by Haylen Beck
He pointed into the black with the Glock’s muzzle. Collins did as instructed. He heard a faint jangle out in the shadows.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
He backed around the driver’s side of the car, paused to open the driver’s door, pressed the muzzle against the back of Collins’ skull to hold her there while he opened the rear door.
‘On my word, get in and close the door,’ Danny said. ‘Now.’
They each lowered themselves in, Collins in the front, Danny in the back, as Whiteside watched them with fury in his eyes. The doors slammed in unison.
‘Okay,’ Danny said as Whiteside stared back at him in the glow of the car’s headlights. ‘Now take me back to Silver Water.’
As Collins reversed, he heard Whiteside scream over the sound of the engine.
41
AUDRA DREAMED OF her childhood home. An old house on the outskirts of a town not far from Albany. The big yard with the apple tree at the bottom. The rooms she was afraid to enter because her father had said no, don’t go in there. To enter those places would make him angry, would make his fists swing, and his belt.
She dreamed of her bedroom at the top of the house, the way the light swept in, and how if she lay on the bed and looked to the window, she would see only sky. As if the house floated high above the earth, and she pretended she was Dorothy soaring up and away to a land of wonders.
The bedside alarm clock pulled her from the dream, and she fell onto the bed as if from a great height, her body bouncing on the mattress. As she gathered her senses, she wondered what time she had fallen asleep. Sometime after midnight, lying here in her clothes, she had been staring at the ceiling, wondering what Sean and Louise were doing.
She hoped they were asleep.
She hoped they weren’t afraid.
She hoped they were safe.
When she’d set the alarm for 4:30 a.m., she’d had no confidence of ever slipping into the dark, yet she had, and she was glad of it. She sat upright, climbed out of the bed, and crossed barefoot to the bathroom. There she used the toilet, washed her face and body with cold water from the hand basin. She regarded herself in the mirror, saw new lines around her eyes and mouth, new grays in her hair. Without thinking, she touched her reflection, fingertips tracing the shape of her face.
A sudden and new emotion came upon her: mourning. Mourning for herself, the girl she had been, the years lost to a marriage that leached the soul from her, leaving a hollow woman behind. Too late to get those years back, not too late for the time ahead. But only with her children. No point without them. No point to anything.
Back in the bedroom, she pulled on a clean shirt and buttoned it, ill-fitting as it was. Clean socks, the running shoes that were one size too big. She slipped out of the room, closed the door as softly as she could, not wishing to wake Mrs Gerber. The stairs creaked beneath her feet, and she winced at every step. Down into the hall, back toward the kitchen.
Audra opened the door, stepped through, and saw Mrs Gerber at the table, a mug of coffee in front of her, a half-smoked cigarette suspended over a clean ashtray. They stared at each other for a moment, each caught in an act they didn’t want the other to witness.
‘I only take one a day,’ Mrs Gerber said. ‘Maybe two if I’m worried.’
Audra nodded and moved toward the back door.
‘Are you running away?’ Mrs Gerber asked.
‘No,’ Audra said. ‘I’m going to find my children.’
Mrs Gerber gave her a hard, narrow-eyed look.
‘I didn’t hurt them,’ Audra said. ‘Whatever happens, please remember that.’
Mrs Gerber reached into the pocket of her dressing gown, removed a set of keys. She slid them across the table toward Audra.
‘You’ll need those for the door and the padlock on the gate.’ She nodded to the coat that hung on the peg by the door. ‘You took them from my pocket. I’ll find them in the alley in a short while.’
Audra reached for them, pushed the screen aside. She looked back over her shoulder and said, ‘Thank you.’
As she turned the key in the lock, Mrs Gerber spoke once more.
‘I killed my husband,’ she said.
Audra stopped, turned around.
‘Almost fifteen years ago,’ Mrs Gerber said. ‘He came home drunk one night and I waited for him at the top of the stairs. I didn’t even push. Not really. I just reached my hand out, put it where his center of gravity should be. I still remember the look on his face. The shock. And it’s funny, see, because I feel more guilt about smoking a cigarette than I do about watching him break his stupid neck.’ She took another long drag on the cigarette and said, ‘I hope you find them.’
Audra watched her for a moment, then nodded. Mrs Gerber did the same, and Audra let herself out.
A mild breeze swept across the yard, cooling her skin. She made her way down to the gate, undid the padlock, stepped through into the alley. She opened her hand, let the keys drop onto the baked earth.
Audra looked in both directions, saw no sign of Danny. She reached into her pocket, took out the cell phone he’d given her the day before. As she looked up the one number in the contacts list, the phone vibrated in her hand. She pressed answer and brought it to her ear.
‘Danny?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are you?’
‘A couple of streets away, behind the guesthouse. There’s a state patrol car doing a circuit of Main Street; it’s half assed, but still, we can’t risk being seen. Head south along the alley, toward the river end. There’s another alley branching off to your left about twenty yards along. Take that into the next street, cross over, and through the alley that’s facing you. I’m on the other side. But be careful. Don’t let anyone see you.’
Audra hung up, stowed the phone, and made her way along the alley. She found the left turn just as he’d said, and she cut through toward the street on the other side. A voice stopped her a few feet from the alley’s mouth.
‘Make,’ a man said. ‘Goddamn it, make.’
Audra flattened herself against the wall and listened.
‘All right, suit yourself, but if you shit on the floor again, I’m gonna put a cork in your ass.’
She watched as a small middle-aged man passed the alley, a squat mongrel dog on a leash trailing behind. The man slipped out of view, but the dog stopped, planted its feet on the sidewalk. It stared into the alley, its hindquarters quivering. It let out a high yip and the leash jerked, the man telling the dog to come on, goddamn it.
Audra counted to ten before moving to the street. She saw the man and the dog making their way along the sidewalk, the dog glancing back at her, the man tugging it along. Across the street, the next alley, and a dark shape that might have been a car. She jogged toward it, her head down, her step as quiet as she could manage.
When she reached the other side, she saw Danny in the shadows, leaning against a dust-covered Chevrolet. Her lungs strained for breath by the time she got close. She stopped a few feet away, saw the blood matted in his hair, the swelling of his lip.
‘Jesus, what happened?’ she asked.
Danny smiled, winced, brought his fingertips to his lip. ‘I had a talk with Sheriff Whiteside. Here, I got something for you.’
He reached behind his back, to his waistband, pulled out a pistol. She took a step back when he extended it to her, grip first.
‘God, no, I don’t want that,’ she said.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘We have to be armed.’
‘But I don’t know how to use it.’
‘It’s a Glock,’ he said. ‘There’s no safety. You just point it and pull the trigger. Easy. Take it.’
Audra came closer. She reached for the gun, felt the cold grip fill her hand. Danny pressed the barrel with his fingertips, guided it away so it aimed at the ground.
‘Just keep your finger away from the trigger,’ he said. ‘Don’t aim it at anything unless you’re ready to shoot. You got it?’
‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘Are we really going to do this? Kidnap Collins?’
Danny looked at her sideways. ‘Oh, didn’t I say?’
He reached for the rear door handle, opened it wide, and stepped back.
‘Oh, shit,’ Audra said.
Deputy Collins lay across the rear footwells, her ankles bound with cable ties to the metalwork beneath the passenger seat, her wrists tied behind her back, a strip of tape across her mouth. She stared wide-eyed up at Audra.
‘They’re in a cabin to the north,’ Danny said. ‘Up in the forest, on the Colorado Plateau, just like your landlady said. A couple hours’ drive.’
Audra felt heat in her eyes, a thickening in her throat. She took Danny in her arms, pressed her lips hard to his cheek, withdrew when he hissed at the pain it caused.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘We haven’t got them yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s move. Whiteside is still out there. We need to be long gone before he makes it back.’
Danny driving, Audra in the passenger seat, they took a dirt track out of town, heading east, then turning north. The sun breached the mountains ahead, heat building, and Danny turned up the car’s AC. He had hauled Collins upright, wedged her into the corner between the seat back and the door, her hands still bound behind her. She had let out a low groan when he stripped the tape from her mouth, leaving a red rectangle around her lips. She directed them to this back road, a route once used to get to the mine that had closed years ago. Furrows had been gouged out of the dusty earth by the wheels of great machines, the ghosts of their tracks still visible in the early light.
After twenty minutes of coarse dirt tracks, they joined a narrow surfaced road that twisted through the hills, followed by long, straight climbs that caused pressure in Audra’s ears. Soon the sun scorched the world around, and she wished for the sunglasses she’d left on the passenger seat of her own car. She lowered the visor, cupped her hand around her eyes.
Then a memory of four days ago entered her mind. A random thought, but it appeared there clear and hard. She acted on it, placed the backs of her fingers against the windshield. A second or two later, she had to withdraw them, the skin red from the heat. She remembered telling Sean to try it. He had done so, said ow, and giggled as he pulled his hand away.
Audra turned her head to gaze out of the passenger window, tried to hide the quiver in her breathing as she held back tears.
‘For what it’s worth,’ Collins said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Audra wiped at her eyes and said, ‘Go to hell.’
42
ANOTHER HOUR PASSED before anyone spoke again.
The road had climbed and climbed, twisting up into the hills like an unspooled ribbon. They passed one other vehicle, a pickup truck, the driver old and grizzled. He lifted his forefinger from the wheel in greeting as he passed. The long stretches were punctuated by strings of switchbacks as they ascended – the Mogollon Rim, Audra recalled – and the temperature dropped until Danny shut off the AC.
They reached a plateau, and the road straightened. All around, pines as far as Audra could see. Sometimes the land fell away to one side or the other, and the forests stretched to the horizon. Beautiful and terrible, she thought, hundreds of miles of nothing but trees.
My children are out here on their own, she thought. But I’m coming for them.
A question appeared in her mind, from nowhere, and she felt desperate for the answer.
‘How much?’ she said.
Danny turned to look at her.
Audra turned in the seat, looked back at Collins.
‘I said, how much?’
Collins kept her gaze to the window. ‘Half a million,’ she said. ‘Ronnie’s share was more. I don’t know how much in total.’
‘Half a million dollars,’ Audra echoed. ‘What would you have done with it?’
‘Got my boy the care he needs.’ Collins’ eyes glistened. ‘He has a heart condition. The drugs cost so much, and my insurance doesn’t cover even half of them. My mother mortgaged her house a second time, and that’s almost gone. Every time he takes a bad turn, he has to go to the hospital, and they take their cut. I got nothing left. Nothing. I just wanted my boy to be well. That’s all.’
Audra studied her, the trails of her tears. ‘And you were willing to sacrifice two other children to make that happen.’
‘That’s right.’ Collins turned her eyes away from the glass, matched Audra’s stare. ‘I mean, they’re not my children.’
The car felt colder than before, and Audra wrapped her arms around herself.
‘Up here, maybe a hundred yards,’ Collins said. ‘There’s an exit onto a dirt road. Take it.’
Danny slowed and made the turn, a cattle grid rattling beneath the wheels. The ground was softer here, more forgiving than the low desert, a bed of pine needles to cushion the worst of it.
‘Follow this trail for like fifteen, twenty minutes,’ Collins said. ‘Then we have to get out and walk.’
They made the rest of the drive in silence until Collins told Danny to stop.
Audra climbed out, stretched her limbs, shivered at the chill in the air. She had to remind herself it was still early morning, the car’s touchscreen saying it was not yet seven-thirty. Danny came around the car and opened the rear door.
‘Get the Glock,’ he said.
Audra reached in through the passenger door, retrieved the pistol from the glove compartment. Cold and heavy in her hand, it sent another wave of chills through her.
‘Keep it on her,’ Danny said. ‘If she tries anything, shoot her in the leg or the arm. Don’t kill her.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ Audra said, raising the pistol, aiming past Danny at Collins’ thigh as he used a pair of wire cutters to snip the cable ties.
Danny stepped away and Collins climbed out. She took two steps before falling, landing hard on her shoulder, unable to break her fall with her wrists still tied at the small of her back.
‘Shit,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ Danny said as he reached down to help her up. ‘Walk around a little. Get your blood moving.’
They gave her a minute or two to recover before Audra said, ‘Which way?’
Collins looked beyond the car and said, ‘That way. About a ten-, fifteen-minute walk.’
‘Let’s go,’ Audra said. ‘You lead.’
Collins left the trail and made her way through the trees. Audra and Danny followed. They made slow progress, and Audra pushed Collins between the shoulder blades to hurry her along. Collins stumbled, but didn’t fall. She looked back at Audra.
‘If you undid my hands I could walk faster,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep my balance like this.’
Audra looked to Danny. He shrugged.
‘I won’t do anything,’ Collins said. ‘You guys still got the guns.’
‘All right,’ Audra said, levelling the Glock at Collins’ shoulder.
Danny took the wire cutters from his pocket and approached. He snipped the cable tie and let it fall away. Collins rubbed her wrists, stretched her arms, rolled her shoulders.
‘Now move,’ Audra said.
A little of the chill left the air as they walked, causing perspiration to spread on her back. Birds called high among the trees and creatures stirred below, rustling in the shadows. Audra kept her gaze ahead, past Collins, looking for any sign of the cabin.
And there it was, through the pines.
Audra froze. There it was, her children inside.
She ran. Arms churning, feet pounding the forest floor, past Danny, past Collins, she ran like she hadn’t run in years, since school, when she ran for the pure joy of it. Danny called after her, but she ignored him.
‘Sean!’ Her voice echoed through the trees. ‘Louise!’
Audra didn’t slow as she burst into the clearing, as she mounted the porch, as she shoved the open door aside. Her feet skidded on the wooden floor as she tried to halt, and her balance deserted her. She landed on her hip, didn
’t pause, got on to her hands and knees, still holding the Glock. She crawled to the open trapdoor, calling their names, calling …
Open?
She saw the splintered trapdoor that rested back on its chains. She saw the lock torn loose from the wood, still hanging from the loop on the floor. She looked down into the basement and saw it empty.
Knowing they wouldn’t hear her, Audra called her children’s names once more.
43
SEAN AND LOUISE kept walking. Louise lagged behind, and Sean had given up cajoling her into hurrying. He had realized some time ago they were lost, so there seemed no point rushing. But they had to move, no matter what.
‘I want some water,’ Louise called from ten feet behind.
‘You already had some,’ Sean said. ‘I told you, we have to make it last. I don’t know how long we’ll be out here. Might be days. We need to conserve our supplies.’
Sean carried those supplies in a plastic bag: two twelve-ounce bottles of water, four candy bars, two apples, and a banana. He had wrapped the handles around his wrist because his palm still stung and bled. The bag seemed extraordinarily heavy for all it contained, his shoulder aching at the effort. His lungs also. No matter how deep he breathed, there never seemed to be enough air. The altitude, he supposed, and clearly Louise felt it too.
He didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but he guessed it was at least an hour. The trail that led back to the road hadn’t been that far away from the cabin, so he knew they had gone the wrong way. He cursed himself for it now. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get away to pay attention to the direction of their flight. Even if there’d been a sense of the land rising or falling as they walked, he might have been able to find a way down to lower ground, but the forest remained level, no matter how far they trekked. Maybe they could stop soon, share one of the candy bars and the banana. But not yet.
The thing Sean wanted more than anything else in the world, other than to see his mother, was to lie down on the bed of pine needles and go to sleep. He hadn’t slept the night before, and his hands still bled from the effort. The knife’s handle had lain on the bottom step for an immeasurable time while he stared at it, angry at the blade for breaking, furious at himself for thinking it wouldn’t. Eventually he had descended the stairs and picked up the handle, turned it in his hands as he studied it.