Switchback

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Ten to fifteen feet.” Susanne took the gun and held it in her lap pointed straight ahead of her. It felt heavy. “Okay.”

  “And be sure not to point it at me or anyone you care about.”

  “Of course.” She had trouble swallowing. What was she getting herself into? Anything for my family, she told herself. Anything.

  “There’s a holster under the seat. You’ll want to wear it.”

  Ronnie started forward, only to stomp on the brakes, then arm-wrestle the truck into an immediate turn. The trailer bore the worst of it. “This is getting a little too interesting. I’m afraid of getting the truck and trailer into something I can’t get them out of. We’re going to need to go overland from here.”

  Susanne wasn’t sure she was ready to be exposed to the dark and the forest, but she didn’t see a choice. “Should we take the horses?”

  Ronnie screwed up her mouth, thinking. “Let’s just go take a peek in the woods. I don’t want to take the time right now. We can always come back for them. I can’t imagine they got much farther than we did with the other truck and trailer.”

  Susanne pulled a rain slicker on as she exited the truck, careful not to get the revolver stuck or point it in the wrong direction. Wet snow splatted on her face and hood. The women walked single file with Ronnie’s flashlight to guide them. Susanne stubbed her toe on a half-buried rock. She pitched forward and dropped the .38 Special before going down on her hands and knees. The flashlight beam swung over to the gun.

  Ronnie made a “huh” sound. “You didn’t bring the holster.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Why don’t you stick that thing in the back of your waistband. We’ll both be a lot safer.”

  Chagrined, Susanne took her advice. The barrel of the revolver felt cold and hard against her skin. “Sorry.”

  Ronnie was leaning over to get a better look at the ground near where Susanne had fallen. “That’s odd.”

  “What?”

  “The tracks are real messed up here, like there was some kind of commotion. What, I’m not sure. But the tracks keep going into the forest, so we’ll follow.”

  In the trees, the snowfall lessened, and Susanne dropped the hood on her slicker. Outside the narrow beam of the flashlight, she was night-blind. Spooky turned to downright scary, and the night sounds didn’t help. They walked onward for a few minutes. Then, ahead of them, something creaked and snapped. Susanne muffled a squeak.

  “Probably just the wind,” Ronnie said.

  She didn’t stop.

  Susanne stayed frozen in place. She heard tearing, snapping, and growling. “Ronnie,” she whispered.

  Ronnie held an arm out low.

  Susanne moved in close, almost hiding behind Ronnie like her friend was a human shield. “It sounds like something eating.”

  Ronnie nodded. “Yes. And we don’t want to get in the way of that.”

  “Can we go around them? Or could you shoot your gun and scare them off?”

  “No, and no. But let’s see if we can get a better look.”

  Ronnie lifted her flashlight toward the animal sounds. She tiptoed forward. Susanne stayed glued to her. After about fifteen feet, shapes emerged, but Susanne couldn’t make out anything distinct. The eating sounds paused. Something growled in their direction, and Susanne’s blood turned to ice.

  Ronnie drew in a breath. “Wolves. A whole pack. I haven’t seen one in years.”

  Wolves. Susanne closed her eyes and tried to stay calm. With her bad vision she couldn’t see the wolves, but she’d never been this scared in her life, not even when she’d come upon a rattlesnake in Texas and had to back away slowly, all the while waiting for it to strike. Every childhood story casting a wolf as the bad guy came back to her in a flash. “Peter and the Wolf.” “The Three Little Pigs.” “Little Red Riding Hood.” She longed for the protection of the truck.

  “What do we do?” she whispered.

  “Let me think,” Ronnie said.

  She paused. The sounds of animals tearing into flesh started up again.

  When Ronnie spoke, her voice was fraught with tension. “Oh my God.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re eating a horse. Well, two horses, actually.”

  Susanne’s legs were shaking. She steadied herself by grabbing Ronnie’s arm. “What do they look like?”

  Ronnie wasn’t listening and didn’t answer. “Shit. I get it now.”

  “What?”

  Ronnie pointed at the ground with the arm Susanne wasn’t attached to. “The oddness about the tracks I mentioned earlier. They had doubled back. They’re not here anymore. We’re standing where they turned around.”

  This meant they could leave? Susanne wanted out of here, so she was glad to hear it, but she was still fixated on the horses. “What do they look like?” she repeated.

  “What do what look like?”

  “The horses. What do the horses look like?”

  “It’s hard to say for sure. One is maybe sorrel, the other is white?”

  Susanne pressed her hand over her mouth, then talked through it, her voice muffled. “Cindy and Goldie.”

  “Who?”

  Susanne dropped her hand. “Our horses. I think the wolves are eating our horses.”

  And then Susanne vomited on the toes of her own boots.

  Chapter Thirty-one: Climb

  Southwest of Bruce Mountain, Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, Wyoming

  September 20, 1976, 11:00 p.m.

  Trish

  Trish loved to ride, but riding double on a horse scrambling up a steep, rocky trail was not her idea of a good time. Goldie was slipping and tripping all over the place. The horse had been jittery at first, but she grew calmer as she got more tired. Trish felt sorry for her. Carrying two people uphill, one off-balance and with heels in the ticklish part of her belly? It had to be super hard. Not to mention that it was snowing. She could feel the flakes on her chin and hands. Funny—the ringleader had been right about one thing. The son’s body was keeping Trish warm. Not that she was touching it. She was keeping herself rigidly away from it, in fact, which she could only do by holding the cantle at the back of the saddle. And that she could only do because she and the son were last in the line of riders. The son had taken the belt off her wrists as soon as the others turned their backs. It was a relief to have the use of her hands and an even bigger relief not to have the eyes of the men on her.

  “There’s nowhere for you to run,” he’d said as he eased the belt off.

  “I know. I won’t.” Of course, she would, if she thought it would do any good. But where would she go?

  He hadn’t spoken since then.

  They continued climbing. Trish’s arms were tired from clinging to the cantle, fighting the gravity that threatened to pull her backward off Goldie’s rump. She swayed. Goldie stumbled sideways. Trish had gotten used to riding blind, but it still wasn’t easy.

  The son reached around toward her head. She sensed it coming. At first, she shied away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to take off your blindfold. You’ll balance better if you can see, and then maybe you won’t get us killed.”

  Was he really going to take off her blindfold? She held still. He grasped the flannel shirt and lifted it off her head. Oh my God. Oh my God. She could see. Her hungry eyes looked around her. She couldn’t see much better in the dark than through a blindfold, but her eyes started adjusting quickly. Soon she could tell that they were on a narrow trail through truck-sized boulders, with nearly sheer drops over more of the same. The giant rocks were like a jumbled chimney piled all the way up to the sky. She followed the chimney up, then lifted her eyes skyward. Swirls of snowflakes danced down and landed on her face.

  But these weren’t the things she needed to see. She needed to see him. The son.

  She tried to get a look at him, but he kept his face turned away from her. All she managed was his hair—dark and curled to his collar—and his heig
ht. Her head barely came to his shoulder. She ducked around his shoulders to stare after the men ahead of them. With their backs to her, she couldn’t see their faces. They were only dark cutouts against a darker background.

  They rode on through switchbacks back and forth across the boulder field. She saw movement and spotted animals huddled together under a rock overhang. Was it her imagination, or did she see the curved horns of bighorn sheep? She peered harder into the darkness. Yes! A small herd of them. Tears pooled in her eyes. How happy this would have made her dad, to see these creatures. How much she wished they could have seen it together. With her mother and Perry, even. And how guilty she felt for the way she’d treated her dad back at Walker Prairie. She hadn’t even passed along her mom’s message that the coroner had called him. It wouldn’t have cost her much to do that. Why hadn’t she? But she had no answer. They climbed closer to the bighorn sheep, and the animals scattered. Trish gaped as they hopped away, surefooted on wet, narrow rock faces. Then they were gone, like they’d never been there at all.

  Time flew by even as she begged it to slow down. She didn’t want to get wherever these men were taking her. The snow stopped. The stars came out. Millions and millions of stars against a velvet sky that seemed just a shade bluer than black. The star glow highlighted the silhouette of the mountain to her left. Dome Mountain, she assumed, if her reckoning was correct on their direction since they crossed Woodchuck Pass. In the near-dark, the colors around her ranged from dark blue to purple to gray. A bruised world, beaten by the fists of weather, moisture, and time. It was like something in a dream, and like nothing she would have ever seen in her life. She would have said “no way” to a ride in these conditions for fun. Yet, she knew no matter how long she lived, this picture would remain one of the most achingly beautiful things she’d ever seen.

  She couldn’t let this dreamscape be one of the last things she saw. Her dad’s advice rang again in her ears. “Whatever a bad guy is going to do to you somewhere else is always worse than what he is going to do to you right here. So fight, fight, fight.” She was glad her mom had insisted he teach them self-defense. She would use it. She flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders. She would be ready, and she would use it.

  Goldie stumbled. The son reined her to a halt. He handed the flannel shirt back to Trish. “Put this back on.” His voice was a whisper.

  No. Something in her wailed and begged her not to do it, but she had to. Now was not the right moment to fight. There was nowhere to run and hide. The men could overtake her easily in the boulder field. So she pulled the shirt over her head and twisted it around until her eyes were covered, leaving a sliver of sight out of her left eye.

  The son said, “Do you have it on?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned toward her. She leaned away. She felt the shirt slide around as he adjusted it. The sliver of sight disappeared. She heard the nylon belt slide through his belt loops.

  “Wrists.”

  Putting on her blindfold was hard enough. Giving him her wrists was hard like she imagined it would be to jump out of an airplane with no parachute. The belt drew tight around her wrists. She grasped the saddle horn, fighting back revulsion as her body was forced to lean into his back again.

  He clucked to Goldie, who sighed heavily. “We’re almost there.”

  Goldie shuffled forward. Trish closed her eyes inside the blindfold. She wasn’t ready to die. There were so many more things she wanted to see and do. It was time for her to fight. That’s all there was to it. It was time to fight. Goldie stiffened, almost as if she felt Trish’s intention, then her pace picked up. The trail leveled off. Goldie’s hooves clacked against rock. After another five minutes, they stopped.

  Footsteps approached. Heavy. Purposeful. Cocky. Her mouth went dry. The ringleader. Fight, Trish, fight, fight, fight.

  “Tie her up, then put up the tents,” the ringleader said. His words sounded soft at the edges.

  “Are you drinking?” the son asked.

  Trish heard liquid slosh.

  “What are you, a spy for your mother?”

  “Just wondering.” The son untied Trish’s wrists and then refastened them when her arms were no longer around him. “Get down. I’ll hold on to you.”

  Trish slid off the back of Goldie’s rump. The belt jerked out of the son’s hands, and Trish fell onto her tush. Goldie didn’t kick. Trish heard the son dismount. As Trish leaned over to push herself up, her blindfold dislodged just enough that she gained a narrow view of the world around her from one eye. Could anyone tell? She ducked her head to hide her eye, just in case, but not so much that she couldn’t watch what was going on. She stood stock-still while she took a moment to get her bearings.

  They were in a clearing in the midst of a ring of stumpy trees. Ringleader spat a thick, brown stream of tobacco juice on the ground. Some of it dribbled into his beard. He was continuing to chew out the son, this time for letting go of the belt, so she was able to put the voices to the faces. Her stomach fell like the time she’d jumped off the high dive at the city pool in Irving. She’d seen them before. The men who harassed her dad at their campsite—the ringleader was the one who’d been in charge then, too. He also might have been one of the two that chased the elk, she thought, although she wasn’t as sure about that. But the son she’d seen many times. He went to her high school. He was a senior. Quiet. A loner. She tried to remember his name. Ben something. With a J, maybe? Ben Johnson. Ben Jenkins. No, Ben Jones, she realized. But where were the other two men? Scary and Creepy?

  Then a thought struck her. She had to control her facial expressions and body language. She couldn’t let them know she’d seen them, recognized them. She relaxed her face. Her dad had taught her self-hypnosis in seventh grade. She was getting nervous stomachaches all the time, being the new kid in her class in Buffalo. It was all about breathing and telling the thoughts in your mind to go away while you relaxed every muscle in your body. She couldn’t make her brain stop, but she started coaxing her body to relax, beginning with her face. In a few seconds, she felt the muscles relax and droop. She dropped her shoulders. Released her clinched fists. Forced herself to breathe normally.

  Better.

  With no warning, a wiry body pressed into her from behind and pushed her all the way to the ground. She landed on her hands and knees. Under the weight of the body on her back, she collapsed to her belly.

  “Still cold, little girl?” Creepy Voice’s breath was boozy and foul. Her dad didn’t drink much, but she had sleepovers at a friend’s house whose parents drank a lot. Creepy Voice smelled like they did when they’d come to tell the girls goodnight. Only Creepy Voice smelled even worse.

  “I’m fine.”

  He snorted. “Yes, you are.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “It only hurts the first time.”

  She thought about Forever. The characters talked about sex hurting the first time in the book. Creepy Voice had to be talking about sex. Fight, fight, fight. She thrashed and raised her voice. “Get off of me.”

  “I’ll get off on—”

  Suddenly his weight lifted from her body. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, away from the spot where he’d pinned her. Her blindfold fell off around her neck. She turned and saw a man she recognized. The white-haired man from her first night on Walker Prairie. His body was writhing, and his chin was hanging over a forearm, but she’d never seen the man who held Creepy Voice in the choke hold.

  When the fourth man spoke, it raised the hair on her arms. The uncle. Scary Guy. “I already told you, we don’t hurt women or molest children. Are you a slow learner, cousin, or a bad listener?”

  Creepy Voice’s eyes bulged. He looked like he was trying to answer, but all that came out of his mouth was spit bubbles. The uncle looked Trish in the eye, and before she realized he even had a knife in his hand, he slit his cousin’s throat and dropped his flopping body to the ground. Trish stared at the body. She screamed so hard it hurt
her throat. The flopping stopped. Creepy Voice’s throat gaped open in a drooling red clown-smile.

  Ringleader shouted, “Why’d you go and kill Larry?”

  “I don’t think you want to be next, do you, Chester? Just think of it as one less person to split the payment with.”

  “What payment?” Chester sounded almost whiny.

  The uncle pointed at Trish. “She’s seen us. She can identify us. We need cash to make a getaway. We can’t leave her up here to walk out. Scaring her dad isn’t good enough anymore.”

  Trish buried her face in her shoulder. She hated that she’d seen them.

  “But how?” Now Chester sounded interested.

  “We still leave her here, but we don’t let her loose. We call her dad and make him drop the ransom before we’ll tell him where she is. Then we hit the road.”

  Ben said, “When do we tell them where we left her?”

  The uncle’s voice was chilling and final. “We don’t.”

  Trish’s head jerked up. The uncle locked eyes with her again. Whimpering, she broke eye contact. He laughed and turned away. Something in her snapped. She scrambled to her feet, then she ran as fast as could, blindly, straight into the dark heart of the forest.

  Chapter Thirty-two: Scream

  Southwest of Bruce Mountain, Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, Wyoming

  September 20, 1976, 11:00 p.m.

  Patrick

  Patrick doubled over onto his saddle horn. His abdomen was cramping like a woman in labor. Or so he guessed, having only witnessed it before himself. His guts had been fine while they were riding up the valley and over the other side of the pass. Everything had been easier for a while. The light snow was much less unpleasant than the rain had been. His extra layer of flannel shirt was even feeling a bit too much for the weather. He felt better about catching up with Trish now that he was chasing horses instead of a truck. And he was finding it surprisingly easy to follow a herd of hoofprints, even though the group wasn’t following an established trail. He kept his mind busy trying to guess how many. More than two. Three? Four? Five? Was one of them Goldie?