Officer in Pursuit (34 page)

Sasha shook her head. “I want to come
with you guys. If Kerry’s out there, I want to help find
her.”

Henry leaned in and whispered
something in Sasha’s ear, something Grey couldn’t hear.

It must’ve been a magic spell, because
she turned toward the stage, leaving him and Grey alone.

They started for the woods. It was
like working a PERT search, only without their gear, weapons or
other team members.

“You armed?” Grey asked, keeping his
voice low.

Henry shot him a look, reached into a
deep cargo pocket and pulled out his Glock.

Grey felt half the world’s weight lift
off his shoulders. At least now, if Brad had Kerry and was armed –
he hated to think about it, but it was a real possibility – they’d
be able to stop him.

Grey felt like an idiot in his
costume. All he had was a fucking cape, and there was no question
of concealing a weapon in all that spandex. He should’ve thought
ahead – should’ve come prepared.

He hadn’t. He’d fucked up.

He should’ve walked to the house with
Kerry, should’ve stayed by her side. If anything happened to her,
it’d be his fault.

* * * * *

Getting Kerry through the strip of
pine woods was like wrestling a pissed-off cat. Brad had to drag
her by her hair, grabbing ahold of an arm too when she wouldn’t
stop hitting him. Goddamn, she was one irritating, stubborn
bitch.

He thought about knocking her out
cold, but didn’t want to risk making her any crazier in the
head.

Besides, he didn’t want to give her
any reprieve. This time, he wanted her to endure every minute,
realize how powerless she was. He’d let her fight tooth and nail
every step of the way, if that was what it took to get the fact
that he was in charge through her thick skull.

He needed to hurry, though. There was
always the risk that someone might stumble through the woods
between the mansion and the neighboring farm running the haunted
house. He couldn’t afford a complication like that, needed to get
her out of here and to somewhere private.

There, he’d punish her for what she’d
done, pay her back until she realized there was no escaping: he was
her life, just like she’d promised, whether she liked it or not.
She was lucky he was willing to take her back, after all she’d
done. There wasn’t another goddamn man on the planet who would’ve
done that for her – not after what she’d done to his
face.

She thought a few bruises were such a
big fuckin’ deal that she’d run away, and then she’d gone and done
that. She was a selfish little hypocrite, to the core.

He’d make her see that.

He’d make her change.

And he’d make her grateful for the
chance to do so.

She was panting by the time they
reached the edge of the woods, the end of the deer trail he’d
followed from the road. His truck waited on the gravel
shoulder.

She seemed to get a second wind when
she saw it.

“I won’t go with you! I’m not your
wife, Brad! I’ll never be your wife again. Let me go!”

She fought him, but she was
pathetically weak – had been ever since he’d thrown her down on the
ground.

He forced her into the cab of the
truck, held both her wrists in one hand and tied them with some
rope he’d stored under the seat. Forcing her down onto her belly,
he made her lie across the seat while he bound her ankles,
too.

“I’m gonna let you sit in the seat
beside me,” he said when he was done. “And you’re gonna act like
you have some fuckin’ sense, because if you try any stupid shit,
I’m going to turn this back around and go find your Superman. I’ll
make you watch while I kill him.”

He unzipped his jacket and showed her
the .45 he’d taken from Michael’s bed stand.

“Either way, you’re coming back to
Kentucky with me. It’s up to you whether you want to watch your
little boyfriend die first.” He leaned in, got so close that he
could feel her breath on his face. “Maybe you’re wondering whether
I’ll really fucking do it.

“The answer is yes. I’ll do
it in a fucking heartbeat. I
want
to do it. Just give me a fucking reason, Kerry.
Give me a reason.”

* * * * *

“I know I heard something. I fucking
know it.” Grey was sure at first, but his confidence ebbed as he
and Henry went deeper into the woods. Were they going in the right
direction?

It’d been two minutes, at least, since
he’d heard anything. He was almost certain Kerry had made the noise
though, mostly because he’d found a few stray sequins glittering on
the pine needle carpet – sequins like the ones on her mermaid
costume. His heart had been in his throat ever since.

“You don’t have to convince me,” Henry
said. “Come on.”

Henry had the gun. Grey had the
flashlight.

He didn’t feel as underprepared as he
should have. The idea of tearing Kerry’s ex-husband apart with his
bare hands was appealing.

With every step, he grew more and more
convinced that Bradley Sawyer had gotten his hands on Kerry
somehow. Minutes ago, he could’ve sworn he’d heard a whimper, then
rustling underbrush.

He hadn’t heard anything since then,
but his mind had come up with a dozen scenarios already, all of
them gut-wrenching. He couldn’t stop imagining, couldn’t stop the
guilt, the burning desire to annihilate anyone who’d dare to hurt
Kerry again.

“You’ve gotta hold the light steady,”
Henry said. “You need me to do it?”

“No.” Grey gripped the flashlight
tighter. It was all he could do to compensate for the tremors that
were wracking him. He couldn’t keep his hands steady when they were
shaking with the urge to destroy, to do anything and everything to
get Kerry safe again – for good.

* * * * *

As Brad’s truck rumbled down the
country road, everything seemed surreal. The shadows were deep and
the Halloween moon was dim; Kerry could imagine the spirits of the
dead walking the earth for the night, revisiting the places where
their lives had been lived and lost, wondering how it had all gone
wrong.

She could almost imagine being one of
them.

Brad had some deranged plan to take
her back to Kentucky, make her live there with him, like she was
still his wife. But the pain in her back was knife-like, and she
knew the tenuous control he maintained was only so that he could
get her somewhere else, where he could do what he wanted without
fear of being discovered.

His promises of revenge echoed in her
mind and his scars stood out dull red in the moonlight, filling her
with a fresh sense of horror. She knew that he’d probably beat her
to death before sunrise, either purposely or because he couldn’t
control his rage.

Unless she figured a way out of
this.

As subtly as she could, she tested her
bonds.

He’d tied them cruelly, and they were
unyielding – already, her hands and feet were going numb, her
circulation inhibited by the waxy yellow rope.

She focused on the pins and needles
feeling, trying to distract herself from the pain in her back. If
she let that overwhelm her, she’d curl into a ball and despair.
That wouldn’t get her anywhere.

She forced herself to look at Brad.
Unwanted memories flooded back to her, not just of the violence
he’d subjected her to, but other things, too. Their first date, at
the aging movie theater back in their hometown. Her first stab of
doubt, afterward, when he’d shocked her by feeling her up in the
car. The mingled excitement and guilt that had filled the downward
spiral after that, the one that’d tied her to him with a sense of
moral obligation that seemed absurd now.

Their wedding and the unbearable days,
months and years afterward.

She didn’t like the man she knew, but
she did know him. Better than anyone, probably.

She hated remembering, but she
couldn’t forget.

They rounded a curve in the road, and
something white flickered ahead, interrupting her
memories.

At first, she thought – absurdly,
really – that it was Alicia. A woman in white stood by the edge of
the road, her dress trailing on the asphalt by a guardrail that
lined the road as it wound around another curve.

Reality hit Kerry fast and hard,
causing her heart to plummet like a stone dropped into water. She
recognized the figure, could have sketched her with her eyes
closed. And she couldn’t help but think that the warning was too
little, too late.

It never occurred to her that Brad
could see Elizabeth too.

Sure enough though, when she moved
with unnatural speed into the middle of the road, he swore and hit
the brakes.

Kerry pitched forward and barely
caught herself with her bound arms before she hit the dash. In the
span of a few seconds, they went from 50 miles an hour to maybe
10.

Brad kept swearing, but the woman in
the middle of the road didn’t move.

As they drew closer, he swerved to
avoid her, showing no signs of stopping.

“What the fuck?” Brad twisted in his
seat, staring at the woman in white.

Kerry couldn’t – wouldn’t – let them
pass the final warning by. This was her last chance. She wasn’t
wearing a seatbelt, and at 50 miles an hour, trying something like
this would’ve been suicide. Now, though, the opportunity was as
good as it was going to get. Brad was even looking away…

She ground her teeth as she laid her
bound hands on the wheel and jerked, hard, tearing it from Brad’s
grip and sending the truck into a violent arc to the right. Gravity
seemed to forget about them for a few seconds as they spun, and
Kerry felt strangely, terrifying weightless, like the ordeal had
already evicted her from her body.

* * * * *

The woods seemed to absorb and destroy
time, just like they did light. Grey sweated as he and Henry combed
through the trees, searching. They’d been trained for this, had
spent countless hours searching similar places that summer. But
this was different.

It felt like they’d been in the woods
for hours, though in reality it’d only been about ten minutes.
During that time, he hadn’t found any sign of her, other than the
stray sequins. He swept the light methodically across their
surroundings, hoping for some flash of movement or color to zero in
on.

There was nothing, only shadows and
tree trunks, saplings and shed leaves scattered across the carpet
of pine needles. And it was only him and Henry. Were they going in
the right direction? Was Kerry still in the woods?

He didn’t know, and it was killing
him. They might be wasting time. They might be moving away from
her, if she was there at all. All he had to go on was that sound
he’d heard and the direction he’d thought it’d come
from.

When the woods ended abruptly, giving
way to a road, his heart dropped.

Had they missed her?

“Shine the light over there.” Henry
nodded to the left.

At first, Grey didn’t see it. Then the
light glinted off a wheel 50 yards away, and he realized what he
was looking at.

CHAPTER 26

From where she lay in the truck’s cab,
Kerry could see the stars. Countless and brilliant, they made up
for the near lack of a moon. They were also the only white light
illuminating the scene of the accident now – Elizabeth’s ghost was
gone.

Now, Kerry was alone with Brad
again.

The wreck had thrown him on top of
her. Kerry had hit the back of her head on the window, but not hard
enough to be knocked out. He’d been thrown against it face first
and hadn’t moved since. His blood was warm and wet on her shoulder,
but she could feel him breathing.

She didn’t know how long she had
before he woke up, and fresh panic filled her as she wondered. Her
wrists and ankles were still bound, and he was nearly twice her
weight. Besides the pain, her back had been weakened by whatever
injury he’d caused it. She couldn’t get out from under his
unconscious body.

She could only hope, desperately, that
another vehicle would come along soon, that she hadn’t wrecked the
truck for nothing.

She didn’t dare call for help, since
that might wake Brad up, and so she waited, her frantic heart beats
marking each desperate second.

Her heart leapt when she heard a
voice.

* * * * *

The truck was facing the wrong way,
and its tail end had crumpled into the guardrail. The flashlight
beam showed the marks the tires had left on the asphalt, dark
ribbons that swerved and spun. The headlights were on, and the
vehicle was still running, but Grey couldn’t see anyone inside the
cab.

He and Henry ran toward the truck
anyway. It had a set of North Carolina tags, but other than that,
it was exactly like the truck Brad had originally abducted Kerry
in. The tags could easily have been stolen.