Beck made only one packet of oatmeal for each of them. Imogen knew they usually made two per person but Gale didn’t, and she understood her sister was rationing. Gale expected Beck and Imogen to share a bowl again, but Imogen took the double serving over to Tilda and for every spoonful she ate, she fed one to Tilda. It was one thing to leave her without coffee, but Imogen couldn’t just let her watch them eat. Fortunately, Gale didn’t object.
After a minute he proposed that Tilda scoot over on her hiney so they could all eat together. And with a little help from Imogen, she did. In spite of Tilda’s bindings (and questionable behavior), Imogen felt safer sandwiched between the warm blockades of the two strongest women she knew.
“This is good. Thank you, girls.” He looked at them, an expression Imogen would have shockingly described as appreciative on his worn-out face.
“You’re welcome.” There was no rational reason for it, but in that moment Imogen felt more relaxed than she had all day.
There were times when she caught glimpses of the normal person in Gale. In fleeting instances he could even seem good-natured. The more she thought about it, this realization might actually be the best thing she could contribute to their survival. Beck saw him as a challenge to be conquered by outmaneuvering, and Tilda perceived him as a menace to escape from posthaste. They were valid perspectives, but ineffective if applied without a better understanding of what made him tick. If Imogen could look past her fear and hold in her mind an awareness of his vulnerabilities, his fundamental needs and wants as a human being, she might be able to connect with him in some important, lifesaving way.
Like the young heroine she’d been conjuring the night before, who had to endure an arduous quest to find her true self, Imogen realized she might now be on such a journey too.
“Yer the soft one,” Gale said to her, alarmingly in tune. “See you thinking, but what you worry about is if yer fickle friend is thirsty or hungry, and is yer big sis gonna make it all okay. She’s older than you, right?”
“Yeah, a little. Less than two years. You’re good at reading people.” The compliment was genuine.
Gale shrugged. “Everybody gotta be good at something. Coulda used a slightly more practical skill, like being handy with tools or good with a computer. But you take whatcha can get.”
Ha. Gale probably hadn’t meant that as a double entendre, but it worked. In another situation Imogen might have counseled him that reading people could make him a good writer or actor, or a good therapist or salesman. It was unfortunate that he’d found other ways to use his talent; she might have guessed his criminal aptitude would make him a con artist, if it weren’t for the evidence of his violent side.
“What’s your plan?” Beck asked Gale, bursting into the conversation, impatient. “Even rationing food there’s only enough for a few days, and possibly less fuel if you’re spreading it over more meals.”
“Always using that fat brain, aren’tcha? Well, from where I’m sitting things ain’t so bad. Just enough people come through here to get what I need, but not so many to rat me out.”
In a matter of seconds, the atmosphere felt more foreboding and less like something Imogen could work with. She nudged her sister with an elbow: the chitchat had been going just fine. Beck nudged her back. It was the closest they could come to arguing without speaking.
“We can’t stay here with you. And believe me, I have way more interest in getting home to my family than I do in reporting some random gunshot injury that I don’t give a shit about. In a few days when we’re not home we’ll be reported missing. And if, as you say, there are people looking for you, then it’s not in your best interest for us to be hanging out together when the search parties come out here for us.”
Imogen didn’t like how cantankerous Beck sounded. Sure, her points were accurate, but what if Gale decided they were all just a pain in his ass and not worth the trouble?
“You girls get what’s happening here?” he asked in his quiet voice. “I’m keeping you with me ’cause the alternative…I ain’t some serial killer kills fer fun, kills fer a hard-on with no conscience. As long yer with me yer alive, you get that?”
Imogen’s heart suddenly felt like the needle on a record player, skidding off its groove. The spoonful she was feeding Tilda dribbled, and she wiped it from Tilda’s shirt with shaking fingers. She heard Gale threatening their lives, but Beck wasn’t having it.
“Great. So?” She sounded combative, as if intentionally picking a fight. Imogen wasn’t sure why. They didn’t have a thing at hand—rock, knife, or other—to overpower him, and one-third of their trio couldn’t use her hands or feet. The two of them couldn’t consider taking him on unless they first relieved him of the gun or the hunting knife—or both. Even then, Imogen suspected he was a scrappy and ruthless fighter. She would’ve preferred to be having an entirely different sort of conversation with Gale. But Beck had other ideas. “We don’t have to stay here, where there’s nothing—that’s what I’m saying. We can hike out together, I’ll drive you somewhere.”
The suggestion came out of nowhere. Imogen felt as surprised as Tilda looked. It hadn’t occurred to her, but it wasn’t a bad idea.
Gale considered Beck’s offer. “Can’t say I fully trust you.”
“Same.”
“Where would we go?”
“Mexico?” Imogen suggested.
“It’s the opposite direction a where I was heading. But probly safer.”
Beck nodded. “It would take about…seven hours to Nogales.”
“Ya got any money?” he asked.
“We’ll get some,” said Tilda, finally joining in on a current of hope.
“When you’re across the border,” Beck said, “you really won’t need us. You can disappear. No one will come after you.”
They could almost hear his brain grinding, recalibrating. But then he seemed to push the thought aside. “I’ll think on it.”
The women exchanged glances. It could work. A possible way out, though Imogen wasn’t so sure about going from the kidnapper’s metaphorical car to a literal one. It would get them back to civilization, to people, but what then? Would they become accomplices in his getaway? Or would Gale exact some other sort of guarantee for the next stage of his freedom? Beck wasn’t stupid. Maybe she’d already thought about what would come next.
The more they talked, the more at ease Gale became, as if they were simply shooting the breeze at an ordinary picnic.
“Y’all really didn’t see anything on the news about me?”
They shook their heads. “I don’t watch the news that much,” said Imogen.
“Nothing about a cop? Texas highway patrolman got killed in a routine traffic stop?”
The trio froze, momentarily in sync. It was startling to hear it so casually uttered.
“Maybe they didn’t start reporting it until after we were in the Canyon,” Beck suggested.
“Yeah. Could be right.” Gale acted as if this were just a thing that had happened, like a flat tire or running out of gas. “Wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Just wanted to see my daughter in Nevada. What’s the point a being out if you don’t got the freedom to live yer life, see yer people? Only been on parole three weeks, knew it was a risk, but…Whatever yer thinking, ’bout all a this, I ain’t no cold-blooded killer, that’s the truth. I panicked, that’s all. Didn’t have a valid license, and the car was a buddy’s, not in my name. I was almost to New Mexico, pretty obvious I was leaving the state. Knew the second that cop started looking into it he’d see what’s what. I had to strike fast. He still got a shot off, but just the one. Only wanted to see my girl. Totally fucked now. You get it now, why I got no option but to lay low?”
Imogen directed her empty gaze to the pocked sandstone embankment across the creek. He’d admitted, with no real remorse, to what he’d done. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was willing to be so open because there was nothing left to debate, no further compromises to be made.
“How’d you get here then?” Beck asked, seemingly unaffected by his story.
“I got across the New Mexico border. Then left the car. Hitched a ride from a Navajo kid. Real nice kid, friendly. He was heading this way and seemed like a good option. No one’d look fer me here, right?”
“I’m sorry everything got…so fucked up.” Imogen wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. Most of the regret was for herself, and for Beck and Tilda, yet a fragment of it was for him; he had a way of getting under her skin. For all the street smarts he likely possessed, he lacked a simple understanding of how to live in the real world. In a similar way Imogen was book smart and life dumb. She couldn’t help but commiserate with someone who couldn’t mold their plasticine life into the shape they’d set out to make.
“Well, I’m glad we’re putting it all on the table now. Easier if we can be honest. Now fer real, where y’all really from?”
“I live in Los Angeles. Beck lives in Flagstaff. And Imogen lives in Pittsburgh, which is where we’re all from. Okay? No more bullshit.”
He considered Tilda, and nodded. “Good. Good.”
Imogen still couldn’t tell if Tilda was sucking up to him for her own benefit, or to benefit all of them. But she felt the moment open up; perhaps there was still a chance to reason with him. “We truly just want this to work out for everybody. I get that you don’t trust us. But you have to realize we don’t trust you either.” She saw a slideshow in her mind—the severed food bag, their ransacked camp, a bullet whizzing past Tilda—and hoped Gale was seeing the same imagery. “But if we could help you figure it out, four heads are better than one, right? If you want to get to your daughter, maybe we can help.”
“Maybe we’re not part of your problem but part of your solution,” said Tilda. It was the kind of thing she’d say to her followers, but would it motivate Gale?
He seemed to weigh the possibility. “You girls have some decent qualities, I do appreciate that.”
“I was serious about what I said before. This doesn’t have to be complicated,” Beck said, as all-business as ever. “We hike out and we’ll drive you somewhere. No one will be looking for you if you’re with us—as long as we get this done by the date we’re expected home.”
“When’s that?” he asked.
“Three days from now, late afternoon. Gives us plenty of time to get to Nevada and back, or Mexico and back.”
“You got a car here?”
“At the Hermit trailhead.” For proof, she unzipped the inner pocket of her fleece and waggled the key.
“Better idea: why don’t we just give him the key,” Tilda said, glowering ever-so-slightly at Beck. “He can leave ahead of us. Get in the car. Go wherever he wants, we’ll be none the wiser.”
“We legit couldn’t tell anyone where you were then,” Imogen added. And she had to agree: unless there was a genius second part to Beck’s plan, Tilda’s idea was better.
Beck and Gale both started nodding, picturing their separate escape scenarios. Holy shit, is this working?
“So then…Even if you say ya won’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, you’d report the car stolen?”
“We’d be stuck for a while,” Beck said. “Have to wait for someone to show up to ask for a ride back to the visitor center or something. And we could give you a full twenty-four-hour head start. You’d already be where you were going by then, north or south, whatever you choose.”
Gale turned to Tilda. “Wanna come with me to Mexico? Show me around? Be my translator?” She cocked her head and gave him a silent fuck you smirk. “Kidding. Learn to take a joke.” But he grew somber, disappearing into his own deliberations. “So…you want me to believe you wouldn’t just call fer help? Minute yer phones get a signal? Not sure where that is, maybe up top. Wait—I didn’t find…You girls don’t have phones?”
“They’re in the car.” Tilda rolled her eyes. “Beck’s dumb tradition.”
Gale blinked. Some kind of mechanism was spinning in his head and Imogen could almost see it, like a slot machine, as three matching symbols lined up and ding-ding-ding he was on his feet, enraged.
“See? This is just the kinda shit I’m talking about!” He paced, with his hand on the hilt of his knife. “You send me off in yer car, don’t tell me about the fucking phones. And later the feds track me down with yer GPS—”
“The phones aren’t even charged, they’ve been sitting for days!” said Imogen.
Gale ignored her, his anger focused solely on Beck. “Yer always trying to get one over on me!”
“We leave the phones in the car because they don’t work here,” Beck yelled, to Tilda as much as Gale. “And I wasn’t the one who suggested letting you drive off in my brand-new Jeep. I suggested we drive you, so you could keep an eye on us and know we weren’t calling anyone or turning you in.”
As Beck glared at her, fear skittered across Tilda’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking from Beck to Gale. “I was just trying…I thought I had a good idea.”
Gale scooped up his mug and downed the rest of his coffee. He half turned away from them, scanning the otherworldly terrain. It was cloudier than it had been, and quiet except for some light gusts rattling the vegetation.
Beck, Tilda, and Imogen watched him, simmering in dread: Now what?