“Get up, you got work to do!” Seth shouted as he walked into the cave, appearing as if out of thin air.
Colten got to his feet and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with his nicotine-stained fingers. It was dark except for a sliver of light from the roof crack. It was easy to lose a sense of time in here, one of the perks he found when he had first discovered it. Unfortunately he had not planned on having the effect work him over.
“What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter, I got a surprise for you.”
“You found the girl?” Colten blurted, almost dropping the lighter as he prepared to get his morning fix.
“No, but I think I found something that will make a good replacement.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a place not too far from here. There’s a woman there, abandoned. Left alone.”
“Out here?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you know this?”
The man walked out of the cave and Colten quickly followed. “How’d you know this!”
“Just take it and use it. You don’t have much time.”
The man spun on his heels and stared at Colten. His black eyes breaking the will of the homicidal maniac. Colten’s legs felt weak, like he did when he was ten and his old man would start whipping him.
“Do you need an explanation for everything?”
“No.”
“All right. It’s enough to know that the old man who owns the cabin is off on a pointless errand. The woman is there. All you need to do is drive down there and pick her up. You can do that now, can’t you?”
“Yeah.”
The man started walking away again toward the two-lane down the mountain.
“But what about the girl? Are we going to find the girl?”
“Consider her lost. You had your chance, you blew it.”
Colten stood motionless, a worker given a list of instructions but not knowing how to turn the machine on. “So how do I find the place?”
“Just start driving,” the man replied as he disappeared from view. “You’ll find it soon enough.”