“Tanner, you’re going to pull into that rest area ahead and park diagonally, blocking the road. You and I will get out of the truck and jack a car. By the time they stop to see what’s inside the trailer, we’ll be back on the interstate, ducking into the next exit.”
Tanner nodded. “It could work.”
“Of course it’ll work. Trust me.”
Susannah’s neck was getting cramped. “What are they doing now?”
“Same thing they were doing the last time you asked,” Luke answered from behind clenched teeth. “Not slowing down.”
Staying down, Susannah leaned over the center console and took the small backup revolver from Luke’s ankle holster.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Arming myself. And staying down,” she added before he could say it again.
“What the…?” Luke muttered. “Hold on.” The car careened to the right. “They’re getting off at a rest stop. Whatever happens, you stay down. Promise.”
“I won’t be stupid,” was all she’d say.
He growled a curse, then threw on his brakes. Ahead of them she could hear the squealing of tires as the trailer slid to a stop. He was out of the car before it stopped, shouting, “Police. Everyone down. Everyone down. In the truck, freeze.”
Then a gunshot cracked. Luke. Tightening her grip on his backup revolver, she threw open her door and slid out, using the door as a shield. Luke was nowhere to be seen. She almost ran after him, but stopped at the trailer.
All that mattered was the girls.
Tires squealed somewhere ahead of the trailer and Susannah heard Luke curse. He ran back, fury in his eyes. “Bobby jumped out and hijacked a car,” he said. “You stay and wait for the backups. Move.”
Susannah jumped out of the way as he drove up on the curb to get around the pickup, which had been parked diagonally across the road. She refocused her attention on the trailer. The pickup’s motor was still running. The back was locked, a chain threaded through the handles. She pulled herself up, standing on the back bumper to see in the dirty window. And the breath she’d been holding came out in a whoosh.
Dear God. Ashley had said one girl had been sold to a man named Haynes, so Susannah expected to see four girls, three of the five who had gone missing from the bunker plus Monica’s little sister. But before her were more than twice that many, huddled together, tied and gagged. She pounded on the dirty window.
“Are you hurt?” she shouted.
One of the girls looked up, and even through the filth covering the glass, Susannah could see the devastation in her eyes. Slowly she shook her head. Then stopped, changing to an even slower nod as the tears began to stream down her cheeks.
The chain was padlocked, so Susannah ran around to the pickup’s cab and stopped, grimacing at what she saw. “Oh, hell,” she muttered. What was left of a man sat behind the wheel. Most of his head was sprayed over the cab. Grimacing, she pulled his keys from the ignition, then tried all the keys in the padlock until she felt it give.
Feeling triumphant, she yanked the chain from the back of the trailer, hearing it clank-clank-clank as each link hit the bumper, then the pavement. She threw open the doors and exhaled as ten pairs of terrified eyes sought hers. “Hi,” she said, breathless. “I’m Susannah. You’re all safe now.”
Interstate 75, Sunday, February 4, 6:20 a.m.
Luke walked up to the horse trailer in time to see Susannah shaming a man into shutting off his video camera. She stood in front of the unfortunate documentarian, fists on her hips, a petite prizefighter primed for a bout with the champ. Had he not just had his heart knocked down to his knees, he might have smiled.
In the thirty minutes he’d been gone, someone had freed the girls in the trailer. Now officers were gently moving them to waiting ambulances, two at a time.
It was triumph. And it was tragedy. In the thirty minutes he’d been gone Bobby had taken yet another life. And she’d gotten away. Too late. Too late.
“How could you?” Susannah was saying to the filmmaker as Luke got out of his car. “You’ve got kids in your car-daughters,” she went on. “How would you feel if some opportunist wanting to make a buck splashed your daughters’ pictures all over CNN? Give me that tape. Now,” she snarled when he would have argued.
The man popped the tape from the camera, then slunk away, sputtering apologies.
“Dumb ass,” she muttered under her breath.
Unsettled and needing her, Luke put his hands on her shoulders and she jumped. “Sshh,” he murmured, soothing himself as much as he soothed her. “It’s just me.”
Her frown disappeared when she saw him, a soft smile blooming. “You weren’t too late this time.” But she sobered when she realized he had not smiled back. “What happened, Luke? What took you so long? Where’s Bobby?”
“Bobby got in a car up at the end of the row. The engine was running with the passenger asleep. The driver hadn’t locked the door.”
“I knew she’d stolen the car, but she has another hostage?”
“No. She pushed the passenger out going about sixty. She knew I’d stop. Of course I did, but the passenger was dead. She’d shot him first.”
Her fingers closed over his arm, lightly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He looked to the end of the rest area to where a man sat in the back of a police car. “Now I get to tell that man his son isn’t coming home.”
“Let someone else do it. Chase will be here soon.”
“No. I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
He almost said no. But after everything, he needed someone to lean on. “Thanks.”
The man got out of the police car as he approached, the color draining from his face when he saw Luke’s expression. “No.” He shook his head. “No.”
“I’m sorry. Your son was shot by the woman who stole your car. He didn’t survive.”
The man took a step back, denial warring with horror. “But we’re going to Six Flags. It’s his birthday. He’s fourteen. He’s only fourteen.”
“I’m so sorry,” Luke said, his heart so heavy he wasn’t sure he could bear it. “Is there someone I can call for you?”
“My wife. I need to call my wife.” Stunned, numb, he stared ahead, his cell phone in his hand. “She’s home with the baby. This is going to kill her.”
The state trooper who’d been waiting with him gently took the phone from his hand. “I’ll take care of this, Agent Papadopoulos. You get back to your other victims.” The father’s shoulders were now heaving, the sound of his sobs like a knife in Luke’s gut.
Now Luke had one more face to add to all the others who haunted his mind.
Behind him, Susannah’s small hand came to rest on his back, tentatively at first, then with greater pressure. “You saved ten girls, Luke,” she whispered. “Ten.”
“All that father cares about is the child we didn’t save in time.”
“Don’t do this,” she said, urgency giving her voice strength. “Don’t you dare do this to yourself.” She grabbed his arm and swung him around. “In that trailer were ten girls who would have been forced into prostitution and death. Now they’re going home. You stop thinking about the one you didn’t save and you start counting the ten that you did.”
He nodded. She was right. “You’re right.”
“Damn straight I am.” Her eyes narrowed, full of purpose. “Now walk back to your car. You’re going to drive back to Atlanta, sit down with your team, and figure out how to catch Barbara Jean Davis. Then you can throw her into hell and throw away the key.”