He couldn’t help but laugh. He’d forgotten how enthusiastic she could get over the small joys in life, like food. “No, thanks. That’s wasting a perfectly good source of protein and fat.” He took a few from the box. “How is your mom, anyway?”
Her enjoyment of the chocolate dimmed. “Do you really care enough to know?”
He’d opened the door wide for discussion and perhaps even deserved that gibe. “Of course I do.”
“Sorry. That was uncalled for. She’s fine. Same as always.” She set the box of almonds down. “I just don’t understand how you could just walk away from us if you really cared. My mom always treated you like you were part of the family. We all did. Weren’t you at all curious if Eddie ever recovered? I mean, he had a broken back. For all you knew, he could’ve died from complications.”
He straightened, suddenly warmer than he should be despite the heater’s setting. Had Eddie not told her anything? “I know that it took him two years, and he drove the physical therapists crazy, but he never gave up. He worked until he was fully recovered.”
Her eyes clouded. “Why—How do you know that?”
“Eddie told me. The nurse told him I kept calling to find out his status. They wouldn’t talk to me, though. I finally agreed to leave my number. Eddie called back. He apologized for wrecking my car. He kept me up to date for a while. It’s been several years, but I heard he’s running one of the branches for your father.”
“So...” She stared out the window. “You spoke to him but not me?”
Her soft voice twisted his gut in knots. He’d hurt her. How could he explain that it was for the best, without sounding like a coward? The wind railed against the trees with such intensity that a giant chunk of snow slammed on the truck’s hood and shook the vehicle. “Like I said, I probably should have said goodbye before I left that night. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I didn’t know that Eddie had been drinking when he took my keys. And even if I had, since when has anyone been able to control Eddie?”
She raised an eyebrow and faced forward but still didn’t turn his way. “That doesn’t explain why you left the way you did. A person who is innocent doesn’t just run away.”
“Because your dad said he never wanted to see my face again. The whole town was against me.” The words rushed out with such intensity it was as if a storm had been brewing inside of him without any forecasted warnings. The memory still stung, and the day’s events just emphasized his worst fear.
The truck underscored his proclamation with an ominous ding. He searched for the source of the sound. A bright orange gas tank lit up on the dashboard. Low fuel. Great. He felt like he was disappointing, all over again, the man he’d looked up to his entire childhood. He couldn’t keep Eddie safe, and now he wouldn’t be able to keep Jackie safe, either.
FIVE
Jackie tapped the digital clock. It was only eight o’clock at night even though her body felt like it’d already endured a twelve-hour marathon. Everything ached. She’d only spent three horrible hours in the elements, but a very long, cold night still awaited them without fuel to keep the truck running. “It’s been twenty minutes with the heater on,” she said. “We need to turn the truck off.”
He frowned. “I know it’s a bad situation, but I think when the warning light goes on we still have a couple gallons to go on. We also want to insulate ourselves. What else is in this duffel?” He handed her the man’s boots. “Think you can make these work? Your flimsy fabric ones aren’t going to do you much good tomorrow.”
He was right; plus, they were wet. At least the man wasn’t very tall, as Shawn had pointed out. His boot size was a men’s size nine. She wore a size seven in women’s, so they were still a little big, but not too bad with the thick wool socks. Shawn split up the rest of the items in the duffel to carry in between the two backpacks, in preparation for their early-morning hike. Then he stretched out the duffel bag and placed it on top of their wool blanket. “Every bit of fabric helps to keep us warm.”
What she really wanted was to return to the subject of the past. Even if her father had flown off the handle at the time of Eddie’s accident, couldn’t Shawn understand? Her dad had been devastated when they’d been told of Eddie’s injuries, and it was easier to blame someone else than his son, bloodied and bruised and waiting for surgery. All she remembered was her dad’s disappointment when Shawn had left. But now she wondered if it was guilt.
She rolled her head clockwise in an attempt to stop her neck from complaining. Her muscles increasingly ached, and there was still a very long and cold night ahead.
Shawn shoved his hand deep into his backpack. “I think I have some pain reliever in here and a pair of tweezers in the first-aid kit.”
He found the sample-size bottle and shook out a few pills into the palm of his hand. She took off her gloves to accept and his fingers brushed against hers. Her eyes refused to lift, refused to meet his. She wrapped her fingers around the pills and realized she’d been holding her breath. She swallowed the pills and Shawn beckoned her to show him her hands again.
She hesitantly offered her palms up. He set his phone in the cup holder so it shone enough to see and worked quickly. He cupped one hand at a time and went to work with the tweezers. She looked away. It hurt more if she thought about just how many splinters were embedded.
“If you could contact Eddie, why not me?” Her voice cracked with emotion she wasn’t ready to feel.
His fingers stilled. “I guess I was scared I wouldn’t be able to stay away.” He set her left hand down gingerly and picked up her right. “I definitely couldn’t bear seeing the way everyone would look at me in town. When people get that angry—even if they find out later they’re wrong—it’s hard to ever regain the same kind of relationship.”
She tried her best to understand his reasoning but came up empty. “What exactly happened, Shawn?”
“There, I think I got them all.”
“Thank you.” She put on her gloves and took another swallow of very icy water that stung her throat.
“We were at the senior class party,” he began.
“I remember. I was there.” The worst part of secretly dating was that they could never attend or hang out at events together. So even though they’d dated for two years, it was easy to never get too serious.
“Yes. Eddie complained that the party was boring, so he walked off with his girlfriend. I found out later that they’d gone somewhere to do shots with some other couples.” Shawn’s voice took on a very monotone quality. “It was starting to get dark, but there was going to be a movie on the greens.”
“We were going to sit together. By accident, of course.”
His eyes shifted slightly in her direction. “Except Eddie didn’t want to stay. I was in the middle of an intense discussion with some other guys about whether the Packers had deserved to win the Super Bowl and handed him the keys without a second glance.”
That sounded like Eddie. “So why didn’t you explain that to Dad?”
“He wouldn’t hear it. He said I’d betrayed his trust and failed him.” His frown intensified.
“But surely now...”
Shawn shook his head. “Eddie said your dad came around, but I never heard it straight from him. Like I said, it’s been years since Eddie and I’ve talked.”
Years. Seemed like such a waste. “But leaving was so drastic—”
“It wasn’t as if anyone had my back. No one was on my side. Not even you.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t even know your side.”
He shrugged. “You probably would’ve reacted the same way the town—”
“You’re right it wasn’t fair to blame you.” Her forehead creased with a deep frown. “But I would hope you could forgive me for being in the wrong in the same way I had to forgive you for leaving without saying goodbye.”
“Of course,” S
hawn answered, a little too quickly. “The bottom line is we never would’ve worked together anyway. Best to leave the past in the past.” He leaned over and pointed at the pack in her lap. “Did I see beef jerky in there?”
She nodded, stunned, and tried to ignore the sudden smell of soy sauce and meat. If ever there was a clear indication of an ended conversation, asking for beef jerky had to be it. She knew all the reasons they wouldn’t work now, but she didn’t know of any reasons back then. So much of what he’d said confused her as if it held more than one meaning. Her temples issued a sharp warning pain behind her eyes of an impending headache.
“Sleep if you can,” Shawn said, his brow furrowed low. “You experienced a lot of physical trauma hanging from that branch.”
The pounding in her head and the soreness in her arms prevented her from asking more questions, but Jackie never let a mystery go unsolved without further investigation. She closed her eyes, just for a moment. The mysteries from the day were piling up too fast to mention. She would get to the bottom of what happened all those years ago, even if the truth meant she’d have to experience heartache all over again.
* * *
The snow had made a layer against the windshield and piled against the side windows. The seats weren’t comfortable, but despite their attempts at blocking out the cold, the howling wind still slipped in and swept past his cheek. Shawn turned on the engine slightly earlier than planned. He’d been running it for roughly twenty minutes every hour to conserve their fuel. Jackie seemed to be in a fitful sleep. Blissful heat filled the cab again. The lines in her face smoothed and, thankfully, she didn’t wake up.
At least the warmth had been strong enough to melt snow off the windshield and the side windows. He kept the headlights on, even now, to avoid raising suspicion should someone be watching. Under the cover of trees, there wasn’t much to see except the flakes getting caught in the beam’s gaze as they fell down.
Something flickered through the evergreen branches. He hunched over and squinted. Still nothing. He tried to move quietly as he grabbed the pair of binoculars he’d found in Darrell’s bag.
The magnification took a few adjustments before he spotted the source of bobbing light. Men on ATVs and a snowmobile. He counted three. But what could be so important to risk riding on treacherous terrain in the middle of the snowstorm? Maybe the reason motivated the murders of two men and the attempted murder of Jackie.
They came to a stop. If he had to guess, the men had paused somewhere near the end of the crevice. A giant, high-powered beam turned on, flashing across the expanse of snow. The backlight illuminated the men as one walked forward and pointed it downward. Shawn’s gut twisted. They’d said they would come back to make sure he and Jackie had died among the truck wreckage.
“Jackie, wake up.” He hated to do it, but he couldn’t take any chances. The men would know they weren’t down there any minute and might start looking for them. “I don’t think we can stay here.”
She blinked and rubbed her face. “What?”
The beam bounced out of the deep pit and hit the tree line, heading straight for the truck. “Duck!”
He twisted sideways, getting his head close to the heater console while Jackie folded over, her head close to her knees. Sure enough, a second later, the light lit up the entire cab.
“But, Shawn, if they killed Darrell—”
He realized his mistake before she fully voiced it. If those men had been responsible for Darrell’s death, they would’ve been expecting to see at least one person, albeit dead, behind the wheel of the truck.
A branch fell from the sky and hit the hood at the same time the sound of a gunshot reached his ears. Jackie flinched, a small scream filling the cab as she flung her arms over her head.
“They know we’re here. They’re coming for us, aren’t they?”
“I’m afraid they are.”
A loud crack and the windshield radiated with fractures around a circle. Shawn’s head throbbed with the sound of impact. The beam still lit up the truck. He tried to contort to look upward and see if the bullet had actually made a hole, but he didn’t find one. “Are you okay?”
She shivered. “No, I’m not okay! That was so close. They know, Shawn. They know.”
A ping sounded again. This time a bullet went through the windshield and snapped the rear mirror in two. He narrowly missed the plastic hitting him in the forehead.
“We need to run, Shawn.”
Since rescuers hadn’t stumbled upon them with the headlights on, their chances of being saved now, so close to Christmas, reduced drastically. “You know the dangers of hiking in the night, and once we leave the vehicle there’s no going back.”
“I also know the dangers of being a sitting duck.” She sat up and grabbed the backpack. The beam of light hit her straight on, and she bolted out of the truck.
Shouting could be heard, echoing through the open air. If the men hadn’t known their location for sure, they knew now. The light disappeared. Engines revved.
He grabbed his pack, stepped outside and sank a good half a foot into fresh snow. The wind had stilled, and the sky, still thick with full clouds, momentarily stopped dropping flakes. He rounded the truck with loud footsteps, his knees lifting to waist level with each step. The only good news about the vehicles heading straight for them was the bullets stopping for a moment while they drove around the crevice and up the hill. But that would only last mere moments. If they were the murderers who had planted the truck here, they knew the path. They had minutes at the most to get away.
Jackie ran deeper into the trees. She halted after about ten feet and spun around. The moonlight hit her wide eyes. “Where do we hide? They’ll see our footprints.”
“We can’t outrun them. I’m guessing the field trailer is at a forty-five-degree angle, southeast of here. Let’s at least start in that direction.”
“But we stay in the woods and go deeper if we can. Remember how we tripped over all those rocks and trunks on the way here?”
He picked up her train of thought almost instantly. “Dangerous for a snowmobile.”
“And not a picnic for an ATV. Especially if we get near trees grouped together.”
He glanced up at the moon and lifted a hand in the direction he thought they needed to go. “They’ll have to track us on foot, which gives us an advantage. Stay close.”
“They’re getting closer.”
He didn’t need her reminder. Their engines increased in volume, and by the sound of things, they’d reached the truck.
“What’d they do with the body?” a man shouted. The engines cut off. “Go in after them. They can’t have gotten far.”
Shawn couldn’t hear the muffled reply. The trees were so thick that the men couldn’t follow them on the snowmobiles, but it sounded like they were following on foot. If only they had more light. One wrong step and one of them could break a leg, fall into a hole or meet up with wild animals. The clouds shifted ever so slightly. The trees weren’t as thick up ahead. The crunching of snow and branches followed them, pushing him to run faster, but he wasn’t sure if Jackie could keep up. Without the promise of getting to heat, working up a sweat could mean hypothermia. Hope plummeted with each step. Their attackers had found their path. He heard it.
Jackie patted his back. He turned and found her holding up a flare. “I can distract them, while you try to take them down.” She gestured to his gun.
In the night, outnumbered in manpower and ammunition, he didn’t think it wise to start a shooting match, but the flare gave him an idea. “Distraction is a great idea. Not yet, though. Is it a simple road flare?”
“Day and night, handheld.”
“Use the day side,” he said in a quiet pant. He couldn’t afford for the men to hear their plan. “At my signal, use wide circles so it fills the space, and then stick it in the snow, and stay low.”
> It didn’t take long to find what he’d been searching for. As the tree grouping grew tighter on the south side, a large bank, covered with snow, rose up. A mix of evergreens and maples towered against the ridge, but they could still climb it. He wasn’t sure what would be on the other side, though. Drop-offs were as common as trees in this section of land.
The moonlit shadows indicated the bottom of the bank was deep, somewhere between a ditch and a burrow. Running out into the open wasn’t an option, so hiding in that space seemed like the smartest course of action.
The men were gaining on them by the sound of their footsteps. He pointed. “Right after you light the flare, go there.” He stepped to the opposite side of the trees from where he wanted to eventually go. “Now or never.”
Jackie twisted off the cap and orange smoke filled the sky. The day side of the handheld flare would produce a dense cloud of orange for at least a minute rather than the night side that burned short and bright. She didn’t need to be told twice. She swirled the stick in a wide circle and the thick foliage trapped the smoke in the space.
“Drop it,” he whispered. She stuck the bottom end in the snow and ran for the bank, just like he’d hoped. The smoke continued to gather and form an orange wall within the trees. He pulled his gun and shouted, “Drop your weapons! BLM ranger!” He fired his weapon into the ground, ducked and sprinted to join Jackie on the other side of the orange cloud. A barrage of bullets sounded, all aiming for the spot he’d just been standing in.
Jackie stood waiting for him just past the smoke. He’d hoped she’d be in the hiding spot by now, but she’d picked up a fallen evergreen branch and swiped at his tracks until they reached the space together. The spot between the tree and the snowy bank proved tight. They could both fit, but would it be enough to hide?
He threw his pack into the space. Jackie took off her backpack and tossed it in, as well. He gestured for her to slide in first. They had roughly two feet of space in between the ridge and the tree branches, but they sat a good foot and a half below the trunk, with just their heads poking up. He managed to sit up, but at an angle, much like a recliner. Thankfully, the thick spread of pine needles, while not the most comfortable, protected them from moisture seeping into their clothes.
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