Chapter 9
We drive for more than twelve hours, take turns sleeping, arrive just before noon on Christmas Day.
The world is a blanket of snow, the sky a sulky gray.
We sit awhile at a distance and watch the little cabin.
It’s dark, nestled in a stand of snow-dusted pine, a picture postcard.
Inside it’s stocked with canned goods and other nonperishables.
Out back there’s a root cellar, packed with more supplies.
There are no tracks in the snow—no tire tread on the hilly drive up, no footprints that we can see. Of course, they might have approached the house from the woods behind. But that would be a lot more difficult.
We tossed our phones about halfway up, smashed them and chucked them into an icy river.
Julian had a spare can of gas, so we had to stop only once.
That’s where they get you these days when you’re on the run.
Gas stations all have cameras now. We paid cash, which is also a red flag, but the man at the counter was old with long gray hair and a MAGA cap and seemed more interested in the paperback he was reading than in me.
On the television screen behind him, I saw the newscast about Bryce’s murder.
Christmas Eve Home Invasion, the banner read.
Child Spared. There was a grainy image of Apple in a police officer’s arms.
Okay. There’s that at least. If I do nothing else good in my life, at least I saved Apple.
We pull off the road into the trees and watch the house awhile longer. There’s not a single sound or movement, and after a while, we decide we’re safe enough to hike through the woods and approach the house from behind.
This place is off the grid. Power comes from a generator.
Well and septic tank on the property. No other houses for at least ten miles.
I have spent only a couple of nights here, back when I first bought it and got it set up.
I’ve checked on it a couple of times, to make sure the pipes didn’t burst, that no squatters had taken residence.
“You were wrong about me,” he says as we both watch a little brown bird bounce on a bare branch, still in the car. “I never enjoyed it. Never took pleasure in it.”
“Okay,” I say, drawing out the word like Dr. Black.
“I’ve been in therapy,” he tells me. “I think I was just doing what I needed to do to survive. I was in a bad place when Nora found me. She was the first person to tell me I was okay just the way I was. Before Nora, I’d been kicked out of every foster home, aged out of the system, got booted from the army. I was lost, broken.”
“She has a gift for finding us, doesn’t she? The ones who will do anything for her.”
He nods slowly. He looks older, tired. Lines around his eyes, three days of stubble.
“Anyway,” he says, voice soft. “I wanted you to know that. I’m not as morally bankrupt as you think.”
“I’m in no place to judge you or anyone.”
Finally, we trek through the woods, and I key us in through the locked back door that leads into the kitchen.
While I take covers off the furniture, he goes back out to turn on the generator.
The lights come up. He builds a fire while I heat up cans of tomato soup on the stove, put some popcorn in the microwave.
After we eat, we make love on the rug by the fire.
Then we pull the blanket from the couch and lie there, lights out, the only illumination coming from the fireplace.
Shadows dance on the walls. Outside the wind howls.
I think about how it’s Christmas Day, and I hope Apple is with her mother and that she got some presents, at least.
“I might have a bargaining chip,” he says after a stretch of silence. “For Nora.”
“Your journals,” I say.
He reaches for his pants, pulls a thumb drive from the pocket.
“The actual journals are locked up in a safe-deposit box, with instructions at a lawyer’s office to release them to the police in the event that anything happens to us—you, me, or both.
If anything happens to me, you have this.
All the information contained in the journals is here on this drive.
Names, dates, my research about who might have wanted the target damaged or destroyed and why.
The location of Nora’s offices, everything I know about her and Buz. ”
“Smart,” I say. His eyes are lashed as thickly as a girl’s, his cheekbones defined as ridges; his hazel stare is trained on me.
“Would you believe me if I told you I love you?”
My mother was the last person to tell me she loved me. Julian and I never said it; it always seemed so normie, like love was something for other people. I kiss him deeply.
“I love you too.”
We make love again, doze by the fire.
The sharp crack from behind the house wakes us both, our eyes locking in the dim light from the embers. Quickly, quietly, we pull on our clothes.
They’re here for us.
In the bedroom there’s a cedar chest with a revolver and a shotgun.
I retrieve them, loaded and ready to use, and return to Julian, who stays crouched by the fireplace.
He takes the shotgun and rests the barrel on the arm of the sofa, pointing toward the back door.
I watch the windows behind us, looking out onto the road.
Finally, there’s just a knock at the door.
“Kids,” comes a muffled voice. “Let’s talk.”
Nora.