Sandra paused. “Not personally. But I was told.”
Kyle shook his head, still not understanding. “Who told you? Who heard him?”
“The chief of police,” she said. “Joe—”
Kyle raised his free palm, stopping her. And he laughed. “Oh well, now it starts to make some sense. Bridgeman told you this.”
“How do you know his—”
“He told you this, and he says Ruskin confessed to him before he died?”
Sandra, almost a whisper: “Yes.”
“Convenient,” Kyle said.
“But... Ruskin gave him the password, for Lisa’s computer. He... he knew things.”
Kyle nodded smugly. “The password, was it Zenia, but backward? With a numeric date attached?”
Sandra started to reply, but nothing came out. She was trying to figure out what was going on. None of what Kyle was saying made sense to her. And yet...
“Plug me in.”
Katie whimpered, “Mom...”
She raised the cable in her hand. “Please. I have to do this.”
“I can tell you where Joe got that password,” Kyle said obligingly. “He got it from me. I had to go through hoops to get it. Ruskin wouldn’t have known it. Lisa would never have trusted him with it.” He thought a moment. “So Ruskin’s confession comes to you secondhand, from the chief?”
She nodded.
“Gotta hand it to him. That was smart. Saying Ruskin confessed before he died.” He was pondering something. “Just how did he die, if it wasn’t one of the cars?”
“He... he hit his head.”
“Were you with him when he died?”
Sandra shook her head.
“But let me guess. Good ol’ Joe was.”
“Plug me in.”
Sandra looked back to the car, and Katie. She said to Kyle, her back to him. “You do what you have to do, but I’m plugging in this cable.”
He shook his head angrily. “I don’t think so. You—”
But then he and Sandra and Katie were distracted by a noise. It was the sound of an engine, a powerful one, coming down the street.
A car.
They all turned and looked, even Katie, who scraped her nose on the board and batten siding as she moved her head.
Joe, Sandra thought. Somehow, he got a car. Let him save us. Let him be the hero, for now. The questions could come later.
But it was not a police car.
It was a big, black, badly damaged Cadillac.
Forty-Eight
The Cadillac came screaming down the street, its V8 engine roaring like a gravelly jet engine, slowing as it rolled past the Montrose house on its whitewall tires. As it went by, Sandra and Kyle and Katie — and Archie, watching through the window — could see that the driver’s side of the car was totally smashed in, starting at the back of the front wheel well, and about a foot beyond the door.
From behind the wheel, a bloody and bruised Bruce surveyed the scene in the Montrose driveway. Bruce only needed a couple of seconds to assess what was happening.
Kyle said, “Him.”
Bruce gunned the engine, speeding up as he headed toward the end of the street. But before he got there, he cranked the wheel hard, as though intending to make a U-turn. The car, however, was too big, and the street too narrow, to execute such a maneuver.
It was, everyone soon realized, not Bruce’s intention to stay on the road.
By the time he had the car facing in the other direction, he was on the front yard of a house five down from the Montrose residence. And then Bruce floored it. The car’s back tires kicked up sod and dirt as the beast lunged forward.
“Oh, shit,” Sandra said, realizing what it was Bruce intended to do. She screamed at Katie, “Get ready!” Then Sandra ran toward the street, careful not to be standing between the Arrival and the approaching car.
Kyle fired off a wild shot as the Cadillac blasted through picket fences and hedgerows set up to mark property lines. Bits of wood and foliage scattered across the massive hood before blowing off. The car continued to growl forward as Kyle took another shot, this one spiderwebbing the windshield on the passenger side.
Bruce didn’t even flinch.
The huge chrome grille was full of silver teeth, chowing down on splinters of wood and shrubbery.
Before Kyle could get off a third shot, the corner of the front bumper barely clipped him, sending him, and his gun, flying.
Gracie, sensing an imminent threat, slipped herself into reverse and started to roll back, releasing her pinioning of Katie. Sandra’s daughter nearly collapsed, but, realizing she had less than a second to seek cover, hobbled frantically around the corner of the house, not five feet away, to safety.
Bruce, in the last millisecond before impact, gave the wheel a slight turn to the left so he’d be lined up with the side of the Arrival as it tried to get away.
And then he hit it.
It was like a thunderclap. An ear-splitting sound of metal hitting metal, metal ripping metal. And under that, the wild cackling of Bruce behind the wheel, shouting, “Not so funny when it happens to you, is it?”
The Arrival was knocked first onto its side, then rolled onto its roof, down onto its other side, then — briefly — it landed back on its wheels before starting its second roll, coming to a stop halfway through it, all four wheels in the air, still spinning, like an upside-down turtle wiggling its legs, trying to figure a way out of its predicament.
It all happened so fast that Sandra had lost track of Katie, and when she glanced about and did not see her, panic overwhelmed her.
“Katie!” she screamed.
As if on cue, Katie stepped out from behind the corner of the house and waved weakly. “Over here,” she said.
Assured Katie was safe, Sandra turned her attention to Kyle, sprawled out on the grass, clutching his thigh, writhing in pain from that glancing blow with the Cadillac. As Sandra hopped over debris — shrubs, fencing, a tricycle — that the Caddy had brought along on its journey, Kyle let go of his leg and started looking for the gun.
He and Sandra spotted it the same time. It lay in the grass, about ten feet from him. Kyle scrambled for it on two hands and one working leg, while Sandra ran. She dived, covering the gun with her body like a noble soldier throwing himself on a grenade.
Kyle reached out and grabbed one of her ankles as she started rolling to one side so she could get a hand on the gun. She yanked her leg up quickly, breaking his grip, but then just as quickly drove it back down, forcing her heel into his face.
Specifically, his nose.
Blood spurted from it. Kyle forgot about Sandra and the gun and his wounded leg, and put both hands over his nose, blood quickly seeping out between his fingers. He wailed in pain as Sandra scooped up the weapon and got to her feet.
Archie charged out the front door, stopping before reaching his mother to survey the Cadillac’s path of destruction, a disabled Brandon Kyle, and a freed Katie, who was running to check on Bruce.
“Crazy,” Archie said. He looked down at Kyle and asked his mother, “Who’s this dude?”
“A bad guy,” she said breathlessly. “A really, really bad guy.”
Archie blinked, took a step closer to the man, and all at once the tension that had been building up in him all day — trapped in the mall, losing a friend, wondering whether he’d make it out alive — came out in a kick right to the back of the man’s head.
“Archie!” his mother screamed as Kyle’s eyes closed and he drifted into unconsciousness.
“He was going to shoot you guys,” Archie said. “Nobody does that to my mom or my sister.”