Advantage: surprise. Disadvantage: time. Everything comes down to whether Jude can get this vehicle down a mountain faster than Ferraro can cross a valley.
Lucia is on the phone. Calling Tiffany. The ring tone cycles through the dark vehicle. Once. Twice. Three times.
No answer.
She calls again. Her thumb on the screen is steady. Her jaw is locked. She is not shaking. She is operating the way I operate. The way Rafe operates. The way Jude operates. Like the fear is fuel and the fuel is burning clean and the only thing that matters is the three miles between us and a four-year-old girl with a grey wolf.
Tiffany’s phone rings. Rings. Rings.
No answer.
The silence in the vehicle after the fourth unanswered call is its own kind of violence. Four adults in a vehicle and none of them can do anything except wait for the mountain to run out beneath the tires.
Rafe leans forward from the back seat. His hand finds Lucia’s shoulder. One grip. Firm. Not comfort. Anchor.
“We will get there,” he says.
Four words. From a man who spends words the way other men spend ammunition. Each one counted. Each one deliberate. Each one a promise loaded into a chamber and aimed at the dark.
The road straightens. Pine Valley below us. The bakery lights are visible from the ridge, a warm amber square against the dark valley floor. Still on. Tiffany keeps the ovens running late when she is baking with company. Those lights mean the power is on. The power being on means no one has cut it. No one has cut it means Ferraro has not arrived yet.
Maybe.
Jude pushes the engine harder. The SUV takes the last switchback at a speed that lifts the inside wheels off the gravel and the vehicle tips for one stomach-dropping second before the tires find purchase and we slam back down and nobody in this vehicle flinches. Not even Lucia. She is watching the bakery lights with the focus of a woman who has run the same math I have and arrived at the same conclusion: those lights are either a sign of safety or a trap and we will not know which until we are close enough that it does not matter.
Lucia’s phone rings.
Tiffany.
“Lucia?” Tiffany’s voice. Confused. Sleepy. Not scared. The voice of a woman who was dozing on the bakery couch while a four-year-old slept in the back room and has no idea what is coming down the valley road toward her. “Is everything okay? Tyra is asleep, she?—”
“Tiffany. Lock the doors. Take Tyra to the back storage room. The one with no windows. Do not open the door for anyone who is not me or Nick. Do it now.”
Tiffany does not ask why. She hears the voice. The Costa command voice that does not explain because explaining costs seconds and seconds cost lives. The line goes silent. Then the sound of movement. A lock engaging. A door closing.
Lucia exhales. One controlled breath.
“She is moving,” Lucia says. To me. To the vehicle. To the dark.
The bakery is a quarter mile. The lights are still on. No other vehicles in the lot.
Ferraro has not arrived.
But the valley road runs straight from the south and headlights are visible three miles out on a flat approach and I can count two sets moving fast toward the bakery from the direction of the highway.
Two vehicles. Moving in formation. No civilian drives in formation at eleven at night.
Ferraro.
We have two minutes.
The bakery parking lot. Jude skids the SUV sideways and kills the engine and we are out of the vehicle before the tires stop spinning. Rafe is first to the bakery’s rear entrance. His weapon is up. His body fills the doorframe. The Beast between the world and a sleeping child.
I move past Rafe through the bakery’s back hall. The smell of flour and chocolate and warm ovens. The hum of the refrigerators. A child’s drawing taped to the wall with masking tape. A grey wolf drawn in crayon beside a figure with dark curls labeled MAMA in four-year-old handwriting.
The storage room door is closed. Locked from inside. I knock once.
“Tiffany. It is Nick.”