“Fighting, shooting, evading capture… Those sorts of things.”
“Shooting? She taught you shooting?”
“It’s not that hard.”
“Learning to pull a trigger is the easy part,” Hank said. “It’s the pointing it at a real-life person and then pulling the trigger, that’s where things get more difficult.” He looked down at the backpack crumpled at her feet. “So you know how to use the Glock in there?”
“Yup,” she nodded.
“Have you ever shot anyone with it?”
“Not yet…”
“I hope you never have to, kid.”
Lucy didn’t say anything.
“You haven’t…?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Good,” he nodded. “Good…”
She didn’t reply, and Hank didn’t know what else to say to fill the silence. He had never been particularly good at shooting the breeze with strangers, much less with a sixteen-year-old girl and her dog sitting in the back of his car looking bored. If dogs could be bored, that is.
“What else did she teach you—” he started to ask when the tablet resting on her lap flickered on by itself, the bright LED screen lighting up the Bronco’s dark interior. “Why did it just do that?”
The girl didn’t answer him. She was already too busy leaning over the device and tapping and flicking and stretching things around on the screen. Hank had to drive, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening and having almost no success.
“What is it?” he asked instead. When she still didn’t respond: “Lucy.”
“It’s Allie,” Lucy said. “She just texted me.”
“Texted you? Why didn’t she just call you?”
“I don’t know. I guess she can’t, for whatever reason.” As she talked, Lucy was typing and he kept hearing a swoosh! sound over and over again. “She’s at a truck stop with them.”
“Who is them?”
“The two guys she was with before. And the girls.”
“The girls?”
“The kidnapped girls. In the back of the semitrailer.”
“Jesus Christ. What’s the name—”
“Andy’s Gas N Eats,” Lucy said before he could finish.
“I know that place.”
“Is it far from here?”
“It’s on the other side of the state.”
“So, really far.”
“Yeah. What about the shooters? The ones that killed the troopers?”
Lucy typed briefly, there was a swoosh, then, “She doesn’t know. They separated after the shooting.”
“What else did she say?”
“She wants us to call the police, get them over to the truck stop, and prevent the big rig from leaving with the girls.”
“What about Faith?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s just focusing on saving the girls for now.”
“That’s the right move,” Hank nodded.
“Are you going to call your friend?”
“I don’t carry a cell phone, kid, remember?”
“I know,” Lucy said. She typed something very quickly, and it was followed by another swoosh!
Even Apollo, in the backseat, seemed to understand the urgency of the moment and rose from the seat to watch the two of them, swinging his head left, then right as they took turns talking, or whenever he heard another swoosh coming from Lucy’s tablet.
“Kid,” Hank said urgently.
“I know, I know,” she said before pressing a button. The tablet went into phone mode and dialed a number.
“Who are you calling?” Hank asked.
“Your friend at the state police,” Lucy said.
“Good, good…”
The call connected, and he heard a male voice that definitely wasn’t Jane say, “State Police. Where can I direct your call?”
Lucy had undone her seatbelt and was leaning across the front seats so he could talk into the tablet while still driving. He fought back the urge to tell the kid to put her seatbelt back on and said instead, “I’m looking for Detective Jane Mayer.”
“Detective Mayer isn’t here,” the man said. “Would you like to leave a message—”
“Who is this?”
“Trooper Harrison.”
“Harrison, I want you to get a message to Mayer.”
“Uh, I don’t know where she is, sir. Maybe if you told me who you are, I could get someone to talk to you—”
“The men who shot the troopers this afternoon,” Hank said.
That got Harrison’s full attention and he said, with a noticeable increase in focus this time, “What about them?”
“I know where they are. Andy’s Gas N Eats. Get everyone you have over there now.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I’m Mayer’s CI.”
“I need a name—”
“Harrison!”
“What?”
“Andy’s Gas N Eats!” Hank said, practically shouting now. “Get everyone out there before the murdering fucks that killed your friends get away!”
“Okay, okay,” Trooper Harrison said. “Stay on the line—”
But Hank nodded at Lucy, and she pulled the tablet back and pressed the button to kill the connection.
“Nice,” she said. “I think he might have pissed his pants at the end there.”
Hank grinned, then thought about pouring on the gas to get to Andy’s, but he hadn’t lied to the girl when he said they were on other side of the state. At this rate, it would take them well past midnight just to reach it, and by then everything would be over.
In the backseat, Apollo had moved over to the right-side window to scan the dark trees outside as they continued driving up the interstate. Lucy, next to him, was doing the same thing as the dog — staring outside, as if she could see something (someone) out there.
“She’ll be okay,” Hank said. “Allie, I mean. If she’s even half as well-equipped to deal with all of this as you keep telling me, she should come out of it fine. The cops will get there and corral everyone. I’ll call Jane and tell her about Allie, and I’ll even conveniently forget to tell her that it was Allie who shot me.”
Lucy nodded, still looking out the window. “I’m not worried about Allie. I’m just thinking about what kind of shit those guys she’s stuck with are in.”
“She’s that good?” Hank asked.
“Especially when she’s pushed into a corner.” Lucy looked over and smiled at Hank. “One thing I’ve learned: You want Allie on your side when the chips are down.”
Thirteen
In a perfect world, there would have been police sirens before she shot Reese. Then again, in a perfect world she would be happily married, living in a house in the suburbs while plotting her next brunch with Carmen.
But it wasn’t a perfect world, and there were no police sirens (at least, none that she could hear), and when she shot him, Reese stumbled but he didn’t go down. For some reason, that didn’t surprise her whatsoever. She always knew the man would be hard to kill, that one bullet wouldn’t do it. Maybe two might, but before she could put that theory into practice, he grabbed the woman wearing too much red lipstick by the arm and dragged her in front of him to use her as a human shield. Lipstick was screaming her head off while fumbling wildly with her purse, as if there were some kind of life-saving device in there that would magically transport her to safety. Allie wished that were the case; then she could have finished Reese off.
She saw his eyes instead, zeroing in on her from behind Lipstick, even as his right hand disappeared behind his back in the direction of his holstered sidearm. Allie thought about taking a second shot anyway — going for the head this time, even if she could just barely see it over Lipstick’s left shoulder — but quickly dismissed that idea when she saw the sheer determination in his eyes while blood dripped to the floor between his and his hostage’s feet.