Left behind, p.3
Left Behind, page 3
Then he sent a text to Wiley.
DoorDash delivery coming your way. Breakfast on me. Take care, big brother.
B.J.
Wiley was sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating whether to get up and shave, or live with the black whiskers, when he got the text. He smiled as he read the message. No cold cereal for him. He managed to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt before making his way to the front of the house.
The cool floor felt good beneath his feet as he went to the kitchen to start coffee, but he needed no reminders to go slow. Everything hurt.
A few minutes later, his doorbell rang. He was sweating by the time he got to the door to retrieve the box, then headed back to the kitchen.
“Oh man,” he said when he saw what was inside, then grabbed a butter knife and carried the whole box to the table. He picked up a croissant and took the first bite plain, reveling in the flaky exterior and the melt-in-your-mouth interior. After that, it was honey butter on every bite.
He quit at four. Eyeing the remaining two with regret and a promise to himself to finish them later, he poured himself a second cup of coffee and downed a pain pill, then sent a quick text back to B.J.
Thanks for breakfast! It was amazing, and so are you.
Then he eased back down the hall, decided to keep the whiskers, and crawled into bed, hoping he’d get a text back from Linette giving him the okay to call. And at the same time, Linette was impatiently waiting for that second invitation, without realizing she hadn’t responded to his text.
***
Rhonda Tiller was at the nail salon when Cecily Michaels walked in. They gave each other a wary glance, but when Cecily sat down at the station next to Rhonda, Rhonda leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Did you know Wiley was shot during that bank robbery?”
Cecily nodded. “Did you know Linette Elgin lives in the same apartment building that I just moved into?”
“No way!” Rhonda said.
“Yes, way,” Cecily muttered. “She was also at that bank when the robbery happened. I saw her in the elevator when she was leaving the building, and when she came home later, she was covered in blood and very shaken.”
Rhonda frowned. She didn’t want to empathize. “So what? She’s a nurse.”
Cecily frowned. “You know…she never did anything to us, but she got hurt because of what we did to Wiley.”
Rhonda shrugged. “I don’t care. We got back at him.”
Cecily sighed. “I know, but for what? All that just because he didn’t ask us out again?”
Rhonda sniffed. “Nobody blocks me and gets away with it.”
“It happened because of what we did, and in the process, we made an enemy of him. I’m mad at myself for ever agreeing to do it,” Cecily said.
Rhonda ignored her. They’d bonded over a mutual issue, but Cecily Michaels could walk out of her life today and Rhonda wouldn’t miss her.
***
Pope Mountain: A week later
The rain came before sundown. A hard but steady downfall with only the distant grumble of thunder. No wind. No lightning. Just a blinding sheet of water, but Carey Eggers couldn’t stop. She was running for her life. She’d taken a wrong turn on her way back to Bowling Green and didn’t know where she was, other than she’d been driving up a mountain, and now she was driving down.
Her fingers were numb from gripping the steering wheel, and she kept watching for headlights behind her while trying to keep her eye on the road. But the rain made it hard to see the white line on the blacktop, and the windshield wipers were a continual squeak—the only sound within the car other than her short ragged breaths. Her brother was dead, she just knew it And, if she couldn’t lose the killer behind her, she would be, too.
If only she could take back her decisions.
The windshield wipers were worthless, but mesmerizing. And she kept remembering waking up this morning with nothing but Johnny’s welfare on her mind.
***
Bowling Green, Kentucky: Hours earlier
Carey helped her fiancé, Johnny Knight, into bed, gave him his pain pills, and sat beside him until he fell asleep. As soon as he was out, she grabbed her purse and phone and left the house to catch the city bus. She needed to go to a suburb of the city, where her brother, Billy Eggers, lived.
She got off the bus at her stop, then started walking to his house to ask for help. It never occurred to her that he might be gone until she was almost there, and then she began to panic. What if he wasn’t home? Then what was she going to do? But when she got closer and saw his car parked in the yard and saw him coming out of the front door, she started running.
Billy saw her, then stopped and raised a hand in greeting.
“Little sister! Are you lost?” he said as she ran into his arms.
“No. But I need help. I don’t get paid for another week, and Johnny’s out of pain meds. Can you loan me money to get them refilled?”
Billy was just a head taller than her, and both of them bordered on the edge of skinny as he put his arm around her.
“Bless your heart, sugar! Why didn’t you call me?”
She ducked her head. “I don’t know. I guess because I didn’t want to ask for money and then ask you to deliver it?”
He hugged her again. “Truck on the fritz again?”
She nodded.
“Come inside,” he said as they walked in together. “How much do you need?”
“The meds are almost a hundred dollars,” she said. “He’s getting better I think, but I can’t stand for him to suffer.”
Billy nodded. “Get yourself something cold to drink. I’ve got to open the safe.”
She headed for the kitchen and was drinking Pepsi from a can when he returned and handed her a wad of bills. “Here’s five hundred to tide you over.”
“Oh my God! Thank you, Billy! You’re the best,” Carey said.
He ruffled her blond curls. “At everything, and don’t you forget it,” he said. “Oh, and you don’t pay me back. This is a gift from me to you.”
Carey threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you. You’re the best brother ever.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I know. I can give you a ride back to the bus stop, but I can’t take you home. I’m heading the other way, and already late,” Billy said.
“It’s okay, and thanks,” Carey said. She stuffed the money in her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder.
But the sound of an approaching car shifted Billy’s mood as he glanced out the window.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Carey asked.
He handed her the keys to his car. “Get in the utility room. If you hear gunshots, go out the back door, take my car, and don’t look back.”
“No, Billy, how will you—”
“Just do it!” he said, and shoved her hard. “And hurry!”
She tightened her grip on the keys and bolted, closing the door to the utility room behind her, and then unlocking and opening the back door, just in case she needed to make a quick escape. Her heart was hammering as she hunkered down in a corner to listen.
Seconds later, she heard someone pounding on the front door, and then loud voices. Billy was yelling at someone, and they kept shouting something about acting on orders, and Billy was yelling back and said a word that sounded like gunny, or money, and the other person said something about invading someone else’s territory, and then a gunshot, followed by a horrifying silence. That’s when Carey knew Billy was down. That’s when she got up and ran.
Every step she took across the yard, she imagined that it would be her last, but that didn’t happen. She made it to the car and sped up the driveway, in a panic to put as much distance between her and the man who’d just shot her brother. She glanced up once and caught a glimpse of a man running out of the house, then stomped on the accelerator, heading back toward the little town just as the sun was going down. If she could get out of sight before he caught up, she might be able to get away. She was scared and crying now, fearing that what had happened to Billy was going to happen to her.
She blasted through the suburb, ignoring the speed limit, and made an instant decision not to lead him straight to her house. Johnny was already hurt. The last thing she wanted was to get him killed, so she took a turn that led her away from the city. Barely two miles further, she drove into the storm. The rain was a deluge. Wind was blowing it sideways, but since she couldn’t see a car length behind her, she reasoned the man wouldn’t be able to see her either and kept driving.
About a half hour later, she finally accepted she was lost and called Johnny just to let him know what had happened. When he didn’t answer, she guessed he was still asleep and left a frantic message about where she’d gone, what had happened, and that it was raining so hard, she couldn’t tell where she was. She was crying when she said, “I love you,” afraid that she’d never see him again.
***
Two hours later, she was driving down a two-lane road on a mountain she’d never seen before, and as lost as she’d ever been. All she saw behind her was the horizontal rain and a night so dark there was no definition. Had it not been for the car’s headlights, it would have been like driving into oblivion.
She shifted slightly in her seat and, as she did, glanced up in the rearview mirror again and caught a flash of light a distance behind her. When it disappeared, she guessed the car had just taken the curve on the road that she’d left behind only minutes earlier.
She panicked, and then immediately began trying to reassure herself.
Calm down. It could be anyone. But her gut instinct was to speed up. She stomped on the gas, and when she did, the car fishtailed slightly. She overcorrected, hydroplaned, and all of a sudden, she was off the road and heading straight for the trees looming in her headlights.
She screamed, and then IMPACT!
The world was spinning, the rain was still coming down, and through the illumination from the headlights, she could see the wind whipping the tree limbs. She was hurting all the way to the bone when she remembered the car behind her and looked back, just as headlights became visible in the distance.
In a panic, she began scrambling to get out and then couldn’t move. It took her a few moments to remember she was still buckled in.
Seat belt. Seat belt.
Her fingers were shaking as it came undone, and then her door was jammed and wouldn’t open. In a panic, she pocketed her phone, grabbed the flashlight from her console, then crawled over it and out the passenger door that had come open upon impact.
Despite the pain, she was still mobile, and she took off into the forest without turning on a light, blinded by the wind and rain. She looked back only once and saw a light bouncing around the crashed car, and then gasped when the light moved into the woods.
Oh God! Somebody was following her! It had to be him!
She turned left to dodge a tree and increased her speed and, as she did, realized she was running up an incline, going back the way she’d come. She didn’t know what was out here in these woods, but anything was better than what was behind her. In her panic, she ran headlong into brambles before finally tearing herself loose, then a hundred yards farther, nearly knocked herself out when she ran into a low-hanging limb. She didn’t know if she’d lost him. She just kept running with the wind and rain blasting her, knowing the storm was drowning out all sound.
***
When Lonny Pryor came over the hill and saw taillights off the road and into the trees, every thought within him focused.
I’ve got her.
He pulled off the side of the road and, as he did, saw a flash of movement and then nothing. He pocketed his weapon, grabbed an LED flashlight, and got out and started toward the car. He was so focused on the taillights that he didn’t see the ditch until he stepped off into it and went belly down in the mud and rain.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelped as his knee landed on a rock, but he was back on his feet and moving within seconds.
When he reached the car and found it empty, he cursed again and aimed the flashlight down, catching a glimpse of footprints washing away in the rain. But they were going into the forest, and he had no option but to follow. This night just kept getting worse. What should have been an easy job had turned into a clusterfuck.
Nobody told him Billy Eggers had a woman. Nobody even warned them of the possibility of one. He hadn’t gone there to do anything but ask Eggers if he knew anything about a new crew dealing drugs in town. But Billy had been confrontational, telling him he knew nothing and to get the hell out of his house. In frustration, Lonny pulled his gun, just to threaten him. He hadn’t expected Eggers to grab the gun Lonny waved in his face, and the rest was history. He didn’t know anyone was in the house until he saw the woman running across the front yard. When she jumped into Eggers’s car and sped away, he was in shock.
That was over four hours ago, and if he hadn’t taken Eggers’s phone to use as a GPS locator, he would never have found her. Only now the car was in the trees, and she was long gone. All he could do was keep running, in hopes she’d hurt herself bad enough in the wreck to finally stop on her own. He was dodging trees and undergrowth, but his knee was throbbing, and when he fell and banged it again, he got up slower, cursing.
After that, it was slow going, looking for any kind of sign that the rain couldn’t wash away. Ten minutes into the search, he found a small piece of cloth hanging from a bramblebush. The same color as the jacket the woman had been wearing. He was on the right track!
A short while later, he found another piece of denim fabric hanging from a broken branch on the trail. She’d been wearing jeans! It appeared he wasn’t the only one falling. Ignoring the pain, he hastened his speed.
***
Carey’s head was throbbing so badly she couldn’t think. She turned on the flashlight to get her bearings and then reached for her head. Her fingers came away red with blood, and then she watched in horror as the rain swiftly washed it away.
Am I running for nothing? Am I going to die from a head wound and blood loss before he catches me? Why, God? Why me? But she knew the answer before she took her next breath. Because I was there.
She aimed the flashlight in the direction she’d been running and saw nothing beyond the beam of light. She was too tired and weak to keep going up. It was time to start moving downhill. Hopefully she’d see a house or a place to hide. She knew she was taking a chance using the flashlight now, but it was still raining so hard that he’d have to be standing beside her to see the beam. She kept moving forward, slowly angling downhill as she went.
But the farther down she went, the harder it was becoming to breathe, and she wondered what she’d done to herself when her chest hit the steering wheel. She was beginning to get dizzy. Half-blinded by the rain, she found herself staggering and once thought she’d been walking in circles.
She stopped to rest against a tree, grateful for the brief shelter beneath the branches. Once she’d caught her breath, she started off again and, within moments, stumbled and fell. Her phone fell out of her pocket, and she dropped her flashlight. She crawled to where it had fallen, picked it up, and was struggling to stand when a bullet tore through her shoulder. The impact threw her forward into the underbrush, and then everything went black.
Lonny grunted with satisfaction. He’d stopped her, but he needed to make sure she was dead. He aimed his flashlight down at the compass on his watch and was starting toward where she’d fallen when a shaft of lightning came down in the trees so close to where he was standing that the hair rose on the back of his head. He saw flames through the rain, followed by a crack of thunder so loud his ears popped.
“To hell with this,” he muttered, and headed back the way he’d come, running as fast as he could move through the trees.
By the time he got back to the road, the lights had gone off on her car, which was good. It would be daylight before anyone could possibly see the wreck, and thanks to the rain, no one would ever know he’d been there.
But he had a problem. He’d wrecked his knee. He was bleeding like a stuck pig and in serious pain. No way was he going to be able to drive like this. He knew Jubilee was further down the mountain and he needed help, but he couldn’t call an ambulance, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to walk into the ER and show his face. He didn’t want anyone to be able to say they’d even seen him in the vicinity.
He sat for a few moments, frantically going through the contacts on his phone when he saw the name Lilah Perry and paused. They’d parted company over two years ago, but not in anger.
Impulsively, he called her number, listened to it ringing, and sighed, fearing she wasn’t going to answer, and then she did.
“Hello?”
“Lilah, it’s me, Lonny.”
“What the hell, Lonny? It’s blowing up a storm down here.”
“Are you still in Jubilee?”
“Yes, why?”
“At the same place?” he asked.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lonny, just spit it out,” Lilah snapped.
“I got caught in the storm and had a flat. I slipped changing it and hurt my bad knee. I need to get it patched up before I drive home. I was wondering if you would—”
“Can’t you just go to the ER?” she asked.
“That’s money I don’t have,” Lonny said.
She sighed. “Yeah, well, I understand that. Yes, I’m in the same place. Can you drive well enough to get here?”
Lonny breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah. I really appreciate this, Lilah. I’m not asking to stay. Just long enough to get it bandaged up and stop the bleeding.”
“Jesus, Lonny! Are you bleeding bad?”
“Enough, but not enough to kill me. I’ll see you soon,” he said, and hung up, then put the car in gear and took off down the mountain.
The lights of Jubilee were a welcome sight when he finally drove through town. The streets were empty. No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this, and he kept going east on the main drag until he came to the oldest residential area of Jubilee and turned left. Lilah Perry’s house was the last one on Thornehill Drive, and she’d turned the porch light on.
