by Amy Lane
They both paused to shudder.
“And then?” Eamon prompted.
“I think she’s pregnant—Yoshi guessed it, because she’d been gaining weight in the right places, and because where’s she going to get birth control in Colton where the whole world wouldn’t see her, right?”
“I don’t even want to…. God.”
“Yeah.”
Two women entered at that point, both of them dressed practically in jeans and boots and parkas, but with visible accessories as kid-friendly as possible. One woman had ducks on her scarf and the other a big bow in her hair, and both had average, sweet faces with real smiles.
“Where is she, Eamon?” the shortest of the woman asked—the one with the scarf. She had a bobbed blonde haircut and a brusque attitude, and Larx had worked with Carlene Collins before. He stepped forward with his hand extended in honest friendship.
“Carlene, Sandy—she’s in her room packing. She may need some help—she seems really levelheaded, but every now and then she remembers that her house is empty, and it freaks her out.”
Carlene nodded at Sandy, who set off for the bedroom.
“Anything else you can tell us?”
Larx recounted what he knew of Candace and Braun and what they’d seen the mother do.
“We’ve got some damage to fix, then,” Carlene said when he was done. “Okay. Good to know. I’m going to go help them—will there be officers out front when we leave?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eamon said. “Larx and I need to go find the sister—she probably managed to survive the night, but we’re not sure how much more luck she’s got.”
A look of weariness crossed Carlene’s middle-aged face. “I hear you. Go, be careful. We’ll wrangle this one.”
“Uh, Carlene?” Larx said, not sure if this was even allowed. “If I bring a birthday present for Shelley to your office, you could give it to her, right?”
A sudden grin split Carlene’s face. “Larx, you make my job a joy. Yessir—even if you send it our way, we’ll make sure she knows someone sent her a birthday present.”
Larx nodded, and then he and Eamon left quickly. Larx realized he’d never taken off his snow gear, not even his gloves when they’d been coloring, and the snow was a welcome, refreshing smack in the face to wake him up from the cranky doze he could have fallen into.
“So she’s got a credit card and a mission,” Eamon said as they got into the SUV again. “Where do you think she’s going?”
“Foresthill,” Larx said with as much certainty as he could muster. “She’s going to want the train to Auburn so she can get an abortion—as soon as she possibly can.”
“I don’t blame her,” Eamon said softly. “Jesus. Poor kid. That shelter in the backyard was really something. Sleeping bag, a bunch of those cans with the grease all burned out. I wonder how often she went out there just to get away.” He put the SUV into gear. “Now call your kids, and then settle in for a nap. We’ve got two hours to Foresthill in the snow, and I need you fresh.”
Larx grunted. “And food,” he said. “When we get there, at the very least. Police hospitality is for shit.”
Eamon chuckled. “You help us get this kid to child health and welfare without getting dead or getting to Auburn, and I swear to God, I’ll buy you steak. And Aaron too.”
Larx yawned and pulled out his phone. “That’s a deal,” he mumbled. “Christi? Yeah, hon. How you doing?”
“Good, Daddy. We’re all sort of hanging out and eating—I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s what snow days are for,” he said. “How’s Jaime?”
“Sad,” she told him softly. “He really misses his brother.”
“Tell Yoshi. Maybe he can do something about that. I just wanted you to know that Eamon and I are heading for Foresthill to check something out, okay? It’s going to take a little while because of the snow, so don’t expect me until later. And even then, when I get back, I’m—”
“Going to the hospital. Don’t worry, Daddy. We know. Thanks for telling us. Yoshi’s ordering pizza for everybody. He says he doesn’t care if that’s okay or not, that’s what you get for stranding him in the house with five thousand teenagers.”
Larx chuckled. “Tell Yoshi I love him too.”
“Sure. You tell Aaron we love him when you’re there. Be careful, Daddy.”
Of course he would be.
SNOWSCAPE
LARX AWOKE and found that Eamon had parked the SUV in the shade and was nowhere to be seen. After a bit of frantic looking around, Larx realized they were in a small section of strip mall, which was sort of an unromantic phrase for the historic clapboarded businesses that made up much of Foresthill.
About the time he figured Eamon must have gone inside for food, he saw the man himself coming down the stairs from the raised boardwalk to walk across the parking lot with two big white bags in his hand.
And two coffees, because he was a man with his priorities straight.
Larx greeted him warmly when he slid in and took the hamburger with supreme gratitude. “Nobody’s seen her?” Larx asked needlessly, mouth full of burger. Mm… this wasn’t a frozen patty either.
“No—but we sent dogs from the shed out toward Foresthill, and they picked up her trail. About five miles through, overland, they found a snow shelter a lot like the one in the backyard. She made it through the night, Larx—she’ll make it here.”
Larx smiled, some of the tension in his back easing. “And I think her life science and geography teachers should get medals for that. Just saying.”
“You make that happen,” Eamon said with a smile before biting into his own hamburger. They ate in silence for a moment, and then Eamon spoke again. “I want Aaron to run for sheriff next year.”
Larx took a hard swallow on the burger in his mouth. “You’ve said.”
“I still want it. Even with the getting shot. Can you deal with that?”
Larx closed his eyes and let his body yearn. Yearn to be next to Aaron again, yearn to see him, even pale in bed, respirator working, telemetry beeping softly.
Aaron, in this job for another fifteen years, maybe twenty.
But then, Larx was here, working when he wanted to be with Aaron. Larx had gotten shot that fall—he’d been the one taking the risks.
“I hope so,” he said softly, taking a sip of his coffee. “Maybe don’t ask me right now. Ask me in two weeks, when he’s home and driving me batshit and I need him to go to work before I kick him in the shins.”
“Fair enough.” Eamon took another sip of coffee and then stiffened. “Whup—there’s our girl.”
The town was little more than two hundred yards of businesses on either side of the street, with a train track in the middle, and their girl had just emerged from the shadows of the two buildings across the street. She had to be theirs—fourteenish, medium build, dressed in survival gear, and limping just a tad from boots that probably needed extra socks to fit.
Other than that, she looked a damned sight better than Larx would if he’d spent the night in the woods.
Yoshi had pulled up the girl’s picture for them, and Larx had remembered seeing her in the halls. Appearance-wise, she was like her sister—brown-haired, blue-eyed, average chin, average cheekbones, no outstanding features, no super extra animation to make her memorable in a crowd.
But Shelley had been young and—relatively—untouched by the awfulness her sister had endured over the last few months.
Candace had purpose now. She didn’t move like a little girl who had been lost in the woods for the past night. She moved like a survivalist who had camped in the woods, broken camp, and was heading for her intended destination and, to her mind, a better life.
God help anyone who got in her way.
Larx remembered what he’d said about her being armed against her stepfather—and took it back. “I’m going to talk to her,” he said quietly. Eamon had gotten him two burgers, and he pulled the second one out of the bag, securely wrapped in whit
e paper, and put it in the bag with the fries. “She knows me—I might not be trustworthy, but I’m certainly nonthreatening.”
Eamon side-eyed him. “Yeah, Larx. That’s what I think when I see you. Totally harmless.”
“I know you think you’re being sarcastic, but seriously, I don’t see how.”
Eamon just laughed, and Larx shook his head. God spare him. He was just trying to keep his kids alive.
“Watch my back,” he said sourly. “If Roy Furman sees her, things could get weird.”
He didn’t slam the door as he swung out of the SUV, and he kept his stride nice and easy. Nothing to see here, just a guy who drove two hours through the snow to wander the boardwalk of a little ol’ gold rush town. As he was wandering, he saw the train station across the road—and figured that’s where she was going.
Traffic on the highway was pretty light, so he took his life in both hands and ran to the train platform, then over the tracks and across the other side of the road. His boots skidded a bit on the icy pavement, and he tried not to wipe out in the middle of the highway, because that would be a terrible way to die.
She’d disappeared into the train station just as he crossed over, and as he mounted the steps to the boardwalk, he heard the sounds of a car fishtailing into the almost empty parking lot he and Eamon had come from. He looked over his shoulder and saw a battered SUV, black, skidding to a halt in the middle of the lot. It must have done a donut because he was facing away from the Colton County Sheriff’s unit, which Eamon had parked in the back corner, in the shade.
Eamon had shown Larx Roy Furman’s driver’s license picture—square jaw, narrow eyes, blocky build—and the guy reaching into his car, profile to Larx, looked very familiar.
Larx hurried to the train station and pulled out his phone in time to see Eamon’s text: Backup is on the way. Keep her inside.
Awesome.
Larx entered the small historical station and looked around. The whole room was paneled in lovely stained wood, beveled to look vintage, and photos of the old train station as well as various antiques showing the elegance of traveling during the steam era dominated the room.
The teacher part of his brain was thinking Oh, I’d like to see the period clothing and the preserved china at another date.
Most of him was thinking C’mon, Candace, don’t hate me because I’m your principal.
He heard her before he saw her. The office was tiny but thickly cluttered by the displays of the old-world train station. The rusty, trembling voice was obviously right by the counter, but the bearer of it was sheltered from view by a wardrobe of antique clothes. Listening to her, part of him was reassured. She’d done an amazing thing, and she had a strong will—but she was still a fourteen-year-old girl in need of help.
“Ticket,” she was saying. “I’d like to purchase a ticket to Auburn. When does the train come?”
“Oh, honey.” The elderly woman had salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail that curled perfectly, and she smiled benevolently, like this poor dear had just wandered away from her parents and needed some cookies before she went back. “I’m sorry—the tracks are blocked up by Donner Pass. The train’s not coming from that way until tomorrow.”
“But….” She took a shuddery breath and pulled the lapels of the oversized army surplus parka around her shoulders. The army/navy store was about a mile from school—he wondered if she’d cut class to go buy it. “I need to get out of here. Is the bus working?”
“Candace?” Larx said gently. “Candace, honey?”
The face she turned toward him was wary and exhausted.
“I’m not going back, Mr. Larkin,” she rasped.
“There’s nothing to go back to,” he told her. “Your mother backhanded your little sister in front of the sheriff this morning—”
“Shelley!”
“She’s going to be fine,” Larx said, his mouth twisting. “CPS has her—nice women. I told them I’d send her a birthday present—”
“She doesn’t want dolls like girl dolls,” Candace said hurriedly, panic in her eyes. “She wants the—”
“Action figures with the kickass play structure.” He let a grin slip out. “Your sister’s sort of awesome. But your stepbrother was killed last night as you were getting away—”
She let out a little moan, and he thought her knees were going to give out. She propped herself on the counter. “Roy’s gonna… oh God, he’s gonna flip—”
Larx nodded and met eyes with the alarmed ticket saleswoman. “Ma’am, do you have a place we can, uh, hide?” He took his gloves off and shoved them in his pocket. This might take a few, and the office was pretty overheated.
The woman’s eyes widened. “Hide?”
“Yes, ma’am—we need to be out of the way while the policemen do their thing.”
“There’s, uh, a little break room in the back here….” She opened the counter and gestured them behind it. Once there, a small hallway led to a restroom cubicle to the left, and following it back took them to a tiny room that reeked of cigarettes and held the circular stains of a thousand cups of coffee. Larx looked around hurriedly, seeing a broom closet, a metal table with a computer on it, and a counter with sliding cabinet doors underneath.
“Is it going to be dangerous?” the woman—Marion, by her name tag—looked at Larx unhappily, and Larx felt a little bit of guilt. Was this how Aaron felt, having a firefight go down in Berto’s front room, with Berto weeping in the corner?
“Candace, has Roy even been to the high school? Any of the town meetings? Does he even know what I look like?”
Candace frowned. “No—he heard you were….” She swallowed. “Uh, gay, and sort of ranted a while. He and my mom got into a big fight over home school and then, well, he made her shut up about it and that was all, I guess.”
“Awesome. Marion, you and Candace go back in the room and—”
The little bell on the front door tinkled violently as the door was thrown open. “Candace? Candace, are you in here? Did you think getting away was this goddamned easy?”
Larx shed his coat and pretty much shoved it and Marion in the room and mouthed, “Get in the closet!” to Candace. Then he shut the door calmly and walked toward the counter, a determined smile on his face.
“Hi, sir, can I help you?” He scanned the ledger in front of him and the antiquated computer and hoped fervently that Roy Furman did not want to buy a ticket.
“Where is she?” The man in front of him didn’t look sane—his eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and his whole body reeked of whiskey the way the back room had reeked of cigarettes. In his arms he cradled a shotgun—Larx wouldn’t recognize the make, but it looked old and it looked deadly, and that was all he needed to know.
Larx let his eyes get really big as he feigned ignorance. “Where’s who?”
“That lying little bitch that got my son killed—where the fuck is she?”
“Sir, I, uh, haven’t seen any women come in—”
“Don’t fuck with me!” Roy Furman roared, and Larx took a frightened step back before he could decide if it was in character or not. Furman wasn’t tall—maybe Larx’s height—but his shoulders were incredibly wide. He had a brutal build—a wife-beater’s build. He probably had a weight set that he used, every day, so he could do to Marie Furman what Marie had done to Shelley.
“I’m sorry, sir—I’m going to have to ask you to leave—”
Furman lunged forward, grabbing for Larx’s collar, but Larx took another quick step back. “Get back here, asshole—you’re gonna tell me where the fuck she is—”
Larx danced out of his reach again, thinking that if only Furman would overreach on the end, at the lift-up partition where there was no counter to catch his body and balance up against, Larx had him.
“I don’t know who”—he dodged—“you’re mad about”—he dodged again, heading toward the part of the counter that lifted up. “But you really need to—” Almost there. “Get hold of your temper!”
>
And Roy played right into his hands. He threw himself forward, overbalancing on the end of the counter, and Larx leaped forward, shoving at Roy’s shoulders hard until he toppled completely over, landing on his head while his shotgun hit the floor with a clatter. He was lying there, dazed and floundering, when Larx picked up the gun and held it like he’d seen them held in the movies.
“Stay right there, asshole,” he snarled just as Eamon burst in the door, gun drawn.
“Took you long enough,” Larx panted, aware that his arms were shaking with the weight of the weapon. The bell tinkled again, and Deputy Hardesty came through, weapon drawn.
“Everybody freeze!” he shrilled, and Larx rolled his eyes. Percy—thirtyish, sharp cheekbones, and thinning beige hair pulled back from a widow’s peak—was probably his least favorite Colton County law enforcement officer, and Larx really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him now.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Larx snapped. “Or could you maybe draw on the wife-beating motherfucker on the ground so Eamon can cuff him?”
“Mills, you gonna let him talk to me like that?” Percy whined, and Eamon gave him a disgusted look.
“You are pointing the gun at the guy who just risked his life to help us,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Can you show a little goddamned sense?”
Percy grunted and pointed his weapon at Roy instead of Larx. At that moment Deputy Coolidge came in, weapon drawn as well, and Larx dropped the stock of the shotgun, holding the barrel with one hand, perpendicular to the ground, and the other hand up.
“Warren, you want to take this weapon?” Larx asked wearily. “It’s the suspect’s.”
“Thanks, Larx,” Warren said with a vague smile. Warren—round-faced and blond with wide blue eyes—had always struck Larx as none too bright—which made Larx glad he was no longer partnered up with Aaron on a regular basis. But Warren did Larx a solid now and held out his hand for the gun, which Larx turned over gratefully.
