One mile.
Two.
Three.
No mailboxes, no signs. Sweat beaded on my forehead.
Another turn. Still no taillights, no side roads. I was driving slower now, half expecting to suddenly come upon Crane’s car pulled off on the side of the road. When I’d gone another mile and seen nothing, fear began worming its way through my stomach.
I thought of gazelles pulling their heads up from feeding as the amber eyes of a lioness watched from the long grass. Of an insect trundling its way closer and closer to a trapdoor and the eight-legged horror waiting beneath it. Of a seal outlined against the shimmering light of the water’s surface and rows of white teeth emerging from fathoms below.
My headlights shone on something, and I braked, blinking without comprehending.
The road ended in a high bank and wall of trees.
No Lexus. Nothing.
Instinct took over, and I whipped the wheel to the right, then left, making a sweeping turn in the dead end, but even as I started accelerating back the way I’d come, lights appeared, center of the road, high beams speeding toward me.
The black paint of the Lexus wasn’t visible behind the lights, but it didn’t need to be. I knew who was behind the wheel even as I slid to a stop and the car rolled closer.
Back up? Get out and sprint into the trees? Try to skid past on the right or left?
In the end my panicked brain couldn’t decide. I thought of Dad’s safe and the combination to open it again.
A gun, a gun, my kingdom for a gun.
The headlights flickered as someone passed in front of them, then Crane was there, tall and dark, squinting down at me through the window, one hand inside the coat he wore. I rolled the window down.
“Hi,” I said.
Crane’s squint narrowed. “The fuck? Aren’t you the guy down the street?” he said.
“Uh, yeah. Andy Drake.”
“The hell are you following me for?” The hand under his coat twitched as if it wanted to draw whatever was concealed there.
“I—I’m not following you.” It was all I could come up with. He just watched me. Mentally, I calculated how fast I could release the brake and hit the gas. Faster than he could draw a gun?
“I’m not gonna ask again,” he said.
If I was going to die, I was going to die knowing the truth. “Did you take Rachel and the boys?”
“Rachel and the—what the fuck are you talking about?”
“The Barrens.”
“Across the street. The guy who got plugged? You a cop or something?”
“No.”
“Listen, whoever you think I am, I’m not. And I’m definitely not a person to follow at night, got me?”
“You sent me the note,” I said.
Crane shook his head and finally withdrew his hand from his coat sans gun, to my eternal relief. “You on drugs or something?”
“The day at the party last summer.”
He watched me for a beat. “Yeah, I saw you two. Don’t know anything about a note, though.” He leaned closer, placing his gloved hands on the window frame. “Lemme give you some advice, friend. Do not go sniffing around where you aren’t wanted. These woods are deep, and no one lives out here. Someone could easily get lost and never found. Happens all the time.”
Then he was striding back to his car. The Lexus made a quick three-point turn, and all I could see was the deep red of his fading taillights. A second later, they were gone.
I put the car in park and rested my head on the steering wheel.
The horn honked, and I let out a short scream.
20
Abject: adjective—sunk to or existing in a low state or condition.
Yeah, I could relate.
The drive home passed in a blur. Garage door up, pull in, door down. Engine off. I sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, absorbing what had happened. The fear had ebbed, and all that was left was a profound confusion. For the second time in as many days, the confusion’s source was my continued existence.
There had been nothing keeping Crane from blowing me away on that back road. Nothing tying him to me or my demise other than living in the same neighborhood. If he was involved with Rachel and the boys’ disappearance, if he’d chased me from their house the other night, snuffing me out would’ve been a reflex.
Yet I was still here.
I showered and lay in bed on top of the blankets, staring at the ceiling in the dark. If Crane’s meeting with the guy in the truck hadn’t been about Rachel or the boys, what was it about?
“Could’ve been anything,” I said to the empty room. Knowing his history, it might’ve been a new fraud scheme or some type of correspondence with his past life. In any case one thing was for sure: he’d been genuinely puzzled when I’d mentioned the note. He had seen us in Rachel’s kitchen, but I didn’t get the impression he cared one iota.