Joe made a thumbing motion.
Ronny got out of the car and let Joe slip behind the wheel. “I’ll drop you off back at the station,” he said.
As Ronny was coming around the other side of the car, he said, “All the cars are going back to their houses. It’s totally weird!”
As Ronny was getting in, Joe’s phone rang. He grabbed it without looking at the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Joe.”
It was Sandra.
“Hey,” he said. “Got your text. It wasn’t anything I did. I think the cars want to be recharged and—”
Her voice very low, Sandra said, “Joe, shut up.”
He stopped talking, and listened.
“It’s got Katie,” she whispered.
“What?”
“One of them. It’s got Katie trapped.”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Coming,” he said.
Joe turned and said to Ronny, “Get out.”
Forty-Seven
Sandra, taking small tentative steps toward Gracie, asked Katie in as calm a voice as possible, “How you doing, sweetheart?”
Katie, pinned at the knees to the front wall of the house by the car’s front bumper, tears running down her cheeks, said quietly, “It hurts.”
“You think anything is broken?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just pressing really hard. Every time I try to move a little it gets closer.”
“Okay.”
Archie had run past his mother, stopping a couple feet from the car, and looked teary-eyed. Then he looked at the car and shouted, “Let her go, you asshole!”
Sandra caught up to him, and pressed her palm gently on his back. “Go in the house, Archie.”
“But, Mom, it—”
“Go in the house,” she said firmly. “Gracie and I are going to have a little chat, sort this out. Okay?”
Archie looked as though he wanted to object, but finally did as he was told, heading for the front door but not taking his eyes off Katie the whole time. He went inside, but almost instantly appeared at the living room window.
The charging stand stood up close to the house, inches away from the Arrival’s front bumper. Inside was the cable that would, once plugged into the outlet right under the car’s headlight, recharge the Arrival in as little as an hour. Clearly, Gracie had made it home before entirely running out of battery life.
“Whom did you call?” Gracie asked.
“The chief of police,” she said. There didn’t seem much sense lying to Gracie. She probably had some Bluetooth feature that allowed her to know what was happening on the phones around her.
“Plug me in.”
“So you can recharge and go around killing people again?” Sandra asked. “I don’t think so. You’re pretty smart, Gracie, but you’re dumb as a shoe if you think everyone on the island is going want to let you guys have another go at this.”
The car moved ahead a millimeter. Katie winced and said, “Mom.”
“Okay, okay,” Sandra said. “Don’t do that, Gracie.”
“Plug me in.”
“Let go of Katie first,” Sandra said, thinking: I am negotiating with a fucking car for my daughter’s life.
Gracie said nothing, which Sandra hoped meant the car was considering Sandra’s request. After several seconds, the car spoke.
“No. After you have plugged me in, I will back up far enough for her to get out.”
Sandra considered her options. Before long, Gracie’s battery would die, her leverage lost. Then, if Sandra could get the car open and somehow shift it into neutral, she and Archie could move it back far enough to free Katie. But could Sandra stall until Gracie ran out of juice? Gracie would know how much power she had left. She might choose to use the last bit of it to break Katie’s legs, cripple her for life, or kill her outright.
Maybe plugging Gracie in wasn’t such a bad idea. Insert the cable, Katie frees herself, and then just as quickly yank the cable out.
And run for it.
But Gracie was no dumbass, and might anticipate such a plan. Sandra was betting the car would not free Katie until it was fully charged.
“Okay,” she said. “But, Gracie, you have to promise me, soon as I plug you in, you’ll let Katie go.”
The car said nothing.
“Gracie, come on. I keep my end of the bargain, you keep yours.” Sandra tried to smile. “Hey, we’ve got a history. In the few weeks we’ve been together, we’ve had some good times, right? We’ve gotten to know each other. Before all the shit that happened today, we were friends. And I know that the way you’ve behaved today, that’s not your fault. Someone did that to you. Someone messed with your programming. I get that. So come on. I plug you in, then you back up far enough to let Katie go.”
Sandra, as a show of good faith, opened the box that held the cable, and started to draw it out. “See?”
The car remained silent for several seconds. Then: “Plug me in and I will back up.”
“You’ll back up right away?” Sandra asked.
Another pause.
“Yes.”
“Okay then,” Sandra said, pulling out more cable.
“No.”
She looked around. That wasn’t Gracie talking. It was a real live human voice, and it was male.
He was standing several feet away, in the middle of the yard. Sandra didn’t recognize him at first, given that he was streaked with dirt and looking a lot slimmer than the last time she’d seen him.
And of course, the gun he was pointing at her was somewhat distracting, too.
But then she realized he was the man who’d passed himself off as Ben Stapleton, of Wheel Base Trends. Except there was no Wheel Base Trends, and there was no Ben Stapleton. This man, she believed, was Brandon Kyle.
Sandra stood there, frozen, cable in hand.
“I have to,” she said. “The car will crush her if I don’t.”
“I know,” Kyle said, and smiled. “Your daughter, right?”
Sandra nodded.
“She nearly blinded me. Put shit in my eyes.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “You didn’t raise her right.”
“I know who you are,” Sandra said. “And I know what you did.”
“Really.”
“You’re the guy with the other car company. You wanted to get even. You did all this, made it happen. I don’t know how, exactly, but you did it. And I know all about Ruskin.”
A puzzled expression passed across Brandon Kyle’s face. “What about Ruskin?”
“Plug me in,” Gracie said.
Sandra said, “He was your inside man. He hated Lisa Carver. He helped you get even with her.”
Kyle said, very slowly, “I don’t think so.” He chuckled. “I mean, where the hell did you come up with that?”
“He confessed,” Sandra said. “Just before he died.”
“Ruskin’s dead? One of the cars got him?”
“No,” Sandra said. “Something else. But that’s what he said. Guess he wanted to clear his conscience.”
Kyle’s look of puzzlement deepened. “That’s not possible.”
“It is.” Sandra looked at the cable in her hand, then at Katie. “You have to let me plug this in. Please. My daughter...”
Kyle waved the gun. “If you do it, I’ll just shoot her, anyway. Or maybe you.”
“Please, just—”
“Were you there? Did you hear this?”
“What?”
“Ruskin’s confession. You heard him say this?”