She stomps the brakes, her heart plunging hard.
No, no, no—
Ahead, Raycevic’s familiar police cruiser is parked on the bridge’s far end. Sideways. Waiting for her. She can see the apelike man sitting on the Charger’s hood with that same black semiautomatic rifle in his lap. He glances up at her, squinting in the glare of her high beams.
She sees his trap, too: Clawed black shadows lie neatly in front of his patrol car, arranged railing to railing. Like lurking crocodiles half submerged in river water. They’re spike strips, designed to shred tires into black gristle. Police issue.
No, she wants to scream. It’s not fair.
I got away—
Raycevic waves at her. A weary smile, workmanlike.
She punches the steering wheel. The horn bleats. She screams at nothing, at everything, at him, at herself—because she knows her fate was sealed the very instant she escaped the Plastic Man and chose to drive north. She’d had two options—north or south—and she chose wrong. Like the owl shepherds the souls of those soon to depart, like the Grim Reaper surely finds his prey in that cave, she’s already made an inescapable appointment on this bridge.
There’s no undoing it. No resisting it.
The digital clock reads 9:00 p.m.
She catches her breath and considers—could she drive over Raycevic’s spike strips and keep running? Not for long. Not on four mangled, flapping tires. He’d catch her easily.
He shakes his head. Like he’s read her mind.
Tears cloud her eyes. “No. Please.”
Then he lifts the rifle to his shoulder, the deadly muzzle finding her through the windshield. Her mind races with panic: Turn the car around, Cambry. Go back, toward—
Headlights in her rearview mirror, too. Those familiar lantern lights of the Plastic Man’s eighteen-wheeler, returning like a nightmare. Even after he’s lost an eye. How is that possible?
She’s trapped here. On Hairpin Bridge.
At her front Raycevic approaches, stepping over his spike strips and aiming that rifle at her. He snaps the barrel left, a stern gesture: Get out.
She shakes her head. Warm tears on her cheeks.
He waves the barrel again, harder. His finger on the trigger.
Get out. Now.
“Please, Ray.” She hates using his name. “Please. Just let me go.”
In the harsh glare she finally sees his eyes. For the first time since nightfall, he isn’t a towering Hulk-like monster, biceps and buzz cut drawn in silhouette. He looks human, flesh and blood and fallible and right now, so damn tired. He doesn’t want to be here. He hates his life.
His voice is tired, too. “Cambry, I will shoot you if you don’t exit the vehicle.”
She does. She has no choice. The Corolla’s door creaks open. She finds the bridge’s concrete with shaky feet. Her chest heaving with hitched gasps.
He points. “Stand there.”
He’s aiming at the bridge’s guardrail, ten feet away. Prickled with flakes of rust that glow like embers in the headlights. She approaches it with slushy knees, certain she’ll die here. It’s a wretched and powerless sensation, sleepwalking where you’re ordered to. Leaving the car is a mistake, she knows. She should have stomped the gas, driven right at Raycevic, and taken a hail of armor-piercing rounds to the chest and face. Again, she considers: I need to run for it. Down the bridge.
I’ll die running, at least.
But Cambry Nguyen has always been a runner. She’s been running her entire life—from therapy, from going to the dentist, from saying I love you to her family. In a strange, sad way, she’s sick of it. There’s peace in being caught.
She can almost smile. This bridge has been waiting her entire life.
“By the railing,” Raycevic instructs gently. “Please.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain in a sec.”
He’s oddly polite. It terrifies her.
She looks back toward the Plastic Man’s eighteen-wheeler, which blocks the bridge’s entrance. The fat bastard himself stands silhouetted on the truck’s footrail, watching them with a hand clasped to his face. In his other hand, an old-fashioned rifle.
Raycevic is closer now. “Your name,” he says, “is Cambry Lynne Nguyen. You’re twenty-four. A bit of a wildcat. I saw a trespass. Malicious mischief. Vandalism. Shoplifting. One DUI, knocked down. You grew up in Washington—”
My driver’s license, she realizes. Back when he pulled me over.
He ran me in his computer.
“Your parents are John and Maisie Nguyen, and they live at 2013 West Cedar Avenue in Olympia. The Eastside neighborhood, looks like. Ages fifty-four and fifty-nine—”
“Please,” she whispers. “Please stop.”
“And let’s not forget your sister. Lena Marie Nguyen. Same age and birthday as you, so she must be a twin. Are you close? Her photo looks exactly like yours. She lives in an apartment called the Biltmore, on Wabash Avenue in the White Center neighborhood of Seattle. Unit 211.”
She can’t speak.
He draws closer. She smells his sour sweat.
“It’s a shitty deal, Cambry, and you have my sympathy, but let me tell you.” His voice lowers, like he’s letting her in on a grim secret. “It’s the only deal you’re getting tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Help me out.” His smile looks like a grimace. “See, everything depends on you now. Your family depends on you. You can save their lives. John, Maisie, and your sister, Lena, will never, ever meet me or my dad. If you just do this one thing.”
He points. “This one little thing, Cambry.”
With inching dread, she realizes he’s pointing past her. Over her shoulder. Over the bridge’s blistered guardrail, into the vast and pristine blackness beyond.
“Jump.”