Her feet found the base where the seat had once been attached. She stood there a moment, dripping blood but shining her light over the jumble of equipment, having no idea where to begin to look.
“No!” Cam Nguyen screamed, and now Bree could distinctly make out the sounds of the babies sobbing, as upset as if they were suffering colic.
I can’t save them, she thought desperately, shining the light all around herself. They’re going to—
Then she spotted something, that Coke sign, and took hope.
Chapter
78
I hit the floor, not unconscious, but damn close from a blow to the back of my head. A boot connected with my lower back. Another hit higher and I convulsed. My vision returned, but it was off-kilter, wavering. I realized I still had my gun and tried to get turned to shoot, but the boot stomped down on my wrist, pinning it to the ground.
“Detective Cross?” Carney said. “What an unexpected surprise.”
My vision cleared and I saw that the young officer was the only person in the room besides Cam Nguyen and the two crying babies. Carney’s baby face was a mess of twitching muscles, thin lips, and wild eyes that aimed over the tritium sights of a 9mm pistol he had pointed directly at my head.
“It’s over, Carney,” I said. “Whatever this is, it is over!”
“It is never over!” he shouted. “It goes on and on and on!”
I saw his fingers flex toward the trigger.
“Other police are here,” I said. “They’re all around us.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “I would have heard the sirens.”
“They came in silent,” I insisted. “You’ll never get out of here.”
Carney seemed to find that funny. “Of course I’m getting out of here. There are tunnels all over the place. I’ll simply do my business and slip away.”
That thought seemed to distract him from killing me for the moment. He stomped on my fingers and I let go of the pistol. He kicked my weapon across the floor and followed it, splashing through the water that had begun to spill over the top of the tub. Carney picked my gun up, grinned, and kept it trained on me as he stalked toward Cam Nguyen, who wept and cowered away from him.
“Do it, Mommy!” he bellowed at her. “Do what you always do!”
The young officer’s entire body seemed wracked with tremors then, and his posture shifted, turned feminine. So did his voice, which rose several octaves and became a woman’s.
“Take the boy, Mother,” Kelli said in a weird pleading tone. “Take Kevin before you take me.”
With that Carney tossed my gun into the tub and with his free hand grabbed Cam Nguyen by the hair. Ramming his gun against her temple, he dragged her off the chair and threw her to her knees by the tub.
“Pick up my brother,” Carney said in his sister’s voice. “And put him in the water like the baby Moses or so help me God, Kenny-Two is going to turn your brain inside out.”
“Please,” Cam Nguyen began to sob. “I…”
Carney went through another of those minor seizures and I tried to get up and go for my gun. But I had to freeze when his eyes focused again and he raged at Nguyen, “Do it, Mommy. Or die!”
Shaking uncontrollably, sobbing from the depths of her soul, Cam Nguyen reached for one of the babies.
“That’s Kelli,” Carney growled. “Take Kevin first. Don’t you remember?”
Her mouth chewed the air as she picked up poor little Evan Lancaster and held him out over the tub. Carney looked as if he were watching an old, familiar movie, his lips curled with pleasure, as if he were about to recite a favorite line.
“Put him to sleep, Mother,” he said. “Put him to sleep. He’ll stop crying.”
The next ten seconds seemed like an hour.
Carney smashed the back of Cam Nguyen’s left hand.