C Box - Below Zero

When he recovered, he called Marybeth. It was after one in the morning, but he knew she’d be awake.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Nearly to Casper,” he said. Which meant still three hours away.

“This won’t be like our usual reunion,” she said, as if in warning.

“I know.” The only good thing about the distance of his district from their home was getting back together. They missed each other and yearned for each other terribly, and seeing each other was still… wild. Not this time, though.

He said, “You know what’s always bothered me about that day on Battle Mountain? I’ve replayed that day over and over in my head for six years. But you know what’s always bothered me the most?”

“What?”

“If it had been Sheridan or Lucy in that trailer, I think I would have gone in after either one of them.”

“You could have been killed trying, Joe.”

“I know that. But I think I would have tried. I think something inside of me would have made me go into that camp after them, after my daughters. I wouldn’t have waited to see how the situation played out like I did with our foster child. That’s always haunted me…”

There was a long pause. “So what are you saying?”

“That if there’s even a remote chance-even a sliver of a chance-that April is alive, I don’t want to screw up again. I want to find her and save her. I want to set things right.”

“Joe… it’s time you let that go. I don’t think you did the wrong thing that day. You would have been killed trying, and where would that leave the rest of us?”

He didn’t respond, couldn’t respond.

After a long time, Marybeth said, “Joe, I can’t even imagine a scenario where she’s alive. But if she were, if she were…” her voice tailed off. He thought he was losing the signal.

Then she said: “What makes you think she wants to be saved?”

THREE YEARS AFTER the incident on Battle Mountain, a man named J. W. Keeley showed up in Saddlestring seeking revenge on Joe. J.W. was April’s uncle. He was also a violent ex-con suspected of murdering a rich couple from Atlanta in his hunting camp. The ending of that encounter still made Joe shudder with guilt.

BOTH EXPERIENCES stayed with him, messed him up, and made it difficult to concentrate on I-25 as he coursed north. He nearly forgot to acknowledge the memory of former Wyoming icon Chris LeDoux as he passed Kaycee.

But he snapped right back when his phone rang at two-thirty in the morning, when Marybeth said, “Sheridan got a text message an hour ago, Joe. From April.”

Aspen, Colorado

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” ROBERT ASKED HER. SHE QUICKLY jammed the phone between the arm of the overstuffed chair and outside of her leg so he couldn’t see it if he looked closely. She hoped her face wouldn’t reveal anything, but he’d startled her and she hadn’t seen him coming up behind her in the hotel lobby.

“Nothing,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound guilty.

“I thought I saw you doing something with your hands.”

She’d been texting. She was fast, a blur of thumbs. But because Robert was in back of her when he asked, she was fairly certain he couldn’t have seen the phone. All he could have seen, she thought, was her leaning forward in the chair, head bent forward, intent on something. Any kid would have known what she was doing, but despite what he seemed to think of himself, Robert was no kid. She doubted he’d ever sent a text message. Robert thought cell phones were for calls. That’s how old he was.

She held up her right hand. “My nails,” she said. “I hate my nails. I chew on them too much.”

She thought it was a pretty good lie. She did hate her nails.

Robert looked at her suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, darting them all over her and around her like a mental frisking. But he skimmed right over her legs and the arm of the chair where the cell phone was.

She’d had the phone for three days, and neither Robert nor Stenko knew she had it. It had been fairly simple to get. She’d asked them to stop at a Wal-Mart as they were passing through Cheyenne on the way to Colorado. She’d said she needed to buy some things. When Robert asked what she needed, she’d said, “Feminine things, if you gotta know,” and that shut him up. She knew they wouldn’t want to go inside with her to buy Kotex, or whatever else the two of them assumed were “feminine things.” She borrowed $50 cash from Stenko and he peeled it off the roll he had taken from the motor home.

The TracFones were located in the electronics section. While standing in line at the cashier’s, she bought a 120-minute Airtime card from a display.

She’d activated the phone in a restroom stall by calling an 800 number with the ten free minutes that came with the phone. Following the prompts, she loaded two hours of talk time onto the phone from the code on the Airtime card. Once it was loaded, she muted the ring and placed the call to the number she remembered from so many years ago to the house on Bighorn Road. She didn’t recognize the voice of the boy who answered, but he did give her Sheridan’s number, which she punched into the memory of the phone before powering it off. Then she threw away the packaging and the charger and slipped the phone down the front of her jeans. She knew that when the battery ran out she could buy another phone at any Wal-Mart or convenience store.

On the way out of the store, she gathered up a large package of Tampax, some nail polish and lotion, and her favorite shampoo. She’d learned years before from one of her many foster brothers that the best time to steal from Wal-Mart was early in the morning, when the employees were lethargic. So she bagged them all up at a self-service checkout and walked out past the staffer near the door who never looked twice.

Outside, she’d offered to give Stenko the change but he smiled and said, “Keep it.”

THEY WERE IN THE LOBBY of the nicest hotel she had ever been in. Such luxury! It was warm and comfortable with crowded couches and chairs, bowls of fresh fruit on tables, dark red wallpaper, hanging chandeliers turned low, exposed ceilings with thick wooden beams, deer heads on the walls. It was late, but she couldn’t sleep since she’d dozed so much in the car all day getting here. The key card to their suite was on a table in front of her. The sleeve for the card read: HOTEL JEROME. Outside, it smelled of pine trees.

Robert sat down in a chair across from her. He had a large tumbler of amber liquid on ice. He was dressed casually, but in a studied way, as if trying to fit in with the surroundings. Open-collar shirt, sports jacket, chinos, leather shoes without socks. And of course he carried his laptop case.

“Dad’s in the bar,” he said. “He’s likely to be in there a while.”

“I’d like to go to bed,” she said. “I’m really tired. It’s one in the morning.”

“I know what time it is. What, do you have an important meeting tomorrow or something? Besides, all you did all day was sleep in the car.” And he laughed.

She really didn’t like him at all, she thought. If it weren’t for Stenko and what he’d done for her, she would have thought of a way to get away already. In fact, the thought had crossed her mind in the Cheyenne Wal-Mart when she was alone from the both of them for the first time since they’d left Chicago.

“What’s he doing in the bar?” she asked, trying to divert the subject away from what she’d been doing previously.

Robert smirked. “Toasting the groom.”

“What groom?” she asked, although she knew.

“ The groom. There’s going to be a big wedding in the hotel in a few days. But you don’t need to know anything more about it.”