Getaway

by Zoje Stage

  In a matter of seconds, the atmosphere felt more foreboding and less like something Imogen could work with. She nudged her sister with an elbow: the chitchat had been going just fine. Beck nudged her back. It was the closest they could come to arguing without speaking.

  “We can’t stay here with you. And believe me, I have way more interest in getting home to my family than I do in reporting some random gunshot injury that I don’t give a shit about. In a few days when we’re not home we’ll be reported missing. And if, as you say, there are people looking for you, then it’s not in your best interest for us to be hanging out together when the search parties come out here for us.”

  Imogen didn’t like how cantankerous Beck sounded. Sure, her points were accurate, but what if Gale decided they were all just a pain in his ass and not worth the trouble?

  “You girls get what’s happening here?” he asked in his quiet voice. “I’m keeping you with me ’cause the alternative…I ain’t some serial killer kills fer fun, kills fer a hard-on with no conscience. As long yer with me yer alive, you get that?”

  Imogen’s heart suddenly felt like the needle on a record player, skidding off its groove. The spoonful she was feeding Tilda dribbled, and she wiped it from Tilda’s shirt with shaking fingers. She heard Gale threatening their lives, but Beck wasn’t having it.

  “Great. So?” She sounded combative, as if intentionally picking a fight. Imogen wasn’t sure why. They didn’t have a thing at hand—rock, knife, or other—to overpower him, and one-third of their trio couldn’t use her hands or feet. The two of them couldn’t consider taking him on unless they first relieved him of the gun or the hunting knife—or both. Even then, Imogen suspected he was a scrappy and ruthless fighter. She would’ve preferred to be having an entirely different sort of conversation with Gale. But Beck had other ideas. “We don’t have to stay here, where there’s nothing—that’s what I’m saying. We can hike out together, I’ll drive you somewhere.”

  The suggestion came out of nowhere. Imogen felt as surprised as Tilda looked. It hadn’t occurred to her, but it wasn’t a bad idea.

  Gale considered Beck’s offer. “Can’t say I fully trust you.”

  “Same.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Mexico?” Imogen suggested.

  “It’s the opposite direction a where I was heading. But probly safer.”

  Beck nodded. “It would take about…seven hours to Nogales.”

  “Ya got any money?” he asked.

  “We’ll get some,” said Tilda, finally joining in on a current of hope.

  “When you’re across the border,” Beck said, “you really won’t need us. You can disappear. No one will come after you.”

  They could almost hear his brain grinding, recalibrating. But then he seemed to push the thought aside. “I’ll think on it.”

  The women exchanged glances. It could work. A possible way out, though Imogen wasn’t so sure about going from the kidnapper’s metaphorical car to a literal one. It would get them back to civilization, to people, but what then? Would they become accomplices in his getaway? Or would Gale exact some other sort of guarantee for the next stage of his freedom? Beck wasn’t stupid. Maybe she’d already thought about what would come next.

  The more they talked, the more at ease Gale became, as if they were simply shooting the breeze at an ordinary picnic.

  “Y’all really didn’t see anything on the news about me?”

  They shook their heads. “I don’t watch the news that much,” said Imogen.

  “Nothing about a cop? Texas highway patrolman got killed in a routine traffic stop?”

  The trio froze, momentarily in sync. It was startling to hear it so casually uttered.

  “Maybe they didn’t start reporting it until after we were in the Canyon,” Beck suggested.

  “Yeah. Could be right.” Gale acted as if this were just a thing that had happened, like a flat tire or running out of gas. “Wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Just wanted to see my daughter in Nevada. What’s the point a being out if you don’t got the freedom to live yer life, see yer people? Only been on parole three weeks, knew it was a risk, but…Whatever yer thinking, ’bout all a this, I ain’t no cold-blooded killer, that’s the truth. I panicked, that’s all. Didn’t have a valid license, and the car was a buddy’s, not in my name. I was almost to New Mexico, pretty obvious I was leaving the state. Knew the second that cop started looking into it he’d see what’s what. I had to strike fast. He still got a shot off, but just the one. Only wanted to see my girl. Totally fucked now. You get it now, why I got no option but to lay low?”

  Imogen directed her empty gaze to the pocked sandstone embankment across the creek. He’d admitted, with no real remorse, to what he’d done. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was willing to be so open because there was nothing left to debate, no further compromises to be made.

  “How’d you get here then?” Beck asked, seemingly unaffected by his story.

  “I got across the New Mexico border. Then left the car. Hitched a ride from a Navajo kid. Real nice kid, friendly. He was heading this way and seemed like a good option. No one’d look fer me here, right?”

  “I’m sorry everything got…so fucked up.” Imogen wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. Most of the regret was for herself, and for Beck and Tilda, yet a fragment of it was for him; he had a way of getting under her skin. For all the street smarts he likely possessed, he lacked a simple understanding of how to live in the real world. In a similar way Imogen was book smart and life dumb. She couldn’t help but commiserate with someone who couldn’t mold their plasticine life into the shape they’d set out to make.

  “Well, I’m glad we’re putting it all on the table now. Easier if we can be honest. Now fer real, where y’all really from?”

  “I live in Los Angeles. Beck lives in Flagstaff. And Imogen lives in Pittsburgh, which is where we’re all from. Okay? No more bullshit.”

  He considered Tilda, and nodded. “Good. Good.”

  Imogen still couldn’t tell if Tilda was sucking up to him for her own benefit, or to benefit all of them. But she felt the moment open up; perhaps there was still a chance to reason with him. “We truly just want this to work out for everybody. I get that you don’t trust us. But you have to realize we don’t trust you either.” She saw a slideshow in her mind—the severed food bag, their ransacked camp, a bullet whizzing past Tilda—and hoped Gale was seeing the same imagery. “But if we could help you figure it out, four heads are better than one, right? If you want to get to your daughter, maybe we can help.”

  “Maybe we’re not part of your problem but part of your solution,” said Tilda. It was the kind of thing she’d say to her followers, but would it motivate Gale?

  He seemed to weigh the possibility. “You girls have some decent qualities, I do appreciate that.”

  “I was serious about what I said before. This doesn’t have to be complicated,” Beck said, as all-business as ever. “We hike out and we’ll drive you somewhere. No one will be looking for you if you’re with us—as long as we get this done by the date we’re expected home.”

  “When’s that?” he asked.

  “Three days from now, late afternoon. Gives us plenty of time to get to Nevada and back, or Mexico and back.”

  “You got a car here?”

  “At the Hermit trailhead.” For proof, she unzipped the inner pocket of her fleece and waggled the key.

  “Better idea: why don’t we just give him the key,” Tilda said, glowering ever-so-slightly at Beck. “He can leave ahead of us. Get in the car. Go wherever he wants, we’ll be none the wiser.”

  “We legit couldn’t tell anyone where you were then,” Imogen added. And she had to agree: unless there was a genius second part to Beck’s plan, Tilda’s idea was better.

  Beck and Gale both started nodding, picturing their separate escape scenarios. Holy shit, is this working?

  “So then…Even if you say ya won’t tell
anyone you’ve seen me, you’d report the car stolen?”

  “We’d be stuck for a while,” Beck said. “Have to wait for someone to show up to ask for a ride back to the visitor center or something. And we could give you a full twenty-four-hour head start. You’d already be where you were going by then, north or south, whatever you choose.”

  Gale turned to Tilda. “Wanna come with me to Mexico? Show me around? Be my translator?” She cocked her head and gave him a silent fuck you smirk. “Kidding. Learn to take a joke.” But he grew somber, disappearing into his own deliberations. “So…you want me to believe you wouldn’t just call fer help? Minute yer phones get a signal? Not sure where that is, maybe up top. Wait—I didn’t find…You girls don’t have phones?”

  “They’re in the car.” Tilda rolled her eyes. “Beck’s dumb tradition.”

  Gale blinked. Some kind of mechanism was spinning in his head and Imogen could almost see it, like a slot machine, as three matching symbols lined up and ding-ding-ding he was on his feet, enraged.

  “See? This is just the kinda shit I’m talking about!” He paced, with his hand on the hilt of his knife. “You send me off in yer car, don’t tell me about the fucking phones. And later the feds track me down with yer GPS—”

  “The phones aren’t even charged, they’ve been sitting for days!” said Imogen.

  Gale ignored her, his anger focused solely on Beck. “Yer always trying to get one over on me!”

  “We leave the phones in the car because they don’t work here,” Beck yelled, to Tilda as much as Gale. “And I wasn’t the one who suggested letting you drive off in my brand-new Jeep. I suggested we drive you, so you could keep an eye on us and know we weren’t calling anyone or turning you in.”

  As Beck glared at her, fear skittered across Tilda’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking from Beck to Gale. “I was just trying…I thought I had a good idea.”

  Gale scooped up his mug and downed the rest of his coffee. He half turned away from them, scanning the otherworldly terrain. It was cloudier than it had been, and quiet except for some light gusts rattling the vegetation.

  Beck, Tilda, and Imogen watched him, simmering in dread: Now what?

  24

  This time it was to their benefit that Gale didn’t stay in one mood for long. He abruptly sat down and grabbed up his bowl with its last few bites of oatmeal.

  “Yer still the sneaky one,” he said to Beck, now sounding more sullen than hostile. “The Mexican’s not a good enough thinker.”

  “Please. Call me Tilda,” she said, bristling.

  “Yer plan has some appeal, I’ll give ya that. But there’s probly something I’m not seeing. I’ll think on it. Roll it around till I see it from all sides. Think I shouldn’t trust you.”

  “I fixed your arm,” Beck said, back to her calm, nonchalant self.

  “Not as good as it felt yesterday. You probly poisoned it.” He clenched and unclenched the fingers of his left hand.

  Christ on a cracker, he sounded petulant. Imogen’s snort and chuckle slipped out before she could contain it. Gale quirked a grin at her, much to her astonishment.

  “Does it look worse?” Beck asked, undaunted by his capricious temperament.

  He peeked under the bandage. “No.”

  “You need to rest it. Take a couple of ibuprofen for the inflammation.”

  Imogen wondered if, behind Beck’s calmness, she was hiding something—some aspect of the plan that Gale would never agree to. She wished there were a way to warn her sister: Don’t trick him. If he agreed to something and later discovered a trapdoor they wouldn’t get another chance.

  He nodded a little, like a chastised schoolboy who realized the teacher was right.

  “We’ll come up with something, okay?” said Imogen. The breadth of his emotions actually gave her hope: he wasn’t a ruthless, one-dimensional cartoon character. “We’re not trying to be sneaky.” She shot Beck a look, Right? “We really do all want the same thing.”

  “Doubt that,” he said, still pouting. He scraped out the dregs of his oatmeal, polishing his spoon with big, shameless licks. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Any a you girls married? Got kids?”

  “I’m married,” said Beck.

  Gale swiveled to look at her. “You? Didn’t have you pegged fer…Oh. You married to a dyke?”

  “A woman.”

  “You the butch one?”

  Beck peered at him over the rim of her plastic coffee mug, but declined to answer.

  “I didn’t mean no offense, I got nothing against gays. Or Mexicans. Or”—to Imogen—“whatever you are, with that weird-color hair.” She almost laughed again. There was something genuine about him, genuine enough to make her believe that his failings didn’t include being superficially hateful, in spite of crass generalizations. To Beck he asked, “Ya got kids?”

  “Not yet.” Beck flashed a look at Imogen and there was something in her eyes, a message, but Imogen wasn’t sure what it meant. Beck and Afiya wanted kids, but Afiya had already had two miscarriages.

  “What about you two?” he asked.

  Imogen shook her head.

  “I have a boyfriend back home,” Tilda said. “No kids.”

  Gale nodded, and didn’t make eye contact as he spoke. “Well, I got me some kids. It goes without saying I been a shitty dad, locked up most a their lives. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love ’em. My daughter—I got just the one, and two boys with a different mother. The boys…Maybe it’s my fault, bad role model and all that. But my daughter, Crystal, she’s a good girl. She was born when I was twenty-one and now she’s twenty-one and having her first baby. I feel like that’s…We got a special connection. I shoulda named her Diamond, ’cause she’s priceless. She’s having a little girl and I suggested she name her Diamond.

  “Anyway. I wanted to be there, that’s all. Crystal’s gonna have that baby any minute and I just wanted…to hold her hand. Kiss the baby’s head. Thought I could drive there and back and not miss my parole officer. I didn’t think that was too much to want, just to see my newborn granddaughter. Didn’t think the effort was gonna…Hoped to be fer Diamond what I couldn’t be fer Crystal. That ain’t a bad dream, is it?”

  Nothing about Gale’s appearance spoke to a tender heart. But even Tilda, practically hog-tied, wore an expression of wounded understanding. Every daughter—and Tilda more than some—needed a father who’d show up for her. Beck’s eyes were filmy with tears. Was she really that moved by his story?

  “Parole is ridiculous,” Imogen muttered, thinking aloud. It always sounded like a cruel game of Simon Says, played in whispers.

  “Agree with ya there.”

  “It just sets people up for failure.” The criminal justice system was only punitive, designed to minimize the odds for reformation. This entire chain of events led back to the rules of his probation. Now a cop was dead, three women’s lives were in the balance—and who knew what had happened to the Navajo kid—just because Gale wasn’t legally allowed to attend his first grandchild’s birth. “It was a good dream. A dream you should’ve been able to have.”

  Something in her words or her tone made Beck turn a questioning glare on her.

  “Yup. Shoulda. Instead…I never learn, even when I know better.”

  “Let us help,” Imogen said. He might yet be convinced to hike out, take the Jeep, ditch the phones, and accept that there were no other booby traps, aside from the ones of his own making.

  Gale tossed his plastic bowl and cup over to her. “You can help by washing the dishes. I’ll tie up yer sis and take the Mex—Tilda—to the john, as promised.”

  Beck laid her dishes and spoon at Imogen’s feet. She turned herself over to Gale, hands clasped together. He took a bundle of cord from his pocket and quickly wrapped it tight, and Beck was soon immobilized where she sat. As Imogen used the last of the now-warmish water to clean up, she watched Gale work. The sympathy she’d felt for him only moments earlier was already w
aning.

  “Gale, just take the car,” she said. “It’s the fastest way you’ll get to Crystal.”

  “That’s fer me to decide.”

  Tilda winced; he tugged the knots away from her wrists before successfully freeing her. “Can’t one of them come with me?” she asked.

  Imogen might not have been able to relieve herself if her sister hadn’t been beside her. They already felt vulnerable in this man’s presence, and Tilda had never acclimated to squatting. “I don’t mind coming.”

  But as she said it, Beck’s face hardened and she gave a little shake of her head.

  “It’s this or nothing. I’m not gonna have you three always trying to get yer way. Yer not calling the shots here. But I’m a gentleman, keep my back turned, just like before.”

  Tilda radiated panic, rubbing her wrists, but she tucked the toilet paper under her arm. Gale took her by the elbow. “Be back in a minute. Don’t do nothing stupid.”

  “We won’t,” Imogen promised, though Beck’s clamped jaw looked less inclined to make such a vow.

  They watched him lead Tilda up-camp, away from the creek. At least Imogen would finally be able to exchange a few words with her sister—but she wasn’t prepared for what Beck had to say.

  “Run to the river! Now!” she whispered.

  “But—”

  “Flag down some rafters, tell them we’re here and ask them to call—”

  “We’ll make it worse, he’s almost ready to take the car—”

  “This was my backup plan,” Beck hissed, “if we couldn’t push him into the gorge. Tilda wrecked that before we could even try, but we can’t give up.”

  “He’ll kill us!” The next time he took the gun out, it wouldn’t be for a warning shot.

  “He’s gonna kill us anyway! We’re running out of options. Take a canteen. Hide somewhere, in case he comes looking. Go!”

  There wasn’t time to keep debating Beck’s plan. Suddenly deluged with adrenaline, Imogen grabbed a canteen and bolted for the creek.