The Sound of Broken Ribs(60)

She fully intended to drive right past Belinda Walsh. Her mind was set on waiting for another time; when it wasn’t the middle of the fucking day and witnesses were not literally everywhere. A couple coming out of what looked to be a clinic of some sort looked up from their conversation with one another at the sound of squealing tires. More than a dozen souls in the donut shop across the street stared curiously as a gray sedan driven by some Asian woman screeched to a stop in the middle of the road. An old man walking his Pomeranian passed just in time to see Lei shove open the passenger side door and raise the Glock—it had likely been ages since the elderly gentlemen had run so fast.

Belinda was heading up the steps of the building that looked like a clinic. Lei aimed at her back.

Her finger was on the trigger.

“Belinda!” she screamed.

Belinda Walsh turned and faced her fate.

*

The woman in the car was immediately familiar to Belinda. Her eyes were, anyway. Even though the face was thicker than it had been, the eyes remained the same. The hair was styled differently, but the eyes were just as insistent, just as piercing.

So this was how it was going to end—her shot dead at the entrance of the Med-Pack on Valley Boulevard. Seemed like it should be more… more something. That her death should mean something was a hope of hers. She certainly didn’t want to be some drive-by statistic. Didn’t matter. Not really. She waited for the bullets to punch through her. Wondered what it might feel like to be shot full of holes.

“Get in the car!” the author bitch screamed over the top of her gun.

Belinda breathed a sigh of relief tinged with sadness. Did she want to die? No. But she hoped that, should her fate already be decided, death would come sooner rather than later.

She moved toward the car at roughly a tortoise’s pace. She was postponing the inevitable, she knew that, but the people pulling out cell phones inside the donut shop across the street gave her hope. So did the old man who’d been walking his dog; the duo were farther down the sidewalk now, hiding behind a palm tree. The old guy was chattering into his own phone, she could hear him but couldn’t make out what was being said. As long as it was something akin to “There’s a crazy bitch with a gun about to shoot some innocent woman whose life has been totally unfair to her up until this point” Belinda would be happy.

“I wanna see your hands at all times. Get in.”

Belinda did as she was instructed. She dropped through the open passenger side door and into the low-slung sedan. She closed the door with her good hand.

Tires squealed and off they went, carving through traffic like flood water through weaving channels.

*

Lei had not a clue what she was doing, but she was doing it all the same. She had to find somewhere to go, somewhere to hide. Before she’d sped away, she’d seen two people inside the donut shop with their phones aimed in her direction. She was sure both had snapped pics or captured video of the kidnapping. Soon enough, the face of a famous author would be printed on every newspaper and tabloid, would be front page of every website and top story of every news outlet. She could hear it now: “Lei Duncan, best-selling author of the new novel The Ebony One and car crash survivor, kidnaps innocent woman at gun point. News at eleven.” Would they give her a pass? Could she plead insanity? That was always an option, anyway. But, truth be told, Lei had never felt so sane in all her life. Not even before the accident.

Lei wanted to get as far away as quickly as possible so she hit the freeway. Where she’d end up was anyone’s guess. Her final destination could be anywhere and decided upon at any time. For now, she was simply escaping. She had her prize, and as long as she got five minutes alone with Belinda Walsh, Lei Duncan would be satisfied.

Oh, we’ll have longer than five minutes.

We can hope, anyway.

Big Bear.

What?

The voice did not answer her, but she knew what it meant, what it wanted. She took her gun hand off the wheel for a second and extended her pinkie. She pressed the voice command option on the GPS with her little finger. The device binged, and she said, “Directions to Big Bear.”

A list of possible destinations matching her voice command popped up, and she tapped the correct one. She hadn’t taken a good long look at Walsh yet, but she could see in her peripheral vision that the woman stared straight ahead, her face impassive, unreadable.

Lei figured Belinda knew she could overpower her at any time, given that she only had the one hand and it was holding a gun and trying to steer at the same time. But doing so would likely result in a car accident wherein both women might be seriously injured or killed. If Belinda were going to act, she’d wait until they stopped. And Lei would be ready. No fucking about. Finger on the trigger. Intention—to kill.

The summer Lei’s first book was turned into a shitty movie that ended up being more profitable than the novel it was loosely based on, Harry and she had spent a weekend at a grouping of cabins on Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains. The rent was insane—twelve hundred bucks a night—but Harry said it was more than worth it.

Rabbits don’t fuck as much as Harry and Lei did that weekend.

A part of her wondered if she’d had the location in mind from the outset of this mission to… To do what? She remained uncertain of her preferred outcome. But the further she went down this rabbit hole the more Lei was able to believe that she’d had an endgame in mind for some time.