“It won’t work,” Abby said. Her tongue felt thick against the roof of her mouth. Too thick for just the whiskey.
Time’s running out. The window’s closing, your fuel is low, your tires are bad, and all these other assholes have more money under the hoods, but that doesn’t matter because you’ve got reflexes, you’ve got instinct, you’ve got...
She came back to awareness with a jerk, her subconscious kicking her awake.
The kid smiled. “Getting tired, Abby?”
“No.” And she wasn’t anymore; that last jolt of adrenaline had cleared some of the fog, but she knew she was running out of time fast. “I’m just telling you that this won’t work.”
“It seems I’ll have to try it simply to settle this debate.”
The foggy feeling from the whiskey was blending with the acrid fumes. She stared at the bottle and wondered whether she could grab it and slam it into the kid’s skull without getting shot. Wondered whether her motor skills were deteriorating as fast as her speech.
Going to have to try soon.
“How much did you already have, Hank?” Abby said, and Hank blinked sleepily at her and then refocused.
“It’s a bad deal,” Hank said thickly. “Shouldn’t have called you. Knew better. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t give up yet, champ,” the kid said, and his eyes flicked toward Hank.
Abby thought it was the best chance she’d get.
She punched the remote start on the key fob twice, taking care not to move the rest of her body. There was a slight lag, and then the motor growled and the running lights blinked on.
When it happened, Abby turned toward the sound with surprise, even though she’d been counting on it. It was this that sold the trick. The kid originally turned toward her, but when he saw Abby’s surprise, he, too, looked toward the yard. Then he leaned across the table to push back the window blinds.
Abby rose and grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle. She didn’t pause to draw the bottle back or change its position, knowing that time was short; she simply swung it up in one continuous motion, aiming for the kid’s face. She moved well despite the fogginess in her brain, and she was sure the strike was going to work.
The kid’s speed was incredible.
Where his head had offered a clear shot, nothing but air waited.
Abby’s momentum carried her forward. The bottle flew from her hand and shattered off the wall in a cloud of glass and whiskey, and then she fell to the floor beside Hank’s chair. The kid had somehow pivoted and leaped in a single fluid motion, avoiding the contact and also maintaining his balance. He pointed the gun at Abby’s face. Above the mask, his eyes were bright with amusement.
“You’re quick,” he said. “Better than I’d have guessed.”
All of their attention was on each other, so when Hank moved, it surprised Abby as much as the kid. Hank’s chair lurched sideways and the hand that had been left untied so he could drink suddenly locked over the kid’s forearm.
The revolver fired; the shot went wide, the bullet sparking off the generator’s engine block. Hank overbalanced and fell, but he kept his hand on the kid’s arm and so they both went down while Abby tried to rise. Hank hit the floor with a splintering crack that Abby hoped was the chair and not his arm. The kid landed on the other side of Abby, twisting while he fell, composed and nimble. He would’ve made a clean landing if Abby hadn’t gotten in the way by sheer accident.
Her rising shoulder caught the kid’s knee and knocked him off balance, and when he fell, his gun hand landed squarely on the glowing grill of the space heater.
The burn achieved what neither Abby nor Hank had been able to — it made the kid finally drop the gun. Even as he howled in pain, though, he was already reaching for the weapon with the other hand, absolutely relentless.
Hank just beat him, managing to roll onto his side and over the gun. He was still bound to the chair, his free arm dangling uselessly now, clearly broken. He couldn’t have picked the gun up and fired it even if it had landed in his fingers. But he’d covered it with his body, and he looked up at Abby, his eyes wide and white, and said, “Run.”
Abby scrambled to her feet and started toward Hank, but he repeated his command, and this time it was a scream.
“Run!”
Abby ran.
22
She reached the front door and turned the knob and then the door was open and she fell onto the screen door and tore it half off the hinges as she surged through it and into the cold night air.
If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have left the driveway and angled toward the trees, seeking cover immediately, but she wasn’t thinking, just moving, and so she ran ten yards straight out of the door and down the wide-open drive, and it was only the sound of the growling engine on the Chrysler that brought her out of the fog.
Don’t run. Drive, dummy. Driving is faster.
She had her hand on the door when a gunshot cracked and the driver’s window exploded. Glass needled across her hands, and a thin line of blood ran down her index finger as she slid into the driver’s seat, jammed her foot on the brake, and punched the starter button to engage the transmission of the idling car. She kept her head under the dash as she shifted into reverse and pounded the gas, focused on two things — she had to stay down to avoid a bullet, and she had to keep the wheel steady and the accelerator pinned to the floor. Hank’s driveway was a straight shot through the pines and back to the rutted road; she didn’t need to lift her head to drive, not yet.
She kept her foot on the gas and her bloody hands tight on the wheel, driving blind but straight.
You’ll know when you hit the road. And then you’d better get your foot on the brake fast.
It seemed to take longer than it should have — driving blind ruined distance perception — but finally she felt a thunk under the back wheels as the Chrysler left the driveway. She slammed on the brake, sending the tires slaloming through the wet dirt and gravel of the camp road, and managed to bring the car to a stop without sliding into the trees. Now she had to risk looking up.
No bullets came for her, and she didn’t wait to give them a chance, just cut the wheel hard to the left, shifted into drive, and hit the gas again. The decision to go left was simple — the trees were thick to that side, and the right was wide open, making her an easy target. She was expecting more shots. No one fired, though. Even when she passed through a gap between the pines, no bullets came.
She should have understood that the lack of gunfire meant she’d made a mistake.
Instead, all she felt was relief. She was free. Out of sight of the house, out of pistol range, and moving under her own power.
Or the car was moving under its own power at least. Abby, maybe less so. The adrenaline was losing the battle with whatever was in her bloodstream — That’s not just whiskey; what else was in there? — and the windshield was a mess of milky cracks that blurred the road in front of her. The combination was disorienting, and she wanted to stop, get out of the car, and put her feet on the ground.
An engine roared to life behind her.
That sound kept her foot away from the brake.
Just keep going fast, she told herself, go far and go fast, that’s all you need to do.
But she didn’t know where she was going. She’d been on the road to Hank’s a thousand times, but she’d never turned this way coming out of the driveway. What was ahead of her? An intersection? There had to be. She needed a paved road; please, please, let there be a paved road. Give her pavement and nobody would catch her; the devil himself would not catch Abby Kaplan if she had four good tires and a paved surface.