He grabbed on to the ballast they’d found: a termite-gnawed, river-tossed log, slimy as a wet cigar. Tried to get his bearings, even as the current swept them on.
It was Betty’s blood, Galvan realized, and it was leaking fast. Something had gashed her forearm, elbow to wrist, the incision deep and nasty looking.
“What happened?” Galvan demanded.
In response, Britannica thrust something hard and heavy into his chest.
“This hit her.”
The box. Galvan clutched it to him.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
She looked him in the eye and nodded, her jaw set, even as the blood kept coming. Girl had some spirit to her.
He sized her up, decided she could make it another five minutes without a tourniquet. And that applying a wet strip of filthy cloth while treading water wasn’t going to work anyway.
“If we wanna beat this current, we’ve gotta swim together,” Galvan said. He wedged the box next to the log, wrapped his arm around both, then got his swim team situated.
Two on each side of the log. Four free arms, eight working legs.
Regular fuckin’ outboard motor.
“Stroke!” he called, like one of those megaphone assholes at the back of a crew boat, the anchor or the coxswain or whatever. Word wasn’t exactly leaping to Galvan’s mind.
“Stroke!”
It was working. They lunged a few feet closer to land, the log’s modest prow slicing through the chop with force.
“Keep kicking! Don’t stop kicking! Stroke!”
The current was merciless, the progress slow but steady. After ten minutes’ hard labor, Galvan’s arms and shoulders aching like he’d been holding a steel beam aloft, they felt solid ground beneath their feet. Britannica led the charge up the riverbank and collapsed at the top, gasping for air. Betty staggered after him, arm clutched to her chest, with Veronica spotting from behind. Galvan brought up the rear, moments from passing out himself. He reached level ground and fell to his knees. Told himself he’d rest for ninety seconds, then jury-rig some kind of tourniquet if Betty’s bleeding hadn’t slowed down on its own.
He was twelve seconds into his shut-eye when Britannica’s voice intruded.
“Uh, Galvan?”
He willed himself to keep his eyes closed. He’d earned this, goddamn it.
“What?”
“The ground is moving.”
So much for a nap.
CHAPTER 28
Nice to see you again, Officer,” Nichols growled, looking past the gun barrel and meeting Lautner’s eyes. The dude’s partner, shorter and skinnier but just as young, was on his way over, a set of cuffs in one hand and a service revolver in the other.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Hands behind your head.”
“That pepper spray still stingin’ a little, buddy?” the sheriff called as Lautner’s partner relieved him of his gun.
“Your partner might want that back,” Nichols suggested. “This little lady here, she grabbed it off him a couple miles back. Bet Lautner didn’t tell you that, did he? Probably told you I took it, am I right?”
Lautner’s knuckles whitened around the borrowed gun he was clutching. “Shut up.”
“Why, because anything I say can be used against me in a court of law? Let’s cut the shit, huh? You ain’t no goddamn cop.”
It wasn’t well thought out enough to call a strategy, but something told Nichols that popping as much junk as possible might rattle these wet-behind-the-ears cocksuckers enough to force an error. There wasn’t much he remembered from the dog-eared copy of The Art of War that had made the rounds of his army battalion, but If your enemy is of choleric temper, irritate him had made its mark. Served Galvan repeatedly and well in the million little pissing contests that comprised both military and small-town life.
This, of course, was a tad different.
Lautner’s gangly fuck of a partner—McGee, the kid’s badge read—was in back of Nichols now, reaching for his wrist.
“Hey, McGee, you know how I can tell you’re not just a dirty cop but a shitty one? Do you? What’s the matter, toothpick, afraid to answer me?”
The first bracelet clicked shut. Nichols put everything he had into a shit-eating grin and lifted his arm, the handcuff dangling from it.
“Because you only brought two sets of cuffs for four people. See what I mean, dumbass?”
In response, McGee grabbed the empty cuff and closed it around Cantwell’s wrist. Nichols didn’t miss a beat, the smack talk cascading from his lips with ease now. He was wringing a perverse enjoyment from this situation, for some reason.
“Now that right there’s a violation, McGee. Texas law does not allow suspects to be handcuffed together. Although I guess that’s the least of your concerns, seeing as you take your orders from a sex-trafficking child-murderer. You feel good about that, chief? You always want to be a candy-assed thug, or were you a real cop once upon a time?”
McGee was grim faced, tuning it all out or doing a great tuning-it-all-out impression. Nichols lifted his chin at Lautner, decided to go at him awhile.
“How ’bout you, tough guy? Is it the money, or do you just like to see innocent people suffer?”
Lautner slipped a pair of aviators from his pocket, disappeared behind them.
Smiled.
“It’s the money.”
He strolled over, a peacock again. Cuffed Sherry to Eric and pushed the boy in the back, hard. “Walk.”
“You too,” McGee said, giving Nichols a copycat shove.
The six of them marched toward the parking lot: Sherry and Eric in front, followed by Lautner, then Nichols and Cantwell, and finally McGee.
It was a three-quarter-mile jaunt. Nichols’s eyes darted left and right, calculating the angles, the possibilities, taking everything in. He had to make a move, and it had to be the right one. These guys were sloppy, but they were also on high alert.
Best to wait until they reached the lot, he decided. The closer the cars, the quicker the escape. Lautner and McGee hadn’t thought to pat them down for keys. A few moments of chaos, and they’d have a decent shot.
Unless the other guys had a decent shot, anyway.
“I don’t think your wife there likes me,” Nichols popped off, twisting at the waist to look at McGee—and take stock of how far behind he was walking, where the gun was, all that good stuff.
“Face forward, and zip it.” A poke in the back, muzzle to vertebrae.
Perfect. A non-idiot would have given his prisoners more space, realized his greatest advantage was the firearm and that it became a question mark, or even a liability, at such close range.
God bless you, Officer McGee. Jesus sanctify the moonshine your mama was guzzling throughout her pregnancy.
Lautner, in front of him, was no smarter. Hadn’t glanced behind him to check Nichols’s proximity in a quarter mile.
Despite having equipped him with a steel garrote.
And a shout-out to your mama, too.
The path dipped, and the sprawling lot came into view below, asphalt shimmering with rising late-afternoon heat. The Audi sat at the far end, gleaming like a ruby.
Nichols gathered Cantwell’s hand into his, gave it a squeeze. She threw him a sharp, questioning look, and Nichols realized he was powerless to convey all he needed to, handless charades not his forte. He settled for a raised set of eyebrows, a minuscule nod in Lautner’s direction, a slight jangle of the chain.
Cantwell understood something was going to happen, even if she didn’t know what.
That put her about even with Nichols.
Sometimes you had to embrace improvisation.
A tenet of Nichols’s military training popped into his mind as the decline steepened, resolving into something like a thirty-five-degree angle.
Use the ter
rain.
He grabbed Cantwell’s hand and pitched forward like he’d tripped—throwing out a “Whoa!” to sell it, keep McGee’s finger off the trigger. Nichols hit the slope hard, going head over heels, gathering momentum, his weight carrying Cantwell through the same spin, turning them into a pair of rampaging bowling balls.
McGee shouted an alert, and Lautner spun, gun raised—just in time to secure the role of tenpin. They plowed into him, Nichols leading with a shoulder, not as out of control as he looked, and taking out the cop’s legs.
It was a beautiful hit. The hill foreshortened Lautner’s fall, slammed him into the dirt cheek-first before he could drop a hand to brace himself. Faster than the cop could recover, Nichols and Cantwell were behind him, the steel chain connecting their handcuffs looped around his neck, no air allowed.
They pulled him to his knees, the taut steel cutting into Lautner’s flesh, and Nichols relieved him of his gun. McGee was twelve feet uphill, legs spread in a marksman’s stance, adrenaline-addled confusion and raw hatred playing in his eyes.
“Drop it!” Nichols ordered, bringing his gun around the top of Lautner’s shoulder. The cop’s meaty frame gave them partial cover, but McGee had plenty of targets. If he was thinking clearly, he could—
Nichols broke the thought off short, remembering the purpose of this entire gambit.
He turned his head a few degrees, just enough to find Sherry and Eric in his periphery, standing frozen to their spots.
“Run!” he yelled. “Go! Now!”
They took off. McGee watched it happen for one second and then half of another, everything silent but the kids’ footfalls and Lautner’s gasps—he was managing to draw a little air into his lungs, the garrote imperfectly applied.
Enough to maintain consciousness, but not much else.
Nichols saw resolve creep across McGee’s features, and his pulse quickened. The cocksucker had realized he held some cards—that Nichols was fucked the minute he tried to move, unless he and Cantwell planned on drag-choking Lautner all the way across the lot—and decided on a force play.
“You drop it,” McGee spat back—and then, incongruously, he darted out of sight, into the low brush. Nichols watched, helpless, as the cop sprinted out of sight.
He was going after Sherry. Of course. She was the prize. They were nothing. It wasn’t a force play. It was a belated realization of the mission’s priorities.
Fuck.
Nichols weighed his options, then lifted the pistol and smashed the butt into Lautner’s temple. The cop slumped to the ground, unconscious. Nichols leapt up and ran.
Immediately, a jolt of pain brought him up short.
He’d forgotten all about the goddamn handcuffs.
“Sorry,” he said, helping Cantwell to her feet. “Come on. We’ve gotta take him out. Give Sherry a chance.”
They lumbered down the hill, into the lot.
Deserted. No Sherry, no Eric.
That was a good thing.
No McGee.
That, Nichols was less crazy about.
Cantwell started toward the Audi, then stopped short when the bracelets jerked tight.
She looked up at him, puzzled. “Shouldn’t we get the car?”
Nichols’s gaze roamed the lot. “Something’s not adding up,” he said, almost to himself. “They couldn’t have gotten away so fast. There must be another lot. McGee—”
Before Nichols could finish the thought, the roar of an engine silenced him. He and Cantwell turned their heads to follow the sound and watched as a police cruiser barreled into sight, cornering past a row of parked cars and screeching to a halt fifteen feet in front of them.
McGee leapt from the driver’s seat and laid a shotgun across the hood.
“Drop it, Nichols. Or watch your girlfriend die.”
Nichols did as he was told.
McGee smiled. “Good boy.”
Nichols smiled back, pleased as fucking punch to stand here and play decoy. Seemed nobody had clued McGee in on the point of this mission after all. He pictured Sherry and Eric buckling themselves into the Jeep, riding the hell out of there, and his smile widened.
“Down on the ground,” McGee barked. “All the way! Lie flat.”
“Sure, sure. You got it, Officer. You got it.”
The ground was pleasantly warm. Nichols felt like he could fall asleep, then and there. A little siesta would have done him lovely right about now.
The bray of a phone rang out, and McGee’s hand darted from the shotgun to the dashboard, flipped open his cell.
“Hello. No, sir, this is McGee. Lautner’s— . . . Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Both of them, sir? Yes, sir. Not a problem. Thank you.”
He hung up, and Nichols heard the kid take a deep breath. Lifted his eyes in time to see McGee come around the back of the car, shotgun in one hand, service revolver in the other.
“Raise up on your knees,” he ordered, and Nichols thought he heard a tiny quake somewhere toward the back of McGee’s voice.
The cop passed in front of them, stooped to pick up Lautner’s gun, then took up position close behind.
Execution style.
CHAPTER 29
What the fuck, Britannica?” Galvan demanded, leaping to his feet as limbs began to emerge from the roiling soil—a slim, bangle-sheathed wrist ten yards away, a muscular pair of nut-brown arms a few paces farther, and who the hell knew how many more beyond, just awakening to the presence of the heart and its No-Longer-Righteous Messenger.
Its exhausted, 75 percent protectorless, shit-outta-luck-and-tricks, half-dead, waterlogged courier asshole.
Galvan keened at the fake priest, staggered over and grabbed him by the sleeve, and brought them eyeball-to-eyeball, very well aware that he was wasting time they did not have, on questions that did not matter.
“What happened to ‘they can’t cross the water,’ motherfucker? What happened to ‘if we can just get to the other side, we’ll be safe’?”
The sweat was pouring down Britannica’s already river-drenched mug in sheets. “They didn’t cross,” he pointed out, looking more terrified of Galvan than of the Virgin Army. “I was right about that, at least.”
“Who cares?” asked a high, fierce voice by Galvan’s side, and they both turned to find Betty, eyes blazing, wounded arm wrapped in her own torn-off T-shirt, pink bra glinting in the sun.
“What do we do?” she demanded as the first two members of the Virgin Army, Second Division, finished exhuming their nether regions.
Bangles and Muscles must not have seen much action, Galvan thought deliriously. There probably hadn’t been a heart north of the river in a long-ass time. Maybe they were rusty.
Or hungry.
He stared at Betty, her face open and pleading. At Veronica, by her side. Their lives flashed before his eyes, or so it seemed, and Galvan’s whole being filled up with regret. They were so fucking young. So innocent.
Two dead girls had become four in the time he’d taken to reflect, all of them sashaying over in that slow, all-the-time-in-the-underworld way. What accounted for the varying velocities of their approaches? Galvan wondered again. Could Cucuy’s wife really be exercising that level of fine control, or did these un-girls have something resembling free will—some remnants of personalities that dictated that one hurtled herself madly while another played it cool? Was it a matter of tactics? The speed of their quarry? How long they’d been dead?
“Back in the water,” Britannica barked. “We’re not gonna last long out here.”
“Longer than we’ll last in there!” Betty shot back.
Innocent. The word flashed through Galvan’s mind again, like a flint striking a rock.
This time, it gave a spark.
“Wait!” He thrust the box at Betty. “Here. Take this. I can’t protect it anymore. But you can.”
She deadpanned, “Me.”
The first Virgin was closing in. Galvan could read the lettering on her begrimed Jefferson Airplane T-shirt.
“Yes! You’re the new Righteous Messenger! Take it—quick!”
Betty eyeballed him a moment longer, then accepted the box, holding it atop the flats of her hands like she was delivering a pizza. Galvan exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and looked over at the advancing soldiers.
They kept coming.
That was when Veronica piped up. “I think maybe you got the wrong idea about us, Calvin. We’re not exactly—”
“We’re hookers,” Betty finished with a shrug of her bare shoulders.
“That shouldn’t matter,” Britannica sputtered, but he was already breaking into a trot, stubby legs pumping double time as he scaled the bank’s incline and reached the flat, currently unpopulated plain above.
“Gimme that, then.” Galvan snatched back the box, and he and the girls followed the priest.
“We’ve done some fucked-up shit,” Veronica elaborated at his side. Her long legs ate up the distance gracefully, but she was already breathing hard. “We’re not bad people, but—”
Galvan raised a hand. “I don’t need to hear this now.”
“It’s a bad world,” Betty finished, all the same.
“Yeah, no shit,” said Galvan, glancing behind him. They’d opened up a little space, the Virgins still moving in that lackadaisical, low-gear way. It was little comfort.
The living tired out—especially when they were a hairsbreadth from exhaustion already.
The dead, Galvan was guessing, did not.
The math was a bitch, and that was putting it politely.
“Yo, Padre,” he shouted, Britannica still in the lead, though not by much, “any theories on how we get clear? Can these fuckin’ things chase us all the way through Texas, or what?”
The con man huffed and puffed as he spoke. He didn’t look like he could sustain this pace for long, Galvan thought grimly.
“They can only sense the heart when it’s close.”
“Oh yeah? What’s close?”
The Dead Run Page 18
