The van screamed and jolted as the brakes locked, and the vehicle raged against Newton’s first law of motion, as it seemed the body of it would come apart around them. Beside David, Chambers slammed forward into the dash with a groan, his head cracking against the inside of the windshield.
And then an explosion behind them and the van lurched forward, throwing David and Chambers back against their seats. David braced himself; his gambit had worked just as he’d planned. The truck that had been trailing them hadn’t stopped in time. It rear-ended them, hard enough that the back of the van launched up into the air, and they hung there in what seemed like zero gravity for a long second, David’s body pinned against the seatback, Chambers lolling free in the cab, blood trailing from his head.
Then the van slammed down with a boom like thunder, and the world went blessedly still and silent.
No.
David shook himself into focus. It wasn’t over. He forced his shaking hands to unbuckle the seatbelt as Chambers groaned beside him. He was alive.
The door handle came into David’s hand and he pulled it. The door opened, and he was stumbling down onto the highway, barely keeping on his feet.
The back of the van sat on the front of the truck, which was smashed almost beyond recognition, the two vehicles merging into each other. As David stepped forward, his boots crunched on broken glass and bits of metal. A hissing noise issued up from the truck’s obliterated engine. Inside the cab, the driver slumped over the steering wheel.
David drew the Glock from the shoulder holster under his jacket. But the young man was either dead or so badly injured that he wouldn’t be a threat. David started to reach out, to feel for a pulse.
Just then, he heard shouted voices from in front of the van.
“Chambers!”
“What the fuck?”
The fog of the crash still gripped David, but he forced himself to think. Two of them, coming from the lead vehicles. Both would be armed. Highly trained. He had no chance against them. Not out here. Alone. No cover.
They were only some twenty or thirty yards from the gas station, but that was forward, past the two soldiers.
He clung to the driver’s side of the van, and then he heard Chambers on the inside, moving.
“Motherfucker pulled the parking brake!”
“Where is he?” one of the voices yelled in response.
Closer. He was almost out of time.
And then David was acting, not thinking. He dropped to the pavement and rolled, sliding underneath the chassis of the van.
He stopped on his belly, facing forward, gun in front of him, clenched in both hands. He stared ahead, holding his breath, waiting for them to appear.
They stopped talking, the three of them. To not reveal their positions, he figured. This wasn’t the first time they had stalked a man.
Their feet came into view. On the left, black and gray tennis shoes. On the right, boots. David prayed for them to stay close together, but as they approached the van they separated, the tennis shoes flaring wide to the left, the driver’s side, and the boots around to the right.
David’s head swiveled back and forth. The second either of them ducked down, saw him, he was dead, a fish in a barrel.
The feet moved methodically, and it seemed from his vantage point almost a dance, choreographed steps and pivots as they scanned the wreckage. He needed them closer. Close enough that he could be sure. He wouldn’t be shooting like he was trained—aim at meaty bulk of center mass. He’d have to shoot one in the leg, then pivot and shoot the other. And . . .
Where was Chambers? Why hadn’t he stepped down?
Now the two sets of feet were directly beside him, across from each other. They would be figuring it out soon. He had to do it. Had to do it now.
He turned to his left, taking steady aim at the tennis shoes. Maybe eight feet away. Feet close together.
David inhaled and imagined a clean shot. Just the way his dad had taught him with a rifle, staring down a deer.
He exhaled and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot exploded in the tiny space, a roar bouncing between metal and pavement.
He watched only long enough to see an eruption of blood, the feet falter, the legs start to fall.
Then he spun swiftly to the right. To the boots.
“He’s under the . . .” a voice started to yell.
David squeezed the trigger twice. The gun recoiled, but his ears were filled with an intense ringing from the first shot, so the only sound it gave was like the crash of a wave.
The man in the boots fell. He landed so that his head was toward the back of the van. David recognized him from the club. Now the face stared at him, confused and hurting.
He still held his gun. David willed him to stop, but the man lifted it forward, toward David.
David squeezed the trigger again, and there was no mistaking that the soldier was dead.
He spun back to his left.
The man in the tennis shoes lay with his feet toward David. He dragged himself away from the van, leaving twin trails of blood. The one shot had pierced both of his feet.
There was still no sign of Chambers, but David couldn’t stay where he was. He army-crawled out from under the driver’s side, moving slowly, steadily, listening for any sign of Chambers.
David sat with his back against the van. His ears still rang.
In front of him, the man in the tennis shoes had almost reached his destination—his gun, which he had dropped when he fell.
“Don’t,” David said.
The man looked back. He was little more than a teenager, all anger and intensity. When he saw David, and saw the Glock trained on him, he stopped.
“Good,” David said, his voice low. “Where is Chambers?”
The soldier said nothing, but his eyes flitted up, to the van above David, with a look of recognition.
David rolled to his left, toward the back of the van, just as shots rang out from inside, bullets going into and through the van’s side panel—plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk—and ricocheting against the pavement.
Something burned in David’s left hand, and he wanted to scream.
But the kid in the tennis shoes was already at his gun, leveling it at David, using the gunfire as a distraction.
David raised the Glock and fired three quick shots, hitting his target in the shoulder, neck, and temple.
The gun clattered out of the kid’s hand as he bled out.
David hunched as low as he could. He stole a quick glance at his left hand, which was red with blood and had a hole clean through the middle of it. He would allow himself to feel pain later. Now . . .
More shots rang out, just over David’s shoulder.
He turned, facing the van, and in one motion squeezed off four rounds. Glass exploded as the bullets pierced the window.
Then silence.
Was Chambers dead?
He scanned the windows, keeping low. His hearing started to come back. In the distance, he could hear the wail of sirens. Then . . .
The groan of a door opening on the far side. David held a second, then stood.
Chambers had launched himself out of the passenger side door and was headed at a dead sprint for the gas station. He held a pistol in his right hand and gripped his side with his left. He ran like a wounded animal, desperate and ungainly. One of David’s bullets had found a home.
David ran up to the car that had been in front of him. Chambers blindly fired his gun, but the bullet went wide as David ducked behind the vehicle.
He leaned out to look. Gas pumps out in front. Onlookers taking cover, some screaming. He heard the faint cry of sirens coming closer—someone had called it in.
David steeled himself and ran out after Chambers, steady, his gun in front of him, ready to aim and fire. He tacked wide, toward the gas pumps, trying to get an angle, to cut Chambers off.
The soldier seemed to see this and broke off toward a large automated car wash along the side of the building, then disappeared into the dark of it.
As David approached, he saw the trail of blood along the pavement, drops the size of silver dollars. It was a cement garage with twin tracks running through, pulling vehicles by their tires as automated arms brought down brushes, buffers, spurts of water, hot gusts of air.
Holding his pistol in front of him, David stepped steadily into the maw of the structure, past the dryer, which blasted him with a desert wind.
He couldn’t hear over the roar of water and churn of mechanized parts.
David hugged to one wall and crouched as low as he could, so that he could see under the spinning arm that hung down from the ceiling.
Foam flicked off of the arm and filled the air, like globs of snow.
It felt as if he’d walked willingly into a creature’s maw to be consumed. Any sign of the blood was lost amid the slosh of water and soap.
So many shapes. So many shadows. So many fast movements. His brain screamed at his eyes. Focus!
Then, just beyond him, a hatchback appeared on the tracks, being pulled toward him, scrubbers drumming away against the car’s exterior, water pelting it.
David froze. He watched. Looking for anything that seemed human. He wouldn’t yell a warning. Not like in Jason’s office. He would act.
Something moved. A form. Chambers.
David took aim.
Just then, the car lurched forward, pulled between them. Foam showered David.
He wiped it off.
But it was too late. Chambers had come around the front of the car and held his pistol aimed.
The gunshot echoed brilliantly in the enclosed space.
For a moment that seemed never to end, Chambers looked at David with an expression of what struck David as remorse. His gun arm hung limp.
Then Chambers fell over.
He was dead, but the automated car wash kept moving, pulling the car forward, the front left tire catching on the body and dragging it, crunching, lurching as bones gave way with a series of grinding pops, car and body buffeted by brushes and cannons of water.
Two women were inside, mouths agape, screaming with voices drowned out by the roar of the machines.
“Shut it down! Shut the damn thing down!” someone yelled.
David turned, back toward the exit. A shape was there, someone holding a submachine gun. A young man in black tactical gear.
“Who . . . Who are you?” was all David could think to ask.
The man responded, but David could hear nothing over the din of the car wash and the ringing in his ears from all the gunfire. Then the machinery around them froze. The car had stopped a few feet ahead, the whirling arms frozen in place, a streak across the ground behind it, a soupy froth of blood and bubbles.
He came outside to find a phalanx of black SUVs ringing the station, dozens of black-suited soldiers with guns raised. To the back of it, he saw Brooke’s truck with lights flashing. She stood outside of it, craning her neck to see. He holstered his pistol and waved to her.
“Thanks,” David said to the soldier who’d come into the car wash. “Hadn’t been for you . . . Anyway, that was all of them. You can tell your guys to ease up.”
The soldier nodded, then signaled to the others, who lowered their weapons; the panic went out of the clutch of people gathered by the gas pumps. Whatever had happened here, it was done.
Conover stepped out of one of the SUVs and stomped toward David.
“Sheriff Blunt. You had specific orders. Those orders were to stand the fuck down.”
Whatever capacity David had for punishment had reached its limit. He wasn’t going to take more abuse, not after this. Let Conover do what he would.
“You knew,” David growled.
It was harsh and sudden enough to throw Conover from his attack. Also, Conover at the same moment looked down and noticed the hole in David’s hand. He lost his bluster but kept up an angry tone.
“I was watching them. I suppose you know what they were doing.”
David nodded.
“We’d known someone was smuggling out samples. But we didn’t just want them. We wanted to bring down the whole operation—the dealers and buyers, too,” Conover continued. “Then you go and play hero cop. Now we’ve got dead suspects and jack shit else to show for it. Fuck. At least this wraps up the serial killer shit with a nice little bow.”
“It wasn’t them,” David said.
Conover’s eyes widened, searching for an explanation.
“Of course it was.”
“They didn’t even know about Erickson. Whoever the killer is, he’s still out there.”
David held up his left hand, which had begun to throb so badly he felt he might not be able to stay upright.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a Band-Aid to put on this,” David said.
He walked through the chaos of the scene to Brooke, parked alongside the highway.
“What in the holy hell happened, boss?” she asked, then saw his wound. “Jesus. Your hand.”
“Can you drive me to the hospital?” he asked. “Tell you all about it on the way.”