Thirty-Seven
The thug beside her noticed the tail a few seconds after Erin did. She had tried not to notice, but that didn't change anything when he muttered, "We got someone following us. God damnit. Turn left here."
She turned left, still unsure where in the hell they were going, except that she didn't want to go there with this guy no matter where it was.
"Step on it."
She put the power down in the car after her momentary hesitation led to another sharp poke in the belly that reminded her exactly what was at stake here. It was all fun and games, all playful pokes, until that knife slipped hilt-deep into her stomach. Because at that point, if she didn't make a hospital in a matter of minutes, the game would be over. It would be a slow death, but even the first stab would do it, if he gave it a good effort.
The Jeep made the sort of unhappy roar that cars with their mufflers only-half-attached made, and sped off. She lifted when they hit the speed limit. He jabbed her again, and she broke it.
The car behind them—that is, the truck behind them—sped up to match. Whoever was responsible for this tail, if they knew how to hide, they also knew when they were made. They came up hard and fast, but didn't try to overtake. Instead, they just slotted in behind her and waited.
Why couldn't they get their god damned acts together and figure out what was happening here? Couldn't someone deal with this psychopath?
She took a breath in that pressed her belly against the blade again, and her breath hitched in her lungs, not wanting to go in and not wanting to breathe out.
She forced the air out of her lungs. With that knife there, she couldn't afford to take any risks with the car, not even if she wanted to. Not this far from a hospital. Not if she couldn't be absolutely certain that the guy was going to eat it.
The truck was close enough now that when she looked into it she could see. Roy was sitting in the driver's seat, his expression almost bored. Someone was behind him in the extended cab, but she couldn't make him out besides that he was big. She had her guesses, though.
"Faster," the man with the knife growled, pushing hard enough to draw blood and stain her white shirt.
"I can't go any faster. I'm already going as fast as it goes."
He cursed and pulled the knife back a moment. Erin looked in the mirror at Roy, hoping that he would somehow pick up on her body language.
"A right here." She jerked the wheel right. She could feel the car threatening to tip and roll over on its lid. This driving was a hundred times too aggressive for the already-ruined suspension on this Jeep, but if she really wanted to, she could have made damn sure it flipped. The truck blew past at seventy miles an hour.
Erin's eyes dropped to the big man's waist, and she held back a curse. Wearing his seatbelt? What kind of psycho did that? She had been hoping that she could flip it and send him head-first into the concrete. But that wasn't going to happen now.
Erin slowed the car, and noted that the guy didn't tell her to speed up.
"Pull over here."
She did what she was told. Not much else choice, after all. They weren't in the slums like her sister had been, or the other women. By itself, that helped, but somehow Erin didn't get the feeling that it mattered all that much to this guy.
"Let's go."
She slid out of the car. An industrial district, though. Nowhere to run, and nobody to run to. She could hope that she could outrun the guy, of course. She'd always been fit. But looking the guy up and down one more time told her that she would do well not to rely on his being in poor fitness.
She did what she was told, followed where he directed.
He fished a key out of his pocket and pushed it into a keyhole until it clicked home, and then unlocked the door. He grabbed her arm and pushed her in hard enough that Erin nearly stumbled over her own feet.
"You should have stayed away," he growled.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"No, you didn't. They raise you like this. Sluts and whores. They tell you that it's fine to fuck around until you're in your thirties, and you hear that for your entire life—you get to believing it. Well, not any more. Not around my family."
Erin wasn't worried about dying any more. It was a strange sensation. She wasn't ready. There were a thousand things that she had left to do, people she needed to talk to, things she needed to correct.
None of those things were going to convince this guy that she should live. None of them were going to change the fact that she was absolutely going to die, and her mind seemed to decide that that meant there wasn't much point in worrying after all.
Instead, she looked around. There was a large section cleared here, but all around was glassware and folding tables. It didn't take a genius to recognize a meth lab in the halfway light.
"Say your prayers. You can have sixty seconds to make your peace with God."
Erin shifted to sit up and closed her eyes, folded her hands. She didn't have anything to say to God. It was God who took Mom away. Erin hadn't been inside a church since the funeral, and she wasn't planning on taking the practice back up.
She prayed anyways, if only to get the man to give her just one more minute. Erin heard the noise of steps outside, and then everything exploded all around.
A gunshot sounded, and an instant later she heard the door slam open. In the time it took for her brain to register what she was hearing she heard the noise of a grenade hitting the ground, heard the loud pop that made it so she wouldn't be able to hear anything else for the better part of half an hour.
Her eyes were closed, but even that couldn't keep out the bright white flash of light that burned itself onto her retinas in spite of her closed eyes. A trillion miles away, someone shouted something about getting down. She didn't move. Arms scooped her up and set her on her feet.
She opened her eyes, her vision swimming, on Roy Schafer. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear him. She blinked, hoping that would help her hearing, but it didn't.
She shouted as loud as she could that she couldn't hear him. It sounded a little louder than a whisper over the sound of the ringing in her ears.
Roy pulled her in tight, held her there for what felt like an eternity, but when he pulled back she wanted that eternity back. As soon as her hearing came back, she would be back on her way to the hotel, and he would be getting the hell out of town.
So the longer that her hearing stayed gone, the longer that they stood there together in that stinking meth-lab warehouse, the better, because as much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she wasn't going to get another chance at it.