But moments later they were past the barricade and Billy was able to put the truck back on the road. He had an aggrieved expression as he goosed the gas pedal. “I don’t guess I can count on you to reimburse me for any damages done to my vehicle?”
“Shut up and drive.”
“You’re not very nice.”
Jessica slowly turned her head his way. “I’m a professional killer. Nice doesn’t enter the equation. You’re useful to me only so long as I can count on you to do as you’re told and cut the fucking back talk. If you think you can’t manage that, I’ll shoot you right now.”
There was a brighter glimmer of fear in his eyes now, though he was trying hard to appear outwardly calm. “That won’t be necessary. Where do you want me to go?”
“Stay on this road until I tell you to turn.”
“But--”
She pointed the gun at him again. “Shut up.”
Billy closed his mouth. Jessica could almost see the gears spinning in the poor bastard’s head. There must be so much he wanted to ask her. This was understandable. It was only human nature. But silence would help her think and heighten her awareness of their surroundings as they continued into Hopkins Bend. She was feeling much more on top of things than she had at the outset of the day, but she was still tired and needed every edge she could get.
Odds were good no significant danger would confront them here. Word of the shuttering of the Hopkins Bend post had filtered down to her while she was in Afghanistan, the reasons given being a severe budget crunch and a lack of a compelling need to keep it open. It served no strategic purpose and had remained in place long enough to cover any trace of the cleansing that had taken place. The barricades and warning signs remained in place to discourage trespassers, though the official cover story of an enduring biological hazard in the area was enough to keep most people away.
The bottom line was that the town where Jessica had narrowly escaped being killed years ago was the one place in the world where she might be able to hide away undetected for a significant amount of time. There was a bitter irony to this turn of events, but that was something she could ponder later, if her father was able to help her find a way out of this mess.
“Turn here,” Jessica said.
They had arrived at a three-way intersection. Billy pulled up next to a bullet-riddled stop sign. Realizing there was no point to observing traffic laws in a ghost town, he took his foot off the brake pedal before coming to a complete stop and continued through the intersection, cranking the wheel to the right to take the turn.
The road they were on now was wider and had been paved more recently than the one they’d left behind. Despite this, some cracks had appeared in the asphalt, allowing vegetation to sprout up here and there. They passed occasional weathered billboards advertising local businesses that no longer existed, including a barbecue joint, a car dealership, and a strip club called the Sin Den. The burned-out hulk of a car sat rotting beneath the strip club billboard. Jessica couldn’t help feeling a sense of humbled awe at the sight of all this decay, which had come about as a result of her desperate struggle to stay alive that long-ago night. It was like driving through a post-apocalyptic landscape.
This impression deepened as they entered the town itself and drove through the eerily empty and quiet streets. Many of the buildings looked as if they had been abandoned decades ago rather than just a few years earlier. Some had smashed-in windows and Jessica saw graffiti tags here and there, evidence that at least a few hearty souls had defied the strident warnings. The burned-out hulk they’d passed on the outskirts of Hopkins Bend turned out to be an anomaly. There were no cars or trucks anywhere. They had all been hauled away and destroyed. Jessica knew similar measures had been taken to dispose of almost everything else of value in the town. All of this was done to lessen the allure of the place to vandals and looters.
Billy shook his head. “This is some spooky shit. First time I’ve ever been in a for real ghost town.”
Jessica glanced at the wide-eyed young mechanic. There was a look of genuine wonder on his face. It was the expression of a little boy on an adventure. He appeared to have forgotten the dire nature of his situation. That wouldn’t last long. And soon enough Jessica would have to decide what to do with him. It was something she had avoided thinking about during the journey out here. He was a nice guy. Some men faked being nice when they thought that was what a woman wanted, but the false sincerity was never difficult to detect. Billy oozed genuine decency. He was almost certainly beloved by most who knew him.
Goddammit, Billy. Why couldn’t you have been a real shitheel?
She had never been into nice guys, having always been the kind of chick who fell instantly in lust with cocky bad boy losers. This preference came with some obvious consequences, yet somehow she never quite learned her lesson. Over time she came to accept this as something she was powerless to change. Time had also helped her understand this was at least in part because she wasn’t an angel, either. She could be ruthless and in some situations she was capable of cruelty.
A glimpse of a building a block ahead on the right snagged Jessica’s attention. It had the standard boxy, functional look of a municipal building. OFFICE OF THE SHERIFF was spelled out in cast metal letters above the double doors, which were dark-tinted glass and were secured by a thick length of chain and a padlock. Someone had spray-painted FTP in squiggly white letters across the adjoining doors.
Somehow Jessica doubted this stood for “File Transfer Protocol.”
“Pull in there.”
Billy steered the truck toward the building’s entrance.
Jessica shook her head and waved the gun vaguely at the side of the building. “No. Go around to the back.”
Billy again did as he was told, taking the truck around the long side of the building to an almost empty rear parking lot. Jessica’s heart lurched at the sight of a Hopkins Bend sheriff’s department cruiser. It was the first vehicle they had seen since the burned-out hulk. But this car was no useless rusted heap. Given that the department had been out of commission for years, this was something of a shock. There were some dings and scratches on the body indicative of rough treatment, but there was nothing to indicate a long period of disuse. The tires were fully inflated and the vehicle was pretty clean in general.
Jessica glanced at the back of the building and saw more dark-tinted glass doors. There was no one around—at least no one she could see—but there was something wrong about what she was seeing. “Get us the fuck out of here. Right now.’
Billy read the alarm in her eyes and reacted with the hoped-for sense of urgency, executing a wide turn in the parking lot before hitting the gas. The truck shot forward and bounced over the curb as it skidded out into a side street. Billy kept going and got them back out on the town’s main drag, this time speeding away from the maybe not-so-deserted sheriff’s office. The truck blew through an intersection with dead traffic lights swaying in the wind and kept going at the same high rate of speed.
Jessica glanced at the mirror on her side and for an instant saw only a stretch of empty road behind them, but then bright headlights appeared as the cruiser pulled out into the street, its back end fishtailing for a moment as the driver raced to catch up to them. There had been no one behind the wheel of the cruiser mere moments ago. Whoever was driving it now had come tearing out of that building in a hurry. Jessica had realized the building might not be empty upon spotting the cast aside padlock and chain that had secured the rear entrance.
The burp of a siren sounded and the cruiser’s roof lights began to strobe.
Billy glanced at Jessica.
She detected a troubling hint of cunning in the slant of his eyes. He was trying to conceal it but was doing a lousy job of it.
Jessica sighed. “Logic should tell you this is no real cop. It’s just some predator using a stolen cruiser. This isn’t your way out of this situation.”
Billy began to ease the truck over to the curb. The look he gave Jessica was almost apologetic. “All I know is you’ve threatened me a bunch of times and I can tell it’s not just talk. You really would kill me if you thought you had to. Shit, I feel like you’ve been thinking about it nonstop since we got here. Go ahead. Deny it. Lie to my face.”
Jessica didn’t say anything. What could she say? It was just the truth. The guy was no dim bulb..
The truck came to a full stop and Billy wrenched the gearshift over to P. He glanced at Jessica again as he switched off the engine. “The way I see it, I gotta take my chances here. You might be right about what’s happening here, but you could be wrong.”
“I’m not.”
The cruiser parked behind them, but the driver didn’t get out immediately. Jessica’s grip tightened on the gun. She kept her gaze on the rearview mirror, waiting to see that door open.
Billy shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out in a minute. Maybe you should just get out and start running.”
The cruiser’s driver’s side door popped open.
Jessica snatched the keys from the truck’s ignition before Billy could react. Moving fast now, she hopped out of the truck and got her gun up and aimed before the cruiser’s driver had time to react. The fake cop stood in the road with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide with surprise. He was a big guy with a muscular build. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans and his facial features had the off-kilter look of the slightly inbred. Not deformed in the way of the grotesque Kincher clan. Just off. His eyes were a little too wide-set and his sloped forehead protruded just a shade too much.
Clutched in his big hands was a pump shotgun.
He started to raise it.
Jessica fired twice, the suppressor emitting two flat cracks as both rounds hit center mass and dropped the big redneck like a slab of meat. The shotgun flew from his hands and skittered across the asphalt. Billy burst out of the truck and ran into the street, apparently intent on making a diving grab for the shotgun.
Jessica rolled her eyes.
Fucking hell.
She shifted her aim and fired again.
9.
Daphne had been hanging from the chain for hours by the time activity in the diner’s kitchen began to wind down. Time was hard to gauge in a state of constant discomfort and anxiety, but she was sure it wasn’t any later than mid-afternoon. She figured Mama Hunt’s was the kind of place that catered primarily to a breakfast and lunch crowd. It was possible things would ramp up again as evening approached, but that didn’t seem likely. The buzz of dining area conversation had dimmed and meals were no longer being prepared. Most of the kitchen staff appeared to have gone home for the day. Those who remained were cleaning up and putting things away. The table where the butchers had methodically taken apart the unfortunate woman with their cutting instruments was now sparkling clean. It was almost possible to believe the grisly act hadn’t actually occurred.
But it had happened, and Daphne knew it would happen to her as well if she couldn’t figure some way out of her dilemma. The way things were looking, though, that would take nothing less than a bona fide miracle.
Soon the remaining workers filtered out of the kitchen. The last one out turned off the overhead florescent lights, leaving Daphne and her fellow captives enveloped in a darkness that wasn’t quite absolute. Some low wattage bulbs located above various prep stations popped on the moment the overheads went dark. Daphne supposed this was so anyone entering the kitchen after regular hours to tend to some last piece of business or whatever could do so without the bother of turning the lights on and off again. Whatever the actual reason, she was grateful to have at least some level of visibility.
The heavy manacles binding her wrists were chafing her skin. On occasion a helpless compulsion caused her to flex her wrists in a useless effort to relieve the irritation. Every time she did this, however, it only made things worse. The strain of hanging above the ground for so many hours was just as miserable. All the joints in her arms and shoulders were singing with pain and she had no means of easing it. The prospect of hanging like this through the night filled her with dread. Multiple days of this might drive her permanently insane.
But every time her thoughts turned to how she might get out of this situation, she came up with the same depressing total lack of answers. There were just no realistic options she could see. Early on she had distracted herself with escape fantasies informed by Hollywood action movies. Badass movie chicks were always able to wrangle imaginative ways out of tight spots. If she were Michelle Rodriguez or Milla Jovovich, she would get free via some feat of reality-defying athleticism.