Everything was incredibly clear through the lenses, bright green with vibrant contrasts. The driver-side headlight was still on but buried in the ground so it emitted only a low hazy glow in the dust they’d churned up. The windshield frame was entirely empty, and she could see two men in the front seats, two deflated airbags from the initial impact hanging across the hood. The driver was a bloody mess, the top of his head pressing tight against the side-door frame, his thick neck bent at an impossible angle. She could see one eye open, staring sightlessly at her. He looked young, early twenties, with ruddy skin, light hair, and the kind of over-built anatomy that screamed steroids. He might have been an agent, except the rest of his look was wrong. His hair was about eight inches long and there was an ostentatious diamond stud in the one earlobe she could see. She would bet he was hired muscle. He didn’t look like he’d been a decision maker.
The passenger was moving, his head wobbling confusedly as if he were just coming around. He was older than the other, maybe midthirties, and swarthy, with a thick three-day growth on his cheeks, burly through the middle in the way that men who lifted the really heavy weights sometimes were. She’d bet he was a bull on his feet. He was wearing a well-fitting shiny suit that seemed inappropriate for this kind of operation but rang a few bells for her. Still strapped in his seat, he was right about at her eye level. She approached swiftly and jammed the barrel of her gun into his forehead, glancing down to see what his hands were doing. They were currently empty and limp.
“Are you in charge?” she demanded.
“Huh?” he moaned.
“Who is your boss?”
“Accident. We’ve been in an accident, Officer,” he told her, blinking into the dark. His eyes seemed to be moving just slightly out of sync with each other.
She modified her approach, pulling the gun back and softening her voice. “Help is coming. I need to know how many of you there are.”
“Uh, six…”
That meant there were four more, possibly heading out toward the sound of the crash right now. At least the dogs were beginning to congregate around her, all of them on silent mode thanks to Einstein’s presence. She wondered if they would have remembered her if she were alone.
“Sir?” she asked, trying to imagine how a cop would speak to someone in a car accident. “Where are the others?”
“Hitchhikers,” he said, his rolling eyes starting to move more purposefully. “The others are hitchhikers. We picked up four men and dropped them off here. Then there were dogs—crazy dogs attacking us. I thought they were going to chew through the tires.”
He was gaining more control, spinning the story carefully. He made a fist, then released it. She raised the gun again and kept her eyes on his hands.
“Were these… hitchhikers hurt in the attack?”
“I think so. I think maybe two of them. The others went in the house.”
So hopefully there were only two others. But was this the guy in charge? The age was right; however, she’d picked up a few things during her time in Chicago. In an orchestrated hit, usually the guys left in the car were lower on the totem pole. The driver was secondary. The star of the show would be the one the contract was made with. The one with the skills.
“I think I need a doctor,” he complained.
“An ambulance is on the way.”
The light from the SUV’s one surviving headlight was almost entirely blocked by thick grass and settling dirt, but there was enough that his eyes were beginning to adjust. She saw them widen when he abruptly realized there was a gun in his face.
He made a grab inside his jacket. She fired a round into his right shoulder; she didn’t want to aim for the hand and take the chance of the bullet passing through and into a vital organ. She wasn’t done with him yet.
He screamed, and his right arm jerked out in a pained spasm, flinging blood across her neck and chin. The gun he’d been reaching for slipped from his fingers, dropped onto his dead companion’s face, then bounced out of the car and against her shoe. She knew it wouldn’t be his only weapon, so she aimed down and shot him through the palm of his left hand.
He howled again and struggled against the seat belt as if he were trying to hurl himself through the empty windshield frame at her. Something was wrong with his legs—he couldn’t get the purchase he was looking for.
The action had roused the dogs, who were all snarling now. Einstein launched himself at the passenger side of the car, which was currently the top side. Bracing his paws against the frame of the missing window, he stretched his neck into the SUV and locked his massive jaws around the man’s right shoulder—the one she’d just shot.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” the man shrieked in abject terror.
She took advantage of his total distraction to grab the gun at her foot. It was a cheap .38, safety off.
“Einstein, control!” Alex ordered as she straightened. It was the only command she remembered besides escape protocol and at ease, and control seemed closest to what she wanted. Einstein let go of the shoulder but kept his teeth right in the man’s face, slavering spots of bloody saliva onto his skin.
“Who are you?” the man screamed.
“I’m the person who is going to have this animal chew your face off if you don’t tell me what I want to know in the next thirty seconds.”
“Keep it away!”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Hector! He brought us in!”
“Where is he?”
“In the house! He went in and didn’t come out. Angel went in after him and didn’t come out. The dogs were going to rip the doors off the car! We bailed!”
“Who was on the sniper rifle? Hector?”
Einstein snapped his teeth inches from the terrified man’s nose.
“Yes! Yes!”