Helen didn’t want to think about it. She’d already crossed at least one line that she couldn’t take back. And that was just the beginning if the man stuffed in her trunk didn’t feel like talking. She was willing to go to extreme measures to extract the information he possessed. The duffel bag in the footwell behind her seat contained everything she needed to encourage him to talk.
She was already looking at five to ten years for the kidnapping—maybe less if her theory proved correct. The contents of the duffel bag represented double that sentence, depending on how far she took the interrogation. But if she was right, the sacrifice would be worth it.
If she was wrong? She’d most likely spend the rest of her life in prison. But she wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t be. Something insidious had taken root in America nearly fifty years ago and had somehow gone unnoticed. Still, she couldn’t shake the distant but ghastly suspicion that she had wasted the past two decades chasing a delusion.
Helen caught herself staring beyond the headlights, lost in thought and close to falling asleep again. She rolled down her window, the sudden blast of humid air chasing away the drowsiness. A very temporary fix, given that she had been awake for most of the past twenty-four hours. Only a coffee refill would get her through the final few hours of the trip, the twisty rural roads demanding her full attention. A few more substantial thuds from the trunk suggested she would have to stop soon—to administer another dose of sedatives. She couldn’t pull into a gas station with her passenger creating this kind of racket.
The pounding against the back seat intensified. A quick look at the navigation app running on her phone showed a town coming up less than a mile away. If it turned out to be the sleepy little place she suspected, Helen would find a spot on the northern outskirts to pull over and give Mr. Wilson another shot of night-night juice. He’d be out cold by the time she reached the Road Star Travel Center at Interstate 40, where she could refresh her coffee and use the restroom.
A few orange-tinted streetlights appeared between the trees in the distance, followed by a blinking yellow light. The town turned out to be a handful of darkened businesses crowding Route 13, barely outnumbering the churches. Helen slowed when she reached the flashing stoplight, more out of habit than a concern for safety. The area looked so dead, she could probably park in the middle of the intersection for the next hour without having to move.
Moments after she passed through the intersection, an oversize pickup truck pulled onto the road ahead of her and effectively blocked both lanes, forcing Helen to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. The moment her car skidded to a tire-screeching halt, mere feet from the side of the pickup, she shifted into reverse and floored the accelerator. At once the rear collision alarm sounded and a van loomed large in the backup camera display.
She hit the brakes. The camera showed two figures already out of the van, rushing toward her. How the hell had they managed to track her? She’d been so careful. There was no time to think about that right now. Helen calmly put the car in park, released her seat belt, and removed a compact Sig Sauer pistol from the purse lying flat on the passenger seat. She pushed her door open and leaned out of the car, snapping off four center-mass shots at the closest ski-masked attacker.
The man dropped to his knees and pitched forward, his head catching the corner of the rear bumper. He immediately crumpled to the pavement, lying motionless in the red glow of the car’s taillights as she slipped out of the car and searched for the second attacker. She found the assailant retreating fast, her bullets shattering glass and puncturing metal until he disappeared behind the van’s hood.
A door slammed shut behind her, prompting Helen to spin and reflex fire at a masked figure illuminated by her car’s headlights. The man grabbed his neck and screamed an obscenity before scrambling out of her line of fire. She emptied the pistol’s few remaining rounds into the pickup’s tinted windows, hoping for the best, before digging a spare pistol magazine out of her coat pocket. Everything went still after she slammed the magazine home and released the pistol slide. Too still. Nothing but humming engines and a faint ringing in her ears.
Were they holding their fire to avoid accidentally hitting Wilson? Doubtful. A moderately skilled shooter from either vehicle could hit her without endangering him. With that thought in mind, she slid back into the car and shut the door, making sure to stay low enough in the seat to see forward while presenting the smallest possible target.
To keep an eye on both threat directions at once, she engaged the parking brake and shifted into reverse, activating the backup camera and alert system while keeping the car in place. If they moved on her from the direction of the van, she’d receive an audible warning. Next, Helen locked all the doors. She spent the next several moments listening and observing. Still nothing. Even Wilson had gone silent.