Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
IMANI WASHINGTON’S WHOLE WORLD WAS snow.
After fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, she and Sharise were far from the border of her family’s property, away from the familiar path they had mapped yesterday even in their short time on the trail.
The Beast’s tracks had led them beyond the pine groves to land with barely any downhill grade, a new clearing of snow with rocks bleeding through.
And Imani was studying every detail, especially since the lower grade had slowed their speed.
She looked for signs of Mom—anything, good or bad.
But what could be good? So she kept her eyes on the snow’s bumps and grooves.
The blue ice patches hidden in the powder.
Pine cones and the sharp tips of gray stones jutting out in her path.
The different depths of the Beast’s circuitous grooves; sometimes deeper, sometimes shallower, as if at times it floated rather than sliding.
She was staring down at the snow with so much focus as she balanced on her snowboard that she’d nearly hit a tree more than once, snapping her eyes up when Sharise called out a warning, breaking their unspoken rule not to make a sound.
They were tracking the Beast, but the Beast didn’t need to know that.
Imani heard Sharise sob behind her. She had been whimpering or crying much of the time, although she had mostly stayed on her feet.
But Sharise was lagging so far behind Imani that she circled back and skidded to a stop to wait for Sharise to catch up to her, shifting the rifle into her hands so she could fire it if she needed to.
Neither of them wanted to be alone on the Beast’s hunting grounds.
Imani’s fingers on her right hand were frigid because she was only wearing her left glove, but she wanted to make sure her trigger finger could fire. She had argued for the right to carry the gun, so she couldn’t let her glove get in the way.
Imani only noticed how hard she was breathing when she stopped moving and could hear the rasping breaths in her chest. Sharise was breathing in long clouds too.
They had never crossed a long terrain on their snowboards, just the simpler downhill trails at Big Bear.
Imani had barely noticed her backpack when they first went down the ski trail, but now it felt like a fifty-pound stone on her back.
And her thighs usually felt sore the day after snowboarding, but today her thighs and calves were already tight with painful bands of fatigue.
Stopping always made the tightness worse.
Besides, they needed to catch up to Mom.
Another pine grove ahead looked so much like the one they had already passed through that they could be going in a circle.
But they weren’t. They had come so far that when she glanced behind them, nothing looked familiar.
The ridge leading back up to Bear Creek Lodge was nowhere in sight.
Only their tracks in the snow would lead them home, or lead someone to them.
As Sharise approached, her face was wrenched with such misery that Imani almost reflexively started crying too.
But she had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry yet.
She would only let herself cry if they found Mom’s dead body.
Or… a part of her body, like the deer’s head or the hand Dad had found under the Jeep.
She wouldn’t cry unless she knew for sure that Mom was really gone.
But Sharise’s tears and snot were caked in white streaks across her dark skin. “Imani…” she panted. “We have to go back.”
“There’s still a trail!” Imani said.
Sharise was shaking her head. She pointed an unsteady finger ahead.
Imani followed her sister’s pointing finger and realized that she’d been so absorbed in the snow a few feet in front of her that she had missed what Sharise had seen two dozen yards ahead, right before a large snowdrift fencing in the tree line—the trail stopped.
The familiar zigzag continued within a few foot of the snowdrift… and vanished.
“Maybe that’s where Mom is,” Imani whispered. “In that mound!”
“Imani, that thing is so big!” Sharise said, blubbering again. “It moves so fast!”
“I have a gun.”
“You don’t even know if that’s loaded!” Sharise said, her voice hoarse from crying. “Please. Now we know it might be here. Let’s go get help.”
“Dad’s getting help.”
Sharise sobbed again, her face contorting in that awful way, and Imani knew why. They didn’t know if Dad was alive either, much less if he was getting help. He might be in a coma back on the lodge floor.
“If it took Mom under the snow, she can’t breathe!” Imani said, raising her voice, forgetting their rule to stay quiet.
Sharise’s sobs burned Imani’s throat. Sharise’s tears tried to spill from Imani’s eyes. Imani could hear the hysteria and delusion in her own words.
“Imani… listen to me… You saw what that thing did to her. Mom is dead—”
“No!” Imani said. She whipped the rifle strap from over her shoulder so she could examine the Winchester at every angle. She needed to figure out if it was loaded. She turned the gun on its side and saw a lever, which she pushed away from her. The rifle spit out a casing.
Sharise gasped and stepped back, expecting the rifle to spontaneously fire. Imani slid the lever back into place with a clack, avoiding the trigger. Was that enough? Was it reloaded now?
“Now it’s ready,” Imani said.
“Imani, I’m scared,” Sharise said, sobbing. Her shoulders shook. Maybe all of her was shaking.
“That’s because you think Mom is dead,” Imani said. “If you thought we could save her, you wouldn’t be scared. You would just be thinking about her.”
“I’m thinking about you,” Sharise said. “Do you think Mom would want us to die out here? She would want to protect us. I want to go back to Dad. I can’t leave you, but I can’t be out here with that thing. Dad had the gun too—and you saw what happened to him—”
“Stop talking.” Sharise’s certainty that Mom was dead made the ground seem to shake. What if she was leading Sharise on this dangerous chase out of shock because reality was too horrible to imagine? What if her entire family died today, the born and the unborn?
Miraculously, Sharise listened to her and went quiet except for her whimpers.
Now Imani was sorry that she had thought of her sister as a useless Barbra in the car, because that wasn’t fair.
She was the one putting them in danger, not Sharise.
It did sound crazy to believe that Mom was alive, and it definitely was crazy to be tracking this Beast by themselves—and Sharise was doing this for her, not to find Mom.
Finding Mom might be so gruesome that the sight would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Imani knew that. Neither of them should be here… and yet…
Imani unbuckled one of her bootstraps and walked back toward Sharise with her snowboard crossways, keeping the downhill edge raised so she wouldn’t slide down before she was ready. Once she reached Sharise, Imani put her hand on her sister’s shoulder the way Mom would have.
“I have to do this,” Imani whispered to Sharise’s sweat-damp hair over her ear. “You can stay back here if you want—be ready to run like hell if something happens. But we’ve come this far… and I have to. If the trail is gone… and there’s no sign of Mom… I’ll go back with you.”
Sharise clung to Imani’s arm, pressing to the bone. “I can’t watch it happen again.”
“Don’t watch, then,” Imani said. “Just close your eyes.”
Sharise looked at her, wide-eyed and appalled.
She let out a hysterical combined laugh and sob.
“That won’t help!” she said, and Imani laughed softly with her.
Laughter threatened to take control of Imani, trying to rise in her throat, but she fought laughter as much as she fought tears.
Neither would help them now. Laughing or crying would curl her into a helpless ball.
Close her eyes—yeah, right. They didn’t dare close their eyes out here, so close to the Beast. Imani kept her eyes locked on the tree line ahead, looking for motion in the shadows.
She expected the Beast to fly toward them from the snowdrifts propped against the thinner trees.
The only motion was the broad wings and white crown of what looked like a bald eagle flying high overhead, a rare sight that would have delighted Imani on any other day.
Today, she only envied the majestic bird’s wings.
Could that eagle see where their mother was?
“Fine,” Sharise said. “I’ll go with you.
But you promise to go back if it’s the end of the trail.
” Absurdly, she held out her trembling hand to shake Imani’s like they were making a business deal.
Sharise’s fingers were cold. Either she didn’t have her gloves, or she had forgotten to wear them.
When they climbed into the rental car that morning, they hadn’t expected to need their gloves, like Mom hadn’t thought she would need her jacket.
(Why hadn’t she insisted that Mom take her jacket anyway instead of that stupid robe? Mom really, really needed her jacket.)
“Promise,” Imani said, locking cold fingers with her sister’s. Instead of a formal handshake, they were hanging on to each other for their lives.
“Your hand is freezing,” Sharise said, surprised.
“Yours too.”
It was easier to notice her sister’s discomfort than her own, Imani realized.
When she was on her snowboard, she barely felt anything.
Clinging their hands together felt good even if they couldn’t give each other warmth.
They hung on for a long time, like it was the last time.
The tremors in Sharise’s fingers finally calmed as she gathered her nerves.
“Okay,” Sharise said, her nostrils still bubbling. “Let’s go. But slowly.”