Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

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She blinked, saw light. The truck. Up the hillside.

“And you, you dumb fuck,” Tophman roared. “You let her get away? What’s wrong with you? How the hell do you think we’ll ever get paid, huh?”

Paid? Someone was going to pay them for abducting her? Killing her? What in the world was that all about?

“Get the shotgun.” Bell’s voice.

Oh, crap!

“She ain’t gettin’ away. No way!” Bell again. “She needs to die.”

“I should shoot you for being such a dumb ass!” Tophman said.

She started moving, ever downward, her entire body aching. Surely she’d run into a path or a road or something. Or someone. Please. Oh, God.

“I’d love to kill her, but that wasn’t the deal. The old man, he doesn’t want her dead.”

The old man? What old man?

She heard the click of the shotgun being readied, a shell now in its chamber, and her heart stilled. She couldn’t do this. Though she heard Kywin moaning and knew that he was out of commission, Tophman was still coming after her, his footsteps crunching on leaves and debris. He had a flashlight, or the light from his iPhone, was shining it through the forest, the garish white-blue light swinging in a wide arc over the ground.

“You can’t get away from me,” he yelled. And he was right. God, he was right. Now, her weapon, reduced to a screwdriver, seemed pathetic. “Come out, come out wherever you are, cop kid,” he singsonged while Kywin groaned pathetically.

Tophman didn’t care about his friend, no way. He was on the hunt. Prowling through the night, searching out his prey, determined to catch her.

Screw that!

As long as he used the flashlight, she could see him and hopefully avoid the swath of light it produced. She was farther down the hill from him, and she moved to the side out of the swinging beam.

When he pointed the flashlight down the hill, she saw nothing but more forest, and rocks and brush. He paused. Listening. She froze, didn’t move a muscle. And then he started turning, rotating, swinging the beam of his flashlight in an arc. She pressed herself up against the bole of a tree and prayed that it was wide enough to hide her body.

Don’t let him see me. Don’t let him see me, she silently prayed as the light swept over the tree, pausing, the beams stretching out on either side, the tree itself making a shadow in the fake bluish light. She barely breathed.

“Where the hell are you?” Tophman said.

Sweat drizzled down her forehead and neck. Her heart pounded so loudly she was certain he could hear it.

“Bi-AN-ca!” Again the chilling singsong voice.

She licked her lips. Heard him call her name again and then the beam rotated, turned back down the hillside.

“Bitch,” he muttered and started down again.

Swallowing back fear, she reached into her shirt and bra, located the screwdriver, and slowly, noiselessly withdrew it. Her palms were slick with sweat and she nearly dropped it, but managed to hold on to it. For now.

Bianca waited. Let him go ahead of her and, once he was twenty yards lower on the hillside, begin to creep up to the truck, her one chance at escape. If she could just get past the wounded Kywin Bell and Tophman didn’t get wise to her plan.

Holding her breath, one eye on the flashlight heading ever downward, she inched upward toward the truck and, she hoped, freedom. Her heart was a jackhammer, her bad leg aching, every nerve end tight. But she was close.

She saw the truck, headlights burning, and kept moving, faster and faster. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.

“Hey!” Tophman’s voice. Nearer than she expected. Had he turned around and seen her? Was he even now running up the hill toward her, pointing his gun, ready to blow her to smithereens?

Crap!

Throwing caution to the wind, she began to sprint the last five yards up the hill, through the leaves and sticks, upward, ever upward to the truck—