And bleach.
Materials to clean up a crime scene, maybe?
After the radio cycled through a few more holiday songs (Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, which he sang along to, and Silent Night, which he didn’t), Lars cut the Astro’s engine and stuffed the keys into his jacket pocket. By now the van was an eighty-degree sweatbox; the windows steamed with condensation. Beads of dewy lamplight sparkled on the glass. Trapped under that smothering blanket, the perspiration and melted snow had turned Darby’s skin clammy. Her sleeves stuck to her wrists, and underneath it, her Art Walk hoodie was soaked with dread-sweat.
Lars scooted outside, slipped his Deadpool beanie back over his scalp, and glanced back at the dome light. He was still mildly perplexed by that detail. But then he turned around, ripped ass one final, emphatic time into the cab, fanned it with the door, sealed Jay (and Darby) inside with it, and left.
Darby listened to his footsteps fade. Then, distantly, she heard the visitor center’s front door open and shut with a dim clap.
Silence.
Jay peeled the electrical tape off her mouth. “He farts a lot.”
“I noticed.”
“I think it’s the burgers.”
Darby threw the bristly blanket off her shoulders, wiping damp tangles of hair from her face. She kicked open the Astro’s rear door and climbed back outside. It felt like escaping a sauna. Her Converse were soaked, her socks grossly squishy inside them, and her right shoe was still missing a shoelace.
“He puts ranch sauce on everything,” Jay continued. “He asks the drive-through for a cup of it to dip his fries in, but that’s a lie. He just pours it on—”
“Right.” Darby wasn’t listening. The subzero chill was invigorating, like shedding fifty pounds of sweaters. She felt agile and alive again. She knew what she had to do — she just didn’t know how the hell she was going to do it. She stepped back, raised her iPhone, and snapped two quick photos.
Jay didn’t blink, her bloodstained fingers on the kennel bars. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Promise you’ll be careful—”
“I promise.”
The girl extended her unhurt hand to Darby. At first she thought it was a handshake, or a pinkie-swear, or some other half-remembered artifact from her own childhood, but then Jay dropped something into Darby’s palm. Something small, metallic, as cold as an ice cube.
It was a bullet.
“I found it on the floor,” Jay whispered.
It was lighter than Darby would have guessed, like a blunt little torpedo. She rolled it left to right on her skin. Her palm was shaking; she almost dropped it. This wasn’t a surprise, exactly, but just a grim confirmation of her worst-case scenario.
Of course Lars has a gun.
Of course.
She should have guessed. This was America, where cops and robbers carry guns. Where, as the NRA tells us, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Hokey, but true as hell. She’d never even handled a firearm before, let alone shot one, but she’d sell her soul to have one right now.
She realized Jay was still looking at her.
Usually, she hated talking to kids. Whenever she was trapped with her nieces or her friends’ younger siblings, she’d always treated them like smaller, dumber adults. But now, it came easy. She didn’t need to mince words. She meant every bit of it, and rewording it would only dilute its simple power: “Jay, I promise I will get you out of here. I will save you.”
10:41 p.m.
Darby hadn’t seen her father in eleven years, but as a high school graduation gift two years ago, he’d mailed her a multitool. The funny part? The drugstore Hallmark card congratulated her for graduating college.
Oops, huh?
But as gifts go, it wasn’t bad. It was one of those red Swiss Army variants that unfolded in a fan — corkscrew, clippers, nail file. And of course, a two-inch serrated blade. She’d only used it once, to help open the blister package encasing her roommate’s new ear buds, and then she’d forgotten about it for the rest of her college career. She kept it in Blue’s glove box.
It was in her back pocket now. Like a prison shiv.
She was seated on the stone coffee counter, her back against the security shutter, her knees tucked up to her chest. From here she could watch the entire room — Ed and Ashley finishing their millionth game of Go Fish, Sandi reading her paperback, and Lars guarding the door in his usual spot.
From the back seat of her Honda outside, under her sheets of rice paper for gravestone rubbings, she’d also grabbed a blue pen and one of her college-ruled notepads. It was in her lap now.
Page one was doodles. Abstract shapes, cross-hatched shadows.
Page two — more doodles.
Page three? Carefully shielded from view, Darby had sketched possibly her finest-ever rendering of a human face. It was nearly flawless. She’d studied Lars, every slouching inch of him. His blonde whiskers, his slack overbite, his mushy chin and slanted forehead. The pronounced V-shape of his hairline. She’d even captured the dim glaze of his eyes. The police would find it useful; maybe they’d even release it to the media to aid the coming manhunt. She also had the van’s make, model, and license plate. Plus a blurry photo of the missing San Diego girl. It would look great on CNN, blown up on forty-inch LCD screens across the country.
But was it enough?
Driving was impossible now, but tomorrow morning when the snowplows arrived and opened up Backbone Pass to traffic, Lars would take Jay and leave. Even if Darby could manage a 9-1-1 call immediately afterward, the police would still be acting off a last-known location. Maybe he’d get caught, but maybe he wouldn’t. He’d have ample time to slip through the patchy net, to vanish back into the world, and that would be a death sentence for seven-year-old Jay Nissen. Jaybird Nissen. Whatever her name was.
According to the regional map on the wall, State Route Seven intersected two other highways near the pass. Plus a major interstate running like a vein to the north. Whether Lars drove east or west, he’d have plenty of escape routes. On closer inspection, she also learned that the Wanapa (Little Devil) rest stop was twenty miles downhill. This one, the one they were all stranded at, was actually Wanapani. She’d misread the map earlier. They were twenty miles further from civilization.
In Paiute, Wanapani translated to Big Devil.
Of course it did.