Hairpin Bridge

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  Right. He thumbed off the safety.

  Maybe Lena was realizing this now—her fatal error in returning to finish him, that he’d lured her into an unwinnable gunfight—as Rick Raycevic centered his rifle’s magnified reticle on her chest and prepared to fire, while she aimed her Beretta back at him two-handed with hard eyes unblinking, taking a deep breath and doing the same.

  She’s not that good, he thought, squeezing the trigger.

  She can’t possibly be that goo—

  He saw a flash in her hands as she fired first. At fifty yards, the light reached him instantaneously, then a tenth of a second later the bullet, and a sixth of a second later, the sound.

  He never heard the sound.

  * * *

  Four minutes later, the Nguyen sisters’ Corolla left Hairpin Bridge for the final time and, on its way out, again approached Theo Raycevic’s stalled semitruck at the south ramp.

  There, in wait, his Winchester lever-action rifle rested atop the door with a .30-30 steel-jacketed cartridge chambered. A dirty fingernail held the trigger staged. The Corolla appeared first in the truck’s broken mirror and then entered the weapon’s iron sights. But the rifle didn’t fire, because the man holding it had succumbed to blood loss minutes earlier.

  The car passed through the gunsights.

  And drove on.

  Theo’s truck continued to hang by a knot of tangled guardrail for another forty-eight minutes. Then a final rivet blew under the suspended weight and the entire rig—and inside, the body of the serial killer who would become posthumously known as the Plastic Man—plunged to the creek bed in a meteoric crash of accordioned metal and igniting diesel, heard and seen by no one.

  Chapter 28

  As I left, I swore you were in the car with me, Cambry.

  You rode shotgun. Right beside me. It’s so vividly clear in my mind—I saw you sitting there with your toes up on the dashboard, chewing gum, sketching in your notepad, glancing up and smiling at me between the strokes of your pen. You always loved to draw.

  I smiled, too.

  I can’t describe how I felt in that moment. God, I’m trying right now, and failing. All I can say is that it was the warmest, most content feeling of my life. A hard-fought peace.

  Your spirit can finally rest now, sis, because your killers will never take another innocent life. Mom knows you’re not in hell. As I drove your bullet-riddled car back to Magma Springs, I couldn’t help but let that dumb, joyful smile take over my face, and I turned your Toyota’s volume dial to full blast and listened to your old CDs as loud as the speakers could go.

  Lena drove in silence.

  She was past screaming. Past sobbing. Past throwing up. She’d done it all already, with red eyes and a raw throat, and she felt exactly nothing now. A barren cavity had opened inside her chest. She pulled the rearview mirror down, because she couldn’t stand to look at her sister’s face anymore.

  Hairpin Bridge vanished behind her. She promised herself, as the skeletal structure shrank against a mile-high wall of smoke, that she’d never, ever set foot on it again. She wished metal could burn. She wished she’d never come to Montana at all.

  A jagged lightning bolt crossed the sky. No thunder, no storm. Just friction in the ash.

  On her knee rested Raycevic’s wallet photo of himself and Cambry, smiling together on the lake. Its very existence was a loose end, and a last-ever glimpse of her sister’s crooked smile, and she was so deeply sick of looking at that, too.

  She held it out the window and let the wind take it.

  Chapter 29

  I need to say this one last thing.

  Then I’m done.

  As I type this, dawn is breaking, it’s September 21, 5:31 a.m., and I’m about to depart for Howard County on my suicide mission to confront Raycevic and learn the truth about Cambry’s death. I have a thermos of black coffee and my Beretta locked and loaded.

  I had a dream last night.

  And I need to write it before it vanishes. Before I go.

  In my dream, we were eighteen again. You and me, Cambry. We’re up on that railroad trestle over the Yakima River with your friends, and you’ve told me that you didn’t believe in an afterlife before you jumped off. That terrible smack as you struck your head on the beam. I’ve leaped in and found you, somehow, in all that cold and dark. And then we’re collapsing ashore on chilled sand. Chests heaving. Green river weeds in your hair.

  And you turn your head and look at me—and I know this is the dream now, not memory, because in real life your friends had already surrounded us—but in my dream, it’s just us and the lapping water, and you look at me with piercing sadness in your teenage eyes. I’ve never seen such heartache before.

  I wait for you to speak.

  I know this isn’t a normal dream. This isn’t another nightmare with slit throats and glistening intestines. Somehow I know: This is my chance, maybe my only chance, real or imagined, to speak to you ever again. After this dream evaporates, you’re gone for good.

  I wait for you to speak. This is it.

  Please. Say anything, sis.

  * * *

  Lena reached Magma Springs under a toxic orange sky. The highway was blockaded with evacuees going east and fire crews coming west. She reached the familiar gravel parking lot shared by the Magma Springs Diner and the Shell station. Gray ash speckled the windows like apocalyptic frost.

  She shut the Corolla’s door and locked it. Mindless habit—the windows were shot out.

  She entered the diner and found her booth undisturbed. The recording had uploaded to the cloud exactly as planned. The connection was uninterrupted. The .mp4 file had recorded for three hours and nineteen minutes before Raycevic destroyed the walkie unit. By tomorrow, the two criminals she’d slain would be national news.

  Watching wildfire coverage on the flat-screen, the lady at the counter didn’t even glance up. She absently asked how Lena’s project went.

  Fine, she answered.

  Would you like anything?

  No. Then she reconsidered. A sundae.

  As the lady ducked back into the kitchen, Lena noticed a newspaper clipping framed on the wall. A local trooper honored with an award. She recognized a younger Raycevic’s smile and studied his face, his white teeth and action-hero squint, wondering how many bodies he’d made disappear at the time that photo was taken. What did her sister see in him, Terrible Guy #18? Was he another bug for her jar?

  Cambry would never answer. If hell existed, she was probably there.

  Or she was gone completely. Which is worse?

  On the tabletop, Bob the Dinosaur stared up at Lena. She’d drawn it earlier today while she waited for Raycevic. Now she pulled a pen from her purse and began scribbling it out in hard, grinding scrapes. Her mind returned to Hairpin Bridge, to the version carved into the vinyl seat of Raycevic’s cruiser—another loose end. But with a sinking heart, she knew he’d been right, that Bob the Dinosaur really was a facsimile of the lizard from that old Nickelodeon cartoon, and thus anyone could have drawn it. Not everything Cambry drew was brilliant.

  The sundae arrived.

  Lena ate three bites, but her loose teeth ached in her gums. The chocolate syrup was thin. Everything tasted like blood. Her stomach turned again, and she dropped the spoon, her cheeks burning, her eyes welling with tears.

  The waitress watched, petrified. She hadn’t left. It took Lena a moment to realize why—her broken nose, the blood hardening on her clothes and hair, the rotten purple knot over her left eye.

  Can you call the police, please?

  The waitress nodded and hurried away.

  Lena waited at her booth. She slipped the empty Beretta from her holster, field-stripped it, and placed the oily black parts on the tabletop. Then she sat on her hands and wondered if she’d ever truly loved her sister, or if she’d just loved the idea of her. Does it even matter, if the person no longer exists?

  She stared forward, into the seat opposite, until her eyes fell ou
t of focus.

  * * *

  You look back at me.

  Your eyes brim with tears, and your lip curls, and I don’t recognize it at first, because I’ve never seen it on your face before: Shame. Deep, aching humiliation. It’s heartbreaking. I can tell you’re terrified of me, somehow. What I must think of you.

  I ask you what’s wrong.

  You won’t answer. You snap your head away, blinking through tears, and look out at the Yakima River.

  I still don’t understand. I touch your shoulder. You shake your head, whipping your slick hair. You keep staring purposefully ahead, out over the water that nearly took you, out at the far shore and even farther. And you part your lips and finally speak through shivering teeth, your words floating on shallow breath:

  Lena, go.

  * * *

  She blinked.

  She was alone in the diner. The flat-screen was muted. No jangling silverware or running dishwashers in the kitchen. The waitress had ushered the staff out after seeing the disassembled handgun on the table. All Lena had to do now was wait for the police—the real police—to arrive and take her in for questioning. But something wasn’t right.

  Not yet.

  In the tabletop’s wood grain, Bob the Dinosaur was still partially visible. She hadn’t fully scratched out his cartoon eyes.

  She didn’t touch her pen. She sat rigidly on her hands in a blaze of red sunlight as last night’s dream took sharp focus.

  Go where?

  * * *

  You don’t answer me. You just stare out over the rippled light of the river, shaking your head.

  Go, please.

  I don’t understand.

  You turn to face me and a tear darts down your cheek. Something new in your glassy eyes—urgency. Rising alarm.

  Go, Lena.

  Just go now.

  Still, I can only stare.

  I can tell you’re getting frustrated now that I don’t get it. And truthfully, Cambry, I’m getting annoyed with you, too. I jumped into dark water after you and risked my life, just to be pushed away like this? What was the point, then? Why did I even bother?

  I shake my head, still confused. I don’t want to go, anyway. I want to stay with you. I miss you. Please, God, let me stay here a while longer on this half-remembered shore of the Yakima River and talk to my dead sister—but then you shove me. Hard.

  Why are you doing this?

  I hit my back on the wet sand, stunned and hurt, staring up at you. Tears in my eyes. I can’t help it.

  Go, you hiss through your teeth. Now.

  You’re running out of time.

  * * *

  She left Magma Springs Diner.

  At her booth she left her laptop, her barely eaten sundae, and the five disassembled parts of her handgun. The door clapped shut behind her and she returned to her Corolla under a darkening sky. Beside the Shell pumps, the waitress watched her drive away with a cell phone held to her ear, reading her license plate to 911.

  She merged back onto the highway. Driving fast. The engine rattled and coughed.

  Lena, go.

  She wove between fire trucks and twenty-ton water tankers, feeling the air lash her fresh cuts. Highway 200, then Pickle Farm Road. After a few miles, the mournful whine of a police siren came up behind her. She didn’t look back. She knew she was being followed by a Dodge Charger identical to Raycevic’s. It didn’t matter, because she was nearly there.

  Go. Now.

  She almost missed the driveway. But yes, it was there, a right turn past the burned-out barn, exactly as Raycevic had described. Another half a mile over washed-out gravel, and she reached a modest double-wide and a workshop over a vast cement foundation. She parked and left her door ajar, her headlights fighting the falling darkness, and on foot she entered a strange wasteland, past the rust-eaten body of an ancient semitruck, around piles of excavated rock, orderly rows of lumber starting to rot, and to her right she spotted the ghastly sight that had started it all: four firepits stacked with pyramids of heavy stone. They were empty now. Dry coals exhaled dust in the wind.

  She kept walking. To her left, trenches and exhumed earth. A red tractor caked with grit. The ground was stirred and sunken underfoot. She wondered how many buried cars she was walking over. How much of the soil was cremated human bone.

  Red and blue lights strobed. The police cruiser parked behind her Corolla, casting wild shadows across the Raycevics’ property.

  She kept walking deeper, deeper. The cop chirped his siren, calling her attention. Still, she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t, under the intensifying thud of her heart.

  You’re running out of time—

  * * *

  Then I woke up.

  That was my dream, dear readers.

  I hope to God that it was really you, Cambry, and not my wishful imagination. I hope it was really your soul visiting me in my sleep, urging me out the door this morning in your own gruff way. To not lose my courage, to go and confront Raycevic on the bridge you died on, to prevent what happened to you from happening to anyone else.

  But something doesn’t fit—the despair in your eyes. The way you shoved me away. Why were you so upset? I wish you’d had something nicer to say, like I love you.

  I guess I just don’t understand.

  And it doesn’t matter, because whatever you did when you were alive—I don’t care. I forgive you in advance, sis.

  For anything. For everything.

  Whatever it is.

  I woke up before I could say this to you, but if you wanted my response? You know me. I’ll make it as nerdy as possible. Think of it like an inverted version of the evil AI from “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” Just: Love. Love. Love. Love. Only love for you. Nothing but love here on earth, in the crater you left behind. Love of unthinkable depth, unknowable vastness, stretching east and west and north and south to infinite horizons of unceasing, untiring, unconditional love. Cambry, my twin, I love you so fucking much.

  And whatever you did in life that you wish to atone for, that you fear my judgment for, I don’t care. Rest warm, sis, because I will always love you.

  And . . .

  That’s it. I’m out. Montana-bound. I’m shutting this laptop and walking to your car and starting the engine and going. Going, just like you asked. But I’ll ask something of you, too.

  Today on Hairpin Bridge, please watch my back. Be my sixth sense. Be the whisper in my mind, the raised hairs on my neck, the subtle edge that helps me survive today’s battle. Let me borrow one of your furies for a day. But most of all, if it was really you in my dream, and not just my heartsick imagination . . .

  Please, Cambry . . .

  Give me a sign.

  * * *

  She heard the cop roll down his window and shout: Stop.

  She didn’t. She couldn’t.

  He cut his engine, and in the heart-pounding silence, a sound caught Lena’s attention. It was faint, tinny, warped by confined space. She halted. It sounded imaginary, illusory, like a ring in her ear.

  Behind her, a car door creaked open. Stop, now.

  Still, Lena focused only on that faraway sound, on that unreal echo. Barely there, lingering at the edge of her perception. She fought to believe in it, that it wasn’t her imagination or the damaged cells inside her eardrums, that it was real and it meant something. It was coming from below. To her left. And there she saw a circle of old stones. A groundwater well.

  Her blood turned to ice water.

  Only now did she turn around, wobbling on weak knees to face the highway patrolman. He held one hand on his sidearm. But he was frozen, too, stunned midstride just like her, because he heard the same noise she did. Oh, thank God—he heard it, too. It was real. She blinked away tears and their eyes met. He already knew what it was, and in another awestruck heartbeat, so did Lena.

  From the darkness of the Raycevics’ well, the sound intensified. Hurt, hoarse with two days of thirst, begging to be found
.

  The cry of a little boy.

  Epilogue

  She descended the narrow shaft with her heels and shoulders arched against dry stone. Like wall-crawling down a chimney, knees pressed to her chest. Far too tight for the trooper, who fed her rope from above. The temperature chilled as she lowered into suffocating darkness, fifteen feet down, then twenty, then thirty, until she swore she was deep under the surface of the Yakima River again, reaching out with aching lungs, fearing her outstretched hand would find nothing, that Cambry was gone forever.

  This time, Lena Nguyen was unafraid.

  And at the bottom, she felt it—small fingers grasping hers.

  She untied the rope from her belt loops and sat with him while help arrived, giving him water in small sips so he wouldn’t vomit. Later, she would be unable to recall most of what she told the boy while they waited together—that he was safe; that good people were coming to help; that the loved ones we lose are always, always with us. All things that probably meant nothing at all to this dehydrated little boy with fractured legs. Sometimes all that matters is your voice in the dark.

  But one thing, she would remember.

  “Want to know a secret?”

  Sure he did.

  As firefighters and paramedics arrived in a swirl of echoed voices and flashlights lit them from above, Lena leaned in close for a whisper.

  “My sister helped me find you.”

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I couldn’t have written this book without the relentless support of my family. Thank you to my parents, for always believing in me and being my two biggest fans.