by Sam Sisavath
For about twenty meters or so, anyway, before its rear lights glowed a stronger red as the driver stepped on the brakes and the vehicle stopped suddenly in the middle of the road.
Allie stopped, too.
She was fifty meters back but close enough to know that the driver could see her. It would be hard to miss the beams of her vehicle’s headlights, but there was nothing Allie could do about that. Her only choice to hide her presence was to shut down her engine, and that would have been just as suspicious if not more so.
So Allie did nothing and watched the Audi as it stalled in the suburban street in front of her. The houses over here were just as quiet and asleep as the two blocks or so they’d driven past. If anyone had heard or noticed the blue trash bin flying across the lawn, they hadn’t come out to investigate.
All the possibilities of how this could go wrong—how this had already gone so, so much more wrong—rushed through her head in the next few seconds.
What if that was Sarah Marshall inside the car, and she was injured? What if she needed help and Allie was just sitting here watching, doing nothing? What if the woman was bleeding out right now?
Then again, what if that was Tom Marshall and he was just drunk? Or asleep at the wheel? How was she going to explain walking up to his vehicle?
What if, what if…
Too many what ifs. That was the problem. That was the damn problem about tonight.
Allie slowly applied pressure on her gas pedal. She eased the Ford up the street, expecting the Audi to instantly jump back to life and take off. Except it did no such thing. It stayed where it was and had been for the last minute or so, its rear lights staring brightly back at her.
Ten meters closer, and the much more expensive automobile remained dead in the street.
Twenty meters…
Forty…
Allie stopped the Ford behind the Audi and stepped out of her vehicle. She wished she’d brought a flashlight with her, but all she had were her keys, which she had left in her steering wheel. It was a good thing her eyes had adjusted to the darkness after sitting in the dark for all this time, because it allowed Allie to see her surroundings. The well-maintained streetlights didn’t hurt.
The Audi hadn’t moved an inch in any direction. The engine was idling quietly—absurdly quiet, especially against the much louder Ford—and its windows were still up. Unfortunately, both the driver-side and rear passenger windows were tinted—the back more so than the front—and at night they might as well be pitch-black.
Allie approached the vehicle cautiously, still expecting it to leap forward and vanish up the street on her at any second. Or, worst-case scenario, the driver opened the door—or powered down his window—and shot her dead in the street.
Okay, so the latter was probably not very plausible.
Then again…
What if. What if…
As she neared the driver-side door, Allie tried to get a glimpse inside the vehicle. Tried, without any luck. Even with the streetlights—one very bright bulb just a few feet away—she couldn’t see a damn thing except the silhouette of the driver on the other side. That, unfortunately, didn’t offer up any hints as to the other person’s sex, never mind identity.
Allie stopped next to the door and waited, hands at her sides. She would have liked to keep them in her pockets for warmth, but that might be too suspicious.
“It’s not my fault, Officer; she had her hands in her pockets. I was scared for my life, so I fired first!”
She glanced around at the darkened streets. Out here, at this time of night, anything could happen. That included getting shot by a violent husband out for a drive. For all Allie knew, the man might have already killed his wife and was trying to make his getaway when she had the bad luck to intercept—
Click! as the door opened and a body fell out, landing with a painful-sounding thump against the hard asphalt road.
Allie took a quick step back and stared.
It was a woman—the same one from Don’t Stop In—and she lay crumpled in the street, thick, wet blood covering one entire side of her face.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Allie wasn’t sure what she was feeling at the moment: Validation that tonight hadn’t been a wild goose chase after all, or dread that everything was going exactly as she had feared?
She knew one thing for certain, though: She should have gone on that cruise with Lucy like the teenager had wanted. Right about now, walking around on a big boat with a bunch of middle-aged retirees and raucous kids sounded extremely appealing.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda…
Five
A half-dead woman in the middle of a suburban street at midnight. Or past midnight. Not that the exact time really mattered, because when someone looked out their window—and there were so, so many windows out there—and saw her standing over the lifeless and bloodied body of Sarah Marshall, that was going to be all they remembered.
“Yes, Officer, that’s the woman I saw! She’s the reason Sarah Marshall is dead right now!”
Maybe the witness wouldn’t add the second part, but the first was a dead certainty. (“Dead?” Nice choice of words.) And it wasn’t like Allie could blame them; after all, she was standing over Sarah Marshall, who lay on the asphalt unmoving—
Or not, Allie thought even as she took one more, then a second reflexive step away from the body.
Sarah Marshall stirred on the ground and opened her eyes, staring up at Allie. Soft brown eyes blinked, the right one peering out from underneath a fresh coating of blood that clung to her eyelid.
“Help me,” the woman whispered.
She crouched next to the blonde and helped her to sit up on the street, leaning her limp body against the still-idling Audi. Sarah’s entire frame was warm underneath the white coat she was wearing. The color made it easier to make out the splatters of blood that dripped down from the right side of her face. Allie couldn’t tell where all the bleeding was coming from; she’d need to get a closer look. A flashlight wouldn’t hurt, either.
“Sarah?” Allie asked. “Are you Sarah? Sarah Marshall?”
The woman continued staring back at her, eyes blinking. Then, something that looked like recognition flashed across the pale part of her face that wasn’t covered in blood. “You. From the bar…”
Allie nodded. “Yes.”
“You…came looking for me?” Sarah asked with a look that almost screamed “I can’t believe you actually came looking for me!”
Allie wanted to laugh and reply with “Yeah, I can’t believe I actually came looking for you, too.”
She said instead, “Of course I did.”
“I didn’t think…”
“What?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“But you left the note for me? Under my beer coaster?”
“Yes.”
There it was. The confirmation she’d been searching—hoping—for.
There it was…and she had no idea how she felt about it. A part of her wished those flimsy pieces of toilet paper had been meant for Stan. Or better yet, Pete. The handsome bartender could have done a lot more for this woman than Allie could. She was a stranger to this part of the world. Pete might have been a newcomer, too, but he was still more native than she was ever going to be.
And Stan… Well, maybe it was better that she got the note instead of the barfly. Chances were good Stan would have either missed the scream for help entirely or failed to heed it. If he could even make out the words through his beer goggles.
Sarah had reached up and was touching the blood-covered side of her face. She brought her hand back and stared at the dark red on her palm. “I’m bleeding. Why am I bleeding?”
“You didn’t know?” Allie asked.
“I was in a hurry…”
“From the house.”
“Yes…”
“What happened at the house? Why were you running away?”
Sarah didn’t answer. A
llie couldn’t even be sure if the other woman had even heard the question as she wiped her palm on her coat. Watching her do that, Allie couldn’t help but think, I wonder how much it’s going to cost to get all that blood off? Because everything about Sarah screamed money, from her clothes to her car, to, yes, even her currently disheveled appearance. Those eyelashes and painted nails didn’t come cheap, and neither did the highlights in her hair.
Looking at the other woman up close, Allie didn’t have any trouble imagining a younger Sarah captaining the high school cheerleader squad, winning beauty pageants, and making teenage boys’ hearts flutter whenever she walked past them in the hallway. Not that Sarah had said good-bye to her prime by any means, but she had looked better. The bruises, now unconcealed with the absence of thick makeup, along her chin and left cheek took away some of the shine. All the blood dripping down her face also didn’t help.
Where’s all that blood coming from?
“Sarah,” Allie said. “What happened to you? Do you need a hospital?”
“No!” Sarah said, before she all but lunged at Allie, showing surprising speed and strength for a woman who looked half-dead. She grabbed Allie’s hands and clung to them, brown eyes boring into Allie’s. “Don’t take me to the hospital!”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll know if you take me to the hospital.”
“Who?”
“Tom! Tom will know!”
Right. Tom. Who else?
Allie pried Sarah’s hands away. “What happened? Did Tom do this?”
“I don’t remember,” Sarah said. She reached for her head again, but must have suddenly remembered the dry blood already on her palm, and stopped halfway. “I just had to get away. Do you understand? I had to get away!”
“Why? Why did you have to get away?”
“Because he would have killed me. I saw it in his eyes. He was going to kill me…”
“That’s why you left the note for me.”
“Yes.” Then, eyes widening, “Yes! And you came. I can’t believe you actually came…”
“Okay,” Allie said, more to herself than the other woman. “Okay...”
Allie glanced up and around the street. It was still just the two of them out here, alone in the middle of the road. If any of Sarah’s neighbors had noticed anything out of the ordinary, no one had come out to take a look. No one had also called the cops either, because besides the crickets in the nearby yards and the sounds of their cars idling, there was no other noise in the entire world.
She concentrated back on Sarah. The other woman was absently wiping the blood on her right palm against her pant legs. She wasn’t doing a very good job of it but didn’t seem to realize she was just making it worse.
“We have to go,” Allie said.
Sarah looked up at her. “Go? Go where?”
“Anywhere but here.” She started to get up. “Come on. Can you walk?”
“Yes…”
“Where are you bleeding?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tom did this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t remember. He tried to stop me.”
“How did he try to stop you?”
“I can’t…remember. God, why can’t I remember?”
So what do you remember? Allie wanted to ask but bit her tongue.
She said instead, “Let’s not worry about that now. We have to get out of the road before someone sees us. Can you drive?”
“I…” Sarah started to say when she almost fell back down.
She might have done just that if Allie wasn’t holding onto her arms at the time. The woman’s legs had turned to jelly underneath her, and it was all Allie could do to pin her against the Audi’s opened driver-side to keep her upright.
That’s a no, Allie thought, leaning in closer to get a better look at Sarah.
There was a gash along her temple. It didn’t look very large but was bad enough to cause all the bleeding. The cut was jagged, so it hadn’t been put there by a knife or some kind of sharp instrument. Maybe a glancing blow from a blunt object swung by a very strong man.
Nice swing, Tom, you dickhead.
“You can’t drive,” Allie said.
“I can,” Sarah said.
“No, you can’t. You can barely stand.”
Allie glanced around the neighborhood again. The homes that were dark when she last looked remained so, and thankfully it was still just the two of them—along with their cars—on the streets. She guessed that had a lot to do with it being the time of day. She had a feeling the good folks of Wells City’s suburban population went to bed early in order to wake up bright and wide-eyed to attack the morning.
“We’ll take my car,” Allie said.
Sarah didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Allie wasn’t sure if that was because the other woman was trying to process what Allie had just said, or—
No, that was it. Sarah’s mind was working slower at the moment, not that Allie blamed her. There was a hell of a lot of blood on the right side of her face. Whatever Tom had used, he’d gotten her pretty good. That left Allie to wonder how Sarah had gotten away, but like the other hundred questions racing through her head, she pushed that into the back for later.
Right now, she needed to get them off the streets. Now.
“Come on,” Allie said when Sarah didn’t say anything.
She pulled the other woman away from the Audi and turned to go when Sarah grabbed her arm and stopped moving.
“Wait,” Sarah said.
“We don’t have time to wait. We have to go.”
“No, no, wait.” Sarah looked back at her car. “The back seat…”
“What about it?”
Sarah pulled her hands free and turned around, then opened the driver-side rear door and disappeared inside.
“Sarah, what are you doing?” Allie asked.
“Just a minute,” Sarah said from inside the Audi’s back seat.
“Sarah, we have to go. We have to go now.”
“Please, just give me a minute…”
Allie sighed and moved over to see what Sarah was doing. The other woman was inside the back seat, where the clack-clack sounds of seat belts unbuckling could be heard.
What is she doing?
Sarah slid back out of the vehicle, pulling out a detached seat with her. It was black leather with pink stripes, and there was a small human being strapped inside it.
A baby.
Sarah was coming out of the Audi with a baby.
Stan, goddammit, you didn’t tell me they had a friggin’ baby, you drunk bastard.
Six
A baby.
A tiny baby.
(Of course it was a tiny baby; weren’t most babies tiny? Except this one looked a little tinier than most, for some reason.)
“Is that your baby?” Allie asked just to be sure.
Sarah nodded, her face beaming noticeably under the streetlights. “His name’s William. He’s the most precious thing I have in this world.” The same beaming face suddenly turned somber. “And I won’t let anything or anyone hurt him.”
“I believe you,” Allie said. Then, putting one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“What about my car?”
“We’ll have to leave it. You’re in no condition to drive.”
And I’m not too keen on getting caught in the street driving a bloodied woman’s car, Allie thought.
She said, “Get in the back with William.”
Sarah nodded and hurried to the rental Ford. For a small woman, she cradled the baby and his seat with surprising strength. Allie was reminded of all those stories about mothers summoning out-of-this-world abilities—like lifting cars—when their babies were in trouble. Looking at Sarah now, Allie completely believed those “tall” tales: Nothing—and no one—was going to hurt that baby. If they did, it would have to be over Sarah’s cold, dead body.
Let’s hope
it doesn’t come to that.
She put mother and son into the back and left Sarah to cinch the baby’s seat into place while she hurried back to the Audi, giving the dark streets another quick sweep. Still as empty and as quiet as the last hundred or so times she’d scanned it. The paranoid part of her, that she had developed over the years and had kept her alive through all her “misadventures,” continued to work overtime. She fully expected a caravan of police cars to show up at any second, and their absence should have made her feel better, but it only encouraged her to move faster.
The driver seat of Sarah’s car was as messy as Allie had expected. It was easy to spot the blood on the upholstery, on the steering wheel, and on the gear shift with the bright ceiling light turned on. Sarah might not have noticed that she was even bleeding until Allie pointed it out to her, but that hadn’t stopped the other woman from liberally spreading the blood everywhere.
Allie slid into the Audi, forcing herself to get past the squeamish feeling of sitting in blood, and put it back into drive. She moved the car over to the side of the road and parked it against the curb. She didn’t drive forward very far, just enough that should the two houses nearby come awake, they wouldn’t be too alarmed at the strange vehicle parked at their curbside. Not that they were going to miss it in the light of day, but it wouldn’t immediately pique their suspicion. Or, at least, Allie hoped it wouldn’t. For a while, anyway.
She killed the Audi and closed the door, locked it, then hurried back to her own vehicle. Sarah was in the back, using her jacket as a blanket to cover up baby William. She still had blood over one half of her face, but Allie was pretty sure the other woman didn’t notice it. Allie would have wasted the time necessary to do something about Sarah’s wound if it was still bleeding, but it looked to have stopped, and Sarah didn’t seem to be suffering too much.
Allie slipped back into her Ford and closed the door. She looked up at the rearview mirror, at Sarah in the back. The younger woman met her gaze before pursing a smile. It was probably as genuine as Sarah could make it, given the circumstances, not that that prevented it from coming across as extremely awkward.
“Okay?” Allie asked.