At the Quiet Edge(88)
Not her baby. No. This couldn’t be happening. He’d already had so many nightmares. She didn’t want him scared anymore. She didn’t want him hurt.
Everett met her eyes, and he looked surprisingly calm, when she wanted to scream at the sky and tear at her hair. He stared at her intently, trying to communicate in some way, but she couldn’t tell if he was attempting to ask something or say something. She shook her head slightly, confused.
His lips parted as if he meant to speak or mouth a word, but then he was shoved ahead. “Let’s go. Back gate. If you try anything, I’ll beat your mom to a pulp.”
Everett hunched his shoulders and started walking.
She’d heard the wisdom that you should never allow yourself to be taken to a second location. That you should challenge an attacker to the death if he wanted to move you. But what did they say about behaving when your precious child was being taken too? She had to stay alive long enough to save him, so she kept her eyes focused on her son’s moving, breathing body.
How could she get him out of this? How could she keep him alive? “Please just leave him here,” she begged.
He answered with a huff of hard laughter. “Where’s my fucking wife?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t know! Yes, I admit to helping her. You were right. I was working with Zoey, and I took Amber in, and I hid her here, but we’re not supposed to exchange information. That’s one of the rules.”
“Where did you take her?”
“I just . . . I just drove her to the Quik Trip. Over in Highbank. I drove her there.”
“Why?”
Lily didn’t care about Amber anymore. She’d sacrifice anyone to save her son. “She caught the bus. She stayed for a night, and then I drove her to Highbank to catch the eleven forty-three bus.”
“Ah, that’s more like it,” Mendelson drawled. “Now we’re getting facts.”
Everett slowed when he neared the back gate, where an old black Suburban was parked on the other side.
She looked hopefully up at the camera, but it was dark, of course. No power. Detective Mendelson had obviously parked here in the middle of the night and spent plenty of time preparing for this attack.
He’d planned so well. If anyone saw anything suspicious, he would’ve heard it on the radio and vanished. How was she supposed to stay ahead of that kind of thinking when he’d likely been masterminding this for days?
“It’s unlocked,” he said to Everett. “Open it.”
Everett shoved until the gate slid open on its metal wheels, and when he slipped through, she had the brief hope that he might bolt, but that hope struck her at the same time with the blinding fear that he would. This bastard might shoot her son if he tried to run again. Her skin crawled with the waves of anger pouring off him.
But Everett didn’t run. He’d come back for her, and he meant to stay to protect her. He looked pale and scared, head bowed to frown at the ground beneath him. He was such a good boy. She’d been so stupid to be worried when he was an amazing, loving son. Why had she wasted time obsessing over stupid things?
She was so full of regret now. She was nothing but regret. She just wanted this over and Everett safe, and it didn’t matter what happened to her. She tried to make her brain cough up an idea, any idea for how to save him. But suddenly they were through the gate, and he was leading them toward the SUV.
“She got on the bus to head south,” Lily choked out. “Maybe . . .” She swallowed hard against her dry fear. “Maybe she has family in Texas? Oklahoma? You can track them down.”
“She does not. Get in.” He pushed her toward the front seat. “Son, you get in back.”
She nearly gagged at the sound of him calling her child son. He yanked open the back door and pointed Everett toward it.
“But I told you everything!” she yelled.
“Funny, for the past hour you’ve been claiming you’d already told me everything, and now here’s a very important fucking detail you left out. Now the only thing I can trust is that you’re a lying, conniving bitch who needs quite a bit of persuasion to find the spirit of God in your heart.” He wrapped his fingers in her hair and jerked her head around to face him. “Isn’t that right?”
She couldn’t help her whimper. He was snarling and red-faced, and her scalp felt as if he were ripping it off her skull. Lily drew in a breath, opened her mouth, and lunged for his nose.
Her teeth caught on him. She clamped her jaw down hard. He’d turned away at the last minute, but she had his cheek, and if she could just stay on him, Everett could run. Run to the business park. Run to Nour or Sharon or the plumbers she called neighbors, and he’d be free.
She felt Mendelson’s hand cup the side of her head. She felt glass crack against her skull. And then the world blazed into shooting stars that trailed white tails until they faded into a deep, dark black. And she was gone again.
CHAPTER 34
He knew he shouldn’t be crying. He knew he didn’t have time to cry, but Everett had discovered that the scariest thing in the world wasn’t a crazy man with a gun; it was watching his own mother be hurt. His strong mom, his one parent in the world. Watching her cry out in pain, watching her wince at a rough hand, and now watching her slump limp against the door after that sharp crack of glass against her head . . . it was way more than he could handle.