Prodigal

Chapter 33

33

Adam found JJ sitting outside, waiting for him on the front steps.

“You see all the fancy s**t downstairs?” she asked, standing.

“I successfully avoided a trip downstairs with all the officers,” he said. “Impressive?”

“Yes, I’d have to say it was. A lot of equipment I didn’t understand, a lot of people wanting to do something… I just hope it helps. Come on. Dorothy’s waiting. She said she’ll drop us on her way home.”

“Will her gun hand be on the wheel?” Adam asked as they walked to the car.

JJ grinned. “Yeah, that was one of Grant’s conditions. He confiscated her gun, and he’s gonna pick up the rest of their guns later. For safekeeping, until this is over.”

Adam whistled through his teeth, more than anything just to prove to himself he could muster that much air. “You think he’ll catch any flak from the Feds about her waving a gun at Luther?”

JJ cringed as she opened the door. “Let’s just hope they don’t find out.”

“Hey!” a deep voice called from nearby. Adam scanned the parking lot across the top of the car and saw a large, pale, bearded man approaching.

“s**t,” JJ said, under her breath. “Otto, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just catching a ride home with your wife.”

“You,” Otto said, pointing at Adam. “You need to come with me.”

“Otto,” JJ warned as the man came closer. “Back off.”

“It’s okay, JJ,” Dorothy said, leaning from behind the wheel. “He doesn’t want any trouble, either. He just wants Adam.”

And how is that not trouble for me? Adam wondered. But he put on his best, disarming smile, ignoring the pain in his face as his cheek moved to accommodate his wishes.

Dorothy reached out her car window and took Otto’s hand in hers, kissing the backs of his fingers.

“It’ll be alright,” Otto said. Then he rested his arms on the roof of the car and addressed Adam. “There’s someone you need to see.”

Otto’s size, longish hair, and arresting eyes put Adam in mind of a Viking. It wasn’t the most merciful image.

“Please,” Otto said.

Suddenly, Adam didn’t see a Viking anymore. He saw a desperate father, asking for help.

Unless he’d actually had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance.

Unless he was daddy.

But there was only one way to find out.

“Okay,” Adam said.

JJ slammed her car door. “The hell you will!”

“I think I need to do this, JJ. And we all want the same thing—Rachel at home, safe and sound.”

JJ’s eyes met Adam’s. Her eyes—good God, how he’d missed them! When they were kids, Adam felt like he hadn’t finished anything until JJ’s deep brown eyes had seen it. A tear snuck out of the corner of one now. Adam wanted to wipe it away, but JJ brushed it off so quickly herself that he almost thought he’d imagined it.

She turned to glare at Otto. “If you hurt him again, I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to my dog.” She opened the door, telling Dorothy, “I mean it.”

JJ grabbed Adam’s hand and clung to it, almost pulling him on top of her as she sat in the passenger’s seat.

“You’re not gonna mash my hand in the car door, are you? Because my hand is one of the few parts of my body that doesn’t hurt at the moment,” he lied. It was actually the hand he’d had an IV in, and he was trying not to wince.

“Of course it doesn’t—you didn’t get a decent punch in.” She squeezed Adam’s hand one last time and told him, “Be safe.”

“Always.” He fell in behind Otto, shuffling his feet through the parking lot so he didn’t lose his slippers on the gravel, telling himself all the while that he wasn’t the proverbial condemned man following the executioner.

Climbing in the truck was like ascending the Command Center steps again, if all the steps were condensed into one painful, yanking lurch. By the time Adam was up (and relatively upright), Otto had already walked around, gotten in the driver’s side, and belted up.

“I’m not having an affair,” Otto said, pulling out onto the main highway. They were headed the opposite direction from the Nicholson home.

“Okay,” Adam said.

“I did once. Just one time, a few years ago. It was cheating, but I don’t even know if that counts as an affair.”

Adam wasn’t sure what sort of response was expected, so he stuck with, “Okay.”

“I’d have to be an i***t to hit you while I’m driving and risk killing us both,” Otto said.

“True.”

“In other words, relax,” he said.

“Okay,” Adam said, because he had nothing else to say.

Within minutes they passed the bar that marked the limits of Cold Springs. The houses on the edge of town still looked like “town” houses, with mailboxes at the ends of driveways and lawns browning but mowed, punctuated by little jockeys (some black, some white) and birdbaths, and anchored by an old oak or elm. The ground began rising in another mile or two, manicured yards giving way to unruly woods and the occasional rusted tractor.

How much light was left in the day? Adam looked at the clock on the dash, but it was flashing twelve.

“Is my daughter still alive?” Otto asked, when the first ridge came into sight.

“I think so,” Adam said.

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Dorothy told me what you said, about why you came over this morning,” Otto said. “She didn’t know what to think of it.”

“That makes two of us,” Adam admitted. He wondered if Dorothy had mentioned she was holding a gun on him at the time. Considering the events of the day, Otto might have assumed as much.

“You know about Rachel’s asthma, don’t you?” Otto asked.

“Yes, I do.” Now.

“You’ve got that same look.” Otto took a hand from the wheel to point beneath his eyes before gearing the truck down. “The same look she has when she gets a bad one. Like a stain beneath your eyes.”

Death warmed over. That’s what Iris would say, when she saw him.

“I had an uncle—nobody talked about it, but we always knew he saw things.”

“Is that where we’re going? To see him?” Adam asked.

“No. This was back in New York, and he killed himself. Blew his brains out.”

Adam cringed, but didn’t have the energy to maintain his horror, and leaned his head against the window.

“Sorry,” Otto said. “You asked. But I think the man we’re going to see can help. I heard about him when I first moved here—years ago—and went to see him about someone else. He couldn’t find her, but with you… I think he can help us find Rachel.”

“What do you mean, with me?” Adam asked.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you came back? He lives over toward Pine Gap. You got about twenty minutes—time for a quick nap, if you want it.”

And he did. Adam wasn’t sure he’d ever been so tired before. The window was hard and cold, but the mountain curves had always felt like a lullaby, rocking him to sleep, ever since he was a baby. Iris said that’s how they’d gotten him to sleep when colic and every other baby ailment in creation had made him cranky. Swaying gently, side to side…

Except once. One time there was a crunch, and the car lost the asphalt, flying into the air and tree limbs, and suddenly—

Adam jerked upright, heart pounding, throat dry. He looked down and saw he had adult hands, wonky thumb and all. That feeling—falling into a flashback to the accident—hadn’t snuck up on him in a long time.

He was alone in the idling pickup. He raised his weary eyes at the sound of metal clinking across metal. Otto stood in front of the truck, unlooping a chain from a gate and swinging it open.

“We’re almost there,” Otto said, climbing back in the driver’s seat. He didn’t bother closing the gate.

They crept slowly over an old cattle guard, then passed open fields on either side. There was a barn in the distance, just before the forest picked up again. Adam rubbed the side of his face where it was cold and clammy. The air outside pressing against the window was much cooler than it had been in town. The sky was thick with clouds, and he felt disoriented, still unsure where the sun was or how much longer it would provide warmth.

“There’s an extra jacket in the back,” Otto said.

It got even colder when the truck rolled under the canopy, leaving the ghosts of prancing colts and cud-chewing cows behind. Adam rubbed the tops of his legs to warm them. What he really needed was another pair of pants.

“You got a cellphone?” Adam asked.

“Naw. No point out here, ’til they put a bunch more towers up. Dorothy knows where we’re going. She’ll call his neighbor if she hears anything.”

After another mile or two, they came to a winding driveway, with trees crowded so close to its edges that their destination remained cloaked in mystery. Otto drove slowly past a patch of trees with dented trunks and bark scraped away at truck height.

“How the heck do you manage that driving uphill?” Adam asked.

Otto said, “Easier than you’d think. There’s a matching track on the downhill side, too. I didn’t make either one.”

Adam was just starting to shiver when the shape of the cabin came in sight through the trees. He racked his brain, trying to remember if he’d seen the structure on the maps or photos. They were all starting to run together. Everything was starting to run together.

“You okay?” Otto asked.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “But I won’t say no to that jacket.”

“Harlan’ll have a fire going.”

Adam looked at the sky above the cabin and saw that Otto was right. Smoke never looked so good. The chimney was stone, and as they made the last bend he got a good look at the cabin it was attached to: simple, one story, with logs stained dark and bright white c******g. Split wood lay stacked all along the outside wall under the porch’s overhang, and also in the driveway under tarps, ends exposed where the tarps had ridden up. The woodpile was the height of the truck and about three feet wide, making a wall of potential warmth.

Otto pulled up alongside an old red truck parked in front of the cabin. He cut the engine, and the vehicle gave a few extra sputters, as if he’d bought bad gas. They sat for a minute or two, listening to the engine tick in the cool air, giving the man inside the cabin time to come out to greet them.

Adam gave another shivering shudder. “So, that jacket?”

Otto reached easily over the back of the seat, a move that Adam looked forward to performing again someday, though probably not for quite a while. Otto handed Adam a camouflage jacket with green cuffs. Resisting the urge to smell it, Adam threw the jacket over his upper body. He couldn’t put it on properly in the cramped truck cab, and possibly not without assistance.

“How long do we—”

Adam’s question was answered when a gray-haired man in a dark flannel shirt and jeans stepped out the front door.

“What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Get your asses in here.” He banged back in through the door so quickly Adam never even got a decent look at him.

“Harlan, huh?” Adam asked.

Otto left the keys in the ignition when he got out. “Yeah, Harlan Miller.”

Otto’s passenger door was old and temperamental, and Adam had to push it harder than he would have liked to ensure it didn’t swing back and mash his legs. He slid off the seat and down to the ground. Only a tight grip on the doorframe kept him upright. The jacket crept off his shoulders and fell to his feet.

Adam stood, unsteady, looking at the garment and wondering if he should join it on the cold, damp earth.

Otto appeared next to him and picked up the jacket, giving it a little shake. “You won’t need that inside. I’ll take my hat back, too.” He plucked the Orioles cap from Adam’s head and tossed it and the jacket in the truck.

Adam looked toward the cabin. Harlan Miller had left the door open except for a screen, so cold air would be rushing in. Harlan Miller… “You mean, Crazy Harlan?” Adam asked.

“Some people call him that.”

Adam knew he’d heard stories, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember any at the moment. “He doesn’t move like an old man.”

“No, but you do. Come on,” Otto said, eyes urgent and fingers bruising Adam’s arm. “Now.”