“Jack, go on. I’ve got your number in case they ask.”
“They already know it by heart. I’m sure they’ll do a much better job of trackin’ me down than they did my son. Motivation is everything, right?” Then, the big man turned and walked out the door…
Chapter Three
The aroma of cinnamon air freshener permeated the car as Kim made the jerky trek up the rugged road. She’d opted to purchase one of those little electronic diffusers from the drugstore, the kind that took a few AAA batteries to let off a smoky burst of fragrant air every ten minutes or so. So far, so good. Aromatherapy was her new obsession, but it did little to temper her nerves. Says I have about twenty-three more minutes to go.
White knuckling the steering wheel, she forged on while listening to ‘Joey,’ from Concrete Blonde, playing on the radio. She’d driven in icy and sometimes perilous conditions before, especially while visiting friends in upstate New York in the dead of winter. This made that, look like a day in the park. It took the ice cream, and the snow-cake. Soft but large flakes fell ever so slowly, making the main road slippery in spots, and some of the path narrowed around tight bends.
I hope my car can take this. My suspension is getting a beating. This is rough. She’d never journeyed to Denali National Park before, and though the guy didn’t really live inside the actual park, his home was on the periphery. There was no way she’d miss it.
I heard it was breathtaking in the spring.
She glanced at her phone which was mounted on the dashboard, taking note of the directions in the form of a little yellow line with a black dot, indicating her car slowly moving up the thoroughfare.
A few additional minutes passed, and her abdomen quivered. Nerves a complete wreck. As she looked around, she was no longer certain the directions were accurate. She paused, put the car in park, then hit the overhead light. Let me take a look at this. She anxiously snatched the paper map with the detailed directions she’d printed out before leaving home. The faded colors from an ink cartridge that had almost run dry didn’t stop her from seeing that she in fact was on the right path. Denali Park only had one main road, and she was nowhere near that. If she ventured into the park itself, she was doomed.
One could only travel it with special equipment. There were no paved roads, but if she ventured inside, she’d have to try and turn around, and possibly run into all sorts of trouble. She breathed a sigh of relief. All was well. The map mimicked what the GPS showed. Nevertheless, she was glad that she’d printed it just in case. After Martha told her where Jack resided, the lady had also warned about loss of cell phone reception due to limited towers and higher altitude in this area, and that this remote land full of sprawling trees, nature, and dead space was known for blind spots, sharp turns, and black bears.
On top of it all, a bad ice storm was coming in late that night according to the weather lady. Kim figured she’d be told to stay home from work, too, which was fine by her. The problem lay in her mind—a memory that refused to be shaken loose and freed to go and dissolve into the warmth of fresh recollections. Ever since the tall stranger had folded that man like a card table and placed him inside his own car trunk like a rejected gift to be returned to the department store, she couldn’t get that night out of her mind. He jumped in and helped. Just like that. That bastard who robbed me fucked around and found out.
Now, it was time to address this. After taking a couple days off from work following the incident, then returning to work and hoping he’d show up again at the restaurant to no avail, she decided to take her declarations of thanks and gratitude to him. She was paying him a visit, and she came bearing gifts, despite Martha’s protests that it wasn’t such a good idea.
‘Jack is a bit rough. I wouldn’t go to his house if I were you.’
The last leg of the journey went quicker than she imagined, for soon she was staring at a gorgeous, sprawling, two-story cabin home. The honey-colored wood lining the outside was covered in a dusting of snow, which made it appear somewhat surreal, like the subject of an oil painting. At the end of a pebbled driveway, the front door was massive, with large boulders and matte gray stones framing it. The house itself was surrounded by towering trees, as well as a weak fog that could provide inspiration for a number of scary tales. Nature stretched as far as the eye could see.