by Cate Clarke
“You know, this is a bad idea—”
“Yeah. Just how I knew that going on that hike was a bad idea, or going to that bridge.” Diana pulled her coat over her shoulders, moving her eyes between her ex-husband and her son. “Sometimes, you’ve got to do bad things to get good results, Rex.”
“Is beating this guy up going to get you a good result?” Rex asked.
Wes piped up from the stairs, “Wait, what?”
“I’m not going to beat him up,” Diana said.
Both Wesley and Rex raised their eyebrows in the same way, incredulous.
“I’m going to set things straight—”
“By punching him in the face?” Rex interrupted. “You taking the bat?”
She didn’t mention that it was in the backseat of the car, its one end still covered in dried blood.
“You’ll be fine by yourself, right, champ?” Rex didn’t wait for her to answer, reaching for his own coat and looking down the stairs.
Wesley nodded and then went back to shaking his head at Diana. “I told you not to go last time, Mom, and you went anyway. Look what happened!”
“I know, Wes.”
“Don’t worry, champ. I’ll take care of her, okay?”
Diana rolled her eyes.
It was over a three-hour drive to Chelan from Seattle, but they made it in just over two and a half with Diana’s speeding. By the time they pulled into the parking lot where Diana had rented the guide, streetlamps were turning on. Out of the four businesses in the strip mall, three were already closed and the last one open was a Subway, filling the air with smells of black olives and wet lettuce. An employee from the insurance place next to the boat rental was locking a door with a key ring that had way too many keys.
“Okay, I’m sorry, Di,” Rex said, looking out over the darkened mall. “We can try to come back tomorrow if you’re still feeling…” Rex thought. “Annoyed.”
Diana slammed her fist down onto the steering wheel and got out of the car, not even looking back to see if Rex was following her. An icy rain was spitting down, lightly covering her unwashed hair and jacket.
“Excuse me—”
The insurance man turned around, jumping and bringing his hands to his ears as if Diana was about to rob him.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Diana said. “I was just wondering if you could tell me about the guy that works at the boat rental place, Kevin Knipe?”
“You have a knife? Oh god.” The man threw his hands over his head.
“No. No.”
The guy was borderline deaf, so Diana took a couple of steps closer to him. He backed himself up against the glass behind her, holding his suitcase in front of him as a shield.
“My name is Diana, and I’m looking for Kevin Knipe,” she said, overenunciating every word.
“Oh.” The man chuckled, releasing his tight grip on the briefcase handle to pat down his hair. “Sorry about that. My hearing’s no good.”
Diana looked at him expectantly.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Yeah, he usually closes up around five. But, you might catch him across the street at the Ale House. He likes to get a nightcap there around this time… Not that I would know much about that. I’m not a drinker, myself. But I do enjoy—”
“Thank you.”
Diana turned on her heel, heading back to the car and then right past it to cross the street. Two car doors closed behind—insurance guy, getting in, and Rex, getting out.
“Diana!” Rex called after her but she was already at the median, waiting for traffic to ease so she could get to the cabin-style building in front of her. It was all dark wood and covered in beer signs, a longstanding bar that had probably changed its name several times but always kept its same artlessness.
Through the double doors, the ID guy gave her an up and down and a flicking thumb while he stopped Rex from barreling right into her with one hand.
“Diana,” Rex hissed under the bouncer’s arm.
“Go back to the car,” Diana said.
The bar smelled of fried potatoes and tequila. There were two bartenders, making their way back and forth between a surprising amount of patrons for a Thursday night. Kevin Knipe was at a table with two other overweight men, sitting around a plate of half-eaten chicken wings and several empty glasses of Budweiser. He was a huge man, bigger than Diana remembered because last time she’d seen him, he’d been blocked by a boat seat. Thick-rimmed glasses were pushed onto his wide face, and he had a laugh that cut through the sounds of the crowd.
After Rex got around the bouncer, he placed a hand on Diana’s shoulder but she kept walking, beelining for Knipe’s table.
“Oh,” Knipe said at the sight of her. He laughed loudly. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Diana put two hands on the table, her elbows jutting out as she leaned forward.
“I guess you’re talking about the article?” Knipe asked, taking a sip of his beer, pretending to be unfazed by her presence as his friends snickered. But she saw it—the fear behind his small beady eyes. “I’m just telling people what I saw.”
“And what did you see, Knipe?” Leaning back and crossing her arms, Diana looked down at the table and slightly over her surroundings. Rex, behind her. Two other tables, watching them curiously. And the friends, their chubby hands much too close to her jeans. Knipe in the middle of it all, sweating to the beat of Rascal Flatts in the background.
“Well, I—” Knipe cleared his throat again and wiped at his upper lip. “I saw a mom being mean to her kids.”
“They’re teenagers, you shithead.”
“You told the girl that you were going to throw her phone in the lake!” Knipe exclaimed and more eyes turned to them. “And the boy…you told him that he should have stayed home.”
The frustration boiled inside of her. Her knuckles whitened as she clenched her fists. She flexed and unflexed the bottom of her foot inside her boots to try and calm herself down.
“You a parent, Knipe?”
“Nah,” Knipe said. “I don’t want to be tied down.”
“I got two kids and I would never say anything like that to my babies,” one of the friends piped up, looking and nodding around the table.
“My daughter is lost in those woods,” Diana said. “She is scared, alone and starving. Yet, here you are, Knipe. Sitting here, eating fucking wings, blabbing about her life like you know anything about it. I don’t give a shit what you think about me and my parenting. You shut your mouth about my daughter and my son, or I will sink every boat you got strapped to your dock—”
“Diana,” Rex cautioned from behind her.
“Every boat. Then, I come here and piss in your fucking beer.”
Diana’s spit flew out over the table, and Knipe hopped to his feet. The two friends followed suit, raising their hands as if any of them had ever been in a fistfight before. They were too big. She definitely couldn’t take all three of them, but with Rex’s help—
“No, Diana,” Rex whispered in her ear. “No. We are not doing this. These guys are assholes. Let’s go.”
He put his arm on her elbow, tugging on it. The music was still playing loudly but three quarters of the bar now had their attention turned to their table. Some began to pull out their cell phones, cameras facing toward them.
Pulled back out into the night, Diana ripped her arm from Rex’s grip.
“Feel better?” Rex asked, following behind her as they weaved through the cars in the parking lot.
“No. You can’t tell me that guy doesn’t deserve to be clocked.”
“Well, sure,” Rex said. “But that’s not your responsibility.”
As they waited for the traffic to pass at the side of the road, something pulled Diana’s gaze to a passing van. One of the doors to the bar opened behind them, and someone yelled out into the night, “Fucking bitch!”
But it went to the back of Diana’s mind, where she ignored it, her
focus entirely on the green Honda Odyssey. Time seemed to slow. A piece of cloth hung out of the back of the van trunk, a neon yellow piece of polyester fluttering behind the vehicle like a snake swimming across the surface of a lake.
Diana was sprinting, breaking toward her car and turning the ignition on before Rex could even get across the street. She peeled out of the space, throwing the car into reverse and then out of the strip mall parking lot. Rex made his way across the median, hopping into the passenger’s side as she stopped at a red light, crawling forward, about to go through it.
“Are you out of your mind?!” Rex exclaimed as soon as he’d sat down and buckled his seat belt.
“Yes,” Diana replied and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, chasing the van.
Under the streetlights, they tore through the city of Chelan and out onto the freeway, Diana keeping her eyes ahead on the fluttering yellow cloth.
“That’s Kennedy’s shirt,” Diana whispered, turning the radio all the way down and opening the windows. The wind rushed by so loud that Rex couldn’t hear her.
Shaking his head, he yelled over the wind, “Diana, slow down.”
Diana threw her cell phone into Rex’s lap and said, “Call Merino and give him the license plate.”
“What license plate?"
“The van!” She threw her one hand forward, gesturing to the Odyssey. “Now, Rex.”
They barrelled down the freeway, passing between the lanes to a chorus of honks behind them as the van tried to peel away from them. Rex made the call, yelling into the phone and trying to justify Diana’s behavior. It wasn’t an easy task. She didn’t care. They could say she was being crazy—out of her mind—but there was a certainty, deep in the pit of her stomach, telling her that Kennedy was close by. When Rex began to struggle convincing anyone of anything, she grabbed the phone from his ear and put it to hers.
“Merino?”
“Diana. What the hell is happening?”
“Green Honda Odyssey. License plate, JUX 580.”
“Where are you?”
“On the 97. Just about to come up to 2.”
“You’re sure it’s her?”
“Yes.”
“Rex said something about a shirt…”
“It’s her, Merino. Put out an APB now.”
And as she turned to toss the phone back to Rex, Diana lost control of the car.
They were spinning, the steering wheel, tires and Diana’s hands frantically trying to regain traction as cars behind them slammed on their brakes. Rex yelled out. The wind whipped her hair around her neck, covering her eyes as finally they stopped spinning and hit something hard and stationary. The car crunched—metal on metal. The smell of smoke and burning rubber reached into the car like a hand across her mouth. Something warm dripped down her forehead, and there was a crowded pain in her shoulder.
“Di,” she heard Rex say, not realizing that her eyes were closed. “Diana, are you okay?”
He shook her.
She opened the door.
“Wait—wait!”
Collapsing out onto the pavement, she saw the broken wooden electrical pole, bent over her car like it was bowing to the two-lane highway. The wires hanging from the top of it were dragging, hanging menacingly, only inches away from the ground.
Diana stood up, looking at the scene, cars slowly driving around them, peering through their windows and checking to see if they were all right.
Walking along the side of the highway, trying to catch a last glimpse of the van, she grabbed her arm, rolled it and popped her shoulder back into place.
“Diana, stop!”
She kept walking, her boots scraping against the gravel, soft but grating.
“Diana!”
But the van was gone. It disappeared as quickly as Rex’s voice into the night, as the anger at Kevin Knipe and as the pain in her shoulder—the focus on Kennedy’s T-shirt not allowing her to feel anything at all.
Chapter 12
Kennedy Tennison-Weick
Along the I-5
They gave her tea from a canteen, a banana and a small bag of potato chips. They helped her reset her ankle and wrapped her fingernail in a bandage. She drank way too much water, trying to clear the forest water out of her system.
By the time her strength was back up, Kennedy was in the back of the van, laying across the backseat and wrapped in a blanket.
Bobby and Willow were in the front, pulling off the road into an empty rest stop. One bathroom and a play structure, no cars nearby or anyone to ask for help.
“Good morning—” Willow said as Kennedy sat up. “Or I guess, afternoon! How are you feeling?”
“So much better, thanks,” Kennedy said, swallowing back a dry mouth and taking a swig of a water bottle she’d left at her feet. She asked, “How far are we from Seattle?”
“Oh yeah,” Bobby said, putting the van into park. “Just a couple of hours. Not far now. Maybe you should go back to sleep?”
“Well, it’s okay, Bobby. You need to go to the bathroom, hun?”
Kennedy nodded. Bobby unlocked the doors. Sliding out of the van, she stretched every limb, even her bad ankle, before stumbling into the bathroom. Running water—something she had always taken for granted. After going to the bathroom in an actual toilet, splashing her face and armpits with clean water, and running her hair under the hand dryer, Kennedy felt herself already forgetting about the woods. The feelings of loneliness were slipping away, replaced by the idea of her mom’s face when she saw her returning home, mostly unscathed. They would hug. They would cry. Mom and Dad would be proud of her for using her Eagle Scout skills like an expert. Mr. Steedman would call after about a week to check in and let her know that she did everything right. She would be safe.
Stepping out of the bathroom and wiping her palms on her shorts, Kennedy heard their muffled yelling. She couldn’t make out the words, but it was clear that Mr. and Mrs. Leffert were arguing about something. That was her first feeling that something was wrong.
The second feeling came when she started walking back toward the van, and she noticed that the North Dakota plates that had been on the front when she’d first gotten in were now replaced by Nevada ones.
Kennedy looked around. The bathroom, trees, the highway in the distance—could she run?
“Come on!” Willow called as she rolled down the window. “Oh, you look so much better, hun. Let’s get on the road again.”
There was something stronger than the sense of fear building inside her, something her mom had talked to her about before—intuition. It was telling her that if she ran, they would chase her and maybe hurt her. But if she played along, she could at least take some time to come up with a plan.
Kennedy got into the backseat of the van, closing the door behind her.
“Feeling good?” Bobby asked.
“Yup,” Kennedy said. “Sorry. How long did you say until Seattle?”
Bobby furrowed his eyebrows in the rearview mirror and said, “Couple of hours maybe.”
“Ugh,” Kennedy forced a guttural sound out of her throat.
“You okay there, hun?” Willow asked.
“Sorry,” Kennedy coughed. “I think— I just—”
She stumbled to the back of the van, over and around the seats.
“I thought I saw a bucket back here,” Kennedy yelled over her shoulder.
“You gonna be sick?” Bobby called back.
“I think so,” Kennedy said. “I’m just gonna open the back so I don’t—”
“Oh yeah yeah. For sure,” Bobby said, the Dakotan accent thick and so neighborly.
Reaching over the third row of seats, she rolled herself over, pretending like she was looking for a bucket that didn’t exist. She opened the trunk door and it lifted up back into the air of the parking lot and the smell of pine trees.
Kennedy spat purposefully onto the pavement, at least a dozen times—selling it.
With one hand flat against the inside of the van, she us
ed her other hand to fish out one of the remaining pieces of cloth from her T-shirt.
“You okay back there?”
Kennedy fake gagged and spat again as she used both hands to tie the cloth to the metal ring at the edge of the trunk. Carefully, she placed the yellow cloth so it would fly out the back like a flag and closed the trunk.
“Sorry,” she said as she dragged herself back toward her seat, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.
“No problem,” Willow replied. “Must still be kinda sick from that water you drank, hey?”
As Bobby put the van back into drive, Kennedy made strategic mental notes about where they were and where they were going.
Leaning between the seats, Kennedy asked, “So you said you guys are from North Dakota, right?”
Bobby said, “Yup. Born and raised.”
“Well, Bobby was. I bounced around a bit as a kid on accounts of my dad being a military man,” Willow said, laughing lightly. “I suppose you know about that—with your mom and all.”
“Well, my mom was out of service by the time I was born.”
“Oh yeah. Of course,” Willow replied. “I tell ya. If it were me, I’d do the same thing. Growing up with a military parent is no easy task, all right?”
Kennedy pulled at her hair. She had never been very good at talking to people, and it felt especially awkward making small talk with people that potentially were trying to hurt her rather than save her. Still, she tried.
“What brings you to Washington?”
“Oh, the scenery.” Willow gestured out the window to the sea of pine trees and the mountains in the distance. “Bobby retired recently. I decided to take the year off of work to travel and see the country. Bought the van and hit that open road, you know? We aren’t getting any younger. After we get all the way east, then we’re gonna go all the way south, west and then—well, you get the point.”
“What do you do for work?” Kennedy asked, looking out for any interstate signs, but it was just electrical pole after electrical pole.
“I think that’s enough questions for now, hun,” Willow said, turning over her shoulder, looking at her with small green eyes. The van bumped along the highway as Kennedy sat back in her seat, wrapping herself in the knit blanket they’d given her. If they weren’t trying to rescue her and bring her home, then what were they trying to do? They were certainly treating her well if she was meant to be some kind of prisoner. But she hadn’t shown them any type of hostility.
