The Breaking Point (11 page)

She was alive.

The relief that flooded his veins then was so intense it made him light-headed. He leaned against the seat and closed his eyes, concentrating on staying conscious.

A sudden wiggling weight in his lap and a wetness on his face let him know Bo was awake—and ecstatic to find Gabe up and around. “Okay boy … relax …” He took hold of the dog’s collar and gave it a tug, grateful when he felt Bo lie down. He kept a hand on the dog’s head, waiting for the dots of light dancing behind his lids to fade.

Finally he could open his eyes again. The minute he did so, Bo jumped up and gave a deep yodel of joy. Gabe restrained the dog but ruffled the top of his soft head. “Hey, boy, good to see you, too.”

Renee was alive … but where was she? Just then he spotted his flashlight on the floorboard. Bo must have knocked it over. He frowned. How had he done that? Gabe kept the flashlight under his seat.

He got Bo into the backseat again, then leaned down to grab the flashlight. As he did so, he caught a flash of fluorescent pink on the floorboard as well.

Renee’s crazy colored paper. He’d thought she was a goof for buying a pad of the stuff. Now it was the most beautiful color he’d ever seen.

He grabbed the note and sat back to read it. Dread lodged somewhere beneath his breastbone as he absorbed the message. He looked at the windshield, but it was covered with snow, so he couldn’t see out. Even so, he could feel the wind slamming into the truck.

Renee was out in this?

The thought intensified the throbbing in his head, and he pressed a hand to his forehead. A bandage. He leaned forward to look in the rearview mirror, taking in the dressing and the dried blood on his face.

He must have taken one monster of a hit. How long was he out? He turned his wrist and squinted down at his watch. A couple of hours anyway. But from what Renee had written in the note, she hadn’t been gone much more than a half hour.

Plenty of time to end up in serious trouble.

Gabe
refused to let the thought distract him. He didn’t have much time to get things together and get going. Not if he was going to find Renee before dark.

He gathered his supplies quickly, then did one final check, forcing himself to think around the pain that beat against the sides of his temples. He was ready to go in less than ten minutes. It helped that Renee had already pulled out his backpack and the canvas bag of supplies.

Gabe slid the pack onto his back, judging the weight. Heavy, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He scanned the truck cab once more, just to be sure he wasn’t forgetting anything.

He gave a quick turn of his head to look in the backseat and immediately regretted it. Sharp twinges stabbed at his temples, and flashes of red exploded in his head.

Pain mixed with frustration, then escaped Gabe in an angry roar that echoed in the stillness around him. He
squeezed his eyes tight, pressing his fingers into his aching temples. After a few moments, he could open his eyes. And he found Bo sitting there, ears laid back, eyes wide and alert.

A pang of regret struck him. When would he learn to think before he reacted? How often had he had an outburst only to see that cautious, alarmed look in the dog’s eyes?

About as often as he’d seen it in Renee’s.

A familiar weight pressed in on him, but he ignored it. He didn’t have time for guilt.

When he pulled Bo’s leather leash from beneath the seat, the dog almost vaulted into Gabe’s lap. He laughed. If only he and Renee could be so quick to forgive. “Sit, boy.”

The dog obeyed, and Gabe clipped the leash onto his collar. He was probably going to regret taking Bo with him. Last thing he needed was to worry about the dog getting away in this storm, but Gabe didn’t care. No way he was leaving the dog in the truck. What if it took too long to find Renee or some kind of help? And what if, even after they reached help, they couldn’t find their way back to the truck?

No. He was not going to leave Bo here to starve to death.

“It’s you and me, buddy. We’re gonna go out there and find her, okay? If we’re going to make it, we have to work together. Got it?”

Bo gave another yodeling roo, and Gabe grinned. Darned if the dog didn’t seem to understand—and even agree.

He pushed the door open and they hopped out of the truck. At the freezing force of the storm Gabe’s head pounded like a tom-tom on uppers. He spun back toward the truck, giving his body a chance to adjust to the cold and wind. Then, the yellow rope in one hand, Bo’s leash in the other, he turned, lowered his head against the storm, and started walking.

Each step confirmed what he’d feared: It wouldn’t be easy going. Not by a long shot. But he pushed on, doing his best to pace himself, to ignore the way his headache crept into his
stomach, making him queasy
Just stay focused …

It should have helped that he knew what he needed to do, where he needed to go. But it didn’t. Because he couldn’t escape a nagging awareness deep at the back of his mind: Nearly every time he thought he knew what he was supposed to do, he was wrong.

And those mistakes had cost him almost everything.

S
UMMER
1971

GABE HATED THIS TOWN.

He snorted. Town? Hardly. It was barely big enough to call a village. A burg. That’s what he lived in. A tiny backwoods, I-can’t-wait-to-get-out-of-here burg. One where everyone knew everyone else’s business—and what they didn’t know, they made up.

Amazing how sure the people in this town were about what they knew. How convinced they were about who was a pillar of the community and who was a bum.

Take his father. Most everyone who knew him—or thought they did—believed he was a great guy. Salt of the earth. After all, wasn’t he always there at community events, always helping out, always with a big ol’ smile on his face and a good word for everyone? The kids at school told Gabe how lucky he was to have such a “great guy” as his dad.

No wonder Gabe was so good at playing a part. He’d learned from a master.

He took a draw on his cigarette and blew the smoke out with a huff, watching it drift up into the night. People in this town were such idiots.

“Hey, you gonna smoke all those yourself, or you gonna share?”

Gabe tossed the pack of cigarettes to Danny. Much to his disgust, the lanky teen grabbed at them and missed. Gabe’s disgust only increased when Danny leaned over to pick them up and fell on his face.

“Man, he’s pickled.”

This from Ray, who could hardly stand up himself. Gabe shook his head and went to snatch up the cigarettes, giving Danny a prod with his foot. His friends were idiots. But they were all he had, so he put up with them. “Get up, jerkwad.”

Danny rolled onto his back, grinning up at Gabe like a stupefied Cheshire cat. “Nope. I like it here.”

Gabe had gone to Danny’s house right from school, not even stopping home to tell anyone where he was going. He’d pay for that, but he didn’t care. He just couldn’t stand the thought of being there …

Besides, Danny had told them that afternoon that his folks were out of town. This welcome news had been followed up with even more glad tidings. “And I know where they keep the key to the liquor cabinet.”

That had settled it. Gabe and Ray had hopped the bus with Danny, and they’d made a valiant stab at trying every bottle in the cabinet. It was sometime halfway through the bottle of Jack Daniels when Ray had the brilliant idea of going for a walk.

Gabe should have known better. Danny and Ray were sloppy drunks. But the idea of being outside, of walking the empty streets, was just too appealing.

He stared down at Danny’s sprawling form. Next time he was leaving these clowns behind and going out alone. He pulled his foot back, about to give Danny a real kick, when light split the darkness. Headlights! He crouched, pushing at Danny. “Get down, Ray!”

He peered up the street. The car was several blocks away, but that didn’t matter. Nobody was out this time of night. Nobody but the cops. Gabe groaned. Great. Just great. Just what he needed …

Danny scrambled to his knees, and the three of them huddled there, watching as the car stopped at the intersection, then headed down the street. Straight toward them.

“Oh, man …” Danny sounded like he was about to cry. “Oh, man … breaking curfew and being drunk. My old man’s gonna kill me.”

Gabe grabbed Danny’s sleeve and gave him a shake. “Shut
up.
Your old man won’t do a thing. He never does.” His stomach clenched. His old man, on the other hand, was another story.

It was definitely a cop car, and it was definitely headed their way. It was only a matter of seconds before the lights found them. He jumped when Ray grabbed his arm. Gabe spun, fist at the ready. “Are you
nuts?”

“Over there, man! Those bushes. We can hide behind them.”

Gabe followed Ray’s pointing finger, and relief surged through him at the sight of a row of dense shrubs lining the street. The perfect cover. He shoved Danny to his feet and the three of them ran. As they vaulted over the bushes Gabe barely restrained a victory whoop. The cops would never even know they were—

“Aaaaahhhhhh!”

Gabe’s smugness vanished in a rush of utter terror as he realized his feet hadn’t landed on the ground, They hadn’t landed on anything, because there wasn’t anything there. Nothing but air.

The bushes hadn’t lined the street. They lined the edge of a cliff.

Beamer Park. Why hadn’t he realized they were on Beamer Park Road? The road that ran above the park, which sat at the bottom of a sheer rock cliff. People were always squawking about the danger. “Some little kid is going to slip, go over the edge,” they whined. The town council had finally put up the bushes as a barrier, to keep anyone from getting too close to the edge.

Gabe’s dad had hooted when he heard about it. Raised his can of beer to the stupidity of the townspeople, the council. “Bushes! Oh yeah,
that’ll
work.” He took another swig. “Like even little kids aren’t smart enough to stay away from the edge of a cliff. I mean, how stupid do they think people are?”

All this ran through Gabe’s mind as he fell, slamming into the branches of the tall evergreen below him, each blow bringing a new wave of pain.
God … God! Please, if You get me through this, I’ll do whatever You want. Just don’t let Dad find ou—

He hit the ground.

His world exploded into a white-hot, searing wave of agony. Gabe clutched at the last shreds of consciousness, vaguely aware he couldn’t move … that every inch of his body was pain.

Am I dead?
He swallowed hard at the thought, gasping for air.
No, probably not. Death wouldn’t hurt this much.

Emotions jangled through him, a tumbled mass of confusion. He wanted to laugh. Almost as much as he wanted to scream.
Too bad I’m not dead, ’cuz I will be when Dad finds out about this. He’s going to kill me.

And, unlike Danny, Gabe knew his dad really could do just that. At the thought, stark fear clawed its way through him, grappling past the pain, clutching at him, telling him to get up. He tried. He really did. But it was no use. All he could do was moan.

No, wait. That wasn’t him. It was Ray. Ray was moaning.

“Man … oh, man … you broke my back …”

That was when Gabe realized the voice came from beneath him. He’d landed on Ray. It was Ray’s fault he wasn’t dead.

“Over here! They’re over here.” “Are they alive?”

Gabe managed to turn his head toward the voice, then closed his eyes against the flashing lights. The police. An ambulance. They were all there. Then they were beside him, talking, telling him they would contact his parents, that it was going to be okay.

Idiots. Stupid, stinking idiots. How could it be okay if they told his dad?

God,
please … don’t let Dad find out.

He opened his mouth to tell them not to call, not to say anything to his parents, but the words were choked off when hands gripped him, lifted him. Gabe screamed as everything faded, dimmed, pushed into oblivion by a searing, ravaging flash of pain.

Everything, that is, but fear. It didn’t let him enter the darkness alone. It clung to him, torturing him—a terrible companion in a terrible place.

“Gabe? Honey, wake up. Open your eyes.”

The coaxing voice reached to Gabe through the nightmarish darkness, pushing back the images that had been tormenting him—images of pain … of angry, punishing fists …

He shuddered, moaning. Soft hands brushed at his forehead, his cheek, and he turned toward them, almost weeping with relief when the darkness finally gave way and he opened his eyes.

His mother was there, sitting beside him, worry a heavy weight creasing her forehead. He wanted to reassure her, tell her he was fine, but when he opened his mouth, all that came
out was a croak. He cleared his throat, tried again. “I’m … okay, Mom.” Oh, that was convincing. He sounded like he had a whole pond full of frogs in his throat. He forced confidence to his voice, his face. “Don’t worry.”