He was too old to be a Bobby. No one over the age of eighteen should be a Bobby, unless he was a professional athlete and Bobby Walker, though not grossly out of shape, was long past eighteen. His face was more weathered than tan beneath unruly hair that had started to recede. He squinted as though he needed glasses—which might account for his parking habits.
But Bobby Walker—RJ Walker, in all probability—had all his teeth, at least all the ones that showed when he talked. Nic hadn't gotten used to seeing people her own age with missing teeth. Snaggle-tooth grins were a constant reminder of how fundamentally different life was in dead-center Florida.
Bobby Walker stuck out his hand. She clasped it barely long enough to say—
"Nicole Larsens."
"I don't mean to bother you, ma'am, but you've got to quit feeding the squirrels."
"I'm not feeding them," Nic replied, feeling very un-ma'am-like in her jeans and nap-wrinkled T-shirt.
"Maybe you don't think you're feeding them, ma'am, but they wouldn't be here like this, if they weren't finding food."
Nic blinked and realized that between Bobby and his red pickup, there'd been a squirrel explosion. The animals were agitated. She couldn't count more than a few without losing track. There were at least a dozen and more when she looked right or left.
"I'm not feeding them. I'm not doing anything to attract them."
"Well, ma'am, then maybe they've got a colony under your trailer. In winter they like to find someplace warm—"
A colony of squirrels under the sagging bedroom floor? The image conjured up countless bad movies, and Nic's thoughts must have shown on her face because Bobby Walker quickly said—
"I could check underneath, ma'am. Set a few traps—?"
Spring-loaded rings of rusty, serrated metal added themselves to Nic's imagination without improving her sense of security.
"Live traps, ma'am," Bobby Walker added, accurately guessing the reasonfor Nic's silence. "I'll empty 'em down the road. I'll look for holes, too. You don't want to go under there, ma'am."
Southern hospitality. Southern charm. And every bit as effective as Northern sarcasm. Whatever Nic saw when she looked at Bobby Walker, what he saw was another damn Yankee without the sense God gave ants. On the other hand, he was absolutely right: Nic didn't want to crawl around under the trailer. She could waste time begging the park owner or accept Bobby Walker's offer.
The choice was clear, but before Bobby Walker went off to get his traps, Nic asked, "Have you heard of pallbearer squirrels?"
He gave her a doubting glance. "No, ma'am, can't say that I have."
So she told him, in quick sentences, about the power problems, her call to the utility company, and the explanation she'd received.
"Huh," Bobby Walker concluded. "They do get into habits, but so do people.
Never heard anything about them following leaders—" He caught himself, changed his mind. "My momma used to say that when squirrels got crazy, it was because they were chasing brownies. My momma said things like that; she was Scottish."
Nic took note of the past tense and said nothing about Mrs. Walker's opinions of ancestry.
For the next hour, Mrs. Walker's son thumped and cursed beneath her rented trailer on his way to deciding that the crawlspace wasn't squirrel-infested.
"There's a hole or two they might fit through, but there's no scat, no nothing to say they've set up housekeeping. Looks like they've just got a fascination for your front door—"
They both took a moment to study the squirrels. Nic couldn't say that there were more now than when Bobby first knocked on her door, but certainly there were no less.
"If you're not feeding them, I can't imagine why they're doing that, but once a few of them get trapped, the rest will get the idea that there's nothing here for them." Bobby had set his traps beneath the steps and beneath a holly bush midway between the steps and Nic's car. "You might hear something as they're sprung," he warned Nic.
Nic forced a smile and thanked Bobby Walker for his help. He lingered at the foot of the aluminum stairs as if he expected an invitation. She gave him a question instead.
"What happens next, if the traps work?"
"Oh, they'll work, ma'am," Bobby Walker replied, lapsing into Southern formality. "I've got 'em baited with more peanuts and corn than any squirrel can resist. Might not trap them all, but there'll be a mess of squirrels in those traps when I check them tomorrow morning."
"So, you'll be checking them? I don't have to?"
"No, ma'am. I'll take care of everything on my way to work."
"Good," Nic said. "I really appreciate that."
She closed the door and closed the curtains, too. Twice during the long evening, Nic thought she heard the sounds of squirrels succumbing to corn and peanuts. She stifled her curiosity and stayed away from the curtains. The localnews had finished and there was no reason not to go to bed.
Darkness did wonders for Nic's imagination. Never mind that she was reasonably certain that squirrels weren't active at night, she could hear their little claws scratching the roof. Nic tensed, expecting to hear the traps clanging, and stayed that way. A green-glowing midnight became one a.m., then one-thirty.
Finally, noise happened: not the expected clang, but a duller thud; and not outside the trailer, but inside.
Nic kept a broom handle between the mattress and the box spring—a souvenir from an urban survival class. With it grasped in her fist, she slid silently out of bed. Aside from glowing clocks, the trailer was dark—or it should have been. There was a steady, soft light at the end of the corridor connecting the bedroom. By that light Nic saw that both the curtains and the front door were still closed, exactly as she remembered leaving them.
Fear and curiosity battled for Nic's mind. Curiosity won— because, with the door and curtains undisturbed, she expected an annoying explanation for the light. Striding to the living room, Nic's only concession to caution came when she sidestepped along the kitchen counter rather than walk straight into the light.
Nic was fortunate that the counter was behind her when she beheld a gray-clad, self-luminous woman kneeling in front of the door: it kept her upright when she reeled and knocked unwashed silverware to the floor. The clatter—the loudest noise Nic had ever heard—surprised the kneeling woman who flung herself at the closed door.
The whole trailer should have rocked on its wheeled foundations, Nic thought with the slow clarity of panic; it hadn't. There should have been noise as the gray-clad woman pounded her fists against the door; there wasn't. The woman should have known that beating the door wouldn't help, that she needed to release the bolt and turn the doorknob.
Any full-grown woman knew that.
Then again, any full-grown woman didn't glow with her own silvery light, and most people had rounder, fleshier faces than that turned toward Nic.
"Wha—?" Nic croaked. She inhaled and tried again. "Who are you? What are you doing in my living room?"
The woman heard Nic's questions; that much showed in her reactions, but she didn't answer, just pushed herself away from the door and toward the curtains which didn't move when she touched them.
Nic wondered if she might be dreaming and willed herself to wake up.
Nothing changed, then the retreating woman's gown-like clothes withdrew across a box—the box Nic hadn't gotten to the post office. It was upside down and on the floor; Nic guessed what had awakened her.
The other woman raised her hands to her face when she saw the box. Nic imagined a horrified gasp, but heard nothing.
"What do you want?" Nic demanded, though the answer to that was obvious and the wiser question would have been, Why do you want a dead hard drive?
The woman didn't—or couldn't—answer. She reached for the box, tears glistening on her luminous cheeks. To Nic's eyes, the woman's fingers touched the box but failed to grasp it. The pieces came together in Nic's mind; theirpattern was irrational, but clear.
"You want what's on the drive," Nic murmured. "You want what's trapped on the drive."
The weeping woman met Nic's eyes with silent eloquence. Her mouth opened, shaped a word Nic couldn't hear, then she vanished, leaving Nic with the impression of a streak of light drilling through the wall.