I thought I eliminated the only link between my family and the world of killers. Apparently, I was wrong.
Finally I close my eyes, suck in a heavy breath. I need to come up with a game plan. Something to get word to Atticus. Atticus will know what to do. He’ll make sure my family is safe. He’ll—
The door opens again.
I expect it to be Sheriff Gilbert, or a deputy, or maybe one of the U.S. Marshals, but it’s not any of them.
Erik Johnson has on jeans and gray T-shirt. He stands in the doorway. Leans in slightly to glance up at the camera, does a sort of double take when he notices the wire has been unplugged. He focuses his glare on me.
“You make me sick.”
I can tell he’s been practicing the line, probably running it over and over in his head. The way he would eye me down. The way he would stand there with shoulders back, his chin tilted up. He’s pissed because he thinks I’ve been lying to him all this time, and while it’s true I have been lying to him, I’ve been lying to him for a completely different reason. Not that it would matter to him right now, or even make sense, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing him as my last chance of saving my family.
“I need your help.”
This clearly surprises him, but his glare doesn’t waver.
“Why the fuck would I do anything for you?”
“Don’t think of it as for me. It’s for my family. They’re in danger.”
This clearly surprises him too, and he frowns for the first time.
“What family?”
“They’re not going to let me make a phone call. That woman—she’s not a real lawyer. She’s—”
Well, who is she? It’s too complicated to get into it. I don’t have time to explain how she set me up to kill those two men. Because she knew I was the kind of person who would kill them. The kind of person who wouldn’t let the murder of a girl go unavenged.
Erik takes a step back, leans his head out the door to look down the hallway, then focuses his glare on me again.
“I shouldn’t even be here right now. They’ve suspended me. They interrogated me. I’m under investigation. Like I had any idea what kind of monster you are.”
Obviously he’s talked his fellow deputies into sneaking him in here before the U.S. Marshals take me away. So that he can tell me off. I don’t blame him, and if I hadn’t just had a visit from the woman I knew as Leila Simmons, I would let him vent.
I say, “Will you remember this number?”
He doesn’t answer.
I recite the number Atticus gave me a year ago, the one he said to call if I’m ever in trouble or need to get hold of him. After I recite it, I say it again, slowly this time, to make sure it sinks into Erik’s head.
“Nobody will answer. It’ll be for a company called Scout’s Dry Cleaning. Leave a message. Say Holly’s family is in danger.”
His face changes, clouds with confusion.
“Who the hell is Holly?”
Before I can answer, there’s a sudden whistle down the hallway, one of the deputies giving him the signal that his time’s up.
Erik doesn’t waste time—he steps away, quietly shuts the door.
I’m left sitting there, shackled to the table, staring at empty space again, and it’s another minute before the door opens and Sheriff Gilbert peers in, his face as hard and severe as his gruff voice.
“Your ride’s here.”
Twenty-Two
There are only two U.S. Marshals. Neither one speaks to me. They pat me down, one of the Marshals signs off on a form on a clipboard, and then I’m being led down a hallway toward the side entrance.
A brand-new Chevy Caprice is parked outside. It gleams under the midday sun. A few deputies stand off to the side, as well as a few state police officers, and beyond them—past a barrier of police cruisers—sits a local news affiliate van, a cameraman already set up with the reporter standing next to him. They watch me, just like everybody else, as I’m loaded into the back of the Caprice, shuffling across the seat with my ankles and wrists still shackled.
Soon the Marshals climb into the car and we begin to move.
The cameraman shifts his weight as he tracks us with his camera. I sense him from the corner of my eye, just outside the window, but I keep staring forward.
The Caprice’s engine purrs as we accelerate down the street, headed for the highway.
The Marshal in the passenger seat makes a quick phone call, says that we just left, and then sets his phone aside. Both of them have on sunglasses, and neither acknowledges me. I can’t tell if the driver even glances at me in the rearview mirror.
While I’ve murdered two federal agents, it hasn’t become a national story. At least, not yet. A news chopper doesn’t follow us. The local affiliate van doesn’t follow us. Nobody follows us as far as I can tell—not even a deputy’s cruiser—and soon we’re speeding down the empty highway, headed south, the landscape mostly desolate except for the foothills off in the distance.
The air condition is on, set to low. An uneasy silence fills the car.
Not once do I feel the need to argue my case to these Marshals. They’re merely my escort. Eventually I’ll be taken in front of a judge for an adjudication hearing. I’ll be prosecuted on the federal level. There’s a lot of damning evidence against me—the photographs, of course, as well as my weapons—and I’ll be lucky if I don’t end up with the death penalty.
My only hope now is that Erik moves past his sudden hatred for me and makes that phone call. All I need is for Atticus to hear that my
