Their father.
Sam had not seen or heard from Emily since the night before.
Only Nora, reached by Debbie Bell, had something to add. On her break from lifeguard duty, she had received texts.
But they made no sense. They were just jumbles of letters. That was anything but reassuring.
So the wheels of the system were now turning.
But Sam could hear a voice. It said only one thing.
Too late.
Too late.
The idea of his father with Emily was beyond comprehension. Nothing, nothing, nothing could be worse.
He pressed down on the gas as the world outside blurred.
This was what he had done. This was what Sam had brought to her world. Hadn’t he known all along that if he looked over his shoulder, his father would be there?
Clarence felt like grinding his teeth until they turned to salt.
People always let him down.
He couldn’t even count on the two girls to act like girls.
Because there was something seriously wrong with both of them.
The big rig had broken free of the SUV, but the collision didn’t stop the madness because the truck was still moving.
And he could now see them behind the wheel.
The eighteen-wheeler was turning in a big loop and heading around the parking lot toward his silver Honda.
They were closing his options.
Clarence reached the car, and the passenger-side door and the trunk were still open. He pounded his fist onto the lid, and it shut.
He then climbed inside, sitting in the pile of broken glass as he fished out the keys from his pocket. In seconds the ignition turned over.
He put his foot on the gas and the car bucked forward, just as the big rig barreled straight for him.
They were screaming. Loud. Ear-splitting cries that were involuntary.
No longer crouched on the black plastic floor mats, they were both up. Destiny was on the edge of the seat, fully in control of the eighteen-wheeler.
She kept her foot depressed on the gas. “He’s not getting away!”
This didn’t make any sense to Emily. “But we want him to get away! We want him as far away as he can get!”
Destiny’s eyes narrowed in fury. “We want him to pay for what he’s done!”
With that, the big rig truck hit the back of the silver car just as it began to move.
If it had been a second earlier, she’d have slammed into him full force. But the Honda’s acceleration meant that the impact was like a hungry shark preying on a smaller fish. The truck got only a taste of the tail.
The silver car spun hard, doing a full 360-degree turn as the bumper ripped right off like a torn fingernail.
Inside, Clarence gripped the wheel and spit into the dashboard as he stepped on the accelerator.
The Honda wobbled, then corrected, gathering speed as it moved across the parking lot toward the exit.
Destiny didn’t think of herself as a gamer, but she’d hung out with guys who were.
And so she’d taken her turn in 3-D digital situations where she was chasing bad guys, going up and over obstacles, in pursuit of justice. Or points in the game.
Now that she and Emily were free of him, she disconnected from reality.
Fired up by a flood of adrenaline and a lifetime of disappointment and frustration, Destiny Verbeck felt the tables turn.
She could be the tormentor now.
And Emily, shouting at her side, couldn’t have stopped her if she’d wanted to.
The ramp from the rest stop back to the highway was a long road lined with tall trees. A series of traffic cones marked off work being done.
Clarence hit two of the temporary barriers and sent them flying as he accelerated. He had a lightweight sedan.
The maniac girls behind him had eighteen wheels of cargo.
He was certain that he’d be out of sight before they could even maneuver the big rig onto the highway.
Now, as he merged onto Route 97, he was going above the speed limit, which was something he loathed doing. Only amateurs got pulled over by the cops for driving too fast.
But speeding was a necessary evil.
For a second he lost his focus. In this world, he wondered, what evil wasn’t necessary?
Then Clarence looked into his rearview mirror, and suddenly the unimaginable appeared.
The truck was there.
He tried to make sense of the situation. What exactly did the girls think they were doing?
And then it became clear.
While the truck was slow to gain momentum, it was a beast on the road. And right now it was hauling down the highway. The air horn was blaring, and it was gaining on him.
There was no mistaking what was happening.
The big rig was coming after him.
They were giddy.
They had survived, and in their shocked state they were no longer rational in any sense of the word. The fear that had pulsed through their veins now seemed to fuel a kind of crazed hysteria.
And they were both infected. Destiny wasn’t going to back down, and suddenly the illogical seemed to Emily like the only thing to do.
Destiny had shown her how to work the air horn, and Emily now tugged on it, sending a shock of sound into the world.
They were outlaws and they were crime fighters. They were asking for attention. They were telling the world.
They were alerting the police, the authorities, and anyone and everyone to see what was happening. They were saying, Look at the man speeding away in the silver car.
Destiny, half standing like a kid who has stolen her parents’ car, kept her little foot pressed to the floor on the gas pedal.
And even when the semitrailer began to wobble, rocking the tractor unit so that the girls felt a vibrating shimmy, the speed of the big rig kept increasing.
Over the roar of the engine, Destiny screamed as loud as she could: “Who’s in charge now?”
He had no choice.
He was going over ninety-five miles an hour, and everything around him started to shake.
As he went over one hundred miles an hour the steering wheel began to vibrate so strongly that he was having trouble holding on.
And then the highway curved.
He tried to curve with it.
But it wasn’t possible.
As he lost control the silver Honda flew out of the lane and caught the end of a guardrail.
If it had hit the structure even a foot earlier, the outcome would have been different. The metal band would have deflected the impact to the concrete posts.
But he struck the tip of the safety structure.
This section of metal bent down into the blacktop. It was the end of the line; it absorbed nothing and acted as a kind of springboard.
The Honda collided with the railing at its weakest point and was launched. Clarence and the vehicle rocketed out into the open space, traveling more than fifty yards and then slamming into the volcanic hillside.
The car then flipped and rolled down the embankment like a smashed toy.
But the journey wasn’t over.
The mountainside dropped off, and the Honda fell again, only this time it disappeared entirely from view.
The tangle of twisted metal finally came to rest deep in the ravine.
Destiny took her foot off the gas.
She, too, had to deal with the bend in the roadway.
Experience told her that the brakes weren’t going to be enough. So she applied the clutch and, double-pumping, downshifted like a pro, moving her foot on the pedals as she expertly slowed ten tons of moving metal.
And where Clarence had failed, Destiny succeeded.
She blew, too, out of her lane, but skimming along the edge of the guardrail, sparks flying from metal on metal, she stayed in control of her vehicle.
She wasn’t afraid.
She felt powerful.
All the while she could hear the voice
of a video game saying, “This is the last dance for Lance Vance.”
So maybe it was worth playing mindless arcade games for all those hours.
Maybe there was something to be learned from spending time in a virtual world.
49
Sam was driving faster than he’d ever traveled on a highway.
And all he wanted was for a state patrol officer to pull them over.
But no one who could help materialized.
Bobby kept his eyes on the pulsing dot of the GPS on his cell phone. “Slow down. We’re almost there.”
Since the revelation of Sam’s father’s escape, the two boys had barely spoken.
Sam put on the brakes. The two boys stared at the phone screen.
Their location and the dropped pin from the OnBoard transmitter were now the same.
But Bobby’s SUV wasn’t on the side of the highway. Instead, the two boys saw the sign for the rest stop. Sam put on his turn indicator. “It must be in there.”
Bobby stared at the sign. “But it’s closed.”
Sam pulled off, following the curve of the access road.
As they entered the parking lot they were confronted with two devastating things.
They saw Bobby Ellis’s destroyed SUV up on the curb by the cinder-block bathroom.
And thirty yards away, an elderly man lay on his back on the asphalt in a pool of dark liquid.
There were three oily-looking crows, several feet from the body, staring as if they were old-school crime reporters.
Bobby’s hand went to his mouth. “OhmyGod!”
Sam slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a stop. The boys got out and started for the body, but Sam knew right away.
The guy was gone. Sam had seen a dead body before. More than once.
Bobby started to breathe in short, shallow gulps and then turned away, losing the contents of his stomach.
Sam’s eyes shifted focus from the dead man to something on the ground in the middle of the parking lot. He saw an orange slipper.
Sam went for it.
He was certain it had belonged to Destiny.
Sam bellowed as if he’d lost an animal and it would appear if he called with enough urgency in his cries:
“Emily! Emily! Em-il-y!”
But the swaying pine trees swallowed up his voice, and no one responded.
Sam ran across the parking lot to the cinder-block bathrooms as he continued to shout, using all his lung power.
“Emily!”
He disappeared into the building. Three stalls. Each one with a door partially open. No one there.
He bolted to the men’s side. Two stalls and a urinal. Empty. He shouted anyway.
“Emily!”
Sam emerged from the building to find Bobby sitting on the curb, crying.
The alarming sight of Bobby Ellis falling apart shook Sam into a new reality.
The air, he realized, smelled like smoke. The sky had gone from blue to milky white. Small particles of ash were falling from above.
Death was all around them now.
He had imagined multiple scenarios for what they’d see, and this was just so much worse than anything he’d come up with.
Sam pulled the cell phone from his pocket and hit three numbers. It was only a few second before he was saying:
“This is an emergency.…”
50
Clarence smelled gasoline.
He opened his eyes and realized he was staring at a tree. But it was growing the wrong way. It was upside down.
He shut his eyes and tried to center himself.
Literally.
His head felt like it might explode.
Clarence worked to steady his gaze.
He was in what was left of the Honda. He was wedged in at an angle in the front seat. Upside down. Tight. Like the car had been dropped into a giant trash compactor.
As his eyes focused he could see that each piece of plastic and metal and molded-to-fit machinery was now smashed. It had all been compressed and collapsed.
Everything was destroyed.
Except him.
He was, he thought, the greatest crash dummy of all time.
Because he felt certain that he could still put two and two together and get five by taking something that wasn’t his.
And then he tried to move.
His leg was trapped.
And he realized that there was a day when having lost a limb just below the knee was an advantage.
If surgeons hadn’t sawed off his left leg, it would have been crushed, because his artificial limb was now garbage.
Clarence inched his fingers down to below his knee and released the metal pin. His dummy was being left behind.
He then began a process. He wiggled and squirmed, sucking his breath in and out as he shifted his position by fractions of an inch. He was a snake slithering through the smallest of openings.
He knew that staying in the car meant one thing. Smoke was rising from what was left of the engine.
He may have survived slamming into a mountain and rolling down a hillside, but he wouldn’t last long in a car that went up in flames.
His jaw was throbbing, and he gathered the liquid in his mouth and spit. A bloody molar landed on what had been the front seat. He hoped it was the tooth that ached every morning when he woke up.
Right now everything on his body hurt, so it was impossible to tell.
Clarence felt the side of his head. His left ear was torn away from his skull and dangled as a mess of crushed flesh against his neck. He grabbed the cartilage and pulled off what remained of the flap of tissue.
That was better.
Even if it meant more bleeding.
As he gasped for air he felt certain that one of his lungs was punctured.
Covered in sticky sweat, with blood leaking from his skull, Clarence wormed his way to freedom.
He didn’t have his dummy, and he wasn’t sure he could stand, even if he had. But he was in one piece as he dragged himself away from the wreck. And that’s all that mattered.
He was alive.
When he was only a short distance from the smoking Honda, what was left of the six-month-old sedan exploded into a fireball.
The heat burned his eyebrows and singed all the hair from his arms.
Even his eyelashes were crispy.
The coppery curls on top of his head had fused into what felt like a hairnet.
Then smoke thickened around him, changing color from black to white.
Clarence looked back to see that the brush on the uphill side of the silver car had ignited.
He stared, dry-eyed and unblinking, as the blaze later known as the Bear Paw Fire spread up the mountainside.
51
It was a windy day. And that made the difference.
The undergrowth in the forest, called “dog hair” by loggers and “fire ladder” by people who had to combat blazes, was thick in the area. It had been a mild winter and an early spring, and the vegetation had turned to the equivalent of straw.
The fire, hopscotching from the burning Honda, had an easy time unfolding in all directions. The breeze coming from the west drove it straight up the hill toward the highway.
The smoke turned the light orange.
It was as if a gauzy ginger curtain had been pulled in front of the sun.
Emily looked over at Destiny, who had pushed herself away from the steering wheel and was slumped deep into the driver’s seat.
Moments before they had been victors.
But now they sat in silence for five minutes. They had returned to being victims.
Emily found her voice and managed to whisper, “Did we just run him off the road?”
Destiny stared through the empty windshield. “He did that to himself.”
Emily took in a deep breath. She could see the column of rising smoke in the distance. “There’s a fire. Down below where his car went over.”
Destiny had to pull herself up to get a bett
er look. Adrenaline still pumped through their bodies, but they were emotionally crashing. Hard.
“I guess he really messed with the wrong two girls.”
Emily stared at her hand. It was shaking. She realized that her knees were hitting each other. By looking at the side mirror, she could see the back of the big rig. It took up part of the lane behind them.
“We’re on a curve. We should move the truck. And we have to go back to the rest stop. We left that man there. We have to tell people.”
Destiny nodded as Emily continued: “We have to report the car crash, and now the fire.”
Destiny turned the key in the ignition, and the big rig fired to life. “Maybe you should make us a to-do list.”
Emily took the suggestion literally. “First thing is go back to the dead man.”
Destiny added, “And then we report that your kidnapper crashed his car.”
“And we think that when he plunged into the gorge, it might have started a forest fire.”
Destiny put the truck into gear. “Did we forget any other disasters?”
Little tears formed in the corners of Emily’s eyes. “You hooked up with my boyfriend. That seemed like a catastrophe at the time.”
Destiny’s face fell. “Correction: I tried to hook up with Sam. I admit that. But I got nowhere. I climbed into his lap and couldn’t make it happen. On any level.”
Emily looked doubtful. “Really?”
Destiny nodded again. “After everything we’ve been through, you think I’d lie to you?”
Emily shrugged. “You saved my life. You’re entitled to all kinds of bad behavior.”
Destiny found the hazard lights on the console and flipped the switch, sending everything on the outside of the truck blinking. “Up until today, all I had was bad behavior. Maybe I just turned the corner.” Then she looked down at her feet. She was wearing only one orange slipper. “I left my shoe back in the parking lot. I hope it’s still there.”
“I’ll buy you another pair when we’re back home.”
Destiny’s eyes suddenly glistened. “I don’t have a home.”
Emily’s look said it all. “You do now.”
Destiny grabbed the air horn as she maneuvered the big rig off the shoulder and onto the highway.