Fourth ring. No answer.
Dominic put his eye to the scope and centered the reticle on the Jeep. He did the math, the variables stacking up automatically in his head: range, velocity, elevation, time.
He could kill the vehicle easily right now. Once that was done he could put shot after shot into the passenger compartment, then sprint down to it and make a thorough finish.
That would hold true for maybe twenty seconds, given the Jeep’s speed. After that it would be more luck than skill.
Twenty seconds, if the call connected right now.
Twenty seconds to explain the situation and get a decision.
Nineteen seconds.
Fifth ring. A click on the line. A man’s voice: “Talk to me.”
Travis hated having the headlights on, making an easier target of the vehicle, but he had no choice. Under this cloudcover the valley would be ink black, and he couldn’t afford to lose the road. Burying the Jeep in snow would be fatal if there really was a sixth man back there.
A memory from childhood came to him: Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Some point along this road represented the fabled bridge, the margin beyond which they would be safe.
He was certain they hadn’t reached it yet.
Paige was next to him in the passenger seat. Carrie sat centered behind them, leaning forward over the console. She had the decoy slumped across her lap, still bound, the Beretta pressed to her head in case she woke. Which she seemed to be doing—she was making noises.
How long since they’d pulled onto this road? Ten seconds? Fifteen?
Ahead lay the town, bright and welcoming beyond the darkness that engulfed the Jeep. They were ten seconds shy of the light when the first bullet hit. It struck the left edge of the hood with a sound like a baseball bat’s impact, but deflected without penetrating the metal. Travis felt the others flinch, and his hands jerked on the wheel, and for a terrible second the vehicle began to fishtail on the snowy road. The back end went left, the wheels spinning without purchase. A second shot skipped off the hard top three inches above Travis’s head. He felt cold air seethe down through the resulting rupture in the material. Then the Jeep straightened and surged forward again, and for the next three seconds nothing happened except that the town got closer and the darkness ahead of them got shorter. Three seconds for them to think they might make it.
Then the rear window shattered and a spring twanged inside a seatback, and blood splattered all over the windshield.
Chapter Ten
Not Paige.
Later, that would be the only thing Travis remembered thinking as the next seconds played out. Not the calculation of how far they had to go to reach safety, or how long that would take. Not the awareness that he needed to keep the Jeep under control. Not even the fear of another shot.
Not Paige. That was it. He could handle anyone else in the vehicle dying, himself included. Just not Paige.
If anybody was screaming, he couldn’t tell. His ears were ringing with increased bloodflow and the wind was keening through the hole above him, drawn by the pressure differential from the missing back window.
They passed into light on the east edge of town and the first available cross street came up fast. Travis braked and hauled right on the wheel, and halfway through the turn he saw a newspaper box on the streetcorner buffeted by a shot. The papers inside fluttered as if they’d caught a moment’s breeze. Then the Jeep was fully onto the side street and accelerating, with two-story brick buildings shielding it from the shooter.
The blood on the windshield was running down, each thick drop now a vertical line.
Travis turned to Paige.
Her left coat sleeve and the left side of her face were bloodier than the windshield.
But no more damaged than the windshield, either. It wasn’t her blood—a fact she seemed to be just verifying for herself. She turned in her seat and looked back at Carrie Holden.
Carrie wasn’t leaning forward over the console now. She was pressed against her own seatback, one hand to the lower left side of her abdomen.
Her fingers were soaked with blood.
“Jesus Christ,” Paige said. She repositioned herself so she was kneeling, facing Carrie; she switched on the dome light and bent down to study the wound.