Down the Darkest Road

“I want the chopper in the air before we lose any more daylight,” Mendez said. He stood with Tanner and Dixon in Lauren Lawton’s driveway.

The crime scene unit had arrived and parked its fancy new RV outside the gate on Old Mission Road. The evidence techs were like a swarm of ants in the house, and on the driveway, photographing, videotaping, collecting blood and tissue samples.

Mendez didn’t want to stop to imagine whose blood or whose tissue. Lauren’s Walther had been abandoned on the table in the great room. Two spent .380 shell casings were on the floor. He hoped she had fired the shots. He hoped she had hit something. He hoped at least some of that blood belonged to Houston or Ballencoa.

Even if she hit one or both of the men, the fact remained that Lauren and her daughter were gone.

“They could be long gone by now,” Dixon said.

“We can’t assume that,” Mendez said, knowing it was entirely possible. If Ballencoa had taken Lauren and her daughter, he had only to drive to the 101 freeway and be gone in either direction—north or south. They could have been well on their way toward Mexico or Canada or anywhere else.

He had alerted the CHP. Every highway patrol officer, every county cop for fifty miles around was looking for Ballencoa’s van and Lauren’s BMW. The CHP choppers were already in the sky cruising the big artery that ran California’s traffic from one end of the state to the other.

“Ballencoa’s too smart to take the freeway,” Tanner said.

Which left the mountain roads. Miles and miles of them. County roads and fire roads and pig trails that cut back into the wilderness. Rugged hills and deep canyons ran up and down the county on either side. It could take days to find a body. It could take years. It could take forever.

No one had ever found any trace of Leslie Lawton. Mendez hoped to God her mother and sister didn’t write the same ending to their story. The chances of him or anyone else riding to their rescue in time were slim to none.

60

“I want to kill her,” Greg Hewitt said. “Let me do her now. Before I fucking pass out.”

Ballencoa sighed impatiently and climbed back out of the van. The men began to argue over who would be allowed to commit what atrocity in what order.

Lauren wrapped her fingers around the handle of her weapon.

“Remember what I told you,” she whispered to Leah.

Her daughter nodded, clutching the screwdriver close to her chest.

“Where are my journals?” Ballencoa asked his cohort.

“They’re in a bag. She’s laying on it.”

“I don’t want blood on them.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Hewitt groused, pushing himself away from the car. “I’ll get the goddamn books. I told you you’re an idiot for keeping them.”

Lauren could hear him breathing hard, as if he’d been running. Please let him pass out, she thought. If Hewitt could be taken out of the equation, they might have a chance.

“I don’t care what you think,” Ballencoa said. “I’ll get them myself.”

He came back inside the van, muttering, a wicked long hunting knife in his hand.

As he bent to cut the zip tie from her wrist, Lauren twisted around and swung the hammer, catching him a glancing blow across the brow. She struck at him again, just above the ear, unable to get a good swing going in the close confines of the van.

Ballencoa cried out, as much from shock as from pain. He scrambled backward, trying to get away from her. Lauren swung again, missing entirely.

Bleeding, cursing, Ballencoa tumbled out of the back of the van, tangling his legs and falling. Lauren got to her knees, grabbing at Leah, pulling her, pushing her toward the back of the van.

“Leah, run!” she screamed. “Run!!”

She flung herself out of the van, her body colliding with Ballencoa’s as he tried to regain his feet. He hit the ground beneath her, cushioning her fall, the breath going out of him in a grunt as her knee rammed into his belly.

Leah leapt out of the vehicle and dodged to the side like a cat as the blond man tried to snatch her out of the air. He caught her by one arm and yanked her toward him.

Screaming and screaming, Leah swung wildly with the screwdriver. The tool caught him in the face, sinking into his cheek, hitting bone and teeth. He staggered backward, howling, grabbing at the handle of the instrument with one hand.

For the briefest flash of a second, Leah stared in horror at what she’d done. Then she heard her mother’s voice screaming.

“Leah, run!!”

Leah ran. She had lost her shoes before she was thrown into the van. Rocks and twigs bit into the soles of her feet through her thin pink socks.

They were in the small mountains west of Oak Knoll, a range of red stone and scrub. There were no trees here. There was no forest to hide in. There was brush and chaparral and shale that shifted and slipped out from under her feet as she ran.

The only thing Leah could do was run downhill until she reached the road. And even then she wouldn’t be guaranteed safety. They were in the middle of nowhere. There might not be another car on that road for hours or days.

She tried to run faster than her legs could go, and she tripped herself and fell hard to her hands and knees. Crying and choking, and gasping for breath, she pushed herself to her feet and looked over her shoulder.

She had gone maybe fifty yards from the van. Her mother was still fighting. Ballencoa had gotten up and he and the other man had her trapped at the back of the van.

Run no matter what, her mother had told her.

Her mother had also told her to be brave.

Leah didn’t think the two things went together.

She had lost her weapon, leaving it stuck in the face of the man who had come into her home and beaten her.

This was what happened to Leslie, she kept thinking. These men had taken her and killed her, and now they would kill her mother too.

Leah had never been so afraid in her life. She wanted Daddy. She wanted Mommy. She had no one. No one was going to save them.

Her hand brushed against something dangling from the belt loop of her breeches.

The steel hoof pick the Gracidas’s farrier had given her.

She unclipped it from the belt loop and fixed it in her hand like a claw. It wasn’t much, but it was what she had.

Be brave, Leah, she heard her mother say as she turned around and ran back toward the van to try to save her mother’s life.

Lauren kept the hammer poised in front of her as she backed toward the van.

Hewitt was coming from her right. He had pulled Leah’s screwdriver out of his face and held it now like a dagger. He was a monster with his once-handsome face smashed and torn and oozing blood. He was trying to shout, trying to curse. The sounds were garbled and grotesque. His tongue was swelling out of his mouth, dripping blood.

He staggered side to side as he came at her with the screwdriver clutched in his one good hand, his eyes glassy and unfocused.