No pavement appeared. The hard-packed dirt road got tighter and rougher. The Chrysler shimmied and shook like it was crossing cobblestones. The trees crept in, branches slapping off both sides of the car. Abby wanted to slow down. Wanted to stop.
No. Hank said to run. You’ve got to run.
But she couldn’t remember what she was running from anymore. Her brain spun, out of sync with her eyes and her hands, and all she could hear was Hank’s voice — or was that Luke’s? Was that Luke telling her to go...
Faster. Faster.
Sure thing. Abby could always go faster.
She remembered her father’s lullaby, the one from the old Robert Mitchum movie about an Appalachian bootlegger with a hot rod, the mountain boy who had G-men on his taillights and roadblocks up ahead. Being the motherless daughter of Jake Kaplan meant that such songs became lullabies. “The Ballad of Thunder Road” had been Abby’s favorite. Her father’s voice, off-key, his breath tinged with beer, singing, “Moonshine, moonshine, to quench the devil’s thirst...” had eased her to sleep many times, the two of them alone in the trailer.
All these years later, the song could resurface clearly when she edged toward sleep.
“He left the road at ninety,” her dead father crooned softly, “that’s all there is to say.”
When the Chrysler left the road, Abby had no idea if she’d missed a curve or simply driven right through a dead end. All she knew was that suddenly she was awake and the car was bouncing over uneven ground and now it wasn’t branches whipping at the windows but whole trees, saplings that cracked with whip-snap sounds. Before she could move her foot to the brake, she hit a tree that did the stopping for her, an oak that slammed the car sideways. The airbag caught her rising body at stomach level, a gut punch that stole her breath but kept her from striking the windshield.
She sat gasping for breath and trying to clear her vision, desperate for just a little time to get her bearings.
Headlights appeared in the rearview mirror.
There was no time.
Abby got the door open and hauled herself out of the car, but her legs were wobbly and uncooperative, her vision spinning. She stumbled forward, trying to fight through the branches with her hands held up to protect her face. Her feet hit wet soil and went out from under her and suddenly she was down on her ass in the muck.
She might’ve stayed there, disoriented and exhausted and near the point of collapse, but she could still see the glow from the headlights, and they triggered whatever primal impulses the brain stem held on to until the very end.
Run. Flee.
She fought ahead on hands and knees, and this was a blessing in disguise because she crawled faster than she could have run. The boggy soil yielded to actual water, cold and deep enough to cover her arms to the elbows. She’d splashed into a creek, and she couldn’t make sense of that. What creek? Where did it lead? She tried to remember and couldn’t. Hadn’t she hiked out here once with Hank and her father? Yes, absolutely. The winter before her father’s heart attack. There’d been snow that day and the iced-over creek had turned into a beautiful white boulevard through the pines and birches, leading down past an ancient stone wall and on toward...
Toward nothing. There was nothing out here but trees and rocks and water. That was the point; Hank had never wanted neighbors. Abby needed a neighbor now, though. She needed anyone who could help, because something was behind her. Who or what was no longer clear. Her flight was now instinctual, not logical. Her body was working better than her brain.
That’s fine, because all I need to do is keep running, she thought just before she slid over a moss-covered rock and bounced into the sinkhole below, where she lay covered in mud and decaying leaves and dampness. There, her body started to quit on her too.
She knew that she needed to get up and get moving, but this hole with its pillow of old leaves and cool moss felt comfortable, almost safe, except for the dampness. There was something about being tucked into the earth like this that felt right.
Like a grave. You are in your grave, Abby.
She thought she could still see the headlights, but it was hard to tell with the fog gliding through the trees. It was a low, crawling mist that seemed to be searching for her. She wasn’t sure if the lights behind the mist were moving or stationary or if they were even out there at all. Her eyelids were heavy and her blood felt thick and slow.
She wondered how long it would take the kid to find her.
The kid. Yes, that’s who you’re running from. He’s a killer.
And he was quick. The way he had ducked that punch? That was more than quick. So it would not take the kid long to find Abby now.
What was his name? Had he said a name? Sure, he had. Gentleman Jack.
Abby burrowed into the soft embrace of the leaves that smelled like death and waited on the arrival of Gentleman Jack.
23
Her first awareness was of the cold.
She opened her eyes and saw a moss-covered rock, beads of water working slowly but resolutely over it, following the terrain like bands of determined pioneers. Then they reached the edge and fell, manifest destiny gone awry.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
She stared at the rock and the puddle for a while without recognition of anything else. Except for the cold. That was still there, and it was intensifying. Uncomfortable but also necessary, because it was pounding clarity into her brain.
Get up. Get up and move before you freeze to death.
She struggled upright, and the motion made her dizzy and nauseated. She rested on her hands and knees, head hanging, waiting for the vomit to come, but the nausea passed and she didn’t get sick. She worked a wooden tongue around a mouth so dry and swollen, it felt carpeted.
What the hell happened?
The kid.
That was what had happened. The night chase came back to her, and she was suddenly convinced that she wasn’t alone here, that the kid had to be right behind her, the kid with his baby face and his grown-up gun.
There was nothing in sight but the woods, though. Abby was in a gully below a forested ridge; above, white birches and emerald pines were packed in tight, and a stream there split and ran down swales on either side of her. No sound but the running water.
She tried to walk up the hill but her feet tangled and she fell heavily and painfully onto her side. She rolled over and breathed for a while and then tried again, slower this time. Each motion required caution because her head spun and her stomach swirled. She tasted bitter bile and her throat was sore, as if she’d been retching. She didn’t remember doing that, though.
The sky was bright enough to show some of the world, but not much of it. Predawn light. That meant she’d been down here for hours.
What had happened to Hank in that time?
She hobbled up the slope. Her left side and left hip hurt the worst, and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t remember much about the drive, the run through the woods, or her fall. She just remembered that she’d been trying to get out in front of the kid and of whatever the whiskey had put in her bloodstream. They’d both been closing in on her fast.
And Hank had been well behind them, tied to the chair. Had he gotten loose? He’d had some time alone while the kid pursued Abby. He’d had a window for escape, if he’d been able to free himself.