Hairpin Bridge

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  But still, she worried.

  Do I have enough evidence? Do I know enough—

  A metal click made her jump. Fear bloomed in her chest.

  She glanced back to the cars. On her Corolla’s hood, the Shoebox recorder had reached the end of its cassette. The tape needed to be replaced.

  Too far away to reach.

  Raycevic knew this, too. “Okay, Lena.”

  In a startling motion, he turned around to face her. She knew she should step back to protect herself from a headbutt or a counterattack—but showing weakness was even worse. She stood her ground, keeping the Beretta’s barrel trained right on his forehead. Inches away.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said, glancing at the Shoebox. “Now that we’re off the record.”

  Don’t back up, Lena. Don’t give him an inch.

  She didn’t.

  “What I’m about to tell you . . . you can repeat it to everyone at the station in Magma Springs, but they won’t believe you.” He smiled. “You can scream it. Write all about it on your nerd blog. Doesn’t matter. They’ll think you’re lying. Or you’re crazy, just like your schizoid sister—”

  “Say it, Ray.”

  He licked his lips. He was enjoying this too much. Nothing ever seemed to rattle Raycevic for long. She wanted to jab the Beretta’s barrel into his eye socket and twist, to scream at him to stop toying with her, to please stop gloating and just tell her, and again her mind returned to last night’s dream, to the frustrating nonsense of Cambry’s words, to the way she urged through teary eyes: Go. Lena, go—

  Not I love you, sis.

  Not I’ll always be with you.

  Basically? Her message from the grave boiled down to: Leave me alone.

  It sickened her. Made her heart squeeze in her chest. And the situation on Hairpin Bridge had changed again, twisting, complicating into something darker and deeper as she held the trigger on Corporal Raycevic and waited for his next words.

  Last night, she’d woken up before she could respond to Cambry—and she hadn’t known what she’d say to her twin’s ghost anyway, real or imagined—but now she did.

  What the hell did you pull me into, sis?

  Chapter 12

  Cambry’s Story

  Don’t stop, Cambry.

  Whatever you do, don’t stop.

  Her speedometer grazes ninety and the Corolla’s suspension jostles over cracked pavement. Trees whip past on her right and left. A ticking clock in her fuel tank. She dreads checking the digital clock in the dashboard but does anyway. The time is 8:44.

  Sixteen minutes to live.

  Ahead, the red taillights have disappeared again, but she knows they’re out there. Somewhere up ahead is a witness. She just needs to catch up. Before she runs out of gas.

  The cop is already on her. His Charger pulls parallel to her, unshakable. She can see the dark man’s form clearly through the windows. The Glock is still in his knuckled hand, resting on his steering wheel. He has a clear shot on her now, less than ten feet between them. But he hasn’t taken it. Why?

  He saw the taillights, too, she reasons.

  An innocent bystander is a game changer. He’s considering the likelihood of this faraway witness hearing his gunshot. In another second or two, he’ll probably decide that at a quarter mile, gunshots could just as easily be rolling thunder, and he’ll shoot her anyway.

  So?

  So.

  Make a choice, Cambry.

  She decides she’s done waiting. She twists her steering wheel hard left, swinging directly into Raycevic’s side. He sees her swerve coming—barely—and cuts his speed with a panicked stomp and a squeal of locked brakes. Still, she nearly clips the Charger’s front panel.

  She half wishes she’d hit his car and wrecked them both. It’s suicide, but ruining this asshole’s night holds a certain appeal.

  Now she’s got the oncoming lane, racing at eighty, and she’s forced him back. Holding the opposite lane denies Raycevic an angle on her from the left and forces him to attack her from the right side, firing left-handed. It’ll make his shot inconvenient, at least. As tactics go, it sucks.

  Another rise in the road—another shrieking touchdown of chassis kissing pavement—and she glimpses those red taillights again. They’re slightly larger now, slightly closer. Not close enough.

  “Come on,” she whispers, stomping the gas. “Come on.”

  Raycevic must be changing his strategy, too, as he swerves around behind her. The gun isn’t in his hand anymore. He’s got both hands on the wheel, driving with his full attention. His high beams swing up on her right side now, crossing the road’s center line, and it occurs to her how recklessly they’re both driving. How cataclysmically deadly a crash would be. The world has changed so dramatically in the past hour, ever since she first spotted those four strange fires.

  Those four ceremonial pyramids of stone, cracks glowing with caged flame.

  The strange dreamlike moment that started it all.

  As the Charger closes in like a predator, she can’t stop her racing anxieties. Terrible thoughts, as heavy as cannonballs in her stomach. She imagines the patrolman out there earlier today in his wifebeater, getting scorched by an afternoon sun, tediously sawing a human body into sections to feed into each small furnace. A foot in one. A forearm in another. Does he drain the body of blood first? He must, to get the temperature high enough to crack bone. Maybe he strings the corpses upside down with a slashed jugular, drip-drip-dripping into a tin bucket—

  Headlights scald her eyes. The Charger nuzzling up close on her right. Closer.

  Focus, Cambry. He’s on you.

  She can’t. Her thoughts are a furious churn. Now she sees Corporal Raycevic grunting with exertion as he cranks a hacksaw through a throat. Pausing to wipe sweat from his brow. Or maybe he prefers to chop instead? The thunderous crack of an axe splitting a femur—

  Focus-focus-focus.

  Hand-feeding those bloodless little body parts, cubed sections of drained flesh and knuckled bone, into those stone furnaces until nothing remains—

  Cambry.

  She swallows hard.

  You will die here if you don’t focus.

  The cop car holds parallel to her. A distant flash of lightning silhouettes the man inside. His hat, his ears, his bull shoulders. The barrel of the semiautomatic rifle resting on the seat like a passenger. But incredibly, he’s still got his big knuckles clasped to the wheel. He’s focused on driving. This is his chance to pull his pistol and take a kill shot. Why hasn’t he?

  It’s 8:46. Fourteen minutes.

  Ahead, the car’s taillights appear again. A brief flash of distant red hope. Then they tug away as the road flexes into another bend.

  Her heart flutters. She’s closed some of the distance. The car is closer now. Maybe two hundred yards between them? On the next straightaway, she’ll know for sure. She’s catching up.

  Which means Raycevic can’t shoot her. Not without risk. On a cool summer night like this, the unsuspecting man, woman, or family up ahead could be driving with their windows down. This close, the rattle of gunfire might not blend so seamlessly into thunder. This psycho cop can’t allow one homicide to spill over and become two, three, or more. He’s forced to hold his fire. This delights Cambry—it feels like a victory. Yes, Raycevic is getting desperate, his arsenal of guns useless, as she nears the taillights of her anonymous savior.

  Which means he has one option left—

  No.

  She doesn’t want to think about this. She shoves it to the back of her mind. Refuses to look at it. She wants to enjoy this moment, this delirious reversal as Raycevic realizes he can’t shoot her. That in a way, she’s already escaped him. She’s already within earshot of civilization.

  But he has one more likely attack.

  No, no, no.

  And she knows it. She can’t ignore it. Her stomach twists into ropes, greasy heartburn in her chest, and she finally, finally accepts it: Cambry, he’
s going to ram you off the road.

  Right now.

  It’s his only remaining option.

  Inside the cruiser, she sees the cop’s posture change. His left elbow rises in a hard twist and that’s Raycevic’s tell, a tenth of a second before his cruiser swings at her, a two-ton right hook.

  Cambry stomps her brakes. All reflex.

  Her world rockets backward. The seat belt whips into her shoulder again, and the Charger swerves in front of her, tires screaming with gritty friction. The vehicles do a strange smoky dance, a whirling do-si-do at seventy. For a blinking split second, his side doors light up in her high beams and she can read HIGHWAY PATROL stenciled in white, as crisp as daylight. Then Raycevic keeps spinning, his rear bumper swinging achingly close to her front panel, and Cambry’s stomach clenches into a ball—but the vehicles pass without impact. Inches between them.

  Raycevic keeps skidding left. Left. Too far—

  She realizes that he was counting on her vehicle being there. Her Corolla was supposed to take a hit to the rear panel and absorb the kinetic energy into a fishtail spin. Instead, she’d slammed on her brakes. While he kept skidding leftward, unable to correct his swerve—

  She cranes her neck to follow him. Yes, you asshole!

  He keeps twisting, a dizzying one-eighty, and grinds up against the gravel shoulder. His headlights strobe at her again, only this time pointed backward. Off the road now, his suspension bucking violently on the uneven land. A firecracker-flash of orange sparks as his bumper scrapes rock. A storm of dust and rubber smoke, cut by headlights.

  Cambry feels her car lurch. She’s at a complete stop now.

  So is the stunned Charger, thirty feet ahead, spilled off the road. Facing her.

  She can’t hold it. She laughs, hard spasms on a raw throat. Her window is still rolled down, and so is Raycevic’s, and she knows he can hear her laughter. That makes it even better.

  She recovers fast and accelerates. Slammed back into her seat by a fresh surge of forward motion, she ducks behind her door as she drives past the stalled cop car. She braces for gunshots as she passes. Aching silence. Her car punches through his dust cloud, and she flinches under the staccato rattle of small rocks peppering her windshield.

  No gunfire. Nothing.

  She risks a backward glance at him, exposing her head. The Charger is still skidded off the road into the weeds, pointing in reverse. This time there’s no lightning to illuminate the dark interior. Maybe his airbag has exploded in there. Maybe he’s hurt. This gives Cambry another dark thrill—she hopes he’s got a gash on his forehead or a concussion. Maybe he’s bitten his tongue clean off.

  In another instant, she’s far past him. Racing on into the night.

  She shouts out her window again, into the leaf-blower rush of cold air. It starts as another fuck you, but midbreath she tries to throw in cocksucker, and it comes out a confused jumble of obscenities. It is what it is: A wild, joyous hymn to surviving another second. To eluding the Reaper. To being alive.

  Another bolt of lightning crosses the sky, a violet flash of exposed clouds, stunning in its power and closeness. Like concert floodlights, the most stunning storm she’s ever witnessed, turning the trees green and the rocks white and the ground alive with racing shadows. She’s never felt so present. She can feel the electricity in her teeth, building for the next flash. We’re all stardust, right?

  The spun-out cop car disappears in her rearview mirror. Going, going, gone. She leans into the road’s next turn and drives faster, her nerves on edge, bracing for the inevitable artillery crash of thunder. But like the gunshots, it never comes. Only the roar of the motor and the howl of the wind in her ears. Just the storm’s silent fury.

  And ahead—those red taillights again.

  “Thank God,” she whispers. “Oh, thank you, Lord, thank you, Jesus.”

  She’s gaining fast on the faraway car. With every twist of the serpentine road, she tugs closer in the darkness. Homing in on it.

  “Thank you, Holy Ghost.”

  She’s running out of divine entities to thank. She’s not religious, at least not in any way she can admit. But there’s something exhilarating to this wild drive under silent lightning, pursued by a dark man in a black Dodge Charger. With salvation ahead.

  She mashes the horn with her fist.

  The car ahead is still too far away to hear. She lost some distance when she baited Raycevic into his spin. She checks her rearview mirror.

  The cop’s headlights pinprick behind her. Back in this merry chase.

  “Shit.” But she knows she should have expected this. Like a pursuing figure from a nightmare, Raycevic is down but never out. She looks back ahead at the faraway taillights and bleats the horn again, again, punching it with her knuckles. The Corolla’s horn has always been weak. She tries flipping her high beams off, then back on.

  No response.

  She’s still too far behind. So she tries something she hoped she wouldn’t have to: cutting her headlights entirely. Off, then on. Off, then on. The oncoming road pulses pitch black before her, vanishing in totality between frightening heartbeats.

  Off. On. Off. On. She smacks the lever harder, dropping in and out of racing darkness, aware of Raycevic’s headlights rapidly gaining on her tail.

  Ahead, the brake lights pulse. A response.

  They see it.

  “Yes,” she hisses.

  The taillights grow brighter. Like twin red lanterns gliding in blackness. The driver is pulling off to the right, grinding up on the road’s shoulder.

  “Yes, yes, yes—”

  She finds herself instinctively tapping her own brakes as well, slowing down to pull over alongside this stranger. But Raycevic is just a minute behind her, closing in fast on them both.

  Ahead, the vehicle’s brakes whine. A complete stop now.

  Cambry knows she can’t waste a second. She’ll need to convince this bystander to let her into his vehicle, to drive them both away. Before Raycevic’s headlights catch up. Before he can start shooting. Otherwise all she’s accomplishing is dragging a second victim into a murderer’s cross hairs. Third, technically? Another collection of body parts to be parceled out into those little fires.

  She stomps her brakes. Stopping, too, behind him.

  She unbuckles her seat belt. Throws the door open. As she scrambles outside into the skin-prickling quiet, the cracked roadway feels strange underfoot. Like stepping out of a swimming pool after hours of weightless floating. In the blackness behind her, Raycevic’s light bar switches back on in an eruption of blue and red—Of course, he’s acting the part of cop again. His lights are joined by a wailing scream. A moaning, ghostlike siren.

  It dawns on her now, as she lowers her shoulders and breaks into a gasping sprint toward the semi’s cab, that Corporal Raycevic, fewer than thirty seconds behind them both, enjoys a profound advantage in this situation, too. After all . . .

  If you see someone fleeing a cop car, who do you assume is the bad guy?

  Who do you help?

  By now, the driver sees Raycevic’s lights. He’s wondering right now if he’s being rushed by a fleeing criminal. He’s probably already got his hand on the stick, about to throttle up and leave.

  She runs faster. Pumps her arms. Almost there. She tries to shout, but her lungs are empty.

  Cambry, you look like the bad guy.

  “Help!” she manages to scream.

  Her voice is lost under his siren. She can’t believe it, any of it. The hateful ludicrous insanity of it all. Like the spectacularly ill-timed lightning, this dark man possesses some unknown power, and no matter the choices she makes, Cambry Nguyen is destined to die tonight. Within minutes now. She’s already drawn the skull card. Nothing can change her fate.

  This is why tarot cards, Ouija boards, and psychic readings have always terrified her. For as long as I can remember, my sister has always deeply feared learning that she’s fated to die. Not the death itself, just the knowledge of when it
happens—and this makes sense. She’s lived her entire life on the move. Why shouldn’t she be terrified of the one thing she can’t outrun?

  * * *

  At this point I should warn you, dear readers: the known record of Cambry’s movements becomes incomplete after she exits her car at 8:48 p.m. The testimony I recorded on Hairpin Bridge becomes unreliable. Up until now, Corporal Raycevic’s account of the events of June 6 has been verified down to the minute. You’ll just have to go with me on what happens next.

  Trust me, please.

  * * *

  As my sister reaches the semitruck’s cab, squinting up to find the driver’s black form inside, Raycevic’s intensifying light envelops the world at her back, tracing her running shadow on the concrete, glinting off the trailer’s sides, which are pocked with rivets and stenciled with the now-revealed print:

  SIDEWINDER.

  Chapter 13

  Lena

  “What happened next, Ray?”

  “I was still catching up behind her. I didn’t see it happen.”

  “You didn’t see what happen?”

  He licked his lips. “We need to go back to the beginning. To what happened before June sixth. You wanted the truth? Congratulations. Here it is.”

  She kept an eye on the semitruck still parked on Hairpin Bridge’s opposite lane, the driver still inside on his radio with emergency services, as Raycevic took a shaky breath and whispered, “Cambry was my girlfriend.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He repeated: “She was my girlfriend.”

  “Uh, wow. No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I was having an affair with her.” He forced an ill smile. “My wife got fat, you know?”

  “You’re lying.”