Ashley touched her shoulder, mouthing again: What?
Darby felt it, that familiar paralysis locking up her bones. Like climbing onstage and forgetting your lines. If she spoke, they’d overhear. If she didn’t, she risked making a scene. The entire world teetered on a knife edge. She chanced a look over her right shoulder, toward Rodent Face, and as she’d feared, he was watching them. She noticed something else, too, and her blood turned to ice water.
Lars had placed something white on the brochure rack. A Styrofoam cup.
Her cup.
The eight ounces of misspelled COCO that she’d stupidly filled up and carried outside an hour ago. She’d set it in the snow by the Astro’s rear door, right before she broke in and spoke to Jay. Then she’d forgotten about the cup, leaving it out there in the dark for him to find. Near her clustered footprints.
He knows, she realized. And something even worse occurred to her — that now, the quiet danger cut both ways.
He’s planning to attack me.
The same way I’m planning to attack him.
“Trapped in a coal mine,” Sandi echoed to Ed. “Scary stuff.”
“Eh.” Ed shrugged. “I would’ve just cut off my thumb.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy.”
“Just saying. When you’re facing a lunch date with the Reaper, what’s a few little bones and tendons?”
Lars kept quietly watching them, and what frightened Darby most was the deep, dumb calm in his eyes. A criminal with any sense of self-preservation would have his gun out by now. But Lars was chillingly uninterested, untroubled, his vapid little eyes regarding her like nothing more urgent, or dangerous, than a spill on the floor that needed to be mopped up in the next hour or so. That was all.
Another black thought slipped into her mind, and somehow, she was certain it was prophecy, turning up like one of her mother’s musty Tarot cards: That man is going to murder me tonight.
This is how I die.
She looked back to Ashley and whispered: “Follow me. Right now.”
11:09 p.m.
In the men’s restroom, she told Ashley everything.
The van. The dog kennel. The little girl named Jay from San Diego. The electrical tape, the bloodied hand, the unknown menace of a yellow card. Even the farts. And no matter how quietly she whispered, her words seemed to echo inside the restroom, ringing off tile and porcelain. She was certain the others could hear.
Ashley exhaled, visibly shaken. His eye sockets shadowed harshly under the fluorescent lights, like dark bruises, and for the first time all night, he looked as tired as Darby felt. And, another first — he was speechless.
She watched him, trying to get a read. “So.”
“So?” he replied.
“So. We have to do something.”
“Obviously, but what?”
“We stop him.”
“Stop him? That’s vague.” Ashley glanced back, watching the restroom door, edging closer to her. “Do you mean kill him?”
She wasn’t sure.
“Jesus, you’re talking about killing him—”
“If it comes to that.”
“Oh, my God.” He rubbed his eyes. “Right now? With what?”
Darby opened her two-inch Swiss Army blade.
Ashley choked on a laugh. “He’s going to have a gun, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’re not thinking this through—”
“I said, I know.” Darby held out the .45-caliber cartridge in a shaky palm. “As in, I literally know he has a gun.”
He studied the bullet. “So what’s your plan, then?”
“We stop him.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“That’s why I told you. And guess what, Ashley? You’re involved now. It’s 11.10 p.m., on a Thursday night, and there’s a child abductor in the next room, and a little girl locked in his shitty van outside, and that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. And I’m asking you now — will you help me?”
That seemed to get to him. “You’re . . . you’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“That Lars kidnapped her?”
“Yeah.” She reconsidered. “If that’s even his real name.”
Ashley ran a hand through his hair and took a step back, leaning against a stall door. PEYTON MANNING TAKES IT IN THE ASS had been scratched on it. Ashley gulped hard breaths, staring down at his shoes, like he was trying not to faint.
She touched his arm. “You okay?”
“Just asthma.”
“Don’t you have an inhaler?”
“No.” He smiled sheepishly. “I, uh, don’t have medical.”
Darby realized she might have misjudged this tall, dark stranger. Maybe Ashley — ex-magician, chatterbox, Salt Lake Institute of Tech student — wasn’t quite as capable as she’d thought. But then she remembered his impressive sleight of hand when he’d returned her note. She hadn’t even felt it. The napkin had just materialized between her fingers, like . . . well, magic.
That was something. Right?
He’d caught his breath now, and looked up at her pointedly. “I need proof.”
“What?”
“Proof. Can you prove any of this?”
Darby thumbed the photo gallery on her iPhone. Behind her, the restroom door banged open.
It was Lars.
Rodent Face stomped in, wet boots squealing on tile. Just like that, the kidnapper was inside the room with them, breathing the same air. Darby’s mind screamed — we’re cornered in here, we’re both exposed, there’s no time to hide in a stall — and the slouching figure of Lars whirled to face them, that stubbly, chinless face wheezing through a mouthful of baby teeth— Then Ashley grabbed her face, his palms to her cheeks—
“Wait—”
—And he mashed her mouth to his.
What?
Then Darby understood. And after another heart-fluttering second, she played along, pressing her body against his, clasping her fingers behind his neck. Ashley’s hands groped her back, her hips. His warm breath was inside her mouth.
For a few long seconds, Lars watched them. Then she heard his squeaky footsteps again, moving to the sinks. A faucet twisted. A rush of water. The soap dispenser pumped once, twice. He was washing his hands.
Darby and Ashley kept going, eyes clamped shut. For Darby it hadn’t been this excruciatingly awkward since ninth-grade Tolo, just pawing movement and misplaced squeezes and half-held breaths. He was either a godawful kisser or he wasn’t trying; his tongue was like a dead slug in her mouth. After a painful eternity — don’t stop, don’t stop, he’s still watching us — she heard the sink twist off, then a paper towel tore and crumpled. Another long silence, and then finally, Lars left the restroom.
The door clicked shut.
Darby and Ashley separated. “Your breath is rancid,” he said.
“Sorry, I drank six Red Bulls today.”
“No shit—”
“Here.” She thrust her phone out to him — a murky photo of Jay caged behind those black kennel bars. Only the girl’s bloody fingernails were in focus. “You wanted proof? That’s what’s at stake. She’s out there, in his van, fifty feet from this building, right here, right now.”
Ashley barely looked at the photo — he’d already gotten his proof. He nodded nervously, gulping in another breath. “He . . . he didn’t come in here to wash his hands. He was checking on us.”
“And you’re involved now.”
“Okay.”