It’s turned on its side, and Donny curses before leaping out of the passenger side, racing to Elise and Lisa who may or may not still be in there.
I dive out as well, juggling my phone free, and calling for an ambulance. Cursing my low battery, I quickly give them our location and tell them to hurry. Putting away my almost dead phone, I slide to the front, trying to see through the window.
From this angle, I can tell they were T-boned from the road connecting to this one. Elise and Lisa are both unconscious, and Elise is bleeding from her forehead. Her side took the brunt of the impact, but I can’t tell how much damage she’s sustained from here.
“Logan!” Donny yells.
I rush around, seeing Lisa’s door jammed into the ground as Donny breaks the front glass, trying to peel it back now that he has something to pry open. Using the crowbar, he pries the top down, and I toss off my jacket, wrapping it around my hands to help him peel the windshield all the way back.
Lisa is breathing heavily, and her eyes are dazed as she blinks them open. She cries out, and lifts her right arm—the one closest to her door.
My eyes widen in disbelief when I see the blood flowing from the shallow cuts.
“It was him,” she says, sucking in a pained breath. “It was him. It was him.”
Her panicked breaths quicken, and Donny tries to calm her down as I look at Elise.
“Elise!” She doesn’t answer, but she finally groans.
Relief washes through me that she’s still alive.
“He did this,” Lisa is saying, still panicking as she points to her bloody arm. “He took our guns. He thought he got all of them. He…He had a gun. He hit us…then he pointed the gun at us. We…we were still upright when he came to my side, telling us to keep our hands where he could see them.”
She cries out, trying to undo the seatbelt.
“Then…then he broke my window, and he used the glass… He used the glass to write this,” she says, sobbing as she holds her arm up again.
“He was going to kill us
, but I grabbed my spare gun when he dropped my arm to retrieve his gun. I shot at him. I shot twice. I grazed him. But…That bastard. He had someone with him. A girl. He had a girl. He knew we were coming. But he carved this.”
Her sentences are all over the place, barely making any sense.
All I can see on her arm are blood smears, but she wipes it off on her shirt and holds it up again. Donny’s breath leaves as he pales. Carved in her skin is the word “KEEP.”
“He knows us,” Donny whispers as Lisa breaks down into sobs again. “He chose Lisa instead of Elise. There’s a reason he targeted your ex.”
His tone is hushed, so as not to agitate Lisa, and my body tenses at the insight. Why “KEEP?” Why that word?
“He’s bleeding,” Lisa chokes out. “I shot him enough to make him bleed. He’ll need stitches at least.”
I look around, finding a light blood trail. It’s not enough for him to die from though. Fuck!
“The truck that fucking passed us,” I say through clenched teeth. “It was him. He even blew his motherfucking horn!”
I slam my fist down on the car, and Donny goes as stiff as I do.
“I hope that shoot-to-kill order remains,” Donny growls.
“Someone tipped him off. He knew we were coming.”
“Is the girl his accomplice?”
I shake my head, hating what’s going on inside it right now. “Nothing in the profile indicates a partner. Nothing in his profile indicates a relationship with police either. No. He’s smart. Calculated, even. He had a fail-safe plan. If he was hiding in this town, there was a reason he felt safe. Look into their local PD. Find out if any of the officers who were aware of this raid has a daughter or a wife. Then go door to door. Find out if someone is missing. It wouldn’t be reported.”
His eyes widen. “You think he took a hostage?”
“Yeah. And now that his location has been burned, he no longer needs her alive.”