Run - Blake Crouch [61]
She reached the construction site and walked over to the pipe. Her children still slept. She crawled inside and sat with her knees drawn into her chest, trying not to cry again so they might sleep a little longer. Jack was slipping farther and farther away with every passing second, and she could feel the expanding distance and it tore her guts out.
Naomi was stirring. Dee turned and stared into the shadow of the pipe, watched her daughter sit up and rub her eyes.
She looked around.
“Where’s Dad?”
Dee whispered, “Come outside. I don’t want to wake Cole.”
“What’s wrong?”
The tears were starting up in her eyes again. “Just come on.”
When Dee told her daughter what had happened, Naomi cupped her hand to her mouth and ran to a far stack of pipes and crawled into one on the bottom row. Dee stood in the snow with her eyes welling up again, listening to the pipe distort Naomi’s sobbing like some tragic flute.
Cole stared at her, grave as she’d ever seen him, but he didn’t cry. They were sitting on a patch of dry pavement in the road in the warmth of high-altitude sunlight.
“Where did they take him?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Why did they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they going to kill him?”
The questions came like little stabs of reinforcement, shoring up the horrific reality of it all.
“I don’t know.”
Cole looked back toward the construction site. “When is Naomi going to come out?”
“In a little while. She’s really upset.”
“Are you upset?”
“Yeah, I’m upset.”
“When can we see Daddy again?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Cole.”
The boy stared at a trickle of snowmelt gliding down the pavement. “This is one of the worst things that ever happened, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She could tell he was mulling something over, sorting out the ramifications.
“If we don’t find Daddy, does that mean you’re my wife and I get to be in charge of Naomi?”
Dee wiped her face.
“No, sweetheart, it doesn’t mean that.”
In the afternoon, Dee walked over to the pipe where Naomi had holed herself up for hours and crouched down by the opening. Inside, her daughter lay unmoving, and she reached out, touched her ankle.
“Na? You asleep?”
Naomi’s head shook.
“There are some buildings just up the road. I thought we could check them out, see if there’s food. Warm beds to sleep in.”
No movement. No answer.
“You can’t lay here indefinitely, wishing things aren’t the way they are.”
“I know that, Mom. I know that. Can you just give me thirty minutes, please?”
“Okay. But then we have to leave.”
The shadows stretched as they walked through slush to the top of the pass.
The lodge had been vandalized.
The restaurant raided.
Refrigerators contained nothing but rotting vegetables and fruit. Spoiled jars of condiments that she almost considered eating.
Dee had to break glass to gain entry to one of the tiny cabins. They climbed through the windowframe. Just as cold on the inside, but at least there were two bunk beds along the wall.
The kids crawled into bed and Dee unlocked the door and went back outside. Walked down to the road and stood at the crest of the pass. Thirty-five miles away, Grand Teton punctured the bottom curve of the sun and the nearer peaks were catching alpenglow. The snow and the rock the color of peach skin.
Watched the sun drop, wondering where Jack was in all that darkness.
She closed her eyes, spoke aloud.
“Jack, do you hear me? Wherever you are, whatever’s happening to you in this moment, know that I love you. And I’m with you. Always.”
She’d never said anything with such desperation. Closest she’d ever come to prayer. Wondered if the intensity of what raged inside her could carry the words to him on some secret frequency.
Beneath the stars, she started back toward her children, the snow crunching under her footsteps. A part of her still thinking