Chapter 21
GRANT
The memory of Avery’s voice fills my head like a spiderweb; impossible to untangle.
It took every ounce of my concentration to even understand her to begin with.
I had to write the words on my arm in pen as she slurred away, and by the time I looked back to the phone to confirm I had it right, she was gone.
I’m a kingdom of tar,
Both vast and flat.
A place where travelers go tit for tat.
Come to me,
And you’ll find your past,
Reflecting darkly, holding fast.
I have no legs, no feet,
No ears,
But still your weeping is all I hear.
What am I?
Be there at noon.
I take a sip of coffee and turn the words over in my head for the thousandth time, little bits of the riddle crashing against the inside of my skull like pinballs.
I’m a kingdom of tar, both vast and flat.
A place where travelers go tit for tat. A kingdom of tar means a highway or a street.
It has to. Especially when paired with the tit for tat road rage clue.
What else can it be? It makes sense … until you take the second stanza into consideration.
Come to me, and you’ll find your past. Come to me—as in a location.
A place that apparently has some sort of meaning to me?
But what exactly? I’ve never been involved in a road rage incident.
I’ve never gone tit for tat with anyone in a car.
And the last stanza? It’s pure gibberish, the kind of bullshit line that always left me feeling stupid as a kid until someone smarter spouted the answer.
It’s all so infuriating. And so … bizarre.
Why did they make me rush home to meet a timeline that didn’t exist?
Why did they make me wait all night before contacting me?
And why do they want me to run all over town now, doing this—whatever the hell this is?
—chasing down the answer to some middle-school riddle in order to save my wife?
I don’t have the slightest clue. All I know is that from the moment they took her, I haven’t had a second to catch my breath.
I pause and take another drink of coffee.
It’s almost 10:00 a.m. and I’m already on my fourth cup of the morning despite my sour stomach.
I need the caffeine. It’s all I can do to focus with how frazzled I feel, how strung-out.
That, and the images of Avery won’t stop flashing through my head every ten seconds.
Her fist-blackened eye. Her swollen, distended lip.
The way her head wobbled when she spoke, like it carried too much weight for her neck.
And now, on top of all of that, I’m supposed to solve some fucking riddle in order to save her?
“Goddammit!”
I slam my fist on the table and send my coffee mug crashing to the floor.
When it shatters, I don’t bother cleaning it up.
I have to figure this thing out. I have to.
I don’t have a choice. I close my eyes and try to slow my pulse, then summon the words.
Kingdom of tar, kingdom of tar. Of all the clues, it’s the clearest. But if it’s not a highway or a street, then what can it possibly be?
A parking lot? And if it is that, which parking lot?
One that belongs to a store? There aren’t thousands of stores in Durango but there are enough that I’ll never be able to figure out the right one by noon.
No way in hell. If it even is a parking lot.
Play it out. Narrow it down.
I grind my teeth. I might as well. I don’t have a better lead at the moment.
There’s The Home Depot off River Road and the T.J.
Maxx off Camino Del Rio. There’s the mall, which is essentially one big parking lot.
There are the downtown tourist traps. All the souvenir shops packed with T-shirts and trinkets and toys.
There are dozens of restaurants. Fucking hell, I have no idea.
My mind returns to the final line. But still your weeping is all I hear.
Something about it feels personal. It’s written like it’s something that will happen to me.
Or something that did. But what that is, I have no idea.
Until I do.
It strikes like a bolt of lightning, so clear, I don’t know how I missed it before.
Here you fall. As a kid, an elderly man ran me over while backing out in a Walmart parking lot.
He came stumbling out of his boat of a sedan, burbling apologies, telling me he’d checked his mirror twice.
You sure came outta nowhere! I didn’t hear a word he said.
I was too busy writhing on the ground with a broken arm.
It took six weeks to heal and robbed me of the rest of my little league season.
It has to be it. It has to. Whoever wrote this knows me somehow.
It means this abduction is personal—that either Avery or I have done something to someone.
Exactly what, I don’t know. But it would explain why they still have my wife despite taking all of our money.
And that chills me to my core. It means there’s a deeper meaning to all of this and I have to keep playing along, dancing like a monkey, until I find out exactly what it is.
But I’ll do it. I’ll dance forever if that’s what it takes to keep my wife and child alive.
The sky crackles blue above me as I sweep my gaze over the “kingdom of tar.” And a kingdom it is.
The Walmart parking lot stretches far and wide all around me.
I don’t know where to go even though I’m early—a full ten minutes ahead of the high noon deadline.
Unless I’m wrong. What if I somehow misinterpreted the clues and I should be somewhere else right now?
What if I’ve already cost Avery her life?
“Stop it!” I hiss so loud that a gray-haired woman shoots me a disapproving look as she passes.
I ignore her and keep hawk-eying the parking lot.
This is the place. I’m certain of it. At this point, I don’t have a better guess, anyway.
My certainty fades when noon hits without incident and then ratchets toward panic when five more minutes slide past.
12:05.
12:08.
12:13.
What the fuck? I can’t help the thought.
Maybe I misread the clues after all. Maybe I’m not in the right spot.
I’ve been standing by my car in clear view—a black Acura sedan I picked up a year ago on sale from a dealership in Denver—so my location should be obvious.
I left the Yukon at home. Who it actually belongs to is anybody’s guess.
I tore through it this morning, searched the glove box and all the compartments and found nothing.
Which means it’s probably stolen. Continuing to drive it would be foolish.
But is that the car they’re looking for?
Is that why no one has approached me yet?
I check my watch for the thousandth time.
It’s now 12:17 and I feel like I’m about to slide out of my skin.
“Are you Grant Wilson?”
I spin around so fast I nearly fall. There’s a kid standing behind me, maybe fifteen years old, with black hair curling out from beneath a red and blue NHRA racing cap.
He’s wearing the same slightly bored expression as the courier from yesterday, holding something I recognize—something that makes every hair on my body stand on end.
Another manila envelope.
“Yeah,” I manage to choke out. “That’s me.”
“This is for you.” He raises the envelope, and I snatch it from his hand so fast it nearly leaves a burn mark on his palm.
“Who gave you this?” I ask.
The kid shrugs. “I don’t know. Some guy.”
He moves to leave, but I’m on him before he can, seizing his arm and yanking him back. “What does he look like?”
The boy’s eyes go wide, his gaze on my hand gripping his wrist.
“What does he look like?” I snarl again.
“I don’t know, man. Like any other guy. Let go of me.”
“Think,” I growl, tightening my grip instead. “It’s important.”
“He had blue eyes, okay? He gave me twenty bucks to give this to you. Shit! Let me go already!”
“Let go of the kid.”
I glance over my shoulder at a man wearing a flannel shirt, cowboy hat, and a pair of shit-kicker boots.
He’s shorter than me, and thinner. But he’s got plenty of muscle, and I can tell by his stance and the way he’s got his head cocked to the side he won’t shy away from a fight.
And I can’t get into it with this guy. It will bring way too much attention, which is the absolute last thing I need at the moment.
I release the kid, and he scrambles away as I raise my hands. “It was just a misunderstanding,” I say. “I don’t want any trouble.”
The man twists his lips to the side and sends a wad of tobacco juice to the blacktop. “It sure don’t look that way to me.”
I don’t reply. Nothing I say to this guy will make things better.
Instead, I slowly slide into my car and pray he’ll be gone when I look in the rearview mirror.
He’s not—he’s still standing there watching me with his arms crossed, his lower lip packed with chew.
I start the car and pull forward, not stopping again until I’ve driven around the back of the building and he’s completely out of sight.
And then I sit there, staring at the envelope resting in my lap, feeling like every nerve in my body is about to blow.
I don’t want to open this thing—I can’t handle another visual reminder of what they’re doing to my wife—but I have to.
What choice do I have? Whatever’s inside is my only chance of getting Avery back.
They won’t give her back. Not after all of this.
It’s another thought I instantly squash. I can’t spiral right now. Not when I need to concentrate on what’s in the envelope. Either way, after this, I have to find a discreet way to contact the police. I’ve already decided to. I can’t keep doing this on my own. I need help.
I peel the envelope open and tilt it down.
Something rolls out and drops onto my lap.
Bile rises up my throat. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
There’s a finger lying in my lap.
A fucking finger.
The world around me turns to slush. I gawk at it for a full ten seconds as blood from the severed digit seeps onto my jeans.
It looks fresh, the skin tinged pink, the nail painted a light blue.
A pale bit of bone extends from the base, roped in tendon.
Above it, there’s a wedding ring—one that belongs to my wife.
My stomach rolls, and I barely get the door open before I vomit.
When I pull myself back into the car, the finger is no longer on my lap.
It’s lying on the floorboard. It’s Avery’s finger.
I remember the pale blue nail polish from yesterday morning.
And I know the ring by heart. I’m the one who gave it to her.
I’m still staring at it when a familiar buzzing comes from the envelope.
Another phone. I tear it out of the envelope and hit the green accept button.
“You motherfucker! If you—”
“Grant?” The voice snuffs out my anger like a cold wind.
“Avery?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She’s crying as she says it, her voice thick.
“Why are they doing this to us?”
“They say …” She sniffs and then starts again. “They say it’s a warning.”
“Jesus! For what? I’ve done everything they’ve asked.”
“They think you’ll go to the police. They told me they’ll send more body parts if you do.”
Warmth trails down my face. Tears hit my lips. I’ll kill them for this. I will tear them apart. “I won’t contact the cops,” I say through gritted teeth. “I swear. I’ll do whatever they want.”
A man’s voice rises muffled in the background, sounding angry. I can’t make out the words. My heart thumps harder.
“Baby, where are you?” I ask. “Tell me where you are.”
There’s a long silence, and then: “They say I have to read the next riddle now. Grant, I’m so scared.”
There’s a shout, followed by the cold smack of a hand on flesh. Avery shrieks.
“Leave her alone!” I roar into the phone. “Hurt me instead!”
The scuffle ends and Avery returns, her voice quivering. “I—I have to start now. Do you have something to write with?”
I scrabble for a pen and pull a black ball point out of the console as she begins.
“Search for a place with … with clinical air. Where worried souls bring their despair.” She hesitates, and I can hear her sniffling, fighting through tears. “Inside, you’ll find what’s meant to heal, instead will leave a wound to fill.”
Her voice fades, and I wait for her to continue, the pen hovering over the manila envelope. “Is that it? Is there more?”
“You have until one-thirty,” she says. “I have to go now.”
“No, Avery! Wait!”
But the line is already dead.
I stare through the windshield, gutted. I don’t look at the finger. What they’ve done to her is unthinkable. I can’t begin to imagine her pain. I wipe the tears from my eyes and tell myself to get it together. I can’t fall apart. Not when I have another fucking riddle to solve.