of Rivers’s bunker, then whipsawed it back the other way to avoid our dead car and the machinery. Once I hit the little road that led to the house, I straightened the car out and roared up the hill.
Just as we passed the pond, headlights went on up by the house.
A black Porsche sports car came peeling out of the garage.
For a split second, our headlights caught the car broadside before it accelerated up the drive.
Dwight Rivers was hunched behind the wheel, and when he glanced our way, he looked terrified.
“Get him before he hits a highway!” Sampson yelled.
I understood and kept the gas floored as much as I could, weaving up the driveway, trying to keep Rivers’s taillights in sight.
The Porsche blew through the mouth of the driveway and drifted across the gravel road as Rivers skillfully kept up his speed.
I knew I couldn’t do that, so I slammed on the brakes and still almost rolled the Jeep on the county road. By the time I got the SUV straightened out, Rivers was well ahead and accelerating toward a curve.
“We won’t catch him,” Sampson growled. “He’s going eighty at least.”
“Call the sheriff,” I said as I lost the Porsche’s taillights. “He’s heading back toward Madison.”
Sampson grimaced but used his bleeding, sore hands to dig in his pocket for his phone. He needn’t have bothered.
When we rounded the curve, there were no taillights on the straightaway heading east. Rivers had lost control and rolled and then flipped the car over a stone wall into a cornfield. The sports car was on its roof in the mud, headlights still on and aimed across the field. We skidded to a stop.
“Call 911!” I said as I jumped out.
I vaulted the rock wall and sprinted toward the wreck. The engine was bucking and backfiring when I got close enough to kneel and shine my light into the sports car. It had a full roll bar, which definitely saved Rivers’s life.
He was hanging upside down, caught by his safety belt and the airbag, bleeding, unconscious, but definitely breathing.
I smelled gasoline.
“Alex!” Sampson yelled. “The gas tank!”
“I know!” I shouted. I threw myself onto my belly in the mud and wriggled to get my head and shoulders through the window.
“Turn the engine off!” Sampson said.
“I can’t reach the button,” I said. “Gimme your knife.”
A second later he handed me an open folding knife. I reached up and slashed at the airbag and the safety belt until I got Rivers free.
I held his unconscious body with one hand and told Sampson to pull me out by my feet.
As I got free of the wreckage, I smelled gas again. I knew we were only seconds from disaster.
Sampson and I grabbed Rivers by his arms and pulled him out and away from the wreck.
Just as we did, a human head rolled out of the car, and then the Porsche exploded and went up in flames.
CHAPTER 45
NED MAHONEY WENT BALLISTIC AFTER I laid it all out for him outside Rivers’s bunker, late on the night of the crash.
“There’s no copy of the message he sent?” Mahoney asked, suspicious.
“I told you, it disintegrated, Ned, but it’s burned in my brain.”
“That won’t do it!”
“Put my decades in law enforcement and my reputation behind it, and it will. And the heads we found? We were meant to find them, just as I was meant to see that Wickr message, Ned. Rivers or M did all this by design. It’s clear as day he’s imitating not only Mikey Edgerton but also the Meat Man.”
“He might be, but nothing about this is clear to me,” Mahoney said. “Make your statements, then go home and sit until I can see things clearly. In the meantime, I’ve got a crime scene to run.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to stay and look for evidence, but I did as he asked.
We drove back to DC in silence. Sampson wanted to drive, despite his wounded hands.
I sat in the passenger seat trying to stay awake, but my eyes kept closing. As I dozed, I saw the severed head in the locker, then the second one tumbling from Rivers’s Porsche, then the head M had put in our car the week before.
My chin hit my chest, and I woke up, groggily thinking, He’s doing the Meat Man, just like Ali…
In my dreams, I relived what had happened more than a decade ago in West Texas.
There was a tornado watch in effect that sweltering afternoon. The wind was already starting to pick