Echoes (Book 1): Echoes

by Caplan, A. M.

  “Sister, you always did talk too much.” Asher’s hand whipped behind him before the words even left his mouth. Two shots sounded in quick succession.

  Hannah looked at Amara. She stood calmly, both of her hands on her gun, legs wide, smoke drifting upward from the muzzle. She’d fired so quickly Hannah hadn’t even seen her move, drawing the gun before Asher had even reached his.

  There was a groan, and Asher crashed to the ground in front of Hannah.

  “And you always were far, far slower than me.” Amara lowered her gun and walked coolly toward them as Asher rolled over, both of his legs shattered and useless, the flesh shredded over shin bones that were separated into wet red splinters.

  “He’s not bright, Hannah. I know he probably seems rather impressive at first, but you haven’t had much by way of comparison. I honestly can’t believe he even managed to find you.” She nudged her brother’s writhing form, then stepped on his shoulder to pin him down. “Did you think you could take me out, Ashy-boy? Just for that I’m going to keep shooting my way up until you’re just a big ugly head.”

  Hannah backed up a step, then two. Amara whipped her gun back up to stop her. “Not so fast, little girl. You stay right there while the grownups talk.”

  “Run, Hannah,” Asher gasped. She could see his hand trying to work its way under his back for his gun.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Hannah.” Amara turned back to Asher, moving her foot from his shoulder. “You are ridiculous, brother.” She pointed the weapon down and fired a shot into each of his shoulders. Hannah retched at the sight, his arms nearly severed by the bullets.

  Amara sighed. “Pathetic.” She put one more in his chest.

  Crack! Crack! Flowers of red bloomed on Amara’s shoulder and arm, and she flew backward. Hannah was shaking so hard she dropped the gun she’d just fired, fumbling to pick it up before she covered the steps to Asher.

  “What are you doing? Run!” Asher’s voice was gurgling, a bloody bubble erupting from his lips. It was like that first night all over again, the beautiful face covered with blood, color draining from the skin. “I will find you. Run . . .”

  He didn’t finish, but Hannah knew he was right; she needed to go. His head rolled off toward where his sister lay. Or where she had been lying. Now there was only blood on the snow. Amara was gone.

  Hannah looked back at Asher. He had gone silent but was still there, somehow hanging on to life by a thread. She turned and ran.

  Trying to keep the gun in front of her, scanning side to side, she retraced the path toward the road. She was shaking so badly she stumbled, going down hard, knees painfully ramming into the ground. Rolling over on her side, pushing herself back up, Hannah looked behind her desperately, waiting for Amara to come crashing through the branches after her. When no one appeared, Hannah pulled herself to her feet and kept moving. If only Amara was injured badly enough, or would just go ahead and die, then maybe Hannah could stay ahead of her and make it to the car.

  She thought she heard something. Stopping abruptly, Hannah threw herself down again and listened, waiting for the sound of pursuit. She didn’t hear anything, but she knew how stealthy Asher had been; she had to assume Amara was at least as silent. She wished Amara was dead silent, from the bullets Hannah had managed to put in her, but she wasn’t foolish enough to bet her life on it, without knowing for sure. There had been blood on the snow where Amara had fallen, and that meant she had gotten up off the ground. There was a good chance she was out there somewhere.

  Trying to be quiet, Hannah started again, then quickly stumbled over a hidden branch and did a full somersault, crashing against a tree. Cursing, she staggered to her feet. The gun had flown out of her hand, and she scrabbled around in the snow, trying to find it. Where the hell was the gun?

  An unbearable searing pain ripped through her right arm just as she closed her hand around the gun, the bullet catching her a split second before she heard the report. Almost instantly her entire side was slick with blood. Forcing herself to her feet, Hannah lunged forward and scrambled up the last bit of trail, over the ditch and up the embankment to the car. She almost made it.

  “Oh. Very nice try. Almost, but not quite.”

  Hannah spun around, pointing the gun one-handed at Amara, who was standing in front of her in the middle of the snowy road, her weapon raised. Her jacket was shredded from the entry of the two shots Hannah had fired, the shirt underneath slick and pasted to her body with blood. It was running down through her pants and off her boot into the snow, traceable backward in a trail of red and pink footprints into the woods. Despite her wounds, Amara stood upright, cooly evaluating Hannah.

  “Now I know I’m supposed to deliver you alive, but alive is a pretty broad term, and I’m beginning to care less and less about what condition you’re in when you get there. Too bad my idiot brother didn’t make it. I’d rather give him the pleasure of watching you squirm a little. Oh well, he’ll be back again soon enough. I have nothing but time.” She smiled. “Unlike you.”

  Hannah pulled the trigger again, but the shot disappeared into the air. She struggled to level the gun for another shot. Amara didn’t even flinch.

  “Dumb luck the first time around, just as I thought.” She leveled her gun at Hannah. “My turn. I think I’ll shoot your feet off, one at a time, just to see how far you can get. I’m sure I can find something to cauterize the stumps with before you bleed to death. Maybe your house.”

  She lowered the weapon toward Hannah’s feet and her finger twitched on the trigger. Amara took one more step forward and smiled an evil smile. Then her head exploded into a fine, red mist.

  Hannah looked in the direction the bullet she hadn’t fired had come from, then back to where Amara had been standing. She was gone; there wasn’t a drop of blood or a shred of clothing, just a trail of footprints in the snow that stopped abruptly in the middle of the road.

  Taking a step back toward the woods, Hannah started to open her mouth and call out to Asher, but she froze. Asher was dead or near to it. There was no way he could have made it from where he had fallen and fired that shot. And the way Amara’s head had disappeared, it hadn’t been done with the handgun Asher was carrying. That meant there was someone else out there with them in the woods, someone with a very big gun.

  Maybe the sheriff or his deputy hadn’t really been dead. Maybe someone had heard all the commotion and come to her aid. Whomever it was, Hannah was grateful for the favor. But she didn’t intend to wait around to thank them. Hannah held her tongue and stepped backwards, then turned toward the car. Because there was also a chance the shooter had been someone with the same intentions as Amara. Dazed, dizzy, and bleeding, Hannah threw herself into the car and tore away, swerving, down the empty, snowy road.

  21

  Hannah was positive not a single person that made an action movie had ever really been shot, because they had it all wrong. On film a person takes a bullet and still manages to not only avoid bleeding to death, but continues to barrel around like nothing happened, all without crying or puking or fainting. She was alternating between all three, the pain in her arm like nothing she’d ever experienced—and she’d fallen off a bridge a few days ago. And you thought that was as bad as it could get. Hannah laughed at herself a little crazily, then shook her head, fighting to stay conscious, her one working hand white-knuckled on the wheel. She was trying to put as many miles as she could between herself and the town before she couldn’t go any farther.

  That, it turned out, was not nearly as many miles as she’d hoped. Her vision went fuzzy, and Hannah drifted away for a second, veering into oncoming traffic. She jerked the wheel and swerved back into her own lane just in time to avoid a dump truck. While the angry blast of the horn faded away she gave up and pulled over to the side of the road. It was a terrible place to have to stop, exposed and visible to every passing car, but she didn’t have much choice.

  She hadn’t yet looked at her arm where the bullet had struck, and she didn’t
want to. It felt like a red hot poker was being plunged into her arm every time her heart beat. After she did look, she didn’t feel any better.

  From what she could tell—which wasn’t a great deal because her eyes swam with black spots whenever she turned her head—the bullet had just managed to catch her on the top side of the arm. It hadn’t gone deep enough to strike bone, but it had been too shallow to pass through cleanly either, instead biting off a great chunk of flesh. She toed off her boot and pulled off one of her long knit socks, wrapping it around her upper arm and tying it semi-securely with the help of her teeth. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes, breathing against the pain.

  The SUV rocked in the wind every time a truck blew by, reminding her how visible she was here on the road. Keeping her eyes laser-focused on the lines, Hannah pulled carefully back into the traffic. She couldn’t keep going forever, but she needed to keep it together just a little bit longer. Hannah had an idea of where she could stop for a while.

  The familiar road sign made her sigh with relief and she exited carefully. Finding a place in the farthest corner of the busy Walmart parking lot, she locked the doors and passed out.

  It was the freezing cold that woke her instead of the pain. Confused and disoriented, Hannah jerked upright, smacking her head against the glass next to her face. The car window was opaque where her breath had created a skin of ice on the glass.

  Her entire body felt numb and locked in ice, the way it had felt when she’d woken up after being in the river. Except for her arm. The pain might not be what had woken her, but it still there and returning with a vengeance, her arm throbbing and refusing to move. A viscous trail had flowed down her sleeve and made a slushy puddle like a cherry icee in the space between the seat and door. At least the bleeding had stopped. Closing her eyes, Hannah rejoiced that she had woken up at all.

  She reached forward to start the car. It took her a couple fumbling numb-fingered tries before it purred to life.

  “…one tonight with a low of twenty-two. Current road conditions are looking good, though if you are traveling on back roads, keep in mind crews are still working on digging out from that last snowfall. Expect a delay unrelated to the weather if you’re going to be traveling in the vicinity of Milltown on fourteen or any of the surrounding roads. We have reports coming in about a dwelling fire resulting in multiple fatalities. Police have the roads…”

  Slapping at the dials, Hannah finally got the radio to turn off. It seemed to take forever for the heat from the vent to feel warm against her good hand, and even longer for it to penetrate her skin. As the frozenness inside her began to thaw out, tears did too, starting with a trickle, then streaming down her face. She thought about the sheriff, Sheila, the deputy, and god knew how many other innocent people who just happened to be in the way. She pictured their bodies scattered across her yard, mowed down in a ring around the charred remains of her house. All dead, all for nothing.

  Wiping them away, Hannah thought about the why. It bothered her as she replayed the events in her mind. She and Asher had been wrong, it seemed—not about who was after them, but about her motivation. This was more than Asher’s sister tormenting him. There was another reason, and if Amara was telling the truth, she wanted Hannah alive, and for someone else. Hannah was someone else’s target. That made less sense than anything. She was just a random unwitting piece in Amara’s sick never-ending game with Asher, wasn’t she?

  And where are you now, Asher? How much time had he spent lying on the snow, clinging to life and suffering before melting away? Chances were he hadn’t lasted much longer. She hoped not, then thought how strange to sit there hoping someone died quickly, in the midst of all this death. But for him it would mean he was alive, healed and perfect. I know you’re out there. At least there’s that. But where?

  He’d said he would find her, but if he was smart he would go far away. What was the point anyway? She might not survive the gunshot, let alone successfully evade Amara much longer. She wanted Asher to escape. She wanted Asher to find her. She wanted a handful of pain medication and a warm bed. She didn’t know what she wanted.

  Everything you need is in the car. That was what he’d said. It’d better be, because Hannah had nothing left—no home, no wallet, no phone, no ID. If she was going to have any chance at all, she needed to get patched up, get over the weepy self-pity, and get on the road and disappear.

  The sound of her blood-soaked coat sleeve peeling off the leather seat was almost as nauseating as the pain that came after it. She looked around, hoping the loud cursing that accompanied it hadn’t drawn any attention. There was hardly anyone around, only a few late-night shoppers far across the parking lot.

  Giving herself a moment to recover, she quietly opened the door and stepped out into the freezing air, then slipped into the back seat. She was quickly disappointed. There was nothing there, not in the seat pockets or on the floor. Again she got out of the car, this time opening the hatch to find a spotless empty space. Feeling around with her good hand, she found the tiny loop she had hoped for and lifted up the flap to the compartment that held the spare tire. There was a black bag, in the space next to the jack and a triangular emergency roadside kit jammed underneath it. She grabbed them both and gratefully locked herself back into the warm front seat.

  It took a minute for the dots in front of her eyes to fade, but as soon as she could see straight she tore through the bags. The emergency roadside kit came first out of necessity. She could feel blood beginning to trickle down her arm again, warmer than her skin and making its way toward her hand.

  There was a surprisingly large number of items packaged like a puzzle inside the hazard triangle, most of which were of no use to her right now. Setting the pair of canvas gloves sealed in plastic and the roll of duct tape aside, she tossed everything else into the back seat.

  Getting out of her clothing was slow and agonizing. Her coat and the sweater underneath it had dried to her skin, and pulling them off felt like being shot all over again. She pressed the folded gloves over the raw wound, hoping whatever they were made of was at least remotely sterile, then wrapped the duct tape around her arm several times to hold the gloves in place. She tore the tape with her teeth and tucked the edge under her arm.

  Time for the backpack. The zippered front pocket held a phone charger, a pen, and a small flashlight. Zipping them back up, she opened the main compartment where she found a change of men’s clothes, a small leather toiletry bag, and a black jacket of windbreaker weight. There wasn’t anything else in the main compartment, but the bag was obviously heavier than it should be, and Hannah ran her fingers around the bottom until she found a small recessed zipper.

  First she pulled out a small, thick envelope. Inside was a stack of passports, US, British, Canadian, French, Israeli, followed by driver’s licenses from states across the country. All had pictures of Asher with different names. Interesting, but absolutely useless. Next was a brick-shaped package wrapped in black plastic, taped tightly. She slit the side open with her nail and sighed with relief; a brick of cash, all big bills, all US dollars. Thank you Asher. Finally she pulled out a stack of credit cards. Hannah turned the inch-thick bundle of plastic over in her hand. She took off the rubber band and thumbed through them.

  She almost missed it. One felt thinner than the others, and when she flipped it over she found a business card, the cheap glossy kind you design online and have shipped to yourself five hundred at a time. The edges were rounded at the corners, trimmed to match the shape of the credit cards. One side was blank, shiny black, the other with generic clip art of a bar, mirrored and lined with bottles. The white type was difficult to decipher, but she eventually made out “The Next Whiskey Bar” 12 Main Street, Falder, Alabama.

  That was all.

  She was still a bloody, woozy mess, but she covered it up the best that she could, changing into Asher’s clothes, the rolled-up pants mostly covering her bloody boot, black jacket with the hood up on top of her mangled co
at. Pushing the cart through Walmart, she kept her head down, picking up what she needed most desperately as quickly as she could. She tossed a tube of antibiotic cream on top of the mountain of first aid supplies. Under all the gauze and bandages were cheap slip-on shoes, a change of clothes, and whatever food had been on the end caps of the aisles.

  “Are you okay, dear?”

  Hannah jumped, backing into an aisle and sending an avalanche of cereal boxes to the floor. The speaker was a stranger, a bundled-up middle-aged lady pushing an overloaded cart full of food. She wasn’t looking at Hannah, but down on the floor. There was a snail trail of blood dribbling from the sleeve of her coat. Hannah traced it back around the end of the aisle and out of sight.

  “Goodness. That doesn’t look good. Let me call—”

  “It’s nothing. I must of…” Hannah didn’t bother to finish fake explaining. She darted away, plowing her cart through the scattering of boxes, and tucked the end of her sleeve up to stop the blood.

  Checking behind her, thankful the woman’s concern hadn’t gone far enough to make her follow, Hannah threw in an armful of bottled waters and energy drinks from the cooler and awkwardly used the self-checkout, paying with a crisp hundred dollar bill from the stack. By the time she made it across the parking lot to the car she was shaking and light-headed from the blood loss.