“All I’ve got left is a pair of scissors. I had the chance to take a Glock, but I didn’t.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Lucy. This isn’t the time.”
The car continued to coast.
Donaldson glanced at the speedometer.
Fifty miles per hour.
Forty-five.
Forty.
The car behind them closed the gap.
“I’m not fucking with you, D. I didn’t take the gun, because I didn’t want to accidentally kill you and spare you all the pain I had in store. I’m sorry. Frisk me now if you don’t believe me.”
Donaldson grunted something noncommittal.
The headlights were riding their back bumper now.
“There!” Lucy said. “There’s a dirt driveway.”
She pointed out her window, and Donaldson squinted to see through the darkness.
“Is that a barn?” she asked.
“Can’t tell. But it’s better than being out in the open.”
Donaldson nudged the Honda onto the shoulder and made a quick right. The tires sank into dirt, then caught, carrying them fifty yards down the road toward the building, gradually slowing until all momentum ceased.
The car that had been following them crept past and then stopped twenty yards ahead. It was a black sedan. Its taillights burned for a minute more, and then went dark.
“What would someone who isn’t in law enforcement want with us?” Lucy asked.
“Why don’t you hop out and ask?”
“What are they waiting for?”
“I don’t know.”
Whoever was in the black sedan stayed put.
“You have any weapons, D?”
“I figured the gun would be enough.”
“So what do we do? Can you sneak up on him, maybe?”
Donaldson shook his head, flipping on the interior light. “Check out my legs.”
Lucy looked down. The bandages had sloughed off in bloody strips.
Wait. Those weren’t bandages.
That was his skin.
“Grafts. Prick named Lanz told me to limit my movement, or they wouldn’t take hold. Guess he wasn’t kidding.”
“Cool. Is this, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?’ I’ll play.”
Lucy pulled a pair of surgical scissors out of her scrubs and snipped a tiny cut into the bandage of her right leg. She pulled back a piece of black foam while Donaldson took a quick glance at the car in the distance. It hadn’t moved.
“I have to warn you,” Lucy said. “I haven’t had the skin grafts yet.”
Her shinbone shone through a hole below her knee.
Donaldson seemed mesmerized by the wound.
“I had to go off my morphine to escape. They gave me a nerve block shot in my spine, but it’s wearing off. The pain is…spectacular.”
Donaldson couldn’t take his eyes off her leg. Lucy folded the bandage back, grimacing as she pressed the adhesive into another filthy bandage in an attempt to make it stick.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t feel a damn thing. You’re paralyzed, aren’t you?”
“We aren’t safe in here, D. We need to do something. Now.”
“Do what, little girl? I can barely walk and I only got one good arm. And I bet you can’t walk at all. We’re outta gas in the middle of bumblefuck.”
“So we just wait?”
“This guy wants something. Eventually, he’ll show us what it is.”
They waited.
No one moved.
“You said you killed a hundred and thirty people?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah.”
“I killed twenty-nine. One for every year I’ve lived.”