“Call me. I’ve got news,” said Lily’s voice.
Dru’s eyes jerked to Shea’s.
Shea tapped the screen again and put her phone to her ear.
The call went through as Dru crossed a quiet intersection. After going a few hundred yards farther, she turned left onto the narrow asphalt lane that wound through her subdivision, and while it did register in some part of her brain that the light-colored pickup that had been behind her for several miles turned, too, it was only on a subliminal level. She was listening to Shea, the message she was leaving for Lily.
“I wonder what she wanted. She sounded upbeat—maybe.” Shea held her phone in her lap. “I’m not getting my hopes up,” she added, as if she had heard the warning in Dru’s mind.
Dru glanced in the rearview at the pickup truck. It was closer now, too close. Close enough for her to see the driver clearly, to see that he—or a woman with very broad shoulders—was wearing a ball cap pulled low. “Sorry, buddy, I’m not going any faster.”
The truck sped up, coming within inches of Dru’s bumper. “What is he doing?”
“Who?” Shea twisted, looking through the back window.
The truck accelerated again, this time tapping the Toyota’s bumper.
“Holy shit, Mom! He hit us.” Shea’s eyes were round with alarm.
Dru punched the gas pedal, shooting the Camry forward.
The truck—she didn’t recognize the model, only that it was light colored and huge—kept pace, and when it struck the Toyota again, Dru knew it was no accident.
“He’s wrecking my car!” Shea cried.
Dru stomped on the gas pedal again, swerving a bit, fighting the urge to overcorrect, somehow remembering advice Rob had given her long ago.
Shea flattened her palm against the dashboard, gaze careening from the scene behind them to Dru to the windshield. “What is wrong with him?” Alarm shot her voice high. “Did you piss him off?”
“I don’t see how. I didn’t cut him off or turn in front of him.” Dru wanted to tell Shea to tighten her seat belt, to assume the crash position. But she couldn’t form the words. Ahead, the road looped into a near U shape before it straightened, and she stiffened in anticipation, praying she could safely navigate the deep curve at this speed. The truck kept pace. There couldn’t be a cat whisker’s width between them. If she could make it home—but what would she do there? She and Shea would be trapped. Dru glanced at her purse. She had the .38. She felt a momentary relief, stinging and cold, that vanished in the wake of her mind’s observation that this maniac, whoever it was, could also be armed.
And then the truck slammed into them hard enough that her head recoiled.
Shea yelled, “Oh my God, Mama! He’s going to kill us!”
“No, he’s not.” Dru was furious now. She slammed on her brakes, tires shrieking, Toyota skidding, mind on her gun, focused on the thought that once they stopped, she’d shoot him. Before he had a chance to get at them, she would blow out his fucking brains where he sat.
As if he could read her mind, he pulled alongside her, crushing the heavier weight of his truck against the smaller car, pushing it off the road. The noise, metal grinding on metal, the higher squeal of tires, was horrifying, deafening. Dru held the steering wheel, stiff-armed, both feet pushing down on the brake pedal as if by the sheer force of her will she could keep her car upright and on the road. The thought roared into her brain that if the Toyota turned over, Shea would take the brunt of the impact.
But she wasn’t safe, either. She could feel the heat from the truck, feel the force of it crushing her door. The Camry was off the road now, skidding along the shallow ditch, sliding into a neighbor’s yard, metal screaming. She jerked her gaze to the truck’s driver. It must be a man. But who? Who would do this? He was staring at her, but his hat was low over his eyes, his face in shadow. She had no clue as to his identity. The sedan rocked on its axles. Dru reached for Shea, finding her hand, closing her eyes—and it stopped—the noise, the motion—so suddenly, it was a moment before Dru realized it. Opening her eyes, she saw that Shea was holding the gun, extending the .38, in her trembling grasp, looking past Dru out the driver’s-side window.
“He’s leaving,” Shea said. “Should I shoot him?”
“What?” Dru whipped her gaze to the window and saw that Shea was right. The truck was backing off, reversing, fast, on the grassy verge, dislodging chunks of dirt, sod, and gravel as it navigated back onto the road. Then it was gone, in a heated rage of screeching tires. Dru could have sworn when it headed into the deep curve, it was balanced on only two of them.
She looked back at Shea. “Let me have it,” she said, gently, taking the .38. “Hand me my phone. I’m calling the police.”
But before either she or Dru could act, Shea’s phone went off, and she answered it, saying it was Lily.
Their conversation was clipped, frantic, and lasted less than a minute, but Dru knew by the time Shea clicked off, before she spoke a word, that everything had changed.
17
The stench was of blood and putrefying flesh mixed with sweat. It made Lily’s stomach roll, and she clenched her teeth, crawling toward the body in the far corner of the fort. The body she thought was AJ’s was on its back, lying so still. Too still. Pleasepleaseplease . . . the word was a prayer, as much a demand as it was a plea.
When she was close enough and saw that it was her son, a sound escaped her, something between a cry and a groan. She took his hand. “AJ?”
“Is he alive?” Her dad, having come up the ladder at her shouted command, stood in the fort’s doorway, his face grim.
“Yes, barely. We need an ambulance.”
“I called already. I told them to go around to the old service gate.”
Lily nodded, watching AJ struggle for breath. His pulse was rapid, his skin clammy to her touch. Incongruously, his chest was bare, and what looked like a very bloody shirt was wrapped around his right thigh. He was shoeless, and his right ankle was swollen and discolored, angry shades of blue and red.
“I’ll ride Sharkey out to meet the EMTs and guide them in. Can you tell what happened?” Her dad knelt on AJ’s other side. If he was affected by what he saw, he gave little sign of it.
“Something under that shirt has bled pretty badly,” Lily said.
“Gunshot, maybe,” her dad said. “Looks like his ankle’s broken or sprained. Hard to tell.”
“Mom?”
“I’m here, honey. So is Granddad.”
“We’ve got help, coming, son.”
“Good,” AJ said, and he grinned—grinned!—“’cause lying here on this floor is starting to give me a backache.”
“Oh, AJ.” Laughter that felt awfully close to hysteria bumped Lily’s ribs, and she clamped down on it.
“What happened?” her dad asked.
“Maybe he shouldn’t talk,” Lily said.
“I think I got the bleeding stopped,” AJ said. “It’s my ankle that’s killing me. I tried getting out of here a while ago—don’t know when. I lost track. I fell off the damn ladder, though. Can you believe it?”
“But what about here?” Lily’s hand hovered over AJ’s thigh.
“Gunshot. Bled a lot. Got my shirt off—”
“You made a tourniquet,” Lily’s dad finished.
“Yeah. Once a marine, always a marine.”
“Semper fi,” her dad said, and AJ smiled, eyes closed.
Lily’s glance collided with her dad’s.
“He’s tough, our boy. He did good.”
She nodded, knowing he was trying to reassure her, to reassure them all.
“I better get going.” He got to his feet. “Hang in there, champ. Take care of your mama. You know how she gets.”
“Yeah,” AJ murmured.
Lily still held his hand and felt the pressure when he tightened his grasp. “Go on,” she told her dad. “We’ll be fine.”
AJ asked for a drink. “I got some rainwater in a cup.” Lily found
it and held it to his lips. Afterward, he lay back, keeping his eyes closed. He felt cooler to Lily’s touch than before, and his color had gone from chalky white to gray. His lips were blue. She recognized the symptoms of shock and knew his feet ought to be elevated, but she was afraid to move him, afraid it would start the blood flowing from the gunshot wound again. Where was the ambulance?
“After I fell off the ladder,” AJ said, “the coyotes came. I think. Unless I dreamed . . .”
“Just rest.” Lily smoothed his hair from his brow. How long had he been lying here? Since Becca was killed? Two and a half days?
“Shea?” he asked, and his eyelids fluttered; he shifted as if he might sit up.
“She’s fine. Lie still.”
“I know she’s scared . . . everybody scared . . . worried. Sorry for that . . .”
“It’s fine, honey. Just rest,” Lily repeated. What happened? Who did this to you? How did you get here? She was desperate to ask, but no more desperate than to hear the sound of her dad returning with the ambulance.
When it finally came, she worried how the paramedics would get AJ down from the fort, but she needn’t have. They’d come equipped with nylon ropes and a lightweight rescue basket. She waited with her dad near the open doors of the ambulance, watching as they lowered AJ as gently as possible to the ground. He was unconscious for the most part and only groaned when they transferred him from the basket to the gurney inside the ambulance.
“Is he going to be all right?” Lily asked one of the paramedics, the only woman among the crew of three. Jeannette, her name tag read.
“He’s getting oxygen now, and we started an IV, saline. We’re giving him morphine for the pain. He’s shocky, so we’ll be watching his vitals.” Jeannette rattled off the information. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Looks like the bullet missed his femoral, though, and that’s a good thing.”
The three of them turned to look when a Wyatt police patrol car bumped toward them, across the meadow. Clint Mackie was driving. Lily’s heart sank.
“I’ll handle him,” her dad said, but Mackie avoided them, going to another of the paramedics, an older guy. The way the two men greeted each other, Lily thought they must be friends. Maybe Clint Mackie was a better friend to the paramedic than he was to her dad.
“Captain Mackie is probably asking for a rundown of your son’s injuries. It would be routine, given the circumstances.” Jeanette spoke gently.
Lily wondered how much she knew about the circumstances. What if she, or the other medical personnel—doctors, nurses—believed AJ was a criminal, a murderer? Would they still treat him? “Could I ride in the ambulance with AJ?” she asked Jeanette.
The paramedic shook her head. “It’s against policy,” she said.
Who knew if that was true?
Moments after the ambulance left, Mackie appeared at Lily’s elbow. “You want to ride with me, I’ll run you to the hospital.”
Lily looked at her dad, unsure if she wanted to ride with the police captain.
“Go on,” her dad said. “I’ll take the horses back and be along in two shakes.”
“I’m not answering any questions.” Lily addressed the captain. “I don’t know anything. AJ was barely conscious.”
“That’s fine.” Captain Mackie opened the front passenger door of the squad car for Lily. “I’ll be questioning him myself as soon as he comes around. I expect a couple of detectives from Dallas will be down here pretty quick to question him, too.”
Lily called Paul from the hospital, and he was headed to his car before they hung up.
“I should be there by seven,” he said. “Call me if anything changes.”
Lily said she would.
“God, it’s a miracle, isn’t it?” There was the sound of the car door slamming, the garage door going up. “I was scared we’d never find him.”
“I know,” Lily said.
“Tell him not to go anywhere, okay?” Paul’s voice was thick with emotion, but Lily heard the smile in it.
She smiled, too, as if he could see her. “I’ll tell him,” she said.
Unlike Paul, Shea went completely silent when Lily called to say AJ had been found. Lily had to prompt her. “Shea? Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m just—I didn’t give up hope, you know, but—” She broke off, and Lily sensed she was fighting for composure, steeling herself. “Is he all right?”
“He’s been shot, Shea, but he’s receiving treatment right now.” Lily spoke quickly, relating the rest of what she knew. “His ankle is injured, too. Dad and I found him at the old fort. He tried getting down the ladder and fell.”
“But he’s going to be okay, right? Please—”
“He’s lost a lot of blood, he’s dehydrated, and he’s in shock, but he was able to talk to me—”
Shea interrupted. “Who shot him? Was it Harlan?”
Lily said she didn’t know.
“We were on our way there the other day we came to search, your dad and me and Erik. If only we’d—but how did he get there? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.” Lily had been thinking about it, all the ways nothing added up. “It’s for sure it wasn’t under his own power,” she said.
“At least now the police will know he wasn’t anywhere near Cedar Ridge Canyon this morning. Someone is trying to frame him.”
“But who? Harlan?”
Shea didn’t answer. Lily heard voices, people talking in the background, wherever she was. “Shea?” she prompted.
“Mom and I had a bit of trouble a while ago. Someone—a guy in a pickup ran us off the road.”
“What?” Lily stopped her pacing in front of the entrance to the ER.
“Mom thinks someone followed us from Kate’s house. We’d gone there to—to pay our respects, and he followed us from there. We don’t know who it was. He was wearing a hat pulled low, so we couldn’t see his face. He kept inching up on us, and when we turned in to our subdivision, he rear-ended us, then he came up alongside and broadsided us. Mom was driving my car, my Camry, and he pushed it right off the road. It was scary.”
“You called the police?”
“Yes, Ken Carter is here.”
“Shea, did you know that a few days before Becca was killed, she and Kate were involved in a traffic altercation, and a man threatened them?”
“Here? In Wyatt?”
“No, in Dallas. But the man drove a pickup. He ran them off the road.”
“Are you kidding?” Asking Lily to hold on, Shea repeated what Lily had told her to Dru.
In the rumble of conversation, Lily recognized the lower timbre of a man’s voice. Ken Carter, she thought, the officer who was there; he was listening, too.
A moment later Shea was back. “You won’t believe this, but Sergeant Carter is saying he saw a report about it.” She sounded incredulous, alarmed and angry all at once. Lily had the sense she was struggling to hold on to her temper. “I told him AJ’s at Wyatt Regional, and he knew that, too. He knew and never said a word to me. I don’t think any of these cops have a clue what’s going on.”
“No, I agree, but Shea, none of us does. Be careful, okay?” Lily cautioned. “Whoever is behind this, they’re still out there.”
She was alone in the ER waiting room across from triage when the doctor, Kelvin Dermott, found her a bit later.
Lily stood up, feeling a wave of relief. “I was hoping you were here,” she said. “You’re taking care of AJ? How is he?”
Kelvin took her hands, looking grave. They were friends, having gone through public school together. “I’m not going to lie,” he said. “AJ is not in great shape. He’s on his way to surgery now to remove the bullet and repair the damage. Jim Matthews is operating. Do you know him?”
Lily shook her head.
“He’s a good man—”
“Kelvin?”
Lily glanced over her shoulder at her dad as he joined them.
The men shook hands. Kelvin repeated what he’d told
Lily. Her dad asked about AJ’s ankle.
“It’s badly sprained, but it should heal fine,” Kelvin said. “The leg wound, too, should be all right, barring complications.”
“Thank God,” Lily said.
“It’s a good thing you found him when you did,” Kelvin said. “Given the blood loss, the risk of infection—he’s not out of the woods, but if he’d been left out there any longer, his chances would be much worse. Or if the shooter’s aim had been any better, if they’d hit the femoral—”
“Yeah. Well, maybe they missed on purpose.”
“What do you mean, Dad?”
“When it comes to shooting someone—another human being—you can lose your nerve. The situation—the way this looks with AJ—I don’t know.” He thought about it. “It just seems off somehow.”
“Clint is sure hot to question him,” Kelvin said.
“Can you keep him from it?” Lily asked.
“I already told him there wasn’t going to be an interrogation without clearance from me or one of the other attendings, and he told me that along with him, I can expect to get pressure from the Dallas PD. They’ve got a couple of detectives on the way.”
“Paul is on his way from there, too,” Lily said.
“What about Shea and her mom? You called them?” her dad asked.
Before she could answer, Kelvin excused himself, saying he’d keep them advised.
Lily followed Kelvin’s progress until he disappeared, then, turning to her dad, she explained what Shea had told her about the incident with the pickup truck. “It’s like what happened to Becca and Kate,” she said.
“Yeah. Too damn similar to be a coincidence. Shea and her mom are lucky.” Her dad wiped his hand over his head. “I guess the one good thing is no one can pin it on AJ.”
Lily’s relief felt oddly deflating.
Her dad wrapped her in his embrace. “We found him, Sissy,” he said. “We got to him in time. That’s all that matters, all that matters right now.”
18
Can you tell me about AJ Isley?” Shea had asked the same question of two other nurses, one in the emergency room and another on the surgical floor, without success.
The Truth We Bury: A Novel Page 20