AS SOON AS we got in the room, Chloe pulled the ice scraper out from under her coat and raised it like a baseball bat. I checked the lock, fixed the chain, and pressed my back against the door.
She took a step forward. “You stay here.”
I grabbed the sleeve of her coat. When she looked back, I shook my head. No way was I going to stand there by myself while she walked around a cold and musty hunting-lodge room that even in daylight looked like a prime location for a murder. The walls were covered in wood paneling, and the only decoration was a framed poster of a mallard duck taking flight from a lake. Beneath the poster was a stripped double bed with a folded green cover at the foot, and next to that was a little desk lamp sitting on a nightstand that wasn’t as tall as the bed. A couple of dressers stood against the opposite wall. One had a television on it, the old box-shaped kind, secured to the wall by what looked like a bicycle lock.
Chloe yanked back one of the plaid curtains, letting in the silvery light of the clouded sky. We moved toward the bathroom together, my hand still tight on her sleeve. She pushed open the door and jumped in with both feet, keeping the ice scraper raised. Water dripped from the faucet of the sink. I flung back the shower curtain, ready with my pepper spray, but there was nothing in the tub but an orange stain by the drain. Still, when we came out of the bathroom, we went through the same procedure with the sliding door of the closet, only finding some wire hangers and a couple of wool blankets folded on the shelf. I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed, but the frame was too low to the ground for anyone to be hiding under.
“Okay.” Chloe looked up at the low ceiling. “It is okay. It is fine.”
She went back to the door and held her hand against it while she slid off her boots. We’d already tracked snow onto the gray carpet, but I pulled off my boots too, taking giant steps on my way back to the bathroom so I wouldn’t get my socks wet.
When I came out of the bathroom, Chloe was fiddling with the thermostat. Something in the heater under the window started to hum.
“That’s encouraging,” I said, my voice a little too chipper, like we were just a couple of ladies on a weekend trip and our biggest problem was that the heat wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to think about our actual situation, or how far away we were from anyone who could help us, even if they would.
She went over to the dresser that didn’t have the television on it and tried to lift one side. “It is heavy,” she said. “You will help me move it to the door? We can put our things inside to make it more heavy?”
I got on one side of the dresser, and we half-slid, half-carried it to the door. We pushed our bags in the drawers, hers on top of mine. I put the plastic bag with Tyler’s crackers and beef jerky in the third drawer.
“That’s all we can do,” she said, turning on the overhead light. She moved around me to close both curtains before she pulled off her hat. Her hair was smashed flat where her hat had been, but still wavy on the bottom.
“Maybe it will be fine,” she said, giving me a little nod like we were agreeing it was true. “Maybe there is no problem.”
I looked at Tess’s watch. It was almost five. We’d have about sixteen hours, at the most, before we knew if there was a problem or not.
I didn’t even check to see if we had hot water. It seemed to me that if I was stupid enough to take a shower in that place, I might as well find some ominous music to play and then go ahead and get a knife to stab myself with forty-five times so I could just get it over with. Chloe was apparently of the same mind: she took her bag with her into the bathroom, and I heard the sink running, but not the shower. She came out wearing her wide-legged pants, the white sweatshirt, and a yellow pair of socks.
“You like Jeopardy!?” I asked, nodding at the television. There weren’t any chairs, so I was on the bed we’d made up, sitting under the mallard duck. “That big guy on the left is killing it, and they haven’t even hit the Daily Double.”
She pushed her bag back into her drawer. “I do like it,” she said. “I play against my husband, and I often win.” She turned around, holding a rolled-up mat and a brown velvet bag that looked like something you’d keep jewelry in. “But now I need to pray.”
“Oh.” I sat up, glancing back into the bathroom. It was the only place I could go to give her privacy.
“Just do as you were. It will not take so long.” She tucked the mat under her arm, pulled a long white scarf out of her bag, and used one hand to drape the scarf over her hair, pushing the long end over her shoulder. It looked right the first time she did it, and she didn’t even have a mirror. She reached into the bag again and brought out something silver, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She squinted down at it, then turned, a little at a time, until she was nearly facing the wall opposite the window. She walked to the other side of the bed, still facing that same direction, and spread out a green-and-gold mat about the size of a bath towel.
“You need me to turn off the television at least?”
She shrugged, setting something small and circular on the mat. “No. I am fine.”
That was nice of her. In my experience with religious people, when they tell you they’re getting ready to pray, that means they usually want you to be quiet, or they even say “let us pray,” like they just assume you’re in on it. Or they’re pretty much telling you you’re going to be in on it, so you might as well bow your head. That was certainly true at Berean Baptist, which I understand, as it was a religious school. But it was even true when I was in public school in Joplin. Right before our spring choir concert, our teacher was really nervous, and she had us all pray together that we would sing our best and bring glory to God through our voices. And of course, Aunt Jenny always said grace at the table. In all of those cases, it never killed me to just close my eyes and bow my head to be polite. But I didn’t know what to do around a praying Muslim.
Whatever she said, it seemed kind of rude for me to leave the television on, with people calling out their question-answers and Alex Trebek saying “no” while someone was trying to pray. I picked up the remote, hit the power button, and lay on my side, facing away from Chloe. Her back was to me, but if she turned around, I didn’t want her to feel like she was being watched. And anyway, even with the locks, and the dresser we’d moved, it seemed like one of us should keep an eye on the door.
Before we went to bed, she prayed again, even though she hadn’t done anything since the last time she prayed except eat beef jerky and crackers and watch television with me. She had to go through the whole deal of getting her mat out again and setting it up in the right spot—it seemed to me she could have just left it out from last time, but I guess not.
I watched her put her prayer things away before I took out my earbuds. I was ready for bed, the blankets pulled up to my armpits, though I was still wearing my sweater and jeans. I’d already decided to sleep in my clothes. If somebody tried to bust through the door chain in the middle of the night, I wanted to be ready. My boots were next to the bed.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.” She looked at me over her shoulder and smiled.
Ho ho ho, I thought. Chloe made a joke. It was sort of a lame one. But still. Good effort.
“I’m sorry.” She turned around, still smiling. “What is the question?”
“You ever get tired of having to pray so much?”
She frowned. I frowned back. I hadn’t meant it the way it came out, like I was pretending to just ask a question but really trying to convince her of something. I sounded as bad as Patty Charlson from seventh grade, who once asked me, with a really nice and caring look on her face, why I wasn’t more worried about spending eternity in hell, as I had not accepted Jesus as my personal savior and could not be convinced by Patty to do so, or even come with her to church. That always got on my nerves, when people acted like I was a sad story because I didn’t believe what they did.
But I wasn’t trying to talk Chloe into or out of anything. I really just wanted to know.
“Sorry.” I waited to let the word settle in. “What I mean is, is it like something bad will happen to you if you don’t pray? Like you’ll go to hell if you don’t do it enough?”
She leaned on the dresser, tilting her head back and forth like she had a marble rolling around inside. “No. It is not that. I want to do it.”
I nodded. It didn’t seem like there was much more I could ask without feeling like I was cross-examining her, like I was the atheist version of Patty Charlson. Also, with religious people, you have to be careful because sometimes if you ask too many questions they start to think it’s the green light to start trying to convert you when really you’re just curious.
She walked around to the other side of the bed, setting her ear drops on the night stand. “It’s a time for me to remember God, and to remind myself to be and do good.” She got in bed slowly, careful not to tug on the cover or the sheets. I could smell her lotion, or her soap, whatever she put on that was minty. “I do it because it is pleasing to God, but it’s pleasing to God because it is good for my soul, just as the movement is good for my body.” She put her head on the pillow, looking up at the ceiling. “And to answer your first question, no, I do not get tired of it. Some days I think I am too tired, or too busy. But it is when I am tired that I need prayer the most. It restores me.”
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue with her about it. But she’d just prayed, and she still looked pretty tired.
She smiled like she guessed what I was thinking. “It is not exactly what I mean. It would be better to say that when I pray, I’m reminded that God does not want me to be sad or afraid.” She shrugged. “And that I don’t need to be.”
“You’re not afraid now?” I tried not to say it like I didn’t believe her. But I myself wasn’t looking forward to her turning off the lamp. We hadn’t heard Tyler’s door, or anything from his room, for a while, and I told myself that was a good sign. For all we knew, he was already asleep, getting rested up for tomorrow’s drive.
“I’m less afraid than I would be.” She pulled her hair back and lay her head back on the pillow. “I might even be able to sleep.”
Maybe it was the God thing that was the difference. Or maybe I was just more jittery by nature. But long after I heard Chloe snoring—nothing loud, just a whistle between her teeth when she exhaled—I was still lying there in the dark with my eyes open and my head buzzing like I’d just slammed an energy drink. I could hear the trickle of water from the bathroom sink. My feet were cold, but I already had on both pairs of my socks. So there was nothing to do but lie there with cold toes and try to keep reminding myself that Chloe was right—there might not be any problem with Tyler. It was entirely possible, maybe, that he had really just been worried about the weather.
I turned on my side, facing the dark outline of the closed curtain. Chloe’s breath kept whistling, and the water kept trickling from the sink. I thought I heard something outside, some kind of cracking sound, but then I didn’t hear it again. When I closed my eyes, I saw the old man who’d gotten shot in Sherburn, and I heard the thuds of the body, hitting the door and then the ground. The people he’d been hiding were probably in Nevada now. I hoped the one who needed medicine could get it.
It was a hard thing to consider that a lot of the people put in the safety zones might not have done anything wrong, except share a religion, at least in name, with people who were crazy. If I put myself in their shoes, I could understand the bad spot a lot of Muslims were in. I mean, if some atheists started going around killing people, which I knew some of them already did, but I mean if they started saying, We’re killing all these innocent people in the name of atheism!, I’d be horrified just like everybody else, but it’s not like I’d change my mind and not be an atheist anymore, or start going to church of my own free will so no one would think I was a killer. I’d think, That’s messed up. But that’s not me. I wouldn’t just stop thinking what I think. I wouldn’t want to pretend, either. But I’d hate to be lumped in with killers when I myself hadn’t done anything wrong and had no intention of killing anybody, just cause of what I did or didn’t believe about God.
I turned over again, trying to find a softer spot on my pillow. The edge of the blanket we’d gotten down from the closet felt scratchy against my chin, and it seemed like it might be the main source of the room’s musty smell. I was hungry, but not for beef jerky, which was all that was left in the plastic bag. I was wondering when and where we might stop for breakfast in the morning when I heard the muffled slam of a car door.
I sat up in the darkness. Silence. Chloe breathing. And then, so quiet I almost didn’t hear it, the outer edges of someone’s voice in the parking lot.
I slid out of bed and felt my way across the room. I told myself it would be okay. Someone was just out in the lot. Maybe Tyler had left something in his truck. Everything was probably fine.
I pulled the curtain back slowly, just a few inches. The sky had cleared, just as Tyler had said it would, and the moon was so bright against the snow on the ground I had to squint. Even without any lights in the parking lot, it was easy to see a two-door car idling at an angle next to Tyler’s truck. A man with a blond ponytail was lifting the trunk door of the car and talking to Tyler, who used one arm to push snow off the plastic cover over the bed of his truck. The man helped him move the cover to the side, and Tyler reached in the truck bed and lifted what looked like a twenty-pound bag of dog food—I could see a picture of a dog on the side of the bag. He handed the bag to the other man, who put it in the trunk of his car.
“Sarah-Mary? What is it?”
I jumped back from the curtain, my hand on my throat. I couldn’t see anything but dark.
“Why are you by the window?” Chloe’s whisper was low and gravelly. “What do you see?”
“Hold on. Don’t turn on the light.” I turned back to the window and moved the edge of the curtain again. The trunk of the car was closed now, and both the ponytail man and Tyler were putting the plastic cover back over the bed of Tyler’s truck. When they finished, the man got in his car.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. I didn’t want Chloe to think there was an emergency. There wasn’t. The truck that I’d assumed was Dale’s, the one with the plow on the front that had been here when we’d pulled up, was still parked in the lot, the windshield covered in snow. So Dale was still here. And Tyler was still here. All that had happened was that Tyler had moved some things out of his truck to a third party. That didn’t have to be any business of ours.
“Please tell me what it is you see.”
“Just wait.” Even with two pairs of socks, the floor felt cold on my toes.
When I looked back out, the car was rolling away. Tyler hurried up the shoveled path to the office, blowing into his hands. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I stepped away from the window and told Chloe she could turn on the lamp.
She stayed quiet, sitting up in bed, her head just under the mallard duck, as I told her what I’d seen. I was trying to convey to her that everything was fine, but I couldn’t get my knees to stop wobbling, which made no sense, because really, nothing I’d witnessed was particularly worrisome. But I had to sit on the edge of the bed and press down on my knees to still them.
“I don’t think it was dog food,” I said. I wasn’t sure she understood. The lamp by the bed gave off a dim yellow glow that cast half of her face in shadow. At first, she didn’t say anything, and I thought I’d have to spell it out.
But then she said, “I see.”
“I wondered if he was moving something. I should have told you.”
She nodded like she wasn’t mad. Or she was thinking about something else.
“It’s probably got nothing to do with us,” I added. I couldn’t figure out how it would. And he hadn’t bothered us yet. He’d just given us crackers and beef jerky and gone back to his room. Still, I had a bad feeling there was something I wasn’t putting together, a riddle I hadn’t figured out.
Chloe reached over to the nightstand for her glasses. She kept looking all around the room, and she seemed distracted, or like she was thinking something but not saying it.
“Well,” she said finally, glancing at her watch. “It is only a little after ten. And I won’t be able to go back to sleep for a while.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and gave me a smile that didn’t look happy. “We can watch television?”
I was fine with that, but I thought it was weird how she asked in such a nice way, her voice gentle, like I was a little kid who’d had a nightmare and needed to be consoled. She used the remote to click through channels until she got to the news out of Grand Forks, which didn’t seem like the most exciting choice to me. But I got back on my side of the bed, folding my pillow under my head.
“Maybe there’s a movie or something,” I said. “You could cruise the channels.”
She nodded, still looking at the screen. “This first,” she said. “Just to see.”
I didn’t want to be rude, but I was thinking, see what? I mean, local news shows always looked pretty low-rent compared to Aunt Jenny’s cable shows, and Grand Forks’s news was no different. The anchor had a flag pin just like ours, and she had a nice speaking voice, but she was just a regular-looking woman who never would have made it on the cable shows, and anyway, there wasn’t a lot anyone could have done to jazz up the long opening piece about a meeting on municipal waste. After staying on that topic way too long, she moved on to a story about a fire at an Indian restaurant that was still being investigated, meaning nobody knew anything yet. I sighed to show I was bored, but Chloe either didn’t notice or she ignored me.
She didn’t even change channels during the commercials, which were local as well, so we both just sat there and watched as a Grand Forks car dealer wearing a spandex suit and eye goggles ran between two lines of parked cars with a chainsaw, saying he was going crazy cutting down prices. The next commercial was for a pizza place that delivered, the number flashing at the bottom of the screen, and they were mean enough to show a slice of thick-crusted pizza being raised up out of a pie, strands of melted cheese hanging down.
“Oh my God,” I moaned, cradling my belly. “I could very much go for some of that right now. You think they deliver out here?”
It was just a joke. I mean, obviously. We didn’t even have a phone that would make the call, and we were probably twenty miles outside of any delivery range, even in regular weather. But Chloe didn’t smile or even acknowledge that I’d said anything, and it occurred to me that maybe she was mad at me after all. I supposed she had a right to be. If I’d told her my theory about Tyler when we were back in Fargo, she could have decided we were done with him, and we could have hitched with someone else. She would probably have been in Canada by now. Or at least a normal hotel room.
“Hey.” I nudged her elbow. “I feel bad about not telling you I thought Tyler might—”
She held up her hand. The news had come back on, but instead of the anchor, SPECIAL SECURITY REPORT was written in black against white, and there was a picture of the flag underneath. There was different music, too, something exciting, with more drums. But when the anchor came back on, she didn’t seem any more pumped than she’d been when talking about the municipal waste.
“We’re breaking in to our scheduled reports to tell our viewers that during the last commercial break, our Channel 5 Nightwatch Team passed on an unconfirmed report that police in Northwestern Minnesota are currently en route to apprehend a Muslim fugitive in a remote location about fifty-five miles northeast of Grand Forks.”
I turned to Chloe. She looked back at me, and the expression on her face made me feel like maybe I’d heard wrong, and everything was still okay. She didn’t seem scared, or even surprised. She had the face of someone hearing a sad story about something bad that had happened a long time ago, something already done and over. She put her hand on the sleeve of my sweater.
“Sarah-Mary,” she said, using the same gentle voice she’d used earlier. “You understand? That is us. They are coming for us already.” She didn’t even seem surprised. And it was only then that I got it—this was why she’d wanted to watch television in the first place. She’d known. Or she’d suspected. She’d just been checking to make sure.
“Do you see?” She put her palms to her cheeks and slid them down to her throat. “He knew what I was back in Fargo. But he couldn’t call, because he had something in his truck. He got rid of it so he could call and get the money.”
“WNDR does not encourage anyone to interfere with police business, but any of our viewers interested in learning the specific location of the suspects can check our website, as WNDR is always committed to keeping our viewers informed on matters of public safety.”
I shook my head. We were so close, so close to the border, so close to her husband and her little boy. This couldn’t be right, that everything could end like this because of one mistake I’d made. I got up and hurried around the bed to the window.
“Turn off the lamp,” I whispered.
The room went dark, and I used just one finger to move the curtain back. Outside, all was silent and still. The almost half-moon glowed above the trees and the two trucks in the lot. But of course she was right. We were in a remote location, and probably about fifty-five miles northeast of Grand Forks. The police were on their way, and worse than that, maybe other people. If they got here before the police, they’d throw rocks through the window. They’d throw rocks at us.
I let the curtain fall. “Then we’ve got to go!” I whispered. “Let’s go! You can turn the light on. He’s not out there. But we’ve got to move.”
She turned the lamp back on, but she didn’t get up. She tapped her finger against the diamond on her wedding ring.
“Move where?” She said it more like an answer than a question, watching me as I hurried back around the bed to grab my boots. I got what she meant. It was freezing outside, and dark, and we were way out in the country. But we couldn’t just wait there with the wood paneling and the mallard duck and the yellow light for the first car to roll up into the lot outside. Not when I was the one who’d gotten her out here.
“Sarah-Mary,” she said. “You know he is watching for us. He won’t just let us run away.”
“He wasn’t out there when I looked.” I pulled up the zipper on my boot so fast it bit my finger. “Listen up, Chloe. I’m walking out of here in one minute.” I went over to the closet and grabbed my coat. “Get up and come with me. Okay? Please?” I let my voice break. I’d cry if I had to. I’d pull out all the stops. “Okay? I’m scared to go out by myself.”
She didn’t ask me where I planned to go, which was good, because I didn’t know. Less than a minute later, we were both ready, coats and boots zipped, hats and gloves on, our bags on the floor beside us as we scooted the dresser away from the door. She was still wearing her pajamas, her wide-legged pants stuffed into her boots. I’d left my toothbrush and comb in the bathroom, and my pulse was a drumbeat in my head, go now, go now, go now, go now, go now.
But once we pulled the dresser away and Chloe undid the chain lock, she paused to look at me, her hand on the doorknob.
“You are ready?” she whispered. She had the ice scraper tucked under her arm. “We’ll go right to the trees. A straight line.”
I held my breath. She turned the knob, opening the door just a crack at first, and then wider, and wider still, until I could see out as well. All was quiet outside, the snow by our door undisturbed except for our own tracks from the afternoon. The stars were out too, twinkling high, but the air coming in was cold enough to sting my cheeks. She held her hand out to me and I took it. Then we ran out into the night.
I think part of me knew, even as we ran, even as I kept my gaze on the trees beyond the lot like they were a finish line, that Chloe was right about Tyler watching for us. After all the trouble he’d gone to, and all he stood to gain, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to just stay inside, warm and cozy, and assume we’d stay put as long as needed. But the night kept quiet as we kicked through the snow, and I could only hear the crunch of its iced-over surface under my boots and Chloe’s, and I let myself hope as I sucked in cold air, holding tight to Chloe’s gloved hand. But then I heard more crunching behind us, moving fast, and I didn’t even have time to cry out before the sleeve of a down jacket moved fast and tight around my neck. I fell back into a body, padded and wide, as another arm clamped around my waist.
“Hold on now!” he yelled, but not in a mean way. He might have been talking to himself. “Just hold on!”
It wasn’t Tyler. It was the other one, Dale, the lodge owner, smelling of cigarettes, his bristly beard pressed against my cheek. The more I thrashed, the tighter he held me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Tyler had come up behind Chloe in the same way. Or he’d tried to. He had his right arm around her neck, and her left arm pushed down, but her right arm was still free, stabbing at his leg with the ice scraper.
I pulled up both legs and brought down my heels against Dale’s shins.
“Hey!” he said, like he was surprised I was fighting, like he’d just expected me to go limp in his arms. “Just settle down, okay? It’s her they want. They don’t even know about you. You stop fighting us and you’ll be okay. We’ll get you back into town. Come on now. It’s over for her. Be smart.”
Tyler cried out, but he and Chloe had moved behind me, or we’d moved forward, and I couldn’t see them anymore. My hat was gone, the air cold on the tips of my ears. I pulled my head away from Dale’s cheek and brought it back hard.
“Hey!” he said, louder now, though he only tightened his arms. “Come on now. Jesus! I got a heart condition, okay?”
I didn’t care about his heart condition. But I got that he was pleading with me when he didn’t have to, and I could feel in the way he held me, with enough space between his arm and my throat that I could breathe, that he didn’t want to hurt me. Chloe cried out behind me, and when I tried to turn my head, my nose pressed up into Dale’s tobacco beard.
“Be smart,” he whispered. “You’re the reason I didn’t get my gun, and I wouldn’t let him borrow one. There’s no reason for you to get hurt. But he’ll hurt you, okay? I’m your friend. I’m your friend here.”
“You better let go,” I hissed. I didn’t want to hurt him either. But he wasn’t my friend, not if he wasn’t Chloe’s. I didn’t care if he was going easy on me or not. And maybe some people will think worse of me for what happened next, or think I’m some kind of animal, which maybe I am because here’s the truth: next thing I knew, I’d pushed my nose down a little more so my mouth was right up against his bristly beard, and I clamped my teeth into his jaw like an attack dog, and I kept clamping. Even after he cried out and gripped at my head, and yelled “Oh! Oh, please!” I didn’t let go. He grabbed my shoulders from behind and tried to push me away, and I felt skin give way between my teeth, then warm blood on my tongue, but I was a pit bull, locked on. What happened next was up to him.
We fell into the snow together, with me still biting down and tasting blood and him clawing at the back of my head. He grabbed hold of my hair with both hands and tried to pull my head away from him. I didn’t let go, and he didn’t let go, and just as I got my hand in my pocket, I felt a giving way above my ears as two fistfuls of hair tore from my scalp, the roots coming out like jagged hooks. His breath caught with the surprise of it, and his hands flew up, newly freed, and in that second I had the safety cap off the pepper spray and the can in his eyes. I unlocked my teeth and turned my own head away before I pushed hard on the trigger.
His scream, when it came, rattled my heart like someone had reached into my chest and shaken it. My own eyes burned, but I could see his hands were over his eyes, clumps of my torn-away hair still threaded between his fingers.
I had to step on his chest to get to my feet. Once I was up, I turned in a circle, gasping and coughing until my stinging eyes found Tyler. He was hunched over Chloe, who was down in the snow, writhing and punching and kicking as he tried to grab hold of her. I ran toward them, and his bulging eyes looked up at me just before I pressed the trigger again, harder and longer than I had before. At first, I thought it didn’t work. He grabbed the back of my neck, and I was the one sucking in the stinging heat. But then his chest fell away from my pounding fists, and before I even opened my eyes, I screamed for Chloe to hold her breath and get up, get up, and run.