“Who are they? They clearly aren’t police. That teacher tried to warn me. I know why now.”
The street off the main road was lined with more vinyl-sided houses and empty driveways. “We have to keep heading towards town.”
“Our only chance now is that Fried Chicken couldn’t open his eyes enough to see where we went. But it’s not going to be hard to find two old women stumbling around. Damn, does my ass hurt.”
“We have to get to that hospital. If William has lost his memory, then maybe he’s in treatment there. Maybe Joe is at the store. He said he was cared for at the hospital. I guarantee Sarah was a patient too. I’m also sure our Suburban has been seized now. We’ll have to convince someone to take us there.”
“We can’t get far on foot, that’s for sure,” Roxy said, blinking in surprise at the wetness on her temple. “Jesus. Am I bleeding?”
I looked over, feeling the same on my face. “It’s starting to snow.”
SEVENTEEN
It became clear almost immediately why we’d heard so many repeated warnings; why everyone from the young man at the car rental to Sarah at the inn and even the man who just tried to kill us, had cautioned us about the storm. By the time we reached downtown Argentum, the snow fell not in sheets, but in buckets, camouflaging the storefronts in walls of white.
Roxy looked over her shoulder, seeing no sign of police lights. “Hope that scumbag gets frostbite to go with the pain in his eyes. If he has a phone, he’s called his boss—or whomever the suit is—to tell what happened. If it wasn’t snowing like this, we couldn’t even walk this out in the open. Watch your step, the last thing either of need is to break a hip right now. Though mine hurts like the dickens.”
“I knew what that man at the police station meant when he said he didn’t want my family to endure another tragedy. I just didn’t have a plan to get away. Thank God you did.”
“I knew I had mace inside my purse, and that was the extent of my plan. We’re lucky all they really wanted was our phones.”
We could barely see the outlines of the mostly abandoned buildings, looming in the snow like gray sentinels.
“Looks like Joe’s shop is closed. We have to get to a phone. In fact, we need to do that right now, before anything else.”
“We’ll stop in Scotty’s, use theirs. It should be right here….”
The “closed due to snow,” sign on the door was laminated and worn from frequent use.
“You know it’s bad when the bar closes.” Roxy breathed into her hands.
“That inn is old. It must have a landline phone somewhere that still works in this weather. We aren’t far.”
We made to the end of the boardwalk and looked across the street. Even in the pummeling snow, we could see the lights of the police cars parked in front of the hotel.
“Fried Chicken must have radioed in,” Roxy said.
“I didn’t see anywhere else open.”
“I saw a bunch of trash cans out behind the inn. Let’s see if we can sneak in. If not, we’ll find another plan. But right now, we have to get inside somewhere, and it’s the only place open. That’s our first priority. We’ll freeze out here. We were stupid not to buy some kind of parkas at the airport; these coats we’re wearing are made for football weather in Tennessee.”
I took Roxy’s arm again. We walked across the street and down an alley, the accumulation preventing us from moving as fast as I wanted. As we emerged behind the stores, we braced ourselves to walk directly into the snow, shielding our eyes the best we could.
There was already an inch of snow on the trashcans and on a maroon Voyager van parked behind the inn. In the ferocious winds, a screened door repeatedly slapped against its wood frame. My face hurting now, I held the screen door while Roxy slowly turned the handle of the main door.
The hallway inside was dark, and the doors to the other rooms were shut. We listened for sound of voices but heard nothing.
Roxy immediately tried to open the door to one of the rooms, finding it locked. As she moved on to the next, someone turned down the hallway. I held my breath as the person stopped, and then approached cautiously.
“What have you two done?” Sarah whispered. “Why are the police looking for you?”
“Listen, we just need a phone,” Roxy said.
“The phones don’t work in this weather.” She looked back down the hallway while fumbling with the keys in her hands.
“Of course phones work when it snows. It only started falling a few minutes ago.”
“That’s not what happens here. Everything shuts down: phone, internet. That’s why the man who rents this room hoofed it out before the storm for his girlfriend’s house. He knows there’s no contact after the weather gets bad. I see his van is still out back,” she said, looking over her shoulder and opening the door to her right. “He won’t even know somebody’s been in his room. Come in here.”
We followed her into a room where laundry sat in piles. “You have to stay in here; they’ve already been up in your room. They’re still here, outside on the porch, smoking.”
“Your landline phones must work,” Roxy whispered.
She shook her head. “We got rid of the landline phones at the inn. No use for them anymore. I don’t know anyone who has them.”
“That ancient technology shouldn’t have been abandoned by your generation,” Roxy scowled. “A good old-fashioned cord would save our asses right now.”
“The officers won’t even say why they want to find you. What did you do?”
“We didn’t do anything. I’m here to find my grandson, and my friend is here to help me. And we found him. Today. In this town. But he didn’t recognize me.”
“Did you understand that?” Roxy leaned in to Sarah. “Her own grandson didn’t recognize her, because he didn’t remember her. He didn’t even know his own name.”
Her eyes darted back and forth.
“We have to get to him,” I said, trying to stay calm. “I don’t know anything about you, Sarah, but Roxy said you don’t have much of a memory either. I don’t know what’s happening in this town, but my grandson is just like you. Could he be at the hospital here?”
“I don’t know, but this is making me too nervous. Stay here, I have to go back up front. Don’t come out. My boyfriend should be over soon. He might know what to do.”
She slipped out, and Roxy shook her head. “Lynn, we have to get out of here. Now.”
“I won’t leave him. I can’t, Roxy.”
“The roads are going to be impassable soon, Lynn. There aren’t any phones. Even if Tom were starting to look for you, there’s no cell towers to trace our phones. We will be trapped here, and they already tried to off us once.”
I hugged myself, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. Roxy walked over to the desk, rummaging around. She then moved over to the dresser.
“What are you doing?”
She slid a pair of keys out from behind an ashtray. “It can’t be that easy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Our ride is here. At least I hope it is. The van parked out back. It’s a Voyager, and Sarah mentioned that the guy who rents this room drove a van. Don’t you pay attention to this stuff? And these look like van keys. We’re giving it a shot. Let’s go.”
“You go. But I cannot—I will not—leave here without William.”
“No one knows where we are, Lynn. We get out, we find a phone, and one call to Tom will have the FBI, the CIA, and maybe even the armed forces here. We know the hospital is here. William must be there. But we can’t just bust in and try to find him, Lynn. It’s too risky. If they find us again—”