Page 37 of I'll Be There
Pete, however, reached over to take the man’s pulse, ever the EMT. He shook his head.
Micah opened the door on the other side, climbing into the cab.
“What are you doing?” Reuben said.
“Looking for—yeah, I got his cell phone. Wallet and—oh, look at this—a small pile of passports in the glove box.”
Micah crawled back out of the truck, the exhaust still firing, stenching the air.
“This thing can’t blow up, can it?” Romeo asked, backing away.
“This isn’t the movies, kid.” Micah handed Conner the cell phone. “Check his last few calls.” He flipped open the wallet.
“A receipt for the Knights Inn Motor hotel,” Micah said. “Another for a burrito at McDonald’s. And...here wego. A Mister Donny Whistler of Winnipeg.” He pulled out a driver’s license. “But wait, that’s not all. Here’s one for Danny Washburn, Detroit, Michigan.”
Conner opened the phone. “The screen is locked.”
And that’s when he heard it—the familiar crunch of tire on gravel. They stood in silence as a gray Chevy Colorado with Minnesota plates pulled up behind Conner’s truck, came to a stop.
Conner watched, every thought vanishing as Seth, the National Park security guard, got out and walked over to the edge of the road.
Seth stood there a long moment, looking at Conner, the overturned truck, and his cohorts in crime. Finally, “I thought I told you to stay put.”
Somewhere, someone was crying.
Or perhaps the sound could be categorized as more of a moan, fractured now and again by a great gulp, shaky and febrile, before settling back into the hazy, guttural, almost feral sound. It reverberated through the darkness, found her soul, settled there with claws.
Liza couldn’t escape the beast now, the scent of him—dirty, wild, with rancid breath. Teeth finding bone. The tearing—almost in slow motion—of claws serrating her arm, separating flesh, ripping tendon, piercing muscle. She pressed her hands over her ears against the moaning, the sound a pulse of horror in the cavernous room, finding her bones, racking her body.
Make it stop.
The beast picked her up, began to shake—
Please—make it stop.
“Liza!”
The light flickered on, even as the door hit the cement wall.
In a second, the animal retreated into the crannies, the shadows.
But Liza couldn’t break free from the moan. From the hold she had on herself, bearing down against the terror that threatened to escape.
Destroy—
“Liza!”
Hands on her, touching her head, her shoulder, wrenching her hands away from her face.
Then—Grace Sharpe staring down at her, so much concern on her face it rushed Liza back to—
The ice arena.
Not a cliff where she lay as dead, or nearly so, in Montana.
“Are you okay?”
She bit her lip—so hard she tasted blood, but nodded,please, yes. “I’m—uh...” But her hands shook—her entire body, in fact, trembled. “I—the door locked and...”
