gotten back to their vehicle and guessed where Jack and Moira were headed. He lifted Moira from the guardrail, knowing there was no chance of escaping. He shoved her into a crouched position behind the rail and then stepped out in the open, the shotgun’s barrel lined up with the approaching car’s windshield.
“Come on, you bastards!” he screamed.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
As the car got closer Jack recognized it and lowered the shotgun.
“Get in. I’m taking you two to the hospital,” Brooke insisted.
“The hell you are!” Jack said. “These guys aren’t that lucky. Someone’s feeding them information. Telling them every move we make. If they weren’t after me, how did they know Moira was with me? How in the hell did they get my address?”
He wasn’t listed in the phone book, and no address or sign was posted at the end of his gravel lane. Liddell’s house hadn’t been listed either. But these guys had found them both.
“So what’s the plan?” Brooke asked. “There are a dozen state, county, and city police units out here now. These guys are halfway across the state.”
Jack was tired, and Moira was completely wrung out. “When they’ve been caught, we’ll go to the hospital,” he said. He knew he was in no shape to protect Moira, and he sure as hell didn’t trust anyone else. Including Brooke.
“Cinderella,” Moira mumbled.
“She can take care of herself,” he assured her, but he knew the dog was dead. He heard the gunshot that had killed her. He felt a lump in his throat. Damn dog . . . saved our lives.
Brooke reached for the radio mic. “Who’s Cinderella?”
“Cinderella is my dog,” Jack said. “She went after the guys when we ran out the back of the cabin.”
“You named a dog Cinderella?”
“I didn’t name the dog,” Jack said.
Moira was sobbing. Through her tears she said, “She was so brave. We wouldn’t have made it if—”
“I’ll tell the troops to keep an eye out for Cinderella,” Brooke said, and picked up the radio mic to call dispatch, but Jack stopped her.
“Tell dispatch that we’re okay,” Jack said. “Give them the location where you picked us up and tell them these guys are heavily armed. At least one of them has a machine gun. They may be doubling back to the river, back toward my cabin. They’re driving an old yellow pickup. It’s probably torn up in the front. Do not tell them where we’re at—or where we’re going.”
“What? Do you think they have a police radio?” Brooke asked.
“Just do it,” Jack said, and Brooke relayed what Jack told her to say and added a description of the pooch given by Moira. She clipped the mic back into its holder. “Okay?”
Jack nodded and leaned against the door. He couldn’t afford to rest, but his body wasn’t listening to him. Strangely enough, he thought about Katie. And then he thought about how she would kill him when she found out he’d let Moira get hurt.
“By the way, where are we going?” Brooke asked.
“Just keep driving,” Jack said.
Brooke headed onto Interstate 164 heading east. The road was elevated above river bottomland that was bare, flat, and dark, except for yellow sodium vapor lights along the highway.
Both Jack and Moira were a bloody mess. She didn’t know how much of the blood on Jack was Moira’s or his own. “I need to take you both to a hospital.”
“Just keep driving,” Jack said.
“Yes, sir. Are we going all the way to Chicago? Or can I make a suggestion?”
“No hospitals.”
“We can use my place.”
“I don’t think a hotel will work,” he said. Probably Eric and Trent both knew where she was staying, and it would be the first place the killers would look when they realized that they hadn’t gone to police headquarters. He hated to admit it, but the reason he wasn’t going to headquarters was because that would mean they got away. He didn’t want it to be over like that. He wanted a chance to thank the killers properly.
Brooke braked sharply and turned east onto Boonville New Harmony Road.
“I grew up around here. My dad left his lake cabin to me,” she said. She turned onto a narrow road, then a quick right onto a dirt track that wound around the edge of a small lake lined with pine trees. She stopped the car alongside a squat cabin. It was badly in need of paint, but looked solid. Although it overlooked a lake and not a river, it reminded him of his own place.
“I’m not much