No Second Chances, page 29
Luke’s shoulders hitched. His eyes blinked emptily. How cruel, how obscenely fucking cruel. He looked left and right again. The stars. The sunset. His brittle mind was pulled in both directions, then he heard a sound from behind him: a high-pitched whine, full of pain. Luke looked in the rearview, and in the red glow of the taillights he saw Xander kneeling with his right arm looped around the rottweiler’s throat. The dog scrabbled and cried, then fell silent when Xander squeezed and twisted at the same time, breaking its neck. The sound was crisp and upsetting. Xander dropped the rottweiler. It slumped to the dirt. He got to his feet—bleeding from bite wounds across his face and arms—then ran at the Caliber.
Luke hit the gas, kicking up a screen of dust as he ripped down the driveway, still looking left toward Lisa, and right toward Kitty.
By the time he reached Sierra Vista, he’d made his decision.
Part III
Showdown at the Rattlesnake Hotel
25
Chase
The Caliber had a trembling four-cylinder engine, built for economy, not power. Luke pushed it nonetheless. His foot hit the metal and stayed there. Nothing on these desert roads, and little more to either side. It was an empty, ghostly landscape, even during the high heat of day, but within the headlights it was interstellar. Luke could imagine hitting the brakes, getting out, then floating away among other stars.
He touched eighty-seven and the needle stayed there. It was all this old car had, and it had to be enough. The engine struggled. Everything else rattled and knocked. He remained focused, his hands locked on the wheel, making incremental adjustments every time he hit a bump and shimmied.
Nothing but nothing, for mile after mile, then finally, in the distance, taillights.
Was it them? Was he catching up?
He considered his decision, second-guessed it, hated himself. Lisa’s and Kitty’s faces swirled through his mind. It felt not so much like he was trying to save one, but outwardly condemning the other. He wondered—assuming he had a future—how long his soul would be at war with itself.
A pack of coyotes skulked at the edge of the road. They scattered as he rushed by, eyes flashing green in the headlights. There was a billboard just beyond, hanging in the darkness in faded colors. Like the one on the outskirts of Pale Bone, it was for the Rattlesnake Hotel. Only seven miles away now, but still closed, according to the aggressive red lettering stenciled across the front.
Luke glanced at it, then concentrated on the taillights up ahead. They had grown larger. He was closing in, within half a mile.
Moments later, he saw the low shape and scarred green body of the Mustang.
I’m heading toward town, then taking Black Valley Road west, Johan had said to Xander, believing his man-ape would soon be following. Did knowing this aid Luke’s decision? He didn’t think so. It removed some of the hard work, certainly, but he would have gone after Johan regardless—albeit blindly.
It came down to this: Ramón would very likely disappear with Lisa and the other women. He might kill them. Kitty’s fate was more certain; Johan had brought his ax for a reason.
Luke hunched over the wheel, willing his car to go faster. Gradually, he got close enough to determine certain details: the width of the Mustang’s tires, its chrome accents, the branding between the taillights. He saw Kitty’s sneaker zip into view through the windshield again, there and gone in a second. The Mustang veered left, crossed the center line, then swung right again. Was Kitty kicking around too much, causing Johan to lose focus? Or was he scanning his cell phone? Had Xander texted to let him know that Luke had slipped the leash?
Maybe, but it changed nothing. Luke was all in.
One hundred feet . . . sixty . . . twenty . . . Luke thumped into the Mustang’s back end, hard enough to explode one of its taillights and crease the Caliber’s hood. The Mustang wobbled, slowing down while Johan got it under control. Luke knocked into it again and his front left headlight went out in a quick shower of glass.
This was a rash, dangerous course of action, but he saw no other way. He’d quickly dismissed the idea of driving into Pale Bone, rousing the auxiliary cops—if they even existed—from the dust, or hunting down a phone to call the main police department in Vegas. By the time they’d asked their questions and dispatched units, Ramón and Johan would have disappeared.
If there was a better way, Luke couldn’t see it. He had to run that goddamn Mustang off the road. Then, with the more urgent problem solved, he could turn every cop in the country on to Ramón, and hope like hell it wasn’t too late.
Luke crunched into Johan’s back end again. Tires screeched. Metal buckled. He didn’t have his .38 Special, but his Caliber packed a bigger punch. He’d assessed the risks—the dangers to Kitty and himself—and concluded they were worth taking. This way, at least, she stood a chance.
Eighty-seven, bumper-to-bumper, tearing through the wide and empty night. The Mustang had all the horses and started to pull away, but it slowed for a curve in the road and Luke saw his chance. He kept in the high eighties and maneuvered into the oncoming lane. His back end fanned out precariously and for one loud heartbeat he thought he was going to lose it, but the Caliber found its line and held the road. Luke drew alongside Johan. The two men looked at each other through their windows. Johan’s upper lip was flared, his teeth stained green in the dashboard lights.
Luke edged right. Their doors kissed with a dull bang. Both cars weaved, rocking on their springs, then came together again. Luke’s side mirror shattered and the passenger window cracked. His hope was to slow Johan down, then clip his back end and spin him out. He had to outmuscle the muscle car, which could be achieved with technique rather than brute force. He’d learned some tactical driving skills during a two-week course in prep for Out of Midnight. He was about to see how effective they were when the cameras weren’t rolling.
Johan did slow down—eighty-seven was too fast to play bumper cars—but not by enough. Luke matched him, watching the needle drop to seventy, but spinning him out at this speed would probably result in the Mustang flipping multiple times. Not good for Kitty, tied up on the backseat. Luke had accepted that she might be injured in this exchange, but he wanted to avoid it, if possible.
“Come on, you son of a bitch.” Luke’s tongue was thick with the taste of blood. His entire body drummed with pain—a loud, constant percussion from the cap of his skull to the balls of his feet. He refused to let it in, riding his adrenaline as hard as he drove his car. They raced out of the curve and Luke was greeted by headlights—an oncoming vehicle, moving fast. He nudged Johan again, trying to squeeze into his lane, but the Mustang held its ground. Luke went the other way, swooping onto the eastbound shoulder and avoiding a head-on collision by a matter of feet. For one deathly second it was all light and sound, then the vehicle’s taillights were in his rearview.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Luke’s lower body flushed ice-cold. His scalp stiffened, lifting every hair. He experienced a single tick of relief, then the Caliber’s tires started to lose traction. Hands soldered to the wheel, he steered a hard right, onto the road again. Momentum carried him all the way over and he punched hard into Johan’s door.
The impact rocked Luke in his seat—Johan, too, who struggled to keep control. The Mustang’s back end slewed left and right. Smoke rippled from the wheel arches. Suddenly he was gone, straying off-road in a thick pall of dust. He hit a low bank and floated airborne for two seconds, then touched down with a crunch that popped the passenger door open.
He didn’t stop—couldn’t risk giving Luke the speed and force. The Mustang dug at the dirt, sliding wildly, then regained its wheels and boomed across the desert.
Luke hit the same bank. He was airborne for longer, and touched down harder.
He didn’t stop, either.
It was slower over the desert’s uneven surface, bouncing over small rocks and tearing through creosote bushes. Luke followed the Mustang’s single taillight as Johan steered around outcrops and ragged trees. The Caliber clonked and protested. Luke felt the desert floor through the steering wheel, through the seat. His head thumped off the roof numerous times. The dashboard lights flickered.
Johan hit the brakes, drifted one-eighty, then churned at the dirt and got moving again. Luke was right behind him. He turned a broader circle but maintained a higher speed. Smoke had started to leak from under the hood. Something was broken under there. This had to end soon.
He swept into the Mustang’s driver’s side again, hard enough to ripple the A-pillar and knock the glass out of the window. Johan’s blond hair flew wildly. He yanked the wheel and clobbered into Luke. Their fenders met in a spray of sparks. They parted to steer around a cluster of boulders, then came together again. The impact threw Luke sideways and his head banged off the window. For a moment everything dulled, then he thought of Kitty on the backseat—of everything that would happen to her—and the edges came back hard and sharp.
He touched the brake, allowing Johan to pull ahead, then jerked the wheel and nudged his back end. The Mustang whipped this way and that, slowed to twenty, then spun out. It turned three dusty circles before coming to a stop, engine grumbling.
Luke looped around quickly, his rear tires sliding. He looked at the Mustang, bathed in its own flickering light. It started forward again, trembling on its shocks. Scrub crowded the wheel arches. There was another sprig caught beneath the windshield wiper. Luke jumped on the accelerator, aiming his front end at the dented driver’s door. He intended to hit it so hard that he would knock Johan’s skeleton right out of his skin.
The Caliber jumped forward, sluggish at first but picking up speed. Luke flexed his hands on the wheel and braced himself.
In all the dust, pain, and frenzy, he didn’t notice the Tundra’s headlights until they were on top of him.
It struck the Caliber’s rear passenger side like a tank, removing the quarter panel, buckling the wheel. The glass on that side spiderwebbed. Luke screamed, thrown first against the driver’s door, then into the passenger seat. He had no idea what had just happened—not until he looked up and saw a Toyota Tundra swinging around behind him. Ruben Osterfeld—Mr. goddamn UFC—was behind the wheel, with Xander riding shotgun.
“Kidding me,” Luke groaned. A delirious cackle broke from between his lips. He had been so close—twenty feet away from broadsiding Johan, liberating Kitty, then delivering to the authorities one hell of a story.
The Caliber, remarkably, was still running, chugging along doggedly on three and a half wheels. Luke glanced at the speedometer. It read 120, but that wasn’t right. It was fucked, just like the rest of the car, just like Luke himself.
The Tundra rolled alongside him. Xander leaned out the passenger window. His face was a red map, detailed with dog bites. He’d have some memorable scars to go with that charming demeanor.
“Fuck you, man.” Luke flipped him the bird.
Xander responded by pulling out a semiautomatic pistol, something fat and mean and with a decidedly more serious payload than Luke’s .38 Special. Before Luke could make any kind of evasive maneuver, Xander aimed at the Caliber’s front tire, squeezed the trigger, and blew the rubber off the rim.
Luke pumped the brake, worked the wheel, but couldn’t keep his gutsy old Dodge from skewing out of control. It veered blindly through the scrub, clipped the trunk of a dead juniper, then slammed into a boulder that appeared so suddenly in the darkness that it could have been magicked into existence.
There was a riot of sound: metal crumpling, glass breaking, the airbag discharging with a loud, powdery bang. The Caliber flipped onto its left side and skimmed across the desert floor, leaving a long scratch mark behind it. The engine ticked and spluttered, then gave up the ghost.
Luke pried his hands from the wheel. He was still alive, but he didn’t care.
The ax came through the windshield only seconds later.
The laminated glass—already shattered into a meshwork of tiny squares—sagged inward, split in a broad line where the ax had punched through. Its bearded bottom hooked to the inside, and when Johan pulled back, he lifted the entire windshield out in one flexible piece.
Luke managed a cracked and helpless yell, twisting in his seat. Johan bent down and peered through the open windshield. He was grinning, but his eyes relayed a deeper, more ferocious energy.
“Hey, are you that actor guy?” He curled a tress of blond hair behind one ear. “Any chance of a selfie?”
He reached in, grabbed the front of Luke’s T-shirt, and started to yank him out of his seat. He met the resistance of the safety belt, though, just like Kitty had four months before. She had been saving his life then. Johan was intent on doing the opposite.
The car was on its side—one wheel still spinning slowly—so it was not a stretch for Johan to reach up and unclip the belt. It retracted across Luke’s body and he slumped against his battered door. Johan grabbed his tee again, pulled him over the steering wheel, over the dash, and out through the rectangular opening where the windshield used to be.
Luke collapsed to the desert floor, coughing up dust and blood. Johan clutched the back of his neck and lifted him to his feet. He sagged, half leaning on Johan, who had his cell phone in his other hand. He extended it for a selfie. Luke saw himself on-screen—a blackish scrawl of blood across his mouth and chin, his eyes bright and tear-struck in the dirty mask of his face. One of his early roles had been playing an earthquake survivor in the medical drama Lion’s Ward. He’d spent eighty minutes in makeup, and looked then exactly as he looked now.
Johan duck-faced and snapped the pic. He showed it to Luke, who turned away from the screen.
“What do you think? Should I post it to my socials?” Johan’s grin was blade-like. “I don’t know, man. Maybe being associated with you will tarnish my spectacular reputation.”
“Just fucking kill me,” Luke said.
“Oh, I will. Don’t you worry about that. And I’m going to kill her, too.” He gestured at his battered Mustang, indicating Kitty, helpless on the backseat. Xander and Ruben stood close by, both with guns drawn. Xander mopped his face with a balled-up hoodie.
“Let her go,” Luke said. “Please. She’s only here because of me.”
“Bitch stole from me, Luke. You know that. She tried to make a fool of me.” Johan pocketed his cell phone and pulled Luke a little closer. “Then you both tried to make a fool of me. Faking her death? That was almost pretty smart, especially for a shit-for-brains like you.”
Luke sighed, which turned into a painful splutter. He held his ribs and winced.
“What’s more, I have a backpack full of canary in my car that leads me to believe you were trying to fuck me over. And you know something, Luke? You would have. The canary by itself may not have been enough, but my manufacturer, too?” Johan whistled through his teeth. “Ramón’s the smartest motherfucker I know, but he’s got no spine, no fucking balls. He’d cut a deal, and that would make things extremely uncomfortable for me.”
“That was the plan,” Luke said.
“I’d deny everything, of course, and let my father’s lawyers work it out in court. Then I’d sue for defamation of character. But really, who needs the headache?”
Luke drew a dry breath. Pain radiated from his ribs and spine.
“Either way, it would have meant the end of my lucrative canary enterprise.” Johan shook his head, as if the mere thought of this were an affront. “And all because of you and Kitty. You two make quite the team.”
“Crockett and Tubbs,” Xander quipped.
Johan laughed at that. He pointed at his berserker and nodded appreciatively. “Right? Because he looks like Don Johnson. In that fucking movie.”
“And because Kitty’s Black,” Xander added.
“Good, Xan. Good.”
Luke straightened, pulling his shoulders square. He met Johan’s gaze and tried to find whatever steel he had inside. “Let her go. This is all on me.”
Johan’s laughter ebbed to a mirthless hiss. He stroked his woven beard and narrowed his eyes. “Noble. I admire that. And such an unusual quality for a wife-killer.”
Luke shook his head. A coyote howled somewhere to the south, a lone cry that filled the night for a moment, then faded to nothing.
“How did you find us?” Luke asked.
Johan removed his hand from the back of Luke’s neck and walked around to the exposed underside of the Caliber. He crouched, craning his head this way and that, then grabbed something close to where the pummeled muffler hung by one strap. He examined it for a few seconds, turning it this way and that, before returning to Luke.
“These things really stick, huh?” He held it up—a small black box with a winking green light and the word track-u-gen printed on one side. “You know what this is?”
“You were tracking me?” Luke asked.
“Not me,” Johan replied. “This little doodad landed on your shitbox courtesy of Tera Montecino, formerly of the LAPD. You know her?”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t like you much, either.” Johan flicked his attention from the tracking device to Luke. “She gave us your location—just in the nick of time, I might add—on the promise that I enforce my own brand of justice. I assume she didn’t want to get any blood on her hands. But that’s okay; it washes off my Scandinavian skin quite easily.”
“Justice,” Luke echoed grimly. “For my wife’s supposed death.”
“Yes, but also for Kitty’s death.” Johan displayed his blade-like grin again. “You really shouldn’t have left those staged photos lying around your house.”
“Jesus Christ,” Luke said. He looked at the stars, as if they were all gods, every one of them laughing at him.
“That was excellent work, by the way. My compliments to your makeup artist.”
Luke lowered his eyes and gazed beyond Xander and Ruben, at the Mustang, envisioning Kitty on the backseat. He couldn’t see her, but she was there, tied up and terrified. He called to her on some hurting, spiritual level, and apologized for letting her down. Similarly, he sent a silent prayer out to Lisa, that she find a way back to her celebrated self, and discover every melody still in her soul.
