Читать книгу The Last Widow - Karin Slaughter, Karin Slaughter - Страница 12
4
ОглавлениеSunday, August 4, 1:54 p.m.
Sara made a mental note of the Porsche driver’s estimated time of death as she checked the F-150 driver’s lacerated scalp.
“Gas main exploded. We got the hell outta there.” The truck passenger pointed toward the silver Chevy Malibu. “It’s them people there you should be worried about. Guy in the back seat ain’t lookin’ so good.”
Sara was glad to hear Will keeping pace as she jogged toward the Chevy. There was something not adding up about this car accident. The rear-end impact from the truck didn’t feel severe enough to break the driver’s neck. A mystery for the Atlanta medical examiner to figure out. Eventually. There was no telling how long it would take to clear out the gas main explosion. It was sheer luck that the construction site was empty.
Still—
Broken neck. No other signs of trauma. No lacerations. No contusions.
Weird.
The Malibu driver told Will, “My friend needs help.”
“She’s a doctor,” Merle said.
“Sir?” Sara knelt down to examine the unconscious man in the back seat of the Malibu. The passenger beside him watched her every move. Airway clear. Breathing normal. “Sir, are you okay?”
Sara heard names being tossed around behind her.
Dwight, Clinton, Vince, Merle.
“Dwight?” Sara tried. The back of the Malibu was dark, the windows tinted almost black. She pulled the unconscious man into the sunlight. His pupils were reactive. His vertebrae were aligned. His pulse was strong and steady. His skin felt sticky, but then it was August. Everyone’s skin felt sticky.
“I’m Hank,” the passenger beside him told Sara. “You’re a doctor?”
Sara nodded, but that was all she could give him. This idiot had knocked himself unconscious because he hadn’t bothered to put on a seat belt. The gas main explosion would have critical cases: burns, traumatic brain injuries, crush trauma, projectiles.
Hank opened the door and got out of the car.
Sara glanced up.
Then she stared.
Blood soaked the back of Hank’s leg.
He turned around, leaning his arms on the roof of the car. His shirt slid up. There was a gun tucked into the front of his pants. Sara heard him say, “Clinton, it’s nobody’s fault.”
Sara looked at her hands. The stickiness wasn’t from sweat. It was from blood. She brushed her palm along Dwight’s back. The familiar puckered hole in his left shoulder indicated the same type of injury she’d seen on the back of Hank’s leg.
A gunshot wound.
The Porsche driver’s broken neck. The short skid marks on the road. The blood trail leading to the truck. The names—would Will catch the fake names? Dwight Yoakam. Hank Williams. Merle Haggard. Vince Gill. Clint Black. They were all country music singers.
Sara took a deep breath and held in her panic.
She carefully searched the Malibu for a weapon.
Dwight’s holster was empty. Nothing on the floorboards. She looked between the front seats and almost gasped.
A woman had wedged herself into the footwell. Petite with short, platinum blonde hair. Arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She hadn’t moved or made a noise this entire time, but now she raised up her head and showed her face.
Sara’s heart shuddered to a stop.
Michelle Spivey.
The missing woman’s eyes were bloodshot with tears. Her cheeks were sunken. Her lips were chapped and bleeding. She spoke soundlessly, desperately—
Help.
Sara felt her own mouth open. She took a stuttered breath. She heard another word echoing in her head, the same word that came to every woman’s mind when they were surrounded by aggressive, damaged men—
Rape.
“Will.” Sara’s hands trembled as she fumbled in her pocket for the key fob. “I need you to get my medical bag out of the glove compartment of the car.”
Please. She silently begged. Get your gun and stop this.
Will grabbed the key. She felt the brush of his fingers. He didn’t look at her. Why wouldn’t he look at her?
Clinton said, “Give us a hand, big guy. Let’s go.”
“Wait.” Sara tried to slow them down. “He could have a neck injury or—”
“Ma’am, excuse me.” Merle’s beard was long but his hair was buzz-cut. He had to be police or military. All of them were. They stood the same way, moved the same way, followed orders the same way.
Not that it mattered. They had already gained the upper hand.
Will had clearly made the same calculation. He was looking at Sara now. She could feel his eyes on her. Sara could not look back at him because she knew that she would fall apart.
He said, “I’ll get your bag.”
Hank had limped around the car. He stood beside Sara—not too close, but close enough. Sara could feel the threat of him like a chemical burning her skin.
Will gripped the key fob in his fist as he walked toward the BMW. He was angry, which was good. Unlike most men, fury cleared Will’s mind. His muscles were tensed. She focused all of her strength, all of her hope, onto his broad shoulders.
“Vale.” Hank was speaking to Vince. He wasn’t using their code names anymore. The pretense was over. Either Sara or Will had given themselves away or Hank had figured out that the police sirens they were hearing in the distance would soon find their way down Bella’s street.
Hank lifted his chin, indicating Vale should follow the rest of the team to the car.
“Out,” Hank told Michelle, his voice low. He had a gun in his hand. It was small, but it was still a gun.
Michelle winced as she crawled over the center console. She held up her pants with one hand. The fly was unzipped. Blood dripped over her fist, ran down her legs.
Sara’s heart turned to glass.
Michelle’s bare feet slapped the asphalt. A bout of dizziness made her reach for the car to steady herself. She had open sores between the webbing of her toes. Needle tracks. They had drugged her. They had cut her. She was bleeding between her legs.
Rape.
“Don’t scream,” Hank said.
Before Sara could react, a blinding pain shot from her wrist to her arm and into her shoulder. She was forced onto her knees. The road bit into her skin. Hank twisted her arm again. Sara had her fingers laced behind her head by the time Will reached the BMW.
He leaned into the car.
He looked up.
His jaw tightened down so hard that she could see the outline of the bones.
Sara watched his eyes track—Hank pointing a gun at her head. Michelle holding up her bloody pants. Three armed men surrounding him. No way to save Sara even if he sacrificed himself in the process.
This final realization brought an expression to his face that Sara had never seen before:
Fear.
“You let—” Michelle’s voice was hoarse. She was talking to Hank. “You l-let him rape me.”
The words were a hammer to Sara’s heart.
“You c-can’t—” Michelle gulped. “You can’t pretend it’s n-not happening. I’m telling you now. You know what he—”
“All right!” Hank shouted over her. He told Will, “I need you to slowly get your head out of the car and put your hands up.”
Sara could only watch as Will complied. His eyes kept darting around. His brain was furiously working, trying to find a way out of this.
There was no way out.
They were going to kill Will. They were going to make Sara fix them and then they were going to tear her apart.
“You let him do it,” Michelle whispered. “You let him h-hurt me. You let him—”
“We need a doctor,” Hank shouted at Will. “No offense, brother. Wrong place, right time. Let’s go, lady. Get in the car.”
Sara had been expecting this moment, but she did not realize until now what her response would be.
“No.”
She didn’t move.
Her knees were part of the asphalt.
She was as sentient as a mountain.
Sara had been raped in college. Viciously, brutally, savagely raped. She had been robbed of her ability to have children. Had her sense of self, her sense of safety, forever stolen. The experience had altered her in ways that she still, almost twenty years later, was discovering. She had vowed that she would never let that happen to her ever again.
Hank’s grip tightened around her arm.
“No.” Sara wrenched away from him. The fear had drained away. She would die before she let them take her. Sara had never been more certain of anything in her life. “I’m not going with you.”
“Lady, that wasn’t a gas main that exploded at the campus.” Hank looked at Will. “We just blew up dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Do you think I give a shit about having your blood on my hands?”
His words nearly cut her in two. All of those sick and injured people. Students and children and staff who had devoted their lives to helping others.
“No,” Sara repeated. She was openly crying. They were going to kill her eventually. All she could control was what happened between now and then.
“Get in the car.”
“I won’t go with you. I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me.” She stared her resignation into Will. She needed him to understand why she was refusing to go.
Will’s throat worked. Tears were in his eyes.
Slowly, finally, he nodded.
“How about I kill her?” Hank pointed the gun at Michelle.
“Do it.” Michelle’s voice was strong, devoid of her earlier stutter. “Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.” Her fist was clenched around the waist of her pants. Sara could see a bloody bandage, popped sutures, at her bikini line.
Had they operated on her?
“You still think you’re a good man,” Michelle told Hank. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are? I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud. He’s sick. He’s going to die. His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”
Clinton laughed. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”
There was a flurry of movement above Sara’s head. Hank’s arm swung around, pointing the gun at Clinton.
Click-click-click.
The gun had jammed.
“You son of a—” Clinton’s Glock was out of his holster.
Hank dragged Michelle down to the ground as the gun fired. Sara closed her eyes. She stayed exactly where she was, sitting up on her knees, fingers laced behind her head, and waited for the bullet.
There wasn’t one.
She heard two more gunshots in rapid succession.
Sara opened her eyes. Merle lay dead on the ground. Vince/Vale had been wounded. He fell out of the open door of the car. Blood flowered from the wound in his side.
Will had shot them. He was turning to do the same to Clinton when the man tackled him to the ground.
Sara pushed herself up to run.
She was flung back down.
Hank’s arm wrapped around her neck. Chokehold. Her vision swam. She clawed at his skin. “Let me go!” she screamed, biting, scratching, kicking.
There was a dark blur out of the corner of her eye. The distinctive, long barrel of a Glock 22. Called a man-stopper because the .40 caliber ammo would stop a man dead in his tracks.
Hank had the gun pointed at the ground. His finger rested above the trigger guard, ready to fire if needed.
It wasn’t needed.
Clinton was pounding his fists into Will’s belly. Liver. Spleen. Pancreas. Kidneys. He was using his hands like a pile driver to break them apart.
“Stop him,” Sara pleaded. “He’s going to kill—”
Will’s hand slashed out at Clinton’s face. The folding knife. The four-inch blade was razor sharp. Blood ripped a line through the air.
Clinton reared back.
Will stabbed him in the groin.
Sara stood up, but Hank kept her from running. His arm was tight around her neck. He kept the Glock pointed downward, but his finger was stiff beside the trigger. The muscles in his forearm were like rope.
“Will—” His name got caught in Sara’s throat.
He coughed up blood. He rolled to his side. He was clutching his belly, trying to stand up, looking for the revolver.
Hank told Sara, “You go with us, or I’ll shoot him in the chest.”
A sob bruised her throat. She reached out her hand as if she could help him.
Will’s legs tensed as he tried to get up again. Vomit roiled from his mouth. Blood dripped from the back of his head. He got to his knees, but fell flat.
Sara cried out as if her own body had slammed into the ground.
“Doc?” Hank finally raised the gun, aiming it at Will.
Sara walked toward the BMW. She could barely stay upright. Her knees kept locking out. Will was still writhing on the ground. She looked up the street. Her mother was standing on the sidewalk. Cathy had a shotgun in her hands, an old double barrel that had been gathering dust above Bella’s fireplace for the last fifty years.
Sara shook her head, pleading with Cathy not to interfere.
Hank dragged Michelle toward the BMW. He threw her at Vale to take care of. He was heading toward Will, his Glock at his side.
“You promised.” Even as Sara said the words she understood the stupidity of trusting a mass murderer.
“Drive.” Vale shoved Sara into the driver’s seat. She could see out of the open passenger-side door. Will was on all fours. Vomit and blood dripped from his mouth. His eyes were closed. Sweat ran down his face.
“Fuck,” Clinton muttered, climbing into the seat behind Sara. “Jesus fuck. Let’s get out of here.”
Sara watched helplessly as Hank swung back his leg. He was going to kick Will in the head.
“Will!” she screamed.
He grabbed the leg, dragging Hank down to the sidewalk. There was no struggle. Will straddled him. He started beating his face; quickly, methodically, furiously.
“Leave him!” Clinton yelled.
Vale strained to reach behind him, blindly feeling for the revolver that was stuck down the front of his pants. He was panicked from the gunshot wound in his side. Blood had soaked his shirt.
“I said fucking leave him!” Clinton pointed his Glock at Vale’s head. “Now!”
“Jesus, Carter!” Vale hoisted himself into the passenger’s seat of the car even as he said, “We can’t leave Hurley.”
Clinton. Hank. Vince.
Carter. Hurley. Vale.
“Drive!” The Glock banged against the side of Sara’s skull. “Go!”
She put the engine in gear. She swung the car around. She saw Will in the side mirror. Merle was lying dead on the ground beside him. He was still straddling Hank or Hurley or whoever the hell the man was.
Kill him, too, Sara thought. Beat the life out of him.
The shotgun went off. Cathy had aimed for the tires but hit the rear panel instead.
“Fuck!” Vale screamed. “What the fuck, Carter!”
“Shut up!” Carter slammed his fist into Sara’s seat. Blood dripped from the slash in his forehead. The handle of Will’s knife was sticking out of his thigh. “Go right! Go right!”
Sara swerved right. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt dizzy. Her stomach was clenched. She felt her bladder wanting to release. Vale was sitting beside her. Carter was directly behind her, his shoulder pressed against Michelle’s. Dwight was passed out in the seat behind Vale, but there was no telling how long that would last. She had trapped herself with these monsters. Her only consolation was that Will was still alive.
“Fuck!” Vale rubbed his face with his hands. He was running out of adrenaline. His body was registering the shock of the gunshot wound. His breath came in sharp, panicked pants. “He got me in the chest, bro! I can’t—I can’t breathe!”
“Shut up, you fucking pussy!”
An Atlanta police cruiser was heading straight toward them, full lights and sirens. Sara prayed for it to stop. The car shook the BMW as it zoomed past.
“Go left!” Carter’s voice was as sharp as the siren. “Here! Go left!”
She swerved onto Oakdale. Sara’s eyes followed the cruiser as long as she could. The brake lights glowed red as it turned left onto Lullwater.
Toward Will.
“I can feel the air seeping out!” Vale sounded terrified. He could help set off bombs inside of a hospital but he was whining about a hole in his side. “Help me! What do I do?”
Sara said nothing. She was thinking about Will. Bruised ribs. Broken sternum. If the spleen had ruptured, he could be bleeding into his belly. Had she sacrificed herself only to leave him dying in the street? And now this man, this whining child, wanted her to help him?
“You’re a doctor!” Vale whimpered. “Help me!”
Sara had never in her life felt so little empathy for another human being. She spoke through clenched teeth: “Seal the wound.”
Vale lifted up his shirt, hand shaking as he reached to cover the hole.
“Put your finger inside,” Sara told him, which was bullshit because his chest cavity was filling up with blood. Each time he breathed, he pushed more air into the pleural space, which pressed on the lung with the hole in it, causing the lung to collapse more quickly. Eventually, pressure would build up on the opposite lung and the heart and veins, causing them to collapse, too.
Her only concern was that it would take him too long to die.
“Jesus!” Vale screeched. The idiot had actually shoved his finger into the hole. The pain took away his breath. His eyes were so wide that the whites showed. Mercifully, he was in too much agony to complain.
Vale wasn’t the one she should be worried about, anyway. Carter was angry, focused and prepared to do whatever it took to get them out of here. Sara was aware that at any moment, he could reach around the seat and grab her neck.
She looked at the time.
2:04 p.m.
The golden hour was already ticking down on Will’s clock. Internal bleeding could be surgically repaired, but how quickly could they get him to a surgeon? He would need to be airlifted to a trauma center. Who would take him? Every cop in the vicinity would be responding to the explosion.
Two bombs detonated on campus. She couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t think about that. All that mattered was Will.
“Pass them!” Carter yelled. “Get in the other lane!”
Sara hurtled into oncoming traffic. Tires screeched. Two cars smacked into each other. Vale screamed again. Sara pressed down on the gas. They were approaching Ponce de Leon.
“Blow the light!”
Sara put on her seat belt. She went through the light. Horns blared. The tires lifted off the ground as she struggled to keep the wheel straight.
Which—why?
Crash the car into a tree. Into a telephone pole. Into a house. Sara had the airbag in the steering wheel. Her seat belt. She didn’t have a hole in her lung or a knife sticking out of her leg or a gunshot wound in her shoulder.
Michelle.
The woman was sitting in the middle of the back seat. On impact, she would fly through the windshield. She could break her neck. Broken metal and glass could rip open an artery. The car could run over her before she had a chance to scramble away.
Do it, Michelle had dared Hank, staring into the black hole of a gun. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.
Up ahead, there was a dog-leg turn in the road.
Sara would go straight. She would ram the car into the brick house just beyond the red light.
Will was okay. He understood why Sara had told them to shoot her. He knew that none of this was his fault.
Her shoulders relaxed. Her mind felt clear. The calmness inside of her body told her this was the right thing to do.
The turn was coming. Thirty yards. Twenty. Sara punched the gas. She held tight to the steering wheel. She tried again to find Michelle in the mirror.
The woman’s eyes were wide. She was crying. Terrified.
At the last minute, Sara jerked the wheel right, then left, taking the dog-leg on two tires. The car bounced back to the ground. She went through two stop signs. She backed her foot off the gas. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had pulled up her legs and buried her head in her knees.
“F-fuck.” Vale’s nose whistled as he tried to draw air into his collapsing lungs. He had seen what Sara was going to do but been helpless to stop her.
“Slow down,” Carter muttered, oblivious. “Jesus fuck, my nuts are on fire.” He punched the back of Sara’s seat. “You’re the doctor. Tell me what to do.”
Sara couldn’t speak. Her throat was filled with cotton. Where was her earlier resolve? Why did she care what happened to Michelle? She had to start thinking about herself—how she was going to get out of this, whether it was by managing an escape or controlling her own death.
“Come on!” Carter jabbed the seat again. “Tell me what to do.”
Sara reached up to the rearview mirror. Her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely find the right angle. The reflection showed Carter’s injury. The knife handle was sticking out of his right inner thigh. Will had driven in the blade at an upward angle. The muscle was holding it in place.
Femoral artery. Femoral vein. Genitofemoral nerve.
Sara tried to clear her throat. Her tongue was thick in her mouth. She could taste bile. “The knife is pressing against a nerve. Pull it out.”
Carter knew better. The blade could also be damming a nick in the artery. “How about I use it to cut open your face? Turn right, then left at the light.”
Sara hooked a right at the stop sign. The light was green when she turned left onto Moreland Avenue. Little Five Points. There were only a few cars on the road. The parking lots in front of the shops and restaurants were sparsely packed. People had probably been directed to shelter in place. Or they were at home watching the news. Or the police had set up a tight perimeter around the hospital—so tight that the BMW had managed to get outside the boundary before they had time to implement the plan.
“Turn off that fucking noise,” Carter said.
The seat belt chime. Sara had not noticed the dinging sound from the passenger’s seat belt being left undone, but now it was all she could hear.
Vale didn’t try to stop the noise. He closed his eyes. His lips were tensed. His finger was still inside of the hole. Every bump, every shift, must have felt like torture.
Sara scanned the road for potholes.
“Shut it off!” Carter yelled. “Help him, God dammit!”
Michelle reached through the split in the seats. She was moving slowly, painfully. The blood on her hands had dried to a burgundy film. She started to draw the belt over Vale’s lap. Her hand hovered a few inches away from the buckle.
His gun was in the waist of his jeans.
Sara’s body went rigid. She prayed for Michelle to pull the weapon and start shooting.
The buckle clicked. The chime stopped. Michelle sat back.
Sara let her gaze slip down to Vale’s lap.
Her heart broke into a million pieces.
Michelle had strapped the revolver against his stomach.
Why?
“Bro?” Carter sounded nervous, uncertain. “Should I use my phone?”
Vale didn’t answer. His teeth were chattering.
“Bro?” Carter kicked the back of his seat.
Vale screamed, “No!” His hand wrapped around the grab bar by the door. He hissed air through his teeth. “Orders,” he said. “We can’t—” He was cut off by a spasm of pain.
“Fuck.” Carter wiped blood from his eyes. He told Sara, “Keep going straight. All the way to the interstate.”
He was taking them to 285. They were going to skirt the perimeter of the city. The direction didn’t seem arbitrary. If these men were really cops or military, then they would have a plan B—another getaway car, a rendezvous point, a safe house in which to lay low until the attention died down.
Sara tried to focus her thoughts on how to stop the car before they reached the interstate. The Atlanta police cruiser she had watched turn left onto Lullwater was her only source of hope. If Will wasn’t able to, Cathy would relay the details to the police officer. He would call command. Command would blast out an alert to every phone and computer in the tri-state area.
Three suspected domestic terrorists. Heavily armed. Two hostages.
The BMW was fully equipped. Satellite radio. GPS navigation. There was an SOS button above the rearview mirror. Sara had never pressed it before. She knew it was part of the system’s telemetric roadside assistance, but did it send out a silent signal or would an actual human being’s voice come through the speakers asking how to help?
“Dash?” Carter was trying to wake the man in the back seat.
Not Dwight.
Dash.
“Bro, come on.” He reached over Michelle and patted the man’s cheek, trying to rouse him. “Come on, bro. Wake up.”
Dash’s lips moved. He started to mumble. Sara adjusted the mirror again. She could see his eyes tracking back and forth under his eyelids.
She scanned ahead again, but not for potholes. There were more cars on the streets the farther away they got from Emory. Could she flash the headlights? Should she swerve erratically? Would either of those things endanger anyone who tried to help?
“Why isn’t he waking up?” Carter was turning Dash’s head side to side. “Vale, get that medical kit out of the glove box.”
Vale didn’t move, but Sara saw the key was still in the lock.
The gun.
“Dash!” Carter yelled, slapping at his face. “God dammit.”
“He needs a hospital.” Sara pried her eyes away from the key. “All I have in my bag is Band-Aids and disinfectant.”
“Fuck!” Carter punched his fist into the back of her seat. “Dash, come on, bro.”
Sara cleared her throat again. She pressed her palm to her chest. Her heartbeats clicked as fast as a stopwatch.
Think-think-think-think.
She told Carter, “He’s been out almost fifteen minutes. He’s probably in a coma.” Another lie. His brain was clearly trying to reboot itself. “We should leave him near a fire station so they can help him.”
“Shit. This is Dash we’re talking about. We ain’t leaving him nowhere.” Carter reached over Michelle again.
“No!” the woman screamed. She scrambled out of his way, pushing herself over the seat and into the cargo area. Her shoulders were pressed to the glass. Arms spread. She looked at Sara with a wild panic in her eyes.
Sara stared back at her in the mirror. She let her eyes dart to Michelle’s right.
Her medical bag was in the storage bin.
Scalpels. Needles. Sedatives.
Michelle broke contact. She crumpled in on herself. Legs drawn up to her chest. Head on her knees.
“What’s wrong with him?” Carter snapped his fingers in front of Dash’s face.
The man’s eyelids had slit open, but he wasn’t responding.
“Dash? Come on, bro. Wake up.”
Sara looked at the clock.
2:08 p.m.
Cathy would take care of Will. Make sure that he was taken to the hospital. Question the doctors. Be there when he woke up from surgery. She would advocate for him the same way she had for Jeffrey.
Wouldn’t she?
“Doctor?”
Sara looked into the mirror. Michelle was talking to her.
“Help him,” Michelle said. “Dash isn’t—he’s bad, but not like—”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Carter warned. The only thing keeping him from jumping over the seat was the knife in his leg.
Look on your right, Sara silently begged the woman. Open the black bag.
Michelle stared at Sara’s reflection. She shook her head once. She knew about the bag. She wasn’t going to do anything.
Sara’s heart sank. She was completely alone.
“Hey.” Carter slapped Dash again, hard enough for the smack to fill the car. “Bitch, tell me what to do.”
Sara had to swallow past her grief. “He needs a stimulus.”
Carter slapped him again. “I’m fucking stimulating him.”
“Stick your finger in the bullet hole in his shoulder.”
“Yeah, that’s working out great for him.”
Sara studied Vale with a cold eye. His wheezing had turned sporadic. His lips were tinged blue. His nostrils collapsed and expanded as he desperately tried to bring air into his deflating lungs.
“Hey,” Carter said. “I think he’s waking up.”
Dash’s eyelids began to flutter. A rumble came from deep inside his throat. He raised his hands, the right higher than the left, fingers spread, like a marionette doll.
“What’s he doing?” Carter was alarmed.
Sara kept her silence. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had returned to her cowered position.
Carter demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”
Dash’s eyes had opened. The rumble in his throat turned into a murmur. He blinked once. Twice. Slowly, he took in the passengers around him. Michelle. Carter. Vale. He looked at Sara, confused.
“Who fhee?” His words slurred. “She. Who if—”
“We p-picked up a doctor,” Carter stammered. He was clearly scared, which meant that Dash was important. “We lost Hurley and Morgan.”
“What—” Dash tried. “Wha—”
“We took a doctor.” Carter didn’t answer the implied question. “I got a fucking knife in my crotch. Vale’s not sounding so good.”
Dash blinked again. He was still disoriented, but coming around.
Sara lied, “His pupils are fixed. He’s probably bleeding into his skull. An aneurysm or—”
“Fuck.” Carter wiped sweat off his face. He scanned the side of the road.
Dash cleared his throat. “What happened?” He looked at Sara. “Who is she?”
“I told you—” Carter gave up. He asked Sara, “What’s wrong with him?”
“Post-traumatic amnesia.” She tried to think of a way to scare him into dropping Dash by the side of the road. “It’s a sign of a deep brain injury. We need to leave him at a hospital.”
“Fuck-fuck-fuck.”
Dash’s hand went up to his face. He touched his cheek with his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut. He would be feeling nauseous, disoriented. But he was coming back into himself. She could tell by the controlled movements. The way his eyes were focusing on fixed points.
“Dammit.” Carter was looking out the front windshield. “Don’t even think about waving this guy down.”
There was a lone squad car coming from the opposite direction. Sara held her breath, waiting for the cop to recognize the BMW from a system-wide alert.
Dash reached clumsily between the seats and rested his hand on her arm. “Stay cool, miss.”
His voice was soft, but his authority was clear. Vale was the whiner. Carter was the hothead. Dash was the man they all obeyed.
Sara watched the cruiser disappear in the side mirror. No brake lights. He wasn’t slowing down. There was a license-plate scanner mounted to the front and rear of his car. The system would’ve pinged her plate.
Which meant that the BMW was not in the system.
“Carter.” Dash winced as he leaned back. He looked older now that he was awake. Fine lines wrinkled from his eyes. “That bullet still in my shoulder?”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Blood ain’t flowing as much.”
“Well, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.” He carefully enunciated each word. He wasn’t 100 percent, but he was trying to make them think that he was. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
Sara did not answer. The shoulder was mostly bone and cartilage. The bullet would’ve been white-hot going in, cauterizing the tissue.
Bad for Sara. Good for Dash.
He groaned as he crossed his leg over his knee. “Carter, use my shoelace to strap the knife to your leg. You don’t want it to do any more damage. Paracord snake knot lanyard.”
Carter started unlacing the boot.
Dash said, “Doctor, we need medical attention. All of us.”
“I’m a pediatrician,” Sara said, which was technically true. She was also a board-certified medical examiner and crime scene investigator. “I’m not a surgeon. These are serious medical issues.”
“They are in-geed.” Dash was losing control of his words again. His eyes were watering. The sunlight was too much stimulus. He was clearly concussed. Sara had no idea how badly. Every brain reacted to trauma in its own way.
Dash cleared his throat. He rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “Carter, has it occurred to you that we’re in a stolen, traceable vehicle with a GPS system?”
Carter was focused on tying the lanyard. “We didn’t have a lot of options. We had to get out of there. Right, Vale?”
Vale mumbled a non-answer. His index finger was still deep in the hole in his side. His other hand gripped the grab bar. Sara studied the revolver trapped underneath the seat belt. Carter’s hands were busy tying down the knife. Dash’s reflexes were compromised. She could—
“Miss.” Dash put his hand on Sara’s shoulder. He said, “Follow that van, please.”
A white van was turning into a strip club off of Moreland. The sign outside showed a scantily clad woman beside the words Club Shady Lady. Work trucks filled the parking spaces. The white van braked, then took a right turn behind the building. There was a Lay’s Potato Chip logo on the side.
Dash said, “Ah, that’s lucky. Keep following.”
Sara drove slowly into the narrow alley. She took another turn. The building was on the right, a thick stand of trees on the left. There was no way she could reach over, unlock the glove box and retrieve Will’s gun without being shot. She could open the door, roll out. Carter couldn’t chase her with the knife in his leg. Vale was too terrified to move. Dash was in no condition to pursue her.
Would Michelle help? Or would she just wait for the bad things to happen?
The white van was parked beside the service entrance. The delivery man got out. He gave them no more than a glance as he opened the van doors and started pulling out boxes.
“Stop here,” Dash ordered.
Sara put the gear in park. The music from the strip club was so loud that she could feel it in her chest.
She looked at the glove box again.
“Vale,” Dash said. “I wonder if you can fetch me whatever is in that glove compartment our friend seems so interested in.”
Sara looked out the window at the trees. She could hear the lock click open. Vale’s gasp of shock when he saw Will’s service weapon.
Dash took it from him, saying, “Thank you, sir.”
Sara closed her eyes. She thought about the BMW’s safety features. The doors locked automatically when the speedometer hit fifteen miles per hour. The handle required two pulls to open. Could she do it fast enough to escape?
Dash seemed to realize something. “Where are Hurley and Monroe?”
“Dead,” Carter answered. “We had to leave them. Fucking guy came out of nowhere. It was like punching a sack of rocks.”
Sara looked at him in the mirror. His head was down. He was still tying the knot.
Dash asked Sara, “What’s going on with our friend in the front seat?”
“I don’t have the correct diagnostic equipment,” she said, implying it was necessary. “My best guess is his lung is collapsing.”
Dash asked, “Pardon me again, but can’t you put in something hollow, bring air back into the lungs that way?”
Sara didn’t know if he was testing her. Saran Wrap would’ve probably helped make a seal around the wound, and she had an IV needle in her medical bag that could deflate the tension.
She decided to answer the question with a question: “Would you put a hollow tube in a flat tire to re-inflate it?”
Vale sucked in a shallow breath of air. He was trying to follow along. He still had his finger uselessly sticking into the hole in his side. She wanted to tell him to stick it in farther. If the shock didn’t kill him, the infection would.
“We should get to know each other,” Dash said. “What should I call you?”
“Sara.” She watched the driver of the white van. He was doing his job, stacking boxes onto a dolly, checking the order on his tablet.
“Last name?”
Sara hesitated. He wasn’t asking to be sociable. He could look her up online. Sara was listed on the GBI’s website as a special agent attached to the medical examiner’s office. There was a big difference between kidnapping a pediatrician and kidnapping a government agent.
“Earnshaw,” she said, giving them her mother’s maiden name.
Dash nodded. She could tell he knew she was lying. “You got any children?”
“Two.”
“All right, Dr. Sara Earnshaw. I know you don’t wanna be here, but lend us your chauffeur services for a little bit longer and we’ll get you back to that husband and kids of yours.”
Sara bit her lip. She nodded. She could tell he was lying, too.
Dash opened the car door. The thumping bass of the club music shook her eardrums.
He held up his hand to block the sunlight. He called behind him, “Michelle, I’ll need you to join me.”
Michelle robotically picked her way over the back seat. She flinched away from Carter. She avoided Sara’s questioning look. Her pants were still hanging open when she jumped out of the car. The gravel must’ve been sharp on her bare feet, but she gave no reaction.
What had they done to break her so irrevocably?
“Let’s go.” Dash indicated that Michelle should walk toward the van. He’d tucked his hand into the opening between his shirt buttons, fashioning a sort of sling. The bullet had missed his humerus. There was muscle damage that would make it hurt when he moved, but he could still move.
Carter mumbled, “What’s he doing?”
Sara knew what he was doing, even as she silently prayed that it would not happen.
The delivery man came out of the building. His dolly was empty. He had his back to them as he closed the service door. Dash reached into his holster and pulled out Will’s gun. The delivery man turned around, and that was the last movement his body voluntarily made.
Dash shot him twice in the face.
Sara watched the closed door at the rear of the building. No one came out. They hadn’t heard the gunshots over the music. Or they’d heard them, but this was the type of neighborhood where gunfire was not unusual.
Carter said, “If you tell him what happened back there, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
Sara looked into the mirror. “That you abandoned Hurley? Or that your bro Hurley tried to kill you?”
Carter’s eyes slid toward the front. He silently watched Dash and Michelle load the dead delivery man’s body into the van.
Carter said, “I figure it’ll take less than ten minutes for me to fuck that bad attitude out of your mouth.”
Sara felt her throat constrict. She looked at her fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. She had transferred blood from Dash’s shoulder wound onto the leather. Merle’s blood had to be mixed in there, too; Sara had touched his head wound at the crash site. Carter’s leg had probably bled in the back seat of her car. Vale had provided his own DNA in the front.
She told Carter, “Enjoy that burning sensation you’re feeling in your balls.” She locked eyes with him in the mirror. “Once that knife is out, that’s the last time you’ll feel your scrotum.”
Vale gave a sharp wheeze as he inhaled. “Sh … shut up …” He pointed his revolver at Sara. His hand was steady. “Walk a-around … the front. The front … of the c-car.”
Sara reached for the door handle. She saw the time on her watch.
2:17 p.m.
She didn’t pull the handle.
Her Apple Watch.
The back door opened. Carter slid out of the car, careful not to bump the knife. He clicked the door shut. He stood outside the car, waiting.
Sara’s mind raced through the options as she slowly pulled twice on the handle. The watch had both cellular and GPS. She could make a phone call, but the speaker would play the caller’s voice. Sending a text was too cumbersome. There was a Walkie-Talkie app, but she would have to tap the icon, scroll to the right person, and hold the yellow button long enough to send a message through.
She got out of the car. She moved slowly, trying to buy herself some time.
“Go around the front of the car and help Vale.” Carter showed her the Glock, as if she’d forgotten about it. “Don’t fuck around or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
Sara tried to stall. “You should leave him. He’s going to die anyway.”
“We don’t leave men behind.”
“Does Hurley know that?”
He punched her in the stomach. The pain was an explosion inside of her body. Sara doubled over. Dropped to her knees. Her head started to swim. She couldn’t breathe.
“Get up, bitch.”
Sara pressed her forehead to the ground. Saliva dripped from her mouth. Her hands had automatically gone to her stomach. The muscles spasmed. She blinked open her eyes. The watch screen was glowing. She tapped the Walkie-Talkie button. Faith was the first name on her list. She held the yellow circle down and said, “Carter, do you—do you really think the cops aren’t going to spot a white potato chip van on 285?”
“Not your problem.”
Gravel crunched under tires. The van had pulled up.
Sara raised her head. The world tilted sideways. She could barely make it to her feet. The pain in her belly forced her to walk doubled over. She tried not to think about Will experiencing the same agony, but worse. She had to steady herself on the car as she made her way around to the other side.
Vale had already opened the door. His lips looked bruised. His eyelids drooped. He was decompensating faster than she had hoped.
“Gimme,” Carter said, grabbing the revolver away from Vale.
Sara had no choice but to help the injured man from the car. Vale’s arm went around her shoulder. His other arm was still looped around his chest, his finger jammed inside the gunshot wound.
“Hurry up.” Carter waved the gun to get her moving.
Vale tried to push himself up with his legs. He was muscular, much heavier than he looked. Sara took a step away when he was expecting her to step forward. Instinctively, she tried to keep him from falling, but she could not move quickly enough.
Vale landed on his back. What little breath he had left was knocked out of him. He gasped for air. His eyes were wild.
Sara went to her knees. She didn’t give a shit about Vale. She didn’t want to be punched again. She pretended to examine him—looking at his pupils, pressing her ear to his heart. His shirt was raised. Blood dribbled in a steady stream from the gunshot wound. Bright red, not venal blood but arterial. The bullet had entered through the axilla, where all the nerves and arteries were bundled.
Dash was out of the van. He helped Vale sit up. He told Sara, “A hand with my friend, if you don’t mind?”
There was something weirdly commanding about his polite, calm tone. He wasn’t helplessly panicked like Vale or blinded by anger like Carter. Dash struck Sara as the type of person who could wield his moods like a sword. She didn’t want to ever find herself on the sharp end.
Along with Dash, Sara used her shoulder to raise Vale to standing. They got him to the van. He was able to crawl on his own into the back.
Sara felt Dash’s hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s take that off, please, ma’am.”
He had noticed the watch.
Sara turned the face down as she undid the strap. Instead of handing it to Dash, she threw it into the woods.
“Thank you,” he said, as if this was exactly what he’d wanted to happen. He motioned for Michelle. He didn’t have to give her instruction. She silently helped move the delivery man out of the van and into the BMW.
Why was she so compliant?
“Gonna fuck you up,” Carter whispered to Sara. He edged into the van on his ass, dragging his stiff leg across the floor.
The driver’s side door shut. Michelle put on her seat belt. She turned on the ignition. She put both hands on the wheel. She stared straight ahead, waiting to be told what to do next.
Why?
“I just need another coupla three seconds.” Dash had managed to open the fuel door to the BMW. He pulled an emergency road flare out of his pocket. He struck the top, which was like a giant match head. Burning white sparks shot out like a sparkler.
He told Sara, “You might want to hurry.”
Sara got into the back of the van. The last thing she saw before she closed the sliding door was Dash jamming the burning flare into the mouth of the gas tank.
He jumped into the front seat. “Go.”
Michelle hit the gas. The van lurched. They took a sharp turn around the building.
Gasoline burned, but only the fumes could cause an explosion. Dash had timed it right. They were fifty yards away when the shock of the blast reached the van.
If the police found the BMW, all the forensics would be burned away.
The blood on the steering wheel. The blood on the seats. The delivery man’s body.
All gone.
“Shit,” Carter muttered. “Shit-shit-shit.” The knife had shifted despite his best efforts. He was cupping his groin. He glanced over at Sara, a helpless look in his eyes.
She looked away.
Dash called, “We good, brothers?”
“Yeah,” Vale mumbled.
“Hell, yeah,” Carter said, though his voice was hoarse.
Sara listened to the steady drone of the wheels on the road. She reached into her empty pocket. She used her thumb to methodically clean beneath her fingernails.
She had scratched Vale’s back when he fell down, gouging out rows of his skin.
At the site of the car accident, she had touched Merle’s head wound and rubbed her fingers clean on her shorts. She had run her palm across Dash’s wounded shoulder. She had transferred Hurley’s blood from the back seat of the Malibu. She would put her hand in the pool of blood seeping out of Carter’s leg when they eventually dragged her out of the van.
Sara knew the statistics. They were taking her to a second location. Statistically, her chances of survival had been cut to roughly 12 percent.
She was not going to end up like Michelle Spivey—alive, but not alive.
Whatever it took, she was going to make these men kill her. Her only job between now and then was to take a piece of them down with her.
Sara wanted her family to have closure. She wanted Will to get vengeance.
Her own sweat was on her shorts by virtue of the fact that she was wearing them. Vale’s skin cells were in the pocket. Merle’s blood would transfer from her hand. Dash’s blood. Eventually Carter’s.
Their DNA would conclusively link all four men to Sara when her body was found.
