“Okay?”
“Okay.” He sighed. “Let’s . . . do it, I guess.”
Darby nodded intently. But her mind had darted back to her mom’s pancreatic cancer.
All of that — the miserable twenty-four hours leading up to this — felt like another life entirely; one she’d blissfully stepped away from. Remembering it now hit her like buckshot in the gut. She still hadn’t gotten a cell signal. She still hadn’t deciphered the meaning behind Devon’s stupid, cryptic text, now several hours old: She’s okay right now— “Darby?”
Ashley was looking at her.
“Okay, yeah.” She composed herself, wiping his saliva from her lip, blinking in the harsh light. “We need to surprise this asshole. And since he suspects we know, he won’t turn his back to us.”
“Even if he does, that butter knife of yours won’t be enough.”
“So we’ll hit him over the head.”
“With what?”
“What do you have?”
Ashley considered. “I . . . I have a jack in my car, I think—”
Too obvious, she knew. Not concealable. But she had a better idea. She reached into her jeans pocket and produced the decorative stone she’d plucked from the Wanapani coffee counter. “This will work better.”
“A rock?”
“Take off your shoe.”
He hesitated, then leaned against the stall door and slipped off his left shoe.
“Now your sock,” she said. “Please.”
“Why mine?”
“Girl socks are too short.”
He handed her a white, ankle-length sock, warm as a handshake and slightly yellowed. He winced. “My washer’s broken.”
Darby pulled the sock taut, slipped the rock inside it, and sealed it up with a tight square knot. She swung it once, smacking it into her palm. The arc gave the small stone fierce leverage; even a quick flick of the wrist could fracture an eye socket. Or at least, that was the idea.
Ashley looked at it, then her. “What’s that?”
“It’s called a rock-in-a-sock.”
“I . . . see why, I guess.”
She’d seen it on a TV survival show. “Rock-in-a-sock,” she repeated.
“The Cat in a Hat’s weapon of choice.”
She smiled, letting the scar over her eyebrow become briefly visible. “Okay.” She hefted the weapon. “Here’s my idea. Lars likes to stand by that front door and monitor the exit, right?”
“Right.”
“One of us — Person A — will walk past him. Through the front door. Outside, toward his van. He’s onto us now, so he’ll follow Person A outside. He’ll have to. And to do this, he’ll go through the door, turning his back to Person B.”
She smacked the rock-in-a-sock against her palm. It hurt.
“Person B — who is stronger than Person A — will come up behind Lars and whack him in the back of the skull. One good swing is all it should take to knock him out cold. But if it doesn’t, Person A, who has the knife, will turn around and we’ll both tag-team him—”
“You mean double-team?”
“Yeah. Tag-team.”
“Those don’t mean the same thing.”
“You know what I mean, then.” She was being intentionally vague about this part. In theory, one swing of the rock-in-a-sock would do the job. If it came to a scuffle, it would still be two versus one, and both two were now armed. Lars might be a violent sociopath, but how prepared could he be for a surprise attack from two directions?
More importantly: how fast could he draw his .45 and fire it?
Ashley was starting to get it now. “So Person B is me, huh?”
“It’ll be two versus one, using the doorway as a bottleneck—”
“Am I Person B?”
Darby placed the rock-in-a-sock in Ashley’s hand and closed his fingers around it, one by one. “You’re stronger than me, aren’t you?”
“I was . . . I was kind of hoping you were Rhonda Rousey or something.”
“I’m not.”
“Then I guess I’m stronger.”
“Two versus one,” she repeated, like a mantra.
“What if we kill him?”
“We’ll bash him to the floor and empty his pockets. Grab his gun. Grab the keys on that lanyard. If he keeps fighting, so do we. I was inside the van with him. I know what we’re up against and I’ll cut his throat myself if I have to—”
She paused, surprised by what she’d said.
Surprised she’d meant it, too.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Ashley said, drawing closer. “And just so you understand, Darbs, this is an assault charge if you’re wrong.”
She did — and she knew she wasn’t. She’d spent thirty minutes lying prone in Lars’s sweaty van under an Indian blanket, listening to that flat-eyed creature eat and fart and giggle with a seven-year-old girl held captive inside a dog kennel. She knew that whatever happened, she’d be seeing that leering grin in her nightmares: Warmed it up for you, Jaybird. But as for Ashley — well, she understood why he had doubts. This had all crashed down on him like a rockslide. All in about ten minutes.
In her other pocket, she still had the .45 round. Pressed tight against her thigh. That was her real fear — Lars’s gun. He’d certainly use it if they didn’t bring him down swiftly. Even if he only managed to squeeze off a blind shot or two, there were bystanders — Ed and Sandi — to consider. Darby had never actually been in a fight before, so she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but she knew the movies were wrong.
“If you can,” she added, “try to keep one eye closed.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to fight him outside, maybe in the dark. So try to keep one of your eyes closed now, while you’re indoors, in the light, and then you’ll have an eye with a little night-vision. Make sense?”
He nodded, half-hearted.
“And . . . you said you have asthma?”
“Mild shortness of breath. I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
“Well, when I was little,” Darby said, “I used to have panic attacks. Really bad ones that made me hyperventilate and faint. I’d be in the fetal position on the floor, choking on my own lungs, and my mom would always hold me and say: Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. And it always worked.”
“Inhale. Count to five. Exhale?”
“Yep.”
“So, in other words, breathe? That’s brilliant.”
“Ashley, I’m trying to help.”
“Sorry.” He eyed the door. “I’m just . . . I’m just having trouble with this.”
“You saw him, too.”
“I saw a run-of-the-mill weirdo.” He sighed. “And now we’re about to beat the shit out of him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, touching his wrist. “I’m so sorry to drag you into this. But I was dragged into it, too. And I can’t save her alone.”
“I know. I’ll help.”
“If we don’t do something right now, Lars could snap and attack us first. Every second we wait here is a second we give him, to decide how to deal with us. If it makes it easier for you, stop thinking about this hypothetical little girl’s life, who you’ve never actually met. Think about yours—”
“I said I’ll do it,” he said, and the ice-tray lights flickered behind him.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“I mean it, Ashley. Thank you—”