“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “I’ve been sent to deliver a message.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her voice was raspy.
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have.”
Julia thought about that. It wasn’t true: she had not given him the chance. She’d hopped into the car and taken off too fast. Since then, the car had been in motion. Killing her while she drove risked an accident—attention and injury to himself. But why hadn’t he waited to reveal himself until she stopped again? Killing her at a stop sign or light would most likely prevent an injury accident, but not necessarily an accident altogether. In death her foot might jam down on the gas pedal in what coroners called a cadaveric spasm. He couldn’t wait until she reached her destination and turned off the car. What if she was meeting the police? The last reason she could think of for his not waiting to kill her until she stopped on her own was that the farther she drove, the more distance she put between him and his own transportation. Then he’d have to either drive her car back, with or without her body, or find another way back. Did killers consider such things? She guessed they did.
“So?” he said. “Pull over.”
Instead, she punched the accelerator. The car roared ahead, past other vehicles, through stoplights.
The hand clenched tighter.
twenty-nine
Allen had slipped into Stephen’s oversized clothes by the time they pulled into the space between the church and his cabin.
“This is it?” Allen asked incredulously.
“Home sweet home,” Stephen confirmed and climbed out.
The cabin was behind the rear wall of the church. The parking lot lay on the north side of the church, in front of the cabin, giving the appearance that a visitor could go either to the church or to Stephen’s cabin, as though the cabin were historically significant. Dense pine forest surrounded the property. The dirt road leading to it ended at the clearing, where the gravel parking lot started. The lot had been rutted dirt until last year, when the tiny church finally had enough funds in the coffers to grade the area and pour the gravel.
Stephen led the way. At the porch steps, he avoided the middle one, pointing at it for Allen’s benefit. When they were both inside, he said, “Want anything?”
“A shower.”
“Bathroom’s over there. Want something to drink, eat?”
“Water’s fine.” He hitched his head toward the bathroom. “Mind?”
“Mi casa, su casa.” Stephen was weary, but his broad smile conveyed the sense of hospitality he genuinely felt.
“Muchas gracias.” Allen sauntered into the bathroom, looking like a child in his father’s clothes. “Towel?”
“Cupboard on the right.”
Allen closed the door slowly, looking beat in every sense of the word.
Stephen went into the kitchen area. He filled two plastic cups with ice and water and placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Water’s here when you want it!” he yelled at the bathroom door before plopping onto the couch. He looked at the wall clock. After one. He always rose by five—an internal clock sort of thing—so he wasn’t going to be worth much tomorrow.
He stared at the bathroom door. Allen was in deep trouble this time, no doubt about it. He wondered if he could or even should help him out with whatever it was. Sometimes the best thing you could do was let people sort out their own problems. He supposed it depended on how nasty the trouble could get.
A square of light from an approaching car splashed through the front window and panned across the wall of books. It was a pattern he knew well: as the car made the last turn in the drive before entering the parking lot, the light would sweep across the books, usually stopping between Matthew Henry’s New Testament Commentary and Clear and Present Danger. Then it would shoot up to the ceiling as the car entered the parking lot, sliding to about center-room before creeping toward the door as the car approached the porch.
This time, however, the light vanished after hitting Dracula. Stephen sat upright on the couch. The car had stopped before entering the parking lot. That, mixed with the hour and the night’s odd events, set off all kinds of alarms in his head. He rose and walked carefully to the window. The car was moving slowly in shadows, headlamps off, closing the thirty-foot gap to the clearing. When its bumper settled over the edge of the parking lot’s gravel, it stopped.
And there it sat, in the gray haze of the night. The occupants would know someone was home. They’d see the Vega parked between the buildings, lights in the cabin. Was this the bogeyman Allen was running from?
“Allen?” he said softly. No answer. He repeated it, louder. He could hear the shower running through the bathroom door. It stopped. “Allen?”
“What?”
“Come here!”
The headlamps flicked on. The car started rolling again. Into the clearing. Moonlight peeled back the shadows like a CEO whipping off the covering of the company’s newest model.
A Corvette—new enough to have headlamps that didn’t retract into the front end.
It rolled slowly into the parking lot, then angled toward the cabin. The brake lights came on, making the trees behind it glow red. It stopped. He could see the ovals of faces inside, swiveling as the occupants surveyed the area. Then the car continued its slow progress toward the cabin.
Stephen pulled his face away from the window and leaned his head against the wall. Could be cops, bad guys, or simply people who’d gotten lost on their way back from the Drestin Dinner Theater. More than a few folks had stopped by for directions over the years.
The Vette stopped out front. He heard car doors open and slam. He moved to the door. Should he open it or ignore the knocks that would start in about five seconds? If the strangers needed help, he’d want to help them. If they meant harm, wouldn’t they find a way in anyway?
He opened the door, flipping on the bright porch light as he did. Two men looked up at him, startled. Stephen grinned at them. One of the men stood at an angle in front of the car. He had short red hair and a zillion freckles. Something in the man’s eyes caused Stephen to pause. He looked at the other man, older than Freckles, maybe forty. He sported a bushy mustache and black, black eyes.
Stephen heard the bathroom door open behind him.
“Did you say—?” Allen started.
Stephen looked over his shoulder at his brother. In the bathroom door, a towel around his waist, Allen was hunching over to gaze past Stephen. His mouth dropped, and his eyes grew wide.
“Stephen! No!” he yelled. “Shut the door! Don’t—”
Stephen turned back to the men. Freckles was swinging a shotgun from around his side. He raised it, leveling it at Allen. One eye closed as he took aim.
The gun roared.
thirty
The car barreled down Brainerd Road, swerving
slightly through pools of halogen streetlights and traffic signals— green, yellow, red.
Julia gasped for breath, one weak hand touching the gauntlet. The attacker’s fist closed, pinching her trachea like a straw. Fat dots of purple and red began to crowd her vision. In a mad effort to get free, she yanked the wheel sharply right, smashing into the door of a parked car. Sparks and headlamp glass pelted the windshield; metal screamed because Julia could not. The assailant in the backseat merely swayed … and loosened his grip. She gulped in huge breaths, her lungs on fire, her throat raw.
They were traveling now at more than sixty miles per hour along one of Chattanooga’s busiest streets, a feat impossible to duplicate in daytime traffic. Now, at a quarter after one, Julia took advantage of the absence of commuters.
“Slow down,” the assailant hissed, punctuating his words with light squeezes. Each one sent a bolt of pain up her neck and into the back of her right eye. Panic stirred within her, ready to free her mind of all restraints. He squeezed again, this time holding the pressure.
“I mean it,” he said. “If you draw attention to us, I’ll break your neck witho
ut a second thought.”
She eased up on the accelerator; he eased up on her neck. The speed dropped to fifty, then forty-five.
“Good girl.”
The car sailed through a red light, eliciting a loud honk from a car Julia didn’t see.
“I understand,” her captor whispered. “We’ve got something like a Mexican standoff here, don’t we?”
The speedometer needle hovered around forty.
“You must be trying to guess my next move,” he said. “Let me help you: right now, I’m considering my choices. I can kill you now and take my chances in a crash. Of course, I’d try to grab the wheel and steer to safety. That might work. Or I can wait until you have to stop—for traffic, an empty fuel tank, whatever. It has to happen sooner or later.”
He let her ponder those options.
“Or you can pull over, I’ll give you the message I was asked to convey, and be on my way.”
Julia continued driving. A bead of perspiration broke off her brow and slid into her eye, stinging it. She tried to blink it out. Coppery blood on her tongue: she had reopened the cut in her lip. She didn’t believe for a moment that he had a “message” to deliver—at least not one that involved leaving her alive. He wanted to instill doubt, to give her a flicker of hope. Hope would keep her from acting drastically and could possibly get her to pull off onto a darkened side street, where murder was much more comfortable.
“You know?” he said, his voice growing deep with menace. It sounded to Julia that he said the next sentence through clenched teeth. “I like the one where I kill you and take my chances.”
Abruptly, he dropped his head lower. A police cruiser was approaching from the opposite direction a half block away.
“Don’t—don’t flash your brights,” he said, every word as firm as the grip he had on her neck. “Don’t make a face or twitch a finger. If you signal them in any way, I’ll keep you alive long enough to choke on their blood.”
She’d never believed anybody more.
The cruiser drew closer. Streetlamps illuminated the faces inside. Two patrolmen. Probably frustrated by orders to carry on as usual, while a cop-killing investigation was unfolding farther away. The officer in the passenger seat said something sharp. The driver agreed with a frown. They could be talking about their wives, for all Julia knew.
They were no more than twenty feet apart when Julia cranked the wheel into the police cruiser’s lane.
The freckle-faced assailant had tried to take a step toward
him while firing the shotgun. As he was closing his eye to aim, his foot came down on the rotted step that Stephen had meant to repair. It splintered under his weight, sucking his foot into its maw. The gun boomed, taking out a head-sized chunk of the cabin’s siding directly above the door, showering Stephen with splinters and dust.
Stephen stormed out the door, raising his elbow in the jaw-splitting fashion he hadn’t postured since his days as a college linebacker. As Freckles was arching forward and down from his crash through the step, Stephen’s elbow caught him squarely in the forehead. The impact sent him reeling back in the other direction. Stephen grabbed the shotgun by its barrel; it slipped easily from Freckle’s unconscious hands.
He spun the gun around, raising it toward the other assailant, who was bringing a pistol around from behind his back.
“Freeze!” Stephen screamed.
The man didn’t even pause. His pistol just kept coming, two seconds from fatal effectiveness. Stephen grasped the man’s intention to go down fighting.
“Ahhhhh …” Stephen bellowed, the sound rising like a furnace under extreme pressure. He hurled the shotgun at the man, who raised an arm to parry the blow. By the time he swatted it away, Stephen was within striking distance. He planted a massive fist into the man’s head, striking the temple. The man crumpled under the impact.
Stephen stood over him, startled by his own abilities. He bent and picked up the pistol and shotgun. Freckles had landed flat on his back on the car’s hood, one leg stretching into the hole in the steps. His sport coat had flopped open, revealing an underarm holster. Stephen took that pistol as well. He saw the outline of a billfold in the coat’s inner pocket and tugged it out. It flopped open, revealing a badge. Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department. He slipped it into his back pocket. He took a few paces toward the woods and threw each weapon into the darkness. He checked the other man for ID and didn’t find any. Then he strode into the cabin, calling for Allen. He found the bathroom door shut and locked. He shouldered it open. Allen’s bare feet were slipping out a small window over the old-fashioned tub.
“Allen!” Stephen leaned over the tub to look out. Allen was scampering away on all fours, gripping clothes in one hand, a pair of shoes in the other. “Allen!”
He stopped and cranked his head around.
“Come around front, man,” Stephen said.
He walked through the house and stood on the porch. Neither assailant showed signs of revival. He stepped off the porch and leaned into the Vette’s open window. He came out with keys and a device that was larger than a cell phone and had a foot-long cylinder jutting from it. Stephen recognized it from Blue Planet, one of his favorite shows: it was a satellite phone, good almost anywhere in the world, not reliant on local networks or relay towers. The phone was tethered to a box that looked like a modem with a keypad. He had no idea what it was—he must have missed that episode. He turned around to see Allen coming out of the breezeway where he’d parked the Vega.
“Oh, wow,” Allen said. “Oh, wow. You did this? Wow!”
It was the first smile he’d seen crease his brother’s face that night. He pointed at Freckles. “That one’s a cop.”
“What?”
“Had a deputy sheriff’s badge.”
Silence.
“I don’t think he was here as a cop, though,” Stephen said. “He tried to shoot me without saying a word, and this is no cop car.”
Allen swore.
“Get in the car. I’ll be right there.” Stephen took a step toward the woods and hurled the keys deep into them.
“What was that?”
“The car keys.”
“What? Why?” Allen asked. “We should take their car. It’s a lot nicer than yours. Look at it.”
Stephen thought about it. “Too late now.”
“What are those?” Allen asked, pointing.
“A satellite phone and some other gadget.”
“Well, don’t throw those away. Maybe we can use them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but we need to find some advantages here, right? You never know. What would it hurt?”
“Whoever these guys were communicating with can probably track the signal,” Stephen said.
“Then turn it off. We’ll turn it on to use it now and then when we’re moving, so they can’t pinpoint us.”
Stephen was doubtful.
“Come on, man. We need something.’”
“All right, here.” He handed the equipment to Allen. “Now get in the car.”
He jumped over the porch steps and clomped into the cabin. A minute later, he came out carrying a paper sack. He switched off the cabin’s overhead light and shut the door.
When he climbed into the Vega’s driver’s seat, Allen asked, “Where are their guns?”
“I chucked them.”
Allen threw up his hands in exasperation.
“What would you do with guns?” Stephen asked and cranked the ignition. After some coughing and sputtering, the engine backfired once and settled into a fitful rhythm. He moved the stick shift into first gear and eased the Vega out from between the two buildings.
Allen threw his hand in front of Stephen’s face, pointing. “Look!” he said.
The mustachioed cop was leaning into the car, pulling at something behind the seats.
“What’s he doing?” Allen asked.
“Can’t be good.” He popped the clutch and pointed the lurching Vega at the road.
/>
The man ducked out from within the car and stood, a weapon in his hands. It looked like the kind of thing Arnold Schwarzenegger favored, like it could blast holes in mountains. The man scowled at Stephen and Allen.
“Go! Go! Go!” Allen screamed.
The car fishtailed, moved closer to the drive.
“He’s cocking it or whatever—!”
They came off the gravel, onto the dirt road, sliding between the first trees.
Metallic thunder filled the air. Trees exploded around them. Gas pedal jammed, Stephen glanced at Allen and saw only impossibly huge eyes.
Clouds covered the moon, drawing darkness over the road. For a moment Stephen had the wild idea that it was symbolic, God’s way of portending their deaths. The car jolted sideways as a barrage caught the rear panel behind Stephen’s seat. A jagged hole opened up on both sides of the car. Then Stephen swerved around the first bend, knowing they were invisible to the assailant now. All the same, he drove like the devil was on their heels.
After several miles, they crossed an ancient wood bridge over Chickamauga Creek.
“Where’s the road?” Allen asked, as though he thought the assailants had taken it. “The paved road?”
“I’m not going to take any paved roads if I can help it. We’re going deeper into the woods until we can figure out what to do next.”
Allen began putting on Stephen’s extra clothes for the second time that night.
Stephen looked over, shook his head.
“I wasn’t about to tear through the woods naked again,” Allen said.
“No, looked like you were crawling to me.”
Allen said nothing.
“Look, Allen—”
The car went across a particularly deep rut. Their heads banged the roof.
“Look, whatever our differences are, we’re in this together now. Whatever this is. You gotta let me know what’s going on.”
Allen nodded. “Get us someplace safe, and I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much.”
thirty-one
Julia saw an instant of sheer horror on the police officers’ faces before their cars collided. The headlight beams merged, growing intense between the two cars before bursting; hoods crumpled; windshields spiderwebbed, then shattered. The collision was deafening, two mountains crashing together.
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