Nineteen #2
He dragged me by Jude’s flannel shirt and pulled me to the back door.
I tried to get a handle on his wrist, but he was too quick and he was pulling me to the Wagoneer again.
Front seat this time. I tried to break free, but another elbow to the solar plexus and I was doubled over again.
Couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened and closed with no sound, like one of Dad’s koi fish.
Couldn’t get my limbs to work. He shoved me in the passenger’s side.
He slipped behind the wheel and we were off, driving through the darkened streets of Lake Sanguis.
“I’m going… to… kill… you…” I managed, wheezing, as my lungs inflated again.
I glared at the camel leather steering wheel, trying to figure out how quickly I could crash this damn car. But Russo held the Glock pointed at me.
“You don’t have it in you, kid,” he said with a chuckle.
Air returned to my lungs. “So I guess that means I’m not your perfect woman after all,” I wheezed.
“You’re like a solid 9.2.”
I wondered what my 0.8 flaws were. But I didn’t ask.
Russo snuck a glance at me. “You already know you’re hot as hell. You’re hotter than your mom, and she was smokin’.”
Glad to know the serial killer wasn’t shallow or anything.
“I can’t have someone around me who doesn’t look good,” Russo declared as he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. And then I remembered Jude’s criticism of him: the guy who keeps checking out his own reflection in every window he passes.
I glanced in my side mirror and right then saw the distant flicker of two headlights. Volvo headlights, I thought. Jude? Could it be?
“We also make a great team,” he said. “You and me, shoulder to shoulder.”
I snorted. “Hard to be a team when you’re punching me in the face.”
The headlights were gaining on us. If that was Jude, the guy might actually be speeding. Was he breaking one of his precious laws for me?
“Everybody needs a smack when they step out of line.”
I wanted to smack Russo right now.
“How are we going to get away? Oscar will be after you. You’ll be caught.”
“I’ve got a plan, kid,” he said as he steered the Wagoneer to the small two-lane highway. “Private plane to Canada. Tonight. Then to a non-extradition country. I’ve got papers. I’ve got it all.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
Russo shot me a sly glance. “Maybe I have sticky fingers. Maybe the city doesn’t need to get all the drug money we bust from the bad guys.”
“You stole evidence?” Why was I surprised?
“Borrowed,” Russo corrected. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “That better not be Brother’s Best Friend. I swear to God.”
Jude had gained on us. Russo hit the gas, but so did Jude. He was speeding! I was so proud of him. I kept my eye on the Glock.
“I’m going to make you kill that son of a bitch,” Russo said. The thick forest trees sped by on both sides of the road, the headlights stretched out beneath a starry sky.
“Won’t do it. Jude’s better than both of us.”
It was true. If one human on earth needed to live, it was Jude.
“He’s no better than anyone else in this town. This town that calls you Thin Ice because they don’t understand you. I do, kid.”
“I’m not like you.” A small lighted sign on the side of the road indicated the small airport up ahead.
“You are. You’re just lying to yourself,” Russo said. “You should loosen up. Let out all that anger. All the retribution. It feels fantastic.” He turned into the small commuter airport and drove toward the big metal hangar and little prop plane ready to go.
“Should I start with you?”
“We both know you can’t handle me, kid. I went easy on you back there in the kitchen.” His overconfidence, his patronizing. I’d just… I’d just had enough.
I grabbed the gun and shoved it down, but it went off, a bullet grazing the top of my thigh. Damn, that stung. That really freakin’ stung.
I whipped the gun out of his hands. It fell to the floorboards near his feet.
I scrambled for it as Russo hit the gas.
Blood bubbled up through my leggings, and I pressed a hand on it while I reached down with the other, but Russo was fishing for it.
He elbowed me in the nose, and sent me reeling.
He came screeching to a stop near the prop plane and hopped out of the driver’s seat, gun in hand.
He whipped a small leather bag out of the back seat and walked away from the car.
He didn’t bother to see if I was okay.
He didn’t ask if he’d hit an artery (I was hoping he hadn’t).
No matter what he said, the man cared more about his freedom than he did about my life. That was a fact. So much for the patriarchal protector.
I slung open the car door and slipped out, limping and holding my thigh.
“Russo!” I cried. “Russo! Stop!”
He didn’t stop. He headed right to the small plane. I recognized the pilot—Bill! I’d know his flannel shirt and orange-and-blue Bears ski cap anywhere.
“What the Sam hell…” Bill asked, blinking at me as I hobbled toward him. “Are you hurt, Thin Ice? You’re bleeding!”
“Bill! He’s dangerous. He’s got a gun. Don’t—” I was limping hard, trying to reach Russo.
Bill, however, took one look at my bloody leg, and fainted dead away. He fell like an oak tree, straight to the ground. I guess Gary was right about him not liking the sight of blood.
“What the hell…” Russo growled, looking at his incapacitated pilot, lying on the tarmac.
That’s when a set of spotlights clicked on, and the whoop of a siren and flash of red and blue lights emerged from the open door of the hangar. Hector Martinez, wearing his gold badge, emerged from the cockpit of the plane, gun drawn.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Hector said, aiming his pistol at Russo, who froze. “Down on the ground!” Several other sheriff’s deputies and three men and a woman wearing blue jackets emblazoned with FBI across the back closed in on the plane.
“On the ground! FBI!” one shouted. Suddenly, we were completely surrounded.
Russo, eyes flicking around him, slowly lowered his pistol to the ground as he kneeled and put his hands behind his head. The FBI agents rushed forward and grabbed him, shoving him to the ground and cuffing him.
Jude pulled up in his white Volvo then, and one agent trained his gun on it.
“He’s with me!” I shouted. “He’s fine!”
Jude dutifully put the car in park, pulled up his hand brake, and clicked on his hazard lights before he undid his seat belt and slowly rose from the car, hands up, before he rushed to me.
“Ella! Are you okay? Ella!” He embraced me in a fierce hug. “You’re bleeding!” Jude eyed my leggings and the growing wet stain of blood.
“I think it’s probably just a flesh wound,” said Gary, emerging from the hangar behind us. He was carrying a first aid kit. “But let me see.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked Gary as he tended to the wound.
“Bill called me,” Gary said as if that explained everything. “Hey, clean in and out!” Gary said, eyeing the entry and exit holes in my leggings.
“Is he okay?” I asked, glancing at his unmoving body.
“Sleeping Beauty will be fine,” Gary said. “His big old head cushioned his fall.”
“Whoa! What happened?” Bill asked, sitting up and blinking. He rubbed his head and, realizing he’d lost his hat, patted around the ground for it.
“You fainted, Mr. I’m-Not-Queasy-Around-Blood,” Gary teased.
Bill glanced at me. He saw my leg and then averted his eyes. “You okay, Thin Ice?” Bill asked me.
“Does she look okay?” Gary grumbled to Bill. “Looks like she went five rounds with a heavyweight.”
I could already feel my chin and eye puffing up, even as Gary cut away the fabric at my thigh to get at the wound.
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You were going to fly Russo to Canada?” I watched as Russo got dragged away to an FBI vehicle and ducked into the back seat.
“Yeah, no. I thought it was strange when this fella asked me about a trip to Canada,” said Bill. “You know, normally I only take tourists on joyriding trips. He was paying all cash, and I thought that was kinda suspicious.”
I nodded.
“So I told Gary about it, and he told Tammy, and Tammy’s husband was talking about the Canceled Killer, ya know?
And, well, we thought we’d talk to Oscar about it, and he sent Hector here and the FBI to lay a trap like, because we can’t have no killer on the loose, not in our little town!
” Bill shuddered. “But they were all late like,” Bill continued.
“So we called Tammy, and she goes, ‘Well, I’ll just go knock on their door!’ And Oscar goes, that’s not safe.
But Tammy was closer, so Tammy stops on by with her hot dish, like. ”
Unbelievable. Tammy probably saved my life. The knock on the door was the distraction I needed at just the right time.
“And then you show up, bleeding and the like, and Bill fainted like a baby because he’s squeamish about blood,” Gary pointed out.
“I’m not squeamish. I just don’t like it,” Bill said, defensive.
Just then, Oscar’s Lake Sanguis Sheriff SUV peeled into the parking lot. Oscar leapt out, looking pale and disheveled until his eyes clapped on me.
“Ella!” he said and strode over to me.
“Don’t lecture me. I know I—”
But Oscar just pulled me into a lung-crushing hug. “Don’t die,” he said. “Don’t ever die.”
“I won’t,” I told his chest.
He grabbed Jude and pulled him into a side hug.
“If either of you scare me like that again, I swear to God…”
He hugged us harder.