Chapter 40 Gunner
Gunner
“Dad!”
The scream is so loud, so shocking, that I almost fall down the rest of the stairs and directly into the Christmas tree.
I spin around, wondering what the fuck is going on with my son now, and see that he’s no longer the kid who was standing in his doorway moments ago, shouting at me and denying having Taryn in his bedroom. Despite the fact that I saw her go in there and know exactly what they were doing.
The memory of it sets my body momentarily on fire again as I remember the rage bubbling inside me at the thought of her being with anyone else, but then Gabe comes skidding toward me and I focus. He looks panicked. Worse than that. He looks horrified.
I catch him before he can go hurtling past me and hold him back to look at him.
“What? Gabe, what’s going on?”
“Taryn,” he gasps, breathing hard. “She’s gone. And so is all her stuff.”
“All her stuff? What does—”
I don’t finish the question because I’m interrupted by the sound of an engine roaring to life in the driveway. A truck’s engine. Moments later the tires screech as someone puts it into gear and steps on the gas too hard.
Gabe and I stare at each other, and I’m sure we’re both wearing the exact same expression of shock and panic. Because there are only three people in this house who can drive, and two of them are standing on these stairs.
The other is a girl who tends to run every time she gets upset, and evidently has every bad idea known to man.
She’s leaving again, and on a night when the road is going to be even more dangerous than it was before.
Yes, it’s stopped snowing, but the snow is melting and wet, now, and that will make the road icy.
And the snow around it more prone to avalanche.
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
Gabe grabs my arm and squeezes, and we take off down the stairs together.
Because it’s not a night to be out on the road alone—particularly for a girl who doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing behind the wheel.
It’s cold and icy and dark, and she’s got to be upset about something or she wouldn’t be running.
We’ve seen a night like this before.
Though I stop myself before I finish that thought. Because I can’t bear the thought of how that night ended.
* * *
Gabe and I jump into the closest ATV and tear out of the driveway after her.
It’s not the fastest vehicle but it’s the most stable in this sort of weather, and if Taryn has any brains, she won’t be going too quickly anyhow.
I don’t know why she thought she needed to leave right now, but I can guess that Gabe and I screaming at each other probably had something to do with it.
Jesus, the girl is already convinced that she doesn’t belong anywhere, and now she’s come to a house where the men can’t even be decent to each other.
Where they’re literally fighting like dogs over her.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I breathe, leaning over the steering wheel and wishing to hell I’d had this thing altered to be faster.
I need to get to where she is. Need to get in front of her so I can force her to slow down.
Fuck, I just need to catch up with her and tell her to get off the fucking road before she gets herself killed.
Jesus Christ, killed. No. I couldn’t stand it. I’ll die myself if anything happens to her, and the thought is so ludicrous, so overdramatic, that it actually takes my mind off what’s going on for just a second, and I start to plan.
“Where’s she going?” I ask my son.
“Dad, it’s not like she left a note,” he replies quickly. “But she’s got to be heading down the hill. That’s where she was going before.”
“Shit,” I say again. If she was going into town, at least the drive would be flat. It wouldn’t be ideal, but there’s no cliff between here and town, and very few curves to deal with. It would have been an easy drive.
Going down the hill, on the other hand... Curves a plenty. Cliffs that drop off into nothing. Mountains prone to dropping literal tons of snow on the road at any moment. Particularly when that slow is already slushy and it’s not getting cold enough at night to refreeze it.
“Yes,” Gabe says, as if he can hear my thoughts.
I don’t answer him this time. I lay onto the gas, pressing the pedal all the way to the floor, and start praying. God, please don’t take her away. Please don’t take her away. I can’t stand it. It’ll kill me.
It’ll kill my son even deader, and I can’t stand that, either.
I tear down the road, fighting to control the ATV whenever we hit a spot of ice and thinking for the fifteenth time this year that I need to get new tires for the fleet.
We go through them so quickly in the winter, with the freezing temps, and once they get bald, the ATVs get harder to drive.
Way more prone to slipping. I slow up a bit but still hit the next curve too quickly, and we slip on the asphalt a little before I can regain control.
By the time we hit the straightaway, Gabe’s hands are white-knuckled on the dashboard and my heart is about to pound through my ribs.
But I can see the truck ahead of us.
“There she is,” Gabe says unnecessarily.
“Thanks for the update,” I say, but there’s no heat in it. For the first time in years, I feel like Gabe and I are on the same team, fighting for the same thing instead of butting heads and standing against each other. Blaming each other for something that’s happened.
For the first time in far too long, we have the same goal, and we’re going to stand together to make sure we accomplish it.
As we watch, though, the brake lights on the truck suddenly light up and the back wheels start to skid, and a moment later the truck is going sideways, slipping across the asphalt in a way that can only mean one thing.
“Ice,” I hiss.
I immediately slow, but not enough to stop our momentum entirely, and when we hit the same ice patch, I want to kill myself.
Taryn is already sliding and it’s not going to do her any good if we get into the same position.
I need the ATV to be whole so that when she inevitably crashes the truck, I have a way to get her home and into the warmth of the house.
I need a way to get us all home.
I work the wheel until I have control of the ATV again, and then focus on the truck to see Taryn coming out of the turn erratically, barely in command of the truck.
“God, she’s a terrible driver,” I mutter.
Gabe barks out a laugh but quickly strangles it when the truck begins to skid the other way, and I realize she might not be a terrible driver after all.
She just doesn’t have control of the truck. It’s essentially driving itself at this point.
She jerks the wheel and sends it in the other direction, and for a moment I think she’s going to be okay. But then the truck starts spinning in circles, moving more and more quickly as it heads down the road and directly toward a cliff that I know has a drop hundreds of feet deep on the other side.
“Oh my God,” Gabe breathes. “The cliff.”
“I know, the cliff,” I reply.
Because I know that cliff.
It’s the same one my ex-wife went over.
And I can’t believe the horrible irony of this situation. We’re about to lose Taryn in the exact place where we lost Natalie.
Before that can happen, though, I hear a rumble and feel shaking through tires of the ATV, and my heart freezes. Because I thought things were bad before.
But they’re about to get a whole lot worse.
Taryn’s still sliding across the road and my brain is racing, trying to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do here.
Everything is moving in slow motion, the actions delayed and the world around us holding its breath in horror.
And while my eyes are fixed to her and my brain is trying to sort through the shaking below us, she comes to an abrupt stop.
My God, she’s hit a tree.
Of course she’s hit a tree.
And the moment she stops, I squeal to a stop as well and Gabe and I jump from the ATV and start racing for her.
Because we both know what the rumbling in the ground means.
It’s the shake that happens when an avalanche is about to come down on us.
It’s not here yet but the snow is coming.
The mountainside is about to slide down and bury all of us.
And if we don’t get Taryn the hell out of that truck, it’s going to take her with it, the same way it took Natalie nearly twenty years ago.