CHAPTER 26
A slow-moving vehicle is approaching them from behind.
Simone squints at it, and the first thing she notices is that it has a personalized plate.
It isn’t an ambulance.
It’s a dark, expensive Buick-type vehicle, five hundred yards away, now four hundred, and Simone’s mind is going faster than it.
The kidnapper knew exactly what she was doing and when.
He was communicating with her on the flip phones.
Simone palms her hands over the man’s trousers, into pockets. No phones.
Realization hits her with a simple thud.
She’s been so foolish. Of course this dead man isn’t the kidnapper. Of course he won’t have conducted the handover. He will have sent a messenger, who she has just killed.
Lucy must realize the same, because she turns to Simone, who shields her eyes in the glare of the Buick’s LED headlights, while Lucy speaks.
‘He doesn’t work alone,’ she says, her speech hurried, the words tripping over each other. ‘He handed me to him. I heard him – this man –’ she points frantically to the body – ‘he thanked the kidnapper for me. He’ll kill us. The kidnapper will kill us!’ she shouts. ‘We’ve killed his man.’
And in the chaos and the furore of the killing and the rescue, even while trying to gather evidence, they didn’t haveenough time to discuss everything. Naturally, Lucy still has knowledge Simone doesn’t.
Simone can only nod.
The car continues its approach, as silent and stealthy as a panther.
And now here the real kidnapper is, come to check on progress, or perhaps was watching the entire exchange, heard the gunshots.
‘We’ve got to go!’ Lucy says, and now they’re running to their car.
They’re leaving the drugs, but what else are they supposed to do? Simone can’t take them. It would look immeasurably worse if she took them. They will be worth millions of dollars to the kidnapper. He’s too much of an enemy already.
It’s a situation with only two bad outcomes. Simone must simply choose the least worst, and she isn’t adding theft to her crimes.
He’s too close to them. He comes into the lay-by, and a single window rolls down, a hand emerging from it like a spider.
And that’s when Lucy does it. Simone has a constellation of thoughts all at once, firing neurons in different directions. Is Lucy going to – Is this because she saw Simone doing – Yes, she is.
Lucy takes the gun from the roof of their car and aims at the wheels of the Buick. To stop it, to buy them time.
The shot Lucy fires halts the Buick as intended.
They both stare at it, speechless with fear.
And then they’re at their car.
‘Go, we’ve got to go,’ Lucy yells.
And Simone is getting inside, gunning the engine, only actions to protect her daughter, no longer thoughts.
And then they’re in and then they’re driving, ten, twenty,thirty miles an hour, forty, fifty, and the Buick hasn’t yet followed them.
They’re on the highway and they glance at each other as Simone burns the accelerator.
‘He will be checking if he’s alive,’ Lucy says. ‘I wanted to – to slow him.’
