by TAYLOR ADAMS
So far, so good.
Darby crept back along the van’s left side, retracing her steps past the stupid cartoon fox, clambering through heaped snow. She stuffed her shoelace into her jeans pocket; no time to relace her shoe right now. She circled the back of the Astro, grabbed the left door handle, and tugged it open.
The girl was inside a dog cage. One of those black wire-grate ones that can be collapsed for flat storage. This one was sized for a collie, reinforced with a padlock and dozens of knotted zip-ties. She was hunched on her knees because there wasn’t enough room to stand. Her tiny fingers gripped the wire bars. Duct tape was looped around her mouth in clumsy twists.
Darby smelled a damp sourness. Urine.
For a long moment, she couldn’t speak. What could you possibly say? There were no words for this situation. As if swallowing a mouthful of peanut butter, she finally managed to move her lips and say: “Hi.”
The girl stared at her with wide eyes.
“Are . . . are you okay?”
She shook her head.
Well, no shit.
“I’m . . .” Darby shivered under a gust of chilling wind, realizing she hadn’t planned this far ahead. “Okay, I’m going to take the duct tape off your face, so you can talk to me. Is that all right?”
The girl nodded.
“It might hurt.”
The girl nodded harder.
Darby knew it would hurt; it was gummed up in her hair. Lars had wrapped it lazily around her head, and it was the black electrical kind. She reached through the gaps in the dog kennel and found the tape’s seams with her fingernails. Carefully, she peeled off the first loop, and then the second, and as the little girl worked the rest, Darby asked: “What’s your name?”
“Jay.”
“Do you know the man who drives this van?”
“No.”
“Did he take you?”
“Yeah.”
“From your house?” Darby rephrased: “Wait, okay, Jay, where do you live?”
“1145 Fairbridge Way.”
“Where is that?”
“By Costco.”
“No. What’s the name of the city you live in?”
“San Diego.”
This made Darby shudder. She’d never driven to the West Coast before. Lars must have been on the highways for days, with this girl penned up in the back. That explained the fast food trash. She glimpsed more of the van’s interior as her pupils adjusted to the darkness—blankets and rugs heaped to cover the cage. Plywood shelving on the walls, all empty. Coca-Cola bottles, the glass kind, jangling on the metal floor. Loose sawdust. Nails. A red gas can with a black spout. Children’s clothing bundled up in white Kmart bags, although Darby doubted Lars had changed Jay once since he’d abducted her from her hometown. All the way in Southern California.
“Right by the Costco,” Jay clarified.
Darby noticed a circular logo on the girl’s shirt, and recognized it—the ball-shaped device from the Pokémon games. A Poké Ball, she remembered, from the iPhone app that had briefly taken CU-Boulder by storm. “What’s your last name?”
“Nissen.”
“Is . . .” Darby rattled the circular padlock securing the kennel door. “Is Jay short for something?”
“Jaybird.”
“No. A longer name. Like . . . Jessica?”
“Just Jay,” the girl said.
Jay Nissen. Age nine. Reported missing in San Diego.
The realization crept up on Darby—this would be on the news. She’d just broken into a man’s car (already technically a crime) and decisions were being made, right now, that would later be recited to a courtroom. Attorneys would nitpick the minute-to-minute details. If she survived, she would have to answer for every single choice she’d made, good and bad. And thus far, all she’d really accomplished was asking the kidnapped girl with her mouth duct-taped shut if she was okay.
Darby had always been awful at speaking to children. Even back to her babysitting days, she’d lacked that maternal instinct. Kids were just messy, belligerent little creatures that stressed her out. She’d often wondered how her own mother could’ve handled her, especially since she’d been unplanned.
Her sister Devon had been deliberate, of course. The darling firstborn. But then three years later, along came baby Darby in the wake of a shattering marital split. Divorce paperwork, late rent, and a side of morning sickness. I thought you were the stomach flu, her mother told her once with a crooked grin. Darby never quite knew how to feel about this.
I thought you were the flu.
I tried to kill you with Theraflu.
Now this little abducted girl raised her other hand to grip the kennel, and Darby realized it was bandaged. Jay’s palm was wrapped and sealed with more loops of sloppy electrical tape. Too dark to make out details.
Darby touched it—and Jay flinched away sharply.
“Did he . . . did he hurt you?”
“Yeah.”
Her gut stirred with rage. She couldn’t believe it—how much worse this night seemed to get with each passing second—but she steadied her voice and asked through chattering teeth: “What did he do to your hand, Jay?”
“It’s called a yellow card.”
“A yellow card?”
The girl nodded.
Darby’s mind fluttered—like in soccer?
Jay lowered her injured hand and leaned back, creaking the kennel, and Darby felt something crusty coating the wire bars. It flaked off under her fingernails, smelling coppery. Scales of dried blood.
A yellow card.
That’s the kind of psycho I’m up against—
Fifty feet away, the building’s front door opened, and then banged shut.
Jay froze.
Approaching footsteps, coming fast. Ice crunching under treaded boots. Darby hesitated there where she stood, leaning into the back of the child abductor’s Chevrolet Astro. Half in, half out. Afraid to move, afraid to stay. Paralyzed by building terror, she looked into the little girl’s wide eyes as the footsteps stomped closer in the darkness.
And another sound, fast approaching.
Mouth-breathing.
8:39 P.M.
Run or hide?
As Lars approached his van, Darby chose hide. She scooted all the way into the vehicle, tucking her knees inside and gently closing the rear door behind her—but it shut on a towel.
His footsteps crunched closer.
“Shit—”
She tugged the towel inside and eased the door shut. It clicked home. She was now sealed inside the predator’s van, wedged between the rear door and Jay’s dog kennel. She sank as low to the floor as she could, contorting to fit the cramped space, and covered herself with heaped blankets and scratchy rugs. Coca-Cola bottles jangled underneath her. The musty odor of dog blankets. Her forehead pressed to the cold metal door, her right elbow squished crookedly behind her back. She fought to control her breathing, to keep her panicked gulps of air silent: Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Inhale. Count to—
Now she heard Rodent Face’s footsteps circle the vehicle’s right side, past the nail gun–wielding cartoon fox, past the we finish what we start motto, passing between his van and her own Honda. She tasted a seasick mix of fright and vindication—if she’d chosen run instead of hide, he would have certainly spotted her. He kept coming, wheezing softly between his too-small teeth, and she saw his silhouette pass by the rear window over her head. He paused there, glancing inside, twelve inches away from her, his breath fogging on the glass.
Darby held hers.
If he opens that door, I’m dead—
But he didn’t. He kept walking, completing a full circle around the van, then came up to the driver door. Unlocked it. Darby heard the door screech open on bad hinges, and the vehicle sank on its suspension as a third human body lurched inside. The jingle of car keys on his lanyard.
With one eye uncovered, careful not to dist
urb the glass bottles underneath her, Darby glanced over at Jay inside her dog kennel and raised one trembling index finger to her lips: Shhh.
Jay nodded.
In the driver’s seat, Lars sniffled, leaned forward, and clicked a key into the ignition—but he didn’t turn it. Darby heard a long, thoughtful pull of breath. Then silence. Too much silence.
Something is wrong.
She waited, her eardrums ringing with building pressure. Gut muscles clenched. A breath held in swollen lungs. Rodent Face was a dark form at the wheel, separated by a caged divider and silhouetted against the opaque snow on the windshield. With her one uncovered eye, Darby could see that his head was turned sideways. He was looking up, and to his right. At the Astro’s dome light.
The dome light she’d switched off.
Oh no.
She could imagine the thoughts inching through his brain. He was wondering why the light bulb hadn’t clicked on automatically when he opened the door, as it usually did. Now, what did that suggest? That someone else had entered his van. That, upon closer examination of the mixed footprints and displaced snow outside, someone was still inside his van, buried in the back under a musty Navajo rug, sweating and trembling with nerve-shredding panic—
Lars twisted the key.
The engine turned over smoothly and Darby exhaled with relief. He hunched forward in his seat and angled the air vents. Clicked the heater dial to full blast. Set his Deadpool beanie on the dashboard beside his model airplane, crinkling a fast food wrapper.
Darby heard movement beside her. It was Jay, quietly rewrapping the electrical tape around her mouth. Smart girl, she thought.
The next twenty minutes felt like hours, as the van slowly filled with heat and moisture. Lars idled the engine and scanned radio stations. He found only different flavors of garbled static, the repeating robovoice of that CDOT transmission, and once again, Bing Crosby’s goddamn “White Christmas.”
I can’t escape that song, Darby thought. It’ll probably play at my funeral. She’d always imagined that they would have invented flying cars by then. Now, slumped in a kidnapper’s humid van, breathing through her nose, she wasn’t so sure.
Naturally, Lars listened to the entire song, which meant Darby had to as well. Listening to the lyrics made her appreciate it a bit more. She’d always just assumed it was about snow, but there was a homesickness and longing to it. As Bing Crosby crooned, she imagined some poor farm boy just out of high school, hunkered in frozen foreign dirt, fighting someone else’s war, dreaming of loved ones back home. She could relate to that.
Lars probably wasn’t thinking quite as deeply about it. He munched a candy bar, chewing loudly. He picked his nose and studied his findings in the glow of the dash. Farted twice. The second one made him giggle, and then he suddenly turned around and grinned at the back of the van with a mouthful of small, pointy teeth, and Darby’s chest tightened, her heart a clenched fist.
“Warmed it up for you,” he said.
He was looking at Jay’s kennel in the darkness, but he had no idea he was also looking directly at Darby. Just a layer of fabric covering her, and one exposed eye. All it would take was a little more light.
He’s looking right at me.
Rodent Face’s grin vanished. He kept staring.
Oh God, he can see me, Darby thought, her sides cramping, feeling spiders crawling on her skin. His eyes are adjusting to the dark, and now he knows I’m in here, and oh my God, he’s going to kill me—
He farted a third time.
Or that, I guess.
This was a long one, a blaring honk, and then he exploded into hard laughter. He screamed his laugh, punching the passenger seat. He was immensely pleased with himself, barely choking out words to his captive: “You’re . . . ah, you’re welcome for the cheek-rumbler. Nice and warm, huh, Jaybird?”
Darby heard Jay’s electrical tape crease as her head tilted slightly. She imagined the girl making a See what I’ve been dealing with? eye roll.
Then Lars’s belly laughs morphed into coughs. They were wet, bubbly, like he was nursing a sinus infection. That explained the mouth-breathing.
Darby’s feet were pressed up against the five-gallon gas can she’d seen before, and beside it, she now noticed a second white jug. A Clorox logo barely visible in the dashboard light. Bleach, probably.
Five gallons of gasoline.
And bleach.
Materials to clean up a crime scene, maybe?
After the radio cycled through a few more holiday songs (“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” which he sang along to, and “Silent Night,” which he didn’t), Lars cut the Astro’s engine and stuffed the keys into his jacket pocket. By now the van was an eighty-degree sweatbox; the windows steamed with condensation. Beads of dewy lamplight sparkled on the glass. Trapped under that smothering blanket, the perspiration and melted snow had turned Darby’s skin clammy. Her coat’s sleeves stuck to her wrists, and underneath it, her Art Walk hoodie was soaked with dread-sweat.
Lars scooted outside, slipped his Deadpool beanie back over his scalp, and glanced back at the dome light. He was still mildly perplexed by that detail. But then he turned around, ripped ass one final, emphatic time into the cab, fanned it with the door, sealed Jay (and Darby) inside with it, and left.
Darby listened to his footsteps fade. Then, distantly, she heard the visitor center’s front door open and shut with a dim clap.
Silence.
Jay peeled the electrical tape off her mouth. “He farts a lot.”
“I noticed.”
“I think it’s the burgers.”
Darby threw the bristly blanket off her shoulders, wiping damp tangles of hair from her face. She kicked open the Astro’s rear door and climbed back outside. It felt like escaping a sauna. Her Converse were soaked, her socks grossly squishy inside them, and her right shoe was still missing a shoelace.
“He puts ranch sauce on everything,” Jay continued. “He asks the drive-through for a cup of it to dip his fries in, but that’s a lie. He just pours it on—”
“Right.” Darby wasn’t listening. The subzero chill was invigorating, like shedding fifty pounds of sweaters. She felt agile and alive again. She knew what she had to do—she just didn’t know how the hell she was going to do it. She stepped back, raised her iPhone, and snapped two quick photos.
Jay didn’t blink, her bloodstained fingers on the kennel bars. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Promise you’ll be careful—”
“I promise.”
The girl extended her unhurt hand to Darby. At first she thought it was a handshake, or a pinkie-swear, or some other half remembered artifact from her own childhood, but then Jay dropped something into Darby’s palm. Something small, metallic, as cold as an ice cube.
It was a bullet.
“I found it on the floor,” Jay whispered.
It was lighter than Darby would have guessed, like a blunt little torpedo. She rolled it left to right on her skin. Her palm was shaking; she almost dropped it. This wasn’t a surprise, exactly, just a grim confirmation of her worst-case scenario.
Of course Lars has a gun.
Of course.
She should have guessed. This was America, where cops and robbers carry guns. Where, as the NRA tells us, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Hokey, but true as hell. She’d never even handled a firearm before, let alone shot one, but she’d sell her soul to have one right now.
She realized Jay was still looking at her.
Usually, she hated talking to kids. Whenever she was trapped with her cousins or her friends’ younger siblings, she’d treat them like smaller, dumber adults. But now it came easy. She didn’t need to mince words. She meant every bit of what she said, and rewording it would only dilute its simple power:
“Jay, I promise I will get you out of here. I will save you.”
10:18 P.M.
Darby hadn’t seen her father in elev
en years, but as a high school graduation gift two years ago, he’d mailed her a multi-tool. The funny part? The drugstore Hallmark card congratulated her for graduating college.
Oops, huh?
But as gifts go, it wasn’t bad. It was one of those red Swiss Army variants that unfolded in a fan—corkscrew, metal saw, nail file. And of course, a two-inch serrated blade. She’d only used it once, to help open the blister package encasing her roommate’s new earbuds, and then she’d forgotten about it for the rest of her college career. She kept it in Blue’s glove box.
It was in her back pocket now. Like a prison shiv.
She was seated on the stone coffee counter, her back against the security shutter, her knees tucked up to her chest. From here she could watch the entire room—Ed and Ashley finishing their millionth game of Go Fish, Sandi reading her paperback, and Lars guarding the door in his usual spot.
From the back seat of her Honda outside, under her sheets of rice paper for gravestone rubbings, she’d also grabbed a blue pen and one of her college-ruled notepads. It was in her lap now.
Page one was doodles. Abstract shapes, cross-hatched shadows.
Page two—more doodles.
Page three? Carefully shielded from view, Darby had sketched possibly her finest-ever rendering of a human face. It was nearly flawless. She’d studied Lars, every slouching inch of him. His blond whiskers, his slack overbite, his mushy chin and slanted forehead. The pronounced V shape of his hairline. She’d even captured the dim glaze of his eyes. The police would find it useful; maybe they’d even release it to the media to aid the coming manhunt. She also had the van’s make, model, and license plate. Plus a blurry photo of the missing San Diego girl. It would look great on CNN, blown up on forty-inch LCD screens across the country.
But was it enough?
Driving was impossible now, but tomorrow morning when the snowplows arrived and opened up Backbone Pass to traffic, Lars would take Jay and leave. Even if Darby could manage a 911 call immediately afterward, the police would still be acting off a last known location. Maybe he’d get caught, but maybe he wouldn’t. He’d have ample time to slip through the patchy net, to vanish back into the world, and that would be a death sentence for nine-year-old Jay Nissen. Jaybird Nissen. Whatever her name was.
