She pulled lightly. Felt as if she was trying to yank him off the bed. His breathing changed, the steady rhythm broken. She stopped pulling. Stood hovering above him, her heartbeat loud in her ears.
Without warning he made the decision for her.
He rolled sharply onto his side. So fast she didn’t have time to think or react. The keyring pulled halfway out of his pocket. Snagged on a loose thread. Then it popped all the way out.
She took a step backwards in her surprise, dropped the key. It hit the threadbare carpet with a dull thud, sounded like a thunderclap to her. She dipped down to retrieve it. His backpack was by the side of the bed. She was tempted to take a peek inside. Did she really care? She might see something in there she’d wish she hadn’t. Why waste any more time?
Because it wouldn’t be a waste, far from it. Trouble was, she didn’t know that then.
With the key firmly in her hand she took a couple of careful steps towards the door. Then froze as he shifted on the bed again. Hardly daring to move, she pivoted at the waist. Waited, watching him. He rolled back over, threw out his arm. Let out a low, growling moan.
She stood suspended in time and motion for what felt like hours, was only a few seconds. When she was sure he was still fast asleep she carried on towards the table by the door. She picked up the key, convinced she’d drop it as well, her hands were shaking so badly.
‘No!’
The shout sent a shock through her like a cattle prod. She jumped. Slapped her hand over her mouth, stifled her own surprised yelp. She spun around.
He was sitting bolt upright on the bed, legs out in front of him. Eyes wide open. Staring straight at her.
She froze. Breathing suspended. Heart in her mouth.
He stared right through her, not seeing her. Still fast asleep. Nothing going on behind the glassy eyes. His lips moved soundlessly. Then a single word.
‘Please.’
The forlorn sound of his voice cut through her like rough steel, pinned her wriggling to the spot. As if it were her he was beseeching and not whatever demons were at play in his subconscious mind.
Without warning he collapsed backwards as if he’d been punched in the face. Lay flat on his back, stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Then another low moan. Turned onto his side, curled himself into a fetal position.
She slipped the door key in the lock. Turned it half way. In the quiet stillness of the room it was like a scene from an old horror movie, one where the nearly-dead butler turns the rusty iron key in the heavy oak door that hasn’t been opened for fifty years. Across the room Cole shifted again. She waited, her heart so loud in her chest she was surprised it didn’t wake him.
She had to move. Before the fear paralyzed her.
She took a deep breath, turned the key all the way. Opened the door. A sudden gust of wind blew a few dry leaves into the room. She stepped quickly outside, closed the door behind her. Locked it again.
She’d need those extra seconds if he woke up.
She ran to her car in her bare feet, expecting at any second to hear the door behind her shaking and rattling in the frame as he tried to open it.
Nothing happened.
She made it to the car. Got in, shifted the seat forward again so her feet actually reached the pedals. Tried to get the key in the ignition. It wouldn’t go in, she was shaking so badly. She stared at the door to their room, convinced it was about to burst open, fly off the hinges any second as Cole kicked it down in his rage.
Calm down.
She gripped the wheel. Forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply until her hand stopped trembling so badly. Then she stuffed the key in the ignition, started the engine. The car leapt forward. Stalled.
She almost screamed. Why did he have to be one of those infuriating people who leave the shift in gear? She stomped on the clutch, slammed the shift into neutral like she was trying to snap it in two. Started the car again.
There was a sudden noise right in front of the car. She gasped, her head snapping up. Expected to see Cole in front of the hood, eyes wild, big hands splayed across it, holding the car still by the force of his anger alone. There was nobody there. It was only the wind blowing some trash around.
Still the motel room door hadn’t moved. She’d been so sure she’d see a fist or a foot come crashing through the cheap wood by now, followed by Cole’s raging body. With any luck he was still asleep and she’d be halfway home by the time he woke.
She peered around the dimly-lit parking lot as she backed out. He was out of luck as far as stealing another car was concerned. The lot was completely empty.
It wasn’t her problem.
It wouldn’t be long before it was.
Chapter 22
SARAH’S EYES FLICKED CONSTANTLY to the rearview mirror as she drove away, the light from the motel’s neon sign fading gradually into the distance. What did she expect to see? Cole come running down the road after her, his anger lending him superhuman powers as he gained on the car? She rounded a curve and then it was nothing but inky darkness behind her.
Was it real? Was she really free?
She’d always been afraid of the dark, ever since that day in her cousin Jack’s basement. And she’d watched too many bad movies. Now her mind played tricks on her. Every creak or rattle from the car she expected to hear him laugh, a high, not-quite-sane sound, as he suddenly sat up in the backseat, clamped his arm around her neck, his eyes wild in the mirror.
The adrenalin rush faded fast as soon as the motel was out of sight. She was so incredibly weary. All she wanted was to curl up, sleep for a week. It was only her body’s reaction to the stress of the last twenty-four hours—and the last hour in particular. That didn’t make things any easier. She let down the window, stuck her arm out. Channeled the cool night air into her face. Sucked it deep down into her lungs, fighting her body’s craving to drift asleep at the wheel in the familiar, safe warmth of the car.
She had to call Evan, let him know she was safe, on her way home. He’d be going crazy with worry by now. And then it hit her. Her phone. Cole still had her phone. In her desperate, paralyzing panic to get out of the room without waking him, she’d forgotten all about it, all her attention concentrated on the keys. It was even worse than that—she’d stood and stared at his backpack, wasting valuable seconds, on the verge of looking inside it. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.
She couldn’t go back now. Even if he hadn’t woken up yet, it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught again just to put Evan’s mind at ease. That sounded too harsh, she didn’t mean it like that, knew he was going through hell.
But if she could ask him, he’d agree an early call that she was on her way home wasn’t worth the risk of not coming home at all.
She drove for four hours putting she didn’t know how many miles between her and the motel. She couldn’t get Cole out of her mind, couldn’t relax with the possibility of him somewhere behind her. It was stupid and irrational. He wasn’t interested in her. Try telling your mind that in the small hours of the morning. So she came off I-59 at Laurel, Mississippi, continued north on US-11. It was slower going, but it had the added advantage that she could pull off the road, grab some sleep if she needed to, confident she wouldn’t wake to his face pressed against the window.
It wasn’t only tiredness, she was stiff and uncomfortable as well. What the hell had Cole done to the seat when he adjusted it for his long legs? Something hard was sticking into her butt. She shifted around, tried to get more comfortable. It only made it worse. And she had a long way to go yet.
Suddenly her butt beeped twice.
Or, to be more precise, whatever it was under her butt, sticking into her and making her uncomfortable, beeped twice. She leaned forward, lifted herself up. Reached around behind her, a vague unease in her gut. Her fingers touched something hard and cold. She took hold of it, brought it around in front of her. She already knew what it was before the light of the dash confirmed it.
Cole’s cell ph
one. It must have fallen out of his back pocket.
Suddenly the car bounced, the wheel taking on a life of its own in her hand. Then the sound of rough ground under the tires loud through the open window. Her head shot up from staring at the phone in her hand. She’d drifted onto the shoulder. She braked hard, brought the car to a juddering halt.
She sat still for a few moments. Stared up at the roof. There were no easy answers there. Should she call Evan on Cole’s phone? Then throw it out the open window into the inky blackness outside and drive on? It wasn’t going to happen. She’d seen Cole get a text earlier. Watched him as his shoulders slumped before his despair turned to rage. When she’d tried to make him tell her about it, he’d point blank refused. Came out with that stupid line:
Have you never heard people say a problem shared is twice as many people in danger?
And she was going to simply throw it out the window, drive on without looking?
Get real.
She’d spent the last twenty-four hours on a crazy road trip to hell. Now she had the opportunity to find out what drove Cole to turn her life upside down. In her almost schoolgirl-like excitement, all thoughts of calling Evan went out the window.
She found the text that had just come in. It was from a guy called Steve.
Hey Cole, we missed you last night. Where were you, man?
All the excitement went out of her as if somebody had pricked her with a pin. It had nothing to do with what was going on. It was from one of Cole’s buddies, a normal, everyday message.
That was the last normal, everyday thing she ever saw on that phone.
Now she had his phone in her hand there was no going back. She had to find the previous text, the one that had such a dramatic effect on him.
It didn’t take long. This one was from someone called Jay. Then, as she read it, she realized it wasn’t from Jay at all—it was about him. Her stomach clenched and heaved, the bile hot in the back of her throat. She swallowed it down. Forced herself to carry on reading.
What had she done?
He’d been telling the truth all along. He wasn’t lying when he told her he needed to get somewhere fast. And now she knew why—or at least what would happen if he didn’t get there on time. What would happen to the guy called Jay, whoever he was.
And thanks to her, Cole wasn’t about to get there any time soon.
If ever.
Her stomach heaved again, more violently this time, a salty, burping lurch. Dropping the phone on the seat, she clamped one hand over her mouth, scrabbled desperately with the door handle. Finally, she got it open. Scrambled out, threw up into the empty darkness. Standing there on trembling legs, bent double, one hand on her knee, one on the fender, she retched. Again and again, hot, salty tears streaming down her face until her stomach ached and her throat was raw.
And all the time she knew it was only the beginning of the nightmare.
The words of the text went around and around in her mind, tormenting her. A parody of an automated corporate switchboard.
Press one for ears.
Press two for nose.
Press three for tongue.
Press four for eyes.
Miss the deadline for all the above.
It went through her head like some sick verse, a sing-song cadence, over and over. And that wasn’t all.
She’d glimpsed an image below the words immediately before she’d dropped the phone. And she knew, even if she’d stood there all night, she’d end up looking in the end. Who wouldn’t? Even though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was put a face to the guy called Jay, a face that would haunt her to the end of her days.
She got back in the car. Reached for Cole’s phone. If she thought her hands were trembling in the motel room, this was something else altogether. She snatched it up. It slipped out of her sweaty fingers, disappeared under the seat as if her Guardian Angel was watching over her, doing his utmost to stop her from tormenting herself further.
Leave it there.
Drive on.
Something wouldn’t let her. Some irrational part of her demanded she put herself through more pain and self-recrimination. Make herself pay in some small way for what she’d done. She dug it out from its hiding place. Held it face down on the seat next to her, her heart pounding in her chest. And when the not knowing became unbearable, she gave in.
Blinking back her tears she saw a guy, a big guy, wrists tied, arms extended above his head. He was suspended from a meat hook in an industrial freezer. His head hung down limply between his shoulders, hair hanging forward. Blood dripped from his chin.
After all the anguish of forcing herself to look, all she could see was the top of his head. Fate had set a limit to how much it would allow her to torment herself. That wasn’t like fate at all, because fate likes nothing more than to twist the knife, to push its unforgiving finger into an open wound, poke the festering sore.
It was a merciful twist. Because she had a vague suspicion she couldn’t name, a memory on the edges of her subconscious, that she knew exactly who it was.
And if she’d been able to pin it down, she’d have known her life would never be the same again.
SHE DIDN’T KNOW how long she sat staring at Cole’s phone, blinking back the tears, trying to justify herself.
How the hell was she supposed to have known?
She had to stop beating herself up for acting like anybody would have done in her situation. Had to put things right. Was it already too late?
Even though she was a lawyer, not an accountant, she did the math in her head automatically. Twenty-one hours spent getting two-thirds of the way, so another ten or eleven-hours driving time to get all the way there. Add in the three hours Cole allocated to the hotel stop and you’ve got a total journey time of thirty-four to thirty-five hours. That sounded to her a lot like a man aiming at a thirty-six-hour deadline. Midday, today. Nine hours away. Sill achievable if she hadn’t just driven back the wrong way for four hours.
Stop it!
Time to stop sitting feeling sorry for herself, time to get moving. The only thing making her hesitate was Evan. She couldn’t call him now. What would she say to him?
I was abducted and driven half way across the country by a madman, but I escaped. Except I’ve decided to turn around and go back.
He wouldn’t understand.
She started the car, made a wide U-turn. Put her foot to the floor. For a moment she thought she’d made the turn too wide, crossed all the way over and onto the shoulder on the other side. Except the sound and feel of the car was different. It wasn’t the crunch of gravel under the tires. The car wasn’t bouncing around on rough ground. Instead, it was pulling to the side, the sound coming through the open window more of a loud slapping.
The sound a flat tire makes on smooth asphalt.
SHE PULLED ONTO the shoulder, let herself slump over the steering wheel. In all the years she’d been driving she’d never had to change a wheel. Now wasn’t the time to start learning how. Outside was nothing but inky blackness. Morning was still hours away. No doubt she’d put it on incorrectly—not upside down, obviously—but she might put it on back to front.
The interior light came on as she opened the door and climbed out, made her feel very exposed. There was a vigilance about the darkness itself. Whatever creatures might be out there, hidden in its depths, breath held as they waited, they could see her now. But she couldn’t see them.
She looked up and down the deserted road, not knowing if she wanted another vehicle to come along or not. Then she opened the trunk, refused to acknowledge the tightness in her chest, the dryness in her mouth, as the panic did its best to claim her for its own, the prospect of being forced into the trunk still fresh in her mind.
That prospect would soon seem like a walk in the park.
She grabbed an armful of stuff, dumped it on the back seat. Then another, and another. Cole was right, the trunk was full of crap. Finally, it was empty. The spare even had some air in
it. The jack was in there as well. And a lug wrench. Everything a girl needs.
She took the lug wrench out first. She wasn’t completely stupid, knew you have to loosen the lugs before you jack the wheel off the ground. She squatted down, fitted the wrench onto the first one, tried to loosen it.
It wouldn’t budge. She got both hands firmly on the wrench, planted her feet against the tire, really put her back into it. She strained so hard she didn’t know what would give way first—her lungs or the seams on her blouse.
She relaxed a second to catch her breath, then gave it a sharp tug. The wrench slipped. She lost her balance, a startled shriek on her lips, flew backwards into the middle of the road. She landed heavily on her back, the impact punching the wind out of her. Then her head smacked hard and painfully into the blacktop.
She lay in a daze, staring up at the night sky, tried to get her breath back. Waited for her head to clear. The ground was cold and damp under her. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. Then onto her knees. It was too soon, too fast. Her head was spinning ferociously, the rush of blood loud in her ears.
Everything happened very fast after that.
A horn blared impossibly loud and close out of nowhere. A vehicle swerved violently around her. The side draft blew her across the road like a plastic fast food container thrown out a car window. Her head smacked the unforgiving ground for the second time in under a minute as she rolled across the road into the dirt. Brake lights flared, car tires squealed in protest. A door opened, feet running towards her.
She closed her eyes. Waited with a growing sense of dread in her chest for whoever it was out and about at three in the morning to get to her, asked herself over and over why she hadn’t stayed on the damn interstate.
Chapter 23
‘YOU WANT TO do it, maricón?’
‘Lucas! Enough.’
Jay opened his eyes at the sound of the new voice. It was a voice he knew well, the voice of the man everybody called El Carnicero. Lucas and Gabriel’s father.
The Road To Deliverance Page 13