The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (39 page)

Four people in the tiny kitchen was at least two
too many. I cleared my throat to get Beth’s attention. When she turned to me, I
said, “Keys?”

She shook her head and looked at Priella.

Priella nodded and patted one of the jacket’s
pockets. “And a phone,” she added.

I shot a pointed glance at the door. “We can’t
stay. They could be back anytime.”

“You’re supposed to be in the shed,” Maggie said
to Priella. “You’re an infidel. ‘The wages of sin is death.’”

Priella flushed. “I’m not an infidel just because
I don’t believe we should be selling drugs to unbelievers. My brother died from
this shit. This is
evil
.”

 Maggie’s eyes narrowed, and a canny look came
into them. She hefted the knife.

“Priella, go outside.” I stepped in front of
Priella, blocking Maggie’s view of her.

Beth coughed and shuffled a step to the side, the
motion instantly drawing Maggie’s attention to her. “No, it’s okay. We do get
it. Um… ‘If you are led by the Father, you are not under the law.’ Right?”

Maggie nodded, but her eyes flicked back to
Priella and me. This was going nowhere.

“Guys,” I said. “We have to go.
Now
.”

Beth looked frustrated. “Maggie, if you want to
come with us, you have to put the knife down. You can still come, but you can’t
bring that.”

Maggie was still eying Priella. I reached behind
me and grabbed a hunk of Priella’s confiscated jacket and pushed her to the
door. When I heard it open and close behind me, I breathed a tad easier.

“Beth,” I said. “Come on.”

My friend’s eyes watered, and I didn’t think it
was from the pervasive chemical stench.

“Maggie—” Beth started.

“Get out,” Maggie said, her voice void and flat.
“You’re infidels too. You will all perish in the coming days. You’re dead already.
You just don’t know it. You’re, like, zombies.” She giggled. “Dead zombies.”

Yeah. We left.

A
s we ran, Beth
struggled into a fleece pullover I had grabbed off the recliner on our way out
of the trailer. I was stuck with a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, which I almost
couldn’t bear to put on. We found Priella bending over a red Honda
three-wheeler, fiddling with something. When she saw us heading for her, she
yelled, “Not this one. The blue one!” She pointed at the four-wheeler with the
metal basket that the tweakers had used for supplies. A key twinkled at me from
the ignition.

The other two machines didn’t twinkle.

“Where are the other keys?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Priella said, joining us next to
the blue ATV. She was breathless from either exertion or excitement. “I only
found this set. I had to try all of them to see which would fit. We’ll have to
ride together.”

Maggie burst out of the trailer and for a
seemingly endless heartbeat I thought she had a gun. It wasn’t. But, almost as
bad, it was a cell phone and she was shrieking into it. “They escaped. They’re
getting away!”

She caught sight of us by the ATVs. “Get away from
there!” Her face twisted into a snarl, and she turned as though she was going
to come at us.

Beth darted to the shed where she and Priella had
hidden earlier, reached in, and brought out a baseball bat. She cocked it back
over her shoulder and screamed, “Come on, then! Just come on!”

Maggie stopped. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
Slowly, she backed up to the trailer.

Strangely prudent of her, I thought.

Having achieved the safety of the doorway, Maggie
screamed toward the woods, “Luke! Ben! They’re here!”

“Oh, crap,” Beth said. “We gotta go. I’ll sit in
the back. Which one of you is driving?”

Priella and I pointed at each other.

Eyes wide, the three of us started a jumbled
chorus of “I don’t know how to drive an ATV.”

“Stop!” I yelled. “We don’t have time for this.
Priella, get in the basket. Beth, get on.”

“You can do this? You can drive this?” Beth’s eyes
were so wide her irises looked like tiny peas floating in a bowl of cream.

“I used to ride a dirt bike. This is the same
thing.”

One slight exaggeration and one lie. I had ridden
a dirt bike exactly one time. Subsequent rides were made impossible since I
lost control in the yard, crashed through the garage, and plowed into my dad’s
week-old Chrysler sedan, thus totaling it and triggering a two-week-long binge
when the insurance finally paid off.

And an ATV was certainly not the same thing as
riding a dirt bike twenty-some years ago. For one thing, my recognition of my
own mortality had grown every year since. 

Beth and I jumped on. If I were less panicked, I
would have pointed out the appropriateness of her riding “bitch,” but that
would keep for later. Priella clambered into the basket while I studied the
machine, trying to figure out which control did what.

A turquoise-dyed rabbit’s foot keychain and a tiny
compass dangled from the key ring; I had a feeling we would be needing both.
The four-wheeler started right up. We were off to a good start. It had gas.
Also cool. I fiddled with the hand controls and figured out by revving the
engine that the gas lever worked off my right thumb. Which meant the clutch
lever would be on my left, and the gear worked off my foot.

See? I could do this.

We surged forward about two feet in what I guessed
was first gear. I almost lost Beth off the back, but she screamed and grabbed
me around the middle in a death grip. Priella had her head down and was white-knuckling
the sides of the basket. I was pretty sure she was praying, which was probably
our only hope.

“I got it,” I said. “I got it now.”

Beth must not have heard me, possibly because she
never stopped screaming in my ear. We hopped and jolted a half dozen more times
while I worked out the gear sequence. For first gear, I had to press my foot
down, but the rest of them were toe up, until I finally got the ATV up to fifth
gear.

“Here we go!” I practically sang.

Here we go
immediately morphed into
oh,
sweet shiny shit
the instant I realized I should have figured out the brake
system before implementing the go-like-a-bat-out-of-hell system. We headed
directly for the shed.

Now both of my passengers were screaming.

I grabbed the longer lever on the right handle,
perhaps a little too hard. Beth rammed into my back, and we almost went ass
over tea kettle into the basket with Priella.

“That’s the front brake,” I announced loudly.

“No shit!” Beth shrieked.

Priella was either channeling her inner Aztec or
speaking in tongues.

Luke and Ben burst out of the woods just as I
rediscovered the joys of fifth gear.

And we were off.

T
he grassy road
we were flying down consisted of two tire tracks, a lot of twisty S-curves, and
a whole bunch of teeth-jarring ruts. All on a steep incline, no less. At the
speed we were going, the ATV tossed us around like three highly unlucky lottery
balls. I felt Beth twist to look over her shoulder, and then she yelled,
“They’re going for the other ATVs.”

“I don’t think they’ll be able to drive them,” Priella
yelled back. “I pulled a bunch of things. Wires and stuff.”

Beth shouted with glee.

We were coming to a particularly snarly part of
the trail, so I didn’t answer right away.

We jounced and bounced and rattled well over a
mile before the trail seemed to peter out. A wall of scrub bushes and scraggy
trees rose up in front of us. I concentrated on downshifting to a stop without
pitching us all off the four-wheeler. Priella had the worst of it; she had been
thrown around the metal basket and was pretty banged up already.

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t coordinate the
clutch with the gas well enough, and the engine died as we jolted to a stop.
The quiet that enveloped us after the engine shut off was delicious.

“Where did the trail go?” Beth asked, peering
around my shoulder.

“Don’t worry; we’ll find it,” I said. “We’ve seen
this trick before.”

“We need to get to Draper,” Priella said. “It’s
the closest town. Or at least I think so. I’m not really sure where we are
anymore.” She twisted back and forth as she tried to get her bearings.

“If I’m right,” I said, “we’re a couple miles west
and south of Megiddo.”

“That means Draper is at least ten miles north,
maybe more.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think we should head
that way. We’d have to go right past Megiddo. And I hate to remind you guys,
but Maggie was calling someone and you can bet it was Father. By now, the old
bastard probably has the whole church ready to come after us.”

Beth’s sigh rattled my ear. “At least they’ll be
more disorganized without Moses and Eli. Of course, if Eli were here none of
this—”

“Maybe,” I interrupted. Thinking about how
desperately I needed Eli would only make things worse. “But they still have
Gabriel and Justus.”

“But Justus had the hots for you. Don’t you think
he would—”

“Justus is a sleazy little weasel. I’d trust
Gabriel sooner than I’d ever trust that slimeball.”

“Gabriel has a sense of honor,” Priella added. “He
reminds me of Enoch that way. They were good friends.”

“Yeah, but even Gabriel said he couldn’t help anymore
than he already has. So we’re on our own, ladies. Which way?”

“Hell if I know,” Beth said. “Down the rabbit
hole? We’ve got a wall of trees in front of us. Somebody stole our trail.”

“No, they didn’t,” I said. “They just hid it.”

I got off the ATV and started walking along the
tree line. Since I knew what to look for this time, it was easy to find.

We had to approach at an angle in order to slip
between the bracken where a scraggly trail had been hacked out. This alley was
even narrower than the one in the clearing between Megiddo and the meth camp.
Twigs and branches scratched at our clothes and hair as I navigated the ATV
down the narrow path. Priella had a hunk of hair snagged so tightly, it snapped
her head back. I tried to go as slowly as I could, but the stupid machine
bucked and jerked whenever I attempted speeds below 10 M.P.H.

We emerged onto a dirt road—a real one, this time.
Not just an ATV trail. I checked the compass. The road ran north-south, which
meant if we turned right in a couple of miles, we would run into County Road-W.
Unfortunately, W was the road Megiddo’s driveway branched off. Heading that way
increased the likelihood of running into anyone chasing us.

We got off the four-wheeler and scanned the
roadway.

“I think this is Thornapple Road,” Priella said.
She confirmed that it intersected with W. “But M picks up between Thornapple
and Megiddo, and runs up to Draper. If we could get to M before the church is
mobilized—”

“Is M the road we take to the restaurant?” I
asked.

“Yeah, and if—”

“How likely is it that we’ll be able to make it
over to M before running into a church posse? M is only a quarter mile from Megiddo.
They know we’re going to come out right here. They’re probably halfway to us by
now.”

“What’s south of us?” Beth asked.

“I have no idea,” Priella said. “I’ve never been
on this road. We just pass it sometimes when we cut over to get to Highway 70.
I think if we keep going south we’ll run into Rusk County, but as far as
towns…?” She shrugged.

“What about west?” I said.

She shrugged again. “If we go straight west,
eventually we’d have to cross Highway 27. That could take us north to Winter or
south to Ladysmith, but we’d have to cross a whole bunch of woodland to get
there. I think this is mostly county-managed land. There won’t be houses or
towns for quite a ways.”

“It’s going to be getting dark soon,” Beth
reminded us.

“Unless we come up with something quick, we can
probably figure on spending the night outside.” I checked the gas gauge. “We
have to keep moving.”

“So do we go cross-country and try to pick up
Highway 27 or head south on this road as far as we can?” Priella asked.

Anxiety slid like acid through my veins. We were
taking too long to figure this out. Way too long.

“We’ll go faster if we stick to the road and head
south. The problem is they’ll know we came out right here. We have to assume
they’re coming for us.”

“Oh, they’re coming for us,” Beth said.

Suddenly, Priella gave a squeal and, rooting in
her pocket, dug out the cell phone she had nabbed at the trailer. My breath
caught with joy as she waved it around.

Short-lived. Her face fell as she studied the face
of phone. She held it up again, not with excitement this time, but in that
futile trying-to-conjure-up-a-signal-from-the-sky pose that told me we weren’t
going to get any help from Verizon anytime soon.

“It’s the hills,” Beth said. “Next time we get to
the top of one, we should try again.”

“How’s the battery charge?” I asked.

Priella made a face. “Not great.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

B
y my
calculations, we only had about an hour or so until sunset. We headed south,
going about 35 m.p.h. because I was too afraid to go any faster. Every few
seconds, Beth would twist around to look over her shoulder. Priella, holding on
to the basket for dear life, had her neck craned to see around me too.

They were coming and we knew it.

We had gone about a mile when I saw a break in the
scrub brush lining the road. I hit the brakes, but we had already zoomed past
it, so I had to turn around and go back.

“What are you doing?” Beth yelled in my ear.