My fingers trembled. This was bad. Really bad. Once Eddie got out onto the highway, there’d be no way I could jump from the car even if I got the trunk open. I’d be killed on impact, and that was assuming I managed to avoid being run over by the cars and semi-trucks behind him.
And if he had Ahanti with him, no one else would know he took her. He could take her anywhere. Out into the Virginian countryside even. That’s likely where he’d be heading to dispose of my body.
I had to get out before he hit the highway. I had to tell the police that Eddie was the guy they were looking for.
I tested the knot. If it let go, I wouldn’t get the laces back, not with how close the confines were.
It seemed tight.
My vision spun and tunneled. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, and sawed my feet up and down like I was riding the world’s tiniest bicycle.
The zip ties snapped.
Thank you, Lord!
My hands throbbed, but I wedged them over my head. The car was moving now.
My knuckles hit something that seemed out of place. I grabbed it, pulled, and the trunk popped. It bounced up and down with the motion of the car, threatening to crush anything that dared to get between its jaws.
I had no choice. It was either risk being battered by the trunk or face Eddie whenever he reached his destination, assuming I didn’t die of heat stroke first.
I braced my hands on the trunk lid and crawled to my knees, then into a squat.
I shoved the trunk and dove.
The pavement came up before I could tuck into a ball. Pain burned through so many parts of my body that it all flamed together into more than I could stand.
The last thing I heard before blacking out was more sirens.
21
The face leaning over me when I opened my eyes wasn’t Jesus or my Uncle Stan, so I knew I’d survived.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t my mom or Mark either. It wasn’t even Ahanti.
It was Geoff.
Which was unfortunate, since the fall seemed to have knocked my filter loose. The first thing out of my mouth was, “I’m getting really tired of hospitals.”
Geoff’s mouth lengthened in that expression people got when they weren’t sure whether what you’d said was meant to be funny or not. “Mark will be back any minute. I sent him to get us some coffee before he paced a hole in the floor.”
No mention of Ahanti.
My tongue went numb, making trying to speak like trying to talk around a mouthful of peanut butter. I hadn’t been conscious to tell anyone what I’d figured out. He might have grabbed her. She might have been in his car. Or he might be after her right now.
“It was Eddie.” I tried to sit up, and pain burned down my left arm and leg, stealing my breath. “You have to warn Ahanti and tell the detective.”
Geoff reached out both hands toward me and patted the air, like he was afraid to touch me for fear of hurting me but also afraid to let me keep flopping around like a suffocating fish. “We know. It’s okay. Ahanti’s with your mom, giving a statement to the police right now. She’ll be here as soon as she’s done.”
Giving a statement to the police? That meant I couldn’t have been unconscious long, but it seemed like I’d missed a lot regardless.
Mark came through the door with a cup of coffee in each hand. The relief that erased the lines in his face as soon as his gaze met mine worked better than whatever pain killer the hospital had me on.
“I’m sorry this wasn’t the vacation we planned,” I said.
Which was probably the last thing I needed to be thinking about at the moment, but everything still seemed to be garbled up in my head.
Mark handed Geoff one of the cups, and Geoff gave him the chair next to me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Half of me felt okay, but the other half felt like I’d been run down by a car rather than diving out of one. I didn’t want to know what was wrong with me until I found out what had happened, though. I was still breathing, so everything else would heal.
“Why is Ahanti giving a statement to Detective DeGoey? What happened?”
“The detective wants to talk to you to ask that very thing when he finishes with Ahanti.” Mark took my hand more gently than usual. “All we know is that you jumped from a moving car. A woman saw it happening when she was walking back to where she’d parked, and she called it in.”
If they didn’t know anything about what went on, that meant Eddie wasn’t talking. Or that they hadn’t caught him yet. “If you don’t know what happened, how did you know Eddie was Ahanti’s stalker?”
It was too bad Ahanti wasn’t here to see Geoff’s grin. It was the same one he got when she showed him an art-gallery worthy design. Terrance was wrong when he said Geoff wasn’t a good match for Ahanti because he didn’t want a tattoo of his own. He was a better match because he didn’t and yet he loved her for what she did despite not fully understanding it.
“Ahanti figured it out,” he said. “She was ordering the subs and realized that Eddie’s handwriting was close to the handwriting of her stalker. She called Detective DeGoey right away. He sent the police to Skin Canvas.”
That explained the sirens I’d heard. It also explained why Eddie came back to his car sooner than I expected. He must have figured out the sirens were for him. Maybe he thought someone saw him dump me in the trunk or that I’d managed to send a message for help before he grabbed me.
I told them what happened after Ahanti and Lucas left. “Have the police captured Eddie yet?”
Mark’s face went the color of spoiled milk. The expression on his face sent a shiver down into my core.
