P. Parrish - South Of Hell

But why was his gut telling him something was wrong about this place?

Joe reached to the door.

“Joe,” Louis said, “draw your weapon.”

She glanced back at him, then pulled her.45 from its holster. She stepped back to let Louis pull the door away.

Joe slipped inside, arms rigid, gun pointed. Louis stayed at the entrance, clicking on his flashlight and wishing like hell he’d thought to put his Glock on his belt. But they had not come here with the idea of finding Brandt.

The beam of his flashlight swept over the back of Joe’s leather jacket, then picked up gray stone walls and sagging rafters.

What was this place? A tornado shelter?

“You can’t go in there.”

The man’s voice was deep and familiar. And it was coming from above him.

Louis’s head snapped up to the hill above the door.

“You can’t be in there!” Brandt screamed.

A second later, Louis saw the broken knife in Brandt’s hand.

“Joe!”

Brandt lunged at him, coming off the top of the hill with the force of a two-hundred-pound boulder. Louis stumbled backward and threw up both arms, trying to deflect the impact of Brandt’s body.

But he was knocked off his feet and slammed to the ground onto his back. A splintering pain fired through his chest.

The knife. Get the knife.

He saw a flash of metal. His hands flew up, locking around Brandt’s wrist to stop his downward thrust. Brandt started hitting him, desperate to free his knife.

“Joe!”

But he knew why she hadn’t fired. She had no clear shot. He and Brandt were too close, too tangled up.

He gritted his teeth and steeled his arms, using all the strength he had to force Brandt’s shoulders back and up, pushing until Brandt was on his haunches and erect.

The six gunshots came rapid-fire.

Brandt spasmed like he had been electrocuted, and with a gasp, he went limp, tipping forward. Louis pushed him aside and scrambled to his feet.

His chest was on fire. He couldn’t pull in a good breath.

Joe was standing over Brandt, her gun pointed at the ground but still held with a white-knuckled grip. Her eyes were pinned on the knife near Brandt’s fingers.

“Are you cut?” she asked Louis without looking at him.

“No.”

She started to crumple.

Louis’s eyes shot to the knife. It was covered in fresh blood.

And he knew what Joe knew. The blood had to be Amy’s.

Louis stepped to her and gently worked the.45 from her hand. The move seemed to sap her remaining strength, and her knees buckled. He caught her and pulled her close.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“I let him get her. I let him…”

“No, you didn’t.”

Louis wrapped an arm around her neck and held her. She fell against him with a sob. And he realized that until this moment, he’d never seen her cry.

He pulled her tighter to his chest, his hand cradling the back of her head, holding her until her body stopped its terrible shaking.

It was a long time before she was able to pull back and look at him.

“We need to find her,” Joe said, her voice cracking.

He knew she was right, but where should they start? Would it be quicker to drive into town and get the deputies back out here or to head off by themselves?

Louis looked down at Brandt.

His clothes were filthy, his jaw whiskered with a week’s growth. Louis guessed he’d been hiding in this bunker since he attacked Shockey. But where had Brandt been just before he appeared at the top of the hill?

Louis eased away from Joe and knelt next to Brandt. His clothes were soaked from the waist down. And his shoes were caked with mud.

“Joe, you take the Bronco and go get help,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’m going to look for Amy.”

“No, I’m going with you,” Joe said.

The Bronco bounced across the cornfields, getting mired in mud a few times but heading steadily north toward Lethe Creek. Finally, Louis was forced to bring the truck to a stop at the edge of the tree break. The copse of trees and brush was too thick to get through.

Joe pushed out her door quickly and started away from the truck. “Which way?” she asked.

“Straight through the trees and up the hill,” he said.

She broke into a run and pushed through the brush. Louis quickened his step to keep up with her. He wanted to be next to her when they crested the hill in front of the cemetery. Because if he was right about how Brandt had gotten wet, Amy would be lying in or near the stream on the other side.

Joe stopped at the top of the hill.

“Oh, my God, Louis…”

He drew up next to her. At first, nothing registered. Then he saw the splash of pink bobbing in the water.

Amy was in the water on her back. Her pink parka was ballooned with air, keeping her shoulders afloat.

Joe raced across the cemetery and down the slope. Louis followed, his stomach knotting as other details registered.

Chalky white face, blue lips, hair streaming out behind her in the fast-moving brown water. He realized in that instant that if her body hadn’t somehow gotten wedged in the rocks, it would have been swept downstream.

Joe was wading across the water. The stitches in Louis’s chest forced him to move slowly down the muddy slope behind her, but his eyes were riveted on Amy’s body.

A final thought hit him like a hard punch. Amy wasn’t all cut up as Shockey had been. At least Joe would be spared that.

With a splash, Joe dropped to her knees in the water and gathered Amy into her arms.

“Oh, my God! She’s ice cold.”

Louis reached her side and tried to pull Joe to her feet. “Joe, calm down. Let’s get her out of the water,” he said.

Joe grabbed Amy under the arms. Louis took her feet. He could see now the rip in her parka and the stain of blood that surrounded it.

They set her on the grass. He dropped down next to her, his fingers going first to her neck. Even under the collar of her jacket, her skin felt like frozen meat. He moved his fingers up and down, searching for the slightest pulse.

“Amy!” Joe said. “Can you hear me?”

“Joe, calm down.”

Joe looked up at him as if he’d slapped her, then turned her attention back to Amy. Something changed in her, as if she’d suddenly found a way to shut down her emotions and unlock fourteen years of training. She roughly pushed Amy’s hair off her face and bent over her, putting her cheek against Amy’s mouth.

“Louis, she’s breathing.”

He finally found a feeble pulse. She was alive, but barely. And he knew they not only had to get her to a hospital, they had to get her warm — now.

He started to rip off his jacket, then realized it was not heavy enough to do Amy any good.

Joe saw him and frantically pulled at the zipper of her leather jacket. Louis eased the sodden parka off Amy. He was trying to remember his academy training, all the stuff about hypothermia, but nothing was coming.

He reached down to pick Amy up. Joe caught his arm.

“Your stitches. You can’t carry her,” she said.

“I’ll do it. Just help me get her up.”

He slipped his hands under her and, with a soft groan, pushed clumsily to his feet. Amy seemed to weigh twice as much as she did that day he first carried her from the house.

Joe draped her leather jacket over Amy’s chest, then looked up at Louis.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Just help me stay steady crossing the water.”

Joe wrapped an arm around his waist, and together they trudged back across the stream.

Breathless, Louis stopped in the cemetery, trying to cool the burning in his lungs with deep pulls of air. Through the branches of the black trees beyond, he could see the bright red paint of Joe’s Bronco.