Aurora(57)

The first imperative, he knew, was to keep the big guy on his feet. If that 220 pounds went down in the front yard, the game was over. Rusty would never get him back up. He’d be there in the morning, dead from a knife wound, Rusty’s knife wound, and there’d be no cleaning that mess up.

But if he kept him upright, even just for the ten seconds it might take to reach his car, Rusty still had a chance. He wrapped both arms around the guy, whispering calmly in his ear.

“You’re OK, you’re OK, hang in there, hang in there.”

The words meant nothing, but Rusty hoped that, to a guy who was in shock from a major knife wound, they sounded just reassuring enough to keep him conscious. Rusty brought his left hand back as far as he could and reached into the guy’s right front trouser pocket, praying for a bit of luck.

He got it—the keys to the BMW were there. He pulled them out, shifted his grip underneath Brady’s armpits, and started backing up across the grass, toward the black car. When they were within a few feet of it, Rusty leaned backwards against the trunk, letting it support both of them for a moment. Brady was rapidly losing consciousness and would soon be dead weight.

Rusty pressed the alarm button on the BMW remote. The doors unlocked with a soft thunk. The lights flashed, but only once, and at 2 a.m. there was no one out to see them. Second piece of good luck: the alarm was not set to chirp.

Rusty threw the car door open, and with one hard twist of his shoulders and hips, he let Brady’s weight slide off of him and fall into the back seat. Rusty got behind and shoved him the rest of the way in. He closed the door softly and turned.

Step one was complete. Step two was harder.

He had to go back in the house.

Rusty took a breath and forced his feet to start moving. He hadn’t come this far and committed himself this deeply to stop short of his goal. He strode across the yard, opened the front door, crossed the hallway, picked up the duffel bag from the living room, and exited the house again, closing the door softly behind him.

Outside, he retraced his steps across the grass, staring down at it, squinting his eyes in the greenish glow from the sky, looking for bloodstains. He couldn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. On that, he’d have to hope and pray for the best, and he thanked the goddess of fortune, who usually seemed to hate him, that at least the entire incident had happened over grass, rather than sidewalk. Maybe any blood or footprints would be unnoticeable in the morning.

Rusty kept moving, his plan becoming clearer in his mind.

He came around to the driver’s side of the BMW, slipped behind the wheel, and was about to start it when he noticed the EV sticker in the middle of the steering wheel. Another piece of luck: the car was a hybrid and could be started in electric mode. He searched the control panel, found the mode-select button, and made sure it was turned to EV before he started the car. The car turned on, but the gas motor did not fire.

Rusty dropped it in reverse and, silently, the black car glided out of the driveway.



Eight blocks away, Rusty pulled to a stop in a less populated area. While he was trying to work out the next part of his plan, he heard a soft moan from the back seat. His eyes darted up into the rearview and saw a rustle of movement.

Shit. He’d taken for granted Brady would bleed to death; it hadn’t occurred to him the guy might recover. Rusty turned, so he could look over the seat, and saw that Brady’s eyes were open, his head crammed at an unnatural angle up against the rear driver’s-side door. His hands were clutched around the hilt of Rusty’s hunting knife, still stuck in his midsection. The fucker was trying to pull it out.

Rusty got out of the car, looked up and down the street in both directions, came around to the rear door, and yanked it open. Brady’s head fell out into the open space and he stared at Rusty, blinking. Avoiding Brady’s eyes, Rusty leaned in over him, slapped Brady’s hands away from the hilt of the knife, pulled it out of the big guy’s gut, and stabbed him in the chest.

Rusty repeated the motion four more times, deeper with each thrust, wrenching the knife out of a splintered bone after the last stab. He shoved Brady’s head and torso back into the car as far as he could, slammed the rear door on them, and slid back behind the wheel.



East Aurora Medical Center was a massive complex a mile and a half from Cayuga Lane that served three counties. Between staff, patients, and visitors, the main parking garage held seven or eight hundred vehicles on any given day. Rusty cruised, sharklike, through the pitch-black space until he found an empty spot on a crowded floor and backed into it.

He worked quickly, hyper-focused. He popped off the BMW’s vehicle ID tag from the front dash, down in the corner where it met the windshield. He pulled off the license plates and dug the wallet and satellite phone out of the dude’s pockets. He knew the car could still be identified from the VIN that was etched into the engine block, but really, what were the odds that the cops were going to be trying that hard to identify a dead John Doe in the middle of the biggest public emergency the nation had ever seen?

Plus Rusty knew he was on a roll now. Once things started to fall your way, they tended to keep falling your way. This would too. He took the blue duffel bag from the front seat of the car, locked the BMW, chucked the keys into a trash can three levels down, and started the hour-long walk back to his truck.

Halfway there, he got his last and best piece of luck. It started to rain. So much for the bloody grass, Rusty thought. He smiled to himself and shook his head.