Again, Cameron froze in hesitation, knowing that only seconds of safety remained, but another look up the hill decided things for her and she rushed back to her truck, started the engine, and raced towards higher ground.
Liquid death was coming and anyone caught in its path would drown.
***
Lydia stood between Tyler and the jail cells, as Tanner and Sara watched the drama play out in front of them, both wondering if they were about to be murdered.
“You can’t kill them, not here. Goddamnit, don’t you have enough heat on you?”
“That son of a bitch killed my brother.”
Lydia placed a hand on Tyler’s chest.
“I know, Tyler. I know how you feel, but you have to get out of here before the chief comes back. His cruiser is right up the road there at the liquor store and he’ll be back any second.”
“It don’t matter, they know too much, just like those kids. And what happened there, did you kill them and get the money back?”
“No, I was watching the girl’s house on 10th Street when Sherry called and told me what you were doing. But let me handle this, I’ll shoot them and tell the chief that they were trying to escape, but you can’t be here.”
“That won’t work now, not with the door all busted in.”
Lydia hadn’t considered that, but her nimble mind came up with a new plan.
“I hate to do it, but McCoy has to die.”
She walked over to the shelf, removed a lockbox from it and took out Sara’s gun.
“I’ll use this, that way, it’ll look like she shot him.”
“In the meantime...” Tyler said and pointed his gun at Tanner.
With absolutely nowhere to run or hide, Tanner stood staring back at Tyler and wondered if he was about to die.
Outside, the chief’s vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of Lydia’s vehicle and Lydia placed a hand on Tyler’s arm.
“Don’t shoot him yet, it’ll alert the chief and take away the element of surprise. Let him walk in first.”
But McCoy didn’t walk in; he sprinted in, oblivious of the broken door, the man holding the gun, Sara’s warning shout, and even the fact that his own deputy was pointing a weapon at him.
“The lake in Evansville crested; we have to get the prisoners out of—”
Lydia fired twice.
The bullets struck McCoy in the chest and his momentum carried him towards the cells, where he collapsed before Sara and rolled over onto his back.
He gazed up at Lydia, giving her the most puzzled expression she’d ever seen, and after exhaling loudly, he died.
“Oh my God,” Sara said, shaken by the ruthlessness of the violence, and it was not lost on her that, motives aside, Lydia’s shooting of McCoy was an echo of her own shooting of Jake Garner, her former partner. And after witnessing the act of betrayal being played out so starkly, she had to fight the urge to vomit.
However, Tanner was more interested in McCoy’s final words than the manner of his death, and unlike Sara, he didn’t see people as either “good” or “evil.”
People were people to Tanner, and any person anywhere was capable of all manner of things, be they benign or malignant. Lydia’s involvement with the robbers and her betrayal of her boss were just actions, choices she made for her own reasons.
What mattered now were McCoy’s actions. Why was the lawman in such an agitated state?
“The chief said the lake in Evansville crested. Why did that have him in such a panic?”
Lydia tore her eyes away from McCoy’s body to look at Tanner.
“Evansville? It’s a town just north of here, at the summit of the hills—oh shit.”
She grabbed Tyler by the arm and began pulling him towards the door.
“We have to go now! This whole area is about to flood.”
“What about them?”
“Leave them, they’ll drown.”
From their cells, Tanner and Sara saw Lydia and Tyler exit. After looking to her left, Lydia made a sound like a strangled scream while Tyler let out a loud curse, and then the two of them scrambled into the chief’s SUV, which he had left running at the curb.
Tanner heard it first; the rush of water, the sound of millions of gallons headed towards them. It was so loud that it even eclipsed the thunder that rumbled overhead.
Tanner looked down at McCoy’s body and dropped to his knees, to stretch his arm out in an attempt to grab the key ring dangling off the chief’s belt.
Sara realized what he was doing and she reached out and snagged the keys, which were closer to her than they were to Tanner, as McCoy’s corpse laid only a foot in front of her cell.
She laughed in triumph, but then realized that Tanner was also going for McCoy’s gun, and the two of them were struggling over it when a tree trunk exploded into the building.
It came in with such force and velocity that the old brick building shuddered from the impact and the front corner of the structure collapsed around it, letting in more water.
Tanner and Sara found themselves slammed against the back wall, as the force of the flow struck them and the shock of the cold water made them both convulse and breathe faster.
Tanner had won the battle for the chief’s gun, and stood to find the floodwaters past his waist and rising fast. When Sara straightened up holding the key, Tanner pointed the gun at her.
“Give me the key or die.”
Sara stared at him defiantly, as she worked the key into the lock on her cell door.
“You’re the one who’s going to die, Tanner, drowning in a jail cell like a trapped rat.”
“Let me out, Blake. If you don’t, you’ll never get the chance to torture me.”
Sara was shivering from the cold water, but she stilled her chattering teeth long enough to say five words.
“I can live with that.”
The power went out in the building and the sudden gloom temporarily blinded them, however, they could hear, and the sound of Sara’s cell door creaking open reached Tanner’s ears.
He aimed at the sound and fired three times, and then mentally chastised himself for not closing his eyes, to avoid the gun’s flash.
Still, his eyes readjusted rapidly to the diminished light, and he saw the dark shape of Sara’s form swimming away beneath the murky water.
Tanner fired several more times, then, he lost sight of her movements and wondered if any of his shots had hit home.
He studied the water while looking for tendrils of blood, but found none, save for the ones flowing from the chief’s fresh corpse, which floated face down upon the water’s surface.
Tanner waited, hoping that Sara’s bullet-riddled body would rise as well.
When Sara finally broke above the surface near the doorway, Tanner glimpsed only her right hand and saw that its middle finger was extended, telling him to go fuck himself.
His shots had missed her completely.
When Sara did come up for air outside the jail, Tanner glimpsed her through a window that had been smashed open by the flood, and he saw the smile lighting her face, before she swam off towards higher ground.
The gun had one round left and Tanner held it beneath the water and fired at the lock on the cell, risking a ricochet and gaining nothing, as the tough steel of the cell lock held fast.
With the water rising past his chest, Tanner looked about for a way to get free and saw only his future tomb.
CHAPTER 16 - New beginnings
Amy stood in the center of her living room, staring at her mother, who appeared not to have moved at all since she and Dean left for their shopping spree.
Dean had carried their bags upstairs to Amy’s bedroom and returned to find out why she hadn’t followed him.
“Why are you crying?”
Amy sniffled and pointed at her mother.
“That’s not my mom. She used to be, before the accident, but she didn’t just lose a foot and sight in her eye, she lost her soul too.”
“Ma
ybe you can talk her into going back to rehab again.”
“She wouldn’t go, and nothing I say or do matters to her anyway.”
Dean took Amy by the hand and led her up to her bedroom. Once there, he pushed aside the bags and lay beside her on the bed, his head propped up on one elbow and staring down into her face.
“I love you, Amy, and I hate to see you so sad.”
Amy kissed him and then stood and went through the bags until she found what she was looking for. It was a dress, nothing fancy, just a dress, but unlike everything else she owned, it wasn’t black, but a vibrant red.
“Do you like it? I thought I’d change my look.”
“No more black?”
“No, not even my hair, I plan on letting it go back to its mousy brown.”
“Why?”
Amy shrugged.
“I want to be me again.”
She draped the dress over a chair and lay back beside Dean.
“I want us to leave town and never come back... will you do it?”
“When, after my birthday?”
“No, today, I’ll pack up some things and we’ll hop on a bus with that money and never look back.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s not my mom. I don’t know who she is, but she’s not the woman who used to tuck me in and read to me, not since her accident. It’ll probably be weeks before she even notices I’m gone.”
“There’s still school, our friends, Matt, Lila, what do we tell them?”
“We’ll call them someday, but I want a new life. That money can buy us a whole new life, don’t you see that?”
Dean gazed into Amy’s eyes.
“We’ll do it, and I don’t care where we go as long as we go together.”
Amy smiled brighter than Dean could ever recall, and the two of them kissed, still unaware that they were the known targets of a gang of killers.
***
A hundred yards from the police station, Sara staggered out of the water, as she had gone high enough up the hill to escape the flood.
She turned and stared back at the building that housed the jail and saw that the water had risen within a foot of covering the roof. Fresh water was lapping at her feet, so she knew that the level was still rising.
“Goodbye Tanner.”
Footsteps splashed towards her, and Sara had just enough time to turn her head before the butt of a shotgun hit her just above the right ear, rendering her all but senseless.
***
Cameron Ryder glared down at Sara’s dazed form and believed that she was looking at the woman who killed her brother.
After cuffing Sara’s hands behind her back, Cameron left her lying in the street, while she retrieved her pickup.
She backed the vehicle beside Sara and then hoisted her into the rear seat, where she placed duct tape over her mouth and around her ankles. Sara didn’t resist, as she was still groggy.
Before driving away, Cameron looked back at the jail and saw that the water had nearly covered it completely.
That the woman had left her partner to drown didn’t surprise Cameron in the least, because she was a firm believer that all criminals were scum who were only out for themselves.
She hoped the man drowned and prayed that it be both painful and terrifying, but she knew that it would not equal a tenth of the agony she planned to put the woman through.
Cameron placed her truck in gear, eased off the clutch and rolled away, to find a nice secluded spot in which to find some justice.
The law be damned.
CHAPTER 17 - Sour puss
Tanner had been using the end of a spring taken from his cell’s cot to work on the door lock, when Chief McCoy’s wooden desk floated over and nearly crushed his hand.
The impact with the bars sent the desk drifting off in a different direction, but Tanner was quick enough to reach out and grab the underside of the center drawer.
The drawer opened, broke free of the sliding track it rode upon, and spilled its contents, which drifted down into the water to fall to the floor outside his cell.
Before he could grope at them and discover what treasures there might be, he had to rise up once more and refill his lungs.
When he reached the ceiling, he was disheartened to discover that only inches of space were left that contained air, which meant the building would soon be filled with water, eliminating his air supply.
Tanner floated on his back while sucking in the last of the air and then dived down to search the floor in front of the cell.
Visibility was almost nil, but the moment he passed his hands through the bars, they came upon the contents of the drawer.
A wet box of paper clips
A stapler
Something that felt like a ball of rubber bands
A fresh magazine for the gun
Tanner paused in his search after finding the full magazine, but realized that his odds of shooting the metal lock open weren’t good, even with multiple rounds, particularly underwater, still, he could try it as a last ditch effort.
With his hands groping again in the murky water, he came upon something round, thin, and made of metal. When he lifted it and felt the slight weight dangling from it, he knew it was a key ring.
It held four keys and only one of them was big enough to be a match for the lock on his cell door.
Tanner found the hole on the lock with the fingers of one hand and placed the key inside it with the other.
The key refused to turn at first, but Tanner gave it a twist in the opposite direction and felt the lock unlatch.
He swam from the cell, pushed his way out through the front door and surfaced, to gulp air into his lungs.
Up on the hill, groups of people appeared and were pointing down at the new lake in their town. Wanting to avoid them, Tanner swam to the side of the building, which was now a foot below the surface, and although it took longer to reach a higher elevation in that direction, when his feet touched upon muddy ground, he was alone in a wooded area.
He convulsed from the cold and was sick to death of being wet, but even if he had somehow miraculously emerged from the water dry, he would still have been soaked within seconds from the rain.
Through the trees, Tanner spotted the rear of several homes in the distance. He headed their way, hoping to find one where the owner was at work.
He needed to get dry, he needed warmth, and he needed to find Sara Blake and put her out of his misery.
But he also needed a car and he needed it soon, because there was a debt he had to repay. Despite his fatigue and discomfort, Tanner headed towards the homes at a jog and hoped that he wouldn’t be too late.
***
After narrowly escaping the flood at the station, Lydia drove the chief’s cruiser back to the farm, where she pulled up behind Sara’s vehicle.
“I guess the minivan is toast,” Tyler said.
“It’s underwater, just like the jail.”
Tyler pointed at Sara’s car.
“I’ll use that, it belonged to the woman.”
“That should be safe, but can you start it without the key, and what about the alarm?”
“Not a problem, Sherry found the woman’s purse where she dropped it in the living room... it was beneath Randall’s body.”
Lydia leaned over and kissed Tyler.
When it ended, he smiled at her.
“You’ve been wanting to do that for a while, haven’t you?”
“Yes, it’s why I began sleeping with Randall, because it gave me an excuse to be around you.”
“Sherry knew. She’s been saying that since the day you and Randall hooked up.”
“I liked Randall well enough, I’ll even miss him, but now that he’s gone, I wanted you to know how I feel.”
“I’m with Sherry, Lydia.”
“Why? Habit? The woman is a downer and a psycho. It’s because of her that the Feds are hot to catch you. If she hadn’t murdered that man, there wouldn’t be half the heat
there is.”
“Still, she and I have been together a long time.”
Lydia left her seat and straddled Tyler’s lap; after a deep kiss, she gazed into his eyes.
“Does Sherry kiss you like that?”
“Speak your mind.”
Lydia reached up and loosened her blond hair, which fell about her face and softened it.
“I’ll just say it. Let’s kill the bitch and keep the money. Or do you want to spend the rest of your life looking at her sour puss?”
Tyler shook his head.
“That’s a big step. Sherry and I, it’s all I’ve known for years.”
Lydia’s hands went to Tyler’s belt.
“It’s time for a change.”
Tyler reached beneath Lydia’s uniform blouse and undid her bra.
“You might be right at that.”
They went at each other inside the car as the rain drummed out a beat that drove their rhythm, and by the time they were done, the windows of the SUV were steamed solid, blocking out the world.
Lydia remained astride Tyler and nuzzled his neck.
“I’ll handle those kids, take back the money, and when I return you take care of Sherry.”
“Alright, but I want to make it painless. I don’t want her to suffer.”
“Neither do I. I don’t hate her; I just want her gone.”
Tyler got out of the cruiser. After throwing him a kiss, Lydia went off to find Dean and Amy, with the intent to end their young lives.
CHAPTER 18 - Won’t somebody please think of the children!
Sara regained her senses slowly and moaned in response to the pain that the blow from the shotgun had inflicted upon her.
Following that, she felt the ache in her shoulders and realized that her arms were cuffed together at the wrists, and were being raised above her head.
She was still wet from her escape, but the small structure she was in was dry and looked to be an old wooden building of some kind, possibly a large shed.
The building no longer had a door, and through the opening, Sara could see trees and the ever-present rain amid a dull light that resembled dusk, although night was hours away.
“Why did you kill him?”
The TANNER Series - Books 4-6 (Tanner Box Set Book 2) Page 6