Seeking Refuge

by Alana Terry

  “Well, have you been good for Auntie Sapphire?” Jade figured that if her daughter could put on a show, so could she.

  Dez’s eyes widened in apparent understanding. “Oh, yeah. I had a bit of a hard time falling asleep last night, but then Auntie Sapphire gave me a little pill, and I’m just now waking up.”

  Jade held back the choke that threatened to well up in her throat. “Well, I’m really proud of you. You’ve been a big, brave girl, haven’t you? Come here and give me one more kiss.”

  Dez leaned in and whispered, “Don’t be scared. I prayed, and Jesus is going to help us.”

  Jade didn’t know what she’d ever done to raise such a perfect, precious, intelligent child. She found herself making God every promise imaginable, all the ways she’d be a better mom if he would only get them both out of this situation. She knew where Gabriel’s gun was, but she had to wait for the right time. After her father’s murder, Jade had taken several handgun classes, vowing to never let herself meet the same kind of fate as her father had. Other women in her class wondered if they’d have the fortitude to actually take a life if necessary, but with her daughter’s freedom and safety at stake, Jade had no qualms.

  “I love you so much, baby,” she told her daughter. “And Mama’s so, so proud of you.”

  Chapter 24

  “HEY, WHAT’S THAT FOR?” Dez asked when Sapphire came in from the back room carrying a long rope.

  Sapphire smiled sweetly. “Well, darling, do you remember that talk we had last night? About how some people have those big, mean demons who want to make them do bad things?”

  Dez widened her eyes and nodded.

  Sapphire handed the rope to Gabriel and continued to talk as if she were a Sunday school teacher telling her students about Jonah and the storm. “Well, sometimes those big, mean demons have to get prayed out of people, and sometimes when that happens they make them do mean things, like try to fight off the ones who want to help them. So the rope’s to make sure your mommy doesn’t hurt herself when we pray the demons out of her.”

  Dez crossed her arms and pouted. “What makes you think Mama’s got demons?”

  Jade tensed. Wished she could find some way to communicate with her body. Dez was doing such a good job playing the role of the obedient, compliant child. She had to keep it up if they wanted to get out of this alive.

  Sapphire’s voice was patient and melodic. “Well, your mom’s angry. She’s got a lot of hurts about a lot of things, and we want to pray to make her all better. But sometimes this kind of praying we’re going to do makes people get angry first, so we’re just going to use this rope to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone else.”

  Jade’s mind was working five times as fast as normal. As long as it was a human constraining her, she had a chance of escape. If Gabriel got complacent or distracted, she could make her move. A rope didn’t have those kinds of weaknesses she could exploit.

  Get closer to the door, she tried to tell her daughter. Why couldn’t telepathy work? Move closer to the door, baby.

  At this point, Jade knew that hoping for her safety as well her daughter’s was too much to expect. She just needed to give Dez a chance to run. Jade had no idea where they were, if they were still near Eureka or not, but it wasn’t dark out yet, and if they were surrounded by woods, Dez could get away.

  That was the goal.

  Get closer to the door, baby.

  Dez was still staring at the rope and ignoring her mom.

  Sapphire took a step closer, her face hardening as she addressed Jade. “Remember now, I gave you the chance to do this the gracious way, and you turned it down.” She draped the rope around Jade’s shoulders like a scarf.

  “What are you doing to Mama?” Dez demanded. With her eyes, Jade tried to calm her daughter’s fears. Tried to communicate what she needed to do. Get by the door, baby.

  Dez took a step backwards. One step closer to the exit. To freedom.

  Good job, baby.

  Jade tried to give her daughter an encouraging nod, and while Sapphire tied a knot in the rope, Jade kept her eyes on her daughter, praying she could understand.

  By the door, baby. Keep going. I love you. You’re going to be okay.

  The knot was complete. Jade couldn’t wait much longer.

  Sapphire leaned down to tighten the noose. “Don’t make this any harder on your daughter than it has to be,” she whispered.

  Now.

  Jade kicked Sapphire in the groin, splaying her backwards. “Baby, run!” she shouted. She turned around as Gabriel pulled out his gun. She tackled him onto the floor, grabbing his wrist with all her strength.

  He wrapped one leg around her, trying to knock her off balance. Jade held fast. She couldn’t see if Dez had fled or not, but there wasn’t time to check. If she lost her grip, she was dead.

  Letting out an animalistic grunt, Jade held onto Gabriel’s wrist, trying to slam his hand on the ground to make him lose his grip. The flickering lamplight glinted off his eyes, and she knew what she had to do. It was her only hope. She gouged one of his eyes with her free hand, turning her brain off so she didn’t have to register the feel of it.

  He screamed. The distraction had worked.

  Jade grabbed the gun.

  There wasn’t time to think. If she stopped to think, she might change her mind. Might not have the courage.

  She aimed. Braced herself for the deafening burst, the powerful kickback. Gritted her teeth in determination.

  Jade pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 25

  THERE WASN’T TIME TO look back. Jade had to find her daughter.

  She stumbled out the cabin door, praying to reach Dez before anybody else did. Sapphire had fled the cabin while Jade was fighting Gabriel, which meant she could be anywhere. Jade had to be ready.

  And she had to protect her daughter.

  She screamed Dez’s name, uncertain if she was making noise or not because she couldn’t hear anything, not the crunching of snow beneath her feet or the sound of her panting or frantic yells.

  “Dez!”

  Previously, during the fighting, her vision had blurred. Narrowed. Now, her periphery slowly returned to focus. “Dez!”

  She scoured the snow for tracks. Where had her daughter gone?

  Jade still had the gun. Gabriel would never come after her again, but Sapphire might. She had to hurry. Had to get to her daughter before that woman did.

  “Dez!”

  There inside some ATV tracks were footprints small enough to be her daughter’s. Racing ahead, she stumbled through the snow heaves until she caught sight of a tiny bundle making her way down the trail. “Dez!”

  Her daughter turned around, running toward her. As she came near, Dez’s tear-streaked eyes danced with joy. Jade bent down to embrace her.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Dez was sobbing. “I knew I shouldn’t go with that lady last night, but she said she knew my daddy, and she seemed awful nice at first. But I was really bad to go with her. Please don’t be mad at me.”

  Jade’s tears mingled with her daughter’s while they hugged in the snow. “Shh. It’s over now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “So we’re safe?” Dez asked.

  Jade wiped the tears off her daughter’s cheeks. The last thing Dez needed was for them to freeze to her face.

  “We’re going to be.”

  “I didn’t know which way to go.” Dez was still crying softly. “I didn’t want to get lost, but you told me to run, and I didn’t want to disobey you again, so I just went.”

  Jade looked down. Dez’s pants were covered in snow and ice. She had to get them someplace dry.

  “Do you know which way we should go?” Dez sniffed.

  Jade’s first instinct was to get them both as far away from that cabin as possible, but she had to be more logical than that. She had no idea what time it was, but the sunlight wouldn’t last much longer. Neither of them had coats, and Dez was already shivering. Jade took off he
r oversized sweatshirt and wrapped her daughter up.

  “What about you, Mama? What are you gonna wear?”

  “Don’t worry about me. It’s my job to worry about you.”

  She took her daughter’s hand and looked around, trying to gauge by the position of the mountains which direction they needed to walk.

  “Are you mad at me, Mama? For going with a stranger last night?”

  Jade shook her head. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not mad. I’m so happy to find you safe and sound I could give you about a million kisses right now.”

  Dez grinned. “Oh, yeah? Prove it?”

  Jade didn’t waste her time arguing.

  Chapter 26

  “MAMA, HOW LONG DO YOU think we’ve been walking?”

  “Shush, baby, and let me think.”

  “But my legs are sore, and I’m freezing.”

  “Stop whining, and hush for a second.” Jade paused to study the mountains. She’d been certain that as long as she kept them to her back, she’d end up at the Glenn, but it was twilight now, and there was still no highway in sight.

  “Listen, baby, when those bad people brought you to their cabin, how’d they get you there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you walk or take a snow machine or a car or what?”

  “It wasn’t a car. It was a truck.”

  “Okay. And when you were driving in the truck, before you turned to get to the cabin, where were the mountains? Were they on this side of you or were they somewhere else?”

  Dez pouted. “Which mountains do you mean?”

  “The big ones, baby.” Jade noted the irritation in her voice and tried to soften it. “The big mountains,” she repeated more gently. “I want you to think. Were the mountains over here like this?”

  Dez shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Jade let out her breath. It wasn’t her daughter’s fault. None of this was her daughter’s fault. In fact, if Jade had been more open in talking to Dez about her biological father to begin with, none of this would have happened.

  “Mama, are you mad at me?”

  “What? No, baby.” Jade leaned over to give her daughter a comforting hug. “Mama’s just trying to figure out which way we need to get to. That’s all.”

  Dez scrunched up her nose. “Are we lost?”

  Jade mulled over her next words. “No, baby. I just need to get us to the highway. That’s where we’ll find some help.”

  “Well, how long until we get to the highway? I’m hungry.”

  “I know, baby. This is all gonna be over real soon. And then we’ll stop for something to eat. I think there’s a lodge in Eureka. We’ll get nice big bowls of hot soup. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  “I want a burger,” Dez announced with a pout.

  “Fine. You can get a burger and a bowl of hot soup.”

  “Will they have ice cream?”

  “Too cold for ice cream, baby.”

  “Yeah, but last night you said you’d get me ice cream.”

  Jade had forgotten all about that. “Fine. Tell you what. Once we get to that lodge, we’ll ask if they have ice cream and if they do, you can have as many bowls as you can finish off.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Dez revived a little at the prospect of food and sweets, and she walked for a while without complaining.

  “Hey, Mama?” Dez finally said as the sun made its last faint glimmer on the horizon.

  “What, baby?”

  “Is anything that lady said true? Was my daddy really a pastor in Palmer?”

  Jade could think of a thousand other topics she’d rather be discussing. “Well, baby, he called himself a pastor, but he wasn’t.”

  “Then what was he?”

  How was Jade supposed to answer that? Was she supposed to tell her child that her own father was a criminal? A serial rapist and child molester? “He’s someone God loves, but he did a lot of bad things and hurt a lot of people, so I don’t want you to worry about him none, you got that?”

  Dez seemed to consider her words. “Did you love him?”

  The question surprised her. Where did her child come up with these crazy notions? “No. I didn’t love him. I trusted him, but it turned out I shouldn’t have. He was dangerous.”

  “Kind of like Auntie Sapphire?”

  “Right. Like Auntie Sapphire.”

  “She isn’t my real auntie, right?”

  “No, baby. She’s nothing to you. Nothing at all.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  They kept on walking, and Jade let out a silent prayer for help. She was doing everything in her power to stay calm and composed for her daughter’s sake, but she had no idea what she’d do if the sky went black while they still were out here lost in the woods.

  “Hey, Mama?” Dez finally asked.

  Jade sighed. “What, baby?”

  “Was my daddy handsome?”

  Jade tried hard not to laugh. Pastor Mitch handsome? “I suppose some people thought he was.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. But I think his daughter’s the most beautiful out of all of God’s creations.”

  Dez wasn’t deterred by the flattery. “Was he black like you or white like Auntie Sapphire?”

  “He was white, baby, but it doesn’t matter, okay? God made you just the way he wanted you to be.”

  “Is that how come you didn’t like him? Because he was white?”

  Jade needed God’s help to get her daughter of the cold woods alive, but she also needed his help to keep her patience. “There’s lots of white men I like. Color of their skin has nothing to do with it. Your father did some bad things, things that you don’t need to know about. But God loved him, and that’s all that matters, okay?”

  “Will I ever meet him, do you think?”

  “I don’t think so, baby,” Jade answered. “I don’t think so.”

  Chapter 27

  “WHY ARE WE STOPPING, Mama?” Dez’s voice was muffled by the heavy mounds of snow surrounding them on all sides. “Don’t we have to keep walking to get to the highway?”

  Jade had spent the past few hours doing what she could to protect her daughter from worrying, but she couldn’t keep up her pretense anymore. “Baby, we’ve got to stop. I don’t think we’re going to find the highway tonight, and it’s already dark.”

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  “I think we’re gonna have to snuggle up real close to stay warm and try to rest here.”

  “You mean outside?” Dez sounded as incredulous as if Jade had told her that her real daddy was Santa Claus.

  Jade tried to keep her inflection positive. “Come on. It’ll be fun. Remember last summer when you were begging me to take you camping?”

  Dez pouted. “But it’s not summer.”

  “No, but we’ll think of it as an adventure, all right? And then when you’re a little old woman you can tell your babies and grandbabies and great-grandbabies all about the night you slept outside with your mom in the winter, and they’ll think you’re making it up.”

  Dez continued to pout. “Well, what’s the point of telling them a story like that if nobody’s going to believe me?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to tell them it’s true whether they believe you or not.”

  Jade squatted down with her back against a spruce tree. Its branches were wide enough that they’d kept most of the snow off the ground. She wondered if covering Dez with the spruce needles would help her stay warm.

  “It’s pokey down here,” Dez whined.

  “Shh. Let me think for a minute.”

  Jade situated her daughter between her legs and wrapped both arms around her. “I think you better give me that sweatshirt back,” she finally said. “We’ll tuck it around us both. Is that okay with you?”

  Dez shrugged. “Fine.”

  “You’re a good girl, baby. Did you know that?”

  Dez didn’t res
pond. Jade put the sweatshirt back on, thankful that it was large enough she could zip it up with her daughter snuggled against her chest.

  “It’s a good thing you’re my little skinny britches, or else you wouldn’t fit. Now you’re like a baby kangaroo in its mama’s pouch.”

  She waited for Dez to laugh, but she was silent.

  “You okay, baby?”

  Dez let out a melodramatic sigh. “Yeah. But next time I say I want to go camping, can we please do it in the summer?”

  “Yeah, baby. We can do it in the summer.”

  Dez fell quiet again, and Jade wondered how she’d ever manage to fall asleep.

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Jade squeezed her eyes shut. So many times in her life as a single mom, she’d felt ill-prepared, unequipped to care for a child on her own. So many times she’d had to make sacrifices. Coffee in the morning or money to pay the heating bill. New winter boots for Dez or gas to drive to Anchorage where groceries were cheaper. There was that time she got behind in her rent because Dez caught strep throat so they were out of the daycare for a week. Jade had gone whole days eating nothing but a can of beans. But that whole time, no matter how bad things got, her daughter had never missed a meal.

  Help me, God. I can’t do this.

  Jade still wasn’t sure if resting here was the best idea or not. What if Dez drifted off to sleep and never woke up? But Jade was exhausted, and the longer she walked around in the woods in the dark, the more likely she was to get them even more lost. No, the best thing was to stay put. Was anyone out here looking for them? She hadn’t thought about Ben all night, but he must be searching for her. She prayed God would lead him to this part of the woods. Wherever this part of the woods was.

  She held her daughter close.

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “That guy who was holding you, he was a bad guy, right?”