Snowbound (10 page)

Will and Devlin sat in the backseat of the Land Rover outside their motel room, staring at the computer screen.

“That woman has balls,” Devlin said.

“Yeah, she does.”

“So what are we looking at?”

“This is a Google map of the Boise area.”

“The truck’s not moving yet?”

“Doesn’t seem to be. Maybe Jonathan’s taking a nap before he hits the road. We should probably do the same.” He opened the door. “Come on. I’ve got this thing set to fire up when the truck starts to move.”

• • •

Will found it almost impossible to sleep, afraid he wouldn’t hear the electronic notification that the TrimTrac had changed positions. But with the computer sitting on the bedside table, humming quietly, he finally succumbed.

His dreams came in waves, repetitive and fevered. He dreamed he woke up and the computer was gone. Dreamed it had melted into a puddle of plastic, got fried by a lightning strike. Dreamed he slept for two weeks and never heard a thing.

His eyes shot open at 4:14
A.M.
He sat up in bed, instantly awake. The computer was making noise—some kind of digital alarm. He turned on the bedside table lamp and opened the laptop. As the screen sprung to life, his eyes came into focus and he saw that the icon on the Google map was no longer across the interstate at exit 64.

He shook his daughter out of sleep, and when her eyes opened, he said, “Time to go, Devi. They’re on the move.”

By the time Will merged southbound onto I-84, Jonathan’s truck had a ten-mile head start. He’d set Devlin up in the backseat with the computer, given her a crash course, and she now knew the program as well as he did, calling out updates every couple of minutes.

At sunup, they were speeding east through Twin Falls.

As morning swung into full gear, they were heading northbound on I-15, climbing steadily into the high country of southwest Montana.

They gave Jonathan’s truck a solid five-mile berth, and what had been pure exhilaration at the outset soon deteriorated into mind-numbing monotony.

There was no stopping.

Dillon. Butte. Helena. Big Sky Country.

On the plains, ten miles north of Great Falls, it occurred to Will where Jonathan was heading, and Devlin must’ve heard him sigh, because she said, “What’s wrong, Dad?”

“He’s going to Canada.”

“Cool, I’ve never—”

“No, not cool, Devi. We have a gun in the car and we’re fugitives.”

“That gun’s illegal?”

“It is in Canada.”

“But we have identification for Joe and Samantha Foster, right?”

It was true. Will carried Social Security cards, a driver’s license, passports, and certified copies of their birth certificates at all times, though he’d had only one interaction with law enforcement—a city cop at a DUI checkpoint near their home in Colorado.

They stopped in the town of Shelby, Montana, thirty miles south of the border, and after thirteen straight hours of driving, Will’s legs cramped as he stepped out of the Land Rover and swiped his credit card at the pump. While the tank filled with gas, he stashed the small Glock in his leather jacket and approached a pair of Dumpsters behind the convenience store.

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 or cold coffee, the computer now in the front passenger seat, angled toward him, Devlin having long since fallen asleep.

It wasn’t his mind that was the problem, but his vision. With the exception of a gas stop in Fort St. John, Will had been on the road for twenty-four hours, and there was nothing NoDoz could do to recharge his eyes.

• • •

They passed into Yukon as the sun breathed its first shot of warmth into the sky.

Devlin stirred, sat up suddenly in the backseat. “Dad? You okay?”

“I don’t even know how to describe how tired I feel right now. Worse than cramming for the bar.”

Devlin reached forward and lifted the computer into the backseat.

“He’s just ahead in a town called Whitehorse, Yukon,” she said. “I think he stopped.”

“Are you serious?”

“The icon hasn’t moved in the last ten minutes.”

“Thank God. You were about to pull driving duty.”

They stopped at the first gas station they came to, just past the small airport in Yukon’s capital city.

Will turned off the car and shut his eyes.

“Wake me when he’s on the move again.”

Will had just begun to dream, when his daughter’s voice broke through. “He’s moving, Dad.”

“You are fucking kidding me.” Will rubbed his eyes, felt like he’d been asleep less than ten minutes, but the sun was above the horizon now, early rays glittering on the waters of the Yukon River.
Pretty country up here
, he thought, looking out at rolling foothills covered with fir trees.

According to the dashboard clock, he’d slept for almost two hours, though the brief reprieve had barely made a dent in his exhaustion. He turned the ignition, drove the Land Rover slowly through town, letting the truck put a few more miles of distance between them.

“You need to talk to me,” he said. “I’ll nod off, end up running us off the road.”

“I can drive.”

“Not yet.”

“What do you wanna talk about?”

“I don’t care. Just engage me. Take my mind off how tired I am.”

Devlin was quiet for a moment, staring out the tinted glass as they passed through downtown Whitehorse.

“Okay,” she said finally, “do you think Kalyn’s pretty?”

Will straightened in his seat. “Well,” he said, “I think that did the trick.”

“No, you have to answer my question.”

Whitehorse was fading away in the side mirrors, and they had the Alaska Highway all to themselves, a corridor of pavement through a forest of black spruce.

“Sure, she’s pretty.”

“You like her?”

“Excuse me?”

“In school, we have this rating system. You can like someone. You can
like
like them. Or you can
like like
like them.”

Will laughed. “So what was your rating with little Ben over the summer?”

“We’re not talking about me right now, Dad.”

“I don’t know, Devi. What do you think? That these last few days have been one big date? This is an incredibly stressful time, and I—”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t like her.”

He caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Look, I’m not saying this to judge or be mean, but Kalyn’s a damaged person, Dev. Nothing against her. I’m just saying I think she’s had a really hard time since her sister disappeared.”

“Harder than us with Mom?”

“Yeah. Why are you asking me all this? You
want
me to like her?”

“I guess it’d be all right. I mean, you haven’t dated anyone since Mom. Aren’t you, like, lonely?”

“You don’t like it, just the two of us?”

“No, I do, it’s just—Dad!”

Will’s eyes cut from the rearview mirror back to the windshield.

An enormous bull moose stood straddling the dotted white line of the Alaska Highway, thirty yards ahead.

Will slammed down on the brake pedal, lunging forward, something shooting through the space between the front seats, smashing into the dashboard.

“Devlin!”

The Land Rover skidded to a stop, the front bumper five feet from the moose, which just stood there staring dully at will through the windshield. He looked in the backseat, confirmed that Devlin was buckled in, safe but rattled, tears streaming down her face.

“No, honey, don’t cry. It’s okay. We’re all right.”

She shook her head, and Will’s stomach fell. He glanced down. Near the gearshift, in the front passenger seat, on both floorboards, and on his lap lay pieces of the computer, and the portion of the screen still attached to the shattered keyboard was black.

“Oh God,” he said.

“We can still find her, right?”

“Oh God.”

“Dad?”

He drove around the giant moose and floored the accelerator.

• • •

It was midday before Will finally spotted Jonathan’s truck, pulling away from the border station into the state of Alaska.

He and Devlin spent fifteen agonizing minutes talking with the American customs official, Will thinking the officer had probably sensed his impatience and decided to ask more questions than he otherwise would have. By the time they were on the road again and passing a sign welcoming them to the “Last Frontier State,” Will figured Jonathan had at least a twenty-mile head start.

He pushed the Land Rover to eighty-five, speeding along the Alaska Highway, passing RVs at the rate of one every couple of miles. In the nowhere town of Tok, Alaska, ninety-three miles west of the border, Will came to what he’d dreaded more than anything—a fork in the road. Stay straight on Alaska 1, head west to Fairbanks. Or make a left onto Alaska 2 and head south toward Anchorage.

“Which way, Dad?”

Will pulled onto the shoulder, shifted the car into park.

“Fairbanks is two hundred miles that way,” he said. “Kind of in the middle of the state. I don’t know much about it. Anchorage is in the south, on the coast.”

“How close do you think we are to the truck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad—”

“Just give me a minute here, Dev!”

After thirty seconds of the most excruciating deliberation he’d ever put himself through, he finally shifted into drive and stomped the gas.

“Anchorage?” Devlin asked as the Land Rover accelerated to ninety miles per hour.

“It’s a shipping city. Lots of ports. I have a feeling they’re putting Kalyn on a boat.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, baby girl. Nowhere close to sure.”