Criss Cross

Chapter 44

My first thought was that tunnel. But how had Rivers gotten out to come around and lock us in? Was there an exit before the house?

Then I remembered something. I scrambled up the staircase yelling, “Follow me!”

I bolted up the three flights and climbed the ladder into the upper container car, the one that jutted out of the roof of the anthill. I pushed open the door and shone my light on the winch bolted into the side of the bunker and the ropes coiled below it.

By the time Sampson reached me, I’d found the winch control in a toolbox inside the bunker. I tied a loop in one end of the rope and hooked it to the quarter-inch steel winch line.

I handed the control to John, took the coil of rope, and moved to that low gate in the defensive wall. I unlatched it, opened it, and threw the rope over. As I’d suspected, it didn’t reach the bottom.

“Play me out as I go,” I said, turning to face him.

I started a modified rappel down the steep side of Rivers’s bunker. The vegetation covering the bunker’s side actually helped my footing, and I moved much faster than I’d thought I would.

Sampson uncoiled a good twenty feet of the winch line until the rope below me reached the ground. By the time I got there, John was on his way down.

I sprinted to our car, jumped in, turned the key in the ignition, and got nothing.

Nothing!

Jumping out, furious, I ran back. Sampson was almost down.

“He disabled our car,” I shouted as I went past him.

When I reached Rivers’s Jeep, the keys were still there in the cup holder. I snatched them up, found the right one, stuck it in the ignition, and felt like cheering when the engine turned over.

Sampson jumped in beside me, drenched in sweat, his hands bleeding. “That cable tore the hell out of me!” he said.

“Hold on somehow,” I said as I threw the Jeep into gear.

I mashed the gas pedal down and kept cranking the wheel to get around the base of Rivers’s bunker, then whipsawed it back the other way to avoid our dead car and the machinery. Once I hit the little road that led to the house, I straightened the car out and roared up the hill.

Just as we passed the pond, headlights went on up by the house.

A black Porsche sports car came peeling out of the garage.

For a split second, our headlights caught the car broadside before it accelerated up the drive.

Dwight Rivers was hunched behind the wheel, and when he glanced our way, he looked terrified.

“Get him before he hits a highway!” Sampson yelled.

I understood and kept the gas floored as much as I could, weaving up the driveway, trying to keep Rivers’s taillights in sight.

The Porsche blew through the mouth of the driveway and drifted across the gravel road as Rivers skillfully kept up his speed.

I knew I couldn’t do that, so I slammed on the brakes and still almost rolled the Jeep on the county road. By the time I got the SUV straightened out, Rivers was well ahead and accelerating toward a curve.

“We won’t catch him,” Sampson growled. “He’s going eighty at least.”

“Call the sheriff,” I said as I lost the Porsche’s taillights. “He’s heading back toward Madison.”

Sampson grimaced but used his bleeding, sore hands to dig in his pocket for his phone. He needn’t have bothered.

When we rounded the curve, there were no taillights on the straightaway heading east. Rivers had lost control and rolled and then flipped the car over a stone wall into a cornfield. The sports car was on its roof in the mud, headlights still on and aimed across the field. We skidded to a stop.

“Call 911!” I said as I jumped out.

I vaulted the rock wall and sprinted toward the wreck. The engine was bucking and backfiring when I got close enough to kneel and shine my light into the sports car. It had a full roll bar, which definitely saved Rivers’s life.

He was hanging upside down, caught by his safety belt and the airbag, bleeding, unconscious, but definitely breathing.

I smelled gasoline.

“Alex!” Sampson yelled. “The gas tank!”

“I know!” I shouted. I threw myself onto my belly in the mud and wriggled to get my head and shoulders through the window.

“Turn the engine off!” Sampson said.

“I can’t reach the button,” I said. “Gimme your knife.”

A second later he handed me an open folding knife. I reached up and slashed at the airbag and the safety belt until I got Rivers free.

I held his unconscious body with one hand and told Sampson to pull me out by my feet.

As I got free of the wreckage, I smelled gas again. I knew we were only seconds from disaster.

Sampson and I grabbed Rivers by his arms and pulled him out and away from the wreck.

Just as we did, a human head rolled out of the car, and then the Porsche exploded and went up in flames.