“What’s happening?”
They were rolling down the exit ramp now, gaining speed. Thank Christ for momentum, for gravity, for the steepening grade. Darby gave the pedal another pump of gas. Another engine-roar. The world tilted downward and kernels of safety glass skittered loosely around them like gravel.
“See? I told you—”
Lars fired again — CRACK — but missed the truck entirely. He was too far behind them now. Vanishing. The orange glow of the Wanapani building was vanishing, too, its familiar shapes sinking into the snowy darkness, and Darby was so glad to see it all go. Like awakening from a dread-sweat nightmare, she never wanted to see it again. Ever. Good riddance to that shitty place.
Jay peered around her seat, watching the pursuing figure of Rodent Face shrink through the perforated rear window — “Stay down” — and she raised a shaking fist. Her ring finger up.
It took Darby a moment to understand. “Uh . . . wrong finger.”
“Oh.” Jay corrected. “Better?”
“Better.”
“Thanks,” said the seven-year-old girl flipping the bird through the bullet-riddled back window of a stolen pickup truck, and Darby started to laugh. It was involuntary, rattling her lungs like a cough. She couldn’t stop it.
Oh, my God, we actually did it.
We got away.
Just seven or eight miles to go. She dug her iPhone from her pocket and tossed it to Jay. “Hey. Watch the screen, okay? If you see a signal bar, you hand it to me immediately—”
“The battery’s almost dead.”
“I know.”
They scraped downhill, truck tires churning fresh powder like waterwheels. She feathered the gas pedal, keeping the Ford moving. Keeping the inertia unbroken. That’s all it was now — raw, desperate forward momentum. Like driving across two states with a stomach full of Red Bull and ibuprofen, fighting to hold her caffeine buzz with a cryptic text from Devon shaking in her palm (She’s okay right now), racing Snowmageddon over the pass. Forward, forward, forward. Don’t stop.
Don’t-stop-don’t-stop—
Now they came up on State Route Seven, high beams cutting over frozen mounds of windswept snow. Here she planned to merge into the oncoming northbound lane and pass under the first saucer of light. Darby felt another flicker of excitement in the bottom of her stomach. This was really happening. She’d done it. They were really escaping.
Even still, she worried — what if the brothers dug their van out, got it moving in the snow, and chased them down the highway? Then another triumphant shiver as she realized: Ashley doesn’t even know where his Astro keys are.
He never saw me throw them out the restroom window.
Yes, yes, yes. It all felt too good to be true.
“Hold my phone up.” She pointed. “Out the window.”
Jay did this, crouched on her knees to lean out the passenger window, and Darby suddenly imagined hitting a hard stop and bouncing this poor girl out like a crash-test dummy. That’d be tough to explain to her parents.
“And buckle your seatbelt,” she added. “Please.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the law.”
“What if we need to get out and run?”
“Then — Jesus. Then you’ll unbuckle it.”
“Yours isn’t buckled—”
“Hey.” Darby grinned darkly, doing her best angry-dad-voice. “Don’t make me turn this car around.”
Jay buckled her seatbelt with a metallic snick, and pointed at the seat behind Darby’s head. “He almost shot you.”
She touched the headrest behind her ponytail. Sure enough, her fingers found a ragged exit wound, leaking spongy clods of yellow foam. Lars’s bullet had sliced an inch high, at most, skimming her scalp before exiting the windshield. Saved by dumb luck. She let out a hoarse laugh. “Good thing I’m five-two, huh?”
“Good thing,” Jay said. “I kind of like you.”
Darby guided Sandi’s truck to the highway, merging into the desolate oncoming lanes. Under normal traffic conditions, this would be a suicidal maneuver. She reflexively nudged the right turn signal, before feeling stupid. Her hands were still shaking. A strange silence settled in and she cleared her throat, struggling to fill it: “So . . . Sandi’s your school bus driver, huh?”
“Mrs Schaeffer, I think.”
“Was she nice?”
“She kidnapped me.”
“Aside from that.”
“Not really.” Jay shrugged. “She subbed for a while. I hardly remember her.”
But she sure remembered you, Darby thought. She remembered you, and your sleek McMansion, and your yuppie parents’ daily schedules. A school bus driver made a logical spotter for a ransom operation, and Ashley and Lars were obviously handling the dirty work. But why would Sandi risk meeting Beavis and Butthead in person, all the way out here? In a remote rest stop, two states away?
She watched the snowy highway unfurl, feeling the blood return to her extremities, bracing against the frigid air blowing through the windows. Only now did she start to see the gallows humor of the whole mess, in her own misfortune and poor judgment. She’d unwittingly trusted a kidnapper for the second time tonight. That carafe of scalding water she’d planned to use as a weapon? Jaybird had dumped it over her over face, which still tingled with first-degree burns. Nothing had gone according to plan. She couldn’t help it, her teeth chattering: “I swear to God, Jay, next time you think you recognize someone else here . . . like, if the first Colorado cop we see looks like your orthodontist back in San Diego, please tell me, okay?”
“My orthodontist lives in LA, actually.”
“Los Angeles?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you take an airplane to see your orthodontist?”
Jay winced, embarrassed. “Sometimes.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s . . . my parents really like him—”
“No shit. Did your parents invent Google or something?”
“You’re teasing me.”
Darby grinned. “Is it too late to ransom you myself?”
“Maybe not.” Jay grinned back. “You’re the one driving a stolen tru—”
Brain-jarring halt.
The entire world seemed to drop anchor. The truck nose-dove into a rise of deep snow, headlights burrowing and going dark, two tons of moving parts slamming into a hard stop. An empty Gatorade bottle flew out of the console. Loose glass shards bounced. Darby banged her jaw on the steering wheel, biting her tongue, and in a microsecond, they were stuck again, trapped again, and all of the joy turned sour and tinny, like the taste of blood in her teeth.
Oh, no.
No, no, no—
Jay looked at her. “Good thing you made me fasten my seatbelt.”
3:45 a.m.
“Oh, shit.”