by Ellie Danes
"Say what?"
I poked a finger in the middle of Nathan's chest. "Say that someone needs to be looking for that little girl. And that you are that someone."
"Bree, I get it if you don't want to go down that road again," Nathan said.
"We are going to find Maggie," I said.
Nathan swept me into a tight hug. His heart was racing but he held his breath. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
He let out a ragged sigh and nuzzled my neck. We stood like that for a long time, and I wrapped my arms around his waist. Nathan was relieved, I could feel it in his muscles. When his pulse finally slowed to normal, he loosened his grip and leaned back to look at my face.
"Thank you, Bree," he said.
"You were never going to be able to let it go," I pointed out. "I was just waiting to see how long it would be before you had to dig back into what happened to Maggie."
"The photograph, the postcard--"
I cut him off. "You have to try. It's the right thing to do."
Nathan nodded and turned us toward the car. "My conscience kept telling me we were headed in the wrong direction."
"What do people always say? You can't run away from your problems," I said.
"That's the thing, though." Nathan brushed my hair back. "These aren't your problems. It's not right for me to drag you back into this. Those gunmen are just waiting for us to head south."
"All the more reason for you to not go alone," I said, moving toward the car.
Nathan held my hand. "It's not fair to you, Bree. You have a say. What do you want?"
It was my turn to struggle for words. I couldn't tell him the truth. I loved him. I was willing to go through all of this and worse because I loved Nathan.
I couldn't tell him that the only way I knew he'd be able to love me back was if he got past whatever happened to him. Finding out about Maggie was the only clue we had, so there was no way I didn't want to find her.
"It's okay, Bree. Just tell me what you want. It's not fair for me not to make plans around your life, too," Nathan said.
"What life?" I joked.
His eyes dropped. "I ruined everything for you."
I lifted his gaze back up to mine. "You couldn't. I had already ruined my life. You gave me an out."
"So, where do you want to go?" he asked.
I kissed him. "I want to go on a long road trip with you."
"We might never get back to that lodge in the mountains," Nathan said.
"Then maybe we'll make it to the coast," I countered.
We got in the car but Nathan still hesitated to start it. His eyes got that blurred look I had seen in the diner. I shifted on my seat and caught his hand again.
"I'm okay." Nathan shook his head. "I just really wish I could remember. It's so frustrating because the harder I try, the blacker those days are."
I plucked the car key from his hand and put it in the ignition. "Once we're back on the trail, I am sure you'll start to remember stuff."
He rubbed his head. "I saw things, flashes, but they were too quick. More like I got little impressions. Nothing that's going to help us yet."
I started the car for him. "We know more than we did this morning. That's a good thing. Just think about that and get us back on the road."
Nathan pulled out of the diner parking lot. "You're right, you know. I would never have been able to let this go. It gnawed at me every day."
"Why, do you think?" I asked. "You didn't do anything wrong. You weren't the one who kidnapped Maggie."
"I just feel like there is something, a big something, that I have to set right," Nathan said.
"You might be the only one," I said.
Nathan merged onto the highway and forced our little used car up to full speed. "Yeah, it was really strange how the local police had nothing to say about the case."
"The news report made it sound like someone was trying to hush it up. Who would do something like that?" I asked.
"The same kind of people who threaten people's families if they don't carry shipments of drugs across the border," Nathan said.
I shot him a look. He was holding out information. "Like a drug cartel?"
He nodded. "There's one that's really active around the El Paso area. That's where Maggie's postcard was from. What if whoever kidnapped her took her there?"
"The report said someone had spotted her in Tijuana," I said.
Nathan set the cruise control and leaned back. "At least there was a report about it on the news. Not everyone has given up looking for the little girl."
I rubbed my head. "I hope those gunmen have given up looking for us. Think we'll be that lucky?"
Nathan smiled. "We don't have to be lucky. We're dead."
"And you say that like it's a good thing." My lips curved up despite myself. His smile was infectious.
"If everyone else thinks we're dead then those gunmen will, too. They won't be looking for us anymore." Nathan's mind was working fast. "We've got the upper hand."
"So, what do we do?" I asked. "Head back to Springer, New Mexico and see why Mrs. Wheeler is acting so strangely?"
"No. We'll never get close to her after what happened," Nathan said. "Dead or not, I bet those local police are still looking for us."
"Do we head back to the last place we saw the gunmen and try to follow them? Maybe if we knew why they were after you, we'd be able to find out more about where you've been. Then we could learn how you got the photograph and the postcard." I slumped down in my seat, weighed down by all the unknowns.
The sun filtered through the dirty car window but it was still warm. I snuggled deeper into my seat, glad that Nathan and I had finally talked about revisiting his past. I had always known he couldn't let it go, and I figured one day he would up and leave me to go chasing answers. It felt good to be with him in the car. Safer together.
"I think heading back there would be a dead end." Nathan settled both hands on the steering wheel. "It's time to head south. We're finally going to El Paso."
I nodded. It was enough that I was in the car with Nathan. Now I knew he had no reason to sneak away from me. We were still in this together.
I closed my eyes. There was nothing to see but a long stretch of road. With my eyes shut, I could see Nathan: the way he looked when he first walked into my diner; the relief on his face when he got me away from the gunmen; his teasing smile as he helped pick out clothes for the newly minted Mrs. Cramer.
I might have only known Nathan for a few short weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. He stood in my memory like a signpost, but instead of a detour, he was the right way. Nathan stood between me and all the mistakes of my past. He thought he had messed everything up for me, but he had no idea what damage I had done to my life before he got there.
In many ways, Nathan was the best thing that could have happened to me.
He swept me out of my shell of a life. Sure, the endless motels and cheap restaurants were hard to love, but he was not. I knew Nathan cared for me, and that was more than I’d had in a long time. My co-workers at the diner had become friends but they didn't really know me. Nathan did. He knew I hadn't belonged there, and he’d offered me a way out.
I was still glad I’d taken it.
The idea of wasting the rest of my damaged life working at the restaurant in Topeka was too depressing of a thought. That's why it didn't matter that we were on the run or that we were heading into the unknown. We were in motion and that was better than being stuck any day. I used to worry about dying before anything happened to me. And then I had met Nathan.
No wonder I loved him.
The only worry I had now, besides the looming danger down the road, was how long I would be able to keep my own secret. Nathan had enough on his mind, he didn't need me throwing in the wrench of being madly in love with him.
My mind drifted to a time when I would be able to tell Nathan how much I loved him. We'd be at the beach, our bare toes in the sand, a soft sunset lighting up his handso
me eyes.
The car hit a bump and I woke up. Hours had passed. I rubbed my eyes and blinked hard at the first thing I saw out the car window.
A sign flew by, and I turned to try to read it again.
"Welcome to New Mexico," Nathan said.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nathan
If I was distracted, it was easy to mistake the motel room for any of the dozens we’d stayed in before. Some motel rooms had details that stood out: the fishing-themed room with glass buoy light fixtures; black & white photographs of the frontier town we were in instead of a generic abstract art; and a painted mural that directly represented the view from better rooms.
I struggled to remember why stamps of small animals paraded around the border of our current room. They had a primitive style that made me think of cave paintings.
“Could be a kid’s nursery,” Bree had said when we stepped inside.
Her comment made me think of the little girl, Maggie, and I was too distracted to remember where we were.
I traced our long days on the highway all the way from the little honeymoon motel room where we’d changed our course. That was one room I would never forget. We’d become the Cramers there, our real selves, no longer fugitives.
The news had declared us dead.
For a moment, I wondered if hell was a cheap motel room. Then I rubbed my eyes hard and forced myself to remember.
The Zuni Indian Reservation. Our motel was a little roadside shack on the highway just outside the reservation border. The animal stamps were actually Zuni fetishes.
I knew because before we checked in, an older woman had cornered Bree and I in the parking lot and convinced us both to buy a hand-carved fetish. Bree had chosen a small, white bear, and I bought it for her.
“I’m good,” I had tried to tell the older woman. “I wouldn’t want to lose it.”
She pressed a glossy yellow figure into my hand. “The mountain lion ensures a successful hunt.”
Bree had overheard the older woman’s words and insisted that I buy it. “We could use all the support we can get,” Bree had reminded me.
I wondered where the little trinket had gotten to, and then I saw it. The mountain lion had a strange habit of turning up as soon as I thought about it. From the bed, I could see it perched on top of the motel room’s ancient TV. I narrowed my eyes and studied it.
The older woman had assured me it was an excellent fetish, one that helped with intuition and resourcefulness. I wasn’t sure what the little carved animal could do, but I had to admit I needed everything it was said to represent.
Bree sighed in her sleep, and I forced my eyes closed again. I couldn’t sleep after I remembered where we were.
I turned over and faced the battered postcard again. Maggie’s photograph was tucked behind it, and I had to fight the urge not to pull it out and study it again. It was such a stark photograph, not one normally taken of a child. There were no defining marks on the wall behind the small girl, no clues in the flooring or in her guarded expression. I wished again for a reflection, a glimpse of something that would tell me I was on the right track, but there was nothing there.
That I could see. No matter how many times I looked at it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.
I plucked the photograph up again and turned onto my back. Why did I have this picture? And why was the little girl’s name scribbled in my handwriting across the back?
I tried to be quiet. Bree had woken up and found me like this too many times before. She had threatened to make me take sleeping pills. I lay still and looked over the photograph until the edges started to blur and my eyes drifted closed.
I didn’t need to have my eyes open to see every detail of the photograph.
Sleep took over for a few seconds before my eyes popped open again. We’d heard a little more about Maggie’s story on the news, but it had only made me more confused.
The case stated that Maggie had disappeared from the San Diego Zoo. The big crowds, the exhibitions, and distractions, it was not hard to imagine how Maggie had gone missing from such a big venue. Still, there were a lot of details about her case that did not make any sense.
I wondered if we should head to San Diego. Not that I had the first idea how to find clues or pick up the trail her kidnappers left behind. It was just that I felt a pull. Like I felt a pull to look at her photograph again and again.
There was something I was missing, beyond my shattered memory, and it occurred to me it might be in San Diego.
Bree shifted in the motel bed and laid one arm across my chest. I tucked the photograph away before she caught me worrying over it, but she didn’t wake up. Bree sighed, and I watched a small smile play over her sleepy lips.
What would Bree say if I told her we were heading to San Diego instead of El Paso?
I pulled her closer into my arms and dropped a kiss on her soft hair. Bree didn’t deserve any of this. Not only had she gone on the run with me, but she’d agreed to fake her own death. Then she had turned around and let all our new plans go in order to help me follow the cold trail of what happened to Maggie.
There was no way I could wake her up with the news of another wild goose chase.
Bree wrapped her arm tighter around me and her warmth began to seep into my body. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like when everything was over.
How would I tell Bree I loved her?
Finally, my mind caught on a pleasant thought and my eyes drifted shut. I felt myself start to fall asleep, and then the dream came.
The only reason my dreaming mind recognized the landscape was the giant sign: San Diego Zoo. Bree and I passed underneath it, hand in hand. We wandered through the exhibits but couldn’t see any animals. It seemed to be past sunset, the dream sky a strange pinkish-orange. There was no one else around.
“What are you looking for?” Bree asked me in the dream.
I couldn’t answer her; my mouth stopped up with sleep. Then I felt the pull. We walked through all the empty exhibits until we came to the mountain lions.
They roamed a large enclosure, their piercing eyes on me. Bree and I watched them quietly until the dream turned sinister.
Zoo employees cornered us, convinced that I had stolen a lion. I argued she was a free animal, not meant to be stuck in a cage, and they couldn’t take advantage of her anymore.
The dream closed in tight, the zoo employees ringing around us with the tasers and restraints they used on the big cats.
“Maggie, no!” I cried out.
One lion, the one I had called Maggie, leaped from the enclosure and defended us.
I reached out, tried to hold her back but the dream kept my hands tied. Bree and I watched as Maggie chased off all the zoo employees. She turned back into a little girl as she walked back to us, a smile on her face. There was a sprinkle of blood on her cheek.
“Let’s go home,” I told her.
Maggie shook her head. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t come with us. The little girl in the dream was determined; she had something important to do. She refused to even think about going home until it was done.
“It’s okay,” Maggie told me in the dream. “When I’m done, they say I’ll get ice cream. I like ice cream. It reminds me of home.”
I wanted to tear the dream apart with my bare hands, but I was powerless. Maggie morphed back into a lion and slunk into the enclosure. She didn’t look back.
My mind screamed at my subconscious that I had to go get her, I had to save her. If there was only one thing I did before I was destroyed, it would be to get the little girl back to her mother. The dream wouldn’t change, and I woke myself up sweating with my futile effort.
It took a minute for my mind to return to the motel room. Then I had to stare at the animal-stamped border and remember where we were. It came back in a painful flash.
I sat up and was face to face with the little Zuni fetish. The mountain lion looked at me from its perch on
the motel room TV, and I swear it moved. I pressed both hands to my eyes but the dream had faded.
If there had been any clues in the dream, they were gone now.
The hot hiss of water came from the motel bathroom. Bree had slipped out of bed while I slept and was now garbling some song from the radio while she showered. My body longed to join her, but I was a wild-eyed, sweaty mess. She deserved her few moments of peace.
I flopped back on the bed and wondered if I would ever find peace again. I knew I’d had had that dream before. Minus the zoo, it had felt so familiar, so true. I groaned with frustration and fought the itchy bed covers. Sleep didn’t even give me a break from the crushing sense I should be doing more.
All I could do was drag myself to the edge of the bed and sit with my head in my hands until Bree came out. She was the only thing that eased the pressure in my brain. It pounded but nothing more came back to me.
When would my mind work again? When would I remember?
Chapter Forty
Bree
I worried into the mirror for a few extra minutes that morning. Not that Nathan’s desire for me was waning, but all the fast food and pizza was weighing on me. I turned around again then gave myself a wink. Finding a way to work in extra exercise was a fun challenge.
It felt good to have something to focus on. I wondered if that’s why Nathan had gotten up so early that morning. Now that we were focused back on finding Maggie, I hoped his mind was at ease.
I wrapped the skimpy motel towel around my body and slipped out to find Nathan.
Putting both hands over my mouth to stifle a scream made my towel drop to the floor. But Nathan saw none of that. For one terrifying moment, I thought he was dead, splayed out face down on the motel bed. Then he let out a soft snore.
I left the towel on the floor and got dressed, one eye on Nathan. It wasn’t like him to nap, and I was worried that he’d been up all night again. It was exhausting how he tried to force himself to remember and only pored over the little that he knew. He’d been going over and over it until the sun came up.
