Chapter 46
Alex didn’t know where she was.
Her chest hurt.
Her head hurt.
She groaned and opened her eyes.
Panic set in when she was met with darkness.
Alex swiped at her face with her right hand–her left was too sore to raise–and felt something wet and tacky.
Rather than incite panic, the fact that she could now see brought with it a modicum of relief.
Alex blinked again, clearing the rest of the blood from her eyes. Then she searched for the source.
Her hairline–there she found a bruise and a small cut. Prodding her swollen head caused everything to flood back.
Edward, the watch, the green Mustang.
AA.
Alex was hanging upside down, her seatbelt the only thing preventing her from falling on her head and neck. The airbag, now deflated, had streaks of blood on it. White powder– Was it from the airbag? Or was it sand? —coated her chest and arms.
She glanced over and saw AA. He too was upside down, but because he was heavier, the man’s body was pressed uncomfortably against the ceiling of the LAPD cruiser. His neck was bent at an odd angle and Alex sucked in a painful breath.
Please…
She watched the man closely for several seconds, her eyes trained on his chest, silently pleading for it to move.
And then it did.
AA was alive.
She was alive.
Where the hell is Con?
Alex turned her attention front and center, but the windshield was shattered and covered in sand. She moved her head right next and immediately hissed through clenched teeth. Pain shot down her shoulder.
Alex shut her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. Slowly this time, she rolled her head and neck.
Nothing seemed broken, just bruised and sore.
Aching.
Alex tried again to catch her bearings by looking out the passenger window again. Best she figured, they’d rolled the car and were lying now upside down at the base of the sand dune. Or they’d rolled dozens of times and the small, white embankment that she saw was a completely different dune than the one upon which AA attempted the PIT maneuver. There were no landmarks, so it was impossible to tell for certain.
Okay, Alex, you need to move now. You can’t just hang here forever. Con is probably still chasing Edward. Except…
Alex steeled herself against the pain as she forced herself to turn her head even further.
The Mustang was there. Not twenty feet from where their car had flipped.
It was idling.
Oh, shit , Alex thought. Oh, shit!
This was bad. A split second later, things got considerably worse.
Amidst the ticking of the cop car’s engine and the throaty rumble of the Mustang, Alex heard something else.
Shuffling feet.
Alex’s vision suddenly darkened as a shadow was cast over the side of the car.
She saw two feet and knew instantly that they weren’t Con’s.
They were Edward’s.
If she needed any further confirmation, she got it when the man bent down and leered at her.
“You must be Agent Frost,” Edward Samuelson said.
Alex shifted and she surreptitiously snaked her hand down her side– up her side–to feel for her gun.
“ Nuh, uh, uh ,” Edward taunted. He brought his hand into view. In it, Alex saw a faded pistol.
“What do you–” she cleared her throat. Where the fuck is Con? “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” A pitch-titter came out of Ed’s throat. And then his features hardened as if he was embarrassed by the sound. “What do I want? All I ever wanted was to make my own movies. Martin promised me. He said after Eclipse , I’d get my chance. My shot . But he lied. They always lie. But jokes on them. I made my movies without their help. Movies of them .”
Alex needed to stall, needed to keep Edward talking to give Con the time he needed to arrive.
“You killed Martin because he couldn’t pay. I can understand the extortion. I saw what Martin did, what Adon said. But you killed him.”
“No!” Edward suddenly roared. “I didn’t kill Martin. Your partner did.”
With the blood rushing to her head, it was taking Alex too much time to put the pieces together.
Seeing her confusion, Edward decided to be a good Samaritan and help her out.
“The watch.”
It clicked.
Edward had a video of Con at the party. He’d also videotaped Con digging at the rock, which was where AA found Martin’s watch.
It was a set-up.
Where the fuck are you now, Con?
“No one will believe it.”
“Oh, they will. Ever since Agent Striker came to visit, I’ve been following him, taping him. He’s a broken man. Did you know that his wife left him?”
Alex couldn’t keep the surprise from showing on her face. She had no idea that Con had even been married–this hadn’t shown up in any of the research she’d done prior to meeting her new partner. And now… she’d left him?
“Maybe you’re not as smart as everyone thinks you are, Alex,” Edward said with a wicked grin. “Or maybe you’re just now figuring out that you face sucked a married man. What do you think is going to happen when I upload all these videos of your partner? You think that boss of yours, Marcus Allen, is going to back him up?” A dry laugh this time. “He’s going to do my work for me!”
“Just… just go,” Alex said. The accident, the news about Con, everything came to a head, and she felt her faculties waning. “Just get in your car and drive.”
Edward regarded her for a moment as if deep in thought. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said simply. Alex didn’t like the evil that had crept into the man’s voice.
“ Please .”
Edward raised the gun and aimed it at her chest. A strangled cry escaped Alex’s mouth.
“I was never a fan of those stupid superhero movies that Martin insisted we make. All that CGI…” He shook his head despondently. “I prefer movies that are more real. Crime thrillers, that sort of thing. Along Came a Spider, Se7ven , No Country for Old Men, that sort of thing.”
“Just go,” Alex whimpered.
Edward was so lost in his own head that he didn’t seem to hear her.
“Martin wouldn’t let me make a movie, so I’m making one now. A real-life movie with a twist. Can you guess what the twist is, Agent Alex Frost?”
Alex closed her eyes. Tears started to spill down her cheeks.
“No? Okay, well, spoiler alert, Agent Striker didn’t just kill Martin Yeo. He killed his partner, too. He blamed her for his failed marriage just like he blames The Sandman for his sister’s disappearance.”
“I–”
–don’t want to die, Alex wanted to say, but never got the chance. A shot rang out, stealing the words right out of her mouth.
***
Con tried to start his car, but the engine refused to turn over. The gas tank wasn’t just empty, it was bone dry.
“No!” he yelled. “Fuck!”
It was Valerie.
His twin sister, the one he’d thought–he’d known –was dead for more than eleven years had been less than six feet from him.
Six fucking feet.
And now she was speeding away.
Con pressed the start button once more but when this was met with flashing lights, he got out of the car.
The pale blue sedan was kicking up dust and Con reflexively, and ineffectively, waved a hand in front of his face.
Despite the cloudy air, he still managed to read the first three digits on the tag: 6LY .
He committed these to memory and then looked over his shoulder.
Con was about to ask Alex if she saw the plate but, of course, she wasn’t with him.
She was with AA.
Con felt his heart rate quicken.
What the fuck?
There was something wrong with what he was seeing. He spotted the Mustang immediately; it was idling upon the crest of a dune. It was AA’s LAPD supervisor car that was wrong.
All wrong.
The fucking thing was upside down and black smoke poured out of the engine.
Con broke into some facsimile of a run. He was so spent that it was more of a drunken shamble than a full-out sprint.
Thoughts of his sister, which had occupied his mind every second of nearly every day since Val had disappeared, vanished.
All he cared about now was his partner.
It was impossible to tell how far he was from the accident.
A mile? Two? Seven?
It didn’t matter.
Con forced his body to move faster.
He made it halfway to the car when he heard the shot.
He was nearly there when he saw the blood on the sand.