by TAYLOR ADAMS
“Mm-hmm.”
“Reminds me of a joke. What does Ford stand for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Found on road, dead.”
Sandi grunted and kept reading.
Finally, Ashley took the hint. “Sorry. I’ll let you read.”
Lars watched this interaction from the door. He licked his lips, and Darby was struck by how small his teeth were. Just two little rows of stunted kernels, like baby teeth, half-formed, still encased in pink gums. He gulped the last of his COCO and threw his empty Styrofoam cup at the garbage can, missing by three full feet.
No one commented on this.
Not even Ashley.
Darby watched the white cup twirl on the tile and considered — assuming her suspicions were confirmed — maybe she’d be able to break into Lars’s van and quietly move the child into her Honda. Hide him or her in the back seat, perhaps, under the heap of butcher paper she used for her gravestone rubbings. Or better yet, the trunk — if there was enough oxygen and heat. When the snowplows arrived early tomorrow morning, everyone could go their separate ways, and Lars might drive away without even realizing his prey had escaped—
No. That was wishful thinking. Since they’d be stranded here all night, Lars would have to run his engine periodically to keep the child warm. He would notice his captive had disappeared.
She took in a rattling breath. She counted to five before letting it out, just as her mother once taught her.
Right now, the advantage is mine.
I can’t waste it.
She wished it could be someone else in this situation. Someone smarter, braver, steadier, more capable. Someone from her college’s ROTC program, one of those sweaty girls in urban digital camouflage lugging heavy rucksacks up and down campus. Someone who knew ju-jitsu. Hell, anyone else.
But it was just her.
Just Darby Thorne, the weird girl who hid from parties inside a dorm room wallpapered with black crayon rubbings stolen from strangers’ graves, like some kind of spiritual vampire.
As the snowstorm intensified outside, she swiped her iPhone and quickly typed another text. Just a draft message. Just a backup, in the event of the unthinkable, but it brought tears to her eyes all the same.
Mom, if you find this message on my phone, something happened to me. I’m trapped overnight at a rest stop as I write this, and one of the people here might be dangerous. I hope I’m just being paranoid. But if I’m not . . . just know that I’m sorry for everything. All the things I said and did to you. I’m sorry about our phone call on Thanksgiving. You don’t deserve any of that. Mom, I love you so much. And I’m so sorry.
Love, your daughter.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Lars went to the restroom.
He passed by Darby’s chair, and she noticed something strange. He’d peeled his black ski gloves off, exposing the pale skin on the back of his left hand. It was peppered with tiny, raised bumps. Like mosquito bites. Or maybe scar tissue, though she couldn’t imagine what grisly tool could do that to a human hand, short of a cheese grater—
Then Lars shuffled past and vanished into the men’s restroom. The door swished shut, taking forever before finally clicking.
Now.
Darby scooted her chair out and stood up on quivering knees. Ed and Ashley glanced up at her. This was her chance, her thirty-second window to sneak outside and confirm the unthinkable. Her phone in her hand, she moved to the front door, her lungs swelling with held breath — but on the way she surprised herself. She did something utterly illogical.
She approached the second carafe, labeled COCO, and quickly refilled her eight-ounce Styrofoam cup. She didn’t even like hot chocolate.
But kids do. Right?
She heard a urinal flush. Lars was coming back.
Hurrying now, she sipped the warm drink while she crossed back to the front doorway, and tugged the door open, aware that Ashley was still watching her. “Yo, Darbs, where are you going?”
Darbs. She hadn’t been called that since fifth grade.
“Trying again to get a cell signal. My mom’s got pancreatic cancer and she’s in a hospital in Provo.” Without giving Ashley time to respond, she stepped outside into the howling storm, flinching against a wall of bone-chilling air, and recalled an offhand little saying she’d heard once from her mother: The easiest lies to tell are the true ones.
NIGHT
9:25 p.m.
Darby walked to the Nightmare Children first.
This was part of her plan — it would be suspicious to beeline straight for the cars, and she had to assume Lars would look out the window after he exited the restroom and found her not there. Plus, she was leaving tracks in the snow. She recognized her own from an hour ago, and Ashley’s, and Lars’s (her size-eight shoes were so much smaller than theirs). All filling with snowflakes.
Tonight, every decision would leave footprints.
As for decisions, the hot chocolate had been a dumb one. About as dumb as Devon’s “Strength in Chinese” tattoo. She didn’t know why she’d taken the time to pour a drink while a possible child predator took a leak one room over. She just did it. She’d burnt her tongue when she sipped it on her way outside, like a real badass.
She circled the chewed-up statues, and then looped back around the visitor center. The building teetered by the cliff’s edge — just a narrow precipice behind a cement foundation wall, made narrower by stacked picnic tables. On the building’s back wall, she spotted two more windows. One for each restroom. They were small and rectangular, about ten feet off the ground, nestled under the icicled overhang of the roof. She was certain Lars was finished in there already — she’d heard the urinal flush minutes ago — but she moved quietly, just in case.
She walked uphill, still play-acting the role of Girl Without Cell Service. Of course, her iPhone detected nothing. She tried re-sending her 9-1-1 text message every few paces, but it never took. Her battery was now four percent.
From up here, she could survey the entire rest area, laid out like a diorama. Wanapa — Little Devil, in the local tongue. The stout little building. The flagpole. The cedar trunk. The Nightmare Children. The huddle of snowbound cars. Particularly, she watched the visitor center’s front door, waiting for Lars to step outside under the orange glow of the sodium-vapor lamp. Waiting to see if he’d follow her trail.
The door didn’t open.
No sign of Rodent Face.
Melanie’s Peak towered to the left, a sloping shadow. The intensifying snowfall had obscured most of it, but it was still the tallest mountain within view. It would be a useful landmark for navigation.
From this vantage point, she could also see State Route Seven, bathed in circles of overhead lights. It looked like a giant ski ramp, glittering with fresh powder. Utterly impassible for everything here except (maybe) Sandi’s truck. Blue wouldn’t make it five feet up — or down — that.
She waited there with snowflakes in her hair, listening to the distant gusts of high-altitude wind. Between them, a bleak silence. And in it, Darby’s own tortured thoughts ran wild, like an echo chamber.
You’re the reason Dad left. And if I could have chosen him instead of you, I would have, in a heartbeat.
In a fucking heartbeat, Maya.
Before hanging up, her mother had answered: If he really wanted you, Darby, he would have taken you.
She sipped her hot cocoa again. Lukewarm.
Now that she was certain Lars wasn’t following her, she could finally approach his van. She crossed the exit ramp and came at it from the north, her eyes never leaving Wanapa’s front façade. From the interior window, you could see the van’s right side but not the left, and she had to assume Lars would be keeping an eye out. Walking in the deep snow was exhausting; she clambered and panted, spilling her drink. The air was abrasive on her throat. Her nose burnt. She felt the moisture freeze on her eyelashes, turning them crunchy.
Strangely, though, her body itself didn’t feel cold. Her b
lood was hot with adrenaline. She felt radioactive. She didn’t even have gloves, but she felt like she could spend all night out here.
Crossing the section of the parking lot designated for RVs and semi trucks, she was close enough now to the building that she could discern seated figures through the smudged glass. She saw Ashley’s shoulder. The top of Ed’s balding head. No sign of Lars, though, which suddenly worried her. What if he’d followed her outside after all? What if he’d just exited the building when she was behind it, and he was tracking her footprints right now, creeping behind her in the darkness?
She couldn’t decide what was scarier — seeing Rodent Face, or not seeing him. Her hot chocolate would soon freeze in its cup.
She kept moving toward that mysterious van, and the stupid cartoon fox floated closer with every lurching step. That slogan: WE FINISH WHAT WE START. The powder on the parking lot was shallower; only ankle-deep under a skin of ice. It had been plowed within the last twenty-four hours, which was reassuring. Approaching from the left, she used the van’s long side as cover.
She approached the van’s rear doors. A Chevrolet Astro. She assumed AWD stood for all-wheel-drive. An older model, judging by the hard wear. Dirty scrapes on the bumper. Charcoal gray paint, peeling off in crunchy blisters. To the right, she recognized the faint outline of her own footprints from an hour ago, passing between the van and her Honda, and pausing right here. This was where it happened. This was where her night took a hard turn.
And now, this was her moment of truth.
She set her Styrofoam cup in the snow and leaned up to the Astro’s rectangular back windows, half-obscured with knives of creeping frost. She cupped her hands to the glass again and peered inside. It was even darker than she’d remembered. No shapes. No movement. Just murky blackness, like looking into a stranger’s closet.
She tapped the glass with two fingertips. “Hey.”
No answer.
“Hey. Is someone in there?” It was strange to be talking to a van.
Nothing.
Only Darby Thorne, standing out here like a car prowler, feeling more and more awkward with every passing second. She considered using the LED flashlight on her iPhone, but that would consume battery and worse, be as bright as a supernova. If Lars happened to be facing the window, he’d definitely see it.
She rapped the metal door twice with her knuckle, just above the California license plate, and waited for a response. No activity inside. Nothing at all.
I imagined it.
She stepped back from the door, sucking in a cold breath. “Listen up,” she hissed, her voice hoarse. “If there’s someone trapped in there, make a noise right now. Or I’m leaving. This is your last chance.”
Still no answer. Darby counted to twenty.
I imagined that little hand. That’s what happened.
Now, in the luxury of hindsight, she knew exactly why she’d taken the time to fill a cup of hot chocolate back in the visitor center. It was her own form of denial. She’d done the same thing after Devon had texted last night with a message that imploded her world:Call me mom has cancer.
The first thing she’d done?
She’d set her phone down, slipped on a jacket, and then walked from Dryden Hall to the student union building and ordered a cheeseburger. She’d watched it come to her, greasy and squashed, paid $5.63 with a crumpled ten, found a seat in the deserted cafeteria, and took two half-hearted bites before bolting to the restroom and vomiting. She’d called Devon right there in the stall, her elbows on bleached porcelain, her cheeks burning with tears.
There’s refuge in normalcy — if you can hold onto it.
Outside Lars’s van, she kept counting.
By now she’d reached fifty, and still seen no sign of this imaginary child. It made sense, right? The same way perfectly rational people swear to see red lights in the sky, or phantoms in mirrors, or Bigfoot in national parks — Darby Thorne had just imagined a child’s hand inside a stranger’s car, and nearly taken serious and violent action on that half-glimpsed mirage. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep.
This wasn’t a movie. This was just real life.
And this was all just a misunderstanding, a false alarm, and Darby suddenly couldn’t wait to return to that stuffy little visitor center. Now the company didn’t seem so bad at all. She’d try and play cards with Ashley, maybe chat with Ed and Sandi. Perhaps doze off on the bench until CDOT updated their emergency frequency with more weather details.
Because Lars wasn’t a kidnapper after all. He was a creep with a stutter and a bumpy skin condition on his hands, sure, but the world was brimming with creeps. Most were harmless. Since the owner of this Astro likely was, too, she regained some courage and pressed her phone to the van’s back window and engaged her LED flashlight, triggering a wash of blinding blue-white. Just to put the last of her suspicions to rest, to finally confirm there was nothing—
Behind the glass, she saw a little girl’s face staring back at her.
Darby dropped her phone.
The LED light landed sideways at her feet, facing the Wanapa visitor center like a beacon, throwing jagged shadows in the snow. She dove for it, covering it with her cupped hands and fumbling for the shoulder button.
Stillness in the van again. The girl had retreated back into the darkness.
And again, Darby had only glimpsed her. But in the harsh flash the afterimage was scorched into her retinas, like staring into the sun. Details lingered. The oval shape of her face. Maybe six or seven years old, with matted hair. Wide eyes, flinching at the brightness. Dark tape clamped cruelly around her mouth, shiny with dripped snot. She was behind something metallic and gridded, like a black wire cage. As she’d initially suspected. A dog crate.
Oh, my God. Her mouth is duct-taped shut and she’s stuffed inside a dog crate.
For the first time since she’d stepped outside, Darby shivered. All of the heat seemed to leave her body in a single, bracing instant. It was all confirmed. It was all true. It was all exactly as she’d suspected. It was all really happening, right now, in vivid color, and a little girl’s life was really on the line, and tonight’s title match would be between a sleep-deprived art student and a human predator.
She stood again.
Stupidly, she retried the Astro’s rear door. Still locked. She knew this already. She went for the driver door next. She wasn’t thinking; she was acting on instinct. Just reflexes, raw nerves. She was going to break into Rodent Face’s van. She was going to get this little girl the hell out of there, and hide her in her Honda. The trunk, maybe. She'd be safe in there, right?
Breaking glass would be loud, and would leave evidence. Instead, Darby peered through the driver window. The Astro’s interior was cluttered with receipts on the dashboard and yellow burger wrappers on the seats. The cup holders bulged with Lars’s empty Big Gulps. She swept away fresh powder and searched for the door’s lock pin behind the icy glass — yes, there it was. Thank God for old cars—
Darby, think this through.
She crouched and ripped the white shoelace from her right shoe. Gritting her teeth, she tied a slipknot down the middle. Drew it tight, like a miniature lasso. She’d only done this once before.
Darby, stop.
No way. She palmed more snow off the top of the door, dropping scabs of ice, and pressed her shoelace into the upper corner. With her fingertips, she gripped the metal and pulled, just enough to relieve the pressure between the door and its frame. Just a millimeter or two. After thirty seconds of fidgeting, the lace slipped right through and dangled behind the glass.
Stop.
She couldn’t. She fed the shoelace in careful inches, lowering the loop to the lock. And something miraculous happened — the lasso dropped onto the pin and encircled it on her first try. This was the hardest part, the part that had taken forty-five frustrating minutes last time, but amazingly, Darby had it here on her very first attempt. This was a promising omen, like God was on her side. She sure hoped He
was. Tonight, she’d need all the help she could get.
Her better judgment was still protesting: Darby, don’t be impulsive. After you break her out, then what? You can't take her inside. You can't hide her in Blue's trunk all night. First, take a step back—
Nope. All she could think about was that girl. That terrified little face, still flash-burnt onto her mind.
Think this through—
She repositioned left, sliding along the door’s perimeter, and tugged the shoelace horizontal. The slipknot tightened around the lock, like a noose squeezing a neck. Then she repositioned vertically, adjusted her grip, and tugged a little harder (too hard, and she’d lose her grip on the pin and have to start over) and a little harder, and harder still, and the shoelace quivered with sweaty tension, and the pin creaked, and now she was committed and couldn’t stop . . .
Darby, you’re going to die tonight.
CLICK.
The door unlocked.
Her heartbeat accelerating, Darby grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open, and to her horror, the Astro’s dome light kicked on. A glaring brightness.
* * *
Larson Garver saw a light outside.
He was slouching by the brochure rack, studying the Colorado Air pamphlet and trying to tell if their Robinson turbine copter was an R66 or an R44, when he noticed it. Glimmering at the edge of his peripheral vision. A soundless little flash from the parked cars, reflected backwards on the window. From his van.
He felt a knot of panic tighten in his gut.
The rest of the room was oblivious. Ashley and Ed’s card game continued, their voices a gentle back-and-forth:
“Nine of diamonds?”
“Agh. You got me.”
Lars held his breath. His angle on the unknown light outside wasn’t good enough; it could just be a reflection on the glass. So he stuffed the Colorado Air brochure into his pocket — where it would join Springs Scenic (a Cessna 172) and Rocky Vistas (a DHC-3 Otter) — and he hurried to the paneled window, craning his neck for a clearer view—
* * *
Darby found the dome light button and punched it off.