SNOWSCAPE

 

 

LARX AWOKE and found that Eamon had parked the SUV in the shade and was nowhere to be seen. After a bit of frantic looking around, Larx realized they were in a small section of strip mall, which was sort of an unromantic phrase for the historic clapboarded businesses that made up much of Foresthill.

About the time he figured Eamon must have gone inside for food, he saw the man himself coming down the stairs from the raised boardwalk to walk across the parking lot with two big white bags in his hand.

And two coffees, because he was a man with his priorities straight.

Larx greeted him warmly when he slid in and took the hamburger with supreme gratitude. “Nobody’s seen her?” Larx asked needlessly, mouth full of burger. Mm… this wasn’t a frozen patty either.

“No—but we sent dogs from the shed out toward Foresthill, and they picked up her trail. About five miles through, overland, they found a snow shelter a lot like the one in the backyard. She made it through the night, Larx—she’ll make it here.”

Larx smiled, some of the tension in his back easing. “And I think her life science and geography teachers should get medals for that. Just saying.”

“You make that happen,” Eamon said with a smile before biting into his own hamburger. They ate in silence for a moment, and then Eamon spoke again. “I want Aaron to run for sheriff next year.”

Larx took a hard swallow on the burger in his mouth. “You’ve said.”

“I still want it. Even with the getting shot. Can you deal with that?”

Larx closed his eyes and let his body yearn. Yearn to be next to Aaron again, yearn to see him, even pale in bed, respirator working, telemetry beeping softly.

Aaron, in this job for another fifteen years, maybe twenty.

But then, Larx was here, working when he wanted to be with Aaron. Larx had gotten shot that fall—he’d been the one taking the risks.

“I hope so,” he said softly, taking a sip of his coffee. “Maybe don’t ask me right now. Ask me in two weeks, when he’s home and driving me batshit and I need him to go to work before I kick him in the shins.”

“Fair enough.” Eamon took another sip of coffee and then stiffened. “Whup—there’s our girl.”

The town was little more than two hundred yards of businesses on either side of the street, with a train track in the middle, and their girl had just emerged from the shadows of the two buildings across the street. She had to be theirs—fourteenish, medium build, dressed in survival gear, and limping just a tad from boots that probably needed extra socks to fit.

Other than that, she looked a damned sight better than Larx would if he’d spent the night in the woods.

Yoshi had pulled up the girl’s picture for them, and Larx had remembered seeing her in the halls. Appearance-wise, she was like her sister—brown-haired, blue-eyed, average chin, average cheekbones, no outstanding features, no super extra animation to make her memorable in a crowd.

But Shelley had been young and—relatively—untouched by the awfulness her sister had endured over the last few months.

Candace had purpose now. She didn’t move like a little girl who had been lost in the woods for the past night. She moved like a survivalist who had camped in the woods, broken camp, and was heading for her intended destination and, to her mind, a better life.

God help anyone who got in her way.

Larx remembered what he’d said about her being armed against her stepfather—and took it back. “I’m going to talk to her,” he said quietly. Eamon had gotten him two burgers, and he pulled the second one out of the bag, securely wrapped in white paper, and put it in the bag with the fries. “She knows me—I might not be trustworthy, but I’m certainly nonthreatening.”

Eamon side-eyed him. “Yeah, Larx. That’s what I think when I see you. Totally harmless.”

“I know you think you’re being sarcastic, but seriously, I don’t see how.”

Eamon just laughed, and Larx shook his head. God spare him. He was just trying to keep his kids alive.

“Watch my back,” he said sourly. “If Roy Furman sees her, things could get weird.”

He didn’t slam the door as he swung out of the SUV, and he kept his stride nice and easy. Nothing to see here, just a guy who drove two hours through the snow to wander the boardwalk of a little ol’ gold rush town. As he was wandering, he saw the train station across the road—and figured that’s where she was going.

Traffic on the highway was pretty light, so he took his life in both hands and ran to the train platform, then over the tracks and across the other side of the road. His boots skidded a bit on the icy pavement, and he tried not to wipe out in the middle of the highway, because that would be a terrible way to die.

She’d disappeared into the train station just as he crossed over, and as he mounted the steps to the boardwalk, he heard the sounds of a car fishtailing into the almost empty parking lot he and Eamon had come from. He looked over his shoulder and saw a battered SUV, black, skidding to a halt in the middle of the lot. It must have done a donut because he was facing away from the Colton County Sheriff’s unit, which Eamon had parked in the back corner, in the shade.

Eamon had shown Larx Roy Furman’s driver’s license picture—square jaw, narrow eyes, blocky build—and the guy reaching into his car, profile to Larx, looked very familiar.

Larx hurried to the train station and pulled out his phone in time to see Eamon’s text: Backup is on the way. Keep her inside.

Awesome.

Larx entered the small historical station and looked around. The whole room was paneled in lovely stained wood, beveled to look vintage, and photos of the old train station as well as various antiques showing the elegance of traveling during the steam era dominated the room.

The teacher part of his brain was thinking Oh, I’d like to see the period clothing and the preserved china at another date.

Most of him was thinking C’mon, Candace, don’t hate me because I’m your principal.

He heard her before he saw her. The office was tiny but thickly cluttered by the displays of the old-world train station. The rusty, trembling voice was obviously right by the counter, but the bearer of it was sheltered from view by a wardrobe of antique clothes. Listening to her, part of him was reassured. She’d done an amazing thing, and she had a strong will—but she was still a fourteen-year-old girl in need of help.

“Ticket,” she was saying. “I’d like to purchase a ticket to Auburn. When does the train come?”

“Oh, honey.” The elderly woman had salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail that curled perfectly, and she smiled benevolently, like this poor dear had just wandered away from her parents and needed some cookies before she went back. “I’m sorry—the tracks are blocked up by Donner Pass. The train’s not coming from that way until tomorrow.”

“But….” She took a shuddery breath and pulled the lapels of the oversized army surplus parka around her shoulders. The army/navy store was about a mile from school—he wondered if she’d cut class to go buy it. “I need to get out of here. Is the bus working?”

“Candace?” Larx said gently. “Candace, honey?”

The face she turned toward him was wary and exhausted.

“I’m not going back, Mr. Larkin,” she rasped.

“There’s nothing to go back to,” he told her. “Your mother backhanded your little sister in front of the sheriff this morning—”

“Shelley!”

“She’s going to be fine,” Larx said, his mouth twisting. “CPS has her—nice women. I told them I’d send her a birthday present—”

“She doesn’t want dolls like girl dolls,” Candace said hurriedly, panic in her eyes. “She wants the—”

“Action figures with the kickass play structure.” He let a grin slip out. “Your sister’s sort of awesome. But your stepbrother was killed last night as you were getting away—”

She let out a little moan, and he thought her knees were going to give out. She propped herself on the counter. “Roy’s gonna… oh God, he’s gonna flip—”

Larx nodded and met eyes with the alarmed ticket saleswoman. “Ma’am, do you have a place we can, uh, hide?” He took his gloves off and shoved them in his pocket. This might take a few, and the office was pretty overheated.

The woman’s eyes widened. “Hide?”

“Yes, ma’am—we need to be out of the way while the policemen do their thing.”

“There’s, uh, a little break room in the back here….” She opened the counter and gestured them behind it. Once there, a small hallway led to a restroom cubicle to the left, and following it back took them to a tiny room that reeked of cigarettes and held the circular stains of a thousand cups of coffee. Larx looked around hurriedly, seeing a broom closet, a metal table with a computer on it, and a counter with sliding cabinet doors underneath.

“Is it going to be dangerous?” the woman—Marion, by her name tag—looked at Larx unhappily, and Larx felt a little bit of guilt. Was this how Aaron felt, having a firefight go down in Berto’s front room, with Berto weeping in the corner?

“Candace, has Roy even been to the high school? Any of the town meetings? Does he even know what I look like?”

Candace frowned. “No—he heard you were….” She swallowed. “Uh, gay, and sort of ranted a while. He and my mom got into a big fight over home school and then, well, he made her shut up about it and that was all, I guess.”

“Awesome. Marion, you and Candace go back in the room and—”

The little bell on the front door tinkled violently as the door was thrown open. “Candace? Candace, are you in here? Did you think getting away was this goddamned easy?”

Larx shed his coat and pretty much shoved it and Marion in the room and mouthed, “Get in the closet!” to Candace. Then he shut the door calmly and walked toward the counter, a determined smile on his face.

“Hi, sir, can I help you?” He scanned the ledger in front of him and the antiquated computer and hoped fervently that Roy Furman did not want to buy a ticket.

“Where is she?” The man in front of him didn’t look sane—his eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and his whole body reeked of whiskey the way the back room had reeked of cigarettes. In his arms he cradled a shotgun—Larx wouldn’t recognize the make, but it looked old and it looked deadly, and that was all he needed to know.

Larx let his eyes get really big as he feigned ignorance. “Where’s who?”

“That lying little bitch that got my son killed—where the fuck is she?”

“Sir, I, uh, haven’t seen any women come in—”

“Don’t fuck with me!” Roy Furman roared, and Larx took a frightened step back before he could decide if it was in character or not. Furman wasn’t tall—maybe Larx’s height—but his shoulders were incredibly wide. He had a brutal build—a wife-beater’s build. He probably had a weight set that he used, every day, so he could do to Marie Furman what Marie had done to Shelley.

“I’m sorry, sir—I’m going to have to ask you to leave—”

Furman lunged forward, grabbing for Larx’s collar, but Larx took another quick step back. “Get back here, asshole—you’re gonna tell me where the fuck she is—”

Larx danced out of his reach again, thinking that if only Furman would overreach on the end, at the lift-up partition where there was no counter to catch his body and balance up against, Larx had him.

“I don’t know who”—he dodged—“you’re mad about”—he dodged again, heading toward the part of the counter that lifted up. “But you really need to—” Almost there. “Get hold of your temper!”

And Roy played right into his hands. He threw himself forward, overbalancing on the end of the counter, and Larx leaped forward, shoving at Roy’s shoulders hard until he toppled completely over, landing on his head while his shotgun hit the floor with a clatter. He was lying there, dazed and floundering, when Larx picked up the gun and held it like he’d seen them held in the movies.

“Stay right there, asshole,” he snarled just as Eamon burst in the door, gun drawn.

“Took you long enough,” Larx panted, aware that his arms were shaking with the weight of the weapon. The bell tinkled again, and Deputy Hardesty came through, weapon drawn.

“Everybody freeze!” he shrilled, and Larx rolled his eyes. Percy—thirtyish, sharp cheekbones, and thinning beige hair pulled back from a widow’s peak—was probably his least favorite Colton County law enforcement officer, and Larx really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him now.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Larx snapped. “Or could you maybe draw on the wife-beating motherfucker on the ground so Eamon can cuff him?”

“Mills, you gonna let him talk to me like that?” Percy whined, and Eamon gave him a disgusted look.

“You are pointing the gun at the guy who just risked his life to help us,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Can you show a little goddamned sense?”

Percy grunted and pointed his weapon at Roy instead of Larx. At that moment Deputy Coolidge came in, weapon drawn as well, and Larx dropped the stock of the shotgun, holding the barrel with one hand, perpendicular to the ground, and the other hand up.

“Warren, you want to take this weapon?” Larx asked wearily. “It’s the suspect’s.”

“Thanks, Larx,” Warren said with a vague smile. Warren—round-faced and blond with wide blue eyes—had always struck Larx as none too bright—which made Larx glad he was no longer partnered up with Aaron on a regular basis. But Warren did Larx a solid now and held out his hand for the gun, which Larx turned over gratefully.

Eamon cuffed Furman, who was still dazed and mumbling obscenities, and then pulled him to his feet and gave him to Percy.

“Take him to Auburn and put him in jail—file charges against him in Placer County.”

“Placer?” Larx asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest to disguise his shivering. “Why?”

“Because it could be a big old jurisdictional mess,” Eamon said grimly. “We’re technically in Placer County, apprehending a solid citizen who was just looking for his daughter, and you know what? This guy could slip out of a loophole, given Colton County’s resources to hold an extended trial. I’m giving him to Placer and keeping the girls so they can maybe go back to school with their friends. That way he’s far out of their lives. You like?”

Larx couldn’t follow it all. “I think it’s a start,” he said, shaking harder with adrenaline. “Eamon, is this… is this normal?” If he hadn’t just thought the room was overheated, he could swear it was freezing.

Eamon grunted. “Son, you’re going into shock. This has been one hell of a day for you, hasn’t it?”

Larx nodded, still shaking. I want Aaron, he thought disconsolately. I want him so bad.

“Okay—go fetch your coat, fetch the girl, and we’ll head back. I understand they’re holding a cot at the hospital just for you.”

Larx’s eyes burned, tearing up and watering over. “Sounds awesome,” he muttered. “I’ll be right back.”

Candace rode back with them in the SUV, devouring the extra burgers and fries that were still in the unit. She told them pretty much what they’d suspected between bites, including the extent of her outdoor training, which she recounted with justifiable pride.

“I stayed warm all last night,” she said, mouth full. “I could have done it again tonight, but….” She bit her lip. “I got so hungry. Power bars may be good for you, but damn, they don’t keep you full. Not when you’re….” She looked away.

“Candace, I’m pretty sure they won’t make you stay that way for long,” Larx said softly.

She nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “That would be…. I don’t want it. I hate it. I hate how it got there. I just… oh God. Mr. Larkin, last year, I was so worried about going to high school. I wanted to go to a dance with a boy so bad. And now? Now I just… I want to go to bed at night and not be afraid.”

She broke down then, and Larx had Eamon pull to the side of the road so he could sit in back with her and hold her as she cried.

She fell asleep on him, about an hour from Colton. Larx waited until he thought he could talk without sounding broken and called Yoshi.

“Yosh? We found her. She’s… well, she’s okay, but—”

“Not okay. I hear you. We got lots of that going around.”

Larx closed his eyes. “Do you need me there? I….” I want to go see Aaron.

“No. Tane and Berto came by for five minutes—long enough for Berto to hold his shit together and tell Jaime he was okay. I sent them to the hospital with a change of clothes for you so everybody else could stay in their jammies. We’ve got pizza, milk, and green vegetables. We’ll be fine.”

Larx nodded. Good.

“I’ll be at the hospital, then,” he said gruffly.

“Good job, boss. Way to principal, since you can’t adult.”

Larx chuckled—for some reason, that was way funnier than it should have been.

“Larx?”

“Yeah?”

“You sound unhinged. Go sleep next to your boyfriend. It just… makes things better.”

Larx couldn’t argue.

He had a few more hours to go, though—it was dinnertime when Eamon finally left the police station to take Larx back to the hospital. In the interim they’d gotten Candace safely lodged with Colton County CPS, filed charges against Roy Furman for child endangerment, assault, and brandishing an unregistered firearm, and filed more charges against Marie Furman for child endangerment and abuse. The last Larx had seen of Candace and Shelley, they were holding each other tightly in the back of Carlene’s little Honda, on the way to their house so Candace could get some clothes to stay with a foster family.

She’d hugged Larx before they’d taken her, and he’d hugged her back.

“Tell Mr. Nakamoto I’m sorry,” she said. “I know he was trying to help me the other day, but I didn’t think he could.”

Larx nodded. “He’s just glad to know you’re okay. He was really worried.”

She’d cried a little more, and Larx wished fiercely for his own daughters.

He’d get there.

Right now he was just as happy to plod through the hospital with a bag of takeout in his hand as a parting gift from Eamon, and find Aaron’s unit.

Aaron was sleeping, blond lashes fanning against his cheeks, full mouth pursed like he was working out a problem as he slept.

Well, they were both too old to sleep like children.

Larx slid out of his jacket and unlaced his boots, grimacing at the smell. Long, long day in last night’s socks. He found a canvas tote by the coat hook and blessed and cursed Yoshi at the same time. He’d been expecting to find his moccasins, because that made sense if you were sleeping in a hospital, right? Instead, he found Aaron’s moccasins, two sizes larger than Larx’s, and Yoshi’s Christmas gift to Larx the year before—Garfield slippers, because Larx’s inability to function without coffee in the mornings was legendary, even to his colleagues.

Well, hell. He’d take ’em and be grateful.

If you couldn’t laugh at Garfield after a day like today, you might as well cash it in.

There were two pairs of sweats as well, and Larx looked about hurriedly for any nurses before changing into one of them and then shedding one hooded sweatshirt for the one in the bag. A shower in the morning—but right now, there was one thing he wanted, and one thing only.

The cot next to Aaron’s bed was about two feet shorter than the bed itself, and that didn’t do Larx any good at all. With a sigh he swung his legs over and laid his head on Aaron’s mattress, running his finger gently over the back of Aaron’s hand.

Aaron moved, stroking Larx’s hair back from his forehead.

“Long day?” he breathed.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Later.”

“What’re you doing now?”

“Staying here. With you.” Larx closed his eyes against the weak tears threatening to slip through.

“Good.”

He kept his eyes closed, but they escaped anyway.

They kept falling until Larx fell asleep, Aaron’s hand moving gently in his hair the whole time.