by TAYLOR ADAMS
Ashley paused — “Oh” — and in a half-second of confusion, his grip weakened and Darby’s shoes touched the floor. A half-second was all she needed. She found her footing, kicked off the tile, and hurled her body backwards into his.
Ashley stumbled, off-balance.
She kept running backward, kept pushing him—
He gasped: “Wait, wait, wait—”
She rammed him, back-first, into a sink. Vertebrae against porcelain. The faucet clicked on. He grunted and released, her arms twisting from his grip. Her hands finally free. She grabbed the wet bag and ripped it off her face, sucking in a full breath. An inverted scream, clogged with blood, snot, and tears.
She saw color again. Air on her cheeks. Oxygen in her blood. She fell away from him, her knees mushy, catching herself on the floor with an outstretched palm. Cold tiles, speckled with her blood.
Behind her, Ashley pulled something from his pocket.
He raised an arm—
* * *
—And he swung the rock-in-a-sock at the back of Darby’s head, arcing the stone like a whipping bola, ready for the wet-porcelain crunch of the girl’s skull — but she was already scrambling forward, moving away.
It swiped her hair.
He lunged after her, off-balance from his swing, the rock banging off the wall to his left, leaving a ceramic chip. He hit his knees and watched her break away and sprint down the restroom, toward that little triangular window, with the plastic bag fluttering behind her. She won’t make it, he told himself. But in another instant, she’d vaulted up to the window frame, caught herself by her fingernails, and hurled her body through the tiny opening like a gymnast. Ankles up, then out.
Just like that.
She was gone.
Ashley Garver was suddenly alone in the restroom. He staggered upright, nearly slipping on the bloodstained Ziploc bag.
It didn’t matter, he realized, slicking his hair back with a palm, catching his breath. He’d assigned Lars outside the back wall, by the stacked picnic tables, for this very situation. His brother, armed with that trusty Beretta Cougar, was the backup. Darby had escaped his kill zone in the restroom, yes, but in doing so she’d practically dropped herself into Lars’s arms, and now she was be too weak to effectively fight back—
The restroom door banged open behind him. He whirled, expecting to see the befuddled face of Ed, here to investigate the racket, and he already had a story prepared — I slipped on the wet floor, I think I hit my head — only it wasn’t Ed standing there in the doorway.
It was Lars.
Ashley kicked the plastic bag. “Oh, come on.”
“You sounded like you, ah, needed help—”
“Yes. I needed you out there.”
“Oh—”
“Out there.” Ashley pointed furiously. “Outside, not inside.”
Lars’s eyes widened, darting from his big brother to the empty window. He realized what he’d done, what he’d allowed to happen, and his face crumpled and reddened with sloppy tears: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Ashley kissed him on the lips.
“Focus, baby brother.” He slapped his cheek. “The parking lot. That’s where she’s running, right now.”
He hoped he could still run, too. His lower back throbbed where the redhead had slammed him into the porcelain sink. And as he collected his senses, he noticed something else. A sudden lightness in his right jeans pocket.
His lanyard was gone.
“And . . . the bitch took our keys.”
* * *
Darby tumbled down the stacked picnic tables, landing hard. She dropped Ashley’s keys in the snow but recovered them, clambering upright.
The red lanyard had become hooked around her thumb in the scuffle. Pure luck, really. When she’d charged him into the sink and broken free, the payload of chattering keys came with her. Now she had them. And he didn’t.
They jingled in her palm. A half-dozen mismatched keys, and a black thumb drive. She stuffed the whole handful into her pocket as a new plan took shape.
What’s better than running for help?
Stealing the abductors’ van and driving for help.
With Jay inside.
A desperate gamble. She was still in shock, her fingers still slick with sweat, her breaths still surging. Her mind racing with panicked thoughts. She wasn’t sure if their Astro could drive any farther than Blue could in Snowmageddon, but she’d sure as hell try. She’d stomp the gas, rock the four-wheel drive on its shocks, try everything. She had no other options. If she stayed here at Wanapani, Ashley and Lars would murder her.
She circled the building, wading through snowdrifts, and the night air stung her throat. She passed the crowd of half-buried Nightmare Children to her left. Chewed bronze forms in the darkness, pit-bull-mauling victims frozen in playtime. That bare flagpole, wobbling under another gust of razor wind.
Ahead, the parking lot. The cars. Their van.
Just another fifty feet—
The visitor center’s front door squeaked open behind her. A rectangle of projected light, and she cast a staggering shadow on the snow. A pair of crunchy footsteps followed her. The door shut and her shadow vanished.
“No.” Ashley’s voice, firm, like he was scolding a dog: “Don’t shoot her.”
She slipped, slashing a knee on jagged ice. Kept running. The pursuing footsteps flanked her now, one moving right, one cutting left. Like wolves encircling their prey. She recognized them by their breathing — the congested pant of Lars on the left, the controlled huffs of Ashley on the right. She kept running and focused on the Astro. Keys jangling in her hand.
“Lars! Don’t shoot her.”
“She’s trying to steal the van—”
“You want a yellow card?”
She slipped again, catching herself. Her purse bounced off her knee. Just ten paces from the kidnappers’ vehicle now. She could see the cartoon fox on the side, racing closer, still holding that orange nail gun—
“She won’t get anywhere. The snow’s too deep—”
“What if she does?”
“She won’t.”
“What if she does, Ashley?”
Darby skidded, reaching the driver door, her heart thudding in her throat. She palmed snow off the lock and fumbled for the keychain, but it was too dark to identify the Chevy key. At least three of them felt thick enough to be car keys. She tried the first one. It didn’t fit. She tried the second one. It fit but didn’t turn—
“She’s unlocking the door—”
She was on the third key, jamming it into the icy lock, when she noticed something to the left. A minor detail, but wildly wrong.
The Astro’s rear door.
It should have been shut — but it hung ajar, the glass reflecting a scythe of lamplight, the upper edge collecting a rim of snowflakes. Darby hadn’t left it open. It couldn’t possibly have been Lars, or Ashley. That left . . . Jay?
Lars panted. “She’s . . . she’s stopping.”
“I know.”
“Why’s she stopping?”
As both pairs of footsteps drew closer, Ashley understood. “Oh, hell.”
1:23 a.m.
From her angle, Darby couldn’t quite see it.
But she knew what Ashley saw — Jay’s dog kennel clumsily sawed apart from the inside, the Astro’s rear door pushed open, and a pair of small footprints hitting the snow and leading out into the darkness.
He stared, mouth agape with dull shock, before glancing back to Darby: “If she tries to run, shoot her.”
She turned — but Lars had already circled the van and appeared behind her with that stubby handgun held waist-high, aimed at her stomach.
She caught her breath. Surrounded again.
“I don’t . . . I don’t believe it.” Ashley paced, his fingers digging into his scalp, and Darby noticed his hairline was every bit as severe as his younger brother’s. He just grew his bangs out to cover the receding bits.
/>
She couldn’t help but feel a grim satisfaction. She loved it. For all of Ashley’s smugness and posturing tonight, she’d still managed to hurl one hell of a wrench into their plan. Little Jaybird was loose.
Ashley kicked the Astro’s side, bruising the metal. “I don’t fucking believe it—”
Lars edged back.
But Darby couldn’t resist. Too much white-hot adrenaline in her veins. Two minutes ago, he’d been asphyxiating her with a plastic bag and she was still furious about that, still bristling with reckless energy. “Hey, Ashley. I’m no expert on kidnappings, but doesn’t it only work if there’s a kid in there?”
He turned to face her.
She shrugged. “Just my amateur opinion.”
“You . . .” Lars raised his pistol. “You should stop—”
“And you should eat a goddamn breath mint.” Darby looked back to Ashley, her words shivery and raw, unspooling like twine: “Are you sure about that little speech of yours? Helpless humans just letting the big, scary monsters do their thing? Because I think I just influenced the plot, motherfucker—”
He stomped toward her.
She flinched — Oh God, this is it, I’m dead — and Ashley raised the rock-in-a-sock as he charged, winding up for a skull-fracturing impact, but then at the last instant he sidestepped past her and threw it.
She opened her eyes.
He’d been aiming at a streetlight. Two hundred feet away. After a few airy moments of flight, the rock hit the post squarely, bouncing off the metal with a warbling clang. It echoed twice.
Most NFL quarterbacks couldn’t do that.
Lars whispered: “Magic.”
I’m a magic man, Lars, my brother.
They’d been toying with her this entire night, she realized. Manipulating her. Pretending to be strangers, working the room, dropping flagrant lies and obtuse little hints and studying how she reacted. Like a rat in their maze.
Can you cut a girl in half?
I can. But you only get gold if the girl survives.
That roomful of anxious laughter rang again inside her brain, as tinny as microphone feedback. Her migraine was back.
Ashley wiped saliva from his mouth and turned back to Darby, his breath curling in the mountain air. “You don’t get it yet, Darbs. It’s alright. You will.”
Get what?
This gave her a sick chill. Her adrenaline high, her crazy-stupid fearlessness — it was all slipping away, fading like a weak buzz. Two beers, fun while they last, but gone by dessert.
Lars peered inside the van. “How long ago did she break out?”
Ashley was pacing again. Thinking.
The silence made Darby uneasy. Like any good showman, Ashley was difficult to read, only telegraphing his violence when he meant to. His younger brother still dutifully held her at gunpoint, never letting the barrel touch her back. Never letting the weapon bob within grabbing distance.
Lars asked again. “How long ago did she break out?”
Again, Ashley didn’t answer. He stopped with his hands on his hips, studying Jay’s footprints in the snow. They led north. Away from the rest stop. Up the rising land, past the overpass, along the on-ramp. Toward State Route Seven.
His words simmered in her mind. You don’t get it yet, Darbs.
You will.
She estimated, based on the powder that had accumulated atop the van’s rear door, that Jay had broken out and escaped roughly twenty minutes ago. Before the attack on the restroom, at least. The girl’s footprints were already growing faint, filling in with dusty snowflakes.
“What’s that?” Lars asked.
Ashley knelt to retrieve something, like a wrinkled black snakeskin. But Darby recognized it — the electrical tape they’d sealed over Jay’s mouth. She’d discarded it here as she fled.
Wisely, Jay had avoided the visitor center, because she’d known Ashley and Lars were inside. So she’d gone for the highway, probably in hope of flagging down a passerby and calling the police — except this poor girl didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know they were well beyond the outskirts of Gypsum, well beyond the outskirts of anything notable, nine thousand feet above sea level. She didn’t know it was six uphill miles to the summit and ten downhill to the power station; that this bleak, wind-shredded climate might as well belong to Antarctica.
Jay was an affluent city kid from San Diego — a land of yucca palms, sandals, and sixty-degree winters.
Darby raked her mind, now throbbing like a hangover — what had Jay been wearing back inside the kennel? A thin coat. That red Pokeball T-shirt. Light pants. No gloves. No weather protection at all.
Finally, in a flash of horror, she got it.
So did Lars. “She’s going to freeze to death out there—”
“We’ll follow her tracks,” Ashley said.
“But she could be a mile down the road—”
“We’ll call out to her.”
“She won’t come to our voices.”
“You’re right.” Ashley nodded to Darby. “But she’ll come to hers.”
Now both brothers were looking at her.
For a moment, the winds faded and the parking lot fell silent. Only the gentle patter of snowflakes landing around them, as Darby quietly realized why Ashley hadn’t already killed her.
“Well, here we go.” He shrugged. “I guess that puts us on the same team, huh? Neither of us wants a black-fingered little Jay-cicle.”
Jokes. Everything was a joke to him.
She said nothing.
He clicked a pocket flashlight, spotlighting the girl’s footprints with a blue-white LED beam. Snowflakes ignited like sparks. Then he aimed the light into her face, an eye-watering brightness. “Start calling her name.”
Darby stared at her feet, tasting stomach acid in her throat. A rancid, greasy sort of heartburn, bubbling with terrible thoughts. I shouldn’t have given her that knife. What if, by intervening tonight, I made things worse?
What if I got Jay killed?
Lars’s pistol jabbed her spine, a harsh gesture that meant walk. If she’d been ready for it, she could’ve spun around, swiped for the gun, and maybe, just maybe, seized control of it. But her opportunity passed.
“Her name is Jamie,” Lars said. “But call her Jay.”
“Go on. Follow the tracks and start hollering.” Ashley swept his LED light at the footprints, and then looked back at her with darkening eyes. “You wanted to save her life so badly? Well, Darbs, here’s your chance.”
* * *
The girl’s footprints led them along the on-ramp, to the dirty ice banks of State Route Seven before veering uphill into the woods. Up a rocky slope of snowdrifts and precarious fir trees. Every step of the way, Darby silently dreaded reaching the end of these tracks and finding a collapsed little body in a red Pokeball shirt. Instead, something even worse happened — Jay’s footprints simply vanished, erased by windswept snow.
Darby cupped her hands and shouted again: “Jay.”
It had been thirty minutes now. Her voice was raw.
Up here, the only navigational landmark was the sulking shadow of Melanie’s Peak, due east. The land steepened as they climbed. Boulders broke through the snowpack, granite faces glazed with rivulets of ice. The trees here teetered on shallow roots, leaning over, branches sagging. Sticks snapped underfoot, like tiny bones breaking in the snow.
“Jay Nissen.” Darby swept the flashlight, throwing jagged shadows. “If you can hear me, come to my voice.”
No answer. Only the stiff creak of the trees.
“It’s safe,” she added. “Ashley and Lars aren’t here.”
She hated lying.
But coaxing Jay back was the poor girl’s only chance at survival now. Possible death at the hands of the Garver brothers was still better than certain death in a subzero blizzard. Right? It made sense, but she still despised herself for lying. It was humiliating. Made her feel naked. She felt like Ashley’s little pet, speaking obediently on his b
ehalf, her nostrils still crusted with dried blood from when he’d recently slammed her face into a table.
The brothers followed her but kept their distance, lingering ten paces back on her left and right. Cloaked in darkness while Darby carried the only source of illumination — Ashley’s LED flashlight. This was all according to Ashley’s plan. Jay wouldn’t dare emerge if she saw her abductors stalking behind Darby, holding her at gunpoint. At least, that had been the idea.
So far, it hadn’t worked.
Jamie Nissen. The missing daughter of some wealthy San Diego family with a Christmas tree standing over a pile of unopened presents. Now she was somewhere out here in the howling Rockies, her fingertips blackening with frostbite, her organs shutting down, buried by flurried snowflakes, tears icing on her cheeks and freezing her eyelids shut. They could have already stepped over her little body, five minutes back, without even noticing.
Hypothermia is a peaceful way to go, Darby recalled reading somewhere. Apparently the discomfort of coldness passes quickly, replaced by a warm stupor. You don’t die so much as drift off to a dumb sleep, oblivious to the awful damage inflicted upon your extremities. Crunchy fingers, dark blisters of ulcerated flesh that go necrotic and must be sliced away with a knife — but in your brain, you’re far away, swaddled in a snug blanket. Darby hoped it was true. She hoped Jay hadn’t suffered.
She called out again into the darkness.
Still no answer.
To her left, she heard Lars whisper, “How much longer?”
To her right, “As long as it takes.”
She knew Ashley wasn’t stupid — he was running the same numbers in his mind. Thirty minutes spent following these half-buried footprints, plus a twenty-minute head start (at least), meant Jay’s chances of survival in these freezing woods were poor, and getting worse every second.
Halfheartedly, Darby assessed her own options here at gunpoint. Fight? Get shot. Run? Get shot in the back. She considered turning and shining the flashlight into the gunmen’s eyes to blind them, but they’d been around it for over a half hour, so their pupils were already adjusted to it. This was problem one. And even if she could blind them for a few seconds, the snowbound terrain was too rough for a quick escape — which was problem two.