Snowbound - Blake Crouch [36]
The gun clanged inside the empty bin.
In the store, Will used the rest room, and he and Devlin loaded up on junk food, soft drinks, coffee, packs of NoDoz.
By the time they were back on the road, it was evening, and the little icon representing Jonathan’s truck on the Google map stood motionless for the first time all day on the Montana-Alberta border.
“I need you to listen to me, baby girl. What’s your name?”
“Samantha Foster.”
“Where do you live?”
“Mancos, Colorado.”
“What’s my name?”
“Joseph Foster.”
“Why are we going to Canada?”
“To follow a renegade FBI agent in the back of a transfer—”
“Not funny. The Canadian border agents won’t have a sense of humor. What they do have is the power to detain us—on any old whim. Something goes wrong? That’s it for Kalyn. So you be respectful, give the information requested, but nothing more. The story is, that you and I are going to visit a friend in Calgary.”
“Shouldn’t I be in school?”
“You’re home-schooled.”
“What’s our friend’s name?”
“Nathan Banks.”
“How long are we staying?”
“A week.”
“You’re a really good liar, Dad.”
The man who knocked on Will’s window was young and garbed in dark clothes.
Will lowered his window. It was already night and bitterly cold.
The customs officer said, “Both of you step out of the car, please.”
Will had their Social Security cards and birth certificates in the sleeve of a notebook.
“Our documents and my driver’s license,” he said.
The man took the notebook and began to examine their papers as another customs officer emerged from the small Canada Border Agency shack, a long Maglite in his hand.
As he climbed under the Land Rover to inspect it, the first officer asked why they were coming into Canada. Where were they going? Coming from? Did they have any firearms? Alcohol? Tobacco? Pets? Plants? Anything to declare?
“Just my watch and a computer.”
The officer helped them fill out a B4 form while the other man opened a door and shone the flashlight inside the car. After a moment, he came over and joined them.
“All in order?” his partner asked.
“Almost.”
Almost?
The man who’d searched the Land Rover asked, “How long are you two planning to stay in Canada?”
“A week,” Will said.
“So where’s your luggage?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Devlin said, “We had an accident in Montana.”
“What kind of accident?”
“We came over a mountain pass and I guess the air pressure blew two corks out of the bottles of wine in our suitcase. Ruined everything. We threw the suitcase away. We’ll buy new clothes and stuff in Calgary.”
The customs officers glanced at each other, gave a brief nod, then the man with the Maglite said, “Have a safe trip.”
They stopped in Lethbridge, four miles from where the Google map said Jonathan’s truck had been for the last fifty minutes.
Stayed at an inn outside of town, ate takeout in their room, and slept hard and without dreams until the computer woke them at three in the morning with notification that the truck was on the move again.
The next twenty-four hours were murder. They followed Alberta Provincial Highway 2 for three hundred miles, north through Calgary, Red Deer, all the way to Edmonton, where they picked up the Alaska Highway, spent the afternoon blasting northwest through Alberta, taking turns driving.
Whitecourt. Valleyview. Grande Prairie.
Near Dawson Creek, they came within a mile of Jonathan’s truck as it stopped in town to gas up.
Evening approached and they prayed, hoped, begged the truck would stop, both starving, their eyes burning after a second full day on the road.
But Jonathan didn’t stop. He continued on that northwest trajectory, driving right on into the night through the uncitied wilds of northern British Columbia, on the most desolate two-lane stretch of highway they’d ever seen, Will driving, popping NoDoz with a chaser of flat Mountain Dew