“I will turn on these lights and they’ll know in a second where you are. Give me Lynn and William’s coats. Now.”
“God damn you, woman,” he said. “You’re gonna go hunch down in the bathroom under all those coats and wait this out—”
“I’m counting down. Starting now: five, four—”
“Shit!” Joe yanked off William’s coat and took mine as I shrugged it off.
“Miss Cliff,” William said groggily. “Are you leaving us?”
“Sorry kid. I’m done with all this. I know what they’re capable of doing. And your coat, too, gimpy. And that stupid sock hat of yours too, Joe. It will be cold in that bathroom.”
“I hope when they start shooting, they aim for the bathroom.” Roxy winced as she took off her coat.
Joe threw the coats out. As Verna slowly gathered them and walked towards the bathroom, the voice came again from the street. “Lynn Roseworth, you have one minute to come out. Please don’t make us harm your family.”
“Jesus, what are we going to do? We have to go,” Roxy said. “Just gun it out of here, Joe. We’ll have to take our chances.”
“They’ll be on our asses in two seconds, they’re right outside. They missed before, but now they’re at close range.”
“There has to be another place we can hide,” I said. Hearing the panic in my voice, William started to cry.
“Joe,” Verna’s voice came from the door. “Give me twenty seconds and then follow the alley down to where Janice Stoney had that crappy secondhand store. You can follow Sugarhill Street out.”
“What are you talking about…?” Joe said, watching Verna shuffle to the front of the building towards a door. Instead of her long coat, she now wore mine, and had the hood up. We could see she’d stuffed Roxy’s coat into William’s with the hood sticking out, and had placed Joe’s sock hat in the hood.
To complete the image, she’d tied her own coat around the waist of the makeshift boy, to cover his legs from the cold.
“What is she doing?” Joe demanded.
“Verna!” I whispered, covering my mouth.
She couldn’t have heard, but she did turn around and look at me. “Tell him,” she mouthed the words. “Tell him what I did. And get him out.”
Verna unlocked a door and stepped out of the building onto the main street, closing the door behind her, holding the crudely assembled dummy in her arms. “I’m here! Don’t shoot!” she cried out.
“Put the child down, Mrs. Roseworth!” the voice boomed.
“No!” Verna yelled out. “I won’t let you have him! I want a phone!”
“We have to go,” Joe said, jumping out of the truck and gingerly opening the doors to the alley.
“Mrs. Roseworth, put the child down. Walk over to us with both your hands in the air.”
“I’m not coming a step closer until you get my husband on the phone! He’s a US senator!”
Joe slid back into the truck. “What’s going on?” William asked. “We can’t leave Miss Cliff—”
“Now, Mrs. Roseworth!” the soldier on the megaphone ordered.
“No! I want my husband on the phone—”
There was no order to open fire, only the sound of automatic weapons unloading. Joe threw it in reverse. I covered William’s face as we slid out of the garage and into the alley.
The shooting continued for several seconds more, masking our noise enough for us to make a sharp turn and approach another street.
“Jesus,” Roxy’s voice was tight. “Oh my God.…”
“God love you, Verna,” Joe murmured quietly.
I made the sign of the cross across my aching chest.
“What happened?” William asked.
I held him close. “Miss Cliff wanted to save you.”
“Shouldn’t we go back and get her?”
I kissed his forehead and told him to close his eyes and try to rest.
Joe drove at a slow pace, unable to use his headlights. For the first time since arriving in Argentum, I was grateful for the fact that this was a small, isolated town. There were no streetlights on the side streets, which allowed us to creep along without being seen.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Roxy whispered.
“You could blindfold me and I could still make it around town. At least, I hope so.”
“Once they … look closer at the coats, they’ll know. They’ll start looking for us,” Roxy said.
“If we can get up and over the rise…,” he said.
“Well, I sure couldn’t,” Roxy said. “It’s complete ice and snow. You better have a plan B.”
“It’s the only way out of town.” He leaned in to the windshield.
The lights of Main Street were still in view off to our right. Joe drove as far on the side street as he could before it dead-ended. Then he had no choice but turn towards the town’s main thoroughfare.
When we reached Main Street, he edged out just enough to look. We all leaned forward, seeing the Humvees along the boardwalk start separating. One disappeared down the alley where we’d gone to reach the mechanic shop, and the others turned towards the medical center before splintering off onto side streets.
“Hold on,” Joe said, turning left. Almost immediately, we began to climb the incline that had stranded Roxy only hours before. I whispered a silent prayer for the sharpness of Joe’s snow tires. We passed the crashed van and the police cruiser, its lights still flashing.
“Looks like my dancing partner survived after all,” Roxy said bitterly. “He was lying by the car when we ran off. Someone must have come to get his sorry ass.”
As we crested the hill, I looked back, certain we were being pursued.
My eyes lingered on the empty street for a moment before they were drawn to the heavens. Even the snow was unable to block out the two massive shapes hovering miles above the far edge of town. Their color was difficult to determine, but the thousands, maybe millions of lights, outlining their diameters and edges were clear. Comprehending their size brought on a wave of fear, like a child seeing a whale for the first time. I could only gauge they were the size of cruise liners, maybe even the battleships I’d seen on TV. I felt nauseous at the thought of William in one of them and looked away, but felt compelled to return my gaze, to make myself believe I’d really seen them.
Of course I had. I’d been in one too.
As we went over the hill, the last thing I saw was another beam of light shoot to the earth below.
Joe then stopped the truck, switched gears, and began to back up while turning the wheel.
“What are you doing?” Roxy demanded.
Joe ignored her, and pulled down the stick shift. The plow on the front of the truck slowly lowered.
Roxy’s hands flailed. “Joe, just keep driving—”
“Woman, I’m telling you what,” he said, waiting for the plow to crunch against the earth. He then drove off the road, the snow immediately piling up before him.
“They can’t chase us if they can’t get through,” he muttered.
Joe continued to drive a half circle and promptly dumped a huge amount of snow and ice on the road. He backed up and took another scoop, piling it behind the first.
“Now, we go,” he said, slowly advancing onto the road.
I glanced back to see lights coming up over the hill from the town. A Humvee was over the rise a moment later.
“Joe!” I cried out.
He swore and gunned the gas, and we started to slide. I looked back out the window and saw that the driver of the Humvee apparently had the same notion when he saw us. I watched the army vehicle race down the road and weave as he tried to avoid the mound of snow and ice. But instead, the Humvee crashed into it head on, the snow falling onto its hood and covering the window.
“Drive, dammit!” Roxy yelled. Despite the heavily falling snow, I could see the headlights of the Humvee rock back and forth as the driver tried to steer it free.
“Eat that, asshole,” Joe said,
driving down the road as fast as he could while still controlling the truck on the ice. I saw one soldier get out of the Humvee with a long rifle and try to aim in our direction, but then we were off the road and onto the state route.
We crunched along, and Roxy patted Joe’s arm. “You did good.”
“Keep looking back,” he said. “They’ll be radioing in for anyone else to follow. It will be even more treacherous on these mountain roads. And it’s night. I’ll go as fast as I can, but the last thing we need is to end up in a ditch.”
“Been there,” Roxy said, holding up a finger, her eyes closed.
We drove in silence, the wipers pushing aside the snow that continued to fall, the pine trees rushing by in the dark.
“Joe, I’m so sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this.”
“Miss Lynn, looks like I’ve been part of this for a long, long time, even if I didn’t realize it. I … can’t believe it.…”
“How are we on gas?”
“I keep reserves in the wintertime, so I filled up before I started clearing the streets this afternoon. I have a reserve tank too. We’ll be fine to get to Denver.”
“What’s to keep them from following us from above? Helicopters? Planes?”
“Would be hard to follow from the air in this blizzard. It is the government, however. They’re probably tracking us by satellite at this very moment, following my cell signal.”
“Do you have one? In the truck?”
“In the glove compartment.”
Roxy opened the latch and pulled out the phone, handing it back to me. I powered it up and found it had no service. I shook my head and looked over to Roxy, who was clenching her eyes in pain.
“We’ll get you to a hospital as soon as we get into the city.”
“No,” she said. “We’re going straight to the airport, getting you and little man on a plane.”
“They’ll expect that. They’ll have people waiting for us there. I have to be able to make a call. Just one call.”
I knew Joe was doing the best he could in the conditions, but it felt like we were moving at a crawl. I kept looking back, expecting to see glaring headlights, or hear the thumping whirl of helicopters above.
We drove on, the snow pelting the windshield, the wind rushing against the glass. Roxy sat with her eyes closed, and Joe kept whispering to himself, shaking his head. I held tight to William, and constantly looked in the rearview mirror.
It seemed like an hour later, but we finally reached the highway. “Honey,” I whispered to William.
The boy had curled up deep under my arm, dead asleep. Delicately, I touched the camera app on the phone and took a quick photo, hoping the flash wouldn’t wake him. As I looked at the sweet image of the sleeping boy’s face, my heart leapt at the three strong bars of service.
I quickly dialed, and held my breath as it rang.
“Hello?” Tom answered immediately.
“Tom,” I turned to face the window, speaking softly.
“Lynn? Jesus, are you OK? Where are you?”
“Listen to me. I can’t speak loudly. I have William. Do you understand? I have William.”
“What?”
“I am in Colorado approaching Denver. I am going to send you a picture you must immediately share with Anne and Chris. Roxy is banged up bad and we’re heading for a hospital. Tom, William is alive.”
“Lynn, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just tell me where you are—”
“I love you, Tom, but I’m hanging up. Look for a text from this number. I have many calls to make, then I’ll call you back.”
“Wait, who are you calling—?”
“I love you,” I said, and hung up.
The phone immediately rang with Tom’s number appearing. I ended the incoming call, touched the picture of the photo, and texted it to his number. He called again, and the phone made a swishing sound as the text went through.
A few seconds after the text went out, the phone stopped ringing.
I pulled up Safari and quickly typed, pulling up a number of different websites.
“You finally learned to use another app,” Roxy observed, with a pained voice.
I touched one of the numbers that appeared, and I held up the phone to my ear. The phone rang three times before someone answered, “KUSA-TV, can I help you?”
“Is this the NBC station? Do I have the newsroom? My name is Lynn Roseworth, I am the wife of Senator Tom Roseworth of Tennessee. My grandson William has been missing for several months. Are you familiar with the story? Good. I am calling to tell you that I have located my grandson here in Colorado, and we are driving to the Denver Emergency Center, where I will be bringing him in to be evaluated. That’s right, my grandson. The one who is missing. I am calling every television station in town, as I intend to make a brief statement after we arrive. I will also be sending you a photo of my grandson for verification purposes. I will call again as we approach the hospital. You can call my husband’s press secretary within the hour to confirm that I have spoken with him. I hope you’ll be there. I can be reached at this phone number as we drive into Denver, but if I don’t answer, it’s because I’m calling your competitors. I hope to see your crew there. What is a good phone number to text you this picture?”
When I hung up and began to search online again, Roxy painfully leaned forward. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
“It’s our only protection. If every TV station and newspaper sees that William is alive with me, they can’t try to take him from us. It’s the only way.”
“What exactly are you going to tell them when we arrive?” Joe asked quietly.
I put the phone up to my cheek. “Are you the ABC station? Good. My name is Lynn Roseworth.”
* * *
Two hours later, when we at last reached Interstate 25, the cell phone was hot from constant use. If it hadn’t been for the phone charger Joe thankfully kept in the glove compartment, the phone would have died long ago.
Tom had called several times, as had Kate, Anne, and Stella. I hadn’t answered, only texted them the picture. I felt so tired after talking to all the journalists, knowing they were all wondering what the crazy alien lady would say at the hospital. It was only a taste of what was to come.
Roxy knew it too. “You need to call Anne.”
“I will, in a minute. I need to get my head together.”
Roxy reached back across William and took my hand.
I squeezed. Tom was no doubt on a plane, probably having called in a favor to a wealthy donor to get on a private jet. He would bring Anne and Chris. Stella would probably muscle herself on board. Kate too. There would be so many questions, but I would insist that word of William’s discovery be sent to Nashville’s metro police immediately. Steven had to be released. And Barbara as well—
I quickly turned to Joe, who was whistling softly. For the first time, I noticed the silver swirl of his hair that lay over the back of his collar, and how he was twirling it, round and round.
The angle of his jaw. The sharpness of his nose. The light shade of his blue eyes. None of it registered then, but it did now.
It can’t be.
When Barbara was a teenager and had come to ask for our help all those years ago, she had twirled her hair. She did it again in that basement in Champaign as well. Barbara Rush, silver hair, soft chin, sharp nose, brilliant blue eyes. Barbara, who never stopped looking for her brother Don.
Twins, from St. Joseph, Michigan.
“Joe,” I asked. “You don’t remember anything of your past?
“Nope.”
“So you don’t even know … if you had … maybe a sister?”
“Not a thing. My God, all that time … was I … taken?”
“So you don’t remember anyone named Barbara?”
“Barbara? You know, funny you should ask,” Joe said, a sad smile coming to his face. “Remember when I told you that some names sound kind of familiar? Like how I
chose Joseph? Well, of all the names of women I’ve heard, Barbara has always been my favorite.”
EPILOGUE
AUGUST
I rested the tip of the pen on the blank square of the question, tapping it repeatedly. The capitol of Maine. Seven letters.
I swear it’s Bangor. But the “b” doesn’t fit, and it’s not long enough. I know this. I know this.
I looked out across the garden, laying the crossword puzzle on the arm of the Adirondack. The chair was by the lavender bush for a reason: Daddy always said the scent had calming effects. I breathed in and closed my eyes, trying to slow my racing heartbeat, looking down at my watch for the thousandth time in the last fifteen minutes.
I tried to focus on the billowing hydrangea bush in its myriad blues and pinks, taking long breaths to slow my heartbeat. The garden has come back after so much neglect—isn’t it remarkable?
We agreed to meet at three o’clock.
Yes, I’d lost some finicky gardenias, and my pots all had to be replanted, but they had been filled with annuals anyway.
I won’t have much time with him, but there’s so much that has to be said.
The hydrangeas are suffering, and they’d be wilting right now in the early evening heat, even if I hadn’t abandoned them late last summer.
I have so much to ask him.
Augusta. Augusta, Maine. I wrote down the word. Now move on to the next, stop thinking about what could be within us—
All those terrible diseases. Horrible storms. People getting sick after eating meat—
“Miss Lynn?”
I looked over, across the fence. It needed its yearly painting, but I planned on having that done in the fall, when the temperatures were bearable. The man just beyond the fence stopped and wiped his brow with a handkerchief, setting down the wheelbarrow full of mulch he pushed. “Do you want me to take the mulch up to the garden by the shop, or dump it here?”
“I’ll use it for the rose bed by the Peddler’s front door. You can dump it there.”
“Uh, no, you cannot.”
Roxy huffed from the other side of the garden. I could hear the keys jingling in the front of her overalls, indicating she’d just closed up the shop. She walked with a cane, and would for the rest of her days, Dr. Burcham said. He had suggested plastic surgery for the deep gash on her forehead that required a series of ugly stitches and had left a wicked scar, but she said at her age, she wasn’t concerned about smooth skin. “Jesus, Lynn, are we running a trailer park here? No, you can’t dump that mulch there, Don. Wheel it around back and we’ll get to it tomorrow.”
The Darkest Time of Night Page 27
