Daddy's Little Girl

by William Malmborg

  “He’s dead.”

  Bitsy’s eyes went wide. “But—”

  “Get in the car,” Misty said, her hands still holding Abigail by the hair, gun pressed into her back.

  Bitsy moved toward the car, the new schoolgirl following behind her and holding the back door for her while she got in and then closing it for her, an odd look of satisfaction on her face.

  Why would she want to come with us?

  None of the other schoolgirls ever did.

  “Can you drive?” Misty asked, forcing the questions away.

  The schoolgirl looked at her, almost as if she was trying to figure out if the words had been directed her way.

  “Can you drive?” Misty repeated, voice more direct.

  “Yes,” the schoolgirl said with a nod.

  “You have an actual driver’s license?” Misty asked.

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Good,” Misty said and shot Abigail in the lower back.

  Lindsey jumped, and then watched in horror as the girl that Misty had been holding by the hair crumpled to the ground, her mind not even registering the noise as a gunshot until she saw the gun in Misty’s hand, one that Misty used to motion Lindsey toward the driver seat.

  On the ground, the girl moved while letting out an odd sound, her cuffed wrists reaching for something.

  Misty pointed the gun toward the fallen girl’s head.

  “Drop it!” Lindsey shouted, pulling her own gun from her pocket.

  “Lindsey, no!” Bitsy cried from the back seat of the county cruiser. It was all she could do since Lindsey had trapped her within, the doors only able to open from the outside.

  “Drop it,” Lindsey repeated.

  Misty stared at the gun, her own still pointed at the wounded girl’s head.

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” Lindsey said, voice trying to mask the terror she felt.

  Misty’s eyes shifted from the gun up to Lindsey’s eyes, nothing but pure hatred present within them.

  She’s not going to do it.

  She’s going to try and—

  Misty swung the gun around toward Lindsey.

  Lindsey pulled the trigger.

  The hammer landed with a click.

  Fuck!

  Misty’s gun fired.

  Lindsey felt the bullet tear through her left arm, the sensation indescribable.

  Another gunshot echoed, only this one was from neither of their guns, the bullet hitting the police car.

  “Misty, drop the gun!” a voice cried.

  Misty spun and fired toward the voice, and then dove toward the open driver-side door of the police car.

  More shots echoed, all of them hitting the car.

  “Misty!” Bitsy said from the back seat. “Are you okay?”

  Misty didn’t reply, her eyes frantically looking around at the various gears and levers within the car.

  “Misty!” Bitsy asked again, ducking as another bullet hit the car.

  Misty grabbed one of the levers and shifted it and then moved her body forward a bit, the sound of tires spinning on the gravel echoing.

  They lurched forward, Bitsy’s body slamming back into the seat and then into the door as Misty spun the wheel to turn the car.

  “Misty!” Bitsy shouted. “You don’t know how to drive!”

  “Shut up!” Misty screamed.

  Another bullet hit the car.

  Misty spun the wheel again, this time throwing Bitsy’s body into the center of the back seat, her fingers trying to find something to latch on to. Nothing but the mesh cage between the front and back was available. She threaded her fingers through the tiny squares and held on tight.

  They hit a bump, car bouncing.

  Bitsy screamed, the sound masking that of bones snapping within the fingers of her left hand.

  Several more bumps followed, each one causing more and more pain as Bitsy tried to slip her broken fingers free from the mesh, one of them twisted so badly that it effectually trapped her hand within the squares.

  Misty spun the wheel again and hit another bump, the angled finger becoming even more twisted.

  “Stop!” Bitsy cried.

  Misty ignored her, car finding three more bumps before it hit a wet patch of earth and came to a stop.

  “Shots fired!” Katie shouted several times into her radio while running toward where the county patrol vehicle had been before it went tearing off into the field. “Suspects are fleeing northward in a county cruiser through the field toward the Old Grove Cemetery. EMS needed.”

  Gary acknowledged the request.

  Katie came upon the scene.

  Lindsey was sitting on the gravel, holding her arm, face white with shock.

  The other girl, likely Abigail, was curled on the ground, face filled with pain, hands trying to undo the gag that held her mouth wide open.

  “Lindsey,” Katie said, flashlight beam searching for the gun the girl had. “It’s Katie Adams.”

  Lindsey looked up at her, eyes blinking.

  “Do you know where you are?” Katie asked. She spotted the gun. It was several feet from Lindsey, likely where she had dropped it after being shot.

  “Liz’s dead,” Lindsey said.

  Katie didn’t know how to reply to that, the statement not what she had been expecting.

  “My father?” Lindsey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Katie said and knelt down next to Abigail, her fingers finding and releasing the buckle on the gag. “Paramedics are on the way,” Katie said to her.

  Abigail gave a nod.

  Katie released her wrists from the cuffs.

  “Am I going to die?” Abigail asked, a hand reaching for her back.

  “Just stay still, okay,” Katie said, flashlight pulled free so she could examine the wound, fingers moving the muddy blouse away from the flesh.

  The bullet wound was not in a good spot, not if it had hit the liver, though from the look of the blood, that didn’t seem to be the case. Unfortunately, that was not the only organ present on the lower right side of the body. She needed help, and fast.

  Lindsey did too, though her wound was far from deadly at this point.

  It could turn that way though.

  “No! No! No!” Misty shouted, tires spinning uselessly as she pressed down upon the gas, car doing nothing but sinking farther and farther into the mud.

  The radio came to life, a call for deputies in the northern part of the county to converge upon Smallwood, their help being needed in setting up roadblocks and securing an area to prevent their escape.

  Hearing this, Misty tried pressing the gas again, lips urging the vehicle upward and onward through the field.

  It didn’t budge.

  They weren’t going anywhere.

  Not in this vehicle.

  They needed to run.

  But where?

  In the distance she could see the flashing lights of police vehicles. They were still quite a ways away but closing in on the area fast. And with the county sending deputies, it wouldn’t be long before they were trapped.

  “Let’s go,” she said, opening her door, hand retrieving the pistol from where she had set it.

  Bitsy didn’t reply, her body hunched over in the back seat behind the wire mesh, one hand on her head while the other was held out before her, the fingers sticking out at odd angles.

  Shit.

  Bitsy was shutting down.

  She did this from time to time when she became overwhelmed, either with pain or emotion, sometimes a combination of both. Once that happened…

  Headlights appeared up ahead across the field, one of the lights having been damaged, the muted glow within doing little to brighten anything.

  Not a police car.

  Or was it?

  Would they try to trick her with a car that looked all busted up?

  If so, how would they know where to send it?

  They wouldn’t.
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  They couldn’t.

  “Bitsy,” she said.

  Bitsy didn’t respond.

  “Bitsy!”

  Nothing.

  “Bitsy!”

  This time the girl looked up at her, and though her eyes were a bit glazed, there was enough life in them for Misty to know that she was still there and would do what was needed to try to get away.

  “Come on, we’re going to go get those people in that car to help us,” Misty said.

  Bitsy looked in the direction she was motioning, eyes now squinting to see through the wire mesh. “That’s where the graveyard is.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s near where I was picked up earlier. I thought they were going to help me.”

  “Maybe these people will. Come on, we need to hurry.”

  “Do you like my dress?”

  “What?”

  “My dress. Lindsey let me borrow it. I wanted to look nice when I found you.”

  “It’s very nice, and I want to see more of it once we’re in the light, but to do that we have to get moving, so come on.”

  Bitsy nodded and scooted over toward the door.

  Misty stepped out of her own and then shut it behind her.

  Bitsy was still in the car.

  What was she waiting for?

  Voices.

  Way off in the distance, but still too close for comfort.

  And more emergency lights.

  They were heading down the road off to her left, toward the farm.

  “Bitsy! Come on!”

  Bitsy knocked on the window with her elbow.

  What was she doing?

  Bitsy knocked again and shouted something.

  Misty reached down and opened the door.

  “What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “It doesn’t have a door handle.”

  “Oh,” Misty said, stepping back so Bitsy could scoot out, her injured hand held out before her. “Sorry.”

  Bitsy cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  Twelve

  “I think it was a dome light,” Tess said.

  “A dome light?” Ramsey asked. “In the middle of the field?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head, disappointment growing. “Come on, you were wrong. Nothing’s happening here.” He pointed toward another set of police lights off in the distance. “We should follow those.”

  “It’s too far south. We picked the girl up out that way.” She pointed toward the east with her free hand, the camera in the other. “And that girl said they were going to the cemetery.”

  “Tess!” he said, voice stern. “No one is here. And if they were, they have moved on, probably out toward where all those police cars are heading. We’re too late.”

  Tess considered this for several seconds and then gave a nod. “Okay, maybe you’re—”

  “Help us!” a female voice cried.

  They both froze, eyes back on the field.

  Nothing else was said, but then two figures stumbled from the darkness, one a tiny female police officer, the other a young girl in a dress.

  “Where’s your car?” the police officer asked.

  “My car?” Ramsey asked.

  “Yes!” the officer snapped. “I need you to take us to the nearest precinct. I have a girl here that is—”

  “Bitsy?” Tess asked.

  The girl in the red and white dress looked up.

  Shit! It was Bitsy.

  Ramsey eyed the police officer, who stared back at him.

  “You’re not the police,” Tess said.

  “What? Of course I am, and I need you to”—she aimed a gun at them—“drive us away from here.”

  “Misty,” Bitsy said, one hand holding her other. “These are the storm chasers from earlier, the ones that brought me to the police.”

  “Are they now?” Misty asked. “Well, this time I think we’ll just have them take us as far from here as possible.” She eyed the young man. “How does that sound?”

  “You can’t get away,” the girl said. “There are police everywhere.”

  “Which is why we should hurry,” Misty said. She motioned with the gun. “Now move!”

  “No.”

  “Tess!” the young man hissed.

  “I will shoot you,” Misty warned.

  “No, you won’t,” the girl said.

  “I will!”

  Misty pulled the trigger, and though she was aiming at the girl, the bullet missed her, the sound of it pinging off a tombstone somewhere between the two echoing.

  “Okay, okay,” the young man snapped, hands held high. “We’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

  This time the girl did not protest, the bullet having likely scared her to the point of realizing that Misty was serious. It was either do what she instructed or die.

  “The car is this way.”

  They started walking, the two storm chasers in front, Misty and Bitsy behind, Misty’s gun aimed at their backs, a sudden question on how many bullets there were inside of it coming to mind.

  “This is where Lindsey’s mom is buried,” Bitsy said.

  “What?” Misty asked.

  “The schoolgirl you shot, the one that tricked me.”

  “Oh.”

  Up ahead, one of the storm chasers said something, the other shaking his head.

  “No talking!” Misty snapped.

  Neither said anything else, the only sound that of their feet on the gravel that wormed its way through the graveyard, which Misty hoped would end soon so they could get into the car she had seen pulling in from the field.

  In the distance, more emergency lights appeared, one turning onto the road the graveyard was on.

  No, no, no.

  It stopped about half a mile away and just waited.

  They’re setting up a perimeter.

  Just like on TV.

  “Now!” the girl up ahead shouted and then darted to the left while ducking down and disappearing behind a row of tombstones, all while the young man stood frozen in place, body turning toward Misty, a plea for her not to shoot leaving his lips.

  Misty fired toward where the girl had bolted, one of the bullets hitting a tombstone, the other simply flying off into the night.

  “Misty,” Bitsy said, her good hand pointing toward where more emergency lights had appeared, these ones to the left. “They might hear.”

  Fuck!

  They were running out of time.

  She turned toward the young man, gun aimed at him.

  “Please no!” he said. “Don’t shoot me!”

  Rather than shoot, she hurried forward and grabbed him by his shirt, hand twisting him around so that he would continue forward with the gun pressed into his back. “Take us to the car, now!”

  “O-okay!”

  Misty glanced toward where the girl had disappeared, her eyes unable to spot her anywhere among the dark tombstones. It didn’t matter though. As long as this one could drive, they would be fine. But only if they could get onto the road and away from the area before the police closed off everything.

  Waving her flashlight in a slow but steady arc over her head, Katie signaled the first patrol vehicle that neared the scene, one that took several seconds to find the gravel driveway that led up to the farmhouse and turned toward them.

  Two minutes later, a part-time officer named Kevin Carter was on the scene, his eyes wide, face pale at the sight of Abigail. No doubt about it, this was his first-ever gunshot wound.

  “Carter!” Katie said, voice calm but firm. “Get your kit.”

  He blinked twice and then nodded, hurrying around to the trunk of his cruiser.

  “She has a bullet wound to the lower back, no exit wound, which means the round either fragmented within or got lodged into a bone somewhere, possibly a pelvic one if it was fired at a downward angle. The blood is clean, but moving her too much without a board could rip something that is just hanging together b
y a thread, so make sure she stays still until the paramedics get here.”

  “What’re you going to do?” he asked, panic returning.

  “They headed off into the field, which means they will bog down.” Katie was certain of this. “I’m going after them.”

  “No, no, you need to stay here and help me with them, and wait for backup.”

  “Backup?” she asked. “We’ll be lucky if we get enough manpower out here to simply block off all the roads, which won’t do diddly-squat if they’re on foot and simply leave the field.”

  “But—”

  “Help them,” Katie said and then, without another word, turned and headed into the field.

  Tess’s frustration toward her older brother for not bolting when she had shouted to do so was at a level that was difficult to shift her focus from. But shift it she did, her eyes trying to keep the three in sight as they headed toward where the car was, all while not alerting them to the fact that she was following, her hope being that they thought she was simply running for dear life, brother forgotten.

  It’s what you should have done.

  Probably what Ramsey would have done, the spineless prick.

  No.

  He would not have left her behind with these two.

  And she would not leave him behind.

  And once they reach the car?

  She had no idea.

  Right now the important thing was to keep after them, so that when they did reach the car she could hopefully act, the camera that she still carried ready to be brought down on the girl’s head, the weight enough that one solid blow would likely end things.

  If she got close enough.

  And if the gun was not pointed at Ramsey’s back.

  She wants him to drive.

  That means him getting in the front seat.

  The girl would have no choice but to step away at that point, likely getting in the back seat, gun momentarily away from his back.

  That would be the moment.

  The only moment.

  She would have to make it count.

  “Gary, they’re on foot,” Katie said, lungs heaving from her run, eyes searching the ground with her flashlight to see if she could spot any tracks that showed which direction they had headed in once they left the car.

  “Where?” Gary asked, voice heavy with static.