by TAYLOR ADAMS
So will you, she thought.
The kid killer forced a tortured rictus grin, all teeth. “Are you satisfied, Lena?”
Three hundred feet away, the rolling semitrailer continued its grating scrape, the railing groaning, the trailer leaning, the whole rig finally tilting, submitting to gravity—only to unexpectedly halt. Ten precarious tons, hanging off Hairpin Bridge by a tangle of railing.
It felt unresolved.
A painful incompleteness, a hole in her. Something was absent. Something had always been missing here, all day, and she couldn’t explain it. Across the valley, she watched the distant wildfire leap from tree to tree, surging sheets of orange. The campfire taste of ash in the air.
If they killed Cambry, why did they fake her suicide? Why not just burn her and erase her tracks, like they did everyone else?
“You can kill us both, Lena, but you can’t change the past. Your sister still chose to jump off this bridge,” Raycevic said. “Right over there. That railing.”
He lowered his voice. “I was there. The minute she jumped.”
Chapter 22
Cambry’s Story
She stomps the brakes, her heart plunging hard.
No, no, no—
Ahead, Raycevic’s familiar police cruiser is parked on the bridge’s far end. Sideways. Waiting for her. She can see the apelike man sitting on the Charger’s hood with that same black semiautomatic rifle in his lap. He glances up at her, squinting in the glare of her high beams.
She sees his trap, too: Clawed black shadows lie neatly in front of his patrol car, arranged railing to railing. Like lurking crocodiles half submerged in river water. They’re spike strips, designed to shred tires into black gristle. Police issue.
No, she wants to scream. It’s not fair.
I got away—
Raycevic waves at her. A weary smile, workmanlike.
She punches the steering wheel. The horn bleats. She screams at nothing, at everything, at him, at herself—because she knows her fate was sealed the very instant she escaped the Plastic Man and chose to drive north. She’d had two options—north or south—and she chose wrong. Like the owl shepherds the souls of those soon to depart, like the Grim Reaper surely finds his prey in that cave, she’s already made an inescapable appointment on this bridge.
There’s no undoing it. No resisting it.
The digital clock reads 9:00 p.m.
She catches her breath and considers—could she drive over Raycevic’s spike strips and keep running? Not for long. Not on four mangled, flapping tires. He’d catch her easily.
He shakes his head. Like he’s read her mind.
Tears cloud her eyes. “No. Please.”
Then he lifts the rifle to his shoulder, the deadly muzzle finding her through the windshield. Her mind races with panic: Turn the car around, Cambry. Go back, toward—
Headlights in her rearview mirror, too. Those familiar lantern lights of the Plastic Man’s eighteen-wheeler, returning like a nightmare. Even after he’s lost an eye. How is that possible?
She’s trapped here. On Hairpin Bridge.
At her front Raycevic approaches, stepping over his spike strips and aiming that rifle at her. He snaps the barrel left, a stern gesture: Get out.
She shakes her head. Warm tears on her cheeks.
He waves the barrel again, harder. His finger on the trigger.
Get out. Now.
“Please, Ray.” She hates using his name. “Please. Just let me go.”
In the harsh glare she finally sees his eyes. For the first time since nightfall, he isn’t a towering Hulk-like monster, biceps and buzz cut drawn in silhouette. He looks human, flesh and blood and fallible and right now, so damn tired. He doesn’t want to be here. He hates his life.
His voice is tired, too. “Cambry, I will shoot you if you don’t exit the vehicle.”
She does. She has no choice. The Corolla’s door creaks open. She finds the bridge’s concrete with shaky feet. Her chest heaving with hitched gasps.
He points. “Stand there.”
He’s aiming at the bridge’s guardrail, ten feet away. Prickled with flakes of rust that glow like embers in the headlights. She approaches it with slushy knees, certain she’ll die here. It’s a wretched and powerless sensation, sleepwalking where you’re ordered to. Leaving the car is a mistake, she knows. She should have stomped the gas, driven right at Raycevic, and taken a hail of armor-piercing rounds to the chest and face. Again, she considers: I need to run for it. Down the bridge.
I’ll die running, at least.
But Cambry Nguyen has always been a runner. She’s been running her entire life—from therapy, from going to the dentist, from saying I love you to her family. In a strange, sad way, she’s sick of it. There’s peace in being caught.
She can almost smile. This bridge has been waiting her entire life.
“By the railing,” Raycevic instructs gently. “Please.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain in a sec.”
He’s oddly polite. It terrifies her.
She looks back toward the Plastic Man’s eighteen-wheeler, which blocks the bridge’s entrance. The fat bastard himself stands silhouetted on the truck’s footrail, watching them with a hand clasped to his face. In his other hand, an old-fashioned rifle.
Raycevic is closer now. “Your name,” he says, “is Cambry Lynne Nguyen. You’re twenty-four. A bit of a wildcat. I saw a trespass. Malicious mischief. Vandalism. Shoplifting. One DUI, knocked down. You grew up in Washington—”
My driver’s license, she realizes. Back when he pulled me over.
He ran me in his computer.
“Your parents are John and Maisie Nguyen, and they live at 2013 West Cedar Avenue in Olympia. The Eastside neighborhood, looks like. Ages fifty-four and fifty-nine—”
“Please,” she whispers. “Please stop.”
“And let’s not forget your sister. Lena Marie Nguyen. Same age and birthday as you, so she must be a twin. Are you close? Her photo looks exactly like yours. She lives in an apartment called the Biltmore, on Wabash Avenue in the White Center neighborhood of Seattle. Unit 211.”
She can’t speak.
He draws closer. She smells his sour sweat.
“It’s a shitty deal, Cambry, and you have my sympathy, but let me tell you.” His voice lowers, like he’s letting her in on a grim secret. “It’s the only deal you’re getting tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Help me out.” His smile looks like a grimace. “See, everything depends on you now. Your family depends on you. You can save their lives. John, Maisie, and your sister, Lena, will never, ever meet me or my dad. If you just do this one thing.”
He points. “This one little thing, Cambry.”
With inching dread, she realizes he’s pointing past her. Over her shoulder. Over the bridge’s blistered guardrail, into the vast and pristine blackness beyond.
“Jump.”
Part 3
The Last Word
Chapter 23
Cambry can’t remember climbing the bridge’s guardrail. In a watery blink, she’s just there, as if teleported, lifting her numb ankles over the railing one at a time. Her breaths hitched and sore. Her arched shoes on the two-inch concrete ledge now, perched by her toes.
“Don’t look down,” Raycevic whispers. “Just let go.”
With her knuckles on the chilled metal, she glances down anyway—a vast and formless night yawns below—and the sheer, frightening depth of it rips the air from her lungs. She can’t jump. She won’t. He’ll just have to shoot her in the head. She collapses against the guardrail, feeling her cheeks burn red under running tears.
“Do it, please.” The cop’s voice softens. “For your family.”
The Plastic Man’s voice echoes, a distant holler muffled by adrenaline. It takes her a few moments to understand what he said.
“Just shoot the bitch.”
“No,” Raycevic shouts back. “
I’m giving her a chance first.”
Giving her a chance. The ghoulish backwardness of it. She clenches tightly to the guardrail’s outside edge, digging her feet into it. She swears to God, to the voided sky, to anyone who’s listening that she’ll never, ever let go of this bridge. They’ll have to snap her rigor mortis fingers off it. Even after Raycevic puts a bullet through her skull and slaughters her family one by one.
“Ray-Ray. Just shoot her.”
Shaking the hair from her eyes, she looks back at Raycevic. “Please.” Her voice is a dry croak. “Please, just let me leave.”
He shakes his head.
“I won’t say a thing about your fires.”
“You won’t. Because here’s what’s going to happen, Cambry. I’m going to count down from ten. When I reach zero, I will shoot you in the head. And then, this weekend, I’ll take some PTO and drive out to Washington.” He flashes that toothy smile again. “You can save them, Cambry. You can ensure they never, ever meet me. But you’re running out of time.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Ten.”
“Please—”
“Nine.”
“No.” Her voice breaks. “Let’s talk. Maybe we can—”
“We have nothing to talk about. Eight.”
Another bolt of silent lightning, and the Plastic Man’s voice again: “She’s not going to jump. I need to get to a hospital. Just shoot her, Ray-Ray. Or I will.”
“Seven.” His dark gaze never leaves her. “Make a choice, Cambry.”
“That’s not how it happened, Lena.”
“You didn’t have to throw her off the bridge,” she whispered with building horror. “You terrorized her into jumping off herself. You have a police computer. You threatened her family. Me, my parents—we were your hostages—”
“No, I tried to save her.” He softened now. “You’re in denial.”
“Keep lying, Ray.”
“You’ll write an exciting book about her, I think. It’s got a chase. A desperate heroine. An evil cop on her tail. A surprise second villain. It’s got all the thrills and spills.”
She almost pulled the trigger. Let those be his last vile words—
“But . . .” He licked his lips. “There are some plot holes.”
Plot holes? The phrase enraged her.
“Let’s start with Bob the Dinosaur. Remember him?” He nodded back at his cruiser. “How did Cambry’s cartoon character get scratched into the vinyl of my vehicle? You say I forced her at gunpoint to jump off the bridge. Answer me this: In your version of June sixth, was she ever inside my vehicle? And would she take the time to doodle, anyway, during a life-and-death chase?”
She tried to think. For a moment she was lost, rudderless, before she made the incongruity fit: “She carved it as a clue, maybe. For me to find—”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s vanity, Lena. It doesn’t revolve around you.” He came closer, licking his lips. “Tell me. In your version, why is Cambry running out of gas, anyway?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Her tank was empty. When you said you found her body—”
“That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking: Was your sister in the habit of driving around aimlessly, alone, on less than a quarter tank, up and down Montana back roads?”
“Maybe. If she was low on money—”
“How convenient.”
“She stole. She siphoned gas when she had to—”
“No. When you need to siphon gas, you go to town, Lena. Take it from a cop, okay? You go to Super One or a bowling alley or an apartment complex. You don’t siphon gas in the middle of nowhere. Out here you can go hours without seeing another person—”
“That’s being desperate.”
“No, that’s being a dumbass. Your sister wasn’t a dumbass.”
“You knew her?”
“Better than you.”
Again, she almost shot him. Right in the throat.
“I couldn’t have coerced her into jumping, anyway.” His grin widened. “The database doesn’t work like that. There’s no Wi-Fi out here. I would’ve had to radio it through Dispatch, which would’ve been suspicious. And all I could have gotten is Cambry’s address, which would have been hopelessly out-of-date. Maybe if your parents were on a no-fly list, I guess?”
“You bluffed, then—”
“And that’s not even the biggest plot hole, Lena.”
Ash flakes fluttered between them. Stinging her eyes.
She knew what was coming.
She waited for it.
“Answer me this: Why didn’t I just burn Cambry’s body like all our others? I have it down to a science at this point. That’s the simplest, safest solution. Living off the grid like a nomad, she should have been just another of my dad’s strays, easy to disappear. What made her so special?”
“You tell me.”
“Why would I force her to jump, even? Instead of just shooting her on the spot?”
“Because you’re an asshole.”
He counted on his fingers: “Staging a death. Burning her notebooks. Scrubbing her vehicle for evidence. Faking a suicide text. Claiming I pulled her over. You really believe I did all of that for fun?”
She took a step back. “Maybe.”
“You didn’t know your sister.” He smirked with adolescent cruelty. “You have no idea who she was. Meeting me here on this bridge today wasn’t really about revenge. Revenge is just an excuse. This is about learning something, anything, to fill the aching hole in you, because the truth is: you had almost twenty-four years to know her while she was alive, and you wasted every minute you had.”
He spat at her feet. A stringy, hateful glob. “You were a shitty sister,” he said. “Face it.”
Another breath of wind carried ash between them. For a moment, his words rang in the silence and she said nothing in answer.
Fine, she thought. We’re doing this.
He was right, too. Everything he’d said was true, and she felt effortlessly and efficiently dismantled. He’d cut her to pieces and laid them out and now understood every private inch of her. Every word hurt her down to her bones. There was no outrunning or outsmarting it.
But she remembered twelve-year-old Cambry slicing that injured doe’s throat. Doing what needed to be done. Lena knew she shared that DNA, that the same blood ran through her veins here and now. The same furies and flaws and fight.
You can hurt me, Raycevic. And he had. He knew exactly where to cut. But now so did she.
I’ll hurt you worse.
With a still voice, she whispered, “I think I know your secret, Ray.”
“For the last time, we didn’t kill her—”
“Not Cambry. You.” She watched him over the Beretta’s sights. “Who you really are.”
“Oh?”
“You’re not a cop.”
“What?”
“You’re not a cop,” she repeated.
“You’re not making sense—”
“You’re not a real cop, Ray. You’re a fraud.”
He blinked.
“Because you’re not Ray,” she whispered. “You’re Rick.”
Stunned silence.
“You’re Rick, aren’t you?”
Under the roar of distant fire, a tree fell with a splintering crash.
She studied his eyes. “You stole your brother’s identity after he shot himself, didn’t you? He—the real Raymond Raycevic—was the one accepted into the Missoula academy at eighteen. Not you. You were the screw-up twin who couldn’t make selection. You flunked. Disqualified. And then, when you both found out your daddy was a serial rapist and killer, your brother Ray shotgunned his head off. He was a good man who couldn’t cope. But you could.”
He said nothing.
She mimicked Theo’s accent: “And you wonder why you’re the one that flunked the academy?”
His face reddened with b
lood. Taking it all in. Staring back at her hard. His fingers kneaded the air, like he was rehearsing how he’d break the small bones in her neck.
Lena got it now. The subtle venom in his father calling him Ray-Ray.
And she loved it.
“So, did Ray really shoot himself? Or did you talk him into it, like you talked my sister into jumping? I mean—he was Daddy’s favorite, and he looked just like you, and he had a bus ticket to Missoula to be trained for your dream job. Must have hurt, huh?”
He glanced at the Shoebox as it listened. Logging every damning word.
“You’re not a real cop, Rick.” She couldn’t hold it back, snarling now, her words cutting her throat like glass. “You snuck in on your brother’s name. You have the training, the badge, the uniform. But you’re unworthy of it, Rick, and you’re an insult to all the thousands of people who get up in the morning every day and do the hardest job on earth. All of your heroes—you’ll revolt them when they learn the truth about you. You’re not the good guy. You’re a kid killer and a fraud, and your father is using you. How’s that for a personal attack, asshole—”
He attacked.
The man who took the life of Raymond Raycevic charged Lena midsentence like a linebacker, coming in with startling speed. His big hands up and out for her pistol, to wrench it skyward so he could snap her neck or stomp her windpipe or force the weapon under her chin and pull the trigger. However he planned to do it, it didn’t matter, because she’d spent three hours studying him today. She’d noted all of his mannerisms, his tics and tells. She was ready.
Before he could reach her, Lena shot Corporal Raycevic squarely in the chest.
Three times.
* * *
Three distant gunshots jolted Theo Raycevic’s world. Like whipcracks.
His good eye snapped open, finding focus. At first all he saw was red, a withered terrain of browned redness soaking into sunken channels, until he recognized Marilyn Monroe’s tits and realized he was facedown in a blood-drenched Playboy. Not sweet tea this time. His blood. Quarts of it.
She shot me.
He couldn’t believe it.
In the face.
He shouldn’t be alive. It was impossible.
