They don’t cuff me or anything.
They close the door of the Cadillac and leave me in there. I don’t know if there’s a driver in the car—there’s a dark pane of glass between the back seats and the front. Anyway we don’t go anywhere, we just sit there.
No one comes to speak to me. I’m on my own for, oh, I don’t know, 113 hours. Or maybe twenty minutes.
Finally the opposite door opens and a guy in a dark pinstriped suit gets in. He sits in the other back seat and looks at me. There’s an odd expression on his face. Like he doesn’t want me to be afraid of him, but at the same time very serious, and concerned. Concerned FOR ME, I think. I figure him for some kind of Fed—FBI maybe. He’s youngish, with pale green eyes and short-cropped brown hair.
Where is Shaylene Cooper? he says eventually.
I don’t say anything.
We need to find her, he says. Your mother. Do you know where she is?
Interesting, I think. So they don’t have Mom. But how would she have gotten away? I think of her going to look for the generator, going to the woodshed, she had said.
Maybe she knew they were coming, the moment the power cut, and she ran for the canyon? Or something?
What the hell, Mom?
He is still looking at me, the Fed, waiting for me to answer. But I don’t. This guy won’t know sign, and I don’t want to talk to him with my mouth—I’m feeling pretty fricking vulnerable already in this situation and don’t want to be even weaker.
At length he sighs; at least I assume he sighs, his shoulders kind of hunch up and then fall, slowly. Do you need anything? he says. Water?
I shake my head.
So you understand me? he says. Where is Shaylene Cooper? Where did she go?
I shake my head again.
You don’t know or you won’t tell me?
I shrug.
He sits very still for a long time, then he raps on the darkened glass divider with his knuckles and says something, but he’s facing forward as he says it so I don’t catch it.
The car starts up—I feel the engine rumbling through the floor, the vibrations. Then we roll, and I feel the gravel of the drive give way to smooth asphalt road, and then we carry on driving for what feels like eons. When we leave the canopy of the forest, and join the main road, I begin to see a little more through the window—the trees flashing by as we go.
I get the impression we’re going north, back to Flagstaff. Back to where Mom stabbed that knife through Luke’s hand …
Yeah, I think, that was the gas station where we stopped. We drive through forest for maybe an hour before gradually descending into high desert plateau again, the black silhouettes of mountains in the distance. The whole time, the guy in the suit just looks ahead, not meeting my eye. As we drive the sun rises, flooding the world with red light, setting the shreds of cloud on the western horizon on fire.
The headrest is soft as I lean back against it, the fur of the elk beneath my legs warm.
I look out the window and see the forest, tree trunks shuttering in and out of existence. The agent sitting beside me suddenly seems a long way away, and I’m so tired, so, so tired. The radio is on loud—I assume so anyway, since I can just hear crackles of updates from other agents, but it sounds like they don’t know where Mom is, so that’s good at least.
Well, I think it’s good.
I look up at the star-filled sky above, take a deep lungful of clear, pure air. I grip on to the elk’s mane and—
the car’s engine drones and—
the wind is in my hair and—
I’m flying along beneath