The Memory Collector (46 page)

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Authors: Meg Gardiner

BOOK: The Memory Collector
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Kanan stared at Riva in the darkened pickup. “They’re not dead.”
Riva was breathing hard. Her eyes were wide. “Ian, no. I’m sorry to have to tell you this again.”
“Again? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I hate this. It rips the wound open every time.”
“What do you mean, every time?” How many times had she told him this?
No.
It wasn’t possible.
She put her hand on his. “Honey, they’re gone.”
Honey?
Her palm, resting on his, throbbed with heat. She squeezed his hand and licked her lips as though they were dry.
“Listen carefully,” she said. “I know it’s a blow. But you have to hold it together. We only have a few minutes.”
“What the hell are you saying, Riva?”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s fucking not.” To him she looked—
frantic
behind those doe eyes. Needy, and . . . cagy, and like she was taking a chance.
“Baby,” she said, “you can’t think about things right now. Just listen to me. We have to grab this opportunity. We’ll never get it again.”
He slid his hand out from under hers. “I’m not your baby. Are you—Christ, Riva.
No.
What are you trying to pull?”
“Ian.” Her hand came up, as if she wanted to reach for him.
He recoiled. “Where’s my wife? Where’s my son?”
“I told you. They’re dead.”
“And I’ve hooked up with you instead? You’re in fantasy land.”
Her voice sharpened. “Stop this. We don’t have time to mess around.”
Abruptly, self-consciously, she softened and reached to touch his shoulder. The ring on her finger caught the light. He grabbed her hand.
“Why are you wearing Misty’s wedding ring?” He looked at her neck. She had on the dolphin necklace. “I gave those to her. Take them off.”
His fear, his panic and confusion, seemed to fill the air around him like a hiss.
“What’s going on? And do
not
tell me I’m sleeping with you. My memory’s shot to hell but I know I am not getting between the sheets with you. No way. So stop playing this goddamned game and tell me where my family is.”
Slowly Riva withdrew her hand. When it reached her lap it was a fist. For a moment her lips quivered. Then she swallowed. She snatched the necklace and yanked it off, breaking the chain. She wrenched the ring off her finger. She shoved the jewelry at him, clutched in her fist. She lifted her chin and spoke through her teeth.
“They’re dead.” She looked out the windshield. “And their killers are in your Tahoe.”
Murdock glowered at Jo. “Stop trying to mind-fuck us. Riva’s getting the stuff from Kanan.”
Jo tried to keep her breathing even, but her heart was drumming. The red dashboard clock read 10:24.
“Riva’s been in the pickup with Kanan more than five minutes,” she said.
“So?”
“In any five-minute span, Kanan’s memory is wiped clean. I’m telling you, she’s going to turn on you. This whole setup is wrong.”
Murdock’s cell phone rang. He answered it with annoyance in his voice.
“What?” He frowned and sucked his teeth, staring out the windshield at the pickup. He shrugged. “Sure.”
Hanging up, he turned to Vance. “Watch them.”
Murdock set his phone on the dashboard and got out of the Tahoe. He stepped clear of the door, raised a hand, and waved.
Riva dropped Misty’s necklace and wedding ring into Kanan’s palm. The gold felt warm, tainted. He heard, as if through thick walls, Riva on the phone. He looked at her face.
She had been beaten. Her lip was split, her face puffy, and she had a blistered red welt on the side of her forehead that looked like the imprint of an iron. She put the phone away. She was shaking with rage and pain.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“I escaped from the kidnappers. Seth and Misty didn’t. The police found their bodies,” she said. “They were beaten to death. Misty was raped.”
The truck, his vision, went white.
“The cops got to their hideout. Misty and Seth were already dead,” she said. “But the kidnappers don’t know that they’ve been discovered. They still think you’re going to hand over the sample of Slick.”
“It’s not true,” he said, but without any volition whatsoever, a great cry rolled through him and erupted. He grabbed his head and fell against the window.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see.
“Ian,” she said.
He couldn’t open his eyes. She grabbed him around the neck with her soft hot fingers.
“Ian, that’s him.”
She hit the high beams. He forced himself to look. Up the road, a man was standing next to the Tahoe. Door open, fully exposed. He raised his arm in acknowledgement.
“Two kidnappers,” Riva said. “Man and a woman. You suspected a woman all along, and you were right.”
He closed his fist around Misty’s ring and necklace.
“Ian.” Riva looked like she was about to crack—like she’d had more than she could take. “I’m with you. Whatever you do. However far you need to take it. But we have to do it now.”
The rifle was behind the seats.
“Take the wheel,” he said.
37
J
o kept Murdock in her peripheral vision. He stood next to the Tahoe, signaling to Calder.
The pickup’s high beams drilled the street. Behind the wall of white light she thought she saw a shadow stretch from the sunroof of the pickup.
“Oh, hell—”
Murdock pitched backward as though he’d been slammed in the chest with a wrecking ball. The report came as a crack in the air. Murdock fell and lay splayed on the ground with a dark wet stain spreading across his chest.
Aorta, or straight into a ventricle.
“Jesus.” Jo ducked.
The next noise sounded like a marble hitting the windshield at the speed of sound. A small clean hole punched through the glass.
“Hell’s happening?” Vance tried to open the back door but the childproof lock stopped him. “Murdock, what’s—”
Crack,
another bullet pierced the windshield. It hit the empty passenger seat. Glass dust and upholstery fragments blew around the interior.
“They’re shooting at us. Vance, put the car in gear,” Jo yelled.
His face stretched with panic. “What?”
“Shooting. Put it in gear.
Do it
.”
The pickup roared toward them, eating up the distance down the wide avenue. Another report pinged off the Tahoe’s frame. Vance cringed. His face bleached white in the glare of the onrushing headlights.
“Vance!”
Whimpering, he fumbled for the gearshift. Jo yelled, “Come
on
.”
He yanked the gearshift into reverse and cringed to the floor in the back seat.
Jo floored it.
Crack.
A hole powdered the windshield. Vance whimpered. In the mirror, Jo saw Misty work her hands under her butt and pull the gag from her mouth.
“Riva’s shooting at us?” Misty shouted.
No, your husband is.
Jo hunkered down. She needed speed, needed to put distance between her and the shooter, and would never do that in reverse.
She slammed on the brakes. “Put it in drive.”
They squealed to a stop. Vance’s arm flailed for the gearshift. Got it. The SUV jerked into drive.
Jo aimed straight at the headlights. Pedal to the firewall. She ducked low and heard a plea in the base of her throat that was mostly terror and some freakish kind of prayer.
Outta my way, motherfucker.
“What are you doing?” Misty said.
Two hundred yards. One fifty. A hundred.
Above her head, the Tahoe’s sunroof shattered. Glass sprayed across the inside of the vehicle. She held the wheel straight.
Airbag wasn’t going to protect her below the chest. Her donor card was current.
“Run away!” Vance shrieked.
Fifty yards. She was committed. The high beams were right in her face.
The pickup swerved.
Bam,
a hard noise reverberated through the Tahoe. The pickup had clipped the Tahoe’s wing mirror clean off. In the rearview mirror, Jo saw the pickup veer, overcorrect, and bounce over the curb onto the lawn of an office building. In the far back of the Tahoe she saw Misty bent over Seth, working somehow to free him from the plastic handcuffs.
The pickup’s brake lights came on. It fishtailed, kicked up clods of grass, and turned a doughnut on the lawn. Jo saw the dark shape of a man standing on the truck’s passenger seat and bracing himself against the sunroof, and he had to have a hell of a big gun. She kept her foot to the floor.
“What’s going on?” Misty cried.
“Fuck, oh, fuck oh fuck it fuck it . . .,” Vance moaned. “What’s happening?”
“Riva’s trying to goddamned kill us. Cut me loose from the cuffs.”
Misty cried, “Seth, stay down.”
Jo sped south along Coleman. She needed to get to a populated place. She needed a police station. She needed a battle tank and a Stinger missile.
“Call Riva,” Vance cried from the floor. “Tell her to stop.”
“She won’t. We have to get away. Cut me loose.”
In the mirror the pickup’s high beams swung around and centered on her again.
Kanan stood on the seat and braced himself against the frame of the sunroof. Riva swerved back into the road and headed south after the fleeing Tahoe. The rifle was steady in his arms.
One down.
One to go. A woman was at the wheel. He couldn’t see her from this angle, but he was sure he’d spotted long dark hair, a pale face. Somebody determined to kill them, playing chicken, racing straight at them. No question about it.
The wind raked his face. He squinted at the Tahoe. The pickup’s headlights reflected off the tinted glass in its tailgate. He saw movement inside. A person?
“Riva,” he yelled, “you sure it’s just two?”
“Ian, take your shot.”
He bent down and shouted into the pickup. “Is somebody in the back of the Tahoe?”

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