The radio crackles to life. "All units, we have a reported collision on Highway 89, approximately fifteen miles north of Briarhaven. Multiple vehicles involved. Unknown number of injuries. Proceed with caution."
My hands tighten on the steering wheel, knuckles going white. "Highway 89. That's the route to the interstate."
"Could be anyone," Colt says from the back seat, but his voice is tight with barely controlled panic.
The dispatcher's voice cuts through the static again. "Be advised, one of the vehicles involved is registered to Roy Cutter. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous."
My heart stops. Roy Cutter. The drug dealer who tried to kill Lucy weeks ago. The one who got away when Gabriel arrested his brother.
"And the other vehicle?" Gabriel barks into the radio, his professional calm cracking.
"Black SUV, New York plates. Registered to Kensington Holdings."
Lucy's uncle' s car.
Gabriel floors the accelerator, the big diesel engine roaring as we surge forward. "Hold on," he says through gritted teeth, taking a curve fast enough to make the tires scream. "We're almost there."
But even as he says it, I can't shake the feeling that we're going to be too late. That whatever's happening up ahead, Lucy is facing it alone.
Just like she's been facing everything alone for the past three years.
The scene that greets us when we crest the hill is pure chaos painted in red and blue strobing lights. The black SUV sits upside down in a ravine about thirty yards off the highway, smoke rising from its twisted metal frame like incense from a funeral pyre. A pickup truck is wrapped around a massive cottonwood tree another fifty yards up the road, its front end accordion-folded beyond recognition.
Emergency vehicles swarm the area. Ambulances, fire trucks, more patrol cars than Briarhaven has seen in months. The air tastes like smoke and spilled gasoline.
But it's the figures standing near the overturned SUV that make my blood freeze solid in my veins.
Roy Cutter, wild-eyed and clearly strung out on something stronger than coffee, has a gun pressed against Richard Kensington's temple. Lucy's uncle is on his knees in the gravel, blood streaming from a head wound that's turned his silver hair crimson. His expensive suit is torn and filthy, no longer the armor of wealth and power he wore into Gabriel's kitchen.
And Lucy...
Christ, Lucy is pulling herself out of the wreckage, moving slow but under her own power.
She's alive.
Hurt, blood on her face, dirt on her clothes, moving like everything hurts, but alive.
"You lied to me!" Cutter screams at Richard, spittle flying from his mouth as he presses the gun harder against the older man's skull. "You said there would be drugs in that van! Good stuff! Enough to set me up for months!"
My heart stops as the pieces click into place with sickening clarity. The attack on Lucy's van weeks ago. It wasn't random. It wasn't the Cutters looking for veterinary drugs to sell.
It was a hit. Ordered by her own uncle.
Gabriel is already coordinating with the other officers, establishing a perimeter around the scene with the practiced efficiency of someone who's done this before.
But all I can see is Lucy, pulling herself to her feet with blood running down her face, staring at the gun pointed at her uncle's head.
"My brother's in county lockup because of you!" Cutter continues, his voice cracking with rage and desperation.
"There was a misunderstanding," Richard says carefully, his hands raised in surrender. Even with a gun to his head, he's trying to negotiate, trying to find an angle. "I can pay you. Double what we agreed on. Triple."
"Too late for that, you lying sack of shit."
Cutter's finger tightens on the trigger, and I see Lucy move. Not away from the danger like any sane person would, but toward it.
"No!" she shouts, and before anyone can stop her, she throws herself forward, knocking her uncle sideways just as the gun goes off.
The bullet buries itself in the dirt where Richard's head had been a split second before. Lucy and her uncle hit the ground hard, rolling in the gravel and broken glass.
