“Please,” Hayley said. “Please. I can’t explain it, but this is important. If information about us gets out …”
“I can drive them,” Colton said.
Shania didn’t like the idea at all. “You don’t even have your learner’s permit,” she said.
Colton cocked his head, a little sheepishly. “I do. Dad and I got it. We didn’t want you to worry. Besides, Mom, you’ve let me back the car in and out of the alley. I can drive.”
“No. Wait until tomorrow.”
“Mom, can’t you see? There’s no waiting. I’m taking them. This is about their lives, not like we’re looking for a ride to the mall to go to the movies or something.”
“He’s right, Mrs. James,” Taylor said, a little surprised that she’d gone from hating Colton’s involvement to appreciating and needing his help. “He really is. Please let him take us.”
Shania James went for her keys.
“I knew you’d understand,” Hayley said.
“No,” she said. “Colton’s not driving. I’ll take you. Your parents will kill me if Colton drove. They’ll only give me the cold shoulder if I do. I can live with that.”
“But, Mom, you don’t drive anymore.”
“It’s like riding a bike,” Shania said. “I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it. But you’d better buckle up, everyone. No promises how smooth it will be.”
She started up the stairs.
“I thought you were going to drive us?” Colton said, calling up after her.
“I am, but there’s a good chance I’ll get pulled over, and if I do I’ll be damned if I’m going to be wearing this robe—favorite or not. You should get dressed too.”
Taylor turned to Colton, her eyes wide.
“When was the last time your mom got behind the wheel?”
“She hasn’t driven since, you know …”
“Why is she doing it now?”
“Don’t you know?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“Mom always said that you two were special, special in a way that some people can never understand. She would do anything for you.”
Hayley looked puzzled. “What did she mean by that?”
He shrugged and headed toward the stairs. “I’m guessing we’ll find out tonight.”
chapter 48
EVEN IN THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT, Shania James couldn’t conceal her anxiety as she led the trio of teens to the old Camry parked in the alley behind the house. Her legs looked like wobbly sticks, ready to snap with each step. Aside from the Christmas trip during which she was blindfolded and heavily medicated, Shania hadn’t been out of the house for years.
The car keys that she retrieved from the kitchen’s junk drawer shook like a jingling tambourine. It had been a long time since she held those keys; a Lucite red heart dangled like it had that afternoon so many years before. She remembered looking it at, sparkling happily in the worst moment of her life: the time she plotted whether she could summon the courage to gouge the eyes out of her attacker’s face.
She looked around nervously, and her son put his hand on her shoulder.
“Mom, you don’t have to do this.”
“I can and I want to,” she said. “Give me a second. Every time I go outside, the world seems so much bigger than I remember.”
Shania took several deep breaths and steadied herself before proceeding.
She opened the driver’s door and looked down at the seat and the steering wheel.
All three wondered what it was that she felt right then. Was she thinking about that afternoon when Colton was a baby? Was she thinking about her attacker? Was she thinking about what she did to save her life? And Colton’s?
“I can do this,” she said a second time.
Colton helped his mom into the driver’s seat. Taylor and Hayley slid into the backseat, while Colton went around to the other side to get in next to his mother.
“You’ve kept the car so clean,” Shania said, trying to take herself out of the moment, out of what she was about to do—and where she was sitting.
“Like you asked, Mom,” he said.
She smiled. But if ever there was a plastered-on smile, Shania James was wearing one just then. The keys and the Lucite heart jangled some more as she turned the ignition and put the car in gear, first in reverse by mistake, then in drive. It felt so strange and yet oddly beautiful to drive again, like a foreign language she managed to recall. Shania drove slowly, very slowly, down the alley and onto the highway. She gripped the wheel like she wanted to choke the life out of it.
Just maybe she did.
“There,” she said, trying effortfully to stay focused on the roadway in front of her and not on the reasons why she hadn’t been in that car. “I’m driving.”
Colton looked back at Hayley and Taylor. Neither said a word.
Hayley couldn’t have spoken just then if she had wanted to. The movie playing in her mind was a horror show of unimaginable depravity. A half-naked man. A knife. A scream. A baby’s scrunched-up face as he cried out.
“Are you all right?” It was Taylor nudging her twin.
Hayley nodded. “Think so.”
“I feel it too,” Taylor said. “Just so you know.”
“I know you do,” she said.
Colton read the directions off the MapQuest printout that Hayley had retrieved from her pocket, and Shania James did what she had to do. She had to protect the girls. Outside of the safety of her house, Shania recalled the promise she had made—a promise that lay dormant until it finally bubbled back up to the surface that night. Agoraphobic or not, Shania had no choice but to drive into the darkness of Port Gamble. Toward what? She wasn’t sure. No one in the car was.
THE WOODS OF KITSAP COUNTY WERE CREEPY enough in daylight. Add a wicked February wind and the black of night and it is the stuff of dark fairy tales, the kind of place where only a fool would wander. Shania pulled the Camry up the gravel driveway to Savannah Osteen’s cabin. A porch light blazed and the heat lamps of the pheasant breeder sent a red glow over the sword ferns at the forest’s edge. The long shadows from the headlights turned every low-hanging cedar and fir bough into a crouching figure, moving in the wind.
A light in the kitchen turned on. Then another in the living room. As Hayley, Taylor, and Colton got out of the car, Savannah Osteen appeared in the doorway.
“Who’s there?”
“Hayley and Taylor Ryan,” Hayley called out. “We need to talk to you.”
Colton went to his mother’s door and opened it. “Mom, are you coming?”
“Just a minute,” Shania said, doing all that she could to steady herself. “Let me catch my breath.”
“Thank you for bringing us,” Hayley said, hugging her.
“Honey, don’t thank me,” she said. “At least, not yet. We don’t know exactly where this is going.”
The log cabin was warm, and stepping inside from the cold night air brought some relief. Shania had kept the air conditioner going full blast on the way from Port Gamble because she was sweating profusely and thought it would help her from passing out.
