And Lilith hadn’t pocketed Wald’s keys.
The key ring dangled from her left hand, loosely held, glinting in the dome light’s glow.
“Cut yourself shaving, Robinson”
Lilith was looking at her left calf, the bandages dark with blood.
“Flesh wound,” Trish said mildly.
“Painful.”
“Not much.”
“Really”
Flash of motion, Lilith propelling her boot into the injured leg, shock wave of agony, Trish biting her lip to stifle a scream.
Lilith smiled. “How about now”
Trish didn’t answer. She needed her full concentration to suppress the waves of dizziness swarming over her.
When her vision cleared, she saw Lilith still watching her, the cool, attentive eyes refusing even to blink.
The keys flashed, tantalizing.
Look away, you sadistic little bitch.
“You don’t cry so easily,” Lilith lisped, “do you, Robinson”
“Guess not.”
Up front, Tyler slumped lower in his seat, the van cutting its speed.
“I hate crybabies.” Lilith’s stare was appraising now, a connoisseur’s scrutiny. “They never last. The other kind, the ones like you, can take much more punishment.” A thoughtful grin. “We can keep you going a long time.”
The van drifted to the right.
Tyler’s head-nodding.
Trish slowly wrapped both hands around the grab bar. “A minute ago you wanted to shoot me.”
“I’m starting to think Cain had the right idea.”
“Are you”
Get ready …
“You’re just too good to waste.” Lilith’s tongue prowled her lips. “I want to hear you scream, Robinson. I want-“
Crunch of gravel.
The van swerving off the road.
“Tyler” Lilith spun toward the front. “Hey, wake up, asshole!”
Hands locked on the grab bar, Trish hoisted herself off the seat.
Lilith shook Tyler alert.
Trish drew back her knees, lower legs extended, feet together.
The van lurched to the left as Tyler cranked the wheel.
Lilith turned.
Now.
Trish pistoned her right leg, slamming a brutal kick into the girl’s face.
Lilith’s nose crunched like a snail. She twisted, fell writhing on the floor, spitting up blood, the gun still in her hand but the keys flying free.
The van skidded back onto the road.
Trish snagged the key ring between her shoes. Flipped it upward, snatched it out of the air.
Tyler released the wheel, clutching at his sidearm holster.
The handcuff key was the smallest one on the ring. Trish inserted it in the left cuff and turned.
Tyler’s gun was out.
The handcuff popped open.
Tyler pivoted in his seat.
Trish ducked, and the handcuff chain snaked through the gap between the grab bar and the ceiling, the empty cuff coming with it.
Gunshot.
The rear window puckered, Tyler’s bullet missing as she dived to the floor, spread-eagle on Lilith, the Glock whipping toward her, and Trish seized the girl’s wrist and held the gun away, grappling with her in a tangle of limbs.
“Shoot her!” Lilith screamed the words. “Tyler, she’s on top of me, shoot her, shoot her!”
Tyler’s gun angled down, pointing blindly, and Trish threw her body to the left, the world cartwheeling, she and Lilith trading places.
Lilith’s eyes widened as she understood who was on top now. She opened her mouth in the beginning of a scream—
And Tyler fired into the rear compartment, two shots, three, bullets ripping through Lilith’s shoulder and abdomen and neck, Trish wincing as the deflected rounds burst out of Lilith’s body in new trajectories, drilling into the bench seat and the wall, and then Tyler was shouting, “Did I get her Lilith”
Blood foamed from the girl’s mouth. She sagged, dead weight, the Glock still clutched in her hand, muzzle pointed at the back of the driver’s seat.
“Did I get her”
“You got her,” Trish whispered, and she curled the forefinger of her left hand over Lilith’s trigger finger and squeezed.
The gun blew a scorched hole in the seat. Tyler wailed, a wounded animal, and his gun discharged, thunder rolling through the van, and Trish fired again, again, again, the driver’s seat bucking, the van skidding, her finger flexing convulsively, emptying the gun, until somewhere a horn blared, an idiot noise, monotonous and pointless.
She abandoned the Glock in Lilith’s frozen grip. Pushed the girl aside, struggled upright, thrust her head into the front compartment, and there was Tyler, dead, slumped over the wheel, his back blooming red roses, his forehead sounding the horn as the van weaved, driverless, at reckless speed.
The road veered to the left. Directly ahead, a dense stand of pines.
The van would meet those trees at sixty miles an hour less than three seconds from now.
76
Cain hustled Ally out of the Porsche. She struggled fiercely, her bound hands thrashing. He hardly noticed.
His thoughts were on the final stage of the night’s operation, so long delayed.
Mr. Kent would not like hearing his daughter raped and murdered just outside the closet doors. He’d told Cain to do her quickly, painlessly. But after all the trouble she had caused, she wasn’t going to leave the world without a scream or two.
Anyway-Cain smiled-it would do Charles good to eavesdrop on the girl’s death. The experience would put him in the appropriately grief-stricken frame of mind. He would cry real tears in the presence of the police.
Up the flagstone steps with Ally. Into the foyer.
Cain paused to retrieve his roll of duct tape.
“For you, sweetcakes,” he said, twirling the spool.
He was feeling fine. The plan had worked, actually worked. In spite of every imaginable setback, he would complete his assignment and earn his pay.
Five million dollars … split three ways now, not five.
He stepped out of the foyer, then froze. Ally stiff at his side, both of them staring at the doorway of the den.
Charles Kent stood there, gun in hand, standing guard over his wife and the Danforths.
There was a moment when mother and daughter locked gazes, a moment electric with a shared thrill of anguish, and then Ally sagged in Cain’s arms, resistance sighing out of her.
Charles ignored the girl. His frightened stare was focused on Cain.
“They got free, found a phone.” The words spilled out in a panicky jumble, his voice an octave too high. “I had to stop them.”
Cain pushed Ally effortlessly into a slashed armchair.
“Very resourceful, Mr. Kent.” He spoke in a monotone, aware that everything had ended for him, his hopes and plans, his grand dreams-all of it ashes now. “Where did you get the gun”
“From your duffel bag. In the kitchen.”
Cain nodded slowly. “From my duffel bag …”
“I checked the clip. It’s loaded.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
He was very calm. He breathed in, out.
In. Out.
The little ritual he always performed before a kill.
77
Trish lunged for the steering wheel.
Out of reach.
The wall of pines rushed closer. The horn blared.
She stretched between the bucket seats. Her groping hand closed over the wheel and wrenched it hard to the left.
Scream of tires.
The van skidding.
Trees blurring past the windshield.
Rattle of branches, shatter of glass. Forked fingers thrust through a side window, then whipped away.
The van careened into the middle of the road, still speeding at sixty, slammed by every rut and pothole, the shocks creaking like old mattress springs.
She had to get Tyler’s boot off the accelerator.