———
From the entrance, a breeze began to blow, slowly stirring the placid air. The moist, cool air one breathes right before a storm.
Boots looked at the entrance and then back to the girl now collapsed before him.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
35
They waited in the cabin that night, confused about what they had experienced in just the past couple of hours. The randomness of all the week’s events, from the near death on the highway, to the eccentric desert nomad, to the seemingly unexplainable paranormal power the old man had over the afternoon’s storm. All of it seemed too much to comprehend, to process into a single coherent narrative.
Laura sat on the couch between intermittent walks to the water pump, flipping through decades-old copies of defunct nature magazines. Jack was his usual restless self, pacing the room, staring out into the blackness of the desert.
“What do you think is going on?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He won’t let us leave.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Really?”
“He’s harmless. Who knows how far away we are from civilization.”
“So.”
“He knows more than we do about how to get out of here.”
Jack could not accept that. He wasn’t going to be bested by this old man. Not in Laura’s eyes. “We should start out tomorrow.”
“Where are we going to go, Jack?”
“There has to be someplace else. Something close by.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said.
“What?”
“In the morning.”
“Hmph.”
He paced on, always hoping that the next look out the window would bring salvation. He walked around the kitchen area, peeking into the three cupboards for anything that would resemble food. A late-night snack to ease his racing mind.
“Stop snooping around.”
“I’m not snooping, I’m starving. This crazy old man has to have something to eat. He doesn’t eat rocks, does he?”
Laura glared back at him. Late-night sarcasm never sat well with her. She watched as Jack paced the floor, first to the cupboards, then to the window, then back to the cupboards.
Nothing.
His stomach growled in anger, demanding its owner remedy the situation as quickly as possible. He kept searching and re-searching the area when what sounded like a sonic boom echoed through their bones. Dropping the magazine on the floor, Laura shot up, ran to the front door, and out onto the porch. Jack followed tentatively behind her.
To the west, over the mountains, they could see massive thunderheads against an otherwise clear sky. Another storm with twisting, churning motions like they had seen in the afternoon, but now at a distance that did not reach them. Where they stood, the air was still and calm. Up on the mountain, a vortex was unleashing its wrath on the stones and peaks. Black and gray swirling in a spiraling spectacle of Van Gogh’s twisted mind.
“Wow!” was all Jack could muster. He had loved storms as a boy, what boy didn’t? But this was of a magnitude he had never witnessed.
Laura stepped to his side and grabbed his arm, amazed at what she saw and a bit fearful at the same time. “Is that coming this way?”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t look like it’s moving at all. Just sitting up there.”
“I wish Boots was here.”
“Ha! I hope he’s up there.” Jack smirked. “The guy could use the bath.”
Laura playfully slapped at him as a lightning bolt lit the sky. The crack took half a minute to reach them, but hit with an intensity as if it had struck the cabin. Her playfulness left her and she snuggled closer to Jack. They stood in silence watching Armageddon over the western sky.
In a breath, like black water sucked down a drain, the storm dissipated. Instantly. Unnaturally.
“Did you see that?”
“Uh, yeah . . .”
“What . . .”
“I don’t know.”
The silence strangled them. They felt exposed. Two souls in the middle of nowhere forced to huddle against each other for support and understanding.
“What is going on, Jack?”
“I have no idea.”
36
The headlights of the pickup truck bounced off the rock walls as Colten sped up the mountain. His head swam with unrestrained rage. He had whipped himself back into a fury since leaving Goodwell, and now was in the state of mind he wanted to be. Dark shadows leapt from the paths of the halogen lights as they skirted across the jagged edge of the two-track. Faster and faster up to the cave.
He arrived at the clearing and slammed on the brakes, creating a cloud of dust that whipped up into the ever-growing wind. He was back. Now it was time to kill the girl. To complete the macabre waiting and move on. The slam of the truck door reverberated all around him as he strutted to the cave.
He had often thought of the taglines the villains used in film. There was the infamous “Here’s Johnny!” that he thought was cool. Colten always thought he should make one for himself, a way of heightening the drama each time he stepped into this cave to do a kill. But he had never been creative that way. It would be imitation. He could never live with that. Besides, it was too much energy to devote to such a stupid thing.
No, he would enter the cave as he always did, silently. Without words, walk over to her, and kill her. That was the way he liked it. No explanation. No grand soliloquies. Quick and brutal and beautiful.
Colten stepped into the room and his blood boiled as he looked across the shadows and saw . . . nothing. He ran over to the far wall and felt for the chain. He found its empty clasp and threw it against the wall.
“No . . . NO!” he screamed as he ran around the small cave like a frat boy searching for a lost phone number. But it was pointless; the cave had no secret spaces, no hiding places. The girl was gone.
He ran out of the cave, back into the clearing where the chaos of the wind punched his face. His panicked eyes searching all over for her, around his truck, up the sheer walls of the mountain, down the two-track. She was not there. She had simply disappeared.
Suddenly the wind began to calm as Colten stood staring down the path he had come in on and out onto the desert floor several miles away. It was the only escape route. She had gotten out and now was trekking across no-man’s-land. He heard a quiet laughing behind him but did not turn around.
“Should have done it earlier” Seth said, reveling in Colten’s anguish.
“Shut up.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find her.”
“You better. She knows what you look like. All she needs to do is tell.”
“I know that.”
“She can’t get far—look at that,” Seth said, pointing out across the wide expanse of the desert. “She’ll probably die within a few miles of here.”
“I need to find her.”
“You will. But first, you need to collect yourself. Put your mind in order. Release some of this tension you’ve built up.”
“Not now,” Colten snapped.
“Yes, now. You’re crazed! You’re of no use in your condition.”
Colten took a step back and turned to face the man behind him. “All right. What do you suggest?”
“Drive home. Get some sleep. Get something to eat. Start out early and find her.”
Blood pumping through constricted veins. Pneumatic pulses in the eardrums prevented Colten from hearing Seth’s directions.
“You listening to me? You need to focus.”
Rage.
Uncontrolled.
Colten turned and made for his truck, got in, and tore down the mountain.
37
Boots kicked open the front door and rushed in, carrying the young girl in his arms. She looked like she was suffering the effects of a binge night, her emaciated face and sunken eyes, her body lifeles
s in Boots’s arms. He walked passed Jack and Laura, who were sitting up at the table, and laid the girl on the old couch next to the wall.
“Great,” Jack whispered to Laura, “he grabbed another one.”
“Naw, Jack . . . I ain’t grabbed another one, but the poor child is in a bad spot right now.”
Laura went to the water pump, filled a glass, walked over to the couch, and started to wash the grime from the girl’s face. Underneath the dirt, she was pretty. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, but with a little girl’s face. Her clothes were a bit worn and several sizes too big for her frame. Laura moved the girl’s dark hair from her forehead to reveal a large bruise.
“Did you do this, Boots?”
“Naw, she had that when I found her. Like I say, she was in a bad spot. Who knows what she’d end up with if I didn’t show up. She’ll be fine.”
“You’re a real hero, Boots.” Jack’s words dripped with sarcasm, but his expression wilted under the glare from Laura.
Ignoring Jack, Boots continued talking to Laura. “I found her just past the west ridge. Not sure what she was doing up there, but that was no place for her to end up. Bet she was dragged up there not knowing where she was going. Seen it before. Boys like to take runaways up there and have their way. Sometimes they leave ’em up there. Sometimes they don’t. Yup, I’ve seen it before.”
“Did you get caught up in the storm? It looked fierce.”
“Storm? I ain’t seen no storm.”
Laura looked at Jack. He was sipping on his water, apparently disinterested in their conversation. She looked back at Boots.
“What storm?” she said, searching Boots’s face. “The storm that was up on the mountain and then disappeared.”
“Like I say, storms come up pretty quick out here, easy to miss if you ain’t looking. I’ll be sure to catch the next one. You take care of her.”
And with that he scooted out the front door and was gone before Jack could respond.
Jack stood as the front door shut behind Boots. “Seriously? The guy vanishes, kidnaps a girl, drops her off here, then runs out? This is far beyond insane, Laura.”
“Not now, Jack,” Laura said, focusing her attention on the girl.
“Not now? Why not now? We are being held by some mountain man who is starting his own prison camp. Why doesn’t he just let us go or lead us out of here? Why is he keeping us here?”
The girl began to groan and stir. Laura sat her up and held the water to her mouth. The girl sipped slowly at first, and then her eyes shot open, staring at Laura. The fear on her face was unmistakable. She pushed back into the couch as if she thought she could melt into the pillows.
“Who are you? Where am I?” she screamed, looking around the cabin for any sign of familiarity. Her eyes fell on Jack, who was now walking over. “Who are you?”
“It’s okay, you’re safe now. We won’t hurt you.” Laura offered the glass again with a motherly instinct and a faint smile. “What’s your name?”
“Molly . . . ,” she whispered. “Molly.”
“Are you hurt, Molly?”
“My head hurts.”
“You got a nasty bruise. Did someone hit you?”
Molly shook her head slightly. “I don’t remember.”
“How’d you get out here?” Jack piped in.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know where here is.”
“Good point. Somewhere in Nevada, I’m sure. Did some old man steal you from some place?”
“Jack!” Laura shouted.
“It’s a fair question! She looks like she’s been roughed up. She doesn’t know where she is, and then Boots comes along and carries her in here?”
Molly pushed at the fog in her mind. Her body was past exhaustion, but she dug for memories while the couple argued on. They seemed all right to her. She felt no ill will toward her from them, just general concern, at least from the woman. The man looked agitated but harmless, like a small dog with all teeth but no bite.
“I was on my way to LA,” she started slowly, scanning her mind through a cloudy haze. “I remember getting as far as Utah but then ran out of money. It was a lot more than I thought it would be.” Molly took a sip of water. “I got a ride with someone down to Las Vegas. They dropped me off there and gave me a couple bucks. I was going to the bus station but didn’t have nearly enough.” Her mind searched for more detail, but that was where things became fuzzy for her.
“You remember anything else, honey?”
Searching her memory again, shifting folders around looking for some lost file. Her eyes darted from the floor to the wall, back to Laura’s face.
“A truck . . . I remember a beat-up black truck.”
38
Colten entered the bar well after midnight. He walked through the stuffy air to the back corner and sat down in an empty booth. He was sure that the dimly lit tavern would conceal his loathing. But he wasn’t looking for a hiding place. He was out hunting, and this was the third venue of the night.
The waitress came over and asked if he wanted a drink.
“Draft.”
He didn’t plan on drinking it, but he knew that he couldn’t sit empty-handed and go unnoticed. He wasn’t sure how many more places he had to hit before he found what he was looking for. He had to keep his wits about him, and so when the waitress returned, he gave her a ten spot and called it good. He also had to be ready to move. Colten grabbed the beer and put it to his mouth, letting just a little quench his thirst, filtering a sip between his teeth.
He was off the Vegas strip. Away from the high-priced tourist spots but in a good locale. The frequenters of these places were either drunk locals or out-of-towners low on cash but still relishing the easy release that came from alcohol. His first two stops were a complete bust.
The first bar had been empty for well over a half hour. He felt uneasy. Exposed. He moved on before he was forced to make conversation with the bartender, who spent breaks between wiping the counter by watching the baseball game on TV.
The second pub had been occupied by a couple trying their best to crawl into each other’s skin, and a small office party. The couple would not do tonight. He wasn’t interested in twisting in a romantic vibe to his bloodlust. Tonight, he had a specific goal in mind. Bringing down to earth something big.
Now at a third bar, in the dark, moving the glass slowly in circles on the table, Colten thought about the day. He had planned to finish the girl off tonight. It would have been slow and calculated. He had waited almost a full week, relishing in the thought and planning every small detail. He had slowly worked her down to the bare, raw emotion. She would scream—of course she would—but she would scream for some pointed purpose, some focused stimuli, some single beam of pure channeled hope. He had learned when the kill came too quickly, a person’s mind would scatter in ramblings, cursing, spitting. Messy.
Prepping her had channeled her suffering. At that moment when her last breath leaked out of her nostrils, he would know the one thing that kept her hope alive. She would scream it out. She would beg for it to help her, and be crushed when the full realization that that one hope would not save her. He would feed on the power then, the power of breaking the one thing that someone held dear. It was a better fix than the beer before him. It was better than anything.
But now she was gone before he’d had the chance to bathe in her misery.
Twenty minutes passed and Colten was about to move on when he saw him. The one who fit the night’s order. The living corpse was sitting on the opposite side of the room, at the far end of the bar. Tucked in the shadows and blended with the wall sat a middle-aged bald man in a black T-shirt. He was big, several inches taller than Colten and at least 100 pounds heavier. The man’s thick biceps flexed as he brought his cocktail to his lips and set the glass back on the table, the ice inside making an empty clink. There was a small, aged, unfinished tattoo peeking out from below the sleeve, an indication that the man wanted to be thought of as tough at
one time, but had not wanted to return to the pain of the needle.
Colten didn’t need a Rosetta stone to decipher his character. The shirt was too pressed and clean for him to be a real biker, and the redness of his skin confirmed that he was not used to the sun. No, this was some guy acting tough. Some guy playing the tough guy role. He could tell by the higher end liquor he had ordered to fill his glass. Yup, Colten thought, he would do just fine. It was not just sheer bulk that Colten had a desire to tear down tonight—no, he wanted to rip ego straight from the bone.
The man got up from the bar and paid his tab, then turned and walked out the door. Colten walked behind him and watched as the man jumped on a black VMAX and fired it up. Colten quickened his pace and got to his truck as the man shot westward toward the highway. It didn’t take long for Colten to catch up and trail behind the unwitting soul.
They drove briskly out from Vegas north up the interstate until the darkness overcame the distant haze of the marquis lights behind them. Colten’s face would glow as he lit the lighter and fired up another cigarette, his eyes on the single taillight of the motorcycle ahead of him. On the radio, the steady thumping of metal coiled his anxiousness around his spine. This was proving to be an adequate substitute.
For now.
The cat and mouse were the only two beings moving on earth at that moment, as if all other cars had vanished and they took center stage. All other souls asleep or watching in quiet, morbid fascination. The only lights on the road were the motorcycle ahead, the black pickup, and the occasional splash of a tossed-out cigarette butt. The motorcycle turned off the highway onto a county road before the lights of the air base lightened the night sky, and Colten moved in for the kill.
Accelerating to close the distance, he was on the bike before the rider knew what was coming. With a quick turn of the wheel he swerved into the rider and sent the bike skidding across the pavement, the rider eating stone and rock as he bounced down the shoulder. The man tumbled, his body becoming more lax with each punch of the pavement until he came to rest next to the hulk of metal that was his ride.
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