Hairpin Bridge

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  He sighed, beaten.

  As they approached the semitruck, she made him walk in front—so if the old man in the shaded cab was still alive enough to lift his rifle and shoot again, he’d be forced to shoot around his son.

  His son, Raycevic. She was still getting her head around it.

  “You flunked academy selection?” she jabbed. “I thought you were Supercop.”

  He said nothing.

  “What was it? Push-ups? Couldn’t memorize the radio codes?”

  No answer.

  “Unless there’s a test for not getting outsmarted and disarmed by a woman half your size? Because I think you fucking tanked that one, Ray-Ray.”

  Ray-Ray. His father’s hateful taunt.

  Still, Raycevic remained morosely quiet, giving her nothing, and they walked in silence through smoky air. She realized she didn’t have the stomach to tease him further. She didn’t have the energy to be cruel to a man who’d just lost his father. She knew what loss felt like. For an uncomfortable moment, Lena forgot all of the sweat and terror of the past ten minutes and felt like the aggressor. The bad guy.

  I’m not the bad guy. I’m just trying to find justice for my sister.

  Right?

  A breath of wind slipped over the bridge, turning the sweat cold on her skin. She shivered. It occurred to her that the first shot fired in this gunfight had been hers, not theirs. It wasn’t self-defense. Not exactly. Whatever the truth was, she needed to secure both son and father—and then she could finally get her answers. She could hear the truth from their lips, that these sick assholes strangled Cambry to death and then dumped her body off Hairpin Bridge to feign suicide.

  Right?

  She knew it. She just needed to hear it.

  She was so close now.

  They reached the cab. To Raycevic, she ordered: “Stand here.”

  He did, staring up at the semi’s tall cab with dread. At the three holes punched through the red door. With a shaky voice, he called, “Dad?”

  “Shut up.” She approached with her Beretta raised. The screams inside had long fallen silent, but that didn’t mean the old man was dead. He could be waiting in ambush. If he was still alive, she decided, she would try to reason with him. If he was dead, she’d confirm it. And whatever happened—there was a devastating rifle in there that she couldn’t allow Raycevic to get his hands on.

  She wiped grit from her eyes. Her cheek stung and itched, peppered with shrapnel buried in her skin like bug bites. Her chewed elbow throbbed, too. But she couldn’t lose her focus. Not now. Not when she was this close to the truth.

  She climbed the truck’s smooth silver footrail. It was slippery, scorching hot from the sun. It burned her feet through her socks.

  “Dad,” Raycevic said hoarsely, “she’s coming up on the door now . . .”

  She snapped back to glare at him, but he’d already finished his sentence: “. . . so please, Dad, don’t shoot her.”

  She studied him, now deeply uncertain. The handcuffed cop didn’t meet her gaze, staring down to the road with defeat. His jaw quivered. He blinked and a falling tear glinted midair in the sunlight. Some persuasive acting—it was acting.

  Please don’t shoot her meant nothing, she knew. But as for She’s coming up on the door now? That sure meant something.

  Perched on the cab’s footrail, keeping her body back, she extended her free hand and reached for the door handle. It was a thin, polished latch. She feathered it with blood-slick fingertips. Then slowly closed them around it. She held her breath, her stomach clenching into a ball, bracing for another thunderous gunshot to explode from the darkness within, blossoming the painted metal inside out, severing two or three of her fingers in one nightmarish blast.

  It never came.

  The handle clicked. She tugged the door open. It swung hard, creaking the frame, and a few leftover shards of safety glass hit the road. She stayed back, her socks precarious on the slippery rail. She considered saying something to the man inside but decided against it. Raycevic had said enough.

  She took a breath.

  Then she peeked once inside the cab, a birdlike pecking motion, and glimpsed a single occupant collapsed in the floor space. Head down. And blood. Lots of blood.

  She leaned back out, exhaling.

  “Is he dead?” Raycevic whispered below.

  She ignored him, passed the Beretta into her left hand, and peeked a second time, slower now. Her index finger curled around the trigger, ready to fire, as the cab’s shaded interior rotated into view. The man inside did appear dead, as Ray feared. His white T-shirt—I Believe in Bigfoot—was stained with blood, bright and Technicolor-red. He’d clearly been hit by her gunfire. He was slumped against the stick with his head lolled down, facing his lap. She could see the brown strap of his eyepatch digging uncomfortably into his gray hair. Gunsmoke still tinged the air. The odors hit her all at once. Fetid, bacterial. Dried sweat, bad breath, stale farts, the inevitable result of a man in his sixties confined to a single location for days without showering.

  She breathed through her mouth. She saw the rifle he’d been firing at her—vintage in its design but immaculately maintained—in his lap, barrel-down. Within her reach.

  Take it, Lena.

  She started to lean inside but stopped herself. It felt like a trap. She’d be turning her back to Raycevic outside. And what if the old man was playing dead? He could thrash to life and grab her wrist, wrestling the Beretta away, and she’d be too close to twist away and shoot him again—

  Grab the rifle from his lap. Take the chance.

  She didn’t. It didn’t feel right. She had two guns already. Why get herself killed for a third one she didn’t know how to operate?

  Throw it off the bridge, then.

  No. Not worth the risk.

  It’s a risk just sitting there, too. In the lap of a man who might not be dead.

  She tried to weigh equally bad options. Her stomach gurgled. She squinted in at the man’s bloody shirt but couldn’t tell where she’d shot him. Chest? Probably fatal. Stomach or hip? Less so—

  “Hey.” She realized Raycevic was moving to her left. “Get off my flank, Ray-Ray.”

  He froze. Caught red-handed.

  She pointed beside the front tire. “Back there. Stay.”

  “Is he dead?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t know. Her skin prickled with goose bumps as she stood perched in the truck’s doorway, orienting herself so she could see both of them. She was afraid to take her eyes off the blood-drenched old man inside, and equally afraid to take her eyes off Raycevic. Even handcuffed, he was deadly up close. In a heartbeat, he could sweep her ankles off the footrail, slam her down to the concrete, and stomp on her windpipe before she fired a shot. How many ways could a man like Raycevic kill with his bare hands?

  Stay alert, Lena. More distractions.

  He asked a third time: “Is he dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she lied, watching the old man’s body closely.

  “Can I see him? Please?”

  Somehow that felt like a mistake, too. Lena shook her head and the world wobbled. For a swirling moment, she felt nauseated. All of the sensory horrors came back at once—the racing panic of being shot at, the dense odor of gunpowder, the thunder of the blasts, the coppery taste of blood. The strange whining sound bullets make as they slice overhead. The dead man here in the cab, the stranger she’d personally killed through a door.

  “He . . .” She said it aloud, like she had to justify it. “He shot at me.”

  “You shot first,” Raycevic whispered. “We were defending ourselves—”

  “Bullshit. One of you strangled my sister. Wrapped up in plastic, so you wouldn’t leave any skin cells or hair or fibers. And you asphyxiated her, just gently enough that there’d be no bruising or marks on the skin or burst vessels in her eyes—”

  “Lena, you’re not listening.”

  �
��Tell me now. Was it him or you?”

  “It was neither of us.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Cambry jumped off this bridge.” The cop treaded closer as he spoke—too close. “I’m trying to tell you the truth, Lena. You keep asking, expecting a different answer—”

  On the dashboard she noticed a browned dirty sock coiled in a knot. It took her a few seconds to realize what it actually was. Stomach acid climbed her throat and she shook her head again, feeling the precarious situation thrash from her control. “No, no, no. You assholes killed my sister. You threw her body off the bridge and pretended to—”

  “We couldn’t catch her.”

  A hard stop.

  “What . . . what are you saying?” She forced the pieces in her mind, trying desperately to make them fit. “What do you mean, you couldn’t catch Cambry?”

  Raycevic took another step. He was close enough to be dangerous now, close enough to grab Lena’s ankles with his cuffed hands, if he chose to.

  He didn’t. He looked her dead in the eye. “Lena. She got away.”

  Chapter 19

  Cambry’s Story

  Cambry hasn’t lost consciousness—not yet. She’s only pretending. Letting her limbs go limp and sagging helplessly in the Plastic Man’s arms is just an act.

  He buys it.

  His lips move beside her ear. “Gone already?”

  My knife. It’s been there in her right pocket, a faint pressure against her thigh, skimming the edge of her thoughts. It’s right there. Inches away. And now, as the Plastic Man loosens his grip slightly to check her pulse, it’s finally, finally within her reach.

  Unseen, she closes her fingers around the KA-BAR’s handle, sliding it out of her pocket. She peels open the three-inch blade with her thumbnail. Tightens a fist around it.

  “Huh.” He huffs, disappointed. “You know, kiddo, I thought you’d last longer than—”

  Over her shoulder, she stabs him in the face.

  The blade finds soft tissue and it feels like piercing jelly. Easier than she’d dared hope. She can’t see where it entered, but she has a pretty good guess. At first the Plastic Man barely reacts. He just inhales sharply through his nose, crinkling plastic. Like the buildup to a sneeze.

  Then he lets go.

  Cambry rockets forward, hitting her palms on the slick tarp. She has let go, too—of the knife—and left it planted in the man’s face behind her. She springs upright, shoes slipping, recognizing the tall shadow of the truck. The night air is shockingly cold, stinging her raw throat. Blinking, searching for Raycevic, for his red and blue lights, finding only darkness.

  She spins, looking back at the Plastic Man.

  He hasn’t moved. He stands dumbly with both hands raised to his face. He’s afraid to touch it. A double flash of lightning reveals the KA-BAR jutting above his respirator mask, pierced between his cheekbone and eyeball. His eyelids jerk open and shut, as if trying to blink away a grain of sand, waggling the knife’s handle up and down.

  He touches it, patting it with light fingertips. Feeling out this new development with a profound and terrible awe.

  “Oh,” he says. “Oh, wow.”

  She tastes vindication—then fear. He’s not dead. Not even close. He’s an injured animal, stunned by the sight of his own blood. In another moment he’ll be enraged by it. She backs away from him, away, away, until her back thuds against the trailer’s chilled metal.

  “Oh.” The crinkle of flexing plastic in the darkness. She can’t see him.

  Behind her: “Dad?”

  Her heart seizes in her throat—it’s Raycevic’s voice—but it’s recycled, electric. It came from a radio unit. Meaning the cop isn’t nearby. Not anymore.

  “Dad, should I turn around?” The radio chirps again. “I’m at the bridge—”

  The Plastic Man stomps furiously now. Hands clenched, hissing with exhaled pain. She can’t see details without another flash of lightning, but she knows he’s pulling the knife from his eye socket. With racing thoughts, she considers attacking him. Right now. Charging, tackling him, landing on top of him and mashing both palms downward against the jutting knife with all of her weight and tunneling it directly through his brain—

  This is your chance, her furies urge. Your one chance. Now.

  Fight him, Cambry.

  But it’s already too late. He screams and his knuckles tear juicily from his face. The knife flies and claps against the tarp somewhere. An enraged grunt.

  “Dad. Come in—”

  Invisible in the darkness, the Plastic Man lunges at her now. But Cambry feels the rush of displaced air and ducks under his whooshing arm. Then she twists on her ankles and skids below the semitrailer, crawling for the other side.

  “YOU BITCH.” He crashes down on all fours behind her. “YOU FUCKING BITCH—”

  She scrambles between the giant tires on her elbows and knees, pushing through the dangling chains. She can’t see the Plastic Man, but she hears him scuttling close behind her, panting, lunging for her ankle with a crinkly, grasping hand.

  “Gotcha—”

  But she slips between his closing fingers. He’s too slow. She’s too fast. She’s born to run. Cambry has always been a speed demon, untouchable and uncatchable, always a heartbeat ahead, making her graceful French exit before the party rolls and the cops show up. She’s already somersaulting out from the trailer’s other side, pivoting hard left under a kicked spray of gravel.

  She can see her Corolla now—there it is, lit by another strobe of lightning—and she breaks into a sprint as the Plastic Man howls behind her, in bloodcurdling rage: “FUCK!”

  On the radio: “Dad. What did she do?”

  “SHE . . . OH, JESUS FUCK. I CAN’T SEE OUT OF MY EYE—”

  “What?”

  “SHE POPPED MY EYE.”

  Good, she thinks as she reaches her car. She tugs the door open—it’s still ajar—and crashes down into the driver’s seat. Home again. She twists the key and the engine coughs, taking a few sputtering seconds to turn. Just fumes in the tank.

  But the interstate can’t be far now.

  You’ll make it, Cambry. Don’t look at the clock.

  The time is 8:58.

  She cranks the car into gear. You’ll get somewhere, and you’ll find a well-lit public area, and you’ll call the police. The real police. And both of these assholes will burn—

  “SHE’S IN HER CAR—”

  “Wait. What happened to your eye?”

  Cambry stomps the pedal and the engine roars. An exhilarating sound she’s always associated with freedom. The Corolla surges forward, barreling past the eighteen-wheeler. She flicks on her headlights, flooding the empty road with light and scans for the half-blind bastard, hoping to clip him as she careens past. No luck. Their voices fade in a blast of air: “SHE’S GETTING AWAY—”

  It’s all vanishing behind her. The Sidewinder truck. The Plastic Man. Their bickering voices, the choking pressure on her windpipe, the musty odors of sweat and snake shit inside the cab. All of it going, going, and finally gone.

  Her speedometer hits sixty, seventy, eighty. The road bends and weaves. The night air races through her windows, tearing her hair back. She shivers and laughs, giggles as hard as stones in her throat. The assholes’ trap failed. She witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see, and she’s slipped their clutches and soon the whole world will see it, too. She’ll make them famous. They’ll be arrested, strung up, sentenced. Maybe the fat one will need a double-wide electric chair.

  Now the road twists, ribbonlike, into an incline. A final patch of foothills before the interstate. Then she’s home free. She checks her rearview mirror for pursuing headlights. Nothing. Another bolt of lightning confirms it. She’s alone.

  A straightaway now and she floors it. More cold air flecks the tears from her eyes. She can’t help it—she’s crying, laughing, screaming, all at once, because every breath is new: Mom and Dad and Lena, she thinks with aching joy. I’ll se
e you again. When I get back to Washington, I promise, I’ll see all of you again, and we’ll be a family.

  * * *

  I’m sorry. I should stop.

  I’m being wishful. The truth is, I have no idea what was in her mind at this point.

  I should stick to the facts while I write this.

  But I like to imagine my sister thinking warmly about us as she drives for safety. How she’ll make amends with Mom and Dad. Maybe she’ll get an apartment, stop living hand to mouth, take night classes in graphic design. Maybe—I hope—Cambry even thinks about me as she drives: I miss you, too, Ratface. I’m sorry we never speak. I’m sorry we’re strangers.

  I wish I had spent my time with you differently.

  It’s also possible that I never entered her thoughts at all on that cold night in June. I can’t prove it. Based on Corporal Raycevic’s account, I know only that my sister eluded the Plastic Man’s attack and kept driving north, toward the interstate. Which means . . .

  * * *

  Ahead of Cambry, the road twists sharply.

  Revealing a bridge.

  It comes up fast. It emerges from the blackness, gaunt and skeletal and hideous. Erector-set beams stand in spidery fractals, bolted solidly into rock. A rust-eaten sign catches Cambry’s high beams, and she glimpses black spray paint as the Corolla whips past:

  ALL OF YOUR ROADS LEAD HERE.

  Chapter 20

  Lena

  “What really happened to my sister?”

  Theo Raycevic sat perfectly still with the Winchester barrel-down in his lap. He kept his head down, his breaths glacial, and just listened. He knew, based on the volume and bearing of Lena’s voice, that her question was directed at Ray-Ray.

  Listening is everything.

  Eyes? Overrated. Most boas have near-useless daytime vision, relying instead on an almost supernatural awareness of smell and vibration. Theo understood this. His best moments are in the dark, when he’s draped in painter’s tarp and standing like a hanging coat inside a motel closet. Ignore your vision and your other senses take over. The tiny room becomes an intoxicating tactile buildup. The woman’s gentle breaths. The jingle of her purse. Her padding footsteps from the bed to the bathroom sink, blithely unaware that she’s sharing oxygen with her killer.