Chapter XVII
The truck took the I-295 bypass around the city and she kept busy by taking his BP and vitals, his blood pressure was shaky and his heart raced like a trip hammer. He was in the throes of a full-blown panic attack. She examined the drugs on hand and gave him a shot of Ativan into his IV. The results were immediate, he calmed and his BP dropped along with his pulse rate. His O2 levels hovered around 84%, which alarmed her but other than the IV of fluids and oxygen, there wasn’t much else she could do for him. She had morphine but that was a respiratory depressant and she didn’t want to compromise his breathing any worse than it already was. She found the intercom, and clicked it, jumped when the voice snapped, “What do you want?”
“Who is this?”
“The driver. You don’t need to know my name. How is the cargo?”
“Having trouble breathing. I don’t have the equipment or the knowledge to deal with respiratory failure.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“How much longer will we be in transit?”
“Another hour and then we switch drivers but we keep going. Say four more hours to our destination.”
“I’m not sure he has four hours.” She studied the youngster’s face and nails and noted that they looked cyanotic. “He needs to be in a hospital. He’s cyanotic.”
“That ain’t gonna happen.”
Now she got angry. “This is a 13, 14-year-old kid with an arrow hole through his lungs not some manikin you can throw away. Do something or I will.”
He laughed derisively. “This cargo crate was designed to hold screaming kids. You think you can do anything to stop it or me? Go ahead, try your damnedest. In the meantime, I’ll call the Sheriff and let him know your concerns.”
She heard wheezing, looked up and was astonished to note that he was awake. The intelligence in his previously blank eyes was unnerving. He removed his mask and the difference it made in his respirations and color was alarming. “O2 tank,” he wheezed. “It’s a bomb. Compressed air, explosive. Blow the doors open.” He coughed and a thin trickle of blood marred his lip, he wiped at it with his chin against a shoulder leaving a bloody smear on the gown.
“Don’t try to talk, Cale. You need to keep breathing that oxygen, your lungs are not working correctly.”
“Can’t be helped. Besides, Granny Elkins is in here with me, helping me to breathe and holding me here. I’ve lost my ability to escape.” He gave a little sob. “I’m so scared of what they’ll do to me. I can’t make myself wake up.”
She pulled the O2 cylinder to the floor, found something heavy to wedge it up against and whacked the valve as she pointed it towards the door. “Ready?”
“Wait,” he said. There are cars behind us, don’t want to hurt them.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. I see it.” They felt the truck shift gears.
“Now. He’s turned into another lane. No one’s behind us.”
She hit the valve with the fire extinguisher and the canister flew forward, hit the doors and exploded outward. She braced herself as the truck skidded to a stop and slowly jackknifed across the lanes of traffic. Cars tried to get out of the way or slid to a stop.
She was the first to recover and unhooked him from the restraints and his lines. His color had paled and he was in obvious respiratory distress. She had to pick him up and half carry him out of the container. Cars honked all around them, a crowd rapidly formed of rubberneckers as she pushed her way through and they busied themselves with the driver of the cab. When she looked again, she could see that the overturned rig had crushed the cab and no one was getting out. Overhead, she heard the beating blades of helicopters and she ducked her head as she checked out their surroundings.
He had chosen a spot where there was enough going on to hide them, they had wrecked right across from a TA truck stop.
“Hey!” She heard behind her. “Didn’t you come from that truck?”
She ran for the restrooms inside the truck stop and carried him into the ladies room where she set him down on the commode in a handicap stall, placing his arms on the rails. She smiled at his worn and pain drawn face. “You hold onto that, Cale. I’m going to call the police. You okay?”
“No,” he whispered with an effort and she felt for the pulse in his neck. It was frighteningly fast and weak. “Call the FBI. Ask for Jed Deleon.” He recited the number and she wrote it down on her palm with a magic marker from the pockets on her uniform pants. Her cell phone didn’t work inside the restrooms. She locked the stall door and scooted underneath.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t make a sound, don’t let anyone in but me.”
“Alice,” he whispered painfully. “Wait.” However, she had already reached the door back in the restaurant gift shop. “Alice,” he spoke and closed in his eyes. “He’s here. Sheriff’s here. Following. Look out.” He slumped against the wall unconscious, his arms tucked into the rails were the only thing keeping him from falling to the floor.
She stood just outside the door to the gift shop, kept her eyes scanning the crowd gawking at the wreck as she dialed the number on her palm. The voice that answered was clear enough although there was a great deal of background noise from a helicopter’s engine.
“Hello?”
“My name is Alice Freeman,” she started to explain. Before she got out more than a few words, she was interrupted.
“We’re on the way. Don’t leave him.”
She looked up to stare into the cherub face of the Hollow’s Sheriff and barely had time to register his anger before he slammed his fist into her stomach. She gasped for air and folded into his arms as he snatched her phone out of her hands and dragged her to his car, tossing her into the back seat. He handcuffed her hands behind her back and pointed the pistol in her face. “Where is he, Alice? Is he still alive?” Anger made the veins in his face stand up and his breath smelled of Fritos. She gagged and tried to catch her breath, vomited to the side on the backseat that already smelled of vomit and urine.
“They’re coming for you, Trask,” she wheezed. “Let us go.”
“I don’t think so, Alice. Only place you could have left him would be the restrooms, showers, or overnight rooms. Overnight rooms require a sign in to register. The clerk will give me access since I’m the Sheriff.”
“Go to hell!” She spat. She pulled up her legs, kicked him in the gut with her tech boots, and scrambled out of the backseat climbing over the top of him. She gave him another kick in the face and ran, keeping her balance by sheer determination. Overhead, she could hear the helicopters getting louder and closer.
Running out onto the highway, she dodged cars barely staying on her feet with her hands cuffed behind her. She headed for the truck wreck and the other paramedics hoping to blend in. She heard the boy’s faint voice reverberate in her head and without hesitation, she obeyed as he screamed for her to drop. She did so instantly, falling and rolling as the bullets went over in a complete miss. Rising up before her was a man dressed in black tactical gear and he dragged her forward, let off a burst from his rifle that blew Trask off his feet and into bloody doll rags. More men rapelled from the hovering choppers and the downdraft nearly knocked them all off their feet.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
“Restroom,” she gasped. “Wheelchair stalls. Go get him!”
The team appeared behind her and took off the gift shop. The SWAT member picked her up and dug out a cuff key, unlocked and checked her over. “You okay?”
“He punched me in the gut, knocked all the air out but I’m okay, it’s the boy I’m worried about. He’s in respiratory failure. Go!” They took off at a run after the team and Alice jumped over the Sheriff’s body without a second glance.
They had the boy laid out on blankets on the floor and were bagging him, they had inserted an airway. His color was an alarming blue and his breaths were whistles as blood stained his lips. A good-looking man with electric blue eyes was squeezing his hands and talking low and urgently to him. He looked up at her. “Alice?”
She nodded and watched as they took his vitals, the numbers were scary. “He needs immediate ER care.”
“We have the helicopter. Louisville is the closest?”
“Go to Crowley Trauma. Maryland’s not far from here and it’s the best Trauma Center on the East Coast.”
“I’m SAIC Jed Deleon. Cale’s friend.”
“Where were you when he needed you?”
“Looking for him in three states,” he returned bitterly.
They lifted the boy, now hooked up to life support equipment and trotted back towards the highway. The SWAT leader radioed the chopper to put down on the road and pick them up, to call Crowley Trauma in Maryland and prepare for an incoming PEDs case. His vitals and condition followed.
“Cale, we’ve got you. You’re safe and on the way to the hospital. The Sheriff is dead. Your friend, Beebe Junior is alive. They shot him but the bullet only creased him.” He carefully refrained from telling him about Cassie Elkins.
“Mr. Special Agent in Charge,” her whispery voice with its strong southern accent came out of the air near the boy’s mouth. “He already knows I’m dead. He took me into his mind and holds me there, so in a sense I am still alive. Good to know about Beebe Jr. though. You kill that no account, lowlife, sick bastard that sold kids to dirty old men?”
“Cale?”
“Cale’s sleeping. You’re talking to Cassie Elkins. You tell him it’s so, Alice Freeman.”
“That’s Granny Elkins voice,” she whispered her eyes large and round.
“I’ll let him sleep until he heals but then I’m gonna kick him out so’s I can go to my next…whatever. You take care this boy, Mr. Special Agent. He’s a special boy, gonna do great things. Goodbye, Alice. Don’t screw up your second chance now that Billy Trask ain’t got you tied up in knots.”
“Granny?”
She chuckled and the sound coming from nowhere was strangely scary. “You’re gonna have a good life, Alice. Take care of yourself.” The chopper lifted to into the air and headed off to the hospital.