I imagined that little hand. That’s what happened.
Now, in the luxury of hindsight, she knew exactly why she’d taken the time to fill a cup of hot chocolate back in the visitor center. It was her own form of denial. She’d done the same thing after Devon had texted last night with a message that imploded her world:Call me mom has cancer.
The first thing she’d done?
She’d set her phone down, slipped on a jacket, and then walked from Dryden Hall to the student union building and ordered a cheeseburger. She’d watched it come to her, greasy and squashed, paid $5.63 with a crumpled ten, found a seat in the deserted cafeteria, and took two half-hearted bites before bolting to the restroom and vomiting. She’d called Devon right there in the stall, her elbows on bleached porcelain, her cheeks burning with tears.
There’s refuge in normalcy — if you can hold onto it.
Outside Lars’s van, she kept counting.
By now she’d reached fifty, and still seen no sign of this imaginary child. It made sense, right? The same way perfectly rational people swear to see red lights in the sky, or phantoms in mirrors, or Bigfoot in national parks — Darby Thorne had just imagined a child’s hand inside a stranger’s car, and nearly taken serious and violent action on that half-glimpsed mirage. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep.
This wasn’t a movie. This was just real life.
And this was all just a misunderstanding, a false alarm, and Darby suddenly couldn’t wait to return to that stuffy little visitor center. Now the company didn’t seem so bad at all. She’d try and play cards with Ashley, maybe chat with Ed and Sandi. Perhaps doze off on the bench until CDOT updated their emergency frequency with more weather details.
Because Lars wasn’t a kidnapper after all. He was a creep with a stutter and a bumpy skin condition on his hands, sure, but the world was brimming with creeps. Most were harmless. Since the owner of this Astro likely was, too, she regained some courage and pressed her phone to the van’s back window and engaged her LED flashlight, triggering a wash of blinding blue-white. Just to put the last of her suspicions to rest, to finally confirm there was nothing—
Behind the glass, she saw a little girl’s face staring back at her.
Darby dropped her phone.
The LED light landed sideways at her feet, facing the Wanapa visitor center like a beacon, throwing jagged shadows in the snow. She dove for it, covering it with her cupped hands and fumbling for the shoulder button.
Stillness in the van again. The girl had retreated back into the darkness.
And again, Darby had only glimpsed her. But in the harsh flash the afterimage was scorched into her retinas, like staring into the sun. Details lingered. The oval shape of her face. Maybe six or seven years old, with matted hair. Wide eyes, flinching at the brightness. Dark tape clamped cruelly around her mouth, shiny with dripped snot. She was behind something metallic and gridded, like a black wire cage. As she’d initially suspected. A dog crate.
Oh, my God. Her mouth is duct-taped shut and she’s stuffed inside a dog crate.
For the first time since she’d stepped outside, Darby shivered. All of the heat seemed to leave her body in a single, bracing instant. It was all confirmed. It was all true. It was all exactly as she’d suspected. It was all really happening, right now, in vivid color, and a little girl’s life was really on the line, and tonight’s title match would be between a sleep-deprived art student and a human predator.
She stood again.
Stupidly, she retried the Astro’s rear door. Still locked. She knew this already. She went for the driver door next. She wasn’t thinking; she was acting on instinct. Just reflexes, raw nerves. She was going to break into Rodent Face’s van. She was going to get this little girl the hell out of there, and hide her in her Honda. The trunk, maybe. She'd be safe in there, right?
Breaking glass would be loud, and would leave evidence. Instead, Darby peered through the driver window. The Astro’s interior was cluttered with receipts on the dashboard and yellow burger wrappers on the seats. The cup holders bulged with Lars’s empty Big Gulps. She swept away fresh powder and searched for the door’s lock pin behind the icy glass — yes, there it was. Thank God for old cars—
Darby, think this through.
She crouched and ripped the white shoelace from her right shoe. Gritting her teeth, she tied a slipknot down the middle. Drew it tight, like a miniature lasso. She’d only done this once before.
Darby, stop.
No way. She palmed more snow off the top of the door, dropping scabs of ice, and pressed her shoelace into the upper corner. With her fingertips, she gripped the metal and pulled, just enough to relieve the pressure between the door and its frame. Just a millimeter or two. After thirty seconds of fidgeting, the lace slipped right through and dangled behind the glass.
Stop.
She couldn’t. She fed the shoelace in careful inches, lowering the loop to the lock. And something miraculous happened — the lasso dropped onto the pin and encircled it on her first try. This was the hardest part, the part that had taken forty-five frustrating minutes last time, but amazingly, Darby had it here on her very first attempt. This was a promising omen, like God was on her side. She sure hoped He was. Tonight, she’d need all the help she could get.
Her better judgment was still protesting: Darby, don’t be impulsive. After you break her out, then what? You can't take her inside. You can't hide her in Blue's trunk all night. First, take a step back—
Nope. All she could think about was that girl. That terrified little face, still flash-burnt onto her mind.
Think this through—
She repositioned left, sliding along the door’s perimeter, and tugged the shoelace horizontal. The slipknot tightened around the lock, like a noose squeezing a neck. Then she repositioned vertically, adjusted her grip, and tugged a little harder (too hard, and she’d lose her grip on the pin and have to start over) and a little harder, and harder still, and the shoelace quivered with sweaty tension, and the pin creaked, and now she was committed and couldn’t stop . . .
Darby, you’re going to die tonight.
CLICK.
The door unlocked.
Her heartbeat accelerating, Darby grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open, and to her horror, the Astro’s dome light kicked on. A glaring brightness.
*
Larson Garver saw a light outside.
He was slouching by the brochure rack, studying the Colorado Air pamphlet and trying to tell if their Robinson turbine copter was an R66 or an R44, when he noticed it. Glimmering at the edge of his peripheral vision. A soundless little flash from the parked cars, reflected backwards on the window. From his van.
He felt a knot of panic tighten in his gut.
The rest of the room was oblivious. Ashley and Ed’s card game continued, their voices a gentle back-and-forth:
“Nine of diamonds?”