Blown Away (26 page)

“He thinks we're stupid, right?” Cross interrupted, panting. “Dull-minded pencil pushers who couldn't hack it in the big leagues, so we're stuck writing parking tickets in the suburbs? As opposed to his superior, world-class self?”

“Yeah…”

“So where would such a genius bury his treasure? Where X marks the spot? Or somewhere he knows for certain we'd never look because we're too retarded?”

Benedetti realized what Cross meant. “No way, Ken,” he protested. “Emily's house is too risky even for that maniac.”

“Because it's right downtown,” Cross pressed. “Because it's boarded up tight. Because the cops check in every fifteen minutes. Because a starving rat would never risk a trap to steal the cheese. Right?”

Benedetti recalled Jodi's concern over the team's raspy voices. “Right!” He grabbed his radio to flood Jackson Avenue with firepower, but Cross touched his hand. “If Marwood hears the cavalry coming, he'll kill her on the spot. Where's your race car?”

They broke into a dead run.

 

Bearing her full body weight suspended from her neck, Emily saw stars explode in the approaching black clouds. Only seconds of consciousness remained. She raised her shaking arms, clawed her bra, pulled out the knife Marwood had condescendingly allowed her to keep. Heart pounding fast and thready in her ears, she thrust the knife over her head and sawed at the rope. Marwood and Shelby wrestled across the slick pine. “Let go! Let go!” Marwood screamed, hammering Shelby's skull. Shelby growled and held on tight. Eyelids fluttering, Emily sawed as hard as her numbing hands allowed.

She hit the floor like a sack of hammers. She rolled to her side, gasping and retching, reaching under the noose to find the taped handcuff key. Her heart pounded so hard from the fresh oxygen, she thought it'd explode. She glimpsed Shelby's eyes rolling and knew it'd be only a moment before Marwood freed himself to finish his deadly obsession.

There it is!

She ripped the tiny key off her neck and shoved it at the ankle cuffs. It scraped past the lock hole. She steadied herself against a cabinet, then eased the key into the hole, willing her hands to quit trembling. “Shoot this mongrel! Then you!” Marwood howled, dragging the ragged dog toward the guns. “You'll never get away!”

Click!

“I'll come back! I won't abandon you guys!” Emily croaked, her legs popping free. She flung the bra knife at Marwood—dizziness made her aim so bad, it clanked off the stove—and tossed the key into Annie's lap. Gathering the last of her strength, she stood, picked up the game table, and heaved it at the window over the sink. The heavy rock maple shattered the glass, and Emily dived face-first through the jagged hole, still-cuffed hands shielding her eyes. Marwood fired a long burst, but she was already through, her body whomping onto the shards littering the porch. Groaning, she rolled to her feet and limped down the hill.

 

“We're coming, Emily! Hang on!” Benedetti yelled as he tromped Love Shack's gas pedal to the floor and blasted through the garage.

“There's his rental car!” Cross shouted as the air bags deflated. “They're here!”

Marty grabbed his shotgun from under the passenger seat and rolled out the door.

 

Marwood chased her down the hill, raising the submachine gun.

 

Annie unlocked the handcuffs, moaning at the pain in her pelvis and belly. She heard the shuddering crash from the front of the house and arm-crawled to the sniper rifle. She grabbed it and headed out the back door. Shelby was already down the hill, inching toward Emily.

 

Emily zigzagged down the steep slope, dodging Marwood's first two submachine-gun bursts. The third came so close, she heard the bullets' angry buzz. She could barely see through the blood sheeting down from her forehead cuts, but a decade of fun runs had burned this route deep in her muscle memory. “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine!” she cried as her bare feet hit familiar depressions. “Forty, forty-one, jump!” She soared headfirst over the woodpile, exactly forty-two strides from her back door, intending to roll to her feet on the other side to keep momentum. But her foot caught a jutting log. She crashed face-first into the ground as Marwood's fourth burst thudded into the thick birch logs. “Go-go-go!” she huffed through her broken nose, aiming at what she hoped was the path through the woods. She screamed as a bullet drilled her left calf, stumbled hard but recovered.

“Got you now, Princess!” Marwood sang from not nearly far enough behind.

“Never!” she screamed, abandoning her zigzag for a fourth-and-inches plunge. The submachine gun ripped a fifth time, but she was safe in the tree line.

 

Annie sprawled sideways, pointing the rifle downhill, careful not to disturb the duct tape—if it became unstuck, she'd bleed out in seconds. Benedetti appeared from the side of the house as Cross blasted out the back door. “Annie!” they shouted together.

“Marwood's chasing Emily!” Annie shouted back. “He's got Flea's submachine gun!”

“I'll catch them!” Benedetti said, tossing the shotgun to Cross and charging down the hill.

“Who's that?” Cross yelled, swinging on the figure about to vanish in the trees. “Can I fire?”

Annie replied by pulling the trigger.

 

“Noooooo!” Marwood howled as the rifle bullet shattered his left elbow into a fog of blood and bone. He wheeled around and emptied the submachine gun at the smoke puff near the porch.

 

Benedetti slammed to the ground to avoid the bullets pouring uphill. Coughing out dirt and grass, he scrambled to his feet at the first lull and kept running.

 

Bare feet bleeding from rocks and glass, Emily sailed out of the woods, across the Riverwalk bricks, through the weedy shoreline bramble, and into the churning river. She couldn't swim because her wrists were still cuffed. “You can't escape!” Marwood howled from the trees.

She splashed into the water as far as she could, then latched onto a floating tree branch, letting the current pull her downstream. Naperville was still rain free, but Wisconsin had been deluged, turning the sedate DuPage River into a blender of foam, waves, and hidden boulders. She slammed into one and spun, silted brown water flushing down her throat. “Awk,” she gargled, the branch floating away. She clutched onto a moss-covered tree stump, holding it with shredded fingernails. The bramble was dense here and would hide her. She looked around for weapons. None, and she'd thrown the bra knife at Marwood. But now she saw what was causing such pain in her left breast—a nine-inch shard of window glass. If she could get it out intact, maybe she could use it as a spear. But it was so slender! It couldn't possibly hold up long enough to reach a vital organ! She hunkered in the mud, looking for another plan, another place to run….

“Forget it,” she growled as a feeling of utter calm settled in. “You want me, Doc, give it your best shot. I'm tired of running.”

 

Annie screamed as Cross fell on her. “Bastard clipped my legs,” he gasped. “I can't stand.”

“He got me, too,” she said. She racked in a fresh cartridge and searched for Marwood. “You've got to help me here, Chief.”

Cross didn't reply, his breathing labored.

“I can't steady the rifle by myself,” Annie said. “Crawl in front of me, and I'll use your neck as a barrel rest. Hurry!”

Cross grunted, inching forward.

 

Emily stared at her pursuer through the bramble. His gun was moving in tandem with his head. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sang. “I killed your daddy and crushed your mama. I burned Jack like a witch at the stake. Crippled Annie and paralyzed Branch. When I'm done with you, I'll find Marty and gut him like a trout.”

She freed herself from the mud, gripping the shard she'd extracted from her breast. Its jagged edges sliced deep into her palm. But she no longer cared about pain. About past or future. Only about ending this madness.

“You're naked, cold, and bleeding,” he said. “Shock will get you if blood loss doesn't.” Six feet from the river, four feet, two feet, one, so close she smelled bay rum. “Surrender to me, Princess! Right now! If you do that, I'll leave Marty alone. I'll let him live, I promise. Just one quick bullet to the brain and you'll join your family. You'll be happy forever! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Emily exploded from the river and jammed the shard between his legs. “Ahhhhhh!” Marwood screamed. “You stinking cunt—”

“Nobody calls me that, Brady Kepp!” Emily screamed, shattering Marwood's left kneecap with a river rock. He flopped sideways, squealing like a stuck pig. She flattened his nose, then raked his face with her fingers, trying to pull his eyes out. He counterattacked, hurting her bad with every punch. He was insanely motivated, and she was half-dead from the rope.

 

Benedetti burst from the tree line, closing the gap to the boiling water.

 

“Perfect, Chief. Don't move,” Annie commanded. Cross lay facedown, fingers stuffed in his ears, elbows and legs splayed so she could sandbag the rifle barrel on the back of his neck. It was a crude but effective platform to launch what she prayed would be the killing shot. She adjusted the telescopic sight for range and bullet drop, then welded herself to the black stock. “They're next to the river,” she said, controlling her breathing to allow an instantaneous squeeze of the three-pound trigger. “Fighting. Too close together. Soon as they separate, I'll fire. Don't move an inch, Chief. Don't even breathe.”

 

Emily jumped behind Marwood and jammed the handcuffs against his carotid arteries. “Bad guy passes out instantly or double your money back,” the academy instructor had bragged about the choke hold. But Marwood dropped his chin to block the choker, reached up, and grabbed Emily's hair with his good right arm. He body-slammed her into the mud like a pro wrestler, then dropped on top. All her injuries squirted fire. He kneed her till she went limp, then seized her throat with his huge right hand. “I'm going to strangle you anyway, Princess,” he gloated, muscling them both to their knees, keeping their faces so close their noses touched. “You should have known you could never win against me. This isn't child's play. It's winner take all.”

“You're so right!” she croaked, reaching down for the shard still in his crotch. She wiggled till her palm ran red with their commingled blood. The pressure on her throat eased. She yanked on the glass till it snapped and watched pink drool run from Marwood's mouth. His face turned pasty, and his head lolled to the right.

 

Annie's finger twitched. Her rifle thundered.

 

“Emily! Duck!” Benedetti screamed, launching himself like Superman.

 

“Ahh!” the psychologist gasped as his left eyeball exploded. He released one more breath, then flopped to the ground. The bullet slowed from punching through his skull but didn't stop.

 

Emily was drowning in mud. Her attacker jumped on her back, and her fury turned atomic. She bucked him sideways, then pounced, stabbing desperately for his face.

 

Annie clutched Cross's arm in horror. “No! No!”

 

“He's dead, Emily. He's dead!” her attacker was shouting. “You stopped him! You're safe!”

“Marty!” Emily blurted, hands snapping back like bungee cords. “I thought you were Marwood! Thank God you're all right!”

He grimaced, shaking his head. “I'm shot.”

Emily frantically checked him for bleeding. None that she could see. “Where, baby?” she demanded, panic rising like helium. “Where were you shot? Tell me!”

“My cheek.”

Her hands flew back to his face, but she saw no blood or holes.

“My other cheek, Detective,” he groaned. “Marwood left the rifle in your kitchen. Annie and Cross found it. Their bullet hit Marwood in the head, but I guess a fragment caught me.”

Emily ripped away his muddy trouser seat, ran her hands everywhere. She found the wound nestled in the fine hair of his lower right cheek. It was a shallow crease, not an entry hole. Raw but not life-threatening. She told him, then started giggling, all the fear and tension of the last three days transforming the oxygen into laughing gas.

“You find something funny about this?” Benedetti demanded.

“No sir, Commander sir, not me,” Emily said, trying to control herself. That made it worse. “You'll need a new nickname, though. Since Halfass is already taken, we could call you Half and Half. Sir.” She fell to the ground, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. Benedetti scowled.

“How did you find me?” Emily finally said, gulping air like a landed tuna.

“Hang on,” Benedetti said, glaring at Marwood's lifeless body. He got to his feet, grabbed Marwood's arms, and dragged him several yards downriver. Then stumbled back and flopped into the mud next to her, draping his arm over her naked waist. “That's better. We came here because of Branch. He figured out Marwood was the Unsub.”

Emily stiffened, thunderstruck. “How did he know?”

“Remember when you guys visited him on the way back from the safe house?” Benedetti asked. “He was paralyzed but wide awake, listening to everything?”

She wiped mud off Marty's nose. “I remember.”

“At some point Marwood asked for cold pop. Doc Winslow returned with a few cans. A couple minutes later you told Branch that Marwood was born and raised in Manhattan.”

She shook her head, not following.

“New Yorkers call soft drinks ‘soda,'” Benedetti continued. “Chicagoans call it ‘pop.' Very distinct regional dialects. It suggested to Branch that Marwood was lying about his roots and, therefore, might be our wolf in sheep's clothing.”