Twisted (39 page)

Mark fell in beside her. “I’ll take the north side, you take south.”

Allison agreed, even though she knew he was trying to use the creek to separate her from the fugitive. No time to waste bickering. She gripped her gun and jogged along the shore, looking for footprints.

“No tracks,” Mark called across the water. “He must have veered into the woods.”

They scaled the embankments and moved through the oaks and cypress trees lining the creek. The brush was thick. Mark signaled for her to be quiet as they pushed their way through it, trying to pick up the trail.

A rustle of branches in the distance, north side. Allison pointed toward it, and they ran faster.

A sudden pain as though she’d stepped on a live wire.
I’m hit.
She was on the ground. A weight crashed down on her.
Moss.
He flipped her onto her back and pressed a gun tight against her forehead.

“Got your girlfriend, Wolfe.” Moss’s nose was smashed and bleeding. Blood dripped onto Allison’s cheek as he loomed over her.

“
Wolfe!
I shot her once, I’ll do it again!”

“If you do, you’re a dead man.” The voice was surprisingly close, but still on the other side of the creek. Allison wanted to turn her head toward it, but the muzzle of that revolver was pressed against her skull.

Her leg was on fire. She’d been shot. She’d lost her
weapon. She processed those facts as she struggled to breathe under his weight. He had her arms pinned under his knees and the bulk of him rested squarely atop her lungs.

“What do you want, Ed?” It was even closer now. She pictured Mark, gun raised, easing steadily closer to his opponent.

“Throw the keys over. The ones to the pickup.” Moss cocked the gun. “If they land in the water, she gets a bullet in the brain.”

Allison’s pulse roared in her ears. Her vision tunneled. All she could see was the monstrous face above her, dripping with blood.

A soft
thunk
as the keys landed beside her.

No, no, no!
She squirmed. Pain shot up her leg.

“Now, put your weapon down and move ten steps back.”

“No.”
Her voice was a croak. “Mark,
don’t
!”

“I’m going to count to three, Wolfe. One.”

“
No,
Mark! He can’t shoot both of us!”

But even as she said it, she pictured him laying down his weapon and stepping away. She pictured Moss shooting him, then pointing the gun right back at her. It was a lose-lose, and Mark knew it, but she also knew he wouldn’t trade her life for his.

“Two.”

Allison knew he was going to do it.

An odd calm settled over her. The pain receded and she saw the leaves above her, felt the earth against her back. She heard the birds trilling. She pictured Mark nearby and felt a warm rush of love.

The monster’s face lifted. He smiled.

“Good call, Wolfe. I knew you were smart.”

Oh, God.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Mark!”

Crack.

Her eyes flew open.

Moss tipped over like a giant tree and crashed to the ground. She pushed his legs off of her and rolled away, as far as she could get before slumping against a rock and gasping air. She heard yelling, splashing. And then Mark was there.

“Jesus, you’re hit!” Sweat beaded at his temples. He had dirt on his face, his clothes. He touched her leg and she cried out.

He snatched up a radio. “Officer down! Get that helo here
now
!” He dropped the radio and stripped off his shirt. His gaze met hers. “You’re going to be okay.”

She tried to sit up. “Moss—”

“He’s dead.” He pressed her shoulders down, forcing her to lie back. He wrapped his shirt around her thigh and pulled tight. She yelped in agony.

“Sorry.” His hands moved quickly. He was pulling off his belt now, wrapping it around her thigh. “Jonah took him out. Sniper rifle.”

“But how—?”

“The bird call. It was our signal.” He glanced up at the sky, then at her. His face was taut with tension, but he tried to smile. “Hear that? That’s your ride.”

Allison heard the faint
whump-whump
of a helicopter. Pain pulsed up her leg, unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

“Mark.”

“You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“It hurts.”

“I know.” He picked up her hand and kissed it.

“Mark.”

“Hold tight. I’m going to get you out of here.”

She noticed the light first. It was soft and yellow and slanted in through the mini-blinds, making stripes across the bed.

She was in a bed. It wasn’t hers.

Allison’s gaze moved over a table, some coffee cups, a chair. A man sat there, silhouetted in the dimness, and she watched him for a moment, drinking in his familiar shape. She thought he was sleeping, but he leaned forward.

“Hey.”

She tried to respond, but her lips didn’t want to open. She ran her tongue over them, and her mouth was dry and cottony.

“Water,” she rasped.

He reached for a cup sitting on the table. She tried to sit up, and a bolt of pain zinged up her leg.

“Easy.” Mark brought the cup and pressed the straw to her lips to help her take a sip. The lukewarm water was like a salve on her parched throat. She wanted a gallon of it, but she started to feel dizzy. She rested her head back against the pillow and looked around.

“My leg.”

He put the cup down and sat beside her on the bed, making it creak. She looked him over, taking in details for the first time. White shirt, rumpled and untucked. Sleeves rolled up. Dark stubble covered his jaw. Allison’s gaze darted around the room and she realized there were paper coffee cups scattered over all of the tables.

“How long . . . ?”

“Three days.”

Three
days.
It seemed impossible.

“My leg.”

“It’s broken. You also had a concussion, probably from the car crash.” He paused. “Do you remember what happened?”

Images flashed through her mind—a van, a basement, a bloodred blade held up to the light.

She looked at his eyes. “Moss is dead.”

“Yes.”

She stared at him for a long moment as more images crowded her brain. She pictured that face hovering above her, bloody and contorted with hatred. She pictured the big black revolver pressing against her forehead.

“Your mom’s here,” Mark said. “She and your sister are in the cafeteria having some lunch. You want me to get them?”

Allison’s head throbbed at the thought. Her mom would be fretful. Her sister would be dramatic.

“Not yet,” she said. “Just . . .”
Just don’t leave,
she wanted to say.

He picked her hand up and squeezed it, as if reading her thoughts.

Mark cleared his throat. “You had surgery on your
leg. Bullet shattered the bone in three places, but the surgeon said it should heal fine after a few months.” He paused. “You’re going to have to do some rehab, though. No running for a while.”

Allison’s chest squeezed. Hot tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back.

“Guess it could have been worse, huh?”

“You going up against a serial killer?” His voice sounded uneven. “Yeah, I’d say that’s an understatement. It could have been a lot worse.”

She took a deep breath. Tried to loosen the knot in her chest. She remembered what Jordan had said.
People tell me I’m lucky. It’s a shitty thing to say.
But she pictured Erika lying dead in that creek, and she
did
feel lucky.

She closed her eyes, and she wasn’t sure how long they sat that way, holding hands in the dim little room. Her head started to ache. Three
days
.

“Have you been here all this time?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. When can I get out of here?”

He smiled down at her. “You just woke up.”

“I know, but—”

“Maybe tomorrow. Doctor said everything should be fine now. You need to let the meds wear off, take it easy for a while.”

“And when do you go back?” The knot was back in her chest as she asked the question. He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant.

“Late tomorrow. I have some things I have to do. Things I can’t put off.”

He eased closer and rested his elbow on her pillow.
He reached over and moved a lock of hair out of her face. His brown eyes were somber.

“You scared me back there.”

She didn’t know what to say. He looked at her hair, not her eyes, and the soft way he was touching her took her mind off the pounding in her head. He smelled good. He smelled like himself, and she let her eyes drift shut and tried to think about him and nothing else.

“Do you remember what you said to me in the helicopter?”

She looked up. She remembered wind flying everywhere. Dust and leaves. She remembered a medic hovering over her and someone giving her a shot.

“I think they gave me something.”

He smiled. “Morphine. You were in some pain.”

She closed her eyes. “It’s better now.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry I have to leave, but I’ll be back.”

“I know.”

“I promise, Allison.”

“I know,” she said again, but it was hard to lie around the lump in her throat.

The elevator doors dinged open and Jordan braced herself against the antiseptic smell as she walked down the familiar corridor. She ignored the nurses behind the desk because she knew where she was going. She passed a waiting area with a television tuned to a local news station. Sheriff Denton was giving another “impromptu” news conference—his third in as many days—and Jordan ignored him, too. Maybe if she’d been raped during an election year, her case would have received more attention.

She took a deep breath and shook off the bitterness. It didn’t help. And she’d recently resolved to allow less of it into her life.

A woman stepped out of a room down the hall, and Jordan looked her over. Short blond hair, sweater set, tailored slacks. She had pearls in her ears and a haggard, sleepless look about her, like a woman who might have jumped up from a bridge table to rush to the hospital—which, three days ago, she had.

“Mrs. Reichs?”

The woman snapped out of her daze.

“I’m Jordan. We spoke on the phone.”

Worry flitted across her face. “Oh, well . . . I was going to get some tea. She’s napping again.” She cast a concerned look at the closed door.

“It’s okay. I’ll just sit.” Jordan patted her shoulder bag and smiled. “I brought a crossword puzzle.”

The woman nodded vaguely, and Jordan slipped into the room before she could change her mind.

It was dim. Cool. The bathroom door stood open, allowing a wedge of light to fall across an empty visitor’s chair. An actual bedspread lay at the foot of the bed, neatly folded. Beside the sink was a vase filled with mums. On the bedside table was a framed photo of a yellow Labrador.

Jordan quietly crossed the room and lowered herself into the chair. Lauren’s long blond hair was smooth against her shoulders, one of which was wrapped in bandages. Her wrist was in a cast. One of her eyes was packed in gauze while the other was black with bruises.

Jordan unwound the scarf from her neck as the eye fluttered open.

“Hi,” she said softly.

The eye gazed out. “I don’t want to talk right now.”

“That’s okay.” Jordan nestled her purse at her feet and dropped her scarf into it. Lauren’s gaze shifted to the purse. She looked at it for a moment, then up at Jordan’s face.

“You’re not with the police.”

“No. My name’s Jordan.”

She looked suspicious. “Are you a reporter?”

“I’m not here to interview you. Don’t talk to me at all if you don’t feel like it.” Jordan looked around the room so she wouldn’t feel obligated to respond. “Tiny rooms, aren’t they? I was in the one three doors down about a year ago. Worst two days of my life, actually. Swore I’d never come back.”

Lauren’s attention moved from the scar at Jordan’s neck to her face. For what seemed like an eternity, she said nothing.

“Why did you?” Lauren asked.

Jordan held her gaze for a long moment, refusing to flinch at the swelling, or the bruises, or the black line of stitches that looked like whiskers across her throat.

Why did you?

“I’m not sure. I just thought, I don’t know, that you might want a friend.”

Salt crunched under Mark’s feet as he walked up a neighborhood street in Baltimore. What had once been a good area was now in decline, and the thirties-era homes needed new roofs and new wiring and countless other repairs that residents hadn’t been able to afford since the real-estate crash. It was a neighborhood where a
BPD cruiser parked in front of a house didn’t warrant much attention. But two BPD cruisers, two unmarked units, and a white crime-scene van were enough to lure neighbors onto cold front porches to see what might be going on.