started throwing things in. The main thing was the laptop, the power cord, the disks, his Jazz drive.
His notebooks. His photo albums. His cameras, of course. His cash. And Summer.
It took him three trips to get everything into the GEO. There was a lot he was leaving behind, but he couldn’t help that. Although no one had put his picture up on television, he could feel them breathing down his neck. He knew he was one step ahead of their snapping jaws—he could feel it. He always trusted his instincts.
They knew who he was. Maybe it was the way the cop had looked at the motor home. He should have jumped on that earlier. At least they didn’t know about the GEO.
After he’d stuffed everything into the back seat, he stood by the car, the sun beating down on him, hyperventilating.
Where would they go?
Mexico?
He’d have to put her in the trunk. But what if the Mexican customs asked to see inside?
He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Or he could head east or west on the interstate. Or take the back roads, lay low.
Later. He’d figure it out later.
He went back inside, feeling strangely jazzed. She was going to give him a battle. He knew it. The wildcat.
And so he prepared everything ahead of time. The chloroform, the rag, his handcuffs, duct tape. It was all in the same place he’d stashed them after he’d used them on Jessica—
The image so strong it seemed like real time. Stupid kid, surprising him like that. The girl, who’d just stopped struggling, a dead weight. He had no choice but to act—and act fast.
Still amazed no one saw him drag the kid down into the woods.
He had the rag, the bottle at the ready. Knocked on the door.
No answer.
He felt the beginning of impatience.
“Summer, we can do this easy or we can do this hard. I guarantee you won’t like it hard.” He tried not to laugh at the pun.
Nothing.
Bitch
To think he’d bought a present for her. He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the key to the padlock, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.
Something jumped out at him like a jack-in-the-box.
“What—?”
He saw the stick clenched in her hands, and his mind had only a split second to wonder what it was when it hit him right in the midsection, punching into his side.
Pain, tingly and bright and blood-colored. He thought he screamed.
He grabbed at her as her impulsion carried her past him, his fingers snagging her dress—
She jerked away, and through a fine haze of pain, he saw her bolt through the hallway and out the door, the door banging
And he was aware that he was holding his side and it was kind of like hot pudding, slick as snot as his father used to say, and he staggered back, spun around, and that was when he saw the object on the floor. Wood tapering down to a band of brass glimmering at the bottom.
It was a leg off the swing-out table.
She’d sawed it off. Somehow.
Smart girl.
He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and pressed it to the wound.
Time slowed. His nerve endings screaming. The towel turning red. Still, he’d better go get her and think about cleaning this mess up later.
49
As Laura walked across the parking lot to the Motel 6 entrance, the overheated asphalt yielded under her shoe like brownie dough. Traffic hummed and sighed on the street behind her, a constant pedal point. She shielded her eyes against the glare and glanced back at the van parked unobtrusively near the edge of the property—a unit from the Pima County Sheriff’s SWAT team inside.
The young woman at the desk looked like a college student. She wore a nice blazer with the name tag “Marci”.
Laura asked Marci if she had either a Dale Lundy or Jimmy de Seroux registered.
