Page 14 of Left Behind

And I’m one of them, he thought as he hobbled down the steps and to his car. By the time he got situated inside the car, she’d already closed her door and turned off the porch light.

He started the car, backed out of the drive, and headed back through town and up Pope Mountain. When he passed the scene of the wreck, he never even looked in that direction. He was bothered by the events of this day, but what was done was done. He also knew that when Billy Eggers’s body was discovered, his DNA would be all over it.

This shit show was far from over.

***

Lilah Perry walked back into the bathroom to clean up, saw Lonny’s sodden underwear lying by the shower, and carried it through the house and tossed it in the garbage can off the back porch. She went back inside and cleaned up her bathroom until there wasn’t a remnant of Lonny Pryor left, then went back to bed. Her alarm would go off at 5:00 a.m., and she’d be clocking in at work at the Jubilee PD by seven. She had been working as a clerk in records for almost two years. It was the best job she’d ever had.

Chapter 3

Lonny Pryor got back to his apartment just after daybreak. He’d driven straight to the ER to get his knee fixed and sat stoically through it all while the doctor and nurse razzed him about the pantyhose bandage as they applied surgical glue to close the cut. He nodded and laughed with them and was grateful for the prescription for pain pills when he walked out.

His visit to Billy Eggers had gone south, but he thought he’d cleaned up the witness. He didn’t know who she was, but he figured she’d bleed out or exposure would finish the job. He entered his apartment, weary to the bone. Stowed the handgun in his safe, then called in. The phone rang three times before it was answered.

“Hello?”

“This is Gunny.”

“Yeah?”

“Shit happened,” he said.

Junior Henley paused. “What kind of shit?”

“Eggers got violent. We got into a heated argument. I pulled my gun. We wrestled with it, and it went off. He’s dead.”

“Dead! You weren’t supposed to kill him!” Junior shouted.

“Yeah, well, it happened. And that’s not all. There was a woman at the house, and I didn’t know it until I saw her running to his car. I gave chase, but I had to run her down across two counties to shut her up. You never told me he had a woman.”

“Son of a bitch! He didn’t have a woman. What did she look like?”

“A skinny little blond with curly hair.”

“That’s his sister, or should I say, ‘She was his sister’? So, she’s out of the picture, too?”

“She is now,” Gunny said.

“You’re sure?” Junior asked.

“Well, I chased her through a freaking forest in a rainstorm and shot her in the back,” Gunny said.

“What did you do with the body?”

“Nothing. I missed getting struck by lightning by about fifty feet. I messed up my knee and got my ass out of there. She’d already wrecked the car. She was disoriented and walking in circles when I caught up to her,” Gunny said.

“How the hell did you find her?”

“Eggers had a tracker app on his phone for his own car. All I had to do was follow the blip.”

“What did you do with the phone?” Junior asked.

“Busted it into pieces and threw it out the window on the way home.”

Junior sighed. “Yeah, okay. What about the gun?”

“Yes. I’ll bring it over tomorrow.”

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