Chapter 9
Peter didn’t understand. Had someone thrown a rock through the window? There was no sound of a gunshot. “KT? What’s going on?”
He ran for the connecting door and saw her on the floor in a boneless crumple. The back of her head was a red mess. Then rounds started coming through the door. Whoever was on the other side was trying to shoot out the lock. Where the hell was that cop?
And where was Ellie? She wasn’t behind the bed. Peter ran to the bathroom and shouldered open the door. Ellie was dressed in enormous gray sweatpants and a black tank top, leaning toward the mirror and applying lotion to her face. “What the hell? Listen, meatball—”
He grabbed her around the middle like a sack of potatoes and ran for the connecting passage, keeping his own body between her and the gunman, holding her close so she wouldn’t see her mother lying like a rag doll on the reddening carpet.
As Peter ran, the shooter kept firing at the lock. The door was splintered, but still holding because the bolt was bound up in the metal jamb. Then he must have kicked the door because it popped open hard, but bounced back from the end of the security chain.
Looking over his shoulder, Peter saw the end of a sound suppressor poke through the opening and push against the metal links.
He wasn’t waiting for the outcome. Unless he changed the equation, he knew how this would end.
He sprinted into the adjoining room, then closed and locked the door.
The only weapon he had was the folding knife clipped to his pocket.
Ellie was screaming at him and pounding him with her fists.
Still holding her, he crouched down and peeked through the window curtain. He couldn’t see the police cruiser. A small pizza delivery car idled in the parking lot’s aisle. They had to move.
At the connecting door behind him, rounds began to punch into the lock. Ellie was still screaming. He grabbed her shoulder and put a hand over her mouth. “Eleanor Grace Thorsen. Listen to me. Somebody else is after us. We need to run. Can you do it?”
He uncovered her mouth. She stared at him with Bambi eyes. “Did…? Is…?”
“Later.” He met her eyes. “Now we run. We’re heading for the pizza car. Got it?”
She looked down helplessly. “I’m barefoot.”
Peter was, too. There was a loud chunk as a round made hard contact with the deadbolt. “You’re tougher than you think,” he said. Hoping it was true. “I’ve got you. It’s only a few yards. But we have to go now and run fast. Ready?”
She nodded. She was already breathing hard.
He put his finger to his lips, then quietly unlatched the outside door and took off the chain.
He wanted to take his knife from his pocket and ambush their attacker when he came through the door, but that was no guarantee Ellie would leave the room alive.
The last time he’d told someone to shelter in the bathtub, it hadn’t ended well.
He heard a thump. The gunman kicking at the ruined wood, trying to free the deadbolt. Peter pulled open the outside door and peeked. Nobody there. Either nobody had noticed the suppressed gunshots or they were too scared to do anything. The rain had started again, harder than before.
He took Ellie’s hand and pulled her outside, closed the door behind her to buy any time he could, then turned left on the covered walkway to make it harder for the shooter to spot them from the doorway. Two rooms down, the cruiser was no longer in its parking spot. The cop had already left.
Peter turned right and slipped between two parked cars.
Rain pounded on their roofs. He kept pulling Ellie forward, speeding up.
Time was not their friend. His bare feet were cold on the gritty wet pavement.
His T-shirt was already soaked. Then they were out in the open parking lane, creeping toward the rear of the pizza car.
It was a tiny gray Nissan with a rooftop sign and a logo on the side. The driver’s door stood open, the engine was still running. It wasn’t until Peter made it past the back bumper that he saw the body on the blacktop. Murdered for a damn pizza, just to make the killer look harmless.
Ellie made a high-pitched yelp. He turned to see her standing frozen behind him, soaking wet, both hands over her mouth in a full-on freak-out.
Peter pulled her close, then put his hand on the back of her head and shoved her over the body and through the open driver’s door into the passenger seat.
As he climbed in behind her, the Nissan’s rear side window spiderwebbed with a crunch. The shooter had found them.
Peter threw the little car in drive and hit the gas. They lurched into motion. Crunch crunch sounded from the rear windshield.
“Get down, get down.” The girl bent double in her seat.
“No, on the floor.” She’d have more protection there.
As she folded herself into the footwell, he looked over his shoulder and saw a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a black windbreaker squared up on the blacktop, still firing.
How many rounds could this asshole possibly have?
Peter cranked the car to the left, heading for the exit now with a line of vehicles between them and the shooter.
In one spot was a tan Toyota pickup with a camo-painted fiberglass cap on the back, exhaust puffing from its tailpipe.
Nobody inside. An older body style. Peter took his foot off the gas.
It was the killer’s truck. It had to be.
Nobody left their car running in a place like this.
But how the hell had he found them? The only people who knew about the motel were cops.
Durant and the two patrolmen who’d escorted them there.
Maybe they’d said something over the radio or put the location in a report?
Peter didn’t want to believe police were connected to KT’s death, but he had to consider the possibility.
Or maybe the killer had followed them from Queen Anne. He could keep following them now. No matter where they went, the runty little pizza car would be no match for the powerful Toyota truck, no matter how many miles it was carrying. They’d be dead in ten minutes.
Thunk thunk. Pistol rounds in sheet metal. Or they could be dead right here. Peter goosed the gas as he turned in his seat, scanning for the shooter, found him standing in the lane where the pizza car had been parked, hat hiding his eyes, firing accurately through the line of vehicles.
Enough of this shit. Peter stomped the gas. “Keep your head down.” He came to the end of the lane, but instead of turning right onto Aurora, he turned left and circled back around the line of cars to where they’d been just a moment before.
The gunman stood in the lane and watched them come.
Crunch. A round punched through the windshield high and to the right, spitting shards.
Standing his ground, the shooter adjusted his aim.
Peter bent low and angled the car as if trying to get past him.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Calm, deliberate shots.
Peter did not like this guy. Glass fragments fell in his hair and down his neck.
He had the accelerator all the way to the floor.
Then he raised his head enough to peek over the dashboard and turned the wheel to the left.
The shooter had backed away toward the parked cars, but not far enough.
Peter hit him going thirty-five, throwing him up on the hood, then stood on the brake to let the guy roll forward onto the pavement.
Then he hit the gas again and didn’t brake until he felt the body thump under the front and rear wheels.
He threw it in reverse and looked down at the dashboard for the image from the backup camera. Twenty yards back, the guy was somehow trying to make it to his knees. He still had the gun in his hand. The hat, which he’d probably worn to hide his face from any security cameras, was gone.
Eyes on the screen, Peter goosed the engine and accelerated until he hit him again, keeping his foot down until he felt the double thump.
If that didn’t do the job, the fucker was unkillable.