"The kids."

Todd's stomach dropped. He flew out of the room right behind his wife and found the front door to the adjoining room standing open. The room dead quiet. Empty. No wonder they'd heard nothing bus suspicious silence from that shared wall. Todd felt his face freezing into the sullen expression he wore when he felt emotions building, and knew he'd have to keep his thoughts from Joy. From himself, even.

"Find them," she said, the girlishness long gone as she clutched at her thin robe.

"They're around," he said over his shoulder as he began gobbling up cracked sidewalk with big strides of his short legs.

The family had been lodged on the ground floor at the rear of the motel, their view an open field before a steep ravine overgrown with scrubby woods and dissected by a swift creek that could be heard rather than seen, somewhere below.

God, not the creek.

Todd's mind watched his kids slipping, sliding, flailing in the swift water. He called out, "Melanie Crissie Todd!" in a single burst of contained panic. Nothing came back from the wooded ravine but his own sharp echo.

He saw rooflines a mile or more away on the opposite side of the cut, and wondered with vicious despair if the town liked little kids too much. That would explain the cop, McConlon, stopping strangers' cars: to snatch children for perverts.

But that was crazy.

"Melanie Crissie Todd!"

Nothing. Todd got back to the narrow sidewalk flanking the back of the motel and followed it around to the front, to a niche tucked under the metal stairs to the second floor balcony, and found them.

His breath caught in his throat and he felt his vision threaten to go gray as he fought to catch up with his spent adrenaline.

They stood in still fascination, watching a hollowed-out woman and two scraggly kids beat up a snack food vending machine. The woman was young, but as scrawny as some middle-aged Depression-era Oakie from photos he'd once seen in an admission-free museum in southern Ohio or Kentucky when he wanted to get the family out of the rain. He'd studied those stark photos with a burning sensation deep in his belly.

The woman with the scraggly kids was wrapped in a pair of jeans that could have fit a fifteen-year-old girl, giving her an unwholesome agelessness. Smoke curled around her face from the cigarette dangling from her lips. Todd watched her miserly breasts twitch as she wrestled with the machine.

She uttered something that had to have been a curse, but the words got twisted by her cigarette. Just as well for the sake of the kids who still watched the transaction in open-mouthed fascination.

"You gotta shake it just right," she drawled, apparently to Todd. Then she went back to hand-to-hand combat with it.

The kids with her, a boy and a girl, looked as rode-hard as the woman. Their hair and clothing were dirty and they seemed underfed, underamused. They'd mirror his own kids after a couple more years of this, Todd admitted to himself with brutal honesty.

He remembered the shame he'd felt about their grimy condition while parked on the shoulder of the narrow highway, waiting for the Babylon cop to approach. Now, as he watched Melanie, Crissie and Little Todd milling around the scrawny woman and her dirty kids, like the vending machine antics were the most excitement they'd experienced in a long while, Todd asked himself where things had gone so wrong.

His life, he realized, kept coming back to this. He'd been born and raised in a mountain town where louse-ridden dogs and cars on blocks were part of the landscape. He felt like he'd been the only one in his big, extended family who'd even noticed how different their lives were from what he saw on TV. But then he'd perpetuated the hillbilly stereotype by getting Joy pregnant before they'd finished high school. A hurried marriage and the mine job, soon to follow. By the time his third child was born, Todd was making eighteen an hour plus overtime and Joy was working part-time taking appointments at a beauty salon in Parkersburg. Hardly the Trumps, but they'd saved up most of the down payment for a new home they'd already picked out and pre-qualified for.

Then the economy went to shit and the ax fell at the coal mine and the salon. Story of Todd Dunbar's life.

"I said, is it okay if yours have some?"

The scrawny but not altogether unattractive woman was dangling packages of chips and pretzels just out of reach of Crissie and Little Todd. Like taunting chimps at the zoo. Melanie hung back, but only slightly.

"Oh...yeah," he said. He wasn't sure if there would be a supper that could be spoiled. He glanced at his watch. Not quite five o'clock. "Late summer days," he said. "Hard to keep track of time." Some sort of apology, but he wasn't sure what for.

She watched him like she didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and he didn't blame her. But the day had been something of a fog from the moment the Olds got pulled over.

Trying to find a foothold back into the conversation, Todd told his girls to thank the woman for the snacks she quickly tossed at them. In seconds, all five kids-the woman's and Todd's-had pealed out of sight in one noisy clump. Todd hoped the lady wasn't going to hold out her hand for reimbursement.

"Nice kids," she said.

"Todd...Todd! Did you find them?"

Oh Jesus, he'd forgotten. And now Joy appeared on the balcony almost overhead, still trying to grasp that thin robe around her no longer narrow hips.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I...yeah, I found them. They're okay, Joy. Everything's fine."

"Thanks for telling me," she said. Pissed royally.

"Joy, would you put some clothes on," he said, feeling as ridiculous as his wild-eyed wife should have felt.

She said something he didn't quite hear-probably for the best-before stomping down the stairs and back to the room. Too angry and embarrassed to face the woman who'd grabbed Todd's attention.

"Your wife," the woman said with the cigarette and a trace of a smile.

She turned and plinked more coins into the vending machine.

"Listen," said Todd. "I'll get you some money back at the room for what the girls ate. I just have to break a single." Had to offer, at least.

The woman gave a little laugh and shrugged her bony shoulders. "Money," she said. "I got enough of it, finally."

"Well, I guess I should-"

"Kathy Lee Dwyer."

She turned, hugging a bundle of cellophane-wrapped munchies from the suddenly amenable machine to her meager chest and took a seat on one of the metal stair steps leading up to the balcony. She dropped her stash next to her and looked up. "I guess it's your turn now."

"Oh," he said after an uncomfortable pause. "Sorry. Todd Dunbar."

"Glad to meet you, Sorry Todd Dunbar," she said with a wink in her voice.

With her sitting there, he couldn't help noticing her bitter little nipples poking through the thin fabric of her tank top while she ripped into a bag with tiny, nicotine-stained teeth.

"Dinner," she said. "You work six, eight hours a day in a restaurant, last thing you want is restaurant food. Not that this is any better."

Nonetheless, she munched contentedly for half a minute.

"You folks are new," she said.

"Just got in today, my wife and kids." He half-waved toward the balcony above them as if reminding her of her near-meeting with his better half.

"Yeah," she said, that half-smile returning.

Groping for more, Todd said, "I'm starting work here tomorrow."

"About as surprising as learning it snows in Alaska."

Todd leaned against the rust-flaked metal railing and watched Kathy Lee Dwyer finish one bag, crumple and toss it into a nearby waste container, and tear into another.

It wasn't a subject he wanted to delve deeply into, but Todd found himself saying, "There seems to be a lot of work here in Babylon."

The woman shook her head slightly and let out a chuckle that turned wet with cigarette phlegm. "It's just like everywhere else. Not a lot of work at all." She took a draw on the butt she'd let mostly burn away between two fingers. "There's lots of jobs. Big difference."

"Uh huh," he said, suddenly not anxious to hear more.

Other voices and coarse male laughter started up, and Todd took a few steps toward the sounds. Beyond the alcove housing the vending machine, he could see a dozen people across the patch of brown lawn. They were gathering on the weed-choked pavement surrounding the pitiful swimming pool.

Men, mostly, with working men's tans and jeans plastered to their legs by a day's accumulation of dust and sweat. They gripped six-packs and lawn chairs. One hoisted a big Eighties-style radio on a broad shoulder as he cut across the dead grass to join the others. A battered pickup truck churned up the long driveway from Pleasant Run and expelled more men, more beer.

When he returned to the thin woman sitting on the stair she said, "After five. Place starts to fill up fast about now, when the factories and such shut down for the day."

She crumpled up another snack bag and sat it next to her. She licked the salt from her chapped red fingers, stubbed out her smoke, expertly flicked it into the trash container and produced another and a lighter in a flash of nicotine magic.

Todd peeked around the alcove wall again. There were more of them now. Even a few kids mucking about by the stagnant water. Mental note: keep the kids away from there. Someone turned on the boom box and the twang of old-style country drifted their way.

"They all work here?" he asked, thrusting a thumb in their direction.

"They have jobs here," she said, as if intent on making that point clear.

Todd was now very conscious of the electric hum of the vending machines. It vaguely annoyed him.

"Except for Carl Haggerty and D.B., I been here the longest, a couple months. Guy named Doyle-something came with Carl, before me and after D.B., but I barely knew him and he just up and disappeared one day, so I s'pose he don't count. A couple others have left the same way, all of a sudden." She shrugged. "Drifters."

She watched him watching her, and went on. "I work at a diner on Main View Road, which is what Pleasant Run becomes once it rolls into the heart of town. Maybe a mile from here. Town's got like four or five blocks of gas stations, bars, small offices, a department store, post office and what have you." She sucked on her cigarette. "Place I work, it's the Old Time Cafe. I get six dollars an hour on top of the tips, which ain't bad. Not bad at all. Sometimes three bucks on a seven-dollar breakfast check. Figure it out."

Todd had no idea where she was going with this.

She shrugged off his blank stare. "I'm not saying I'm getting rich, but they let me work my own hours and even pay basic medical for my kids and me. Ideal job, right? And yet they're so desperate to fill the position, they get Marty McConlon to flag me down and make me the offer right there on the spot. I mean, like this whole town ain't got a single person wants a waitressing job with the best tips, benefits and working conditions I ever seen."

Todd felt his chest tighten. He grabbed his pack and plugged a cigarette between his lips, lit it and dragged deep. He still had no idea what the woman was getting at. Didn't know what she wanted from him.

"Did he tell you your car was a road hazard?" he asked her.

She laughed. "That's what he used on you, huh? That's how he got Denver Dugan and Jamey Weeks and some of the others. But with me-" She stopped, her eyes flitting from his gaze. "It was different with me," she mumbled. She stubbed out her cigarette and flicked it so that it sparked hard on the pavement. "Let's just say-"

She never finished. Her eyes went as wide as Todd's when the screaming started. Maybe she thought it was one of her own ragged children, but it wasn't.

It was Melanie.

Chapter Six.

The road tilted upward enough to get a faint whine out of the smooth engine of the Lexus, and Paul had to stay alert to follow the multiple curves taking him up Darrow Road until it became Pleasant Run and took him into his still largely unfamiliar home.

It was a few minutes after five as he fiddled with a radio that had turned to static mush at the same point as always, just before that seedy motel sitting high on the edge of town.

Although Savannah Easton, their real estate agent, had hinted that Babylon didn't exactly lay down the welcome mat for newcomers, there seemed to be quite a few of them staying at the Sundown Motel. He could see them as he drove by, lounging by the barely visible swimming pool. At first he'd taken them for locals in that the town couldn't possibly draw that many overnight lodgers, but they didn't look like everyone else he'd seen about town. Mostly men, they looked rough. They looked like outsiders imported to do the town's heavy lifting during the day, then dispatched to the outskirts as evening approached. Like third-world laborers in some oil-rich nation.

The Lexus flew past the motel and negotiated a slight bend where Pleasant Run smoothed out and changed names to Main View, one of Babylon's two main drags. Paul hung a left onto Third Street and cut to Middle View where he took a right. It was nearly as busy as Main View here, but fewer restaurants and retail and more modest commercial space.

With too much time on his hands since he and Darby and Tuck had moved here, he'd burned off some of his energy with long, aimless walks that had gradually uncovered the town's delightfully skewered sense of time. A curious number of shops, restaurants, offices and service providers only came alive after sundown. There seemed to be as many Babylonians walking the streets at midnight as could be found in the middle of the afternoon.

Stopping for the light on Fifth and Middle View, just before Crenshaw, their own street, his attention was drawn to a plate glass window. He frowned as his thoughts returned to a minor, though unsettling, event of the week before.

Babylon hadn't been Paul's first choice, but he loved strolling its moonlit streets. The Detroit suburb he'd formerly called home consisted of a couple square miles of cul-de-sacs with pseudo Tudors and sprawling McMansions on imposing lots, the residential pockets bordered by cookie-cutter malls and franchise restaurants.

Babylon, by pleasant contrast, actually had its own distinct downtown, five or six blocks of unzoned brick and wood storefronts from a mishmash of eras. The pubs and specialty shops and service stations, the theater and bowling alley and department store and funeral home carried names that would most likely be known only to fellow residents: Crenshaw, Chambers, Chaplin, Buck, Tolliver-all evidently prominent names in Babylon, perhaps for decades or a century or more. It was a place with its own unique history, with a story attached to every faded brick, each carved cornice and pilaster.

It was on a night of exploration the week before that he'd stumbled upon the colorfully named Winking Dog Saloon. The same bar that his Lexus now idled uncomfortably near while the damned red light refused to change.

He wasn't sure what had drawn him to the Winking Dog that other night except that he carried a romantic picture of planting his ass on a barstool just like the regulars, and knocking back a beer. Make it a shot and a beer if that was the local custom. The night being cool and clear and inviting, he could see himself as the transplanted city boy, hailed for his sophistication and youthful charm. He'd meet people who knew nothing about him-his soap-opera relationships and suddenly rocky career-and talk sports and local gossip with them. They'd later tell their friends and neighbors, "That new guy, Highsmith, he's not so bad for a rich city guy. Drinks beer, slams shots and tells dirty jokes."

And he-and by extension, Darby-would finally find the acceptance that had eluded them since moving day.

Right in line with his fantasy, the locals did take notice as soon as he walked in the door of the Winking Dog. All heads had turned, and conversations stopped.

Paul stood frozen in the doorway, his psychic hairs bristling like a cat sensing danger from the shadows. It was as if he'd intruded on an orgy, the closest image his mind could come up with for what was going on.

And yet there was nothing happening in there. Darts were being thrown, girls chatted up, cigarettes smoked. At the bar sat a cluster of men in their twenties. They were dressed in the summertime attire of young men everywhere: baggy shorts, loose T-shirts, ball caps. But they watched him with glittery-eyed interest. Grinning, unshaven, one or two with long, greasy hair jutting beneath their caps.

"Hi, Paul," one of the grinning men said, his voice like gravel at the bottom of a wheelbarrow. His whiskers and brim-shadowed eyes shone black against his pale face.

Paul nodded. More than once he'd made sales presentations to grim, hard-faced clients and plowed on as though he couldn't read their doubts. He'd held the shocked or sullen glances of employees while terminating them on more occasions than he liked to recall, but he failed this time and this time only. He couldn't force a return greeting from his locked jaw.

Then another sound goosebumped his arms and the back of his neck. A low rumble, something you felt in your feet before your eardrums caught notice. The slow warning growl of a threatened animal. A big animal. A sound you'd take very seriously if it came out of the dark woods.

Just as intimidating coming out of a dark bar.

Paul backed up a step until his spine pressed against the door that had closed behind him.

It had come from the dark-whiskered man who'd spoken to him.

"Purcell," warned the bartender, a rangy, broad-shouldered man with a jewel twinkling in one earlobe.

Paul gave his watch an exaggerated glance, shook his head and mumbled something that was supposed to imply a need to leave the premises as suddenly as he'd entered.

Someone snickered. "Guess you got places to go." He had a male model's sharp, clean features under a spike of unwashed blond hair, and a high taunt of a voice.

Without his eyes deviating from the crowd, Paul reached behind him and found the doorknob. As he did, he heard the unearthly, deep-throated growl again, a sound so untamed that he would have been sure it came from the television over the bar except that it relayed nothing more beastly than a Tigers ballgame.

"Stop in again, Paul, when you have more time," the one named Purcell said, his voice still faintly tainted with the sound that had worked its way up his throat seconds before.