The Old Wheel, page 33
part #2 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
“Camdyn, please.” I tried to think. I tried to make my brain work. I was distantly aware that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and if I blacked out, we’d probably both die. All those fucking Wikipedia articles. All those fucking Great Courses videos on YouTube. I needed the one on hostage negotiation, or crisis de-escalation, but all I could think of was the page on Holmes (Sherlock, that is), which I’d read about a million times in the last two months, or the one that was entirely dedicated to hills that were shaped like boobs, or the Dry Valley in Antarctica. They hadn’t had rain in over two million years. Instead of reading about what to do when a lunatic holds a gun on you, I’d read about BackpackersXpress. Which was great if Camdyn was open to the idea of changing the purpose of our trip. We could pick up a bunch of off-key, drunken backpackers and adopt a fucking terrible business model. And then I couldn’t think about any of that. All I could think about was Holmes, who had been silent in the trunk, and if he was getting enough air, or if he was suffocating from carbon monoxide, and how it had felt to kiss him while snow flurried against the car, while the whole world was cold but we were warm.
“Slow down,” Camdyn said. “There’s a turn ahead.”
The words yanked me back to this moment. I scrambled for something to say. “What about Kazen?”
“Slow down.”
“Did he threaten you? If it was self-defense, that makes a big difference.”
“Yes. He threatened me.” But she sounded confused, like she was reading the words off cue cards. “He was…he was lying there. Naked. In Aston’s bed.” The next silence writhed with something like horror. “He was touching himself. The first thing he said was, ‘Hey, baby.’ Then he realized.” I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror: eyes wide and frenzied, cheeks flushed, lips parted. “He threatened me. He was going to hurt me. He was going to hurt Aston. I was so scared.”
Headlights appeared behind us. Part of my brain dissected the lie she was telling both of us—Kazen naked, unarmed, shot in the chest; the way his clothes had been rifled—but the rest of me focused on the headlights. Another car meant people. Witnesses.
Camdyn cleared her throat. “Do you know the thing about secrets? We’re all convinced there’s this part of us we have to hide. That we’d be better off if nobody knew about it—and maybe the world would be too. But the thing about secrets is that they always come out. Who you are? It comes out. Sooner or later. Whether you want it to or not. And you know what? I think that’s a good thing. To be seen as who you are, finally. Not how someone wants you to be. I think maybe it’s for the best.”
“This isn’t a secret,” I said. “This isn’t who you are. We can fix things. We can make things better.”
She laughed, and it was gentle and a little sad and sounded way too sane for my liking. “You really are sweet, Jack. I’m sorry.”
The car rushed up behind us, the headlights flaring in the rearview mirror.
“Pull over,” Camdyn said.
“Fuck off, buddy,” I said to the mirror.
“He’s trying to pass,” Camdyn said. “Slow down and get over so this moron doesn’t kill us.”
I burst out laughing. It was way too much, and it hit me way too hard, and it wasn’t even funny—just a release valve for everything that had been building since she jabbed a gun in my neck. I was still laughing when the car started to pass, coming up alongside us. And then it slowed to match our pace.
The police, my brain suggested. Or then, grasping at straws, Aston. Hell, I’d take anybody. I risked looking away from the road. If I could catch the driver’s eye—
In the first moment, it seemed unreal. I recognized him. The overweight guy with the peachy complexion, the one who had been smoking outside the athletic center. He was looking back at me, his gaze intent as he inspected me and Camdyn. And then my brain connected the dots: the car following us up the canyon, the car that had passed us in Heber.
He tapped his brakes and started to fall back. Some of my tension unknotted itself. A weird coincidence, that was all.
Then he swerved into the Infiniti.
I lost control immediately. Our car slewed across snowy asphalt, and the movement turned into a spin. I grappled with the wheel, trying to correct course, straighten us out, stop the movement. It didn’t help. We spun.
Part of my brain strobed, and I was back there, back then. A year and a half ago. Mom driving. The car hurtling toward the guardrail.
Gravel hissed under our tires, and then we were airborne, flying into the vortex of darkness and snow.
Chapter 30
Silver
Impact was a series of blows that threw my body: against the roof of the car, against the door, against the seat, against the seat belt. We must have rolled once, maybe twice. Camdyn was screaming. I was screaming. And then it was over.
Darkness speckled my vision. A rushing noise filled my ears.
My first thought was: H.
Do not black out, I told myself. Don’t you dare black out. He needs you.
I clawed away from that abyss. Bits and pieces of the world came together around me. I was hanging from the seat belt—sideways, I realized after a moment. The car lay with the passenger side against the ground. The engine was still idling, and another sound accompanied it now: the rush of water. It took me a moment, staring out the windshield, to understand what I was seeing. We were halfway into the creek; the headlights showed me the ruffled surface of the water, where snowflakes melted as soon as they settled. Then the car made a weird whining noise, and the electronics—including the lights—went out.
I yanked on the seat belt, but it wouldn’t give. A panicked sob built in my chest. Part of me was back there, back then, alone and afraid in the car after it had stopped moving. And Mom and Dad weren’t moving either. I gave another yank. Then another. I tore at the belt with my nails. Something crowded the edges of my vision. My breaths were high and ragged. I had to get out. I had to get out. I had to—
“Jack!” Holmes’s voice was muffled but recognizable. “Jack, you have to talk to me.”
Another sob escaped me—a different kind, this time. My fingers stung where I’d torn some of my nails, but whatever had been crowding me, stuffing me down that black tunnel, it eased.
“Jack, I understand this is difficult, but please, you must talk to me.”
A little posh. I shouldn’t have told; he’d do it all the time now, not that I had any complaints.
“H,” I said. That was all I could manage before another sob constricted my throat.
“Good. That’s very good. Are you hurt?”
I tried to take stock, but too much of my brain was still screaming at me, so finally I said, “No. I don’t think so. No.”
“Wonderful. I need you to find the trunk release; the one in the trunk doesn’t seem to be working. Can you do that?”
It rushed over me again: the darkness, the fall, how still they were. I squeezed my eyes shut, but tears leaked out. I managed to say, “Yeah.” I coughed, cleared my throat, and did a little better. “Yeah, yes.”
“Good. You’re doing perfectly. Find the trunk release.”
Now that my brain was marginally less swamped by terror, I realized the seat belt was still buckled. I undid it, fell awkwardly against the center console, and steadied myself against the head rest of the passenger seat. I risked a glance back. Camdyn had ended up against the passenger window, and she was pale and unmoving. No sign of the gun. Something glistened, and when I bent to look closer, I realized it was water. The car was flooding.
Well, we were half-submerged in the creek, after all. Jack Moreno, Boy Genius.
“H, are you getting water?” I asked as I lowered myself to stand on the passenger window. The water came halfway up my Stan Smith’s, soaking my feet and freezing them instantly.
“Find the trunk release, Jack.”
I opened the glove box, located the release for the trunk, and pressed it. “Got it.”
Silence. Something thumped. And then another, harder thump came. Holmes swore.
“H?”
“Jack, I need you to listen carefully. I assume Camdyn is incapacitated because she hasn’t been screaming or shooting. You need to find her gun, and then you need to run. Cross the creek, continue in our direction of travel, and find the turn that she mentioned. Follow it until you’re sure that you’re not being pursued. Then you must find shelter.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you hear me? Find her gun and run. Now.”
“H—”
“Jack, you must go!”
I risked another glance into the back seat. Camdyn’s gun wasn’t anywhere I could see it, and while part of me knew Holmes was right, that the gun was a good idea, I couldn’t bring myself to climb back there and look for it. I couldn’t be in the back seat. Not now. Not again. I used the center console as a stepstool and reached for the door. It took me two tries before I remembered the door was locked. Then it opened, and I snaked my way out—albeit a bit more clumsily than usual, since it kept trying to fall shut and, you know, crush me.
I’d just finished getting my legs free of the Infiniti when I heard a man’s voice—Peachy, I guessed, since I hadn’t seen anyone else in the car.
“It was my call,” he shouted over the howling wind. “It’s the first time all day he hasn’t been glued to the Holmes kid.” His steps crunched on the gravel at the shoulder of the road, and I knew I should move, but I was frozen, listening. “Don’t tell me how to do my job. And don’t ever fucking call me again when I’m working. You don’t like it, next time, do it the fuck yourself.”
The sound of his steps changed to hard thumps against earth, moving closer toward us through the storm.
I had to move.
I slid off the car. Snow pelted me, and the wind sweeping down the canyon cut at my exposed skin, ripped at my hair, shrieked in my ears. I staggered around to the trunk, and I saw immediately the problem: the back of the Infiniti was lower in the creek than the front, and water pressed against the trunk lid, keeping it closed. I splashed into the water. My already frozen feet turned into frozen feet, ankles, and calves. It was the kind of cold that closed around you and compressed—so painful that my eyes watered and I forgot about my torn nails and the bruises from the seat belt.
By the time I reached the trunk, it was up to my waist, and part of my brain reminded me about hypothermia. Bugger off, I told it. Maybe it was the shock. Maybe I’d been reading too much British porn.
“H,” I shouted over the wind, “you’ve got to help me. I’m going to pull. You push.”
He said something back—probably something bossy and sensible—but I couldn’t hear him over the wind. And, for that matter, over my chattering teeth. “N-now!” I shouted.
At first, the lid of the trunk refused to move; the water pressed it closed. Then, slowly, it began to rise. For a moment, I thought we had it. Then my numb fingers slipped, and the water forced the trunk shut again.
Holmes shouted something else, but I couldn’t hear him. I tried to grab the trunk again, wedging my fingers in the gap between the lid and the bumper, but I couldn’t feel my hands by that point, and whatever strength I had left went into holding myself up.
In the distance, a dark figure moved toward us, hand low at his side.
Run, the voice in my head said.
I had been here before. I had done this once. I had lived to have nightmares about it. And for a treacherous moment, my body responded: I angled myself toward the bank, already looking for escape.
But Holmes was here, trapped, the water rising. If I ran, he’d die. The first time, I hadn’t known what I was doing. But I couldn’t do it again.
The snow blew a curtain between me and that dark figure, obliterating him for a moment, revealing him again. When the snow changed direction again, he was gone.
I had to distract him. I had to get him away from here so Holmes had time to get free. Jack Moreno, I thought. Wonder Boy. Armed with nothing but a trusty river rock—
No, I thought. Not quite.
I checked my back pocket and, somehow, Glo’s box cutter was still there. I worked it free and extended the blade. It was more difficult than it should have been. I was shaking pretty bad now, and the cold made my fingers stiff and unresponsive. I’d get one chance; the first bad move, and I’d lose my grip, and the box cutter would be gone. Then Wonder Boy would get his ass capped.
He’d be expecting me to run. And he’d come after me, nice and slow—because he was warm and dry and had a gun, because he hadn’t had his brain scrambled in an accident.
Well, fuck that.
“H, find the seat release.” I hammered on the trunk and screamed over the storm. “Put the seat down and crawl out the front.”
Then I splashed down into the creek and crouched as low as I could. The cold wasn’t as bad this time, and that worried a small corner of my brain. Keeping low, I scuttled along the side of the Infiniti that was in the water, using it to hide myself from anyone who might be on the bank. When I got halfway down the car’s length, I stopped. The creek pulled at me; I thought I could feel it sucking the heat from me, my body’s temperature dropping like the mercury in a cartoon thermometer. I wasn’t shivering anymore. That seemed bad.
Something crunched—the sound of brown stubs of winterkill crushed under a heavy tread. It had come from the other side of the car. Then another step came. And another. Steady. Calm. A measured gait. He was moving after me—in the direction I’d started running.
When the sounds began to fade, I slipped around the front of the car and dragged myself up on to the frozen bank. The wind knifed into me again. I couldn’t tell if I was still holding the box cutter, so I had to look. It was still there, but my fingers barely moved when I tried to tighten them. Now I needed to—
A shadow loomed, barely different from the darkness, and much closer than I’d expected. I tried to rush him, but I overestimated myself and underestimated my body’s response to the paralyzing cold. I stumbled.
He materialized out of the storm, the gun coming up. I was so close that the heat from the flame and gas touched my face. Something tugged at my arm. I twisted toward him and lunged, slashing at his face. The blade was a tiny, inch-long triangle of steel, and it sliced open his cheek. He roared, twisted, and clubbed me with the gun on the side of my head. The world went helter-skelter, and I dropped.
It was like a dream. The edge of a dream. The Christian mystics, Wikipedia told me, had believed they could brush up against a consciousness vaster than their own. A mind that filled the universe, a limitless well of compassion and peace and grace.
Holloway Holmes came out of the spindrift of night and ice and snow, came toward me, came for me. He shone like silver in the stormlight: his face, his eyes, his hair. They used silver, I knew, to kill monsters.
And then I couldn’t hold on anymore.
Chapter 31
Nibble, Nibble, Little Mouse
My head hurt, and my arm, and I was hot and sweaty, and my blankets had gotten tangled. Bad dreams waited at the rim of consciousness—the darkness, the cold, the car rolling, the man with the gun. I tried to throw back the blankets to get some air, but I only got myself more tangled. I cracked one eye open, and the lights were too bright.
“Jack,” my dad said, “you’re ok. Hey, buddy, calm down.”
Bits and pieces of it came back: the ambulance ride, the warmth, doctors looking at me and moving my head and forcing me to open my eyes. And then, finally, they’d let me sleep.
Even with my eyes closed, I recognized his hands as he tucked me in. His breathing was different, though. I felt like I could sleep, but in spite of the headache, everything was taking on that total clarity that comes from waking during midnight hours.
I opened an eye again.
The light wasn’t as bad this time, although for a moment, it was a spike that went straight to the back of my skull. Then my vision adjusted: the bedside lamp, the dark room. Dad was a wreck. His skin was gray, and he had bags under his eyes. He wore a Walker polo over a white undershirt, and the collar stood up in back. He smelled rough too, but I was guessing I didn’t have any room to talk on that one. Across from us, an old woman slept with her mouth open in the other bed. A white board on the wall said REBECCA and then a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand.
Dad rubbed my shoulder. “You need to go back to sleep.”
I smacked my lips and tried to say, Thirsty, but what came out was, “Hot.”
Dad waffled. Then he untucked one of the blankets. That must have been the load-bearing one, because once it was free, I could wriggle around a little more and get my arms out. I had a bandage around one forearm. I wanted to take a closer look, but just getting myself settled had wiped me out again.
“You’re ok,” Dad said. “Your body temperature was really low. When you fell in the creek, they say you went into shock.”
“H?”
“He’s fine. He was sleeping here, but we agreed to take shifts.” Something I couldn’t read crossed Dad’s face. “That boy’s a tough nut to crack.”
“Did he do that thing where he stares at you until you agree with him?”
That startled a laugh out of Dad. “He does that to you too?”
“He’s the fucking worst sometimes.”
“Do you want some water?”
I nodded. Dad had to hold the cup, and I made do with the little bendy straw, and Dad said I’d had enough while I was still trying to get more. He touched my hair lightly, but when I looked at him, he pulled his hand back.
It was hard, meeting his eyes, so I pressed my cheek to the pillow and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
