Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [8]
“How long is a little while?”
“Until I say.”
“When are you gonna—”
“Joel, do you mind?”
The little boy’s head dropped. The man stopped typing and looked up from his laptop.
“I’m sorry. Tell you what. Give me five minutes so I can finish this email, and we’ll go eat breakfast.”
Mitchell sipped his espresso, snow falling beyond the storefront windows into this mountain hamlet of eight hundred souls, Miles Davis squealing through the speakers—one of the low-key numbers off Kind of Blue.
Mitchell trailed them down the frosted sidewalk.
One block up, they crossed the street and disappeared into a diner. Having already eaten in that very establishment two hours ago, he installed himself on a bench where he could see the boy and the man sitting at a table by the front window.
Mitchell fished the cell out of his jacket and opened the phone, scrolling through ancient numbers as the snow collected in his hair.
He pressed talk.
Two rings, then, “Mitch? Oh my God, where are you?”
He made no answer.
“Look, I’m at the office, getting ready for a big meeting. I can’t do this right now, but will you answer if I call you back? Please?”
Mitchell closed the phone and shut his eyes.
They emerged from the diner an hour later.
Mitchell brushed the inch of snow off his pants and stood, shivering. He crossed the street and followed the boy and the man up the sidewalk, passing a candy shop, a grocery, a depressing bar masquerading as an old west saloon.
They left the sidewalk after another block and walked up the driveway to the Antlers Motel, disappeared into 113, the middle in a single-story row of nine rooms. The tarp stretched over the small swimming pool sagged with snow. In an alcove between the rooms and the office, vending machines hummed against the hush of the storm.
Ten minutes of brisk walking returned Mitchell to his motel, the Box Canyon Lodge. He climbed into his burgundy Jetta, cranked the engine.
“Just for tonight?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be $69.78 with tax.”
Mitchell handed the woman his credit card.
Behind the front desk, a row of Hummels stood in perfect formation atop a black and white television airing “The Price is Right.”
Mitchell signed the receipt. “Could I have 112 or 114?”
The old woman stubbed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray and reached for the key cabinet.
Mitchell pressed his ear to the wood paneling.
A television blared through the thin wall.
His cell phone vibrated—Lisa calling again.
Flipped it open.
“Mitch? You don’t have to say anything. Please just listen—”
He powered off the phone and continued writing in the notebook.
Afternoon unspooled as the snow piled up in the parking lot of the Antlers Motel. Mitchell parted the blinds and stared through the window as the first intimation of dusk began to blue the sky, the noise of the television next door droning through the walls.
He lay down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling and whispered the Lord’s Prayer.
In the evening, he startled out of sleep to the sound of a door slamming, sat up too fast, the blood rushing to his head in a swarm of black spots. He hadn’t intended to sleep.
Mitchell slid off the bed and walked to the window, split the blinds, heard the diminishing sound of footsteps—a single set—squeaking in the snow.
He saw the boy pass through the illumination of a streetlamp and disappear into the alcove that housed the vending machines.
The snowflakes stung Mitchell’s cheeks as he crossed the parking lot, his sneakers swallowed up in six inches of fresh powder.
The hum of the vending machines intensified, and he picked out the sound of coins dropping through a slot.
He glanced once over his shoulder at the row of rooms, the doors all closed, windows dark save slivers of electric blue from television screens sliding through the blinds.
Too dark to tell if the man was watching.
Mitchell stepped into the alcove as the boy pressed his selection on the drink machine.
The can banged into the open compartment, and the boy reached down and claimed the Sprite.
“Hi, Joel.”
The