Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(94)
On the sofa are Miranda Tidewell and Mike Lustig, and for a sharp second I think they are on the crew . . . but then I see the gag on Miranda’s mouth, and the bruises and cuts on them both, and the way their arms are pinned behind their backs.
They’re prisoners.
Somebody kicks the bend of my knees, and I hit the floor hard, but I barely feel it. I’m looking at the fear and desperation in Miranda’s eyes. She’s been crying. Black trails of mascara down her cheeks stain the off-white cloth of the gag. There are lots of shallow, bloody cuts on her arms, blood staining her blue jeans where cuts were made on her thighs. Her left eye is swollen shut and dark red.
She’s in her worst nightmare, facing a helpless, tortured death. How many nights did she drink herself into a weeping mess over her daughter’s murder, and tell me she never wants to die that way?
Mike’s gagged, too, and if anything, he looks worse than she does. They didn’t hold back with him.
“You bastards,” I say. “Let them go.”
The new man directs his question not to me, but to the two on the couch. “Is this him?”
Mike ignores the question. Miranda nods. More tears break free and slip down her cheeks.
“Okay.” The new man is older, harder, skin like varnished walnut. He’s wearing a plain black suit, something off the rack at Sears, and I think, Prison issue, because he looks like a convict, someone who’s survived the toughest kind of time and come out distilled to a violent essence. He has a wicked combat knife in his right hand. He turns to face me, and there’s nothing in his eyes. “They say you know where Ellie White is. You’re going to tell us.”
They tried to beat it out of Mike, the sons of bitches. Mike didn’t talk—not that he knew where to even begin to look for the girl. Miranda talked, but she lied. She did only what she thought would help her get through this alive: send them after me, in the hopes I’d be able to find a way to stop them. I don’t blame her for that.
I blame them.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re the original kidnappers, right? The real crew who took the girl in the first place?” The longer I can keep this as a conversation, the more relaxed they’ll get. I need them complacent.
A tiny expression bends his lips. Distaste? Amusement? I can’t tell. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re organized. You clearly know what you’re doing,” I say. “How’d you lose the kid?”
“Not sure,” he says. “GPS died on the car close to this shit town.”
“Maybe your driver disabled it and took the kid himself.”
“I know my guy.” In a flash, that knife is at my throat. I instinctively try to pull back, but two more sets of hands grab my arms and hold me in place. Walnut’s face hasn’t changed. It probably won’t when he cuts my throat. And he will. He’s just admitted a federal crime to me, not to mention the abduction of the federal agent sitting across from me. The three of us aren’t walking out of here alive. In the back of my mind, I’m scared, but I can’t let that rule me. Panic won’t help.
“Now,” he says, “who has Ellie White? Where’s she being held?”
I have zero downside to telling him, but the fact that I do, in fact, have an idea where the kid might be means I have a card to play. It’s a low-value card, but I have to try. “There was a two-car wreck about a week ago,” I tell him. “On the outskirts of town, in the dark. Two men died. You want me to tell you more, you let the woman go. Have your guy drop her at the hospital.”
He stares at me for a second, then nods. “Okay.” Something’s wrong; I sense it like a sudden heat on my skin. “That’s a deal.” He calmly takes the knife away from my throat, slots it in a sheath on his belt, and in the same smooth motion draws a gun from a holster on the other side. It’s a semiautomatic, but that’s all I see as he turns away from me, sights, and fires.
He shoots Miranda Tidewell in the head.
It’s a kill shot. She’s looking at me, not him; she’s fearing my death. She never sees it coming, and so I get to see that the last look in her eyes is anguish. Anguish for me.
The bullet he’s fired leaves a small beveled circle in her forehead. Prefrontal cortex, her ability to learn: gone. Memories, gone with her hippocampus. Bone shrapnel cascades through the soft tissue with the bullet, shredding her brain. A high-velocity bullet, like this one, leaves damage ten times its diameter in its wake.
I hear the shot while all this useless information burns through my own brain, but by then Miranda’s already dead. Her limbs are relaxing. Her eyes blank as empty glass. The bullet doesn’t exit, so the only visible damage is that small, ragged circle, and a trickle of blood.
Her body slumps back on the couch. It’s an empty sack now.
Mike’s thrashing against his restraints.
It hits me: a flash of shock, horror, and then I scream. It’s a roar of pain and rage I can’t stop, and neither can the two men holding me down; they’ve flinched in surprise at the shot, and I lunge up and into the man who’s killed Miranda, drive my head into his chest, and bull-rush him back onto the fallen bricks around the fireplace. He goes down. His head hits the corner of a jutting brick and breaks it off with the impact, which dazes him. He swings the gun down and tries to shoot, but I raise up, sweeping his gun hand with my shoulder, and when the shot comes, it’s already past me, headed for the other end of the room. I hear one of his men cry out. They can’t be far behind me. The wild shot he fired has hit one of his own.