Ashley knelt to retrieve something, like a wrinkled black snakeskin. But Darby recognized it — the electrical tape they’d sealed over Jay’s mouth. She’d discarded it here as she fled.
Wisely, Jay had avoided the visitor center, because she’d known Ashley and Lars were inside. So she’d gone for the highway, probably in hope of flagging down a passerby and calling the police — except this poor girl didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know they were well beyond the outskirts of Gypsum, well beyond the outskirts of anything notable, nine thousand feet above sea level. She didn’t know it was six uphill miles to the summit and ten downhill to the power station; that this bleak, wind-shredded climate might as well belong to Antarctica.
Jay was an affluent city kid from San Diego — a land of yucca palms, sandals, and sixty-degree winters.
Darby raked her mind, now throbbing like a hangover — what had Jay been wearing back inside the kennel? A thin coat. That red Pokeball T-shirt. Light pants. No gloves. No weather protection at all.
Finally, in a flash of horror, she got it.
So did Lars. “She’s going to freeze to death out there—”
“We’ll follow her tracks,” Ashley said.
“But she could be a mile down the road—”
“We’ll call out to her.”
“She won’t come to our voices.”
“You’re right.” Ashley nodded to Darby. “But she’ll come to hers.”
Now both brothers were looking at her.
For a moment, the winds faded and the parking lot fell silent. Only the gentle patter of snowflakes landing around them, as Darby quietly realized why Ashley hadn’t already killed her.
“Well, here we go.” He shrugged. “I guess that puts us on the same team, huh? Neither of us wants a black-fingered little Jay-cicle.”
Jokes. Everything was a joke to him.
She said nothing.
He clicked a pocket flashlight, spotlighting the girl’s footprints with a blue-white LED beam. Snowflakes ignited like sparks. Then he aimed the light into her face, an eye-watering brightness. “Start calling her name.”
Darby stared at her feet, tasting stomach acid in her throat. A rancid, greasy sort of heartburn, bubbling with terrible thoughts. I shouldn’t have given her that knife. What if, by intervening tonight, I made things worse?
What if I got Jay killed?
Lars’s pistol jabbed her spine, a harsh gesture that meant walk. If she’d been ready for it, she could’ve spun around, swiped for the gun, and maybe, just maybe, seized control of it. But her opportunity passed.
“Her name is Jamie,” Lars said. “But call her Jay.”
“Go on. Follow the tracks and start hollering.” Ashley swept his LED light at the footprints, and then looked back at her with darkening eyes. “You wanted to save her life so badly? Well, Darbs, here’s your chance.”
*
The girl’s footprints led them along the on-ramp, to the dirty ice banks of State Route Seven before veering uphill into the woods. Up a rocky slope of snowdrifts and precarious fir trees. Every step of the way, Darby silently dreaded reaching the end of these tracks and finding a collapsed little body in a red Pokeball shirt. Instead, something even worse happened — Jay’s footprints simply vanished, erased by windswept snow.
Darby cupped her hands and shouted again: “Jay.”
It had been thirty minutes now. Her voice was raw.
Up here, the only navigational landmark was the sulking shadow of Melanie’s Peak, due east. The land steepened as they climbed. Boulders broke through the snowpack, granite faces glazed with rivulets of ice. The trees here teetered on shallow roots, leaning over, branches sagging. Sticks snapped underfoot, like tiny bones breaking in the snow.
“Jay Nissen.” Darby swept the flashlight, throwing jagged shadows. “If you can hear me, come to my voice.”
No answer. Only the stiff creak of the trees.
“It’s safe,” she added. “Ashley and Lars aren’t here.”
She hated lying.
But coaxing Jay back was the poor girl’s only chance at survival now. Possible death at the hands of the Garver brothers was still better than certain death in a subzero blizzard. Right? It made sense, but she still despised herself for lying. It was humiliating. Made her feel naked. She felt like Ashley’s little pet, speaking obediently on his behalf, her nostrils still crusted with dried blood from when he’d recently slammed her face into a table.
The brothers followed her but kept their distance, lingering ten paces back on her left and right. Cloaked in darkness while Darby carried the only source of illumination — Ashley’s LED flashlight. This was all according to Ashley’s plan. Jay wouldn’t dare emerge if she saw her abductors stalking behind Darby, holding her at gunpoint. At least, that had been the idea.
So far, it hadn’t worked.
Jamie Nissen. The missing daughter of some wealthy San Diego family with a Christmas tree standing over a pile of unopened presents. Now she was somewhere out here in the howling Rockies, her fingertips blackening with frostbite, her organs shutting down, buried by flurried snowflakes, tears icing on her cheeks and freezing her eyelids shut. They could have already stepped over her little body, five minutes back, without even noticing.
Hypothermia is a peaceful way to go, Darby recalled reading somewhere. Apparently the discomfort of coldness passes quickly, replaced by a warm stupor. You don’t die so much as drift off to a dumb sleep, oblivious to the awful damage inflicted upon your extremities. Crunchy fingers, dark blisters of ulcerated flesh that go necrotic and must be sliced away with a knife — but in your brain, you’re far away, swaddled in a snug blanket. Darby hoped it was true. She hoped Jay hadn’t suffered.
She called out again into the darkness.
Still no answer.
To her left, she heard Lars whisper, “How much longer?”
To her right, “As long as it takes.”
She knew Ashley wasn’t stupid — he was running the same numbers in his mind. Thirty minutes spent following these half-buried footprints, plus a twenty-minute head start (at least), meant Jay’s chances of survival in these freezing woods were poor, and getting worse every second.
Halfheartedly, Darby assessed her own options here at gunpoint. Fight? Get shot. Run? Get shot in the back. She considered turning and shining the flashlight into the gunmen’s eyes to blind them, but they’d been around it for over a half hour, so their pupils were already adjusted to it. This was problem one. And even if she could blind them for a few seconds, the snowbound terrain was too rough for a quick escape — which was problem two.
To her left, Lars fretted. “What if we got Jay killed?”
To her right: “We didn’t.”
“What if we did?”
“We didn’t, baby brother.” A pause. “She might have, though.”
This hit Darby like a twisting dagger in her gut, how painfully right Ashley was. It made sense, in an evil way. If she hadn’t intervened tonight, Jay would still be penned up in that dog kennel inside their van, captive but very much alive. Icy fingers reached around her stomach and slowly, oh-so-slowly, began to squeeze. Why did I have to get involved?