The Breathtaker Read online

  She eyed him questioningly.

  “Towers looming. Incredible punch throughout the sky.” He frowned. “We’ll stay put and watch it for a while.”

  She nodded as the sky grew suddenly blacker, a shadow falling over the van, over the road, over them.

  “You get nickel- and dime-sized hail as a storm collapses, so obviously you want it bigger than that. The bigger the hail, the stronger the storm.” He cocked his head. “Listen.”

  “To what?”

  “Here it comes.”

  A large hailstone pinged off the windshield, a silver web forming instantly on the black glass. Her heart convulsed. She felt the texture of the seat with her palms, then raised her hands to run them over the wool jacket, its fabric crinkling with electricity.

  “Can we go now?” she asked, struggling to keep the fear out of her voice. “Please?”

  His face grew strangely taut as he stared at the streaks of silver flashing past their headlight patterns, two alabaster circles in the dark.

  “Can we?”

  “Not yet.”

  He was somehow too powerful to contradict.

  “It’s gonna be a good show. Heavy stones. You don’t wanna miss this.”

  The van shook as a slew of hailstones briefly whacked the right side of the vehicle. She reached for her locket, then remembered it was gone. Tears flooded her eyes and dropped down her cheeks, and it sickened her to think how far away from home she was.

  “I like the way this looks,” Rick said. “Smooth. Some spiked. We may get hailstones up to three inches.”

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

  He gave her a strange look. “When the weather changes…” His eyes never left her face. “. . . you lose control… you just lose control and everything changes…”

  She could feel a small scream rising inside her.

  “I won’t deny what I’ve become.” He looked out the window again. “It builds slowly inside you. And then a voice says, ‘This house’ or ‘That one.’ I just hate to see it all standing there. I want the wind to blow it all away.”

  Terrified of the storm, of him, she yanked on the door and was barely able to push it open against the wind. She screamed as a curtain of hail whipped across the van, ice hammering metal.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  Large spiky hailstones battered her pale, shivering flesh, and with a terrified scream, she ducked back inside.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  A damaging volley of hailstones crackled against the windshield, leaving granular fractures in the glass. She screamed as hail thundered down around them—rattling the roof, denting the doors, hammering the hood.

  “I wanna go.” She shuddered convulsively. “Take me home!”

  He gave her a skeptical look. “Do you honestly think it’s safer there?”

  There followed a weighty pause.

  She could feel her face becoming tense as he inched closer. She dragged her nails across his face. “Get away!” She fought him off with an animal fear. “Get away from me!” She reached for the door handle again, but he grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her close—so close she could hear him breathing, could see the stitched white line of his mouth. Could feel his legs tense beside her.

  “When lightning is this close, needless to say,” he hissed in her face, “remain in the car.”

  Sophie screamed. She screamed until her lungs were raw, while all around them, thunder boomed and jagged lightning brought the sky terrifyingly close. She bucked from side to side, but he struck a swift blow with his open hand, hitting her in the windpipe.

  It messed up her breathing.

  She felt the blow in the soft tissue of her throat… and trembled all over… before everything went black.

  9

  THE ROAD from hell, Route 30, was as straight as a trail of ants. Charlie hit another pothole and could taste his own blood. “Fuck!” He was jamming through yet another one-light town, bouncing over the deeply rutted road and feeling all twisted and sweaty inside his clothes. An updraft of wind blew a burst of twigs and leaves against the truck, and a few stray hailstones popped off the roof. Glancing in his rearview, he caught sight of the northern edge of a massive storm front—a vast, churning supercell cruising north by northeast at approximately forty knots, the entire atmosphere in fast-forward. An escalating wind mussed the grass and flung the birds about. It blasted through the trees and spit out leaves and twigs like watermelon seeds.

  His eyes burned with fatigue. The defensive shell he’d worked so hard to construct over the past several hours was beginning to crumble, and in its place was nothing but a sheer, unadulterated panic. Crows flapped away from inkblots of roadkill, and lightning leaped between the clouds as Charlie’s foot squeezed the gas pedal. The long, straight road sucked him onward, past blighted patches of dirt and saplings too small to hide behind. The monotony of the landscape got into your blood like a slow-acting poison. One day you woke up and couldn’t live anyplace else.

  “Come on, come on…” The pickup truck strained up a gradual rise as he threw it into gear, the flesh of his back clutching tighter. He tried not to picture his daughter—so small, so helpless—and groped for some kernel of hope. She had backbone. She would fight him.

  Now he spotted a lone vehicle on the road up ahead and throttled down. Unholstered his .38 and rested it on the seat beside him. The vehicle was parked by the side of the road. Charlie eased his foot off the gas and caught sight of a satellite dish on the roof.

  The brown Doppler van.

  A surge of elation spasmed through him. He wanted to tear out of the truck, but all his years of police training prevented him from acting on impulse. If he pulled up behind the van now, Rick would have the advantage. He might hurt her. Charlie had to think. Don’t try to solve everything at once. Be patient. Achieve safe surrender of the perpetrator.

  His eyes welled with indignation as he edged past the Doppler van and caught sight of two figures inside the cab, the interior light bathing them in a yellow glow. Don’t stop, don’t stop. Behind him, a giant striated updraft was slowly churning its way across the plains. They had somehow arrived at the foot of a massive HP beast; it looked like a 1950s atomic bomb blast with its rock-hard tower, cumuliform anvil and great gnarled knuckles.

  Fear tearing at his sanity, Charlie inched past the van and kept going for several mind-numbing minutes more, until he was certain that the van hadn’t followed. The rotating wall cloud suddenly changed shape, going from a transparent mist to a solid brown mass. It was perfectly backlit, Jesus rays streaming down the western side of the updraft. From this dark mass, a pencil-thin tornado descended from the clouds and jabbed into the ground like an ice pick.

  Ignore the hostage. Give her minimal attention. That only makes her more valuable to the hostage-taker.

  He switched off his lights and decelerated, slipping into neutral. Taking his foot off the gas, he turned the wheel ninety degrees, and the truck fishtailed across the wet road, tires chirping. The rear end swung around, items in the flatbed banging against one another, metal slamming metal.

  The Loadmaster came to a rickety stop. He could hear a high-pitched hum in the air from a nearby transformer, while up ahead, two flags of rain shimmered in the Doppler van’s high beams. The air was hazy with dust and debris. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed his gun and stepped out of the truck.

  10

  THERE WAS silence in the center of her mind, an odd calm. Her lower jaw throbbed dully. The wind was making a harmonica sound, whistling through the van. Another flock of hailstones hit the glass.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  Groggily Sophie opened her eyes. Rick Kripner was hovering over her, his face lit with an odd fascination. She feared him. She did not know him. Screaming, she struck him across the face.

  He flinched and caught her arm. “Somebody’s awake.”

  She screamed again, blood filling her mouth.

  “Do you think you could work on that att
itude of yours?”

  “Leggo!” She lashed out, stars strobing in her field of vision. She gasped for breath. “Let go of me!”

  Suddenly and indifferently he released her and rested his hands on the steering wheel, fingers curling possessively around it. He tapped his thumbs to the beat of the wipers and looked out at the night as if he were hypnotized by it.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  Another volley of hailstones swept across the vehicle. The driver’s side window cracked, a spiderweb forming on the glass. Behind them, she could see a spectacular coffee-can updraft in the lightning flashes. She reached for the door handle and was about to leap out when he jerked her back inside.

  “Things don’t always go the way we want them to, Sophie,” he said. “Life’s funny that way.”

  Choking back her revulsion, she reached for the door again. Spasms in her breathing.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  He yanked her back.

  Bang, bang, bang…

  Then something awful happened. The driver’s side window shattered, glass shards exploding into the cab like a thousand icicles, and a fat sweaty fist smashed into Rick’s face with a sickening crunch.

  His head flew sideways. His neck snapped. His false teeth went flying. The upper plate nicked Sophie in the scalp, and the lower plate landed in her lap. It was pink and wet and disgusting, and she screamed until her voice gave out.

  Now an arm reached into the broken window and tried to tear Rick out of the van. Sophie groped for the keys, but Rick stomped on the gas, released the emergency brake, and suddenly they were lurching forward into the blinding storm, while hailstones screamed down out of the sky. The van slid over the road, tires squealing, as Rick bellowed, “Teef! Teef!”

  “What?”

  He held out his hand. “Teef!”

  She stared in horror at that raw-looking hole.

  He scooped up the lower plate and mashed it into his mouth, making the shrill, obscene sound of a castrated bull as they flew into darkness.

  11

  SHIT!” CHARLIE fired three rounds at the fleeing van, trying to blow out a rear tire. He’d seen his daughter, seen her alive. Rain dripped down his neck, and the wind turned his uniform into a million dancing butterflies. His nose was broken, and his knuckles were bleeding. He’d used the butt of his PR-24 baton to smash through the glass and could still taste the impact of knuckles on jawbone. He stood for a paralyzed instant while hailstones pounded down around him and the van’s taillights zigzagged into the mist. Then he holstered his weapon and broke into a sprint, boots sinking into the mud.

  Charlie dug in with pounding strides back to the Loadmaster, where he tore open the door and hopped inside, a gust of wind slamming it shut behind him. He held on tight to the steering wheel and stomped on the gas, tires grabbing and spinning forward. The truck slewed sideways—it was like driving on ice cream—but he managed to level it out and floored it down the road.

  It took a combination of poor steering, lousy road conditions and weight shifts to turn a vehicle over, and Charlie wasn’t about to let that happen. He couldn’t see a damn thing through the prismed windshield and knocked out the rest of the safety glass with the butt of his gun. He’d seen his daughter alive—she was wearing her seat belt and shoulder harness. Good girl. He’d also seen that Rick wasn’t wearing any seat belt. Dumb move. Now Charlie could ram the back of the vehicle at full throttle, jolting it off the road and preventing Rick from fleeing; since Sophie was buckled in, she’d be relatively safe. Safer than if he let them go.

  The Doppler van made an abrupt left turn, cutting across the field on an intercept course. Charlie lurched after them, Michelin tires chewing up fist-sized chunks of earth and humping over ruts. He could feel the rear wheels spinning viciously as he veered down yet another poorly paved road, the old engine ripping and grinding.

  Visibility cleared as he punched out of the hailstorm, pink whorls of light breaking through the scattered clouds. He could see the van’s taillights twinkling on the road up ahead and a terrible sight beyond—electrical discharges the color of marigolds shooting out of the core precipitation, the dark dusty wedge itself whipping around like a cosmic tantrum. A cap of exploding azulene billowed above the band, visible in a vivid background of lightning, with suction spots circling the outer edges. The debris cloud was at least half a mile wide at the base, with two-by-fours and tree limbs flying around the periphery like tiddlywinks. The monster was twice as wide as it was tall, an enormous spinning top rotating at about 250 miles per hour. He figured he should probably get out of the way of that.

  The next bolt of lightning crackled the atmosphere, and an icy wind scraped into the cab. Charlie glanced at his speedometer. The needle was inching past sixty, and the fuel tank was nearly empty. “Don’t fail me now, you lovely piece of shit.” He heard a muffled snapping sound as he rammed it into gear and drove the pedal to the floor.

  The new tires tore for a grip on the slick asphalt as he steadily gained on the van. He veered into the oncoming lane, the smell of burning rubber hitting his nostrils, and picked a spot on the back bumper. He waited a beat, then wrenched the wheel sharply to the right. Throttle down, he slammed into the van at probably 70 mph. He could feel the flesh of his face rippling over bone as the two vehicles converged and the Loadmaster delivered a disabling crunch.

  BAMMMM!!!

  The frame pushed straight up. His front bumper, embedded in the van’s fender, made a huge squealing sound, in sour harmony with the flogged V-8s and screaming tires. After a few hairy moments, the van tore away and spun off the road, tires spitting out white clouds of smoke.

  Charlie slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and all four wheels instantly locked solid to the brake drums. He was out of control, spinning counterclockwise, the heavier front end dragging the rest of the truck around. Equipment flew sideways inside the cabin, chunks of plastic breaking off and exploding like shrapnel. A black toolbox collided with his skull and he saw stars. Time dilated. He was plunged into a chilling silence, into a thick and coiling darkness, as the truck described a lazy arc in midair.

  12

  SOPHIE PLASTERED herself against her seat as the van went into a deadly skid, slewing sideways across the road. They spun around, thwunk, thwunk, crack-thumping over potholes. A disabling fear descended as the vehicle ground to a halt, and then, with a creaking groan, everything went still.

  Pain shot up her spine. She licked her lips and could taste the blood on her teeth. Raising her hands to her face, she noticed that some of her purple nail polish was chipped, an incongruous thought. She heard a sound like rapidly flowing water. It got louder. Deeper tones became audible. The windshield was crazed into a thousand fractures, and through the jewel-like glass she thought she saw insects swirling in the sweep of the van’s headlights. Only those weren’t insects, she soon realized, but chunks of debris caught up in the ferocious updraft.

  “Fuck.” Rick rubbed his forehead, and she looked at him uncomprehendingly. He gazed back, the corners of his mouth drawing up like curtains.

  She became terrified of him all over again. The van shook with pulses of inflow wind, and she could hear the crisp snap of kindling. She turned to look out her window at the pitch-dark. A transformer exploded nearby, blue sparks shooting out like fireworks, and for an instant, she could see the wedge-shaped tornado trundling toward them, churning up the atmosphere. She got that shaky feeling in the pit of her stomach, like a bubble that wouldn’t pop. Her hands went numb. There was glass in her hair. Her heart raced harder than she’d ever imagined possible. Lightning the color of tiger lilies strobed across the sky as the tornado hit the first in a long line of telephone poles, blue sparks spitting out horizontally into the air. One by one, the telephone poles got sucked up into the gyrating vortex and pitched away.

  Rick keyed the ignition, released the emergency brake, and the engine roared to life with a coarse, deafening sound. She groped for the door, but he grabbed her by the arm and wo
uldn’t let go. She tried desperately to break away, a shriek clawing at her throat.

  With a sudden inrush of air, the door flew open, and a gaunt figure aimed his gun inside. His face was spattered with blood, his hair was plastered to his skull and his wet uniform was stuck to his body.

  “Daddy?” she screamed.

  Rick pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the van tore out of the ditch. Her father jumped on the rocker panel and held on tight. Sophie fumbled with her seat belt, while her father girded himself, every muscle straining against the slapping door. Then he aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger.

  The sound was deafening.

  Rick’s lower lip blew off.

  Sophie’s eyes grew glassy with shock.

  Blood flew everywhere.

  The van danced across the road in a shower of sparks.

  Sophie unbuckled her seat belt, but Rick only tightened his grip, the pain making her eyes water.

  Another bump, and her father almost lost his balance.

  Feeling a cold ache around her heart, she bit down savagely on Rick’s arm, sinking her teeth into the sweaty, straining muscles until she could taste a warm gush of blood at the back of her throat.

  He wrenched his arm away. Screaming and quivering with outrage. The sight of his mangled face curdled her blood. Those missing teeth, that shattered lip.

  Her father hooked her around the middle, held on tight, and together they leaped into chaos. She felt as if she were falling off the planet at a million miles an hour. They hit the ground rolling, her arms clamped tight around his neck. They bumped over the wet grass until the field finally caught them. Sophie sputtered for air in a tangle of wildflowers, a searing pain registering in her lungs. Try again, try again. Air scudded into her lungs. She clasped her twitching fingers around her father’s neck and gave a faint grateful cry.

  He helped her upright, then the two of them staggered in the wind. Green sky, purple lightning. The air around them twisting and screaming. Which way? She heard the sound of squealing tires and looked back at the Doppler van. It was caught in the updraft, tires spinning futilely as Rick tried to get away.