried pies. Other supplies, too," Wyatt said, as though coming out of a trance. He smiled in a knowing way at Terry and pushed Maisey's seat forward and got out of the car.

Terry watched him enter the truck stop, then he pulled the gas nozzle from the tank and clanked it back on the pump and got into the car. Through the truck stop window he watched Wyatt pay for the gas, then return to the counter and exchange a dollar bill for silver and go into the men's room.

Terry chewed on his lip, his eyes busy with thought.

"What are you doing?" Maisey said.

"Don't worry about it," Terry said, and started the car and burned rubber onto the highway.

They roared through Bonner, passing the lumber mill and a church and a school and rows of company houses with birch trees in the yards. Terry poured on the gas at the edge of town and the tires squealed on the curves above the Blackfoot River.

"Slow down," she said.

"Don't be telling me what to do, Maisey," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"To your house. Where you think?" he replied.

"I didn't tell you where I live."

"Yeah, you did. You just don't remember."