Page 76 of Killer Clone

“Edwards. Six months, ma’am.”

Six months. A few more months on the job, and he’d know enough to take his time.

“Give it your best shot, Officer Edwards.” Hagen gestured to the lock.

Officer Edwards applied the jaws of the bolt cutter and squeezed the handles.

Nothing happened.

He changed his grip and squeezed harder. A report as loud as a gunshot echoed down the corridor. The broken lock landed on the floor, just missing his boot.

Hagen pushed past him through the door, and Stella followed.

At first glance, Stella saw a single mattress that had seen better days with a sleeping bag next to it, a gas cooker in a corner, and a long piece of thick rope hanging from a metal bar in the ceiling…with one hell of a strange but familiar mess beneath it. The lingering, metallic smell of blood took her back to the woods, to Sheriff King’s shed, to every crime scene she’d ever attended.

And on the walls was that writing again.

That cursed cuneiform.

Hagen examined the long piece of rope that hung ominously from the ceiling before crouching to inspect the nasty brown stain. “Check out the floor here.”

At a glance, it looked like dried mud or paint.

But she knew it was blood.

They’d found the place where Patrick Marrion had been strung up and drained of life.

Outside the door, Officer Edwards’s radio squawked. He confirmed receipt of the message and stepped through the doorway.

“They’ve stopped the train.”

“And?”

“No one on it, ma’am.”

33

I was alone. Completely on my own. In the middle of nowhere and with no one to help me. I’d always thought I’d manage perfectly fine by myself. People who needed people were losers. Winners didn’t need anything but their own brains and abilities. That was me. I could do that. That was how I’d always lived my life.

And it had brought me here. Close to a railway line in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to go and no way to get there. The Feds had my truck—well, that journalist’s—and I didn’t even have enough cash in my pocket for a Happy Meal.

That train had come through at exactly the right moment, though. I was due for some good luck, because even with all my athletic prowess, I couldn’t outrun an SUV.

Maybe I should’ve taken a shot at them after the crash. Stopped all this running. I was tired, there was no doubt about it.

Shooting them with any degree of accuracy most likely would’ve meant instant death for me. In the time that it took to line up my shot, I’d never have gotten both of them. The other one would’ve killed me on the spot.

The train saved me. Just made it onto the last car, scrambled around the side, and let it carry me away.

But I figured they’d be waiting for me when the train stopped, so I leaped off as soon as the thing slowed.

Train must’ve still been going a good thirty miles an hour, though, maybe more, when I jumped out about ten minutes after we crossed the Cumberland River. Landed on my left ankle and rolled through a bunch of gorse bushes. They scratched me up all over—both hands were bleeding. I hobbled away from the tracks as quickly as I could, in case someone saw me.

On either side of the train tracks were trees and overgrown vegetation, which separated them from the residential neighborhoods east of the city center on either side. I decided to lay low here on a sawn-off tree stump until sunset. I needed some time to think, to get my head together. I rubbed my throbbing ankle.

I needed to get off my feet for a while too.

There was no way I could get back to my warehouse. The Feds would be all over that place, especially once they found the homeless guy in the toolbox of my truck.

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