A desperate gamble. She was still in shock, her fingers still slick with sweat, her breaths still surging. Her mind racing with panicked thoughts. She wasn’t sure if their Astro could drive any farther than Blue could in Snowmageddon, but she’d sure as hell try. She’d stomp the gas, rock the four-wheel drive on its shocks, try everything. She had no other options. If she stayed here at Wanapani, Ashley and Lars would murder her.
She circled the building, wading through snowdrifts, and the night air stung her throat. She passed the crowd of half-buried Nightmare Children to her left. Chewed bronze forms in the darkness, pit-bull-mauling victims frozen in playtime. That bare flagpole, wobbling under another gust of razor wind.
Ahead, the parking lot. The cars. Their van.
Just another fifty feet—
The visitor center’s front door squeaked open behind her. A rectangle of projected light, and she cast a staggering shadow on the snow. A pair of crunchy footsteps followed her. The door shut and her shadow vanished.
“No.” Ashley’s voice, firm, like he was scolding a dog: “Don’t shoot her.”
She slipped, slashing a knee on jagged ice. Kept running. The pursuing footsteps flanked her now, one moving right, one cutting left. Like wolves encircling their prey. She recognized them by their breathing — the congested pant of Lars on the left, the controlled huffs of Ashley on the right. She kept running and focused on the Astro. Keys jangling in her hand.
“Lars! Don’t shoot her.”
“She’s trying to steal the van—”
“You want a yellow card?”
She slipped again, catching herself. Her purse bounced off her knee. Just ten paces from the kidnappers’ vehicle now. She could see the cartoon fox on the side, racing closer, still holding that orange nail gun—
“She won’t get anywhere. The snow’s too deep—”
“What if she does?”
“She won’t.”
“What if she does, Ashley?”
Darby skidded, reaching the driver door, her heart thudding in her throat. She palmed snow off the lock and fumbled for the keychain, but it was too dark to identify the Chevy key. At least three of them felt thick enough to be car keys. She tried the first one. It didn’t fit. She tried the second one. It fit but didn’t turn—
“She’s unlocking the door—”
She was on the third key, jamming it into the icy lock, when she noticed something to the left. A minor detail, but wildly wrong.
The Astro’s rear door.
It should have been shut — but it hung ajar, the glass reflecting a scythe of lamplight, the upper edge collecting a rim of snowflakes. Darby hadn’t left it open. It couldn’t possibly have been Lars, or Ashley. That left . . . Jay?
Lars panted. “She’s . . . she’s stopping.”
“I know.”
“Why’s she stopping?”
As both pairs of footsteps drew closer, Ashley understood. “Oh, hell.”
1:23 a.m.
From her angle, Darby couldn’t quite see it.
But she knew what Ashley saw — Jay’s dog kennel clumsily sawed apart from the inside, the Astro’s rear door pushed open, and a pair of small footprints hitting the snow and leading out into the darkness.
He stared, mouth agape with dull shock, before glancing back to Darby: “If she tries to run, shoot her.”
She turned — but Lars had already circled the van and appeared behind her with that stubby handgun held waist-high, aimed at her stomach.
She caught her breath. Surrounded again.
“I don’t . . . I don’t believe it.” Ashley paced, his fingers digging into his scalp, and Darby noticed his hairline was every bit as severe as his younger brother’s. He just grew his bangs out to cover the receding bits.
She couldn’t help but feel a grim satisfaction. She loved it. For all of Ashley’s smugness and posturing tonight, she’d still managed to hurl one hell of a wrench into their plan. Little Jaybird was loose.
Ashley kicked the Astro’s side, bruising the metal. “I don’t fucking believe it—”
Lars edged back.
But Darby couldn’t resist. Too much white-hot adrenaline in her veins. Two minutes ago, he’d been asphyxiating her with a plastic bag and she was still furious about that, still bristling with reckless energy. “Hey, Ashley. I’m no expert on kidnappings, but doesn’t it only work if there’s a kid in there?”
He turned to face her.
She shrugged. “Just my amateur opinion.”
“You . . .” Lars raised his pistol. “You should stop—”
“And you should eat a goddamn breath mint.” Darby looked back to Ashley, her words shivery and raw, unspooling like twine: “Are you sure about that little speech of yours? Helpless humans just letting the big, scary monsters do their thing? Because I think I just influenced the plot, motherfucker—”
He stomped toward her.
She flinched — Oh God, this is it, I’m dead — and Ashley raised the rock-in-a-sock as he charged, winding up for a skull-fracturing impact, but then at the last instant he sidestepped past her and threw it.
She opened her eyes.
He’d been aiming at a streetlight. Two hundred feet away. After a few airy moments of flight, the rock hit the post squarely, bouncing off the metal with a warbling clang. It echoed twice.
Most NFL quarterbacks couldn’t do that.
Lars whispered: “Magic.”
I’m a magic man, Lars, my brother.
They’d been toying with her this entire night, she realized. Manipulating her. Pretending to be strangers, working the room, dropping flagrant lies and obtuse little hints and studying how she reacted. Like a rat in their maze.
Can you cut a girl in half?
I can. But you only get gold if the girl survives.
That roomful of anxious laughter rang again inside her brain, as tinny as microphone feedback. Her migraine was back.
Ashley wiped saliva from his mouth and turned back to Darby, his breath curling in the mountain air. “You don’t get it yet, Darbs. It’s alright. You will.”
Get what?
This gave her a sick chill. Her adrenaline high, her crazy-stupid fearlessness — it was all slipping away, fading like a weak buzz. Two beers, fun while they last, but gone by dessert.
Lars peered inside the van. “How long ago did she break out?”
Ashley was pacing again. Thinking.
The silence made Darby uneasy. Like any good showman, Ashley was difficult to read, only telegraphing his violence when he meant to. His younger brother still dutifully held her at gunpoint, never letting the barrel touch her back. Never letting the weapon bob within grabbing distance.
Lars asked again. “How long ago did she break out?”
Again, Ashley didn’t answer. He stopped with his hands on his hips, studying Jay’s footprints in the snow. They led north. Away from the rest stop. Up the rising land, past the overpass, along the on-ramp. Toward State Route Seven.
His words simmered in her mind. You don’t get it yet, Darbs.
You will.
She estimated, based on the powder that had accumulated atop the van’s rear door, that Jay had broken out and escaped roughly twenty minutes ago. Before the attack on the restroom, at least. The girl’s footprints were already growing faint, filling in with dusty snowflakes.
“What’s that?” Lars asked.