Page 128 of Forever Dark
Pruitt shook his head too quickly.“No.”
Connor let the silence stretch.
Motels were never truly quiet, never total.Pipes knocked somewhere beyond the wall.A footstep crossed the outside walkway.The office ice machine rumbled and dropped a load.All of it made the room feel more closed in, highlighting the pause between them.
“Tell me about the people who come through those tents,” Connor said.
“Lonely people.Broken people.The unsaved.”
“You sound like Croft.”
Pruitt shrugged without meaning to.“I hear him every night.”
“That all you hear?”
The question annoyed him.Connor saw it in the slight tightening around the man’s mouth.
“No.”
“What else do you do there?”
“Music only,” Pruitt said.
Connor let that go.“You stay on the bus?”
“No.That’s just for Elias.Sometimes motels or in a car.Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Money.Space.The usual considerations for a traveling group.”
“You and Croft close?”
Another shrug, smaller this time.“He’s my employer.”
“That’s all?”
“What else would it be?I deeply respect him, if you want to know the truth.”
Connor looked down as if consulting notes, though he already knew where he was going.Better to let a man think the paper mattered more than his face.
“Oh, you respect him?Does that mean he saved your soul?”
Nolan let out a short laugh.“From what?”
“What about Ohio?”he asked.“That ring a bell?”
Pruitt went still.
Not frozen.His eyes moved around nervously.
Connor stared at him.“The fire in your juvenile record.”
“That’s… That’s supposed to be sealed to let me establish myself as an adult… There was a fire,” he said.“Long time ago.”
Pruitt’s eyes dropped to the carpet.
“That was when you were young,” Connor continued.“Maybe stupid.Maybe angry.Maybe neither.But it’s there.Let’s say you lit a fire somewhere you shouldn’t have.I wonder what else you’re capable of?”
