Kill Tide Page 21

  He needed Jessica Little. Needed to get her…down to the core of his being. Three was the number. Three was the end of the first part of the plan and the beginning of the endgame. No point arguing about it.

  Fuck! He couldn’t wait around for some undetermined number of days…they’d be risking too much. He thought about the two Emmas and their suffering, chained up in the Heart. No, this couldn’t continue. There had to be a different way.

  And now the Emmas had thrown this female hygiene curveball. Buying a ton of female products had definitely not been part of the plan. But what could he do? He needed to decide by himself and both options were bad.

  The man drove toward the Rite Aid pharmacy. He assumed there’d be different brands of women’s stuff—he didn’t have a clue. So he’d clear the place out. All the female creature comforts. Buy different brands and different sizes. Let the girls sort out what they needed.

  He had to look at it as an opportunity to score some big-time trust points. Show them they would be provided for. And that he’d forgiven Emma Bailey for biting his lip, the hellcat.

  He would show them the strength of his commitment. Emma Bailey would come around, and Emma Addison would come around too. By the time the new family was away and together, he would be their new favorite.

  And while he was at the pharmacy, he’d pick up some anti-bacterial crap for his lip. It still stung like a bitch.

  For obvious reasons, he hadn’t been able to go to a freaking hospital. No, he’d used ice and a needle and thread and taken care of it himself. It’d hurt like a motherfucker and he was glad he hadn’t been within swatting range of Emma Bailey—he’d have done some damage to the girl. He hoped his Frankenstein mouth didn’t lead to questions at the pharmacy.

  The man was glad he’d taken a few minutes earlier for a quick session with his pipe. Not a biggie. Just enough crank to lift his spirit to a hundred times its usual size. He felt so more. So damn alive. It was like giving himself a superpower, along with the guts to use it. A solution would present itself. He truly believed it.

  The man in the van not only saw the road and what was in front of him—he could see everything in the corner of his eye too. His head was on a swivel, taking it all in. He was on point.

  It was the upside to meth no one talked about. Hell, the U.S. military gave speed to pilots to help them in battle.

  As he drove to the pharmacy, the man surfed the FM radio dial from station to station, listening for news. Everyone was talking about the Red Sox, as if that was the most important thing in the world. Something about a big win last night over the Yankees.

  I honestly don’t give a shit about the Red Sox, thought the man. Sure, he watched it, ’cause it’s what’s on. What’re you going to do? But when they win, he didn’t win himself, right? So fuck you very little. From now on he was going to only give a shit about his own shit.

  The man reached the Rite Aid, where he bought out the whole damn female hygiene section. And remembered to grab antibiotic Vaseline for his lip.

  The elderly woman who rang up his purchases didn’t make any comment. She probably saw weirder purchases every day.

  Then the man strolled next door to the package store, where he bought some liquid courage. He grabbed the cheapest whiskey they had and a six-pack of Busch beer, then got back on the road, thinking about his bad situation.

  If Jessica Little was on vacation somewhere, screw it—the bridge to freedom was still calling his name. Unfinished business was better than getting taken down like a dog. He had the Emmas…and he was going to have more money to spend than he’d ever had in his life, thanks to the Addisons paying the big fat ransom.

  Everything would be just fine. He’d make a quick stop to see if his buddy was home—bum a beer, shoot the shit—then he’d head back to check on the Emmas. He’d give them all the female crap and some extra food and water—if they were nice to him. And why wouldn’t they be, after how he’d bought all the embarrassing female devices?

  He sipped a Busch roadie as he drove. Cold and delicious. He didn’t know why anyone bought fancier beers. It wasn’t meth, but what was?

  As he turned onto Lower County Road, he glanced at the dashboard clock: 5:43. Like a countdown…

  And when he looked forward again, on the sidewalk about a quarter of a mile along, he saw the perfect solution to his damn problem. It was a pony-tailed girl, on the shorter side (maybe a young teenager?) walking alone in the same direction he was driving.

  Going his way…

  The man in the van had only a moment of indecision. Of fear. This girl wasn’t part of the plan. He’d done no recon at all. He didn’t even know her name. It was too freaking random.

  He scoured the road ahead and checked his rear mirrors. No cars or pedestrians in sight.

  Just him and the girl. Fate?

  The man in the van decided it was. His fate. Her fate. Their fate. A quick grab, then move to part two of the plan—getting far, far away from Cape Cod. To the place in the mountains. To their new start!

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Pepper experienced the next fifteen minutes in fast forward.

  He drove the police SUV through the rain, singing a Kings of Leon song like an idiot. He was nervous about seeing Delaney, what he would say to her. They’d go to his house long enough for him to change out of his uncomfortable cadet uniform. She’d get a kick out of it, a joy ride in a cop car. Especially when she learned that he’d made his choice, and it was her. And making music. She’d be totally excited.

  Freedom. Together. He still had to tell his dad and Jake. He knew there’d be trouble, but he’d decided. He’d quit—if his dad didn’t fire him first.

  Fire him…

  Pepper decided he would sit his dad down later that night and give him the news. Pepper wasn’t going to Harvard this fall. And he wasn’t ever going to become a cop. He would be a musician. He and Delaney were leaving this week. And that was that.

  He knew his dad would flip his lid. Throw away an Ivy League degree for a guitar and a girl? Pepper could already hear his gravelly voice.

  Maybe it had been the wrong day to swipe the police SUV. The weight of it hitting him now.

  He came down the hill on Roger’s Folly Road. As he approached the intersection with Lower County Road, he saw a brown cargo van pulling onto that road from a grassy strip between the road and the sidewalk. It was approaching the four-way stop to his right.

  Pepper noticed a white bag in the grass. Maybe a kitchen garbage bag? No, something smaller.

  The van’s right-turn signal was flashing. The driver—a guy in a green trucker’s cap—looked at Pepper and their eyes met. Maybe he distracted the driver because his van rolled a few feet into the intersection before he stopped.

  Pepper remembered that the man spat out his window in his direction and drove straight, not turning despite his turn signal.

  And at that moment Pepper got an even wilder inspiration.

  He would stop blaming others for his troubles and his future, once and for all. Fuck that! He was going to take action to force his freedom in a crazy act of revolution. Pull over the brown van for running the stop sign. Call in for backup. When another officer arrived, they’d send the driver on his way and take in Pepper to be dealt with by his dad.

  It’d be a serious fuck-up. What could his dad do then but fire him?

  And what would everyone expect him to do then—even want him to do—except go the hell away?

  Which was exactly what he wanted.

  Instead of going straight toward Delaney Lynn’s apartment, Pepper turned left, following the brown van. As he turned, he thought, Pepper, you’re nuts. He was about a hundred yards behind the van, which was moving at a slowish pace, probably five miles under the thirty MPH speed limit.

  Pepper caught up to the van and settled in about twenty yards back. White paper covered the inside of the van’s twin small rear windows. It looked the same as thousands of other basic work vans all over the Cape. A
nd not much like the notorious white van his dad and law enforcement had been hunting on the Cape that week in connection with the two Emma kidnappings.

  Kings of Leon reached the bitter end of their song and a decent Black Keys tune started up, but Pepper killed the music. Then he turned on the police radio and lifted the mic. First time ever, but he’d seen his dad and others do it for most of his life. Still, he fumbled around. Then he hit the talk button. “Ah, Dispatch?” he asked.

  Pepper’s stomach was suddenly in his throat. It was one thing to get a self-destructive idea. The way people standing near a ledge getting a momentary impulse to jump, which they almost always dismiss just as fast, leaving their toes tingling while staying alive. That self-preservation instinct…

  Barbara Buckley’s voice crackled on the radio, acknowledging.

  Shit. What was Pepper going to do? It wasn’t too late yet to bail out of his idea.

  And then it was. “Ah, Dispatch, this is Car Two-Two,” said Pepper. “Please send units for, ah, backup. Lower County Road, east of Roger’s Folly.”

  Long silence, then: “Is that you, Pepper? Repeat that—”

  Instead, he hung up the mic. He fumbled around the dashboard and eventually found the switch to activate the roof lights and siren. His heart jumped as he flipped it. Pepper, now you’re fucked. Congratulations, you’re fired for sure. His right foot didn’t belong to him—he barely felt it, heavy and strange, as it floored the gas. His siren screamed in his ears.

  The brown van maintained its pace for thirty seconds, then slowed and stopped on the road’s muddy edge. It was still raining lightly.

  Pepper parked ten feet behind the van. He sat watching his windshield wipers scrape back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Nothing more, right? Just sit there…hadn’t he screwed up enough already? Just wait for backup to come and talk to the van driver…send him on his way.

  Then everything went to hell. The van’s brake lights lit bright red as its engine turned on again. With a roar, the van backed hard at his SUV and slammed into his front end.

  Pepper launched forward into the steering wheel, hitting his chin. But his SUV’s air bag didn’t pop.

  The brown van roared away in a cloud of mud and exhaust, headed up Lower County Road toward Route 28.

  Holy shit! thought Pepper, cradling his chin in his hands. His whole body started shaking. He was freaked out. And he was damned mad too.

  He had to admit he wasn’t thinking clearly at that moment. He wasn’t thinking at all.

  Pepper put the SUV in gear and slewed wildly back on the road in pursuit of the van.

  Chapter Forty

  Pepper struggled with the SUV’s steering wheel and floored the gas. His battered vehicle shuddered, and steam or smoke was seeping from under the hood. The SUV’s bumper crash guard had provided some protection, but something must have been shaken loose by the impact.

  Most important, it still drove.

  And the asshole’s brown van was no match for the SUV’s police interceptor engine. Even with the damage it’d sustained. Pepper was alongside the van in less than a minute, his siren wailing in his ears, and he swung his steering wheel hard to the right, sideswiping the van. Like he’d done many times before…playing Grand Theft Auto.

  The van swayed away from him, then lurched back onto the road. Pepper could see the driver’s face—furious and pale. He was yelling something Pepper couldn’t hear through the closed windows.

  Pepper pulled a few feet ahead of the van, then swung his steering wheel again, colliding with it even harder. The van launched off the road across a grass strip and crashed into a tree. Pepper braked and pulled off the road, sliding to a stop in the wet grass fifty feet down the road. He groaned, unhooked his seatbelt and climbed out of the SUV.

  The driver-side door of the van was caved in, but Pepper saw its passenger door swing open. The driver crawled out and stumbled toward the road. A green trucker’s hat fell off his head into the grass.

  “Stop!” yelled Pepper, running toward him.

  The man reached the road twenty feet from the brown van. He slipped on the wet pavement, then recovered. He pointed a handgun at Pepper.

  He skidded to a stop. He was completely unarmed. An incredible rush of energy flooded his mind with thoughts. Run away! Fight! Both primitive choices blasting his brain in that instant, tearing him in half.

  Pepper chose to run…right at the man with the gun. Maybe instinct, maybe just more epic stupidity.

  Pepper heard three shots and liquid fire erupted low on his side. He stumbled, then somehow kept running.

  He tackled the man and they fell in a tangle as the man fired again. Pain stabbed into Pepper’s shoulder. They began wrestling desperately on the wet asphalt. Pepper heard another shot but didn’t feel an impact. He needed to rip the gun free or rip the man’s arm from its shoulder socket. Either would do.

  And neither of which worked. The man was strong too, and wild. They ended up tangled together, both lying on the arm holding the gun. The man grabbed Pepper’s hair with his other hand and was trying to tear himself loose. The man’s face was flushed crimson and his eyes were impossibly wide. The man’s lip was swollen like he’d been in another fight. It was stitched up with black thread but was oozing blood.

  Way in the distance of his senses, Pepper heard a faint thump, thump, thump. His own heartbeat?

  They fought like animals on the wet road—locked together. Kicking, pulling, looking for any advantage. Pepper had been in more scraps than he could count as a hockey player. He was known to be good at it. And he’d boxed Golden Gloves in high school, with mixed success. But this was a completely different fight. One of them was about to die.

  Pepper could hear sirens from back toward town. Too far and faint for help to arrive in time.

  The man screamed as he ripped his gun hand free and swung the barrel toward Pepper. He shoved away the man’s elbow with his right hand while desperately grabbing at the weapon with his left. His hand closed on the cold metal.

  The handgun fired again. Pepper felt a shock of pain in his left thumb and the man screamed “Aghhhhh—!” An inhuman, broken sound. The man jerked backward and thrashed wildly on the ground under Pepper. Blood was spurting from the man’s neck. The gun slid and hit the road. Pepper kicked it away.

  Still no civilian or police cars. Where was everybody?

  Thump, thump, thump. That sound again, echoing in his ears. Louder. His hand was bleeding and his thumb was wrong. He wrapped his index finger around the bleeding stump of his thumb and squeezed hard. Then he raised the hand above his head, hoping it might slow the bleeding.

  His vision was shrinking—all black at the edges and weird. His shoulder was going numb, his side was on fire and the world was spinning under him.

  The man tried to crawl free. Pepper pulled himself onto the man’s chest, using his legs to pin the man’s arms to his side. Using his uninjured hand, Pepper firmly pressed the bottom of his itchy police cadet shirt against the man’s neck, trying to contain the bleeding. The man’s blood continued to spurt against his hand.

  The man began to spasm and his bloody mouth twisted in a grimace. The man said weakly, “We can’t—” Then started coughing, or laughing. Pepper couldn’t understand the rest of whatever he was saying. The man’s brown eyes bugged out with rage. Had Pepper seen him somewhere before?

  The man swore, then spat blood. It hit Pepper’s face, stinging his eyes. He lifted his chin but kept his hand and shirt against the man’s gushing neck.

  “We won’t—” groaned the man, or possibly the words were just a big exhale. His body gave two kicks. Then the man’s brown eyes faded to the cheap, dull brown of his van. They froze and were suddenly empty.

  Pepper began to cry, alone there in the street.

  Time passed, Pepper couldn’t say how long. Then he felt a strong hand shake his shoulder.

  It was Lieutenant Donald Eisenhower. Pepper had never seen Eisenhower’s African American fac
e so pale. Or so close. It was ridiculous.

  “Hey man, what’s up?” asked Pepper. He didn’t recognize his own voice. Thick. Slurred. He gingerly raised his hand in greeting and saw it was stained blood red.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Hey…you hear that?” asked Pepper.

  Lieutenant Eisenhower was bent over at his side and answered him. But Pepper couldn’t follow his words very well, because the lieutenant’s head was lazily splitting into a mosaic of Eisenhowers. Like Pepper was looking through one of those kaleido-thingamabobs he’d played with as a kid… What was Eisenhower saying?

  Pepper tried to wipe the blood off his hand on the wet road. But the blood only smeared. He was in a ton of pain and his hand looked wrong now. Why wasn’t the rain washing it clean?

  He saw a small group of fuzzy people behind Eisenhower, gawking down at him. The evening sky behind them was a broken shade of gray. Were they civilians? Like what, this was all a goddamn show?

  Pepper tried to push himself to a seating position, but his hand landed on someone else. He saw it was a man who was also covered in blood. This man was dead still. A wet green baseball cap lay in the street at his side.

  Eisenhower slapped his cheek, as if to make him focus. But the slaps felt way too feeble. What was wrong with the lieutenant? Was he hurt too?

  “What happened, Pepper? What the holy hell did you do?” Lieutenant Eisenhower asked.

  Pepper could barely hear him over the thump, thump, thump. He tried to clear his head and answer. I can explain…just give me a second. Please!

  Pepper really tried. But no words came out. And now the many faces above him looked wicked scared. And way too close.