Chapter 9 - Velocity and Fire
Sterling was a dead weight in the passenger seat, trembling so violently his cane clattered against the dashboard. I pushed the SUV to eighty miles an hour down the twisting descent of Pine Ridge, tires screaming against the asphalt curves.
My phone sat on the console. The speaker was open. Static hissed through the tiny grill.
*“Mercer,”* Meyers’s voice came through, distorted, hollow. *“You have eight minutes.”*
“I have him,” I yelled at the phone. “We’re five minutes out from Route 9. He’s in the car, Sydney! Don't touch her!”
*“Route 9?”* Meyers’s voice sharpened, cold and terrible. *“I didn’t tell you to bring him to Route 9, John. I told you to bring him back to the bedroom. Back to where the lie started.”*
My heart plummeted into my gut. The trap snapped shut.
He had never intended for me to take Sterling to the water tower. He had thrown out two different locations to see if I was coordinating with the precinct or acting on my own panic. He wanted us all in the room. He wanted the tribunal.
“We’re coming to the house,” I shouted, slamming the steering wheel to the left, tires breaking traction as I spun the SUV into an illegal U-turn across the grass median. Sterling cried out, clutching his chest.
“Who is that?” Sterling wheezed, his eyes bulging. “Mercer, who is on that phone? That’s not the police!”
“Shut up!” I roared, flooring the pedal. “That’s Clara’s husband, Arthur! That’s the man you buried alive fourteen years ago!”
Sterling went dead white, his mouth opening and closing like a landed carp. He slumped back into the leather seat, clutching his left arm, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling gasps.
Back in our neighborhood, the sun had fully set. The streetlights were flickering to life, amber halos against the darkening blue sky. The cul-de-sac was deserted. The neighborhood was cooking dinner, watching television, completely oblivious to the war occurring thirty yards from their manicured lawns.
I pulled into our driveway without headlights, cutting the engine thirty feet from the garage.
Silence descended, broken only by the ticking of the cooling manifold.
I grabbed the framing hammer from under my seat, shoved it into my waistband, and turned to Sterling. “Get out.”
“I can’t,” the old man wept, real tears leaking from his rheumy eyes. “My heart... John, please...”
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“You walk in on your own two feet,” I said, dragging him across the console by his collar, hauling him out into the cold night air, “or I drag you by your teeth.”
***
