Brian Freeman - Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7)

‘I’m sorry,’ she pleaded with him.

Bernd’s face was knotted up into a mask of rage.

‘I didn’t know, how could I know?’ Anna went on. ‘We still have Cat. You said yourself, she’ll be worth a lot. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Not you.’

‘You can’t leave me here!’ She took Bernd’s shirt in her bloody fists and shouted in his face. ‘You think I’m going to prison for the rest of my life for you? Fuck that! I’ll give you all up. Every one of your sorry asses. I’ll tell them everything!’

‘I know,’ Bernd said.

He brought the gun up and fired through Anna’s stomach. The noise reverberated in the shut-up space. Anna screamed in agony and laced her hands over her belly as she staggered backward. Streams of blood squeezed through her fingers. She stared down at herself in disbelief.

‘You son of a bitch—’

Bernd straightened his arm and fired again, directly into her head. The shot was like a bomb. Cat watched Anna’s face explode in a shower of bone and brain. Her friend’s knees crumpled, and Anna slumped to the floor in a dead pile. Cat squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. She felt deaf from the bang of the gun, and her skin was pricked with stinging, pinpoint burns.

The killer’s hand locked around her wrist. ‘Let’s go.’

Bernd dragged Cat by her bound hands, and her shoes scraped on the dirt. He got to the door of the storage unit and kicked it open with his heel. She squinted into the gray light of the afternoon. The rain was heavier, sheeting sideways in the wind.

The SUV was there, its tailgate open. The packing crate lay on the ground, the wooden lid next to it. Cat knew what came next. Bernd cocked his arm and flipped the pistol in his grip, ready to crash the butt of the gun into her head. Cat swung at him with her arms, but it was like striking an oak tree. His body barely moved. She lost her footing in the mud as she hit him and stumbled to her knees. Protecting her stomach, she tried to skitter away from him, but he grabbed her under her shoulders and hoisted her into the air. Her legs kicked. She landed blows without felling him. He dropped her down again, and with his bloody hand around her neck, he pointed the gun into her face.

She felt the heat of the barrel burning her.

And then she heard it. They both heard it. Sirens. Loud, wailing, roaring closer, not even a block away. She stared past the dirt lot to the street, barely able to hope for rescue, but there they were. The strobe lights of squad cars flashed between the tall trees, one after another, brake lights squealing as the cars swung wide. In the midst of them, she saw a truck she recognized.

Stride’s Expedition.

‘There!’ Al shouted, pointing at an ivy-covered house at the corner of a T intersection with Edward Street. ‘That’s where Anna lives.’

Stride jerked to a stop and bumped over the curb on the boulevard. With his window open, he gestured police cars past him, where they swerved into position, blocking both streets. He opened the driver’s door. Serena and Maggie climbed out of the back seat behind him.

‘Stay here,’ he told Al. ‘Don’t move.’

All of Stride’s attention was focused on Anna’s house, which was built on a shallow slope of lawn and had steps leading from the sidewalk to the front door. The wall nearest the street was completely draped in dense vines, obscuring the windows. He led the way toward the door, with Serena and Maggie close behind him. Rain slashed his face. He’d nearly reached the door when he heard Al shouting from inside his truck. The kid’s high-pitched voice was muffled by the window, but he screeched a name over and over, and Stride recognized what Al was saying.

‘ Cat! Cat! ’

Stride swiveled toward the street. So did everyone else. He saw a dilapidated row of storage units, a muddy, weed-covered driveway, a forest of soaring, waving trees, and an SUV parked near the last unit with its tailgate swung open. Beside the truck, a tall man backed away toward the edge of a steep ravine.

The man had a gun in his hand.

And he had Cat.

The passenger door of Stride’s truck swung open. Al screamed Cat’s name and bolted across the street, his arms and legs flying. Stride shouted after him, but the kid didn’t stop. Then they were all running: Stride, Serena, Maggie, the cops. Stride skidded down the lawn of Anna’s house and hit the pavement in a sprint. Ahead of him, Al kept shouting.

‘Cat! Cat!’

Al pumped through the mud, his sneakers splashing. He was almost at the SUV when the man holding Cat raised the pistol and fired. The first shot missed wide. Al threw himself behind the truck bumper, but a moment later, he charged again, and the man fired again. This time the bullet drilled into the meat of Al’s shoulder. Al jerked at the impact, his face twisted in pain, and his knees buckled. His hand clutched his shoulder, and he fell against the truck door.

Stride didn’t dare shoot. He kept the SUV between himself and the gunman as he evaluated Cat’s situation. She was bound with her hands in front, but otherwise looked unharmed. She wriggled frantically in the man’s grasp, but he had her neck in a chokehold as he pulled her toward the edge. When the man spotted Stride, he laid the barrel of the automatic against Cat’s cheekbone.

The two of them kept backing toward the ravine. Thick trees soared from the pit of the valley and loomed over their heads. Dense, leafy brush leaned in around them. Compost and dead branches, dumped at the fringe of the slope, made the earth like quicksand.

‘Stop!’ Stride shouted at him. ‘Stay where you are!’

The man cast a glance behind him, where the ground fell away. He was up to his ankles in mud. He took the gun from Cat’s head and squeezed off another shot, which pinged against the metal siding of the SUV. With one more shot, he shattered the truck’s windshield, pelting Stride with glass.

Stride ducked behind the truck and waited an excruciating five seconds. The man didn’t fire again. When Stride stood up, the slope ahead of him was empty. The deep gully had swallowed them up.

Stride went down and down and down.

He half-fell, half-climbed the sharp slope. The soft earth gave way under his feet, and he stayed upright by grabbing onto wet brush. Leaves slipped through his fingers. The deeper he went, the darker it got, blocking out the charcoal sky. When he glanced behind him, he saw Serena and half a dozen cops starting down the hill, but soon they disappeared behind the crowns of trees. He was alone.

Where the ground finally leveled, water gurgled over his feet. He was no more than a hundred yards from the open coastline where the St. Louis River widened into Spirit Lake, but for now, he may as well have been in a rainforest, trapped among trees so dense that he couldn’t see ten yards in front of him. He listened, but the noise of rain and wind drowned other sounds.

He saw fresh footprints in the mud of the creek, heading east toward the lake. That was their trail.

Stride yanked out his phone and called Maggie. ‘They’re moving east. There’s an abandoned set of railroad tracks by the lake. We should be able to get people in from the north.’

‘On my way,’ she told him.

He followed the ravine, shoving branches aside and wiping water out of his eyes. He felt blind and deaf. The rain got harder, drumming like thunder on a million leaves over his head. The creek water deepened, filling his boots. Every few steps, he stopped and squinted to peer through the forest ahead of him. There was no sign of them.

And then –

The flaky trunk of a birch tree burst into bark and wood dust two feet from his head. The crack of a gun rippled over the noise of the storm. He squatted and caught a glimpse of a man’s legs, anchored in the creek, facing toward him. Cat was still with the man, struggling to escape. They were fifty feet away. Another second later, the man turned and disappeared, dragging Cat behind him.