At the Quiet Edge(89)
The cop grabbed a fistful of tissues and pressed them tight against his bleeding cheek before gunning the vehicle into reverse. When he swung onto the road, Everett’s whole body slid over to the door, and he tried his best to brace himself against it, raising his feet up to push against the back of the driver’s seat.
He pressed his forehead to the window and swept his eyes over the back of Nour’s workshop, hoping she might be there, but everything was shut up tight. The detective cursed and grabbed for more tissues.
Just as Everett felt his control slipping, just as he thought he might start screaming in helpless terror, he saw someone at the front of the shop. Right outside the door, Sharon was there, her back to the road, her hand at the lock, and Everett willed her to turn around, turn around, turn—
She did. She turned, frowning at the sound of a vehicle where it shouldn’t be, because she always knew where things shouldn’t be, and Everett sat up straight, opened his eyes wide, and mouthed, Help, as clearly as he could. Then he mouthed it several more times, bouncing up and down just a bit, trying to meet her gaze as they sped too quickly past.
He looked back as long as he could, pressing his temple to the window to keep the shop in sight for a moment longer. Then he faced forward and scooted more toward the middle to stare down the road toward the highway.
Were the police on their way? If there wasn’t radio chatter, was it because they weren’t coming or because they’d taken seriously his warning that their attacker was a cop? They wouldn’t broadcast that all over a cop radio, would they?
But they might have just considered the call a prank from a stupid kid. He thought the whole police force would have been racing down the road by now. Then again that could be something that happened only in TV shows, and maybe everything moved more slowly if they didn’t use the radio.
If it was possible to stare hard enough to make the entire police department appear, Everett gave it his best. Unfortunately they made it all the way to the highway undisturbed, only one other car passed, and then, instead of turning right toward town, they turned left.
As they turned, Everett glanced back down the road, and he saw a gray car pull out of Josephine’s neighborhood, right where he caught the bus. A man was behind the wheel, face shadowed by a ball cap. Then the cop sped onto the freeway, and Everett couldn’t see well behind them no matter how much he twisted.
This evil cop could be taking them anywhere. To another town, to a city, or just to a field where this monster could shoot them and bury them in plowed dirt so that wheat would grow from their bodies.
He hiccuped a little at the thought, but then his mom groaned, and he was so thankful she wasn’t dead that he began to cry in earnest, tears falling freely down his cheeks because he couldn’t reach them. She rolled her head back and forth for a second, but that was her only movement even after he watched her for long minutes.
Everett decided his only strength at this point was observation, so he blinked the grief from his eyes and read each sign that came up, each mile marker. They hadn’t driven far when they got off the highway and turned left again.
“Where are we going?” he forced himself to ask, but he got no answer except a raspy sigh from his mom, who seemed to be struggling to sit up again.
They weren’t far out of town, but out here there was nothing but farm roads, paved and unpaved, no real landmarks. He felt thankful that they stuck to the paved streets, because the isolation of a dirt road would be too terrifying in this situation.
When they turned left one more time, a strange stir of interest bloomed inside Everett’s brain. He squinted, studying every structure he could see. A farmhouse on one side. A bigger farm with a cattle pen on another. A group of huge cottonwoods near a drainage ditch. And far up the road, getting larger every second, stood a group of three houses.
A chill bloomed over the back of his neck and raced down his spine.
Despite all his careful research and investigation, despite his many suspicions, Everett had been wrong about everything and everyone. Because this monster wasn’t taking them to some random spot in the country.
He was delivering them straight to Alex Bennick, and that suddenly seemed like the scariest possibility of all.
CHAPTER 35
The side of her head burned, and a deeper pain throbbed there with every beat of her heart. A concussion surely, because she could barely force her eyes open, and the world spun around her.
Or perhaps the world was flying by, greens and browns and blues sliding past. Yes. She was in a vehicle. She was with . . .
Lily cut her eyes hard to the side, and she saw him. Him. The man who’d put terror in Everett’s eyes. It all rushed back, and she clamped her teeth hard to hold back the nausea that rolled over her. She tasted metal and pain and sour blood. Her heart fluttered at the sight of the oozing wound on Mendelson’s cheek. She’d marked him. She’d hurt him.
But where were they?
She didn’t think her head was injured badly, more of a goose egg than a skull fracture, but combined with the pain in her temple, she felt caught in a vise. Still, she forced herself to twist around and look for Everett. The sight of him stabbed her with relief and horror. He looked sickly white and shocked, but he met her eyes and even tried to smile for her. His attempt choked her with a wave of painful love.
She tried to raise a hand to her head, but of course her hands were cuffed behind her, so she only made her ribs twinge with sharp pain.