by TAYLOR ADAMS
But no. Instead, Darby Elizabeth Thorne, a college sophomore with zero law enforcement or military training, had tried to take matters into her own hands. And now here she was, walking through the woods with a .45 aimed at her back, searching for a dead child.
To her right, a morbid laugh. “Gotta say, Darbs, as far as good Samaritans go, you’re batting a thousand. First you confide in one of the abductors, and then you get the abductee killed. Nice work.”
Everything was a joke to Ashley Garver. Even this, somehow.
Christ, she loathed him.
But now she wondered—had he been telling her the truth after all? Maybe it really was a textbook ransom plot, just like he’d described to her, and postpayment, the brothers really had intended to return Jay to her family alive. She imagined them jettisoning her at some barren bus stop in flyover country. Little Jaybird blinking in the Kansas sun after two weeks of darkness, rushing to the nearest stranger on a bench, begging them to call her parents—
Until Darby had intervened, that is. And handed the girl a Swiss Army knife so she could escape into a hostile climate she was utterly unprepared for. And then another venomous thought slipped into Darby’s mind—she felt guilty for even thinking it, given what had already happened—but it burrowed in like a splinter.
They’re going to kill me now.
Darby was certain of this.
Now that Jay is lost, now that they don’t need my voice. And now that—
* * *
Now that they were beyond earshot of the rest area, Lars had been waiting for permission to shoot Darby in the back of the head, and Ashley had finally given it to him. The phrase “batting a thousand” was the tipoff.
It meant kill.
It was called Spy Code. Since they’d been kids, Ashley had buried dozens of secret messages within everyday dialogue. “Lucky me” meant stay. “Lucky you” meant go. “Extra cheese” meant run like hell. “Ace of spades” meant pretend we’re strangers. Failure to obey a coded message meant an instant yellow card, and Lars’s fingers were pocked with the pale scars of past errors. Tonight had already seen one frighteningly close call—he’d nearly missed “ace of spades” back at the rest area.
But he’d known this one was coming.
The pistol was ice cold in his hand. His skin stuck to the metal. It was a Beretta Cougar, a stout, stubby firearm that bulged under his coat and never felt quite right in his hands. Like gripping a big jelly bean. The Cougar was usually chambered in 9 millimeter, but this particular model was the 8045, so it fired the fatter .45 ACP cartridge. More stopping power, but punchier recoil and fewer rounds stored in the clip (the magazine, Ashley insisted). Eight shots, single-stacked.
Lars liked it well enough. But he’d secretly wished for the Beretta 92FS instead, like the iconic pistol that the hard-boiled detective Max Payne dual-wields in his series of Xbox games. He would never admit this to Ashley, of course. The gun had been a gift. You never, ever question Ashley’s gifts, or his punishments. That’s just how big brothers are—one day he’d brought Lars a stray cat from the shelter. A peppy little torbie (a mix between a tortoiseshell and a tabby) with a loud, rumbly purr. Lars had named her Stripes. Then, the next day, Ashley drenched Stripes in gasoline and hurled her into a campfire.
Like any big brother, I giveth, and I taketh away.
Lars raised the Beretta Cougar now.
As they walked, he aimed at the back of Darby’s head (aim small, miss small). The painted night sights aligned; two neon green dots traced a vertical line up her backbone. She was still a few paces ahead of them, sweeping Ashley’s flashlight through the trees, her body silhouetted perfectly by her own light. She had no idea.
He started to squeeze the trigger.
To his right, Ashley plugged his ear, bracing for the gunshot. And Darby kept trudging through the knee-deep snow, aiming the flashlight ahead, unaware that she was inhabiting the last few seconds of her life, unaware that Lars’s index finger was tightening around the Beretta’s trigger, applying smooth pressure, a half ounce from drilling a .45-caliber hollow-point right through her—
She clicked the flashlight off.
Blackness.
* * *
Darby heard their startled voices behind her: “I can’t see—”
“What happened?”
“She turned off the flashlight—”
“Shoot her, Lars—”
She ran like hell. Staggering through deep snow. Hard gasps stinging her throat. She’d night-blinded them both. Not by flashing them with the LED beam, which their pupils had already adjusted to—but by taking it away. She’d been shielding her own eyes to preserve her night vision. This was her solution to problem number one. As for problem number two—
Ashley’s voice came from behind her, calm but urgent: “Give me the gun.”
“Can you see her?”
“Give me the gun, baby brother—”
Even downhill, it was like running in waist-deep water. Lurching over snowdrifts, dodging trees, stumbling, banging a knee against icy rock, recovering, her heartbeat thudding in her ears, no time to stop, don’t stop—
Ashley’s voice rose: “I see her.”
“How can you see her?”
He kept an eye shut, she realized with rising panic. Just like I taught him—
He shouted after her: “Thanks for the trick, Darbs—”
He was aiming at her right now, taking a marksman’s stance. She felt the pistol’s sights tingling on her back like a laser. Inescapable. No chance to outrun him. Just dwindling microseconds now, as Darby executed her desperate solution to problem number two—
What’s faster than running?
Falling.
She hurled herself downhill.
The world inverted. She saw a whirl of black sky and frozen branches, plunging in a half second of free fall, and then a wall of shorn granite rushed up to meet her. Thunderous impact. Stars pierced her vision. She lost the flashlight. She rolled on knees and elbows, kicking up flecks of snow in a bruising tumble—
“Where is she?”
“I see her—”
Ten somersaults down, the ground flattened again and she landed hard and dizzy with ice down her shirt. She scrambled upright. Kept going. Hurtled through prickly undergrowth with outstretched hands, branches snapping against her palms, slashing bare skin. Then the terrain dropped again, and again she fell—
Their voices growing distant: “I . . . I lost her.”
“There, there—”
Sliding on her back now. Fir trunks whooshing past. Right. Left. Right. No stop this time. The slope kept going, and so did she, slip-sliding over ramped snowdrifts, accelerating to dangerous speed. She raised her arms, trying to slow herself, but hit another rock shelf. Another impact punched the air from her chest, rag-dolling her sideways. Up and down lost all meaning. Her world became a violent tumble-dryer, an endless, crashing kaleidoscope.
Then it ended.
It took her a few seconds to realize she’d even stopped rolling. She’d landed sprawled on her back, her eardrums ringing, a dozen new bruises throbbing on her body. Time seemed to blur. For a dreamy moment, she nearly blacked out.
To her left, a fir tree made a strange little shiver, dropping an armful of snow and peppering her with wood chips.
Then she heard an echo from uphill—like a whipcrack—and she understood exactly what had happened, and she staggered upright and kept running.
* * *
Ashley blinked away the Beretta’s muzzle flash and aimed for a second shot, but he’d lost her amid the brush and studded boulders. There was too much tree cover.
He lowered the pistol. Smoke curling in the air.
“Did you get her?” Lars asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“She’s . . . she’s getting away—”
“It’s fine.” He started downslope, descending carefully, finding footholds on snow-crested rock. “We’ll catch her at the bottom.”
“What if
she gets back inside and tells Ed—”
“She ran the wrong way.” Ashley pointed downhill with the gun. “See? Dumb bitch is going north. Deeper into the woods.”
“Oh.”
“The rest stop is back that way. South.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, baby brother.” He tucked the pistol into his jacket pocket and extended both arms for balance, his boots on slick stone. He found his LED flashlight upright in the snow where she’d dropped it.
As he scooped it up, he noticed something in the distance, something incongruous—the white shadow of Melanie’s Peak. The same eastern landmark as always, cloaked in low clouds, but now it loomed on his right horizon. Not his left.
Which meant south was actually . . .
“Oh.” Suddenly he understood. “Oh, that bitch.”
“What?”
“She . . . she must have turned us around. She’s running back to the building—”
* * *
Darby was within eyeshot of the rest area now.
Like a campfire in the darkness, tugging her closer with every aching step. The warm amber glow of the visitor center’s single window, the parked cars, the flagpole and the half-buried Nightmare Children—
In the woods behind her, Ashley howled: “Daaaarby.”
No enunciation, no readable emotion—just her name, resounding in shrieking singsong from the darkness beyond. It chilled her blood.
She’d bought herself some time. Not quite ten minutes, but enough time to steal the brothers’ Astro (the keys were still in the door) and attempt a getaway. Fifty-fifty chance she’d even make it out of the submerged parking lot, but hell, those were better odds than she had in her own Honda, and probably the best she’d had all night. She thought about poor little Jay as she ran, and it hit her again like a crushing wave, a swarm of terrible thoughts racing behind her, biting at her with wicked teeth—
Why did I get involved?
She couldn’t think about it.
This is my fault—
Not now.
Oh Jesus, I got a kid killed tonight—
She was approaching the parking lot, passing a green signboard, when Ashley shouted at her again from the trees, closer behind her now, his voice cracking into an ugly adolescent pitch: “We’re going to catch you.”
The Astro was fifty feet away. The snow was shallower in the parking lot, and it renewed her energy; she launched into a faster, lighter sprint. She passed an indistinct form buried under swept snow—what she’d initially believed to be Ashley’s car. From this new angle, she glimpsed green metal. Pits of vertical rust. A white stencil. Under the snowpack, it wasn’t a parked car at all—it was a Dumpster.
I should’ve known. I should’ve looked closer—
She kept running, heaving steps, the air stinging her throat, her calves burning, her joints aching. The kidnappers’ Astro van coming closer.
She wished she’d never stopped at this stupid rest stop. She wished she’d never left her hometown for college last year. Why can’t I be like my sister, Devon? Who was perfectly happy waiting tables at the Cheesecake Factory in Provo? Who vacuumed Mom’s house every Sunday morning? Who had “Strength in Chinese” tattooed on her shoulder blade?
The Astro van was now thirty feet away.
Twenty.
Ten.
“And when we catch you, you little bitch, I’ll make you beg for that Ziploc bag—”
She hit the Astro’s driver door with her palms. Snow globs slid off the bumpy glass. Ashley’s lanyard was still dangling in the lock, where she’d left it. She opened the door and glanced to the Wanashono building. She could twist the keys in the ignition, right now, and attempt an escape. And maybe she’d make it. Maybe she wouldn’t.
But it would be a death sentence for Ed and Sandi.
Thinking a move ahead, she knew the brothers would then have no choice but to murder them both for the keys to Sandi’s truck, so they could chase Darby down and kill her on the highway.
No, I can’t leave Ed and Sandi.
I can’t get anyone else killed tonight.
She wavered, gripping the open door for balance. Her knees were slushy; she almost collapsed inside. The ignition was right there, close enough to touch. The steering wheel was sticky, duct-taped in patches. A crunchy sea of Taco Bell trash lay on the floor. Lars’s plastic model airplane. The van’s interior was still as warm and moist as an exhaled breath, the upholstery still reeking of clammy sweat, dog blankets, and the piss and vomit of a dead girl.
The ignition was right there.
No. The snow was too deep. She’d seen the highway with her own eyes. State Route Six was buried, unrecognizable, all hopeless powder. Four-wheel drive or not, the Astro would high-center in seconds, trapping her on the on-ramp, and then the brothers would run her down and shoot her through the window—
What if it doesn’t?
What if this, right now, is my only chance to escape?
The keys chattered in her right hand. She closed a fist around them. She desperately wanted to slide into the killers’ vehicle, to turn the engine, to shift into gear, to just try to drive it, to just please try—
Coming closer: “Daaaaarby—”
Make a choice.
So she did.
She slammed the door. Pocketed Ashley’s keys. And, with the Brothers Garver still pursuing somewhere behind her, she circled around the vehicle on aching bones and ran for the orange glow of the visitor center. She had to warn Ed and Sandi. She had to do the right thing. They’d all escape the Wanashono rest area together. No one else would die tonight.
Ed and Sandi, I can still save you both.
She had, at best, sixty seconds before Ashley and Lars caught up to her. Sixty seconds to make a new plan. She looked back at that cartoon fox, at the nail gun in its furry hand, that stupid slogan now a ghoulish promise:
we finish what we start.
2:16 A.M.
Darby froze in the doorway.
Ed was murmuring something (“No signal this far from—”) and stopped midsentence when he saw her, midstep near Espresso Peak with his Android in his palm. Sandi was kneeling by the table, and she whirled to face Darby, revealing a tiny shape standing behind her.
It was . . . it was Jay.
Oh, thank God.
The girl’s dark hair was speckled with snowflakes. Her cheeks were rash red. She was shrouded in Sandi’s bumblebee-yellow parka, dwarfed by its saggy sleeves. This was the first time Darby had seen the girl in full light, outside of that dog kennel, and for a shivery moment, she wanted only to close the distance between them, to lift this little child she barely knew and squeeze her into a bracing hug.
You turned around.
Oh, thank God, Jay, we lost your tracks but you turned around.
Sandi stood up, a black pepper-spray canister raised in a knuckled hand, her eyes rock hard. “Not one step closer.”
Jay grabbed her wrist. “No. She rescued me—”
“Sandi,” Ed hissed. “For Christ’s sake—”
The door banged shut behind Darby, jolting her back into the moment. She tried to figure—how far behind her were the brothers now? A hundred yards? Fifty? She caught her breath, tears in her eyes, struggling to speak: “They’re coming. They’re armed, and they’re right behind me—”
Ed knew who they were. “You’re sure they’re armed?”
“Yeah.” She locked the deadbolt.
“With what?”
“They have a gun.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Trust me, they have a gun.” Darby glanced from Ed to Sandi, now realizing the deadbolt was pointless. “And they will not stop until we’re dead. We need to take your truck and drive. Right now.”
“What if they chase us?” Sandi asked.
“They won’t.” Darby showed her Ashley’s keys.
Ed stopped pacing behind her, considering this. He seemed to like it.
Darby realized the ex-veteri
narian was holding a lug wrench in his right hand, half-concealed under his Carhartt sleeve. A blunt weapon. He stepped past her, wiping sweat from his eyebrow. “Okay. Okay, Darby, keep your Honda keys on you, too. We can’t have them stealing your car and following us—”
Jay stood up. “Let’s go, then.”
Darby liked her already.
And she noticed a yellow bracelet glinting on Jay’s wrist. She hadn’t seen it before in the murky darkness of the kidnappers’ van. It looked vaguely medical. She wondered briefly—What is that?
No time to ask. Everyone crowded up to the front door, and Ed unlatched the deadbolt with a hard swipe. He rallied the group, like a reluctant coach. “On three, we’ll, uh . . . we’re all going to run to the truck. Okay?”
Darby nodded, noticing the odor of vodka on his breath. “Sounds good.”
“Are they out there?”
Sandi peered out the smudged window. “I . . . I don’t see them yet.”
“All right. Sandi, you’ll take Jay to the front seat and start the engine. Give it gas and go drive, reverse, drive, reverse—”
“I know how to drive in the snow, Eddie.”
“And Dara, you’re at the back tires with me, so we can push.”
“Deal.”
He pointed at Jay, snapping his fingers: “And somebody carry her.”
Sandi hoisted the girl over her shoulder, despite her protests (“No, I can run too.”) and checked the window again. “They’ll get here any minute—”
“Don’t try to fight them. Just run like hell,” Ed whispered, leaning against the door, starting the count: “One.”
Run like hell.
Darby lowered into a shaky runner’s crouch at the back of the group, behind Sandi, feeling her tired calves burn. No weapons—they would only slow her down. From the door, she recalled it was fifty feet to the parking lot, over a narrow footpath cut into the snow.
“Two.” Ed twisted the doorknob.
She rehearsed the next minute in her mind. She estimated the four of them could run fifty feet in maybe . . . twenty seconds? Thirty? Another ten seconds to pile into the truck, for Sandi to fumble her keys into the ignition. More time for the Ford to start moving, slogging through the dense snow. And that was assuming Ed and Darby wouldn’t need to push it. Or dig the tires out. Or scrape the windows.
