The Darkest Evening Of The Year

Chapter 61

They turned toward the coast and were eventually found by fog again, which didn’t creep around them on little cat feet but prowled forward with no less menace than a pack of lions.

Vanessa called Brian three times at fifteen-minute intervals, with additional bursts of directions, as her wealthy paranoid fiancé tried to thwart any tabloid-television crews that might be tailing them with or without their knowledge.

The absurdity of it seemed to confirm the reality of Vanessa’s story, and by the time they reached the white gate, Amy wanted to believe that the document signing, while awkward and unpleasant, would not be an intolerable ordeal.

Even with fog lights, they almost didn’t see the gate. The red reflectors were nearly defeated by the curdled mist.

When Brian, who was driving, pushed a button on the call post, Vanessa answered. “It’s a mile and a half past the gate, Bry. Piggy’s packed and I’ve got Dom Perignon on ice. Let’s get this done. I’m so happy the little freak is getting out of here, I might pee myself.”

Amy had not heard the woman before. She was struck that, even through the cheap speaker on the call post, the voice was throaty yet strong, and uncommonly seductive.

The gate swung open, and they passed through, and as the barrier swung shut again, Nickie growled.

The dog stood behind them in the cargo space. She looked left, right, and then forward through the windshield. The growl was low but not brief. She held it in her throat, then let it deepen, as though warning something off that didn’t take the first growl seriously enough to suit her.

Braking to a stop, Brian said, “Maybe the fog spooks her.”

“Maybe,” Amy said. “Where are the security people Vanessa said would sweep the car, us, and Nickie?”

“She said it’s still a mile and a half to his place. There’s probably a more formal guardhouse somewhere ahead.”

The car drifted forward. Amy said, “Wait.” Brian stopped again.

Amy turned in her seat, said “Move” to Nickie, and snatched her carryall from the back. She opened a zipper, withdrew the SIG P245.

“If it’s feeling funky to you,” he said, “we can turn around, drive past the gate. The open ground’s rough but passable.”

“I don’t know how it feels. I have to trust furface here.”

At the sight of the pistol, the golden stopped growling.

Amy said, “We know Vanessa’s sick. How sick, do you think?”

“She’s too in love with herself to do anything too stupid.”

“That’s the calculation I made when I wondered whether I should bring a gun. I decided I didn’t need it. Yet here it is in my hand.”

He nodded. “Let’s go back.”

“No.”

“You just said-”

“Here’s the thing. There’s a pattern. I lost a girl, and you lost a girl. Mine is gone forever. Yours isn’t, but she may be soon.”

Nickie whined, as though to suggest urgency and to add emphasis to Amy’s use of the word soon.

“But they want us to take her,” Brian said.

“The pattern includes things unseen. That night, Michael wasn’t in Argentina, he was right there, I didn’t know. The alarm system appeared to be engaged, a secret override disarmed it.”

Phantoms of fog shaped all the monsters of myth.

“Vanessa’s rich boy is waiting with documents, a fat checkbook,” Amy continued. “But he’s a thing unseen, maybe he doesn’t exist.”

“We agreed her story made sense.”

“The pattern is clearer now. In Connecticut, I thought I might get a golden. If I’d had one, it would have warned me, saved us.”

As if on cue, Nickie growled again.

“We have a golden now,” Amy said. “And not just any golden.”

“For sure, not just any. She’s…something.”

“I had a phone call from a dead nun.”

“Is this a Marco-and-his-blind-dog moment?”

“The dog isn’t blind. I told myself Just a dream. I knew better. Sister Jacinta said tell you about my girl, how I lost her.”

“Okay, that’s it, we go back to the county road, call the cops.”

“No. Vanessa expects us in a few minutes. The fog explains a short delay, not a long one. I’ve got a bad feeling, Brian.”

“Yeah. It’s infectious.”

“Truth is, I’ve had a bad feeling the whole way here.”

“You didn’t say.”

“Because it was maybe the only chance to find your girl. Let’s go a little farther.”

The amorphous white tissue of the late afternoon parting as if to the thrust of a blade, healing at once behind, enfolding on every side things unseen…

Amy said, “If something about this does stink, and she thinks we smell it, she’ll kill Hope.”

“Where do you get that from?”

“Intuition. Pattern. What Theresa said.”

“Theresa?”

“She told her mother the dog’s name was always Nickie. Always.”

In the deep swamp of fog, half-seen trees, bearded and strange, prehistoric and insectile, looming then gone…

Amy said, “You and me forever, Brian. Isn’t that where we are?”

“God, I hope it is. It’s what I want.”

“So if it’s you and me, and Hope is yours, then Hope is mine, too. Our daughter. I couldn’t save my own girl. Not back then.” Her voice pulled tight, didn’t break. “But two nights ago I saved her.”

“Amy…?”

“I saved her, and now she’s helping us save Hope.”

He coasted toward a stop. “Amy, you don’t mean…”

“Keep moving.” She held the pistol in both hands, palms dry, ready. “Whatever I mean, this is a second chance for both of us. If we fail to take it, the levels of Hell don’t go deep enough to give us what we’ll deserve.”

Into the last white-blind minutes before twilight, when the mist will darken to murk…

Brian said, “So it’s this again.”

“This?”

“Tagging after you into crazy-violent, tire-iron, jumping-on-the-table places.”