She howled in agony, dropped one hand that held the baby boy, but clutched him with the other by the side of his filthy little pajamas. Carney grabbed her right wrist to hammer her into dropping Evan Lancaster into the tub.
Chapter
79
The explosion in that confined space was deafening, disorienting.
Carney’s right shoulder erupted in blood. He staggered against Cam Nguyen, who let go of Evan Lancaster. The baby fell into the tub.
Carney grabbed his gun with his left hand and tried to raise it.
The second shot shattered his left wrist before he could fire, and his gun fell into the bath after the baby. I shot up to my feet, going for Evan Lancaster, but Cam Nguyen was way ahead of me. She’d plunged headfirst into
the tub and yanked up the sputtering boy before I got there.
Over the ringing in my ears I could hear Bree shouting, “On the ground, Officer Carney! Now! Any other move, I will kill you.”
Carney looked at her like she was an apparition in a nightmare. I saw why. My wife’s face was completely swollen and lacerated. There were pieces of wood sticking out of her wounds, and blood ran like spiderwebs down over her face and shirt.
Despite my woozy head, I thrust my hand down into the tub, retrieved my service pistol, pointed it at Carney, and shouted, “You heard her. On the floor.”
The tics and contortions of rage in the young officer’s face began to disintegrate before he collapsed to his knees by the tub, looked up at the ceiling of the crude room, and moaned, “You said we weren’t doing anything wrong, Mommy. You said they were just sleeping.”
Chapter
80
Marcus Sunday and Acadia Le Duc heard the sirens long before they saw the lights of the Montgomery County sheriff’s cruisers and ambulances ripping up the slick dirt road toward the field and the farmhouse. The duo was up on a limestone outcropping across the road, back toward the reservoir. Sunday was using the binoculars to look down through the drizzle toward the old farm several hundred yards away.
“Shouldn’t we get out of here, sugar?” Acadia asked.
“Why would we do that?” he replied calmly. “We’re just hikers, or bird watchers, or both.”
Sunday kept the binoculars trained on the cruisers as they turned onto the driveway.
“Those were shots down there a while back,” Acadia complained. “I don’t know how things went down at your house, but I was taught to stay away from police when there’s been shooting going on.”
“Your father the bootlegger taught you that?” he asked.
“And Mama,” Acadia said. “She didn’t trust any cop. I don’t, either.”
“My daddy took somewhat the opposite perspective,” Sunday said, seeing the cruisers and ambulances stop in the overgrown farmyard. “He liked to study the people who might do him the most harm.”
“He obviously never saw you coming,” she replied.
“Oblivious,” the writer agreed as Cross appeared from the house, followed by EMTs pushing a stretcher on which a sobbing young man lay. Bree Stone followed, carrying two babies in her arms. Behind her an EMT helped a young Asian woman wrapped in a blanket.
Sunday tilted his chin, said, “Bravo, Mr. and Mrs. Cross.”
“What?” Acadia asked.
“It appears they’ve got the killer and rescued the babies and the missing prostitute.”
Acadia gazed at him, said, “I must say, you surprise me, sugar.”
“How’s that?” Sunday replied, lowering the glasses and looking at her.
Acadia shrugged. “I figured you’d be upset because, I don’t know, Dr. Cross just beat you there?”