The Lonely Mile(43)

This was her chance. Never mind cleaning up in preparation for her impending rape, suddenly here was the break she had been praying for. It might be the only one she was going to get. The knife had a serrated blade, maybe six inches long, with a square-looking pearl-white handle. Carli had about a half-second to decide what to do and then she would be past the table and her chance would be gone.

The I-90 Killer was paying no attention to his kitchen table. He was paying no attention to anything; he was probably anxious to get her into the bathroom and back out again so the fun could begin. Carli made her choice. It was no choice at all, really. She yanked her arm hard, pulling the open end of the handcuffs out of the man’s grasp and ignoring the pain radiating outward from her already injured wrist. She leapt for the table and grabbed the knife.

Then she spun on her heels and faced her attacker, lunging with everything she had, aiming at his midsection. She was going to gut him like a fish.





CHAPTER 39


BILL CONCENTRATED ON SECURING the contents of the dream in his head, memorizing the important parts like he was studying for a test back in high school. In the dream, he was standing in the parking lot of the rest stop, searching for the man who had tried to kidnap the young girl, Allie Serrano. He scanned the mammoth lot, but it was choked with cars, not full by any means but still clogged with vehicles practically as far as the eye could see. Then the man passed Bill almost close enough for him to touch. He was escaping, driving a beat-up old box truck toward the interstate on-ramp and the freedom beyond.

As the truck chugged by, blue plumes of exhaust pouring from the tailpipe and hanging in the fetid air, Bill squinted and stared, trying desperately to make out the numbers and letters on the license plate. But no matter how hard he tried, the thick pollution coming from the vehicle’s tailpipe stymied him.

Out of the corner of his eye, though, and somehow retained in a remote corner of his brain, he finally saw what he had been looking for, the key to finding his missing child. His subconscious mind must have been trying to show it to him all along with these crazy dreams. The truck drove by, and Bill concentrated on the license plate, but as he did, he took note of the obviously amateur paint job. The side of the truck was a riot of fading, off-white vehicle paint, sprayed in overlapping strokes still covering some areas completely. But in other areas, the paint had begun fading badly, to the point where a series of blocky, green letters from the truck’s previous incarnation were beginning to show through.

The kidnapper had no doubt painted over the green letters on the cargo box, since kidnapping girls in a truck with a name on the side wasn’t the best avenue to achieving a long and successful criminal career.

The I-90 Killer had been in business for three-and-a-half years, and over that time period, the harsh, northeastern winters and hot summers had done a job on the paint, so now, Bill could recall seeing faint letters on the side of the crappy truck, beneath the remains of the crappy paint job. The letters, in three rows, were:

SPE





FAR





ET





Bill reached for his wallet and pullet out the business card Agent Angela Canfield had given him and looked at the clock. Four forty-eight a.m. He dialed her cell number and hoped she wasn’t a heavy sleeper.





CHAPTER 40


CARLI SPUN ON HER heels and lunged at the kidnapper, swinging the knife with no real skill but plenty of adrenaline-fueled force. She wasn’t sure where to cut him to achieve maximum damage, so rather than take the chance of aiming for something hard to hit and missing, for example, his throat, she went for the center of mass—his belly.

Almost immediately, though, everything went wrong. She swung the steak knife in a wide arc, angling for his stomach, planning to put him down with the first thrust and take him out by any means necessary after that. But he was quicker than she had anticipated, raising an arm to defend against the slashing blade and stepping back, moving on the balls of his feet.

She felt resistance as the knife dug into his outstretched arm, slicing all the way to the bone. Blood spurted, spraying in an impressive arc onto the filthy kitchen floor. “You little bitch,” he grunted, a response seemingly made up more of surprise than pain.

Carli had put everything she had behind her thrust, driving forward with her legs and putting all of her one hundred and five pounds into the parry. The knife ricocheted off the man’s arm and the force of her momentum caused her to lose her balance. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees as the man screeched and clutched his wounded arm reflexively to his chest. She scrambled on the floor, desperate to strike again before he had time to recover.

The blood continued to waterfall from the man’s left arm, draining from the gaping wound, but after his initial cry of surprise and pain, he rallied, dropping the useless arm to his side and advancing on Carli quickly. She regained her footing and struck out at him again, but the angle was all wrong and he was coming at her quickly, and she didn’t have time to wind up and get any kind of torque behind her swing.

Martin easily danced away from the weak thrust, his hard eyes glinting. “You little bitch,” he repeated. Carli’s only advantage was surprise, and it was gone. He grabbed her wrist with his still-strong right hand, squeezing the small bones together until she cried out, first in fear and then in agony. The knife clattered to the floor and she sank to her knees as bright pain flared in her wrist and ran up her arm.