by Camy Tang
“Like I thought,” Joslyn said. “So where would Martin take Fiona to protect her?”
Clay held up the glass ornament. “I think I know.”
* * *
Clay hadn’t driven down this road around Lake Tahoe in years, but landmarks here and there popped out at him familiarly—the Spangler Café, where Fiona bullied him into going because she liked their muffins, the eight-foot-tall carved grizzly bear at the entrance to a rustic motel, a formation of rocks just off the shore that was glimpsed through a break in the trees. Joslyn had driven most of the way there, but he’d taken over in Tahoe.
The landmarks and attractions reminded him of his time here with Fiona. He was certain she had to be here. Would she be glad to see him? He couldn’t help a slight niggling of nervousness.
“How do you know Bobby will even be at his cabin?” Joslyn asked. Bobby was Martin’s cousin and a self-proclaimed mountain man. His secluded cabin would be the perfect hideout for Fiona.
Joslyn looked out the passenger-side window of the car at the redwoods and firs edging the lake. “If it’s his vacation home...”
“It was when Fiona and I came to visit,” Clay said, “but he moved up here to live permanently around the time Martin divorced my mom and she and I left Los Angeles.”
Her soft gaze made him uncomfortable, as if she could see all the hurt he’d felt at the time. “Martin had custody of Fiona?”
“He sued for custody and won because Mom could only get low-paying jobs to support us.” He remembered her working two jobs at once to pay for their tiny apartment. It had been the reason they’d left California.
“But didn’t Martin pay child support? Alimony?”
Clay shrugged, but it hid the burning anger in his chest. “His lawyer was better than Mom’s. He barely paid enough to support her, and none for me since I wasn’t his biological son. She’d been out of the workforce for so long, she had a hard time finding a job.”
“That’s awful,” she breathed.
“That’s Martin,” Clay said.
There was silence for a while, then Clay added, “But Fiona and I reconnected when she went to Chicago for college, against Martin’s wishes.” And Clay had thrown that opportunity away by ignoring her and practically forcing her out of Chicago. He should have listened to her. She was his sister.
He turned off onto a narrow dirt driveway, not because he remembered it but because his navigation system told him to. He flipped on his headlights since the trees lining the driveway blocked out the light. The car jumped and rocked on the pitted surface.
“Well, this is definitely a remote location,” Joslyn said.
“Bobby’s a survival expert,” Clay said. “It’s why he doesn’t have a phone or cable TV or utility lines. He considers this cabin ‘luxury living’ because he’s used to roughing it in the wild for days on end.”
“You mean he likes doing that kind of stuff?”
“He took Fiona and me on some of the worst and best camping trips.” Clay navigated around a narrow turn where the road was lined with trees and juniper bushes. “I saw him take down a bear once without blinking an eye. If Martin wanted to keep Fiona safe, he’d send her to Bobby. He’s the first person I thought of when I saw that ornament, because the shop where it came from is only a couple miles down the main road.”
They rocked down the driveway for another quarter mile before entering a clearing, with trees rising around it like sentinels. There stood a rustic cabin with weathered boards, but the yard and roof were clear of branches and leaves, and the small front porch had been swept recently. Despite the spring weather, Tahoe was a little chilly and a thin curl of smoke was rising from the brick chimney. Beside the house was a detached garage with a set of closed double doors, all made out of the same weathered wood as the cabin.
Clay parked behind the garage and tried to peer in between the cracks in the doors, but it was too dark and he couldn’t see if Bobby’s truck was there. He made his way onto the porch and knocked on the heavy wooden door. “Fiona! Bobby! It’s Clay!”
“Does he like you?” Joslyn asked him as she peered through the front window. A curtain covered it but there was a narrow crack between the panels.
“Bobby?” Clay remembered him as a crotchety old man with a heavily weathered face. “Well...he didn’t seem to dislike us.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “That’s very helpful.”
“He might lie to me about Fiona being here just because Martin asked him to,” Clay said, “but if Fiona knew I was here, she’d come out.” He hoped. Had he burned his bridges with her the last time he saw her?
He pounded on the front door again. “Fiona!”
“Fiona! It’s Joslyn!”
But there was no answer.
They walked around the house and saw Bobby’s wellhead and generator. The generator was cold, so he hadn’t used it anytime recently. They looked in the windows but it looked as though the cabin was empty.
“They’re not here,” Clay said. There was an empty thudding in his stomach. He’d been so sure she’d be here.
“They wouldn’t have gone to town or something like that?” Joslyn asked.
“Bobby wouldn’t if he was alone, but if Fiona’s here, maybe he would have.”
Joslyn shifted from foot to foot. “Should we wait for them?”
Clay thought about it, then shook his head. “I’m not sure Bobby didn’t just take Fiona camping to keep her off the grid. If he did, we’ll never find them.”
“I still have a hard time picturing Fiona camping,” Joslyn said with a delicate shudder. “Us computer girls don’t do well without electricity. And toilets.”
Clay smiled. “Fiona wasn’t too thrilled about it, but there are some views you can only get to by going backpacking, and they’re...” He took a deep breath, remembering in particular one isolated mountain lake, the sky above him so blue it almost looked fake. “Magnificent. Fiona’s artistic side liked that a lot.”
“I guess I can believe that. So what do we do?”
“Let’s leave a note. If he’s only out for a little while, he’ll get it and call us.” Hopefully.
“But he doesn’t have a phone.”
“He goes to the pay phone at the grocery store down the highway.”
They found an old receipt on the floorboard of the car and he wrote a note to Bobby, leaving his burner cell phone number as well as Joslyn’s. He slid it under the front door and hoped Bobby would notice it.
“Let’s check into a motel and follow leads from there,” Clay said.
“How will we know if he’s got the message or not?”
“We don’t,” Clay said. “But I don’t think he’s taken Fiona camping. The porch is too clean. He’s been home recently.”
They got in the car and Clay did a three-point turn in the front yard, then headed back down the narrow driveway. It was late afternoon, but because of the mountains and the trees, the path was dark and he turned on the headlights again.
As they rounded a sharp turn, they suddenly saw headlights down the driveway from them, snaking through the trees. Clay’s hopes rose. “That’s got to be Bobby.”
He stopped the car as the other one approached, preparing for the difficult task of backing up the driveway, but then something about the lights made him pause.
They were too near the ground. Bobby’s headlights were high up because he drove a Ford pickup truck.
That wasn’t Bobby.
Clay couldn’t let them be trapped on this road. “Hang on!” He gunned the engine. He knew he needed to take the occupants of the car by surprise or else the driver might simply turn sideways to block the road. They could just be lost tourists, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
He almost made it. There was a curve with a treeless s
ection near the edge of the road. He jammed the car onto the turnoff to swerve around the oncoming sedan. If he could slip past them, they could try to lose them on the winding mountain roads.
As his headlights flashed through the trees, he thought he saw a familiar figure hidden in the darkness.
The sedan skidded on the dirt, the loose ground making it too hard for the car to gain traction, but suddenly it hit a hard patch and twisted sharply, turning sideways on the road. The sedan rammed into the front corner of Clay’s car, shoving them hard into a stand of trees.
“Duck!” Clay grabbed Joslyn and shoved them both to the floor as bullets shattered the windows.
ELEVEN
Joslyn was crammed under the dashboard, her head tucked into her knees, as the sound of the gunshots snapped through the woods, partially absorbed by the trees. The shatterproof glass of the windows held, but a few stray bits rained on her head. Clay had his arms around her, his body shielding her from most of the debris.
“It’s two weapons against one,” she whispered. “I’m not that good a shot.”
“I think Bobby’s out in the woods.”
“How do you know?”
“The headlights reflected off something...I think it’s him, anyway.” They both flinched as pieces of the window fell into the car.
Clay suddenly reached across to the other side of the passenger seat and pulled the lever to angle the back of the chair. It dropped to not quite full horizontal. “Out the back door. Come on!”
Joslyn spread herself out on top of the stretched-out chair and pulled the door handle to swing the back door open. She saw that the trees the car had hit had blocked in her own door, and the back door only opened partway because it was hampered by a huge bush. She slithered out onto the ground, then scrambled out of the way as Clay followed her.
He shouted to the men, “What did you do with my sister? I know you have her!”
Joslyn gave him a wide-eyed look that silently asked him, What are you doing?
“I’m telling Bobby it’s me,” Clay whispered. “Get your weapon out. You’re going to have to distract them.”
She could do that. She got her firearm and flicked the safety off, then eased it on top of the trunk of the car for a stable firing surface and looked out.
The woods were dark, but the sky above was still light and she could make out the men also crouched behind their own car. She’d thought it was right next to theirs, but it must have bounced backward after the collision, twisting around slightly so that it faced the way it had come with a stretch of driveway between the two vehicles.
As soon as the men paused in their firing, she aimed a shot at the rear bumper, where Met was hiding, and then at the front hood, where she thought G was. They answered with more gunfire.
“Police?” she whispered to Clay. How close were the neighbors? Surely they’d hear the gunfire.
“Too far away to get here quickly,” Clay said. “When you fire again, I’m going to sneak around the woods to try to get the drop on G.”
“They’ll see you.”
“It’s getting darker. I’ll be careful.” He pulled his jacket sleeve down to hide the bright white of his cast.
She shot several rounds into their windows, spidering the glass and hopefully obscuring any view they might have had. She felt rather than heard Clay move away through the woods.
She crouched behind the car, her heart pounding, intermittent gunfire ringing in her ears. She didn’t want to hit Clay, but she also wanted the thugs focused on her and not on the woods around them. She took careful aim and hit the taillight close to where Met was standing, and then the ground next to where she saw the edge of his shoe.
Clay had moved faster than she expected. He’d somehow crossed the driveway and sneaked up on G’s other side, stalking him through the trees. He was just about to tackle G when the man turned and saw him.
The two went down in a tangle of limbs and there was a flash of white from Clay’s cast as his jacket sleeve was shoved up. Joslyn saw G’s gun arc in the air and land somewhere in the bushes.
The two men got to their feet. G swung at Clay, but he staggered backward onto the driveway.
Met had moved from the rear of the car to the front, but Joslyn shot out the headlights to keep him pinned down so he wouldn’t try to help his partner.
But Clay was too hampered by his broken arm. G’s roundhouse connected with Clay’s left shoulder, and he winced. G followed with a second jab to his upper arm, then a blow to Clay’s right jaw as his arm dropped. Clay stumbled backward and fell to the dirt.
G jumped on Clay, squirming around until he could wrap his arms around his neck in a choke hold. He twisted Clay’s body around until it gave Met a clear shot.
Joslyn’s heart was in her throat. She had to help Clay. But how?
“Give it up, Joslyn,” Met called. “Or Clay dies.”
The sound of a shotgun priming cut through the air.
“Get off my property.”
The voice was deep and rough, as if it belonged to someone who had been woken up from a deep sleep. While the man spoke with a slow drawl, he emerged from the darkness of the trees with a mean look his eyes and his shotgun aimed at G and Clay.
G twisted around slightly to see the newcomer. Met aimed his gun at the old man.
Joslyn shot her last round near Met’s head, and he yelped and ducked back down. She slowly, quietly reached into the open back door of the car, searching for her bag, which contained her second magazine.
“I’m giving you to the count of three,” the man said.
Joslyn switched out her clip and looked. Met’s attention was focused on the man.
“You’ll hit Clay,” G said. His tone was arrogant.
“I couldn’t care less if I hit him,” the man said. “One.”
Joslyn took a deep breath, then darted across the road and landed behind the back bumper of the men’s car. She aimed her gun straight at the back of Met’s head where he crouched near the left front tire. “Drop your gun or I’ll shoot,” she said.
Met froze.
“Two.”
“Okay, all right.” Met suddenly raised his hands.
“What?” G gave Met an incredulous look.
Joslyn couldn’t quite see, but Met gave G a look that made him shut his mouth. His eyebrows rose, and he gave an almost infinitesimal nod. Then he suddenly released Clay, who collapsed, gasping, on the ground.
The man kept his shotgun trained on G as he made his way back to the car. Met got in on the driver’s side.
Without lowering his shotgun, the old man yanked Clay to his feet, helping him stagger to the side of the road.
The sedan’s tires threw up dirt for a second before it finally skidded back onto the driveway, then drove away.
Only then did the man lower his shotgun. “You dumb fool.” He smacked Clay in the back of the head.
Clay winced. “Nice to see you, too, Bobby.”
“Who was that?”
“We’re not sure. They’re trying to keep us from finding Fiona.”
“We’re looking for her, too,” Joslyn said.
“She’s not here, obviously,” Bobby said with a fierce look in his dark eyes. “And you’re not the only ones who came here looking for her.”
* * *
It had scared Clay, leaving Joslyn alone behind the car like that. But he hadn’t known how else he could try to take out one of the two men and give Bobby a chance to help them. But he’d worried about Joslyn the moment he’d gone to sneak through the underbrush. She had distracted him. He couldn’t let that happen again. He had to distance himself emotionally from her. He had to stop touching her, stop giving her stupid blue weeds.
Easier said than done.
She drew hi
m, like a light in a window, shining through the night. He had the feeling that when he came into her warmth and light, he’d be home.
No, he had to stop thinking like that. He wasn’t fit for any woman to get to know. Maybe, once he found Fiona and got to apologize to her, he’d start on that road to finding a better version of himself. But not now. Not with someone like Joslyn, who clearly bore emotional wounds from the past. She deserved someone better than a screwup like him.
Yeah, he kept telling himself that, and he kept ignoring his own good advice. It was because she inspired him. He could tell she’d been scared, but she’d mastered her fear enough to take careful aim with her gun and use her bullets strategically. He could only admire her for that.
The local police arrived seven minutes after the men left, which was sooner than Clay had expected. Apparently Bobby’s neighbor a half mile away had happened to be outside in her garden, heard the gunshots and called 9-1-1. Clay had been expecting another fiasco like in Phoenix and Los Angeles, but he’d forgotten that there were still a lot of folks who hunted in these woods and so gunshots were not as rare an occurrence to the Tahoe police.
Joslyn immediately gave them Detective Carter’s name as reference, and the officers went to their squad car to call in and get in touch with him. They took their statements and were gone within the hour, promising to search for the men’s car in the Tahoe area.
“If those goons are smart, they’ll already have switched cars,” Clay said as the squad car disappeared down Bobby’s driveway.
“You told the police that you’re looking for Fiona and those men have been following you,” Bobby said. “Come inside and tell me the full story.”
The inside of the cabin was exactly as Clay had remembered it, with the same leather couch and recliner, the handmade wooden bookshelf stuffed with paperbacks, the woven Mexican rug on the wooden floor in front of the stone fireplace. Everything was scrupulously neat and free of dust, which was so at odds with the way Bobby had gotten completely filthy on their camping trips. Clay had cheerfully followed suit while Fiona gave herself a sponge bath every day.
