Jade Sky (23 page)

The truck hit the brakes and Matt gunned the SUV. It lurched forward, and Matt veered left just enough to see around. If nothing went wrong, he had enough time to make it before getting plastered by an oncoming minivan. The tires slipped as he accelerated.

"Matt." Blossom's clipped voice betrayed her nervousness.

"I know." He wasn't even sure what that meant.

The dump truck tried to give him room, but there wasn't much shoulder, and the ditch had him boxed in. Matt hugged the truck, his sideview mirror folding back and popping forward as it brushed along the irregular, rust-stained metal. Ahead of him, the minivan swerved, almost into the ditch, then overcompensated into the path of the truck.

"MATT!"

"I KNOW!"

A thousand possibilities screamed through Matt's mind, so he picked the best one and prayed. He eased past the truck, blocking out the screaming curses from the cab, cut into the right lane—and into the path of the minivan. Instinct told him to veer left; precognition told him that would get them all killed, and the whispers begged him to do it. The van jerked to its right, and Matt cut to his. Gravel crunched under his tires as they hit the shoulder, right tires almost in the ditch. The van passed with inches to spare, and the truck driver skidded to a stop behind them, already screaming into the CB, glaring at Matt through the rearview.

"You're crazy," Blossom said, knuckles white in her lap.

Matt accelerated, closing the distance to the red sports car. He locked eyes with Jeff through Jeff’s rearview, noting the look of grim determination and the nervous sweat on his brow. Matt shook his head and mashed down on the gas as they rounded a curve.

Jeff stretched his left arm out the window and let a small object fall from his hands. Matt accelerated over the grenade, and flinched when it exploded behind them.

"Where the hell did he get that?" Blossom asked.

"Garrett. Which means he's got, what, two more at most?"

The second grenade spattered the driver's side with shrapnel, and Matt backed off. Jeff lobbed the third grenade high, and it tumbled into the ditch. Matt didn't even hear it go off as they roared past. He hit the gas just as they rounded the bend onto a straightaway.

The forest opened up into a valley with a small farm community at the bottom. Miles ahead, a single bridge traversed a small river—no more than an overgrown creek—just before a railroad crossing. Matt saw the train churning its way from the east, and swore.

Matt had the needle buried past ninety, and Jeff pulled away from them on the straight road. He gauged the distance to the crossing as the Mustang peaked, and Blossom voiced his thought.

"He won't make it."

Matt took his foot off the gas. Whether or not Jeff did, they had no chance of beating the train. The red lights at the crossing flashed, and the gates closed. Clouds of dust kicked up behind the red car, and Matt couldn't help admiring the beauty of the sleek machine as it did what Detroit had made to do. But it wasn't enough.
C'mon, Jeff. Just stop.

 The train blared its horn, two perfunctory blasts that said, "Here I come." Then another, long blast. Brakes squealed, but the locomotive had a hundred cars behind it and had to have been going fifty miles an hour. The best it could do now was buy Jeff a second, maybe.

Matt pounded the steering wheel and brought the SUV to rest. "Goddamn it, Jeff."

"He's dead," Blossom replied.

Matt didn't need precognition to see it coming. The train beat the Mustang to the intersection by a split second. Jeff shielded his face with his hands as he blasted through the gate, and then vanished in a shriek of metal as the Mustang hit the locomotive at a hundred-something miles an hour.

The enormous engine rocked as shredded metal blasted off of it. A single tire launched into the air, careening over the train in a high arc even as the first railcars blew past. The crumpled back end of the Mustang flipped end over end next to the train, tumbling down the embankment toward the water, spewing gasoline as it went. The front of the car had ceased to exist, and the red mist clouding the railway could have been paint or what little remained of Jeff.

Blossom muttered something in Japanese.

Matt said a prayer of thanks that the train didn't derail, did a U-Turn, and drove back the way they'd come. The dump truck driver flipped them the bird on the way past; with any luck he hadn't called the cops on the reckless drivers, and they'd be long gone before the police caught up to them.

Matt knew better than to count on it.

*   *   *

Akash met them at the curb, tossing a duffel bag into the back seat as he got in.

"Lost you, did he?"

"He's dead," Blossom replied. "Hit a train. Squish."

"Holy shit." He locked eyes with Matt in the rearview. "Seriously?"

Matt nodded, then took a right out of the lot. He kept it at just under the speed limit and breathed a sigh of relief when they crossed the state line into Tennessee. He'd feel better if they had a different car, just in case the trucker and the train engineer put two and two together, but stealing a vehicle would paint just as big a target on them. At least crossing state lines made it more of a bureaucratic mess.

"I don't suppose y'all have a police scanner in that bag?"

"Nope," Akash said. "Good idea, but sorry."

"How about a clean shirt? This one's got blood on it."

"No can do, but I've got an ICAP windbreaker." He passed it up to Matt, who didn't bother to put it on yet.

"Where are we going?" Blossom asked.

"I'm thinking Maryland," Matt said.

"Why?"

"'Cause Janet LaLonde lives in Maryland. And if anyone knows where they're keeping Gerstner, she will."

"Or can find out," Akash added.

"Right."

"Did you find anything else?" Blossom asked.

Akash shrugged. "Only sort of. The bailing wire was still intact, but there was a lot of blood on it."

Blossom turned in her seat to face him. "You think Jeff used blood to slip through?"

"I have a hard time believing Garrett would be that sloppy."

"Me, too," Matt said. "And what were those puncture wounds?"

"I don't know. They almost looked like someone jammed acid-dipped needles into his skin. There wasn't any sign of forced entry."

"So what happened?" Blossom asked.

In the rearview mirror, Matt watched Akash shrug.

*   *   *

They hit a Motel 6 outside Tina, Kentucky, to see if Father Rees had tried to contact them. Without using a credit card, they couldn't rent a room if they wanted to, but Matt could slip into the hospitality room. He had one message. It read,
Call me.
His heart jumped to his throat.

He approached the front desk, where a bearded thirty-something sat at a computer, clicking the mouse with too much enthusiasm for it to be work related. He hit the spacebar and looked up. "May I help you?"

"Y'all got a phone I could use?"

He lifted his chin toward the wall. "Courtesy phone's right there. Just enter your room number, then dial nine." He turned back to his game.

Matt cleared his throat. "I don't have a room number."

The man raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, pal. Phone's for customers. Company policy."

Matt put a ten dollar bill on the counter. "How firm's that policy?"

He smiled, exposing teeth stained yellow-gray. "Not that firm." He scooped the ten off the counter and stuffed it into his pocket. "Dial star-one-five-five-one, then nine. You have a nice night."

He grabbed the phone and dialed Father Rees's cell. He picked up halfway through the first ring.

"Hello?" His voice sounded strained, worried.

"It's me. Talk."

"Hey, I think you need to get here."

He closed his eyes. "What happened?"

"I think maybe it'd be better in person—"

"Tell. Me."

Silence, then, "I'm so sorry, Matt. She's in surgery now, they're going to have to perform a hysterectomy."

Light exploded in his head, cold and without mercy. He forced a word through a dry mouth that had forgotten how to speak. "Why?" He asked God and Father Rees at the same time. Only Rees responded.

"Uterine bleeding. She's going to bleed out if they don't do it. She . . . She didn't want them to. Fought them. Said she'd rather die. They had to sedate her to save her."

When he could breathe again, he asked, "She's going to be okay?" He didn't ask about their son. He didn't need to hear what he already knew.

"Yeah. She should be out of surgery in an hour or so. Then a couple days in the hospital and a few weeks of rehab." He paused. "And she's going to need counseling."

"She's already in therapy," Matt snapped.

"I know. But she'll need more. Grief counseling. After this, maybe couples counseling."

He couldn't reach through the phone and snap Rees's neck, so instead he said, "When's she coming out of surgery?"

"The doctors said a couple hours, then she'll sleep through the night. I'm sure that's on purpose. They're going to keep her in ICU."

Matt did the math in his head. "I can be there in three hours, give or take."

"See you then. And Matt?"

"Yeah."

"It's best you come alone. Someone saw your friends, the dark guy and the Asian woman, carrying those assault weapons. Police put out an APB, came to talk to me and everything."

"What'd you tell them?"

"I told them I haven't seen anyone but I'll keep an eye out."

"That it?"

"That's it."

"Thanks." Matt hung up, and the pitying look on the clerk's face took too much to bear. He left the motel with tears in his eyes. Before Akash could say anything, he said, "We're going back. I need to be with Mon." He could just make out Blossom's form through the blur. "Can you drive, please?"

She slid into the driver's seat, and he took shotgun.

"How fast?" she asked.

"Don't get pulled over. But fast."

*   *   *

Matt left Blossom and Akash in the parking garage and stalked through the hospital to the information desk. "Hi," he said to the young black man behind the counter. "Where's your ICU?"

He pointed down the hall to the left. "Follow the blue line. Who are you here to see?"

Matt walked away, using the blue line as a guide through the warren of white-tiled halls lit with sterile, lifeless fluorescents. He stepped through the doorway under the huge "Intensive Care" sign and approached the desk.

A freckled nurse with bottle-red hair too bright for middle age smiled at him. "May I help you?"

"You had a Jane Doe come in from surgery."

"And you are?"

"I'm here to see her."

She pursed her lips. "Sir, I'm going to need a name, and you're going to need to sit right there and wait." She nodded to a bench, a recycled church pew, against the wall behind him. He cut left, looking in each room as he went by. She got up and stalked after him, cross-trainers squeaking on the hard tile floor. "Sir! You have to wait on the bench!"

He found her in the fourth room and wrinkled his brow at the haggard, unconscious form under the sheet. The life leached out of her, Monica's pale face held no comfort of sleep. The nurse grabbed his arm as he stepped through the door. He turned, pried her fingers off his arm, and placed his fingertips on her sternum above her breasts. He took one step and extended his arm, propelling her backward out of the room. She flailed and stumbled into the desk. He stepped in and closed the door, then approached his wife.

He stopped in shock at the round lump of her belly, and turned to Jason as he stood from the seat in the corner.

The priest's sad smile held more joy than Matt expected. "Good news."

Matt shook his hand and sat next to the bed. He took Monica's hand in his, kissed her brow, and looked at the priest. "Tell me."

"It wasn't as bad as they'd thought, and they were able to stop the bleeding without removing her uterus. But it's going to be touch and go for a while, for both of them. They recommended termination; I fought them on it."

He closed his eyes and inhaled a haggard breath. "Thank you, Jason."

"Sure. I've been in here a long time. I'm going to get some rest. I'll leave you with her." Matt heard his footfalls echo down the hall.

He held Monica's limp hand and waited for her to wake up. A few hours' dozing in the car had refreshed his body more than it needed but left his mind raw. Given how he'd treated the nurse, it came as no surprise when the policeman appeared at the door a moment later.

Mid-twenties, tall and muscular with a black crew cut and a ragged scar across his forehead, he didn't offer his hand. "Can I ask you a couple of questions, sir?" His uniform and badge identified Officer Voss as a Simpson County Sherriff's deputy, not a Statie.

Matt nodded to Jason's chair, adjacent to the giant white monitor that kept track of Monica's vitals. "Have a seat, deputy. And close the door."

He closed the door, then sat and took out a pen and spiral-bound flip pad. "Can I see some identification?"

"No." Matt waited.

"I understand you gave the nurse a hard time."

When Voss didn't go on, Matt said, "Is that a question, officer?"

Voss clucked his tongue. "Alright, how do you know our Jane Doe?"

"She's my wife."

"What's her name?"

"Jane."

Voss grunted. "Last name?"

"Doe."

He sighed and flipped the pad closed. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask for your cooperation on—"

Matt cut him off with a raised hand. "Just . . . Just wait. She came here as a Jane Doe for a reason, and I'm not about to change that just because you've got a badge."

Voss leaned forward, his face flushed with anger. "I'm a police—"

"I don't care," Matt said without raising his voice. "If you want my cooperation, you're going to have to forget your badge a minute and talk to me as a person, not a suspect." They stared each other down, and while Matt blinked, Voss broke first.

The policeman sighed again and sat back. "I could take you into custody."