Dying for Mercy with Bonus Material (20 page)

T
here they were, laughing and leaning against each other.

Such a happy couple. Happy and nosy. A couple with powerful resources. A couple who wouldn’t be satisfied until they figured out Innis’s damnable puzzle.

He opened the door for her to get inside the Volvo and then walked around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. As soon as the car pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, it was time to follow them.

The Volvo was traveling at a pretty stiff clip up Route 17.

The driver seemed to be in a hurry to get home. That was understandable. Just about any guy would want to be home with Eliza Blake.

The Volvo slowed as it approached the Tuxedo Park entrance gate.

Hold back.

Wait until the Volvo is admitted and begins driving up the road.

Now that it was clear Eliza Blake and her beau hadn’t noticed the car following them, it was safe to glide up to the gate and be quickly waved through.

L
et’s take the long way home,” said Eliza, edging a bit closer to Mack. “It’s such a beautiful, clear night. Let’s take a ride around the lake.”

Mack drove slowly, unfamiliar with the unlit road. “Thank goodness for the moon and headlights,” he said. “It’s dark as pitch up here.”

The car coasted down the incline that led to the boathouse and the clubhouse beyond that.

“Pull in at the area next to the boathouse,” urged Eliza.

Mack parked the car at the edge of the lake, pointing it at the water. He turned off the engine. “I feel like I’m in high school,” he said as he reached out and put his arm around her. “I don’t know when was the last time I made out with a girl in a car.”

“Who says you’re going to make out now?” Eliza asked teasingly.

“I say.” Mack leaned over and kissed her, a kiss so intense that neither one of them noticed the car that had come to a stop a hundred yards away.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mack said breathlessly. “There’s not enough room in this thing.”

“All right,” said Eliza.

He steered the car out of the lot and turned right.

“I think you should have gone left instead,” said Eliza after they had driven a ways. “But to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure where the carriage house is from here.”

“Great,” said Mack. The dark road was curved and narrow. “I can’t turn around here.”

“Go a little farther,” said Eliza. “There should be a driveway or someplace where the road gets wider.”

She was straining to spot an opportunity to maneuver the car when suddenly the Volvo lurched forward.

“What the hell?” Mack yelled. He looked into his rearview mirror. The outline of the front of another vehicle, driving with no headlights on, was barely visible. Before Mack could decide what to do, the vehicle rammed into them again.

“It’s trying to push us off the road!” cried Eliza.

“Hold on,” said Mack through clenched teeth. “I’m going to speed up and try to get away from this nut.”

Mack accelerated, and the Volvo gained speed.

Eliza looked out the rear window. “We’re not losing it, Mack!” she cried. “It’s coming right at us!”

As Mack began to answer, the car reverberated with another impact, forceful enough to send it off the road and careening over the edge, down toward the lake.

Eliza felt as if everything was taking a long, long time. The tumble down the hillside, the crash into the tree, the inflating of the air bags, the minutes spent in shock, staring straight ahead, not quite sure what exactly had happened.

Was she all right? She told her brain to move her arms and legs. They did as they were commanded. She couldn’t identify anything hurt, didn’t think she was bleeding.

“Mack,” she called out, reaching toward the driver’s side of the car. She couldn’t see him in the dark and with the air bag blocking her view. “Are you all right, Mack?”

She was answered with a low groan.

“Mack, answer me. Please, Mack.”

No response at all this time.

Eliza pushed at the air bags, desperate to see his face. She leaned forward into the darkness and listened. She could hear Mack breathing.
Thank God.
But the breathing was heavy and labored.

She felt around, found her purse, and took out her cell phone. She dialed 911. Nothing happened. She looked at the screen. No signal.

Eliza knew she had to get out of the car and go get help. Adrenaline pulsed through her. She struggled to undo her seat belt, opened the car door, and began to scramble up the hill.

W
hat if the job wasn’t complete? What if Eliza and her boyfriend weren’t taken care of for good?

That was a damned dangerous drop to the lake at that point in the road. Even a Volvo wouldn’t ensure survival.

Still, it would be a good idea to go back and check. There was also a little calling card to leave behind.

E
liza climbed up, grabbing hold of rocks and branches to help her. As she reached the edge of the road, she heard a car approaching. She was about to wave her arms and yell for help when the outline of the vehicle came into dim view. Its headlights were dark.

It was the car that had driven them off the road!

Looking around desperately for someplace to hide, Eliza dived behind the trunk of a tree. She crouched down, holding her breath as she heard the car come to a stop and its door open.

Her heart pounded as she listened to the footsteps on the macadam. Was whoever it was going to climb all the way down to the car and find Mack there, alone and helpless? The driver’s aim had obviously been to kill them. What would happen if Mack were found alive but unconscious, unable to defend himself?

Eliza, still somewhat dazed, didn’t know what to do.

T
he moonlight reflected off the roof of the Volvo. It was apparent that nothing was moving down there except the steam rising from the hood.

The darkness on the road was suddenly pierced by two beams of light in the distance.

A decision had to be made quickly. Stay and risk someone seeing the car and wondering what it was doing there, or leave right now and take the chance that the occupants of the Volvo were still alive.

Eliza and her boyfriend, if not dead, had to be injured. Nobody would find them tonight and maybe not tomorrow either. With a little luck, it would be too late—whenever the car was discovered.

Even if they did survive, they would be smart enough to realize they’d been warned.

Just to make certain—so there would be no doubt—silver coins were hurled into the air, and the sound of metal showering down on the Volvo’s roof echoed in the eerie autumn silence.

C
rouched in the darkness, Eliza heard strange pinging sounds, metal against metal, hard objects raining down on her car. Then she heard a door slam and the vehicle drive away.

She crawled out from behind the tree and clawed her way up the rest of the hill. When she got up to the road, she began running.

S
itting alone in the waiting room at Good Samaritan Hospital, Eliza looked down at her hands, noticing for the first time that they were covered with dried blood. She wasn’t quite sure if it was Mack’s blood or her own. She had cut herself while clawing her way up from the crash site, but Mack’s head wound had bled profusely.

Eliza closed her eyes. Mental images of his body being dragged up the hill on a backboard filled her with dread. He had lain there so perfectly still that Eliza was sure he must be dead.

But Mack wasn’t dead. He was having emergency surgery. “Internal injuries,” the doctor had said.

“It’s going to be a while.”

At the sound of the voice, Eliza opened her eyes and saw a nurse standing in front of her.

“Can I get you anything?” the nurse asked. “Would you like to freshen up?”

Realizing that the question was really a suggestion, Eliza shuffled down the hallway, wearing the loafers given to her by the woman who’d stopped her car when she saw Eliza running down the road. In the ladies’ room, she washed her hands. Looking in the mirror above the sink, she almost didn’t recognize herself.

Her face was colorless except for the dirt smudged across her cheeks. Her hair was tangled and messy. But it was her eyes that were most unfamiliar. They stared back at her, the dark pupils wide, almost eclipsing any blue. There was an anxious, fearful look in them, the look of someone who was deeply frightened.

The thought that she might lose Mack now that she’d finally allowed herself to love again was more than Eliza could allow herself to fathom. She had already gone through losing John almost eight years ago. For most of the time since then, she’d focused on Janie and her career, unable to let down her guard enough to allow someone else in. It couldn’t be possible that now that she had, he might be taken away from her.

But unfortunately, terribly, it
was
possible. Cruel and unfair things happened all the time.

Splashing cool water on her face, Eliza prayed. “Please God, let Mack come through this. Don’t take him from me.”

“My purse and cell phone were left in the car,” said Eliza as she leaned over the counter of the nurses’ station. “Is there a telephone I can use?”

“I can’t let you use the one here on the desk,” said the nurse. “But you can borrow my cell.” The nurse took it from her pocket and handed it to Eliza. “The only problem is, you have to go outside to use it.”

When Eliza walked out of the hospital, the sky was beginning to lighten, hinting that the sun would be rising soon. She hated to call Annabelle this early, but she really needed to talk to her friend.

“I’m on my way,” said Annabelle before Eliza could finish telling her everything that had happened.

“I know it’s Sunday, and I hate to impose on you like this, but—” Eliza was cut off in midsentence.

“Stop it,” said Annabelle firmly. “I’ll be there in about an hour, and I’ll have my cell phone with me. Call me if you need to talk to me about anything before that.”

“Annabelle?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

A
fter the sun came up, the Tuxedo Park police, led by Chief Vitalli, searched the area of the accident. Tire-tread marks were found in the dirt at the point where the Volvo was forced off the road. The car had torn an obvious swath down the hillside, coming to a violent stop when it hit the tree.

“They’re lucky to be alive,” said one of the officers as he inspected the crushed vehicle.

“Yeah,” said another. “But somebody wanted them dead.”

The policemen made observations and took notes about the condition of the car and its position.

“This is strange,” one of the officers remarked, reaching out and picking up several quarters from the roof of the Volvo.

“There are more on the ground.”

Altogether they found thirty coins.

W
e all wanted to come,” announced Annabelle when she arrived in the waiting room with Margo and B.J. in tow.

Eliza rose and hugged each of them. “I’d say you shouldn’t have, but I’m so glad you did,” she whispered.

“What’s the latest on Mack?” asked Margo.

“I’m not sure,” said Eliza. “He’s in surgery, but nobody has come out to tell me anything more.”

“Let me see what I can find out,” said Margo, squeezing Eliza’s hand before taking off for the nurses’ station.

“It’s nice to have an M.D. on your side,” said B.J. “Especially when you’re in an unfamiliar hospital.”

“When is a hospital ever familiar?” asked Annabelle.

“You know what I mean,” said B.J. “If Mack were in a hospital in the city, we’d feel better about it.”

Annabelle shot him an exasperated glare. “You idiot,” she mouthed.

B.J. looked embarrassed.

“It’s all right, Beej,” said Eliza. “I know what you meant, but John was in arguably the best cancer hospital in New York—in the whole country, for that matter—and it didn’t make things better. I guess when it’s your time, it’s your time.”

Annabelle wrapped her arms around Eliza. “It’s not Mack’s time, Eliza. Not even close.”

Margo came back to the waiting room.

“Great news,” she announced “There’s no brain or spinal-cord injury.”

Eliza let out a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you, God.”

She tried to read the expression on Margo’s face. It wasn’t joyful.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Mack’s shaken up,” said Margo. “He fractured some ribs, one of which punctured his lung. His spleen was torn badly enough that they had to remove it. His liver was lacerated as well, and they’re working on stitching that up now.”

B.J. let out a low whistle.

“Mack’s going to be all right, though, isn’t he, Margo?” asked Eliza.

Margo looked directly into Eliza’s frightened eyes. “I’m going to be honest with you, Eliza,” she said. “Mack has some very serious injuries, and the coming days are going to be hard and painful for him. But he’s got youth and good health on his side. Barring complications, he should probably be fine.”

Probably was not definitely, thought Eliza as she wrapped her arms around herself for comfort. How was it that Mack was so badly injured—and she had walked away practically unscathed? She was responsible for getting him involved in what had become a deadly situation.

But who was responsible for this nightmare in the first place?

“Do you want to talk about what happened, Eliza?” asked Annabelle when all four of them sat around a table in the hospital coffee shop.

Eliza shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know,” she said. “We had just come back to the park after a wonderful dinner. We stopped to look at the lake. When we started for the carriage house, we went the wrong way, but before we could turn around, this car came up behind us and started ramming us.”

“What kind of car was it?” asked B.J.

“I don’t know. It was pretty dark, and the car didn’t have any headlights on.”

“So you couldn’t see the driver?” asked Annabelle.

Eliza shook her head. “Uh-uh. I could kick myself now for not getting a look at his face when he came back.”

“He?” asked Margo. “You know it was a man?”

“No,” said Eliza, “I don’t. I’m just assuming it was.”

“What do you mean, ‘when he came back’?” asked Annabelle.

Eliza recounted how she had climbed up the hill to get help and had hidden when their attacker returned.

“I think he just wanted to make sure that he’d finished the job. And I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out he didn’t.”

Annabelle went outside, ostensibly to get some fresh air. She really wanted to make a phone call but didn’t want to take the chance of upsetting Eliza.

She identified herself, her affiliation with KEY News, and her friendship with Eliza Blake.

“I would like some information on the accident last night,” she said.

“Wish I could help you, ma’am, but I’m not at liberty to divulge any information on an ongoing investigation.”

“Give me a break, will you?” asked Annabelle. “Somebody tried to kill the host of
KEY to America
and almost succeeded in murdering another KEY News correspondent. I demand to be given information.”

Even as Annabelle spoke, she realized she should have alerted Range Bullock and Linus Nazareth about what had happened. They would be furious when they learned that they hadn’t been called right away.

The police officer responded to the determination in her tone. “Captain Vitalli is the only one who is able to give out the kind of information you want,” he said.

“Then please let me talk to him.”

“He’s not here right now, but if you give me your number, he’ll return your call as soon as he can.”

Annabelle recited her phone number, but she knew damn well that Chief Vitalli wasn’t going to call her back.

The president of KEY News answered the phone. “Bullock,” he said brusquely.

Annabelle explained what had happened the night before. “Eliza’s fine,” she said. “But it looks like Mack has some serious injuries.”

“I’m coming out there,” said Range. “But the first thing I’m going to do is arrange for security details to guard Eliza and Mack.”