If I Live

by Terri Blackstock

  There’s no guarantee that Dylan is where that phone is, but it’s a place to start.

  I clean up any evidence that I was in Dex’s in-laws’ cabin, then quickly disguise myself, lock the door, and return the key to where we found it. Then I get in the rental car that Dylan left me and head toward Shreveport.

  I pray all the way there, every few minutes repeating the prayer as if the only way to get through to God is to catch him when he happens to be looking my way. I know it doesn’t work that way. I know that he’s attentive to me every time I pray, and that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, interceding for me, like I heard in church. Surely God is attentive to Jesus.

  My prayers grow more frantic as I get closer to Shreveport, navigating my way to that blue dot on the map.

  36

  DYLAN

  As I wait for Keegan to kill me, I search the room for anything that can be used as a weapon. The closet doesn’t have a shelf I could dislodge, and Keegan already removed the rod for hanging clothes.

  I take a quick inventory. There’s a light switch by the door, but with my hands bound it would be tough to do more than short out the switch. I might be able to break the switch plate and fashion it into a sharp enough object to help me fight my way out.

  There’s crown molding, baseboards, Sheetrock. With no tools, I can’t do anything with those.

  I go to the light switch and bend over, stretching my arms up, almost out of their sockets. I use my thumbnail to turn the screws, loosening the plastic plate. Yes, this could work. I could break a corner off, then another corner, and use it as a makeshift weapon. I’d only get one shot at it, since they’d probably notice it’s missing the next time they come into the room.

  I study the door. There are hinges on this side of it, and I wonder how long the screws are. The door sounded solid when they closed it. If it’s solid wood, then the screws might be longer, and if I place them between my knuckles, they could work as a weapon. I step quietly toward it and study them, inserting my fingernail and trying to turn each of them. There’s no way I can get them out without a screwdriver.

  But if I break the switch plate into something I can use as a screwdriver, I can dislodge the screws from the hinges. If I ever hear them leave, I’ll be able to dislodge the door and escape. But if they don’t leave . . . if they come for me . . .

  I look around once more. The only other thing in here is the carpet. Yes! The carpet.

  I go to the doorless, shelfless, rodless closet and sit down with my back to the wall. I slide my fingers behind me to the edge of the carpet and pull it up from the floor. It comes up pretty easily. I pull it back until I feel what I’m looking for.

  The wooden tack strip with small nails sticking up to hold the carpet in place. I grab the wood that’s nailed to the subfloor, and I manage to get one end loose. I pull the other end and get it free too.

  I tuck the carpet back down, hiding what I’ve done, and swing the three-foot strip. Yes, it could do a lot of damage if I use it right. And maybe the nails will help me cut the plastic ties on my hands. I try, but I can’t apply enough pressure to cut through.

  I pull up my pant leg where I still have dressing on my burns. There’s no way to hide it against my leg because the tacks will get caught on my jeans. I stick it back under the carpet, leaving the rug loose so I can grab it when I need it.

  When they come to kill me, I can at least fight.

  Casey will demand proof of life, and that’s why they’re keeping me alive. They’re using me to lure her here.

  I hope Casey is keeping her head down. When Barbero told her that Keegan had me, she probably went ballistic. I hope she’s thinking clearly and not just doing what they say.

  But she will. She’s brave and selfless, and she will put my life above her own.

  I know her.

  The thought brings a stinging mist to my eyes. I don’t know when anyone ever in my life has put me first like that. My mom and dad sure didn’t. My sister and I were pretty much just trying to survive—every kid for himself.

  She loves me. I close my eyes and replay those words we exchanged last night, when I told her I was in love with her and, teary-eyed and almost unable to speak, she said, “Me too.”

  I don’t need more than that. I know the power and meaning of those two words. Today, they put her in deep danger and may cost her her life.

  I wish she didn’t love me. Please, God. Stop her from coming!

  If I can just stay alive until KTAL reports what I’ve given them. When it comes out on the news, Keegan and Phillips will be so rattled that they might take off and leave me here alone. If they do, I’ll find some way to escape.

  It’s not much, but it’s the only hope I have.

  I have to survive for her.

  37

  CASEY

  As I drive to Shreveport, approaching the blue dot on the map that represents Keegan’s phone, I call KTAL, the station Dylan was planning to take the thumb drive to. After the robotic menu offers my options, I choose to be routed to the voice mail of Macy Weatherow.

  “This is Casey Cox,” I say. “Someone delivered a thumb drive to you today with evidence showing that I didn’t kill my friend Brent Pace. Two police detectives—Gordon Keegan and Sy Rollins—did it and set me up so I would get the blame. If you haven’t already, please look at those files. These men also killed my father and they and their partners have extorted money from multiple businesses in the area. They killed a dry cleaner last week, and a few days ago, Keegan murdered Sy Rollins, his partner.”

  I sound like a raving lunatic. She’s going to think I’m delusional. It’s such a complex web of lies and murder, and no one wants to believe a cop could do these things. They’d rather suspect me.

  What will she do? Will she call the police first or investigate it herself?

  “Look, I know how this sounds,” I say as I drive. “But Dylan Roberts, who’s a PI working on the case, took all this to District Attorney Phillips this afternoon, and now he’s vanished.”

  My voice breaks. “I needed for someone to have the truth. I can do an interview if you’re interested. I probably won’t have the same number, but I’ll try to call back later.”

  I burst into tears as I drive through the night, realizing the blue dot is taking me farther from civilization, where I won’t be able to get help. “I’m sorry . . . to bring you into this, but you seem to be an objective reporter, and this is the biggest story you’ve ever done. Think about it. Even if I’m lying, every national news show is going to want to have you on to talk about this phone call. All I ask is that, before you decide I’m hysterical and insane, just look at the stuff on the flash drive. Just listen to the interviews, read the evidence, study the pictures. Then realize that the people we’re talking about are deadly. Be very careful.”

  My throat constricts, and I try to find my voice again. “Maybe . . . get a bodyguard.” I hope she’ll tell others— reporters, editors, her station manager. They can kill us one at a time, but they can’t kill us all.

  38

  DYLAN

  I hear a car pulling up outside. I pray it’s not Casey, that they haven’t checked my phone, found the only number in my contacts list, and lured her here.

  I hear the front door opening, and I get down on the floor with my ear to the slit beneath the door, hoping to hear better. I hear men’s muffled voices, then a string of angry curses. They grow louder, and I hear their footsteps coming closer to the door. I get up, move across the room to the closet, and sit down with my back to the wall, my bound hands finding the carpet tack strip, my only weapon. I get back up as the key scratches in the lock, and I stand stiff, my feet apart and my teeth set, ready to fight if I have to. The door opens.

  Jim Pace steps into the room.

  My mouth falls open and I suck in a breath. Jim Pace, the father of Brent, my best childhood friend. Jim Pace, who hired me to find Casey and bring her to justice for his son’s death.

 
“Jim!” I just gape at him, too stunned to move.

  He looks fifteen years older as he stands there, shaking his head at me. “Dylan, what are you doing, man?”

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Are you working with these guys? Is this your house?”

  “You’re going rogue,” he says. “Elise and I trusted you.”

  I tighten my hold on the carpet strip behind my back. “And I trusted you! Casey Cox didn’t kill Brent, and I think you must know that. I don’t understand how—”

  “What?” he cuts in. “Of course she did.” He glances back toward the door and comes farther into the room. “What are you saying?”

  I’m confused now. Is he with them or not? “Your son was helping her get evidence about who killed her father, Andy Cox. They shut him up when he got too close to the truth. Keegan stabbed your son to death. Are you okay with that?”

  His face changes, and his hand is shaking as he rakes it through his hair. “Dylan, son, I think you’re having PTSD issues—paranoia, delusions—and they’re causing us a lot of problems.” He pauses and stares at the floor, as if playing my words back through his mind.

  My mouth is twisting now. “Jim, tell me you weren’t complicit in the murder of your own son.”

  “Of course I wasn’t!” he shouts. “Brent’s death wasn’t about Andy Cox. That’s . . . it isn’t even possible. Why would Brent care about it?”

  “Because he cared about Casey.”

  He’s sweating now, and he’s breathing heavily. I can tell that he’s hearing this, considering it, for the first time. “It isn’t true,” he says in a voice suddenly raspy.

  “Jim, it is. Why wouldn’t I want to find Brent’s real killers? It was Keegan and Rollins. Phillips is in it with them too, and I don’t know who else, and now Keegan has murdered Rollins, and somehow, you’re connected to these people?”

  He reaches out to the wall and steadies himself. His eyes mist over. He looks at me with lethal sorrow and whispers, “They blackmailed me . . . I didn’t know.”

  “You can stop this now, Jim,” I say in a low voice. “If you don’t, you’re complicit in all these murders. And now you’ll be complicit in mine.”

  “Nobody’s killing anybody,” he says on a wheezy breath. He holds his palm out to me, as if telling me to stay put. “Just . . . wait here. I need to . . . clear some things up. I’ll be back. Just hold on.”

  He seems lost in thought as I watch him walk out. He locks the door, and I lie down and listen at the bottom of it again, in disbelief that this man I admired and trusted so much, this employer of mine . . . Brent’s dad . . . is connected to this extortion and murder ring. What could they be blackmailing him for? What could be so important that he’d let them drag him into this?

  I hear his voice rising outside the door. Cursing, crashing, Keegan’s voice bellowing across the house. It’s clear from the words I can make out that Jim really didn’t know that Keegan had anything to do with Brent’s death. I wonder how many others Keegan has blackmailed. It explains how he got so rich. Extortion alone didn’t explain it. Elise doesn’t know. She can’t. She’s a strong Christian woman, and she wouldn’t stand for this.

  “Did you kill my son?” Jim cries out, his voice echoing throughout the house. “Did you kill my son?” he screams. “Did you stab him to death? Did you watch him bleed until there was nothing left? Did you make me bury him?” His voice breaks off, and I hear more crashing.

  I hear things breaking, grunts, muffled yells. Something shatters on the tile floor. “Did you kill Sy too?”

  “Jim, you let him get into your head. None of this is true!” DA Phillips is shouting.

  Keegan’s voice fires back. “You don’t have any say here, Jim! He’s lying to influence you just when we’re luring the girl here. Get a grip!”

  Another crash. Then suddenly I hear all three voices rising at once. It sounds like they’re coming toward my door. I hear the key in the lock, more grunts, someone swearing.

  Then there’s a gunshot, and I’m showered with splinters of wood through the door.

  39

  DYLAN

  The gunshot leaves a hole in the door where my head would have been if I’d been standing there, and I smell gunpowder. I drop the tack strip and get to my feet and study the hole, keeping well to the side. Blood has spattered the door.

  It wasn’t me they were shooting at.

  I hear Keegan’s voice, quieter now. “We’ve got to get him out of here. Help me. Now!”

  They’re moving away from me, and I can’t hear them well. But I’ve heard enough.

  Jim Pace is dead.

  Nausea rises to my throat, and I hold it back. I’m sweating and shaking, and things fade to black, my mind disappearing into smoke, my lungs closing down, my skin burning and the feel of blood slime on my knees, soaking into the fabric of my uniform . . . I’m there, on the street in Kandahar, coughing and looking for cover, and I see my buddies on the ground. I call out to them, but I can’t hear. I’ve gone deaf. Then I see Dex get to his elbow and try to sit up. I see his mouth moving. He’s telling me something, but I can’t hear him, and as I move toward him, yelling, “Let’s go!” I see that he can’t go anywhere. Both legs are burned to the bone, and his arm is blown to pieces.

  That same blackness clouds my head again, closing over me, and then I hear gunfire, the smell of smoke and gunpowder mingling with something like ammonia, and I can’t see to get out of the way. I grope for Dex, and I feel his hand closing over my arm. I have to stop his bleeding, but first I have to get him out of here. I take off my belt and tie off the area just below his knee and just above the bloody mess of his lower leg. Then I throw his good arm around my shoulders, get to my feet, and run behind our overturned Humvee, covering us from more fire.

  I find his belt, still buckled at his waist where his shirt is still tucked in, and I slip it off him and tie off the other mangled leg. Gunfire keeps up its staccato song above our heads, and I know I have to take him farther. “Stay with me, man,” I say, but I doubt he can hear me. I can’t hear my own voice.

  I throw him over my shoulders, knowing that when I grab his thighs it must be agony, but moving is his only hope.

  I look back at the others. None of them are moving. They’re all dead, scorched and bloody, bodies jolting as machine gun fire rat-a-tats through them.

  I run blindly, my lungs burning, ears ringing, bullets exploding into objects around me. I run and pray, run and pray, and as I run, I know I probably won’t be able to save either of us.

  I heave, the choking feeling jolting me out of the black memory, and I’m back in the room where Keegan has locked me, where my best friend’s dad is dead on the other side of the door, where I can’t help Casey or even myself.

  40

  CASEY

  The blue dot leads me down a dark road past a lake. I’ve never been here before, but it jogs a memory. Someone I knew had a lake house out here. Who was it?

  The seed of a memory seems buried too deep to sprout. I zoom in closer on my phone’s screen, and I see a road up ahead that I’m supposed to turn down.

  I’m very close now. As I move closer to the dot, I cut off my headlights so they can’t see me coming.

  I move more slowly now, hoping the sound of my tires in the gravel won’t alert anyone. I won’t go all the way. I’ll walk part of the way.

  I wish I had a gun. All this time, all this hiding, and I’ve never had one. The last thing I wanted to be caught with was a weapon so they could prove I was armed and dangerous. But now I need to be both.

  I pull around a curve and see lights up ahead. There’s a house, tucked into a wooded area. I pull the car into the trees and turn off my dome light so it won’t come on when I open the door.

  I need a crowbar, a knife, an umbrella, anything I can fight with, but there’s nothing. There could be a tire iron in the trunk of the rental car, but if I dig around for the jack to find it, I might make noise and call attention to myself.r />
  I should have stopped and gotten supplies. Some criminal I am.

  I leave the keys in the car and walk along the muddy shoulder of the gravel drive toward the house.

  The porch light comes on, and I slip behind a tree. Voices. A door closes, and I peer around the trunk and see two shadows emerging into the light. Moving closer, I hear Keegan’s voice. I don’t know who the other man is, but it’s not Dylan.

  I try to quiet my breathing. I look again as they move toward the trees. The two men move slowly, clumsily, and as they pass a lantern on a pole in the yard near a firepit, I realize they’re carrying someone.

  41

  CASEY

  Rage like lava erupts inside me, and I ignore the risk and follow the men into the woods, desperate to know whether the man they’re carrying is Dylan.

  The sound of the night forest muffles my steps, as if God has made it crescendo just for me. Moonlight shines through the trees, and as the men pass through the beams of light, I lower behind a bush and see the faces of Keegan and another man I don’t know. I can’t make out the face of the dead man.

  I’m close to hurling myself at them with all the rage of a lunatic when they drop him onto the ground.

  My heart bangs against my chest and tears sting my eyes and knot my throat. It must be Dylan.

  I fall to my knees as Keegan grabs a shovel leaning against a tree and starts digging. I cover my mouth with both hands to muffle my horror.

  “Go back to the house and get another shovel,” Keegan orders. “He keeps it in the shed behind the house.”

  “Do we have to do this?” the other man asks. “I’m not dressed for digging.”

  “You’ve already got Jim’s blood on your pant leg.” I catch my breath as Keegan lets out his good-ole-boy cackle.