The cave welcomed him that night with open arms. It was now his home. His hideout. His refuge. Colten could no longer go back to Goodwell. His days manning the gas station were done. He thought of this as a good turn of events.
Killing the cop had thrown everything into helter-skelter. It left him ill-planned for life as a fugitive. Had he thought it out better, he would have stocked supplies to hold out, but as it was, he was weakly equipped. The store would be watched. He couldn’t go back. It would be instant capture.
Driving up to the next town wasn’t a possibility either. On the roads he would be a sitting duck. He had been too careless that afternoon after the cop, driving like a madman late into the night looking for the girl, stopping and searching every slight movement that had caught his eye. He was playing with fate out there. Better to be up here in his cave. In his tomb.
It was dark. Cold. Empty.
Colten thought about sleeping in the truck, but after sitting in it all day, he had to get out and stretch his legs. He walked to the back of the cave and felt the chain in the wall. He rubbed the clasp in his hands, trying to catch the latent feel of its last occupant. He had been so close. He remembered kneeling in this very same spot. A missed opportunity. He hated himself at that moment as much as he hated anything.
He lay back on the stone floor and lit a cigarette. The white smoke escaped his lips and hung in the air above his head. The crack in the rock above him exposed a small sliver of the night sky, and he could see a couple stars shining down on him. Two celestial observers of his depravity. How much had they seen in the time since he opened the cave for business? Enough, he thought. And they burned on without ceasing, uncaring of the carnage he unleashed in this corner of the universe. No, nothing up there cared what he thought up.
“You’re not getting sentimental on me, are you?” Seth said. He was seated by the entrance, watching Colten, supine on the floor.
“No.”
“You have to keep on track. Focused. This is where many have been lost before.”
“I know.”
Colten thought of others in the past that were in his line of “work.” They were all known because they had all been caught, usually by some stupid twist of fate or idiotic miscalculation. Much like the one he had performed on the highway today. He thought about the cop looking up at him from the hood of the cruiser, looking at him as she resigned her soul to her inevitable fate. He had taken no joy in it. She had not given him anything to bask in. She had kept her secrets, and died without pleading.
It would be his mistake. The Grand Mistake.
“You need to get your rest and then, in the morning, find that girl.”
“I know.”
“You can’t give up on that.”
“I know.”
Colten took another drag of the cigarette. He couldn’t get the scene with the cop out of his mind. He kept going back to his reaching up to the visor to pull the license. If he had not been panicked, if he had not been pushed into hysteria, he would have been fine.
“It’s your fault, you know, why I’m messed up now.”
“Why’s that?” Seth asked as he got comfortable.
“If you hadn’t been pushing me, getting me all worked up. I could have thought clearly. Been thinking straight.”
“You want to blame me for this?”
“Yeah . . . why not.”
Seth stood up and walked over to Colten. He stared down at the killer with an unearthly malice. Colten could feel the seething hatred pour from the man like a breeze chilled to absolute zero.
“You need to remember something. You are nothing without me. You are just a puppet. A piece of meat. You are in this ‘mess’ because of your stupidity. You have everything you have had because of me.”
Colten put his cigarette out beside him but kept looking up. “All right,” he said with a subtle attempt at sarcasm.
The man bent down low, his mouth next to Colten’s ear. “I can kill you anytime I want. I could do it now. Reach down your throat. Grab your spine and rip it out. It means nothing to me. Just remember that.”
An involuntary shiver ran through Colten. “All right, I got it.”
“Good.”
The man stood and walked to the cave entrance. “Now you get some rest. Tomorrow, this gets resolved.”