Read Grab (Letty Dobesh #3) Online
Authors: Blake Crouch
"U.S. 95 South. U.S. 93 South. I-15 South. I-15 North. U.S. 93 North. U.S. 95 North. Six main arteries out of Vegas. They're looking for a vehicle that matches your white Suburban. They will check every motel and hotel within three or four hours, which is why we aren't taking that chance. Why don't you let the professionals do the thinking, my man. You're in good hands."
They climbed out.
It was almost cold in the desert ghost town.
No wind.
Letty glanced back the way they'd come. The dust trail of their passage beginning to settle.
Everywhere she looked
—emptiness.
Isaiah walked out into the middle of the road
. He stared off at the distant hills.
Then
laughed—long and low.
Jerrod and Stu mov
ed toward him, and as he turned, the trio embraced.
A f
ierce, sudden, emotional huddle.
"
I'm so proud. We did it, boys. We did it. They're gonna make movies about us."
"
Yeah," Christian said. "And with a big surprise ending."
Letty looked across the hood of Ize's Tundra.
It took her a second to process Christian standing in the road with an AR-15 pulled snug against his shoulder, sighting down the Marines.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Raise your hands and get down on your knees."
Isaiah's head tilted. "What the fuck—"
The gunshot exploded across the desert, the round punching through t
he windshield of one of the rentals.
"Ne
xt shot goes through your eye.
Ize
."
Isaiah, Stu, and Jerrod
exchanged glances.
They slowly lifted their arms,
got down on their knees.
"
Join them, Letty."
"What are you doing, Christian?"
"You're going to make me kill somebody, aren't you?"
She moved around the front of the car.
"Christian," Isaiah said. "You want more money? An even split? We can do that. This hard-bargaining shit ain't necessary. We're reasonable men."
Letty eased down into the dirt.
"Your offer of one point five million was generous, but I think I'll have to settle for everything. Where are the keys to the Tundra, Isaiah?"
"Ignition."
"Where are the keys to the rentals?"
"Center console."
Christian fired eight shots in rapid succession.
Letty hear
d the air hissing out of the tires of the cars behind them.
"
Everyone, flat on your stomach, spread out your hands."
"
I'll find you," Isaiah said.
Christian back
ed away, keeping the gun on them as he approached the driver side door of the Tundra.
"I could kill you all right here, leave you in the desert. Perhaps you should be thanking me
for allowing you to live instead of making empty threats."
"Nothing empty about them, my man."
"Christian, please," Letty said.
"Thank me,
Ize," Christian said.
"
Fuck you."
"Thank me or you
die right now."
"Thank you," Isaiah said through gritted teeth.
"You're welcome."
Letty watched as Christian
opened the door.
Isaiah said under his breath,
"Anybody packing?"
"No."
"No."
Jerrod said,
"I can get there. I can stop this."
"He can shoot,"
Isaiah said. "In case you missed the part where he went eight for eight on those tires."
Christian reached i
nto the car.
He
cranked the engine.
Isaiah said, "I
ain't believing this shit."
Christian jumped in, slammed
the door, the engine revving.
The Tundra
lurched toward them.
Letty didn't even h
ave time to get to her feet.
Just
rolled out of the way as the tires slung rocks and dirt, the rubber tread passing inches from her head.
She sat up, cough
ing, wiping dust out of her eyes.
Isaiah's Tundra sped off down the dirt road, taillights
shrinking into the dawn.
Isaiah jumpe
d to his feet, sprinted twenty yards.
He planted his feet and
screamed at the sky, his voice racing across the wasted landscape, ricocheting between the buildings in the ghost town.
He turned and started back
toward the group, toward Letty.
When he was ten feet away, she noticed the knife in his hand.
"Isaiah, please."
She scrambled onto her feet, backpedaling.
"You," he said. "You did this."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You brought Christian in."
"I had no idea."
He rushed her, swept her off her feet.
She struck the ground hard enough to
drive the air out of her lungs.
Isaiah—all two hundred and twenty
pounds of him—perched on her chest, his knees pinning her arms to the hardpan.
He dug the knifepoint into
her face.
"I ought to carve you up right here. Leave you for the buzzards."
"I didn't—"
"Where did you find
him?"
"
I told you. He was my therapist. I ran into him at the Palazzo. He was suicidal. Had lost his family several months ago. He told me he'd come to Vegas to kill himself."
Isaiah leaned in close.
"What else do you know about him?"
"Nothing.
I only saw him in sessions."
"You
think he shoots like a shrink? Think he drives getaway like a shrink?"
"I'm more stunned than you
are, Ize. I swear to you. I told that man my darkest secrets for six months."
"Something ain't right here." He
drew the blade softly across her throat. "I'll find him," Isaiah said. "And when I do, me and Christian will have a talk. He will tell me all of his secrets. If I find out—"
"You won't, because I didn't.
If you want to kill me because I got played, go for it. But I'd never sell my partners down the river."
Isaiah p
ushed the blade against her carotid.
Stu and Jerrod had wandered over. They stood behind Isaiah, staring down at her.
"What do you think, boys?" he asked. "Feel like watching her bleed?"
20
Letty
walked alone down the dirt road away from the ghost town, back toward the highway.
Isaiah
, Stu, and Jerrod had gone ahead.
S
he couldn't see them anymore.
The sun crested
a range of barren hills.
The desert went supernova
.
She walked on, shoes
scraping dirt.
Buzzards circled
.
With each step, she became more thirsty, more exhausted, more humiliated.
Occasionally, blinding silver specks would streak across the far horizon. It was the highway, still miles away.
# # #
The sun was high by the time she reached the pavement, beating down with a kind of angry purpose.
There was no
sign of Isaiah and the boys.
S
weat poured out of her.
She walke
d twenty feet down the road and then her legs failed.
She dropped.
Sat down in the dirt.
Stunned/c
rushed/confused/enraged.
Still trying to process what had happened.
If she wasn't mistaken, it was four
or five miles back to Beatty, the last town they'd passed through. But she was in no condition to make the trek. She'd left her purse and iPhone in Ize's Tundra. Had a twenty dollar bill shoved down one of her socks, but not another penny, credit card, or form of identification to her name.
There was nothing coming in either direction.
The heat wafting off the blacktop like a furnace.
Scorpions watching her from the shade.
She couched her face between her knees and shut her eyes.
# # #
The sound of an approaching car brought her head up.
For a moment, she didn't know where she was.
She hoisted her arm into the air and raised her thumb.
A Prius screamed past,
kept going.
# # #
The sun bore down from directly overhead, and she could feel herself beginning to come apart.
You have to get up.
You have to walk to town.
You cannot just sit here and wait for a good Samaritan
to stop.
Because they don't exist anymore.
# # #
She walked up the shoulder of the highway, swatting at the swarm of flies
and gnats that had been attracted by her salt-tinged sweat.
In the distance, the mini-roar of an engine.
She looked up.
C
ouldn't see anything through the brutal glare.
Just blinding chrome and glass.
Thinking,
If I took my top off, would they stop?
Could you handle that rejection if they didn't?
She raised her arm, held out her thumb, but didn't slow her pace.
Kept walking as she shielded her eyes.
The car streaked past.
She traded her thumb for a middle finger.
But something was different with this one.
The
pitch of its engine had dropped.
She
stopped, made a slow, staggering turn.
Damn
.
Somebody
had actually pulled over.
She stumbled toward the vehicle, moving as fast as she could manage, some part of her fearin
g that as she drew near it would turn into a mirage.
But the image held.
A burgundy Chevy Astro with deeply tinted windows.
She sidled up to the
van's front passenger door, yanked it open, climbed up into the seat. The air-conditioning was crisp and roaring out of the vents.
She looked over at the driver, her head spinning
, unwieldy.
Said, "I can't thank you e
—"
At first, she thought she was hallucinating.
A symptom of heatstroke and exhaustion.
But
when he spoke, the voice matched the face.
Christian said, "Shut the door, would you? You're letting all the cold out."
When she didn't respond, he reached across her lap and pulled the door closed himself.
The desert raced by.
Christian reached down, grabbed a bottled water from between the seats, dropped it into her lap.
"G
lad you were still here," he said. "I swapped out Isaiah's car as fast as I could, but it took longer than I'd planned."
She unscrewed the water and sucked it down.
Still cold enough to trigger a brief, blinding headache, but she didn't care. The thirst-quench was orgasmic.
"There's a whole case," he said. "Help yourself."
She killed two more, leaned back in her seat.
They were speeding along on a descending grade.
The temperature readout passing the 110 mark.
The desert looking more hostile and unforgiving with each passing mile.
Like a lifeless planet. Like that painting in Christian's office.
The hydration and the AC were going a long way toward clearing her head.
She looked over at Christian. He'd changed. Maybe others wouldn't have noticed, but to her, a student of body language, it was like riding with a completely different man. He sat straighter. His shoulders implied confidence and ability. And there was a hardness in his face that hadn't ever been there before.
He said, "
Your pride is wounded. As it should be. But you should know something."