Deliver Her: A Novel (22 page)

CARL

“Colebrook’s a straight run north, dude. What else do you want from me?”

With that limited guidance from the disinterested store clerk and a printed bus schedule, the three headed up Route 3, Iris training high beams on the state highway, not much more than a country road at that point and all but deserted. A compact band of sleet built up under the wipers; the weather report indicated they were trailing the storm.

As best Carl could determine from the bus schedule, they were a good half hour behind the coach. Its route rambled up Route 3, with assorted stops at gas stations and even a bike shop.

While Iris drove, Carl and Mia engaged in choppy games of telephone—Carl with Alex’s parents, Mia with her dad, relaying updates to and from Swiftriver—sporadically truncated by spotty cell service. Cam said the troopers had shut down operations at the general store, Mia reported. They were shifting manpower to the Colebrook lead, troopers fanning out from Hope Haven and the bus depot, with Mendham, Lopez and several units from the north assigned to track the bus. Attempts to make radio contact with the bus driver were in progress.

On the phone, Alex’s mother worried about the officers confronting Alex on the bus. “She’ll be terrified. They won’t arrest her, will they?”

“Of course not,” Carl said. Given her status as a minor and a missing person, the officials could remove her from the bus. But as far as anyone knew at this point, Alex hadn’t done anything illegal.

“That drunk girl at the depot—did she actually
see
Alex get on the bus?” Meg asked.

“No,” Carl admitted.

“Then did anybody
talk
to the bus driver?”

“We’re trying. This storm isn’t making things easy.”

“So this could still turn out to be a wild goose chase?”

Carl doubted it. “Your daughter was extremely motivated to get to Happy Corner, according to this young woman with me.” He shared the two texts Alex sent from Reyna’s phone. He was going on the theory that Alex was letting friends know she was headed to Rainmaker
,
he said.

“What if your theory is wrong?” Meg had asked.

“Then we go back to the drawing board. But we’re close, Mrs. Carmody. I feel it.” Hanging up, he strained to see through the whorl of sleet for taillights he could tie to either the troopers or the bus. They appeared to be gaining on the storm, if the crescendo of frozen rain pelting the windshield was any indication.

“You know what doesn’t make sense?” Mia mused from the backseat. “Why Alex would bend over backwards to help Reyna, but totally skip over the fact she left behind two people trapped in a car at the bottom of a hill.”

Carl didn’t know how to explain that, either. The omission didn’t match up with Alex’s actions in the traumatic moments post-crash, when she thought to leave the violet scarf as a marker. The girl he woke from a dead sleep this morning—this morning? Was that possible?—demonstrated remarkable concern for Reyna at the bus station, given her own desperate agenda.

Carl rubbed his head, wincing when he made contact with the bump. There were definitely aspects of this impetuous young teen he hadn’t seen during the ride up, a generous and compassionate side. Why she would lie to Mia was perplexing. Then again, Alex was sixteen, her brain years from full development.

Suddenly, the faint whine of a siren interrupted Carl’s thoughts.

Iris leaned over the steering wheel. “Folks, am I seeing things?”

ALEX

“Colebrook, coming up in about fifteen miles,” the bus driver bellowed.

Inside the overheated bus, condensation clouded Alex’s window. She traced a large heart, animating its exterior with lines, like legs on a caterpillar.
Very Keith Haring
, she thought, sitting back to admire her work.

See, Mia? You’re not the only artist in the world.

Angered, she wiped out the entire image with her arm. To think she had put her faith in the spoiled painter with the amazing studio, who, judging from the aromatic cloud that engulfed Alex, wasn’t above partaking in some serious ganja herself.

The girl’s gray eyes had glittered with suspicion (or something else) while she grilled Alex at the door. Once Mia determined she wasn’t an ax murderer, she let Alex into the most amazing art studio ever—all glass walls and smooth wood, a sick wood-burning stove, a pair of easels with some seriously good paintings on them, not that Alex really knew anything about art.

Alex wriggled on the bus seat. In hindsight, lying to Mia hadn’t been cool. She hated when her friends did that to her. But Mia deserved it for double-crossing her, especially after Alex had sat on the floor in front of that stove and poured her heart out.

Mia had nodded sympathetically the entire time, giving Alex dry clothes and tea and granola—even handing her a folded twenty for bus fare, then offering to drive her to the bus depot.

She should have suspected something when she saw that Mia’s friend’s house had a name: Hope Haven. Where Alex came from, only rich people out near the country club gave their houses fancy names. There was nothing fancy about Hope Haven. She and Mia had slipped inside without even knocking. (“I spend a lot of time here,” Mia had said at Alex’s questioning stare.)

The bus’s heat was making her sleepy. She curled up on the seat, feeling mostly satisfied with herself and with all of her actions today, and hoping Cass was, too. After all the drama, she was more than ready to be on her own for a while.

Funny, Alex mused, being on her own was kind of what her mother had been suggesting all along.

She must have dozed off, because when she next opened her eyes, the bus had slowed.
Colebrook
, she thought giddily, gathering her bag and preparing to move to the front of the bus so she would be the first to exit. That’s when the grumbling of her fellow passengers began to register.

“Sorry, folks,” the driver said. “Unscheduled stop. Nothing I can do about it.”

Alex rubbed at her fogged window, seeing nothing but darkness. Sleet still drummed the bus roof. Would the weather mess with her plans again? The bus wheezed to a halt, and the driver threw the lever to open the door. Who could possibly be boarding the bus in the middle of nowhere? Alex wondered.

A second later, her question was answered when a uniformed officer stepped aboard, his bulky frame filling the aisle, his park ranger hat grazing the bus ceiling.

“Evening, everyone. Sorry to disturb your journey.” The trooper rested his hands on his belt like a cowboy. “Everyone take your seats, please. This won’t take long, if everybody cooperates.”

MEG

In the passenger seat, Jacob fought sleep, his chin bobbing toward his chest until the last second when he would jerk his head back and shake it. He finally lost the battle as they crossed the border into New Hampshire, his uneven snores now punctuating the silent ride. Meg’s phone slipped off his lap onto the seat.

Whatever he’d taken that morning must be wearing off
, she thought, sliding her phone closer and wondering what a drug test would turn up in Jacob’s system. Would the results match what he’d admitted to?

She wished she had jotted down the texts Carl had relayed to her. One had been to Shana, obviously; the other to Evan, most likely. It saddened Meg but didn’t surprise her that Alex reached out to them and not to her parents during her brief window with a phone at the bus depot. Certainly if Alex had reached out to Melissa, Meg would know by now.

When her own phone finally lit up with a text, Meg grabbed it. She rested it on the wheel and attempted to read it, swaying into the empty left lane in the process. The motion roused Jacob.

“Hey, what . . . ?” He grabbed the phone.

“There’s a message. Read it to me.”

“Hold on. It’s from Shana.” He read haltingly:

OMG. ALEX TEXTED ME. SO SCARED. DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE MEANS.

“How could Shana not know about Happy Corner?” Jacob asked once he finished reading. “They were all friends.”

“Obviously not as close as we thought. This was clearly Alex and Cass’s thing. Tell her she doesn’t need to worry.”

As Jacob texted a reply to Shana, Meg thought again of her daughter’s second text. “Jacob, what was it Alex said to Evan again?”

“Something about not being able to help him anymore.”

Meg rubbed her lower lip. “You know, hearing that one again, it sounds kind of final.”

“It’s not, Meg. It’s actually good. She’s just trying to shake this guy once and for all.”

“I hope so.”

Meg shifted into the right lane for the White Mountains turnoff, thinking of her daughter alone on a bus, wishing she could be as certain as Carl Alden and Jacob that Alex was within their reach.

CARL

The siren’s wail grew louder. As the gap narrowed between their car and the cluster of taillights up ahead, Carl made out a bus parked on the shoulder, a clutch of SUVs angled beside it. Strategically placed flares framed the coach; its interior glowed softly, silhouetting some standing passengers.

“Do you see Alex?” Iris asked as she pulled over.

“What if she’s not on it?” Mia asked.

Carl jumped out and jogged to the coach, its silver exterior slick with sleet. Before he reached the bus, Mia had caught up with him, matching his long strides.

ALEX

At the sight of the trooper, Alex crouched down in front of her seat, pulling her bag with her, jackhammers reactivated and pounding double time.
It’s not fair.
They couldn’t do this to her now, not after she’d come this far, not when she was so close to Rainmaker she could taste it.

“Just a quick search, folks. Stay right where you are. Appreciate your cooperation.”

The trooper’s voice was closer now.
Shit.
Squeezed into the small space, Alex wished it were possible to crawl under the seats to the front of the bus, then sneak off. But the footrest dug into her shin in this position, blocking any access. Squatting, she pulled the hood of Mia’s sweatshirt over her head to disguise herself and inched closer to the aisle, leaning out just far enough to glimpse the trooper’s regulation boots—massive, like monsters’ hooves—a few seats away before scooting back again and throwing herself into her seat, curled toward the window and feigning sleep.

Around her, disgruntled passengers continued their complaining.

“How long’s this going to take?” a man called out. “We already left Lincoln late.”

“Relax, folks. We’ll have you on your way in no time.”

“They must be looking for that missing girl,” a woman said. (The stinky salad one?)

“I heard she just walked away from those poor people,” a man answered.

Alex’s jaw dropped in indignation.
WTF?
I did not
, she mouthed to the bus’s steamy window. It took everything she had not to jump up and defend herself to her fellow passengers—to describe the slam of the moose, the sight of the unresponsive driver’s head slumped over the pearl moon of air bag, the deadweight of Mom Haircut’s arm dropping onto Alex’s knee like a zombie’s. What would they do if
they
woke up next to a woman with a lap full of glass, sleet pouring in through a jagged, gaping hole in their roof?

She doubted any of them would have had the presence of mind to grab Cass’s scarf as she had. Alex was certain Cass was watching over her. It was the only explanation for the car door that miraculously opened in spite of the child locks, and for everything that came after as Alex crawled around the muddy ground behind the car paralyzed with fear, inhaling the faint odor of smoke, practically sobbing when she finally felt the bumpy Braille of tire tracks, following the path on all fours to the bottom of the hill, Cass’s scarf trailing on the ground and nearly tripping her in the process.

After a few tries, Alex had given up on scaling the hill.
It would serve her parents right if they discovered her frozen body in the woods
, she thought, slipping to the bottom of the slope.
That
would be cosmic retribution.

So it could only have been Cass who yanked Alex back to her miserable reality, willing her to try again, to inch her butt up the hill, who inspired Alex to loop her scarf around the metal barrier, the shiny wrap a pomegranate kiss against infinite gray.

Had her fellow bus passengers been present in that frosted landscape, they might have understood how it had wounded Alex’s soul to part with her best friend’s scarf, to leave it billowing in the wind, despite the higher purpose it now served.

They would not have questioned the decision Alex made at that moment—when she glanced back at the violet marker one final time—to fulfill the promise she and Cass had made the day they struck the
Annie
set. Despite her vow after losing Cass, Alex had taken all the events of today as signs Cass wanted her to continue on the journey alone. From that point on, every slippery step along the Kancamagus, every choice made over the course of the day, moved her closer to Happy Corner.

Cass would have been proud
, Alex thought, head pressed against the bus window.

The trooper’s boots sounded about a seat away now. Alex took another deep breath, wishing she could inhale herself into invisibility, pulling the sweatshirt hood farther over her face.

Up front, the bus door wheezed open again.

The monster feet stopped in their tracks. “Sir, please stay back. No one is authorized to come aboard. Young lady, that means you, too.” The boots clomped toward the front of the bus.

Alex strained to listen.

“We have this under control, sir. I need to ask you to wait outside.”

Alex thanked the universe for the interference, which gave her time to consider other options. If she could somehow make it outside, she could slip into one of the giant luggage bins below and still get to Colebrook.

Clomp, clomp, clomp.
The monster boots marched down the aisle again, now double time as another pair of feet joined the trooper’s. In spite of her fear, Alex’s curiosity got the better of her. Still curled in a ball, she shifted in her seat, peeking out the tiniest, tiniest bit to see the boots, sounding so close now Alex thought she could reach out and touch them.

That is, if Alex had
wanted
anything to do with the brown work boots she’d spent most of the day trying to escape—boots now so scuffed and filthy they barely resembled the polished pair that showed up unannounced in her Riverport bedroom this morning.

She might have convinced herself they belonged to another disgruntled passenger, were it not for the gratingly familiar voice booming above her head:

“With all due respect, Mendham, Alex Carmody was my responsibility. I’d like to be the one to find her.”