The Tempest (26 page)

 

Chapter Thirty-eight

H
unter tried to turn on her phone as the Bentley pulled out of the garage and Walter Kepler drove past. But the signal was dead. She backed around and began to follow him up the long drive, trying again. Nothing. It was as if the phone's batteries had run down while she was in the house. But that couldn't be. She fiddled with the charger in the glove compartment, as Kepler's high-­beams briefly lit up the fields.

Hunter braked and set the car in Park. She lowered her windows. It was dark now over the rolling country. She was supposed to call Hank Moore, and Pastor Luke, as soon as she finished talking with Walter Kepler. But she couldn't get a signal. There was a cool current in the air, a scent of cut grass. She listened, heard the sound of the wind sweeping high in the trees again; a sound she'd been hearing for days, which resembled human breathing.

Kepler turned left at the top of the drive. His taillights dipped out of sight, then appeared again, moving much faster.

Hunter felt a tug on the seat-­back. She felt something moving against her shoulder. Then fingers touching her face.

She whirled around, trying to grab her gun. But too late. Her head slammed hard into the side window.

“Put your hands out! Now! Now!”

She smelled the woman's body, a sulfurous animal scent, as she reached over the seat and pulled Hunter's .22 from the holster.

“Now! Get out of the car. Now!”

Hunter felt the woman's breath, saw the .45-­caliber handgun inches from her face. She opened the door and stepped out, keeping her hands up.

The other woman came out the back, pointing the .45 at Hunter with both hands. She was dressed in black jeans and a dark oversized windbreaker, her hair cut short, down to her scalp. But Hunter recognized the flat, sullen mouth and hard eyes of the woman she had known as Elena Rodgers. And she realized what she must have done: she'd used a jamming device to knock out Hunter's cell phone. This whole meeting with Kepler had been a setup.

Crap!
Hunter thought. She'd been a fool, doing it like this. Coming up here alone. She'd walked right into a trap.

Hunter spread her arms against the back of the car and let Elena frisk her, Elena breathing heavily, running her hands down her body and her thighs, Hunter's phone and wallet quickly going into the pockets of Elena's windbreaker.

“Now step back,” she said, signaling with the .45 for Hunter to stand by the door and get in. Elena took several long steps to the passenger side.

“Okay, let's go,” she said. “You're going to be my driver now.”

The seat belt warning began to bing as Hunter started forward. “Buckle,” Elena said, holding the gun on Hunter's shoulder. “Buckle!”

She left her own belt unbuckled, and the binging sound continued until they came to the main road.

“Turn right here,” she said. Hunter looked left, the way Kepler had turned; his lights were gone now.

Hunter drove. The road dipped and then folded into a dark patchwork of fields, which was spotted in the distance with occasional window lights.

“You don't need to do this,” she said. “We can figure something out—”

“We're not going to talk,” Elena said. “We're just going to drive. Okay?”

Hunter sighed. She watched the road, trying to pick out landmarks—­fence poles, ruts in the fields, a large tree and a tractor on a hillside reflecting the faint light of the sky. Each time the breeze stopped, she smelled the woman's clothes and the heavy sulfurous scent of her skin.

They drove in silence down the two-­lane road, Hunter entertaining all kinds of thoughts. Should she tell her what she knew? Should she mention Belasco? Should she try to disarm her? Try to strike a deal? Her instincts kept telling her to do nothing.

The country became even more rural and darker, a thin mist beginning to cling to the farm fields, stealing her frames of reference. She let the speedometer tick up a little and Elena told her to slow down. At a four-­way intersection, she braked too late, missing it, and ended up running the stop. Elena jammed the gun barrel into the side of her head.

“Pay attention. Stay at the speed limit. Make this easy for yourself,” she said.

Hunter drove on, feeling a lingering throb of pain now below her right ear. For another mile, then two miles, two and a half. And then Elena instructed her to slow down and take a turn. The landscape flattened out, into what seemed like miles of empty fields, Hunter feeling increasingly disconnected from anything or anyone that could help her. She pressed her brakes several times, a kind of SOS tattoo into the darkness, although she suspected there was no one out there to pick it up. She felt the inner tug of war—­wanting to do something, needing to cooperate; knowing that her life was narrowing down to a few choices, like the closing moves in a chess game; how she'd gotten here didn't matter.

Then, suddenly, she realized that another vehicle was behind them. A pair of headlights had swung out from a drive and was following, a quarter to a half mile back. Elena turned around to look, keeping the gun barrel against Hunter's neck.

“Just stay at the speed limit,” she said. “Stop braking.”

They came to another intersection. Elena instructed Hunter to put on her signal and go left, onto an unmarked road. Hunter watched the mirror, saw that the other car had its signal on, too. They rode like that for three-­tenths of a mile, four-­tenths, Hunter watching the odometer and the mirror. And then, surprisingly, the other vehicle began to pick up speed, as if making a move to pass.

“Slow down!” Elena said. Hunter felt the gun barrel pushing against her skull, where she'd just hit her. “Let him get by you. Slow down!”

The road undulated and the center lines became solid. Elena was leaning between the seats, looking back. Waiting for the other car.

Then the road leveled again and a stitch of broken center lines appeared.

“All right,” Elena said, “now just let him get by you.”

Hunter braked. The other car slowed, too. Hunter coasted, playing dumb.

“Goddamn it!” Elena said. “Go on and pick up speed. Get up to the speed limit and stay with it.”

Hunter picked up speed, having no idea what the speed limit was. And then the night fields lit up with revolving blue and red lights.

It was a police car, its light bar and grill flashing behind them.

“Shit!” she heard Elena Rodgers mutter. Hunter's heart was pounding. This could be good or this could be bad. She kept driving slowly, waiting for instruction. Knowing what Elena's options were. If they sped away and led a chase, it wouldn't end well; if she pulled over, they'd probably have a record of it on the patrol car's dash cam.

“All right, pull over, ease into a stop,” she said with sudden decisiveness. “Don't make any waves.”

Elena told Hunter what to say. She talked her through how this had to go, her voice rising with authority as they waited for the officer to emerge from the cop car. Hunter glanced back in the rearview mirror each time Elena turned her head.

“You do anything stupid, I kill you both. You understand?”

“I do.” Hunter took a deep breath, believing her; if she felt cornered, Elena probably would kill a police officer. Especially if there was only one.

The mist had grown thicker and cooled the night air. Hunter couldn't see the trooper clearly until he was right up behind the driver's window. An older man, heavy, walking a little bowlegged; receding gray hair and wire-­framed glasses.

Only one.

“How you doing tonight, ma'am?”

“Fine,” Hunter said, holding her license and registration. He shone his light in on Elena Rodgers and ducked his head down momentarily to look at her.

“Driver's license and registration?”

Hunter handed them to him, letting her left hand dangle for a moment; pointing her forefinger at the ground, like a gun.

“You're a state police officer?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hunter opened her badge next, as Elena had instructed. The officer—­Trooper Cavanaugh, his tag said—­studied her picture, his eyes comparing it with the woman in front of them. He handed it back. “Where are you headed?”

“Back to Maryland.”

“Where're you coming from?”

“Visiting with family. Just a ­couple miles down the road. We're going to Route 321, then down to Maryland.”

It was what Elena had instructed her to say. She tried again signaling with the fingers of her left hand as she closed her police ID.

“All right,” he said. “The reason I stopped you, the speed limit in here is thirty-­five, you were doing forty-­four. Sit tight a ­couple minutes.”

He walked back to his car to run her license. Elena went silent. Hunter could hear an impatience in her breathing that hadn't been there before.

“You do anything when he comes back, and I'll take out both of you. You understand? Just get back your license and we go. No one gets hurt.”

“All right.”

Elena was nervous now and that made her more dangerous, Hunter realized. There was a feral look in her eyes as she gazed back at the police car. Hunter didn't want to do anything that would cause her to hurt this man.

They sat silently, waiting, the police lights arcing through the mist, the night quiet, nothing but the police car's engine shifting and a chirping of crickets.

Finally, the officer came back, her license clipped to a ticket pad.

“Nice evening, isn't it?” he said.

“Yes, sir, it is.”

It'd begun to feel like early autumn, the mist making the air wet. He handed Hunter her license and registration. “I'm going to let you go with a verbal warning tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“Just be careful with all this fog out here,” he said.

“I will.”

Hunter put the license and registration back in her wallet, and handed it to Elena, as the officer walked back to his car. She waited for him to pull out first. But then she sensed that he was waiting for her. “Go on!” Elena said. “Drive!”

Hunter pulled out and began to pick up speed. She saw the trooper's car in her rearview mirror, starting forward, stopping and reversing, turning around. So much for her hand signals.

“They're going to have a record of that stop,” Hunter said after a minute or two. “We can figure out a way for this to end where no one gets—­”

“We're not talking! Do you
understand
me? We're not figuring anything,” Elena said. She pushed the gun barrel against the base of her skull. “Understand me?”

“Yes.”

“You hear me?”

Hunter almost grabbed at her then, but managed to control herself. She drove on, through dark patches of country, big farm plots, horse farms, cornfields. Elena knew this country. She knew where they were going. She told her where to turn, when to speed up and slow down. “Turn in here,” she said, and Hunter had to stop before she could see the turn. It was a gravel drive, barely a single lane, which ran into some thick, scratchy woods.

“All right, lights off, pull to the right and put the car in Park.”

Just before clicking her headlights, Hunter saw a glint of glass ahead in the darkness. Another vehicle was parked in the clearing, facing them.

“Now turn off the car, hand me the keys.”

Hunter did.

“Get out . . .”

Elena got out, too, right with her. Hunter felt the gun nudging her into the woods, smelled Elena, breathing right behind her.

Elena had worked all this out. She was going to leave Hunter's car here, as she had left Joey Sanders's truck in a remote wooded area of Virginia. She'd parked another car, which she would use to get away or maybe to transport Hunter someplace where her body would be found. Staged to look like an accident. Or maybe she
wouldn't
be found. Maybe Elena had a hole dug somewhere that she was going to cover and Hunter would become a permanent missing person. It was probably Kepler who had driven her here, she realized. Meaning Kepler was involved in whatever was going to happen. And had happened.

They walked toward the second car, which was a midsized Toyota, Hunter breathing the damp earth and tree bark, Elena guiding her from behind with the .45. The trunk popped, startling her; but no trunk light came on. Hunter stopped and faced Elena as her left hand came from the pocket of her windbreaker; she saw that she was gripping something; saw it for a moment, reflected in the light from the sky—­small and cylindrical, a syringe, maybe. Hunter turned her head, scanned the landscape through the trees, her breath coming faster: miles of nothing. No one was coming, not in any kind of time frame that would matter.

“Get down now, to your knees! Get down!” Elena said, waving the gun emphatically.

That was when Hunter decided that she had to take the only option that made any sense anymore. The only option she had: she needed to attack Elena Rodgers.

“Down on your knees,” Elena said.

Hunter said, “All right,” feeling buoyed suddenly by a gathering of adrenaline.

Elena stepped toward her, raising the gun like a club. Hunter began to comply, lowering her shoulders, going into a crouch. But then she lifted up and charged forward, hammering her right fist into Elena's face. Elena staggered for a moment and got off a shot, missing. Hunter jumped her and took Elena down; then she was all over her, pummeling her face, jamming an elbow into her neck, Elena grappling desperately at her arms, scratching her, tearing the sleeve of her jacket, Hunter not even knowing where the gun was anymore.

Elena rolled them over, her fingernails cutting into the flesh of Hunter's forearms, slicing down her right arm, and then Hunter felt the .45 under her back. She kneed upward into Elena's groin and pushed off, getting to her feet, with the gun in her right hand now. Elena rose, too, crouching, looking at Hunter, breathing hard: the feral look. Then Hunter saw what she was doing: the other gun, Hunter's Glock, was coming out of Elena's windbreaker; it was in her right hand.