Page 6 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
Instead, they’d put two bullets into Virtue Falls’s beloved waitress, busybody, and local wise woman, Rainbow Breezewing. Now Rainbow rested in the hospital hooked up to ventilators and drips, unmoving, unconscious. The doctors told Kateri that Rainbow didn’t have a chance. They said Rainbow’s coma was a blessing, for she was dying. Dying…
“The Terrances are slowing down.” Moen moved closer to the Hellcat’s bumper.
“Maybe they’re out of gas.” That would be too wonderful—and too lucky since as far as Kateri could tell, the Terrances had stashed fuel and food all up and down the coast. “I don’t believe it. Back off.”
Moen sighed noisily, but did as he was told.
She leaned forward, trying to figure out what they were up to. “Be care—”
John Terrance, Junior or Senior, goosed the black Dodge SRT and threw it into a skid that sent the car sideways, passenger side toward the pursuers.
“Don’t T-bone him!” Kateri shouted.
Moen downshifted, eased off the gas and in the excessively patient tone of the very young toward the very old (Kateri was thirty-four), he said, “I know what I’m doing, Sheriff.”
The SRT’s passenger door flew open. Something tumbled out.
Someonetumbled out.
Moen screamed, “Shit son of a bitch!”
Kateri yelled, “Don’t hit him. Don’t run over him!”
Moen slammed on his brakes, locked up all four wheels, making the patrol car a high-speed toboggan propelled by inertia and momentum.
No way to avoid the collision.
The patrol car’s left front tire caught the body. The car went airborne.
“The tree!” Moen shouted.
They rammed it, a giant Douglas fir, square on.
The airbags exploded.
Kateri was smashed against the back of her seat. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see.She was drowning.
She fought the hot white plastic out of her face. The airbag was already deflating… she tore off her sunglasses. White dust covered them, covered the interior of the car. The siren blared. She needed to catch her breath—
Moen looked in the rearview mirror and yelled, “They can’t stop. They’re going to nail us!”
“Who?”
“Cops!”
Another explosion of sound and motion as they were rammed in the right rear fender. Metal scraped. Fir needles rained down. The impact spun the patrol car sideways, wrenched the stitches over Kateri’s ribs. The wound opened, one torn stitch at a time. Icy-hot pain slithered up her nerves. Warm blood trickled down her side.
Moen opened his door.
Through the ringing in her ears, Kateri heard the roar of an engine. Was another vehicle going to hit them? Or worse—had John Senior escaped?
Moen unbuckled his seat belt. “You okay, Sheriff?”
“Yes.” She pressed the pad of her bandage. “Go.”
He leaped out and ran toward the unmoving body in the middle of the road.
Had they inadvertently killed a hostage?
