He pointed his lug wrench at her. “Shut up.”
Darby took the child by the shoulders and pulled her back, away from the barricaded window, toward the center of the Wanapani lobby. Any stress or trauma could trigger a seizure. This is literally life and death. I have to keep her calm.
Would that even be possible tonight? She tried to remember the exact phrasing Ed had used — an Addisonian crisis? — and she crouched down to Jay. “Hey. Jay. Look at me.”
She did, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Jaybird, it’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t—”
“They won’t hurt you,” Darby said. “I promise, I won’t let them.”
By the door, the argument intensified: “Ed, they’re going to get inside—”
“Then we’ll fight them.”
“You’re just drunk. If we try to fight them, we will die.” Sandi’s voice rattled. “I will die, you will die, and she will die—”
“She’s wrong.” Darby pulled Jay further back, behind the coffee counter. She patted the packed stones with her palm — solid enough to stop a bullet. “But stay behind this counter, like Ed said, okay? Just in case.”
“They won’t hurt me,” Jay whispered. “They’ll hurt you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” She recalled the girl’s eerie message on the napkin and scooted closer, lowering her voice to a whisper so the others wouldn’t overhear: “But tell me. Why don’t you want me to trust Ed and Sandi?”
Jay looked embarrassed. “I . . . no, it’s nothing.”
“Why, Jay?”
“I was wrong. It’s nothing—”
“Tell me.”
At the front door, Ed and Sandi’s argument reached a screaming fever pitch. He held the lug wrench out at his cousin, brandishing it like a weapon, his voice thundering now: “If we cooperate, they’ll kill us anyway.”
She swatted it away. “It’s our only chance—”
“I thought . . .” Jay hesitated, pointing over the countertop at Sandi, finally answering: “I thought, at first, that I recognized that lady. Because she looks exactly like one of my school bus drivers.”
All the way in San Diego.
Darby’s world froze.
“But that’s impossible,” Jay said. “Right?”
She didn’t have an answer. What were the odds of that? What were the odds of two other travelers having come from the same West Coast city as the abducted child? Of all places? Here, hundreds of miles inland, stranded at a remote highway rest stop in the Rockies?
The oxygen seemed to drain from the room.
San Diego.
“But . . . but, that’s not her,” Jay added quickly, gripping her wrist. “She just looks like her. It’s just a coincidence.”
No, it’s not, Darby wanted to say. Not tonight.
Tonight, there are no coincidences— By the front door, Ed and Sandi had stopped arguing. They were both listening now, standing in petrified attention. Then Darby heard it, too — a pair of muffled footsteps, boots crunching in the packed snow outside, approaching the door. A two-man death squad.
Ed backed away from the door, red-faced. “Oh, Jesus. Everyone get ready—”
“Ed,” Darby said. “Where did you say you guys are from?”
“Not now—”
“Answer the question, please.”
He pointed. “They’re right outside the door—”
“Answer the goddamn question, Ed.”
The brothers’ footsteps halted outside. They’d heard Darby raise her voice and now they were listening, too. Ashley was less than six feet away, waiting on the other side of that thin wooden door. She even heard Rodent Face’s familiar mouth-breathing outside, like a hospital ventilator.
“We . . . we drove from California,” Ed answered. “Why?”
“What city?”
“What?”
“Tell me the city you’re from.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Answer me.” Darby’s voice wobbled with adrenaline, with two strangers inside and two killers at the door outside. They were listening, too. Everyone was listening. Everything hinged on what this ex-veterinarian said next— “Carlsbad,” Ed said. “We’re from Carlsbad.”
Not San Diego.
Darby blinked. Oh, thank God.
He threw up his arms. “There, Dara. You happy?”
She exhaled, like emptying her lungs after surfacing from a deep dive. It was just a coincidence. Jay had been mistaken. It’s easy to match faces among half-remembered strangers, and apparently Sandi had a doppelganger in San Diego with a morning bus route. California was a massive population center, so it wouldn’t be unheard of that Ed and Sandi would just so happen to hail from the same state as the abducted girl. Everything else — just nerves. Just paranoia.
Silence outside. The brothers were still listening through the door.
“I told you,” Jay whispered. “See? I was wrong—”
“Carlsbad,” Ed hissed to Darby, his face glistening with sweat. “Carlsbad, USA. What else do you need, for Christ’s sake? State? California. Zip code? 92018. Population? A hundred thousand—”
“Sorry, Ed. I just had to make sure—”
She was vaguely aware of Sandi moving up behind her, and she was turning to face the older woman when Ed continued — “County? San Diego county” — and that was the last clear thought that went through Darby’s mind before a pressurized spurt of icy liquid fired into her eyes.
Then pain.
White-hot pain.
WITCHING HOURS
3:33 a.m.
Ed screamed: “SANDI—”
But Darby’s world went bloody red. An acid-splash. She felt the cells of her corneas sizzling with violation, simultaneously scalding hot and freezing cold. Like bleach under her eyelids. It crowded out all of her thoughts.
She hit the floor on her kneecaps, eyes clammed shut, clawing at her face, rubbing away beads of chemical burn. Tiny fingers grasped her elbow, tugging her. Jay’s voice in her ears: “Darby. Rub your eyes—”
“Sandi, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Eddie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
Jay’s voice, louder: “Rub your eyes.”
Darby did, furiously, gasping with pain. Mashing them until her eyeballs squished in their sockets. She forced her eyelids open, peeling them back with her fingernails, and saw a cloudy soup of red and orange, blurred with incendiary tears. The watery outlines of flooring tiles. The room spun, hurtling around her like a rotating stage. She coughed, her throat thick with burbling snot. She saw dark droplets hitting the floor. Her nose was bleeding again.
“Hold still.” Jay lifted something heavy. Darby was about to wonder what it was — but then a crash of hot water came down on her face. The carafe, she realized, rubbing her eyes. Smart girl.
Enraged shadows moved above her. Stomping footsteps.
“Darby.” Jay yanked her elbow, harder. Twisting it against her shoulder socket: “Darby, come on. Crawl. Crawl.”
She did. Palms and kneecaps on the cold tile, half-blind, dripping. Jay guiding her with pushes and pulls. Behind her, the voices intensified, booming inside the room, pressurizing the air:
“Sandi. Just explain to me what’s going on—”
“I can save you.”
“Don’t touch that door—”