CHAPTER 26
A slow-moving vehicle is approaching them from behind.
Simone squints at it, and the first thing she notices is that it has a personalized plate.
It isn’t an ambulance.
It’s a dark, expensive Buick-type vehicle, five hundred yards away, now four hundred, and Simone’s mind is going faster than it.
The kidnapper knew exactly what she was doing and when.
He was communicating with her on the flip phones.
Simone palms her hands over the man’s trousers, into pockets. No phones.
Realization hits her with a simple thud.
She’s been so foolish. Of course this dead man isn’t the kidnapper. Of course he won’t have conducted the handover. He will have sent a messenger, who she has just killed.
Lucy must realize the same, because she turns to Simone, who shields her eyes in the glare of the Buick’s LED headlights, while Lucy speaks.
‘He doesn’t work alone,’ she says, her speech hurried, the words tripping over each other. ‘He handed me to him. I heard him – this man –’ she points frantically to the body – ‘he thanked the kidnapper for me. He’ll kill us. The kidnapper will kill us!’ she shouts. ‘We’ve killed his man.’
And in the chaos and the furore of the killing and the rescue, even while trying to gather evidence, they didn’t have enough time to discuss everything. Naturally, Lucy still has knowledge Simone doesn’t.
Simone can only nod.
The car continues its approach, as silent and stealthy as a panther.
And now here the real kidnapper is, come to check on progress, or perhaps was watching the entire exchange, heard the gunshots.
‘We’ve got to go!’ Lucy says, and now they’re running to their car.
They’re leaving the drugs, but what else are they supposed to do? Simone can’t take them. It would look immeasurably worse if she took them. They will be worth millions of dollars to the kidnapper. He’s too much of an enemy already.
It’s a situation with only two bad outcomes. Simone must simply choose the least worst, and she isn’t adding theft to her crimes.
He’s too close to them. He comes into the lay-by, and a single window rolls down, a hand emerging from it like a spider.
And that’s when Lucy does it. Simone has a constellation of thoughts all at once, firing neurons in different directions. Is Lucy going to – Is this because she saw Simone doing – Yes, she is.
Lucy takes the gun from the roof of their car and aims at the wheels of the Buick. To stop it, to buy them time.
The shot Lucy fires halts the Buick as intended.
They both stare at it, speechless with fear.
And then they’re at their car.
‘Go, we’ve got to go,’ Lucy yells.
And Simone is getting inside, gunning the engine, only actions to protect her daughter, no longer thoughts.
And then they’re in and then they’re driving, ten, twenty, thirty miles an hour, forty, fifty, and the Buick hasn’t yet followed them.
They’re on the highway and they glance at each other as Simone burns the accelerator.
‘He will be checking if he’s alive,’ Lucy says. ‘I wanted to – to slow him.’
Simone pauses. She doesn’t know what to say. In the end, she simply replies, ‘I know.’
‘He would’ve killed us.’
‘I know.’
Simone closes her eyes for just a beat.
She turns to look at Lucy, light and shade flaring across her features as Simone drives. ‘We ought to go straight to the police, now.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy says.
‘What does this look like?’ Simone says, and she almost whispers it, there in a quiet car that fires through the night like a silent rocket. ‘We’ve shot – we’ve shot twice. And we’ve left.’
‘No, but – we …’
‘There isn’t any evidence you were kidnapped.’
Lucy’s eyes widen, and she shifts uncomfortably in the seat. ‘I beg to differ.’
But Simone is too panicked to parent well. The pieces of their version of events are falling all around her. It makes her reveal too much to Lucy and insensitively. ‘I destroyed the ransoms. I told someone there was a business opportunity.’
‘Was there?’ Lucy asks, confused.
‘I trafficked drugs to get you,’ she tells her.
Lucy goes still on the passenger seat, and Simone is glad she didn’t add that the kidnapper threatened to kill Lucy.
She doesn’t need to know how close she might’ve come to death.
‘I brought cocaine in from Mexico. That’s what I was trying to bury.
And then I killed a man.’ Simone pauses. ‘What does that look like?’
Lucy says nothing for several moments, stunned. ‘I didn’t know my proof of life video was – he passed me a script to read. I didn’t know you were asked to do that. But I was kidnapped. I can tell the police that.’
‘Could you identify him?’
‘No. He put a hood on me before I saw him. But I can tell them that it happened.’
‘The sheriff specifically said people blame kidnaps around here. They say they were forced to commit crimes.’
‘But we were.’
‘We could leave,’ Simone tells her. ‘Refuse to take the risk of not being believed. We’d be charged with … murder, drugs offences.’ She doesn’t add Lucy’s own ill-advised shooting, nor that they have already left the scene, which makes it so much worse for them.
‘I know.’
‘No one knows it was us. We didn’t say our names. We used the payphone, not our mobiles,’ Simone tells her; they were unknown callers. She checks the rear-view mirror. There’s nobody, just empty highway. ‘Did the kidnapper ever use your name?’
Lucy blinks, tucks her legs up underneath her, thinking. ‘No,’ she answers eventually. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Did you think he might know who you are?’
‘I don’t know. But he didn’t use my name. All his demands were notes or using a distorted voice thing. He would untie me, briefly, so I could take my blindfold off myself. So I never saw him. I didn’t know him, and I think he didn’t know me.’
Simone nods, her jaw set. They might be able to get away. She would’ve told the police when it was just her. But now it’s Lucy, too. A second shooting at a second car.
Here is another hand dealt, a shitty one full of low cards, but they have to play it as best they can. Two poor options sit in front of them: stay, and risk an arrest and trial for multiple offences, or go, now. The kidnapper let himself into an anonymous lodge. That is what she thinks.
And maybe he was able to track Simone on the flip phones, but she doesn’t think he knows her name. He never used it. Simone wonders if she’s kidding herself, but she thinks of the trauma of Lucy going to trial over this, and she can’t, she can’t. What are they supposed to do, except try to run?
‘What do you think would happen?’ Lucy asks.
‘I think they’d arrest me for cocaine supply and murder.’ Simone once again omits Lucy’s crime.
‘Go to the airport,’ Lucy says. ‘Go. Now.’