Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [26]
The first time they’d come and accidentally discovered this place, the twins were only six years old, and Michelle had lost her front teeth to this gap while she and Jennifer wrestled and rolled in a meadow one sunny afternoon, cried her heart out, afraid the tooth fairy wouldn’t pay for lost teeth.
There had been the trip seven years ago where he and Sue had to fake happy faces for the girls, crying at night in their tent, while fifteen hundred miles away, in a laboratory in Minneapolis, a biopsy cut from the underside of Sue’s left breast was screened for a cancer that wasn’t there.
Three years back, he’d been anxiously awaiting news on an advertising campaign he’d pitched, which if chosen, might have netted him half a million dollars, remembered trying not to dwell on the phone call he’d make once they left these mountains, knowing if he got a yes, what that would mean for his family. He’d pulled over once they reentered cell phone coverage at an overlook outside of Asheville. Walked back toward the car a moment later, eyes locked with Sue’s, shaking his head.
But looking at the time they’d spent here as a whole, forest instead of tree, it felt a lot like his life—so many good times, some pain, and it had all raced by faster than he could’ve imagined.
Roger crawled to the thicket’s edge and started up the hill, the flashlight and the Glock shoved down the back of his fleece pants.
After five minutes, he stopped to catch his breath.
He thought he’d been making a horrible racket, dead leaves crunching under his elbows as he wriggled himself under the low branches of the rhododendron shrubs. But he assured himself it wasn’t as much noise as he thought. To anyone else, to Donald, it probably sounded like nothing more than the after-hour scavenging of a raccoon.
Roger was breathing normally again and had rolled over on his stomach to continue crawling when he spotted the outline of a tent twenty yards uphill. The moon shone upon the rain fly, and in the lunar light, he could only tell that it was dark in color.
He pulled the gun out of his waistband.
His chest felt tight, and he had to take several deep breaths to make the lightheadedness dissolve.
Then he was crawling again, though much slower now, taking care to avoid patches of dead leaves and low-clearance branches that might drag across his jacket.
The tent stood just ahead, a one-man A-frame. He was still hidden in shadow, but another few feet and he’d emerge from the cover of darkness, into the moonlit glade.
Roger lay beside the tent and held his breath, listening for deep breathing indicative of Donald sleeping, if in fact this was even the man’s tent. He didn’t know how long he lay there. Two minutes. A quarter of an hour. Whichever the case, it felt like ages elapsed, and he still hadn’t heard a sound from inside.
Maybe Donald wasn’t in there. Maybe he’d already found a spot to hide and watch their tent. Maybe he was a silent sleeper. Maybe he’d heard Roger crawling toward him through the rhododendron and was sitting up right—
“That you out there, Roger?”
Roger jumped up and scrambled back toward the thicket.
He stopped at the edge of the glade, his gun trained on the tent, trembling in his hand.
“Would you tell me something?” Donald asked. “Was she alive right after you hit her? She was dead when the paramedics arrived.”
Roger had to wet the roof of his mouth with his tongue so he could speak.
“She was gone instantly,” he lied.
“You didn’t tell your wife, did you?”
“No.”
“She seemed surprised. Does she know you came over here? Did you discuss it with her after I left? Tell her what you’d done?”
“What were you going to do to us?”
“Not a thing.”
“I don’t believe that. How’d you find me?”
“When the police gave up, I spent thousands of dollars on a PI who located and investigated everyone who owned a silver Lexus in the St. Paul area. I’ve had conversations like I had with you and Sue tonight with a half dozen other people I suspected, feeling them out, gauging their reactions.”
“You didn’t