by K. J. Emrick
Darcy looked off in that direction.
She had followed Jon’s clue this far. Maybe she just hadn’t followed it far enough.
No. That was just grasping at straws, she told herself.
Falling to her knees, she set her hands in her lap, and stared off into the distance.
The arm went up. The arm came down. It pointed off into town.
Darcy didn’t know anything about Wellingford. There had never been any reason for her to come here before. From what Ellen and she had seen on the way in, there wasn’t much to it. The town didn’t have much space to expand because it butted up against a cliff that dropped away to a river. Kind of like Ausable Chasm over in New York. She’d been there once, when she was still a teenager. On a school trip. She remembered walking along narrow ledges and wooden walkways, and thinking to herself that if she fell here she just might fall forever and no one would ever find her, ever.
That was how she felt right now. She was falling away into a pit and no one, including herself, would ever be able to find the person she used to be, ever again.
“Darcy?”
It was Ellen. She came over and knelt down next to her, dropping her backpack next to her, all packed up again. Darcy tried to stop the tears but they wanted to keep falling and she didn’t have the strength to argue with them.
Ellen wrapped an arm around her shoulder. It was an odd gesture from someone who always acted so tough. “Darcy, listen. I know how you feel. When I lost Audie to that maniac in Bear Ridge, my whole world turned upside down. He was the love of my life and then he was dead. I know how much it hurts. I know how much pain you’re in. If I could give Jon back to you… oh, Darcy. Please believe me that if I could, I would.”
Darcy hugged her friend back. Then she took a shaky breath, and made herself get up.
If grasping at this straw was the only hope she had left, then she was going to take it. She was going to hold onto it until there really was no hope left.
She turned to Ellen, felling hollow and emotionless. “I need your help.”
“Sure,” Ellen agreed quickly, dusting her knees off as she stood. “Anything, Darcy. What is it?”
Pointing with her finger in the same direction as that fist full of money, she said, “I need you to drive us. Over there.”
Ellen looked that way, squinting into the night. There was no way she could see anything more than the murky dark and the distant trees. “Why?” she asked. “What’s over there?”
“Jon,” Darcy answered. “That’s where Jon is.”
Chapter Eight
Funny, Darcy thought. How is it that one group of trees can look exactly like every other group of trees?
“It might help,” Ellen suggested, not for the first time, “if I knew where I was going.”
“Yes,” Darcy agreed, “it might.”
But, since all she had to go on was basically a big hand in the sky pointing that-a-way, the best they could do was drive down County Route Sixteen in the dark while their headlights illuminated stands of pine trees that were perfectly straight and symmetrical. As the car passed each row, Darcy could look down a solid straight line of trees, and then a perfect gap in between, and then another perfectly straight row, and so on.
“I’ve seen places like this before.” Ellen slowed a little to manage a sharp turn to the left as the road narrowed. “The State pays for the trees to be planted so they can reforest an area. They come in, plant the trees in perfect rows, and then this is what you get. Looks just like a giant’s vegetable garden.”
“If we were ants,” Darcy said, although she agreed the perfectly straight rows of trees looked a little creepy, regardless of the State’s good intentions in bringing more trees into the world.
“Hard to believe there’s a casino just a few miles back,” Ellen commented.
“Mmm,” Darcy murmured.
“This is going to be one of those silent drives, isn’t it?”
“Mmm.”
Soon the perfect rows of trees ended, and the hillside dropped sharply away next to the road, and the moon sparkled off a wide river with trees growing along the banks on both sides. The regular kinds of trees that grew where they felt like it. Darcy thought she saw maple trees as well as pines, and others she didn’t know the names for. Metal guide rails followed them now on the right side of the road, protecting them from the drop.
“Do you know where this road goes?” Ellen asked.
“No.” Darcy was concentrating on watching the night time world around them. First out the front window. Then out the side window. Then the front again.
“Well, I do know where it goes,” Ellen told her. “It goes exactly nowhere. It takes the scenic route along the river here to circle back into Wellingford on the other side. It’s literally a road that goes nowhere.”
Darcy didn’t say anything. The implications there were too obvious.
After another fifteen minutes of driving, though, she had to admit that Ellen might be right. There was nothing out here. Just the sloping hill and the river and—
“Wait!” she cried out, twisting in her seat to look behind them. “Did you see that?”
Ellen slowed down, but there was nowhere to stop out here. “What? See what?”
“Turn around!”
“Darcy, there’s nowhere here to turn around. The road’s too narrow and we’re on a blind curve. I mean, look…”
“I don’t care. Just turn around!”
Grumbling under her breath Ellen jammed the brakes hard, rocking both her and Darcy forward. Then she threw the car into reverse and began backing down the road using her mirrors to see where she was going. Darcy kept her face pressed to the window until the spot came into view again. She’d been right. The light hadn’t been playing tricks on her.
The Fiero came to a stop.
“You see it now?” she asked Ellen.
“I see it. Do you think…?”
Darcy touched her wedding ring. A tingling sensation coursed up through her fingers and quickly spread to the rest of her. Taking her hand away from the ring only made the feeling stronger.
When she pointed her finger at what she saw outside the car window, the tingling became a hum at the base of her skull. It tickled in her ears. She swept her hand away again, experimentally, and the humming dimmed. The tingling grew fainter.
It returned again, just as strong, when she moved her finger back to where it had been before, pointing at the reason she had wanted Ellen to stop the car right here.
The guard rails were put up in sections. Each one was maybe fifteen feet long, with a curved end that didn’t quite meet the end of the next section. In this spot, where one section of the guard rail ended, and the next flat length began, there was a gap of a few feet. The edges of both sides had been crumpled outward, away from the road, like something had been slammed through them. In the dirt shoulder of the road the ground was torn up.
Almost like a car had gone off the road.
“There,” she told Ellen. “I’m sure. This is the way we’re supposed to go.”
They got out of the car together and went over to examine the edges of the metal safety fence. There was obviously damage here, but if someone was driving down the road and not paying attention, they wouldn’t see anything. Ellen knelt down and brushed aside some leaves and fast food wrappers and other debris until she exposed a small spot of ground.
Darcy looked over her shoulder. “Those look like tire tracks.”
“Yeah. They sure do.”
They looked down the embankment as far as she could see. There were no streetlamps out this way. Nothing but the moon to show them the steep slope and the rushing water far below. Whatever was down there was hidden from their view.
Mumbling to herself, Ellen went back to her Fiero long enough to pull a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Closing the car door with a slam, she flicked the handheld LED on and off a few times to make sure it was going to stay lit for them.
�
�Far be it from me,” she said, “to doubt Darcy Sweet and her mystical, magical gifts. Where to?”
Darcy pointed down the slope. Imaginary pins and needles coursed through her, pricking her deeper and harder as she pointed…
“That way,” she said, looking down the hill at an angle that went off to their left.
“It’s pretty steep,” Ellen noticed.
“I don’t care. That’s the way we’re going.”
Hope welled up in her again, and this time she held it close and let it blossom.
Ellen watched her moving her finger back and forth, chewing on the inside of her cheek before she nodded her head in hesitant agreement. “You understand,” she said carefully, “even if this is an accident scene it could have happened weeks ago. It might not have anything to do with—”
“It’s him,” Darcy insisted. “Come on.”
Ellen could obviously see there was no arguing with her. Looking back at the Fiero still parked in the road, her only comment was, “I suppose the car will be safe there, with the lights on like that.”
As Darcy started down the slope she was stopped by Ellen’s hand on her arm.
“Why don’t you let me go down first. You might not like what you see.”
As a killer for hire, Ellen had seen more than her share of dead people. Some of them her own work, Darcy assumed, although she had never asked too many details about that part of Ellen’s life. But Darcy had seen more ghosts and death than she ever cared to remember, too, thanks to her gift. Death wasn’t any kind of stranger to Darcy Sweet.
But this was Jon.
Swallowing back her anxiety, Darcy shook her head. “No. I need to do this. I need to see for myself.”
Ellen squeezed her arm before letting go, and an understanding passed between them in that silent way that only women will ever understand. Darcy was glad she had come to know a friend like Ellen. Especially now.
They started out together, Ellen in the lead with the flashlight, Darcy behind her keeping track of where they were going. It was impossible to make a straight line down to the water, although it quickly became obvious that was where they were heading. The slope worked against them to the point they had to lean sideways, keeping both feet and one hand in contact with the ground for balance. Loose rocks slipped out from under foot and threatened to send them down the hard way. Below them, skinny trees grew up at the riverbank. Up here, on the path they followed, nothing grew but scraggly tufts of grass. Trees towered below them, down by the rushing sound of the water and the darkest of shadows.
It was a long way down. Darcy felt like it was taking them hours, even though her rational mind told her it might have been closer to twenty minutes or even less before Ellen’s flashlight found the riverbank… and something else.
The back end of a wrecked car came into view under the swath of the bright LED light. Darcy didn’t need the special feeling that was attracting her to this spot any more. Her whole body was on edge.
The car was a blue sedan, crumpled and dirty and sitting cockeyed with one back wheel up off the ground. Jon’s car. She knew this car. Even banged up like this, she knew this car. The front of it had come to rest hard against several tall trees standing almost at the river’s edge. The side they could see—the driver’s side—was banged up like it had taken part in a demolition derby.
Darcy’s heart surged up into her throat as she saw a tiny smear of blood along the twisted fender above the rear wheel.
Blood. On Jon’s car…
Forcing herself to do it, she leaned down closer to the smear of red. No. Not blood…
It was paint. Red paint. A transfer, from something that had hit Jon’s car and sent him down here. Another car had hit Jon’s and sent him off the road. Just like someone had rammed into Grace’s car.
On purpose.
“Look out!”
Ellen’s warning came a second before Darcy heard the sound of wood rending and cracking. She looked up in time to see one of the trees that Jon’s car had slammed into twisting, falling, racing towards her with its branches held wide like it was reaching out to grab her…
She stumbled off to the side as the tree fell against the roof of the car with a resounding FWUMP. The top of it, sticking out further, continued its downward momentum and bounced against the ground right where Darcy had just been standing, like a hammer aiming for a nail. The sound of leaves rustling and branches cracking continued afterward until the broken hulk of the tree came to rest in its new position.
Darcy stared in disbelief at the spot of ground where she had been standing. Thank God for Ellen’s warning. Her heart was racing, and she was still finding her footing on the slope of the hill, but she was alive.
Sometimes, trees fall. Now, where had she just heard that?
“You all right?” Ellen asked her, breaking her train of thought.
“I’m fine. It just surprised me, I guess.”
“His car must have been going pretty fast coming down here, to break a tree like that.” Ellen trailed the flashlight’s beam back up the path they’d taken, to the bent ends of the guardrails somewhere above them. “That’s why no one could find him. This spot is invisible from the road. Between the slope and the brush and the tress… unless you’re looking for the scene of an accident, you wouldn’t even notice the damage to the rails up there.”
Darcy was only half listening. She knew Ellen was right, and she didn’t care. She’d already taken several steps closer to the car, carefully ducking under the branches of the broken tree as she went. What would she find when she looked inside? The windows on the driver’s side were broken. What would she see? The door probably wouldn’t even open.
What would she see?
“Darcy, wait,” Ellen said.
She didn’t wait. She was at the driver’s door. She looked inside.
From the backsplash of Ellen’s flashlight, Darcy could see… nothing. The car was empty.
Ellen was beside her now, panning the light around the interior. There was shattered glass and little things had been thrown everywhere.
And this time, there really was blood. But no Jon.
“I don’t understand,” Darcy said. She’d been so sure she was going to find him here.
There it was again. Her mind kept slipping and telling her she was here to find Jon. Not to find his dead body. Not to find out who had killed him, or why, but here to find—
“Look at that,” Ellen said. The flashlight was pointed at the other side, the passenger side, and Darcy blinked in surprise.
The door was open. She could see the ground on the other side, under the fallen tree.
Walking around the car meant edging through the maze of tangled, broken branches. Ellen made it around quicker than Darcy. Without the flashlight, the world turned dark again. Shouldn’t the lights be on, Darcy wondered? No, not if the battery was dead. Of course. Sure. But then… how long had the car been here like this?
“Darcy!”
The tone in Ellen’s voice called her back from her wandering thoughts. When she got to the other side of the car she saw that Ellen had walked off a short distance, closer to the edge of the water, following the beam of her flashlight. Now she was kneeling in the grass, next to the trunk of a twisted birch tree. Her flashlight was on the ground. In its light Darcy saw something that sent a cold chill up her spine.
A man was lying on the ground, face up. His white button-down shirt and black slacks were torn and dirty. In the glow of the flashlight, at the angle it was laying, shadows darkened the blood on his face and collar. The same shadows lent sharp edges to his usually strong features. His dark hair was mussed. His eyes were closed.
In the moonlight, Jon Tinker looked pale as death.
Darcy felt like she floated her way over to him, like her feet never touched the ground once. She was just suddenly there next to Ellen, kneeling close to her husband, trying to find the words… the thoughts… the reason to do anything else but just sit there.
; After a moment, she realized Ellen was trying to get her attention. “Darcy? Darcy, look.”
Darcy blinked. What…
“Darcy,” Ellen said, more urgently. “He’s alive. Jon’s alive!”
With a whispering cough that was barely audible over the incessant noise of the nearby river, Jon stirred. Just enough to turn his head a fraction of an inch. Just enough for his eyelids to flutter.
Just enough for Darcy to see it was true. Jon wasn’t dead. He was alive.
Ellen was up on her feet in the next instant with her cell phone out, making a 911 call for help. “There’s no signal,” she said. “No bars. I’ve got to get back up to the road. I’ll be right back!”
Darcy stayed with Jon, holding his ice cold hand in both of hers and saying his name over and over. Each time she did, he seemed to come back to her a little bit more. It was like he was fighting his way back from whatever pit his soul had sunk into. Her voice was his lifeline. His strength of will was the only thing that kept him from slipping away from her again.
“Jon,” she said, tasting her own tears on her lips. “I knew. I mean, I didn’t know, but I did. I knew… I kept saying that I needed to find you. To find you, Jon. Somehow I knew you were still alive. Jon, I knew, I can’t believe it… Jon? Jon?”
His eyes snapped open, and he focused on her. In his eyes, she saw pain and confusion and a spark of something deeper that she had seen in him so many times before. Determination.
Just that, and then his eyes closed again. It seemed to her he was breathing stronger, and his hand was warmer.
He was coming back to her.
“I knew it,” she said, more to herself than to him this time. “I don’t know how, but I knew it.
***
When she had time and space to think again, Darcy started putting the pieces together.
She had Jon back, and he was alive. That part of the mystery was done. She had her husband back. Colby had her father back.
