Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

“Drive like hell,” Bett muttered. “Try to lose him.”

He did.

For about two miles it looked as if they’d get away. The Swedes make a good car but it was no match for the souped-up engine of the pursuing Plymouth. “Can’t make it,” he told her.

He eased up on the gas. “I’ll talk to him. Maybe he’ll at least send a car to the hospital.”

“No,” Bett said. “Pull over.”

“What?” Tate asked, jockeying the skidding car onto the gravel shoulder and braking.

Bett ripped her purse open and dug inside. She paused, took a deep breath, then sat upright, staring in the rearview mirror at herself, stroking her cheek as Tate had seen her do so often.

What’s she up to? he wondered.

“Bett!” he cried as she lifted the nail file to her face and dragged it hard across her skin.

Blood poured from a gash deep in her cheek.

“Oh,” Bett wheezed. “It hurts.”

Tate stared at the blood, running more black than red down her neck and falling onto her chest in delicate paisleys.

“Get out of the car!” reverberated the metallic voice through the rectangular mouth of the PA speaker atop the car.

The young trooper stood beside the open door of his squad car. His blue-black pistol, dwarfed by the lawman’s huge hand, was aimed at Tate’s head.

“Get out of that vehicle! Keep your hands up.”

For a moment neither of them moved.

Then Bett’s door opened so fast Tate thought that another deputy had snuck up behind them unseen and pulled her out. But, no, she was moving on her own. She screamed shrilly as she rolled onto the grassy shoulder of the road. The leather strap of her purse was wound around her wrists as if she were tied up. Without the use of her hands she fell hard and dust mixed with the blood covering her face.

“Help me!” she cried. “He kidnapped me!”

“Don’t move. Nobody move!” the trooper called, swinging the muzzle toward Bett. Tate sat perfectly still, hands on the wheel.

Bett scrabbled toward the cop.

“He’s got a knife!” she cried. “Help me, please. He cut me. I’m bleeding. Help me!” She put the harrowing wail of a frightened child into her voice as she stumbled forward. “He was going to rape me! Get me away from him! Oh, please… Oh..

The trooper gave in to his instincts. “Over here, miss. You’ll be all right. He’s that fella from Prince William, isn’t he? The one killed that girl? Where’s the knife?”

“In his belt. He picked me up at a rest stop,” she cried. “He kidnapped me!”

“Put your hands up!” the trooper called over the microphone. “And I mean now!”

Tate! did.

“What happened?” the cop asked Bett, who was stumbling closer. “Cut me… I need a doctor…” The words were lost in the sobbing.

“You in the car. Leave your right hand up and with your left reach out the window and open the door. Don’t lower that right hand.”

Tate didn’t move.

“I’m not telling you again! I have a-”

“Put it down!” came Bett’s raw scream from inches behind his head. Tate’s pistol was resting at the cop’s. throat.

“Oh, shit.”

“Do it!”

“I’ve got him covered, lady. You do anything to me and he’s gone. I’ll shoot him. I swear…“ But he said this out of shame, not resolve, and when Bett screamed, “We’re after my daughter and I’ll kill you right now if I have to,” the cop’s disgusted grunt was followed by the sound of his large pistol hitting the dirt.

Bett stepped away from the man, who towered over her. He went limp as he saw the ferocity in her face, maybe wondering just how close to death he’d come. He sagged against the car.

“All right,” Bett muttered. “Lie down on the ground. There. On your stomach.”

Tate was out of the car and jogging toward them.

“There’re other troopers coming, lady. They’ll be here in minutes.”

“All the more reason to move!”

He eased down. Bett handed the cop’s pistol to Tate.

“Cuff him and let’s go,” she said.

But Tate put his hand on her shoulder. “No. You’re staying.”

“No, Tate,” Bett said, holding a wad of Kleenexes up to her bloody chin. “I want to come.”

What could he say to her? That there wasn’t anything she could do and Tate needed to focus on saving Megan-if she could be saved? That it was important for her to stay here and tell the police exactly what had happened, send them out to the hospital? They were both surefire arguments. But Tate answered instead from his heart and told her the truth. Simply: “I don’t want to risk losing you.”

She looked at the dark blood on the Kleenex and up at Tate once more. She nodded.

“Now, listen to me,” he said gravely. “When they get here, just set the gun down and put your hands up. They’ll be nervous and looking to shoot. Do exactly what they say. You hear me?”

She nodded, He touched her cheek, wiping away some blood.

“A sexy woman with a scar-won’t be a man in the county’ll keep his hands off you.”

“You’ll get her, won’t you, Tate?”

“I’ll get her.”

He kissed her forehead and ran to the car.

He floored the accelerator, splattering the squad car with gravel and dirt. As he drove over a crest in the road, the tach nosing into the red crescent of the warning zone, he caught a glimpse of Bett in the rearview mirror, crouching beside the prone trooper, undoubtedly apologizing earnestly. Still, the pistol that was gripped in both her hands was pointed steadily at his face.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Crazy Megan was gone, dead and sleeping with the fishes.

The depleted air suffocated her. The smells-the rot and the sweet scent from embalmed skin-wrapped themselves around her throat and squeezed.

Which was bad enough. But then the panic started to sizzle through her body like electricity. The claustrophobia.

“No, no, no,” she said, or maybe she just thought it. “No, no… Let me out, let me out, let me out.

Suddenly she wasn’t even worried that Matthews was outside the casket, waiting for her. It didn’t matter; she couldn’t stay inside a moment longer.

Megan pushed against the lid of the coffin.

It didn’t move.

She tried again, with all her strength. Nothing.

“Ah,” she gasped. “Oh please, God, no…

He’d locked her in! She pounded on the lid then heard a wild laugh outside. Words she couldn’t distinguish. More laughter.

More words, louder: “… two having fun together… likes you… Peter likes you.

“Let me out, let me out!”

Her voice rose to a wild keening, her whole body shivered in violent spasms.

“You fucker you fuck let me outoutoutout!” With both her fists Megan pounded on the lid until they bled, banged it with her head, feeling with horror Peter’s cold face against her neck, his cold penis against her thigh.

From outside Aaron Matthews beat on the lid too, responding to her pounding. Then more laughter. And finally more tapping, like a drummer, keeping perfect time with the rhythm of her raw screams.

No subtlety, no nuance…

Tate Collier came to the end of Palmer Road and saw the mental hospital in front of him. He aimed Bett’s car directly toward the gate, got his speed up to about forty and bounded over logs and potholes in the neglected surface. He saw the infamous gray Mercedes parked in the staff-only carport. He saw a faint light in one of the windows.

He had no plan other than the obvious and as he skidded around a fallen pine and straightened for the final assault on the gate he pressed the accelerator down harder, sealing his resolve.

He pressed his hands into the steering wheel, pinning himself into the seat. The car plowed through the chain link. The air bag popped with an astonishingly loud bang. He’d forgotten about it and hadn’t closed his eyes. He was momentarily blinded and lost control of the car. When he could see again he found the vehicle skidding sideways, narrowly missing the Mercedes. The Volvo crashed obliquely into the cinder blocks, stunning him.