Harper nodded but said nothing. He looked out the front windshield at the other Crown Vic driving further up the road in front of them. Allie was in the backseat of the other vehicle right now. Beckard wondered if she was doing her song and dance at the moment, trying to convince the occupants of the other car the way he was in this one. She had a lot of work ahead of her, because he was pretty sure he had been mostly successful. At least with Jones. Harper, on the other hand…
Beckard was buoyed by one fact: Harper may be suspicious (Great instincts, asshole), but he didn’t have any solid proof that Beckard was lying. He had been careful to tailor his story to match the evidence the other troopers would have found by now. His truck, the shotgun, and Allie’s Ford. There wasn’t a third vehicle at the crash site, so Beckard still had no idea where the hell those hunters had come from.
There were just the kids back at the cabin to worry about. The two live ones, anyway. For the life of him, Beckard couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t called the cops yet. All it would take was one phone call to 911 and his ass was cooked. He figured it probably had something to do with Allie. Did she say something to them? Convince them to hold off calling the cops?
I killed her sister and their friends. Maybe they agreed to let her hunt me down.
Crazy kids and their blood vendettas.
He might have chuckled softly to himself, because Harper glanced up at the rearview mirror for a brief second. “You say something?”
“Did anyone call 911?” Beckard asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe someone heard all the shooting in the woods. That shotgun made a hell of a ruckus. Or maybe someone saw the cars on the side of the road?”
“We didn’t get any calls.” He turned almost completely around in his seat so he could look back at Beckard. “Why didn’t you call? What happened to your cell phone?”
“I lost it in the crash. She must have tossed it before she came after me to finish the job.”
Harper stared at him in silence for a moment.
“What’s on your mind, Sarge?” Beckard said. He wanted to add, Come right out and say it to my face, motherfucker. But he said instead, “If you wanna ask me something, I’m an open book, Sarge. Besides, why would I lie? By morning, you’ll be able to confirm everything I’ve told you, anyway.”
“What’s one woman doing out here in the middle of nowhere, driving around with a shotgun? She doesn’t live around here. Her ID says she’s from Los Angeles.”
Beckard shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her. I just know what happened and that I’m lucky to be alive.”
The trooper nodded, though Beckard knew the man was far from convinced. He turned back around, then unclipped his radio and keyed it. “Come in, Stevens.”
“Stevens here,” a male voice answered. Stevens was the driver of the other Crown Vic.
“Station’s coming up. Take the woman to processing and then straight into one of the interrogation rooms. No one goes to see her or asks her any questions without my permission, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Stevens said.
Shit. He’s going to talk to her himself.
Beckard fidgeted in his seat. Even though he wasn’t restrained, he now understood the helpless feeling that came with sitting in the back of a moving police cruiser. The backseat was claustrophobic and suffocating.
“Jones,” Beckard said, “can you please drive faster? I’m dying back here.”
Jones looked over at Harper for permission, but the sergeant shook his head.
Beckard gritted his teeth.
Motherfucker.
He sat back and concentrated on the back of Harper’s head on the other side of the partition. Harper had a bit of a bald spot that wasn’t apparent from the front, and Beckard wondered how hard he’d have to push to get a knife through the man’s skull. The more he zeroed in on Harper’s head, the more the pain faded into the background…
He must have dozed off during the rest of the ride to the hospital. By the time he opened his eyes to the dull backseat ceiling light shining in his face, the car had stopped and doors were slamming shut up front. Jones helped him out of the Crown Vic while Harper went on ahead to take care of the paperwork.
“You don’t look so hot,” Jones said.
Beckard grunted. “I was shotgunned, chased through the woods, got my nose broken, and a wild dog tried to maul my arm off. I’m peachy.”
Jones chuckled. “How was Rita’s, by the way?”
“I dunno. I spent most of the night trying to pick up Sarah.”
“The new waitress?”
“Uh huh.”
“She’s hot.”
“Why you think I was trying to pick her up?”
“Say no more. You get anywhere?”
“I said ‘tried,’ didn’t I?”
“Ha ha,” Jones said. “It wasn’t your night, was it?”
“That’s the understatement of the century, Jones. I don’t think it’s been my year.”
“Yeah, well, night’s still young.”
That’s what I’m counting on, he thought, but said instead, “Lord help me.”
A nurse came outside with a wheelchair before they reached the lobby. Beckard sat down gratefully and was pushed inside.
The hospital was a one-floor building, just big enough to support the two closest towns along the highway. It had everything he needed, but Beckard was more concerned about its proximity to the state police station about twenty minutes, give or take, further down the road. Allie would be there right now and soon, Harper would be joining her.
Harper.
The man was trouble. Maybe even more than Allie, because people would actually believe him, whereas Allie was a stranger. Worse, a vigilante. Cops hated vigilantes, especially ones brandishing shotguns and trying to shoot one of their own. Law-enforcement types tended to demand evidence before you could whack someone.
But Harper. If he believed her, if he decided not to wait until morning when the lieutenant came in to start the investigation, then Beckard was screwed.
Shit.
He had a lot of time to think about what to do, how to handle Harper and Allie, while waiting for the doctor on call. When the doctor finally showed up at his room, Beckard was disappointed to see she was a brunette. Pretty enough, but a bit on the short side and maybe ten years too old. Way out of his range.
She gave him a cursory look before going to work unwrapping the gauze dressing around his arm that the troopers had put on him back in the woods. “Looks like you had yourself some night, trooper.”
“Tell me about it,” Beckard said. “Can I get something for the pain, doc? I’m really suffering here.”
“What’s worse, the nose, the arm, or the side?”
“I can’t pick just one, doc. They all hurt like a sonofabitch.”
“I need to know what I’m dealing with first.” She swung a magnifying lamp over to get a better look at his arm. “Looks like you have extensive muscle and tendon damage. That’s the bad news.”
“You mean there’s good news?”
“It didn’t reach the bone.”
“It feels like my arm’s about to fall off.”
“I bet. What did you do to it?”
“What? The dog?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. It was a wild dog.”
Like Harper, she didn’t look like she believed him. “Did they catch it? We need to find out if it’s been immunized in case of rabies.”
“Good luck with that,” Beckard said. “It ran off into the woods. Like I said. Wild dog, doc.”