Joe Victim

He hopes like hell both Joe and Melissa are gu

Chapter Sixty-Five

Schroder is gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles have gone white. They are thirty yards behind the ambulance. There are people everywhere—many between them and Melissa, most though are on the sidewalks.

“There’s no way she can get away,” Kent says, looking around her, and Schroder can hear the message she isn’t saying: There’s no way she can get away, so no reason for us to keep trying to close the distance, no reason we can’t just stay hanging back so we don’t kill anybody.

“Maybe she has a plan,” Schroder says, “or maybe she knows there’s nowhere to go and doesn’t care. That could be part of her plan too. But we’re not hanging back. I’m not risking losing her.”

“I agree she has a plan,” Kent says, “but it doesn’t make sense—how did she know she was going to be asked inside?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Middleton was sick, so we got one of the paramedics to come in. She was waiting for it.”

“And you believed him?”

“He wasn’t faking, and even if he was there’s no way she could have known she’d be asked to come inside.”

“I don’t know then,” he says, a

“Well it had to be something,” she says, “and it would have worked if somebody hadn’t shot him. How’s that for bad timing for Melissa, huh? Freeing her boyfriend and then another shooter trying to pick him off. I guess her plan was just to drive away without being chased.”

Schroder claims back the few yards he lost, then a few more. “I saw her. A few days ago.”

“What?”

“At the prison. When I went out to see Joe, I ran into her in the parking lot.”

“Why didn’t you—”

“Tell you? I had no idea it was her,” he says. “But it was. Shit,” he says. “My keys. When I came out of the prison I couldn’t find my keys. Then I found them on the ground.”

“She took your keys?”

“She was pretending to be pregnant. She had the bump and everything. I helped her out of her car. Oh my God she’s good. I had no idea.” He slowly shakes his head. “She must have swiped my keys then. She must have been in my car. . . . Oh shit, that’s why I couldn’t find the photograph of her.”

“What?”

“When we were talking to Raphael. Remember I went back to grab a photograph of her?”

“Why the hell would she risk breaking into your car just to steal a photograph?”

A young man dressed as a teapot with two spouts extends a hand to give Schroder the finger, probably a

“I don’t know,” he says. “It doesn’t make . . . Wait, what were you saying earlier?”

“About the photograph?”

“No. About the plan to escape.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I said something about how unlucky she was Joe was shot.”

“You said it was her plan to drive away without being chased.”

“Yeah. It must have been.”

He shakes his head. “No. There has to be more. She was always going to be chased, not chased exactly, but there was always going to be an escort if Joe was sick in the back of the ambulance.”

“Makes sense,” she says.

“So how was she going to escape the escort?”

“Oh Jesus,” she says, and he can tell she’s coming to the same conclusion as him. “You think the explosives?”

“Has to—” he starts, but doesn’t get to finish, because that’s when the car blows up.

Chapter Sixty-Six

The explosion is almost ear shattering. There is no fire, just smoke and glass and twisted pieces of metal. The car is picked up like a child’s toy, and just as casually dismissed like a child’s toy—it’s launched three feet high and a couple of feet to the left before landing back on its wheels. The shock wave blows all the windows out. Bits of flesh hit the interior like paintballs exploding across a wall. People start screaming. Some are ru

Schroder’s shoulders climb up around his jaw in expectation of an impact. Kent twists in her seat and looks behind her. Schroder keeps driving, glancing into the mirror back at the explosion. It came from a car that was only twenty or thirty yards behind them. A decoy explosion. Something to shut down the intersection and fill the streets with scared and panicked people.

“Oh my God,” Kent says. “Somebody was driving that car.”

“Oh fuck,” Schroder says.

“I know, I know,” she says.

“She was in my car,” he says.

“What?”

“She was in my fucking car!” he shouts, and he slams on the brakes. “Get out, get out,” he yells, taking off his seat belt.

“What—”

“Get the fuck out,” he shouts, and he opens his door and so does Kent. People are ru

“Get back,” he screams. “Everybody get back.”

“Carl—”

He looks back over the car. “Fire some shots in the air,” he shouts. “Get—”

His car explodes right in front of him. He sees Kent ride the shock wave ten yards through the air, where she is thrown into a parked car, where she smashes the windshield and enters it. Only it looks like twenty yards because he’s riding the shock wave in the opposite direction. A lot of people are. Twisted metal. Smoke. Flesh and blood.

Then darkness.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Two explosions and Melissa tosses the second remote onto the floor. The padding against my wound is soaked with blood so I replace it with some fresh stuff, which will no doubt soak up just as quickly. I realize there are two holes, one in front and one in the back, right through the right-hand side of my chest. I can’t move that arm. I don’t know what’s been hit. I don’t even know really what’s in there. Bone and muscle and tendons, I guess, which means reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy or a future of having a gimpy limb. It seems too high and too far to the side to worry about lung damage, but I don’t know—I’m not a doctor, and nor is Melissa—so I worry anyway.

I get onto my knees and clutch the wall and the back of the driver’s seat and stare out the windshield as Melissa heads through the next intersection, then another, then turns right at the following one. Now we’re heading back toward the courthouse, only one or two streets over. Then she pulls over.

“Nobody is following us,” she says.

“Why are we stopping here?”