“I don’t know,” the girl sniffed.
She needed to find it fast. Under the front seats, maybe? This orange box had to be large; there were only so many places it could fit.
She raced to the driver’s side door, her feet sinking, like running in quicksand. She chanced a look over her shoulder — the advancing figure was halfway to them. Twenty feet back, taking high steps on the footpath. She recognized the beanie, the slouching walk. It was Lars. His right hand swung past a slice of light, and she saw a blocky shape.
His .45-caliber pistol.
“Jay,” Darby hissed. “Close your eyes—”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Just close your eyes.” She reached the Astro’s driver door, hitting it with both palms, her mind screaming: Find their nail gun. Kill this asshole. And then take his gun, and kill that lying snake Ashley— She tugged the door handled. Locked.
Her stomach plunged.
Because . . . because Lars had re-locked it. Of course he had; he was in there last. It was locked, locked, locked.
“You, ah . . . you asked my brother to kill me,” Lars’s gurgling voice called out, drawing closer. “Is . . . is that right?”
They’re brothers.
Shit, shit, shit.
Crunchy footsteps, like breaking eggshells, coming toward her. “He says you . . . you asked him to bash my brains in.” His voice was so frighteningly close. Hoarse, rattling in the crisp air, hot with exhaled fog.
The Astro’s driver door was a no-go. Darby scrambled back to the rear of the van, catching herself on the ajar door for balance, and looked back inside the dark vehicle. At Jay’s eyes, brimming with panicked tears, full of reflected light. At her rash-red cheeks. Her tiny fingernails.
She pleaded: “Run—”
Lars’s footsteps crunched closer.
Darby pressed her Swiss Army knife into the little girl’s outstretched fingers, almost dropping it. “Use this,” she said, touching the serrations on the blade. “Scraping motions, okay? To saw at the kennel bars—”
“He’s coming.”
“Do it, Jay. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Keep cutting. You’ll get out.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Darby stepped back out and slammed the rear door, dropping a shelf of snow. She hadn’t answered Jay’s question, because she had no answer at all.
I have no goddamn idea.
*
“Why . . . ah, why are you running?” Lars called.
Darby scrambled through the snow. It was waist-deep off the path, like hauling herself out of a wading pool, over and over with every lurching step. Hard, gasping breaths. Her throat stung. Her calves burned.
“Hey. I just wanna talk—”
From the clarity of his voice, he was less than ten feet behind her. Chasing her. His mouth-breathing had morphed into a steady pant. Low, guttural, wolf-like. Her left shoe — still unlaced — tugged off in the snow. She grabbed it and continued, half-barefoot, as his labored breathing grew behind her. He was gaining, she knew. A few paces closer and he’d grab her ankle— “I’m . . . ah, I’m gonna catch you anyway—”
A metallic rattle. The gun, moving in his hand.
But she knew the pistol was just for intimidation. If Lars really wanted to shoot her, he would’ve done it already. That would alert Ed and Sandi, so Ashley had probably ordered his brother to run her down, to kill her discreetly, via suffocation or a snapped neck— His brother.
His fucking brother.
Darby passed the bare flagpole and looked back. Lars was a pursuing shadow. He’d lost his Deadpool beanie. She saw weedy blonde hair, milky in the dim light, a receding hairline. The furious fog of his breathing. He’d stopped shouting at her; he was too winded now. The deep snow was too exhausting. It was a slow-motion nightmare.
He’s going to catch me, Darby knew.
She was already tiring. Muscles throbbing. Joints mushy.
He’s going to run me down out here, and wrap his hands around my neck, and choke me until I die— He was right behind her now. She could smell his salty sweat. She’d lost her lead and given up both of her weapons — the rock-in-a-sock to Ashley, the pocket knife to Jay — and now all she had left was a bullet in her pocket and a size-eight shoe in her hand. She considered throwing it at Lars, but that’d just be a nuisance. He’d swat it away without breaking stride.
There was nowhere to run anyway. Ashley was smartly guarding the building’s front door. She didn’t have her keys, so locking herself inside Blue wasn’t an option. Running wasn’t, either — there were only miles of jagged Colorado taiga in all directions, frigid and unsympathetic. Just crunchy alpine trees, sparse ground cover, and fatal drops concealed by snow. How long would she last before succumbing to the creeping death of hypothermia?
I can’t keep running.
She considered stopping, standing her shaky ground, and fighting Lars. Bad odds.
“Turn around,” Lars huffed behind her. “Let’s . . . ah, let’s talk—”
She needed to decide. If she stopped now, she’d have a few seconds to catch her breath before the fight. But if she kept running and he tackled her, she’d be winded, and her odds would be even worse— Or . . .
The layout of the Wanapani visitor center flashed through her mind again. Walls, corners, blind spots. Although the front door was still blocked by Ashley, there was another way into the building. The little triangular windows in the restrooms. She’d seen it in the men’s restroom, no larger than a doggie-door. She could see it from here, leaking a whisper of orange light through hanging icicles, above the stacked picnic tables.
Her purse was inside that restroom. With her keys and her phone.
Okay.
I’ll climb those tables, break that window, and get inside.
She changed direction.
Lars noticed. “Where . . . where are you going?”
She didn’t have a plan for when she got inside. She just went for it. Because, as Sandi said, inside was a hell of a lot better than out. Ed and Sandi were in there, and Ashley and Lars wouldn’t dare murder her in view of two witnesses.
Would they?
No time to think on it.
The picnic tables were stored in a heap below that window, crusted with snow, so she climbed them, like giant-sized stairs. One, two, three tables up, wobbling under her weight. But she made it, and she hit the building’s triangular window with outstretched hands. Frosted glass, glowing with interior light, bumpy with ice. Too thick too shatter with an elbow. But it was a casement window, opening outward on a rust-eaten hinge, and it seemed to sit crookedly, so she groped for the edges, gripping with numb fingertips— Lars laughed. “What’re you doing up there?”
A twelve-inch icicle dropped from the roof and banged off the table beside her. She winced, gritting her teeth, still pulling, clawing her fingernails into the window’s rubber seam— “Hey, girlie—”
Pull . . . pull . . .
Another icicle dropped and exploded, showering her with ice flecks. Like glass shards on her cheeks.