The sergeant fought valiantly to keep the van on the road, pushing their speed to get ahead of the truck as he shouted an update into his radio.
His words were cut off as the truck slammed them again, causing the van to scrape against a metal bridge support with a scream of metal against metal.
He gripped the wheel, jammed the gas pedal to the floor, and outpaced the truck. Mackenzie’s breath came in spurts. She could see the far side of the bridge ahead. If they made it across, they’d have a chance. Another officer might have time to rendezvous. She called out to Lorraine, but the woman was frozen in shock.
Without warning the truck dropped back and out of her view. Sweat gleamed on the cop’s brow as he pushed them onward. The exit to the bridge was only twenty feet away. He was actually going to get them off.
Her hope popped like a soap bubble as a second vehicle, a black 4x4, rolled onto the far side of the bridge facing them. It wasn’t help. Like a cork bottling up the fluid inside a shaken bottle, they were trapped.
Heart in her throat, she watched as the 4x4 bore down on them from the front. No doubt the white truck was still pursuing as well. She wished she could hold Lorraine’s hand, comfort her or the silver-haired woman who had done nothing to deserve what was about to happen. The handcuffs prevented her from doing anything but holding up her palms in the universal “calm down, don’t panic” gesture.
Useless, as there was every reason to panic.
Something popped. A tire exploding. Theirs?
The cop continued to holler details into his radio. There was a rifle locked in a holder in the console. To use it, he’d have to slow, to stop. Defend them as best he could until backup arrived. The glass was probably bulletproof, so maybe if they stayed put ...
A brutal impact slammed her forward, and the restraints jerked her back, cutting into her wrists. Glass fractured around her. She did not feel any bits of it raining down, but she could hear the breakage and the shearing of metal. The wires threaded through the glass kept it in place in spite of the spiderweb of cracks. Small comfort. The glass would hold. But there was nothing that would keep them from drowning if they went over. The railing flashed closer and closer.
“No!” Lorraine cried, halfway between a wail and a sob.
With a screech of metal, the van punched through the rails and flew out into the air.
Her stomach tumbled as if she were on an amusement ride. In her peripheral vision she saw the officer clinging to the steering wheel, his knuckles white as if he could somehow still control the van as it sailed free from earth.
But they were dropping toward the thundering river.
The terror of the situation pressed into her every cell as she recalled that she was chained in place.
What awaited Mackenzie instead of the justice she sought?
A slow drowning in a frigid river.
Bullseye’s deadly web had killed her brother.
And now he would murder her and three innocents as well.
****
On the far side of the bridge, Gideon flung the binoculars into the passenger seat and cranked the wheel to escape the shrubs where he’d concealed his Jeep. His hands strangled the wheel.
The white truck had shot past his place of concealment and continued at breakneck speed away from its terrible handiwork. The 4x4 that burst on the scene had paused a moment at the rupture where the police van had gone over and then spun a U-turn and followed the route of its escaping cohort.
Gideon hadn’t seen what happened to the police escort supposed to accompany the van, but it hadn’t made it onto the bridge. No help coming from that quarter. His heart slammed into his ribs.
New plan.He flat-footed the gas. Thanks to his shortcut, he was parked on a high point up a soggy riding trail where he had a perfect view of the van as it approached the bridge and crossed it. The road funneled down into a pinch point, the prime location to stage an ambush if one was so inclined. He’d anticipated some sort of attack,and the guy in the white truck who’d just slammed into the van had not disappointed.
His instincts had been right.
His teeth clamped tight as he bounced down the trail and onto flat ground before he sped across the bridge.
He called 911 as he drove, shouting the situation over his roaring engine. They heard, and probably were already alerted to the danger by the cop before the van went over, but he didn’t have a spare moment to elaborate before he disconnected.
He raced to the breach, yanked the Jeep off to the emergency shoulder, and jammed it into park. He grabbed his pack, zipped the phone in a waterproof case inside, and slid it on, pulling it tight to his body. The roadway was slick as he sprinted to the point where the metal had given way.
Below, the van was floating driver’s side up in the rapids, the rear already sinking. The equilibrium would eventually be restored as the water crept in, but the current was sucking them on a wild path as the van took on more water. He scrambled onto the guardrail, perched there staring at the white eddies gobbling the van in inches.
This was going to be messy and potentially lethal.
