by TAYLOR ADAMS
“I think so.”
Darby doubted a power tool would be an even match against Lars’s .45, but it was a hell of an upgrade from a two-inch Swiss Army knife. She’d never operated a nail gun before, or even seen one outside of an Ace Hardware store—but she hoped it would be simple to learn. How far could it fire a nail? Was it heavy? Loud? Would a nail to the skull kill the victim, or just maim? Point and click, right?
She touched Jay’s right hand through the bars, and found the nine-year-old’s fingers were slick with fresh, cold blood. The scab on her palm must have broken.
Point and click.
Darby vowed she’d kill Lars tonight. Maybe when she and Ashley finally cornered this sicko and pummeled him into a whimpering, broken heap—well, maybe she’d keep stabbing. Maybe she’d cut his throat. Maybe she’d enjoy it.
Maybe.
She leaned back and checked on the building again—still no activity. Now she was getting worried about Ashley, Ed, and Sandi. Was Lars really just standing idly by in there, allowing Darby to poke around the parking lot outside? After finding her Styrofoam cup in the snow? After stalking her and Ashley into the restroom? After she made knowing eye contact with him on her way out the door?
Jesus—what the hell was going on?
Bloody scenarios cycled through her mind like camera flashes. She braced, half expecting the thump of a gunshot. But there was nothing. Only icy silence. Only the distant moan of the wind. Only Jay and herself, standing on shaky legs in that desolate parking lot.
The nail gun, she decided.
Lars’s nail gun was her new objective. She’d find it, figure out how to operate it, and then she’d run back inside the visitor center, kick open the door, and whatever was going on inside, she’d fire a nail right into Lars’s whiskery little face. Ka-thunk. Asshole dead. Innocent child saved. Nightmare over.
That would work.
She looked back at Jay, her teeth chattering. “All right. Where do you think Lars keeps his nail gun? Back here, or in the front?”
“The other one keeps it in an orange box.”
“Keeps it where?”
“It used to be back here, but I think they moved it—”
But Darby wasn’t listening. Jay’s little voice bled away, and in a flash of scalding panic, the prior sentence snagged in her brain and echoed: The other one keeps it in an orange box.
The other one.
The other one.
The other one—
Slipping, staggering back outside, she hit her kneecaps on hardened snow, steadied herself against the brake light, and peered around it—
The building’s door was now open.
Lars stood in the doorway. Beside him, Ashley.
The other one.
They watched her, fifty feet away, framed by interior light. They appeared to be speaking to each other in guarded whispers so Ed and Sandi wouldn’t hear from inside. Their faces were black shadows, unreadable. But Lars had his scrawny arm chicken-winged up inside his jacket, likely resting on the grip of his pistol. And Ashley had the rock-in-a-sock out, in his right hand.
He was swinging it.
Smacking it against his palm.
Midnight
12:01 A.M.
December 24
Two versus one.
She’d been right about that part.
Ashley was in on the kidnapping. He’d lied to her—about driving the other car, about not knowing Lars, about everything. He’d played along with her in the restroom. He’d put his tongue in her mouth. He’d been so authentic, so convincingly human and frightened. She’d believed it all. She’d told him everything. Her entire plan, all of her options, her thought processes, her fears.
She gave him everything. Including a new weapon.
She whirled to face Jay. “You didn’t tell me there were two of them.”
“I thought you knew.”
“How could I know?”
“Sorry—”
“Why didn’t you fucking mention it?”
“I’m sorry.” Jay’s voice broke.
Darby realized she was yelling at a nine-year-old girl who’d recently taken a steel nail through the palm. What did it matter? It was Darby’s fault. Her mistake. Her horrible, fatal miscalculation, and now it was two versus one, and she and Jay were both as good as dead. Or worse.
One of the silhouettes started walking toward them.
Her heart seized up. “Okay. Where’s their nail gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“Front or back?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said, sniffling.
She needed to find it fast. Under the front seats, maybe? This orange box had to be large; there were only so many places it could fit.
She raced to the driver’s-side door, her feet sinking, like she was running in quicksand. She chanced a look over her shoulder—the advancing figure was halfway to them. Twenty feet back, taking high steps on the footpath. She recognized the beanie, the slouching walk. It was Lars. His right hand swung past a slice of light, and she saw a blocky shape.
His .45-caliber pistol.
“Jay,” Darby hissed. “Close your eyes—”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Just close your eyes.” She reached the Astro’s driver door, hitting it with both palms, her mind screaming: Find their nail gun. Kill this asshole. And then take his gun, and kill that lying snake Ashley—
She tugged the door handle. Locked.
Her stomach plunged.
Because . . . because Lars had relocked it. Of course he had; he was in there last. It was locked, locked, locked.
“You, ah . . . you asked my brother to kill me,” Lars’s gurgling voice called out, drawing closer. “Is . . . is that right?”
They’re brothers.
Shit, shit, shit.
Crunchy footsteps, like breaking eggshells, coming toward her. “He says you . . . you asked him to bash my brains in.” His voice was so frighteningly close. Hoarse, rattling in the crisp air, hot with exhaled fog.
The Astro’s driver door was a no-go. Darby scrambled to the rear of the van, catching herself on the ajar door for balance, and looked back inside the dark vehicle. At Jay’s eyes, brimming with panicked tears, full of reflected light. At her rash-red cheeks. Her tiny fingernails.
She pleaded: “Run—”
Lars’s footsteps crunched closer.
Darby pressed her Swiss Army knife into the little girl’s outstretched fingers, almost dropping it. “Use this,” she said, touching the serrations on the blade. “Scraping motions, okay? To saw at the kennel bars—”
“He’s coming.”
“Do it, Jay. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Keep cutting. You’ll get out.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Darby stepped back out and slammed the rear door, dropping a shelf of snow. She hadn’t answered Jay’s question, because she had no answer.
I have no goddamn idea.
* * *
“Why . . . ah, why are you running?” Lars called.
Darby scrambled through the snow. It was waist-deep off the path, and moving through it was like hauling herself out of a wading pool over and over with every lurching step. Hard, gasping breaths. Her throat stung. Her calves burned.
“Hey. I just wanna talk—”
From the clarity of his voice, he was less than ten feet behind her. Chasing her. His mouth-breathing had morphed into a steady pant. Low, guttural, wolflike. Her right shoe—still untied—tugged off in the snow. She grabbed it and continued, half-shod, as his labored breathing grew louder behind her. He was gaining, she knew. A few paces closer and he’d grab her ankle—
“I’m . . . ah, I’m gonna catch you anyway—”
A metallic rattle. The gun, moving in his hand.
But she knew the pistol was just for intimidation. If Lars really wanted to shoot her, he would’ve done it already. That would alert Ed and Sandi, so Ashley had probabl
y ordered his brother to run her down, to kill her discreetly, via suffocation or a snapped neck—
His brother.
His fucking brother.
Darby passed the bare flagpole and looked back. Lars was a pursuing shadow. He’d lost his Deadpool beanie. She saw weedy blond hair, milky in the dim light, a receding hairline. The furious fog of his breathing. He’d stopped shouting at her; he was too winded now. The deep snow was too exhausting. It was a slow-motion nightmare.
He’s going to catch me, Darby knew.
She was already tiring. Muscles throbbing. Joints mushy.
He’s going to run me down out here, and wrap his hands around my neck, and choke me until I die—
He was right behind her now. She could smell his salty sweat. She’d lost her lead and given up both of her weapons—the rock-in-a-sock to Ashley, the pocketknife to Jay—and now all she had left was a bullet in her pocket and a size-eight shoe in her hand. She considered throwing it at Lars, but that’d just be a nuisance. He’d swat it away without breaking stride.
There was nowhere to run anyway. Ashley was guarding the building’s front door. She didn’t have her keys, so locking herself inside Blue wasn’t an option. Running wasn’t, either—there were only miles of jagged Colorado taiga in all directions, frigid and unsympathetic. Just crunchy alpine trees, sparse ground cover, and fatal plunges concealed by snow. How long would she last before succumbing to the creeping death of hypothermia?
I can’t keep running.
She considered stopping, standing her shaky ground, and fighting Lars. Bad odds.
“Turn around,” Lars huffed behind her. “Let’s . . . ah, let’s talk—”
She needed to decide. If she stopped now, she’d have a few seconds to catch her breath before the fight. But if she kept running and he tackled her, she’d be winded, and her odds would be even worse—
Or . . .
The layout of the Wanashono visitor center flashed through her mind again. Walls, corners, blind spots. Although the front door was still blocked by Ashley, there was another way into the building. The little triangular windows in the restrooms. She’d seen one in the men’s room, no larger than a doggy door. She could see it from here, leaking a whisper of orange light through hanging icicles, above the stacked picnic tables.
Her purse was inside that restroom. With her keys and her phone.
Okay.
I’ll climb those tables, break that window, and get inside.
She changed direction.
Lars noticed. “Where . . . where are you going?”
She didn’t have a plan for when she got inside. She just went for it. Because, as Sandi had said, inside was a hell of a lot better than out. Ed and Sandi were in there, and Ashley and Lars wouldn’t dare murder her in view of two witnesses.
Would they?
No time to think on it.
The picnic tables were stored in a heap below that window, crusted with snow, so she climbed them, like giant stairs. One, two, three tables up, wobbling under her weight. But she made it, and she hit the triangular window with outstretched hands. Frosted glass, glowing with interior light, bumpy with ice. Too thick to shatter with an elbow. But it was a casement window, opening outward on a rust-eaten hinge, and it seemed to sit crookedly, so she groped for the edges, gripping with numb fingertips—
Lars laughed. “What’re you doing up there?”
A twelve-inch icicle dropped from the roof and banged off the table beside her. She winced, gritting her teeth, still pulling, clawing her fingernails into the window’s rubber seam—
“Hey, girlie—”
Pull . . . pull . . .
Another icicle dropped and exploded, showering her with ice flecks. Like glass shards on her cheeks.
“Girlie, I’m comin’ for ya—”
Two more icicles dropped to her right and left, exploding like twin gunshots in her eardrums, and the picnic table wobbled underneath her as Rodent Face climbed up toward her, clambering on elbows and knees like a racing, scuttling animal, but her sole focus was that hinged window. On that warm glow behind the glass, so teasingly close. On her clamped fingertips, wrenching the thing open—
Pull . . .
Pullpullpull—
The mechanism broke. The window came free.
She let it fall, and it shattered off an icy picnic table. Lars raised a hand to shield his face from the shards—Oh Jesus Christ, he’s right behind me—and Darby was out of time. She lunged inside, face-first, performing a desperate swan dive through the tiny opening—
Icy fingers clasped around her ankle. “Gotcha—”
She kicked free.
12:04 A.M.
She twisted, dropped six feet, and hit a urinal.
Spine-first, slamming into the porcelain lip with the small of her back. She rolled off it, sprawling, and her skull banged against floor tile. Flashbulbs went off behind her eyes.
The urinal flushed.
She scrambled upright, whirling to face the empty window. Just a triangle of darkness. Snowflakes swirled inside. The opening was probably too small for Lars to follow her through, but she couldn’t count on that. Plus, Ashley was still around.
She backed away from the window, down the long rectangle of a restroom, past the stalls, past paul takes it in the ass, past the other stained urinals, until she bumped into the sink with her bruised back. Another flare of pain. She’d left her purse here. She scooped it up, feeling inside for the reassuring jingle of her Honda keys. And her iPhone.
Seven percent battery.
She held her breath and listened. She could hear Lars’s footsteps outside the window, and his wheezing mouth-breaths under the whine of the wind. He was stymied now—unwilling to climb through and risk getting his bony ass stuck, unwilling to leave the little window unguarded and circle around the front. It was eerie. He’d given up speaking to her. Just grunting, huffing animal sounds now.
Keep moving, Darby.
She heard voices from the visitor center lobby. Muffled by the door. Ed and Sandi had probably heard her fall. And she recognized the robotic tones of the radio—another CDOT update. What was the timetable before help arrived, now? Dawn, right? Six hours? Seven?
Don’t think about that. Keep moving.
Ashley was nearby but unaccounted for, and this terrified her. Worse, she was unarmed now. She hoped Jay could saw through the kennel bars with her serrated knife, or this was all wasted. She just had to buy the little girl enough time to do so (assuming she could survive the next few minutes in close quarters with two killers) and then drive them both to safety (assuming Blue could limp through Snowmageddon). All in all, three colossal assumptions. Unlikely didn’t even do it justice.
No, Blue was snowed in. The snow was too deep now—
But what about Sandi’s truck?
Tire chains, good lift—yeah, that thing stood a chance.
She closed a fist around her keys, letting the sharp points protrude between her knuckles. She could do some damage to an attacker’s face, or gouge an eye if she got lucky. Her Dryden Hall dorm key was particularly sharp, like a little filet knife.
She heard shuffling outside. She froze, listening. Something heavy moved and scraped, followed by a thud of displaced snow. A picnic table shifting. She knew Lars was attempting, a second time, to climb the wobbly stack of tables and follow her inside. Any second now, that chinless little face would appear in the window, grinning with demented cheer—
Time to go.
Darby slipped her right shoe on. Double-knotted the shoelace. Then she slung her purse over her shoulders—car keys still clenched in her knuckles—and pushed out into the Wanashono visitor center lobby.
Ed was fussing with the radio’s antenna through the security shutter. He performed a confused double-take in her direction, and she knew why. She’d exited the building twenty minutes ago—and now she’d returned through the restrooms. Beyond him, Sandi napped on the bench, her legs hunched, her paperback covering her
face.
“Find a cell signal?” Ed asked.
Darby didn’t answer. She looked ahead, past Espresso Peak, at the front door. That was where Ashley stood, his broad shoulders blocking her exit. He was staring at her. The flinching, nervous asthmatic she’d spoken to an hour ago was gone, just a discarded act. This new Ashley was still and solid, with deep, observant eyes. He looked her up and down—she had snow on her knees, her cheeks were flushed red, her skin sticky with sweat, her Honda keys clasped in her fist—and then he glanced at the center table, as if ordering her to take a seat.
She stared back at him, gritting her teeth and trying to appear fearless. Defiant. Like a courageous hero encircled by evil forces.
Instead, she almost cried.
She was certain now—she’d die tonight.
“Hey.” Ed leaned between them, straining to remember her name. “Are . . . are you okay, Dara?”
For Christ’s sake, it’s Darby.
She swallowed, her voice mouse-like. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. She felt sobs trapped in her chest, shuddery spasms struggling to escape. Her spine ached where she’d landed on the urinal. She wanted to jump forward, grab Ed by the shoulders, to scream at this nice old veterinarian and his sleeping cousin: Run. For the love of God, run right now. But where?
Ashley nodded again at the table, harder.
At her chair.
She noticed a brown object neatly placed on the center of her seat, and recognized her brown napkin. The same napkin they’d used before, back when she’d thought he was an ally.
She approached the chair and picked up the napkin. Still watching her, Ashley curled his lip. It was the beginning of a smug grin, unnoticed by Ed and Sandi.
She unfolded the napkin with numb, clumsy fingers.
if you tell them, i kill them both.
12:09 A.M.
Ashley moved to the table and took a seat directly across from her. He’d crossed the room silently, and he sat now with both palms flat on the tabletop. His hands were large and callused.
Darby refolded the napkin and set it in her lap.
The radio crackled.
