He smiled and laughed and glanced in his rearview mirror to check on her.

His smile died. His laughter caught in his throat.

His eyes met the eyes of a zombie.

52

Michael Warner picked Brittany up off the floor like she was a rolled-up rug or a corpse already. Better if he thought she was, if he thought she was dead he wouldn’t have to kill her.

The pain in her head was like an explosion. Every muscle in her body tightened against it. She pressed her hand hard against her stomach, holding her phone tight against her. If it wasn’t broken, if she could see to use it, she could call 911 from the trunk of the car.

She had never imagined being so terrified in her life. She had never imagined what that felt like, what that did to the body. She was trembling all over. She had wet herself. Nausea choked her like a ball in her throat. Dizziness swam her head in circles.

Michael Warner swore as he carried her. Julia Gray kept telling him to hurry. Who might know the girl had come here? she said. Someone could come looking for her. They had to hurry. They had to get rid of her quickly. They would say they had been out for the evening, that they had never seen her. She must have been snatched off the street.

Dr. Warner swung sideways and Brittany’s feet hit the frame of the door as he carried her into the garage. Julia Gray stood beside the car. Hurry, hurry, hurry! He dumped Brittany like a bag of trash into the trunk of the car, threw a blanket over her, and shut the lid.

They were going to kill her. These people who seemed so ordinary. Parents of kids she went to school with. Michael Warner was a doctor. Brittany had come to this house to give Julia Gray her sympathies. It was all so crazy, she wanted to think it wasn’t real. She must have been dreaming, having a nightmare. And yet it was all too real.

Her heart was racing wildly. She could hardly see the illuminated screen of her phone through her tears. Her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t work the keyboard. Fingers on her left hand were broken and useless; only her thumb was functional. Over and over she tried to get the numbers keyboard to come up. Nine-one-one. That was all she needed, but she couldn’t do it.

The car dipped as someone got into it and started the engine.

They were going to take her someplace, put her in Gray’s car, and run the car into a lake.

Brittany managed to hit the phone icon. Contacts came up. The letters were a blur. She tried to hit a name. Whoever answered could call 911. If she could speak. If they could understand her. She touched the screen again and again, but nothing happened.

Nausea swept over her like a crashing wave, and she had to turn her head and vomit. The pain in her broken jaw was like being hit with a hammer over and over. She cried and retched and choked on her own blood and vomit. Her ribs hurt so badly from being kicked, she could hardly draw breath. Panic followed the nausea, another wave to drown her. She had to fight to keep from dropping the phone. Her hands were shaking so violently she thought she might fling the thing away.

She was too young to die.

She touched the screen again and a list came up. She couldn’t read it.

Her fingers shuddered against the glass.

Oh, please, God, please, God, please!

She could hear the garage door opening. The car lurched backward.

She could hear a phone somewhere ringing at the other end of her desperation.

Please answer, please answer, someone, anyone.

The voice that answered was familiar.

“Britt! Where are you?”

Kyle.

She managed the only words she could.

“Help me.”

53

The words of Kyle’s text message seemed to leap off the screen of Nikki’s phone: MOM HURRY!!!

Kovac drove. Pedal to the metal, careening around corners, running red lights. They were in his own personal vehicle. They had no dash light. They had no siren. They had no radio.

Nikki used her cell phone to call for backup and braced a hand against the dashboard as they hurtled through the streets. For once, she didn’t complain about Kovac’s driving. She egged him on.

It wasn’t that far to Julia Gray’s house as the crow flew. Driving was another matter. One-way streets, stoplights, pedestrians, cars double parked. It would have been faster to fucking run. A child was in danger.

“If she’s hurt that girl, I’m gonna fucking shoot her!” she said.

“I’ll get rid of the body,” Kovac growled as they made a hard left onto Julia Gray’s street.

They were going too fast. The car skidded sideways on the rutted, icy pavement and the rear passenger quarter panel pounded hard into the front end of a BMW SUV parked at the curb. It was like hitting a tank.

“Fuck!” Kovac shouted as they came to a hard stop.

Headlights were coming at them from the end of the street.

He gunned the engine and spun his wheels, the cars locked together where wheel met wheel.

Nikki scrambled out the door and ran toward the oncoming vehicle.

Weapon in hand, Kovac planted himself in the middle of the street beside her.

Both of them were shouting at the tops of their lungs.

“Police! Police! Stop the fucking car!”

The car kept coming.

•   •   •

KYLE HAD NEVER run so hard or so fast in his life.

He stayed in the street when he could, avoiding snow banks, cut through yards when he had to, jumped fences when he had no choice.

The cold air burned his throat and lungs. He was freezing cold and sweating all at once. His legs felt huge and heavy with the buildup of lactic acid, but he kept running. He kept running and thinking of Brittany.

He was never going to forgive himself if something bad happened to her. He never should have let her go to Gray’s house alone. He didn’t know what could have happened to her there. All she had been able to say over the phone was Help me, and that was muddled and garbled. If not for her name showing up on the screen, he never would known the caller was her.

What could have happened to her? What was happening to her right that minute as he was running? He couldn’t even really know where she was, he realized. He only knew where she had been. If she had been taken, she could be anywhere. In his imagination he saw her getting grabbed off the street by the serial killer they called Doc Holiday.

How crazy would that be? She would be kidnapped by the maniac who had killed Gray, the maniac his mom was trying to catch. And she would be in the clutches of this madman because Kyle hadn’t gone with her to and give her condolences to Gray’s mother.

It wasn’t that far to Gray’s house. A mile, maybe. The longest mile he had ever run. If he got there too late, he was never going to forgive himself.

•   •   •

THE DRIVER JERKED the wheel at the last second, trying to shoot between them and the tangle of crashed cars on the side of the street. The Lexus slid sideways on the icy ruts created by the herd of news vans that had clogged the street just the day before.

Metal crashed on metal as Julia Gray’s car plowed into Kovac’s.

The car alarms were screaming. A horn was blaring. Nikki ran toward the mangle, gun outstretched in front of her.

The passenger’s door opened and Julia Gray flung herself from the vehicle looking dazed.