Jill fought to suppress a rising terror. Her face and head throbbed with pain. Her nose was bleeding. She heard a soft bubbling sound, her own blood leaking from her nose. Her right eye felt loose, warm, and wet, so she knew her orbital bone had been hit, maybe broken. She heard the sound of quiet whimpering.
Victoria.
Jill felt the sensation of movement, a slight jostling. There were no other car sounds, no passing trucks. The rate of speed was low, maybe fifty miles an hour. There was only road noise, and weeping.
Jill lay still, forcing herself to think, and function. If her right orbital had been hit, her eye would look like a sunken and bloody mess. Nobody could tell it was open. The two men would think she was still unconscious.
She kept her left eye closed and looked around through her right eye. It wasn’t easy but she could see well enough. Victoria was hunched over, crying and shaking. Her hands covered her face. Blood dripped through her slender fingers. Her phone and purse were gone. Her blusher and hairbrush lay scattered on the backseat.
“I gotta take a leak,” said one of the men, up front, and from the direction of the sound, Jill guessed it was the driver talking, Donator or whatever his real name was. He must have shown ID to somebody at the hospital, but it must have been fake. Jill hadn’t even thought to ask, she’d been so preoccupied.
“Make it fast,” said Cohz, or whoever. “This chick is making me mental, with the boohooing.”
“So pop her again.”
“It just makes it worse. Hurry up.”
Jill felt the car slow down. She couldn’t let anything happen to Victoria. She felt a rush of love and terror, in almost equal measure.
The car pulled over to the side of the road, and Jill could see thick woods. No houses. No people. No cars. No help. She and Victoria wouldn’t get far if they ran for it. The men had to be armed, and there were two of them. It was late afternoon, still daylight. One man would go after her, and the other would hunt Victoria down.
“Be right back,” Donator said, braking. There was movement on the floor of the car as it stopped. Something rolled out from underneath the seat, an orange color that caught Jill’s attention.
Victoria’s EpiPen.
Jill knew it was a syringe of epinephrine, or adrenaline. In case of an allergic reaction, it would restore breathing, but injected into the muscle of a healthy person, it would have almost no effect. It would only increase the heart rate, cause nausea and tremors. It would have no effect in a vein.
Unless it was the right vein.
Jill didn’t know if she could do it, but she and Victoria were dead, otherwise. She heard the sound of the car door opening, then a beeping that signaled that it had been left open. She couldn’t see the driver, but she heard the crunch of his foot on the gravel road, then his footfalls disappeared.
She imagined him walking up a distance, then turning away from the car. His back would be to the roadside. She’d have to wait until then. It would buy them extra seconds.
It would be her only chance. Their only chance.
She stilled her heart, listening. Counting.
One, two, three.
Go.
Chapter Sixty-one
Jill swooped down, grabbed the EpiPen, tore the cap off with her teeth, then lunged forward and plunged its long, thick needle directly into Cohz’s carotid.
His eyes flew open. His lips parted in shock and pain.
Jill clamped her other hand over his mouth to stifle his cry. The EpiPen wouldn’t kill him, but it would immobilize him long enough to give them a head start. “Go, go, go!” she hissed to Victoria.
“Oh!” Victoria sat upright, teary and shaken, then reached for the door handle and shoved the door open with Jill right behind her, pushing her outside.
“Run to the woods! Go!”
“Help!” Victoria screamed, but Jill didn’t have time to tell her that screaming was the worst thing to do.
“No, stop!” Donator shouted, from up the road, behind them.
Jill grabbed Victoria’s hand. They crashed together into the woods, running as fast as they could. They tore through the trees, tall and thick. They ducked low branches. The trees grew denser. There was no room to run in between. They let go of each other’s hands, running together, racing with all their might. Bark scraped their legs. Their hair caught on branches. They leapt over dead limbs. The temperature cooled. The sun vanished.
Victoria panted as she ran, her arms pumping. Her legs churned. Her jacket caught on something and ripped.
Jill’s breath went ragged. She put up her hands to shield her face. She was too adrenalized to feel pain. They twisted and threaded through the trees, trying not to trip on vines and undergrowth. Twigs, stones, and dry leaves covered the ground. There was no path or trail. No room to run side-by-side.
“HELP, HELP!” Victoria screamed.
Crak! a gunshot fired, close behind them.
Jill ducked, on the run. A jolt of sheer horror shot through her system. Donator was after them now. She knew what she had to do. They couldn’t keep this up. She turned to Victoria.
“Go left,” Jill shouted, gasping for breath. “You go left, I go right.”
“What? Why?”
“Go and shut up. I’ll draw him.”
“No!” Victoria reached for her, but Jill slapped her hand away, though it killed her to do it.
“Listen to me! Go left! Do it! We have to separate! We can’t both make it!”
“No, I’m not going!” Victoria met Jill’s eye for a split second, panting hard, tears streaming down her cheeks, as heartbroken as she was terrified, and in that instant, Jill could see that they had become mother and daughter, once again.
“I love you, honey. Now, go! Get help!”
“No!”
“Yes!” Jill turned right and bolted away from her, screaming at the top of her lungs, to draw Donator. “Help! Help, police! Somebody!”
Crak! went the gunshot, closer.
Jill knew it had worked. She was on her own now.
She put her head down and ran for her life.
Chapter Sixty-two
Crak! went another gunshot, even closer.
“Help!” Jill put on the afterburners, running faster. Raising her hands to clear her way. Keeping her knees high so she wouldn’t fall. Ducking when the branches got too low. She sweated and bled. She had no idea where she was. She didn’t know if she was running straight or in a circle. She knew only that she was running away.
Her chest heaved with each breath. Her legs ached, and she started to stagger. Thorns sliced her palms and forearms. She tripped on a vine, yanking it to free herself. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep going. Donator would catch up with her. Cohz would regain consciousness and join him.
Then she saw it. Up ahead, through the trees. It looked oddly lighter, like a clearing. She didn’t know what it was, but she ran for it. Civilization lay ahead.
“Help!” she hollered, with hope.
Crak!
Jill felt the heat of the bullet, whizzing past her head. She bolted in terror through the woods toward the clearing. She had to get to help before Donator got to her. She didn’t know how many bullets he had. The promise of the clearing gave her new strength. She got a second wind.
She raced ahead. She cried out when a branch sliced her cheek, its end pointed like a steak knife. She ran and ran, knocking dead limbs out of the way with her arms. Beyond the trees was a brightness. The sun shone through. She spotted rooftops and glimpsed houses.
“Help me somebody!”
Crak!
“No!” Jill cried out. Her left shoulder burned like it had caught fire. She’d been shot. Her arm flew instinctively to grip the wound, but it slowed her pace and she let go. She reached the clearing like crossing a finish line.
It was a housing development, unfinished. The trees had been cut down, making a circle of dirt and clay around a few Cape Cod houses, then a row of bare wooden frames for houses.
They sat on an unfinished paved street, part of a larger asphalt grid. Tattered orange flags marked the building lots. RUNNING HORSE REALTY, read the faded sign, with a peeling overlay that read MODEL HOME.
“Help!” Jill yelled. Tears of relief ran down her face. She sprinted toward the model home, then noticed something, on the run.
There were no people, no cars. No toys in the front yards, no swingsets in the backs. No trash cans or recycling bins. Everything was quiet and still. It was a suburb that never happened.
Her heart sank, her hope vanished. Still, she ran on and on. The development had been abandoned. The Cape Cods stood empty and unoccupied. The unfinished houses were skeletons, their Tyvek skins flayed by the elements, their plywood bones bleached by the sun.
She ran past the model home, guessing it would be locked. She scanned on the fly for a place to hide. There were no open garages. No gardening sheds. No sewer pipes.
She ran down the street past the finished houses. They had to be locked, too. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Donator could pick her off here with ease. Her breath came harder and harder. She couldn’t keep going much longer. Her shoulder was killing her. Her heart pumped hard, she was losing blood fast. She had to get out of sight.
She gulped for breath. She ran for the last frame house in the row, which was almost complete. Plywood sheets formed its front wall. She tore through the rubble and red clay to the threshold. It had no door.
She whirled around, looking for a place to hide. It was a see-through house. Wood frames stood where the walls would have been, their studs at regular intervals. All the rooms were open except one in the back, intended to become a garage. A cinderblock wall blocked her view.
She raced for the cinderblock wall and ducked behind it. The garage was open to the back, facing the woods. The floor was poured concrete.
She looked around for something she could use for a weapon, left by a construction worker. A two-by-four, a hammer. A boxcutter, a pipe. There was nothing. It had been picked clean.
She faced the front of the house, her eyes glued to the threshold for Donator. Then she saw something that sickened her.
Drops of her own blood dribbled along the plywood floor, leading to her hiding place. She was bleeding from the shoulder wound. She should have thought of that. She couldn’t hide here, she couldn’t hide anywhere. She was bleeding, making her own gruesome trail of crumbs.
Then she realized. She hadn’t heard a gunshot in a while, and that was the only thing worse than hearing a gunshot. It meant that she didn’t know where Donator was.
She rose silently, trying to slow her heart, quiet her breathing. Maybe he was out of bullets. Maybe he’d given up. Maybe he’d gone back to his car.
Suddenly she heard a shuffling behind her, and she turned.
Chapter Sixty-three
“You bitch!” Donator roared, running at Jill, his hands reaching for her throat.
“No!” Jill raised her arms, but he was already upon her. His strong hands caught her, pushing her off her feet, crushing her Adam’s apple under his thumbs.
She gagged. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. She tried to pry his fingers off but they closed tighter. She tried to kick him but he kept coming, knocking her off-balance.
She lost her footing. He dragged her backwards by her neck, scraping her heels across the plywood floor. She couldn’t breathe, he’d sealed her windpipe with his hands. Still, she kept hitting, prying, and kicking, fighting for her life. Her shoulder exploded in agony.
“Give it up!” Donator yelled, his face crimson with rage. He bared his teeth like an animal. She fell backwards, her head hitting the floor, her arms flailing at him. Donator fell on top of her, tightening his grip, strangling her.
She felt dizzy, she saw stars. She was out of oxygen. She writhed and twisted, trying to wiggle away. She tried to knee him but he weighed her down. She tried to move but couldn’t.
Her strength started to desert her. Her arms fell backwards. Her shoulder was agony. Her legs flopped open. She couldn’t fight anymore. She couldn’t form a single thought. He had choked the life from her.
“Good girl,” Donator whispered, his hot breath in her face, his grimace an inch from her lips. He was killing her and he was enjoying it, she could see. Then she didn’t want to see anymore.
Jill closed her eyes. She heard her own, final choking sounds, pathetic and fading.
Then, she heard nothing.
The last sound she heard on earth would be her own silence.
Chapter Sixty-four
Wham was the sound, then a loud thud, and a man’s agonized shout.
Suddenly Jill was gasping for oxygen, her chest heaving, her body bucking up and down, her autonomic system kicking into gear, the organism trying to survive before its brain could process what had happened.
Victoria was standing at her feet with a two-by-four, and Donator wasn’t on top of her anymore.
Jill gasped for breath, sputtering, trying to come back, wanting so much to stay alive. She rolled her head to the side, choking and coughing.
Donator lay still on the floor beside her, face up. Dead. His eyes stared fixedly at the exposed rafters. His mouth was open, his lips a shocked circle. His arms lay at his sides. Blood poured from a gaping wound in his temple, pooling on the concrete floor around his head, like an infernal halo.
“Jill? Jill?” Victoria dropped the two-by-four and rushed to her side.
Jill could feel her heartbeat pounding, her gasps wracking her body, and her lungs beginning to function. Her throat hurt so much, and she tried to speak, but couldn’t.
Victoria bent over, gathered her into her arms, and hugged her close. Jill looked up into Victoria’s eyes, which shone with a tenderness they’d never held before.
“Are you okay?” Victoria asked, with a weepy smile. “Are you hurt?”
Jill shook her head. She managed a smile. She couldn’t say a word, but she knew what she thought, in her heart.
I was hurt, before this very moment. I’ve been hurting since the last time I saw you.
But I’m fine, now.
Chapter Sixty-five
Jill was only vaguely aware of everything that happened next as she faded in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain, in almost continuous motion. There were police, ambulances, then being strapped into a gurney with EMTs looking down at her with concern. They attached her to monitors, an IV bag, and at one point she cleared her aching throat enough to ask what she had to know:
“Can you call, about Rahul?”
“This is no time to worry about the office,” the EMT answered, then they were hustling her out of the ambulance and to the ER nurses in their patterned scrubs, all of them looking down at her with even more concern as they whisked her inside through the automatic doors.
Jill kept saying, “Call somebody, please. Please, call about Rahul.”
But they didn’t listen, either.
Chapter Sixty-six
Jill sat up in the hospital bed, stitched, bandaged, medicated, and finally safe, in the company of real, ID-producing FBI agents, Special Agent Anthony Harrison and Special Agent Gordon Kavicka. The bullet wound to her shoulder wasn’t deep, sutured with only a local anesthetic, and some pain meds had made her comfortable enough to meet with the FBI. The two special agents sat in chairs at the foot of her bed, dressed in dark suits, with striped ties and short haircuts. Victoria sat next to Jill on the bed in her torn jacket, and the cut on her cheek had been butterfly-bandaged.
“Can anybody tell me what just happened?” Jill asked, her throat aching. “Who was Donator, where is Cohz, and did somebody reach my office to ask about my patient, Rahul Choudhury?”
Victoria added, “Also, was my father murdered, and what did Brian have to do with it, if anything? Is he really undercover with the FBI, or were they lying to us?”
“Hold on, one question at a time.” Special Agent Harrison raised a hand, his expression grim. He was a tall, lean man with smallish bro
wn eyes, deep crow’s feet, and a prominent cleft chin. “Dr. Farrow, we have a call in to your office, and we’ll let you know about your patient as soon as they call back. Now, as for what happened, I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can, on a need-to-know basis.”
Jill felt taken aback. “We need to know everything. We were almost killed.”
“Let us finish our jobs, then we’ll explain everything. You have found your way into an ongoing federal investigation. We’re within hours of making major arrests and indictments, and we cannot jeopardize anything. An investigation as large and important as this one requires countless man hours, budget dollars, and hard work.”
Jill didn’t interrupt him to say how much he sounded like the fake FBI agents.
“For now, we’ll tell you only the information you need to know, and we expect you to treat the matter in complete confidence. Beyond this circle, we depend upon you to say nothing to any friends or neighbors, and explain your injuries by saying that you were in a car accident. Dr. Farrow, your fiancé, when he arrives, must also keep it confidential.”
“He will.” Jill hadn’t spoken to Sam, but evidently the FBI had.
Victoria leaned over. “Special Agent Harrison, can you please tell me about Brian? Is he out of surgery, and is he one of you or not?”
Special Agent Harrison cleared his throat. “Brian works with us. He’s awake, and we expect a full recovery.”
“Thank God.” Victoria brightened, and Jill touched her shoulder.
“There’s good news.”
Victoria nodded. “But who is he, really? Is he even a lawyer?”
“I can’t answer that, yet.”
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