“I can hardly hear you.”
“I can barely get a call out! I’m—”
“Whoa, wait. Is this Kim? Iron breadbasket Kim?”
“Yes!”
“Where are you?”
“Shit. Yeah, where am I?” There was a long pause. “Um, about fifty feet away from my car…”
“…That doesn’t help.”
“I can’t believe I need your help again… This is embarrassing. I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t have to…” She said something else, but he couldn’t make it out—something about her trying to do something by herself. “I knew calling for a tow truck wouldn’t help, either, and by the time the police would get here I’d be a popsicle. My car is stuck. I tried to call you three times now, but the call kept dropping before it would even ring and I—”
Oh, God. She’s rambling. “Please just tell me where you are.” He sighed, dropped his head, and rubbed his forehead. She started talking again, her voice going in and out, becoming more and more frantic with each passing second. He could only make out a fraction of what she was saying but hoped to get the gist of it soon. It never happened.
“Kim, I am asking you again. Where. Are. You?”
“Where am I?! How the hell should I know?! I can’t pass, Jack! I’m in the middle of nowhere. That’s where the hell I am.”
“You left the main road, didn’t you?”
“I left the main road because it was too icy, and all downhill, so I didn’t want to chance it. I took a detour.”
I told her to stay on the main road. Never leave the main road if you don’t know these parts… This lady had really bad luck. Jesus. But he kept his ‘I told you so’ thoughts to himself. Now just wasn’t the time.
“…Now, I’m stuck! On top of that, there’s a big branch that fell not too far in front of me, so even if I wanted to go forward, I can’t, and I can’t get my car into reverse without makin’ the wheels spin, and—”
“Okay, okay. Shhh… Take a breath and listen. Do you have any cellular bars on your phone right now?”
There was a brief pause.
“…No.”
“Okay. So that means you can’t send me your location from your phone because there are no cellular towers or wi-fi where you are, so we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, all right? Do you see anything around you that can help me find you faster? A house? Maybe a sign of some sort? Any structure at all?”
“No, and the reception is cutting out again. I’m scared this call is going to drop, just like the others.” Her voice shook.
“Don’t panic. Let’s make this fast and not waste any more time with unnecessary details. The road you’re on now, was it a street off the main road?”
“No. I made a few turns, and then got lost.”
“Do you remember any of the names? What was the last road you turned off of, Kim?”
“Uh… I think it was called Devil’s Triple Tail. I drove about ten, I don’t know, fifteen minutes down it, then turned onto another road, can’t recall the name, I think it didn’t even have a name… then this happened!”
She’s in the backcountry. “The street you turned off of before you arrived where you are now is called Devil’s Double Point, and it had two forks in the road, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one did you take?” He quickly put her on speaker phone and started to get dressed faster. If he didn’t hurry, she’d probably run out of gas which meant no heat in her car, and possibly no charging for her phone if she didn’t have a portable charger on hand. “Left or right?”
“…Huh? I can barely hear you!”
“WHICH FORK DID YOU TAKE?! Left or right?!” He heard a loud crackly noise, but no verbal response from her. “Hey, I’m on my way!” he yelled into the receiver. “Don’t try to move or drive away. STAY RIGHT THERE. Get in your car, stay warm. Let it run for five-minute intervals to conserve gas. Run it. Turn it off for five, then start again. The temperatures are dropping and it’s getting dark, so once you get back in the car, stay inside the car. I hope you can hear me… I will find you.”
He disconnected the call and quickly finished dressing. Then, he grabbed his revolver, made his way back downstairs, grabbed his rifle too, and headed out the front door…
Chapter Five
It was rare that Kim was rendered numb with sheer terror. There had been some hair-raising occurrences over the years, such as when a cab driver had tried to abduct her when she was twenty-three, a liquor store she was in was robbed at gunpoint, and the police burst into her home with guns drawn after her ex-boyfriend had fleeced his clients, stealing millions, and he’d planned to flee to Jamaica without her knowledge. That notwithstanding, none of those instances compared to what she felt right at that moment.