stood at the sink, washing his hands.
Her eyes slammed shut, and when they opened again, her face lay pressed against the cold tile and the kitchen table had been righted and the sheriff and that familiar man sat across from each other.
“. . . this storm, we won’t be able to get back to Abandon until next summer. I told you it might come to . . .” His voice left audible trails, as if he were speaking in triplicate.
Abigail had been stoned before, drunk, even took Ecstasy a couple years back at an ill-advised rave in the Meatpacking District. This was nothing like that. She didn’t feel euphoric, just tranquil and dreamy and wise. On some disassociated level, she understood the danger, but it was knowledge without emotion or investment, no more upsetting than hearing of a stranger’s death on the evening news.
“I fucking hate this.” The sheriff’s voice.
Somewhere in the kitchen, a crow squawked nine times.
“This isn’t the first blood spilled for those bricks. But we do this right? Finish it? Maybe it’s the last. You thought of it that way?”
“I don’t know if I’m wired for—”
“Remember what you said to me four days ago? ‘There’re people going into Abandon, and I think they’re going for our gold.’ You told me, ‘Don’t let it happen.’ ”
She went out of time again, wading amid thoughts jumbled and irrelevant and absurd, vaguely aware that she needed to bring herself down, untangle her mind from this exquisite high.
“. . . four-hundred-foot drop off Peace Falls. There’ll be no chance of anyone finding her until . . . Jesus, Jen, I told you to get her loaded.”
Abigail tried to sit up.
“I spiked her tea with thirty milligrams of oxycodone.”
If Abigail didn’t move her head, she could actually bring their faces into focus.
“What’d she say, Quinn?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
This time, she got the words out, though they slurred against her thick tongue, sounded as muddled as everything else. “Why’d you drug me?”
Jennifer said, “Just to help with your pain. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Lovely.” Abigail stared at the man at the table, her mouth and eyes gone dry. “I know you.”
“Yes, we’ve met.”
Abigail managed to sit up against the cabinets, had to close her eyes to shut out the chaos of light and noise.
“In the mine?”
“No, Packer’s mansion. But I did lock you and your father and June into the mine. More than a little surprised you found a way out.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She tried to suppress a giggle. It all seemed so terribly funny. Then it hit her. “Jennifer,” she said, “there were gold bars in that mine. I’ll bet that’s what your—what was he?”
“Great-grandfather.”
“What he was looking for. I can show you—Wait.” She pointed at Quinn. “He knows. He was there. He had a key. How does he have your great-grandfather’s key?”
Quinn and Jennifer laughed.
Abigail laughed, too, her eyes catching on the clock above the sink, a different bird assigned to each hour.
It read 9:10 P.M.
Impossible. It had been hours since she’d walked into the office and looked at the Silverton photographs and Primack’s journal.
“I need to get going, huh?” Quinn said. “Before this snow gets any deeper.”
“I should go with you. I won’t lie—I don’t want to, but—”
“No, I’ll take care of it. Abigail, wanna go for a ride?”
She thought about it. “Where to?”
“Just up into the mountains a little ways.”
“Why?”
“To meet up with search-and-rescue, so we can get your dad out of the cave.”
She smiled. “Know what I think?”
“What?”
“You don’t mean the words you’re saying.”
“No? Then what do I mean?”
“Something bad.”
