Darby’s mind fluttered — like in soccer?
Jay lowered her injured hand and leaned back, creaking the kennel, and Darby felt something crusty coating the wire bars. It flaked off under her fingernails, smelling coppery. Scales of dried blood.
A yellow card.
That’s the kind of psycho I’m up against—
Fifty feet away, the building’s front door opened, and then banged shut.
Jay froze.
Approaching footsteps, coming fast. Ice crunching under treaded boots. Darby hesitated there where she stood, leaning into the back of the child abductor’s Chevrolet Astro. Half-in, half-out. Afraid to move, afraid to stay. Paralyzed by building terror, she looked into the little girl’s wide eyes as the footsteps stomped closer in the darkness.
And another sound, fast approaching.
Mouth-breathing.
9:39 p.m.
Run or hide?
As Lars approached his van, Darby chose hide. She scooted all the way inside the vehicle, tucking her knees inside and gently closing the rear door behind her — but it shut on a towel.
His footsteps crunched closer.
“Shit—”
She tugged the towel inside and eased the door shut. It clicked home. She was now sealed inside the predator’s van, wedged between the rear door and Jay’s dog kennel. She sunk as low to the floor as she could, contorting to fit the cramped space, and covered herself with heaped blankets and scratchy rugs. Coca Cola bottles jangled underneath her. The musty odor of dog blankets. Her forehead pressed to the cold metal door, her right elbow squished crookedly behind her back. She fought to control her breathing, to keep her panicked gulps of air silent: Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Inhale. Count to— Now she heard Rodent Face’s footsteps circle the vehicle’s right side, past the nail gun-wielding cartoon fox, past the WE FINISH WHAT WE START motto, passing between his van and her own Honda. She tasted a seasick mix of fright and vindication — if she’d chosen run instead of hide, he would have certainly spotted her. He kept coming, wheezing softly between his too-small teeth, and she saw his silhouette pass by the rear window over her head. He paused there, glancing inside, twelve inches away from her, his breath fogging on the glass.
Darby held hers.
If he opens that door, I’m dead— But he didn’t. He kept walking, completing a full circle around the van, and came up to the driver door. Grabbed the handle. Darby heard the door screech on bad hinges, and the vehicle sank on its suspension as a third human body lurched inside. The jingle of car keys on his red lanyard.
With one eye uncovered, careful not to disturb the glass bottles underneath her, Darby glanced over at Jay inside her dog kennel and raised one trembling index finger to her lips: Shhh.
Jay nodded.
In the driver’s seat, Lars sniffled, leaned forward, and clicked a key into the ignition — but he didn’t turn it. Darby heard a long, thoughtful pull of breath. Then silence. Too much silence.
Something is wrong.
She waited, her eardrums ringing with building pressure. Gut muscles clenched. A breath held in swollen lungs. Rodent Face was a dark form at the wheel, separated by a caged divider and silhouetted against the opaque snow on the windshield. With her one uncovered eye, Darby could see that his head was turned sideways. He was looking up, and to his right. At the Astro’s dome light.
The dome light she’d switched off.
Oh, no.
She could imagine the thoughts inching through his brain. He was wondering why the light bulb didn’t click on automatically when he opened the driver door, as it usually did. Now, what did that suggest? That someone else had entered his van. That, upon closer examination of the mixed footprints outside, someone was still inside his van, buried in the back under a musty Navajo rug, sweating and trembling with nerve-shredding panic— Lars twisted the key.
The engine turned over smoothly and Darby exhaled with relief. He hunched forward in his seat and angled the air vents. Clicked the heater dial to full blast. Set his Deadpool beanie on the dashboard beside his model airplane, crinkling a fast food wrapper.
Darby heard movement beside her. It was Jay, quietly re-wrapping the electrical tape around her mouth. Smart girl, she thought.
The next twenty minutes felt like hours, as the van slowly filled with heat and moisture. Lars idled the engine and scanned radio stations. He found only different flavors of garbled static, the repeating robo-voice of that CDOT transmission, and once again, Bing Crosby’s goddamn White Christmas.
I can’t escape that song, Darby thought. It’ll probably play at my funeral. She’d always imagined that they would have invented flying cars by then. Now, slumped in a kidnapper’s humid van, breathing through her nose, she wasn’t so sure.
Naturally, Lars listened to the entire song, which meant Darby had to, as well. Listening to the lyrics made her appreciate it a bit more. She’d always just assumed it was about snow, but there was a homesickness and longing to it. As Bing Crosby crooned, she imagined some poor farm boy just out of high school, hunkered in frozen foreign dirt, fighting someone else’s war, dreaming of loved ones back home. She could relate to that part.
Lars probably wasn’t thinking quite as deeply about it. He munched a Baby Ruth bar, chewing loudly. He picked his nose and studied his findings in the glow of the dash. Farted twice. The second one made him giggle, and then he suddenly turned around and grinned at the back of the van with a mouthful of small, pointy teeth, and Darby’s chest tightened, her heart a clenched fist.
“Warmed it up for you,” he said.
He was looking at Jay’s kennel in the darkness, but he had no idea he was also looking directly at Darby. Just a layer of fabric covering her, and one exposed eye. All it would take was a little more light.
He’s looking right at me.
Rodent Face’s grin vanished. He kept staring.
Oh God, he can see me, Darby thought, her sides cramping, feeling spiders crawling on her skin. His eyes are adjusting to the dark, and now he knows I’m in here, and oh my God, he’s going to kill me— He farted a third time.
Or that, I guess.
This was a long one, a blaring honk, and then he exploded into hard laughter. He screamed his laugh, punching the passenger seat. He was immensely pleased with himself, barely choking out words to his captive: “You’re . . . ah, you’re welcome for the cheek-rumbler. Nice and warm, huh, Jaybird?”
Darby heard Jay’s electrical tape crease as her head tilted slightly. She imagined the girl making a “See what I’ve been dealing with?” eye-roll.
Then Lars’s belly laughs morphed into coughs. They were wet, bubbly, like he was nursing a sinus infection. That explained the mouth-breathing.
Darby’s feet were pressed up against the five-gallon gas can she’d seen before, and beside it, she now noticed a second white jug. A Clorox logo, barely visible in the dashboard light. Bleach, probably.
Five gallons of gasoline.