Lee Child - MatchUp

“Then let him,” Joe said, and right then the vehicle behind them turned on its police flashers, painting the white landscape with red and blue light.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Perry said as he eased to a stop. There was no shoulder left to pull onto, only snowbanks, so he just stopped in the road.

“Just get your badge out,” Joe said, but the police car behind them didn’t stop, it just passed by. For an instant, they were side by side with it in the whirling white snow and fading gray day. It was still light enough to read the logo on the car’s door panel.

Helen Police Department.

Then the car was by and the flashing lights went off. The driver had just turned them on to goose the Malibu out of his way. The driver was keeping up a hurrying speed, like he had places to get and people to see, weather be damned.

“Seems like we’re outside of Helen’s jurisdiction,” Perry said.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Tolliver said from the backseat. “That giant stick behind the wheel was Paulson. He’s the kid who stuck his gun in my face in the alley this morning. Didn’t it seem like he was in a bigger rush to get up the mountain than we are?”

Perry looked at Tolliver, then at Joe. “Follow him?”

They both nodded.

The wind rose in the same proportion as the road, both of them crawling steadily higher. Perry was driving faster than Joe would have liked, but he had to do it to keep the Helen police car in sight.

“Any idea where we are?” he asked Tolliver.

“Not sure, but I’d say we’re in the park.”

“What park?”

“Unicoi State Park, which is inside the Chattahoochee National Forest, which is where Anna Ruby Falls is located.” He looked out the window. “I would say pay attention to your surroundings, but everything is white.”

“We didn’t pass through any gate,” Perry said.

“There aren’t any gates. You just drive in.”

Brake lights came on ahead of them.

The Helen police car was pulling to a stop.

“Drive past,” Joe instructed.

His hand had crept to the butt of his gun.

As they drove by, the Malibu’s headlights pinned two vehicles in the relentless snow. The Helen cruiser and a Ford pickup that was idling, the engine running to keep the heater going, probably. It was covered with snow, but the hood was warm enough to have left melted streaks across it that showed traces of the paint.

“Black, not blue,” Joe said, disappointed. “Has a roof rack of lights, too. That’s not the one from the surveillance video.”

“I was told that Double Simpson drives a new black Ford,” Tolliver said. “That one fits the bill.”

“So what do you want to do?” Perry asked as he drove around a curve and the road plummeted down, the other vehicles falling out of sight in the mirrors. “Go back in the car, or go back on foot? If it’s just Paulson and Simpson sitting there, with no sign of the blue truck, we’re going to have to explain—”

His words faltered as the Malibu caught black ice and slid, the car drifting sideways as if the steering wheel was an unimportant thing. Perry spun it and slammed on the brake. Neither effort made any impact. They turned in a near 360, the spinning headlights illuminating snow-laden limbs, and then there was a muffled thump and a jarring impact as the back of the car smacked into a snow-covered bank. Perry slammed the gearshift into first and hit the gas.

The tires spun without catching.

“Kill those headlights,” Joe said. “Kill it all, actually.”

Perry shut off the lights and the engine.

The stillness was eerie, no sounds save the wind and the whisper of falling snow on the glass.

“I guess that answers your question,” Tolliver said from the backseat. “We’ll be going back on foot.”

“For the record,” Joe said, “Barney Oldfield was a race car driver who couldn’t hold a curve. Maybe you’ll remember him now.”

He popped open his door and had to push hard to keep the wind from slamming it shut on him. Somewhere in the distance was a crashing, thundering sound that had to be the roar of the falls that Tolliver mentioned. In this weather it wouldn’t be long before that water would ice into spikes and daggers. Cleveland, Georgia, had gotten confused with Cleveland, Ohio, today. He thought about the dumb-shit remark he’d made that morning to Luisa, the DEA agent, about how they wouldn’t be troubled by the snow.

If only she could see them now.

Tolliver had found a flashlight in the back of the car. Perry had packed a go-bag, which seemed unnecessary at the time, but now that the car had spun out in the middle of nowhere, Joe was grateful for the supplies.

He was climbing out of the car when a moaning sound made him stop half in and half out of the car. For a moment, he thought it was the wind, low and mournful as it whistled through the trees. But then it returned, and while the wind might be able to moan, it was not able to cry out for help.

“That’s behind us,” Tolliver said.

He was already out of the car, standing nearly knee-deep in a drift, and had his gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. Perry got out carefully, taking care not to make any noise. The cry came again, and it might have been mistaken for the howl of a wounded animal if not for that single word it formed.

Help.

Tolliver handed Perry the flashlight and moved toward the sound without speaking. Joe followed, motioning at Tolliver to separate, and Tolliver nodded and moved laterally without hesitation, putting distance between them while Perry hung back, ready to provide covering fire. In this triangular formation they moved slowly through the snow. The wind gusted and a pine bow shed its weight, dumping fresh, cold powder across Joe’s neck and shoulders, some of it sliding under his shirt and melting in a chilled slick along his spine.

The voice came again, crying for help, but it was weaker now, fading.

Joe was just about to say they might have gone in the wrong direction, that Tolliver had been mistaken about where the voice was coming from, when they crested a ridgeline and saw the man hanging by his arm from the tree.

Five steps farther, and Joe recognized him.

Antonio Childers was handcuffed to a low-hanging pine limb. His face was a mask of battered flesh and blood, and he wasn’t dangling from the branch because he’d been hung too high for his feet to reach the ground.

He was dangling from it because his legs were broken.

Tolliver whispered, “What’d they do to him?”

“Whatever they wanted,” Perry said.

Joe looked out into the wind-whipped snow and the gathering darkness and said, “Let’s get him out of the tree and the hell out of here in a hurry. Before whoever hung him up there comes back.”

He tossed Tolliver the handcuff keys. Tolliver caught them with one hand, tucked the Glock into the back of his pants, and went to free Antonio.

Perry said, “They kept him alive for a reason. They’re not done with him.”

Joe was about to concur when he heard a sound that made him look over his shoulder. Nothing in sight, but he wasn’t sure how much that mattered. Thomas “Double” Simpson had grown up on these mountains.

Perry went to help Tolliver carry Antonio back toward the car. When they were close enough, Joe looked at the man’s battered face and said, “You’re a long way from Eddy Road, Antonio. Happy to see a familiar face?”

Childers, who’d once promised to kill Joe and all those dear to him, whimpered like a child.

Begging for help.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said. “We’ve come to take you home to Mansfield.”