He left the windows down, as was also his policy, so that the cab might be reasonably cool when he and Trevor returned. He had half a dozen ancient cassette tapes in the truck’s glove box, each worth nothing and thus more valuable than the vehicle itself. Even with the engine running and the doors unlocked, he figured the thing most likely to get nabbed would be his copy of
He passed through the farthest section of the lot, stepping over a curbed area of grass that acted as a traffic regulator in a way painted yellow lines never seemed to manage in the parking lots of the world. Pasted against the far side of the small island was a pile of windblown refuse comprised mostly of damp newspaper and flyers, an abstract mess of dirty papier-mache.
Litterbugs. The mountains had their share too, of course, but somehow the grime always seemed thicker down here, less manageable. You got the impression that with a lot of dedicated clean-up you could eventually scrub those mountain roads clean but that the stains here in the lowlands were permanent.
Mike imagined a team of boy scouts with buckets and sponges going to work on the access road to his property and grinned sardonically as he stepped through the doors of the Mountain View. Upon seeing the grand carousel and the converging throng around it, however, his mind quieted, and his eyes bulged.
A trio of teenage girls in ripped jeans and too-tight t-shirts bumped him from behind, striding in through the doors with their heads held high and their shoulders pulled back, a royal entourage from some universe gone terribly wrong. Mike tried hard not to stare at the exposed slices of flesh through the tears in the seats of their pants.
He stepped deeper into the mall and out of the path of any future entrants. Libby had said she’d meet him in the food court, but she hadn’t specified where; Mike had counted on
Mike walked casually past food-court diners, not in any rush. A quick look at his watch told him he’d actually arrived a few minutes early, despite the truck, and the line for the carousel was extensive. If Libby and Trevor
Walking closer to the waiting crowd, Mike let out a little whistle of disbelief. Two hundred people must have been standing in line, many of them children and young teenagers. Mike didn’t think he’d had that much patience as a kid. Hell, he wasn’t sure he had it now.
He moved around the perimeter of the crowd, always more comfortable away from the center of activity, scanning the field of hair, looking for Libby’s distinctively sleek do. Her hair. He’d always loved it, from the day they’d met, and he hadn’t grown so bitter that he couldn’t still see it for what it really was.
Her hair wasn’t there. He made a second lap around the crowd to double check, but he didn’t see her, and he was pretty sure he would have managed to pick her out. Trevor, being so small, might have disappeared beneath the surface of the crowd, but not Libby. Mike frowned and turned away from the carousel. Short of bulling his way through the line and screaming out their names like a rescue worker tearing through the wreckage of some collapsed building, he wasn’t sure what more he could do.
He supposed he ought to head back to the tables, see if somehow he’d passed them by. About to move in that direction, he happened to catch sight of a woman zigzagging her way down the corridor.
“Libby?” He said it quietly, could barely hear the word himself over the music coming from the loudspeakers behind him. Standing with his head cocked, he raised a hand to draw her attention, but she was looking at something behind her shoulder and didn’t seem to be aware of him at all.
He started to say her name again, but then decided he’d better move out of her way instead before she mowed him down.
He wasn’t fast enough.
He’d played football in high school, had been plowed over many times by linebackers and linesmen and once by a rival school’s mascot on a particularly embarrassing play, but that had been many years ago, and he hadn’t expected his ex-wife to come charging into him like a blitzing defenseman on an adrenaline high. He stumbled half a step back and grunted out, “Hey,” before reversing direction as quickly as he ever had in his gridiron days and moving to catch Libby before she could rebound onto her ass. He needn’t have bothered. She caught herself and seemed to consider hurrying past him without acknowledging his presence, but then she looked directly at him for the first time and stopped.
“What’s going on?” he asked her, peering into eyes maybe one blink away from a torrential tear storm. “Where’s Trevor?”
He leaned to the left and glanced around her waist, as if the boy might be hiding there. Of course, no Trevor. No Trevor anywhere, and Mike knew without Libby saying a word what had happened.
“Missing,” he said simply, and Libby nodded, still not crying but looking close to it.
“I let him wait in line for the carousel,” Libby said, searching the area immediately around them with her eyes while she spoke. “He wanted to wait alone, didn’t want me—” She laughed a little in a way that made Mike cringe. “Didn’t want me cramping his style, I guess. And I got up to get a refill, and when I turned around, he was just gone.” She stopped talking long enough to crane her neck over a group of baggily dressed boys before continuing. “I talked to the girls he’d been standing in line with and a security guard and then looked in every shop I could think of but he—”
“Okay,” Mike interrupted. His natural instinct was to pull her to him and give her a big hug, maybe calm her down a little, but they were long beyond the days of such intimate contact. He settled for clutching her shoulder. “Don’t worry, okay. We’ll find him.”
“I don’t know where he could have gone.” Libby was understandably antsy, shuffling her feet, moving her fingernails toward her mouth.
“Let’s walk and talk,” Mike said, knowing she couldn’t stay still for long.
“He promised he’d stay where I could see him,” Libby said and hurried off down the corridor, leading Mike, though only barely. “I can’t believe…I thought maybe somebody grabbed him.”
Mike glanced at the carousel crowd. Children swayed slowly on their feet, bored. Little boys danced from foot to foot and…
“You were getting a refill?” Mike asked after a sudden inspiration.
“Yeah, so? I don’t—”
“You ate supper?”
“Oh,” she said, “yeah. I didn’t know if you had plans.”
“No, it’s not that. But I think I might know where he went.”
Mike took hold of her by the upper arm and led her only long enough to be sure they were heading in the same direction; then he let go of her bicep, and they rounded the uncrowded side of the merry-go-round together, back toward the eateries and the munching customers. He didn’t come to the mall any more often than anyone else, and certainly far
“Where are we going?” Libby’s flats clacked against the floor. Dressed in well-worn sneakers, Mike had the grace of a cat burglar in comparison, though he chugged along just as swiftly.
Mike let her question go unanswered. Just a few more seconds and she’d see for herself.
Between the