Vera Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Vera left the stone passage with the witness behind her and her sister's killer still ahead. She drove through the night, following the one lead she had left. Marcus Donnelly had spent her money. Before he ran, he had robbed her blind, stripped the cash she needed to chase him, and vanished laughing. Tonight her headlights found him again. He stood at the mouth of a tight corridor between two tall stone buildings. The same kind of dead end she had used before. He wore a dirty shirt and torn jeans. His hair stuck out wild. His eyes were too wide, the eyes of a man who had been running too long and sleeping too little. He saw her SUV and froze. "You," he said. His voice shook. "How'd you find me?" "You took something of mine," Vera said through the glass. "I want it back." He ran. He bolted into the narrow passage, the one place a car should not follow. He thought the walls would save him. He thought the space was too small. He was wrong. Vera's SUV was built for this. She gunned it. The oversized tires bit the stone. The heavy bumper scraped sparks off both walls as she forced the machine into the gap. Marcus looked back. His mouth opened. He had nowhere left to go. The front wheels caught him. The SUV lurched once, hard, then settled. Vera felt the chassis rise and drop. She stopped. The engine idled in the quiet. She climbed down. Marcus lay motionless beneath the frame, twisted at an awful angle. Fresh blood ran across the undercarriage and dripped onto the stones. She knelt and reached into his jacket. Her fingers closed on a thick roll of bills. Her money. She pulled it free and counted it in the dark. All of it. Every dollar she needed to keep the hunt moving. But the hunt was the problem. Marcus had been her lead. She had chased him across three states, and she believed he knew the man she really wanted, the one who killed her sister. Now Marcus was gone, and whatever he knew was gone with him. She had traded a lead for a wallet. Vera stood. She looked at the cash in her hand and understood what she had done. She had killed the wrong man too soon. She sighed and said you shouldn’t have tried to rob me now look at you all squashed under my wheels haha. Then she got back in, backed out of the dead end, and drove away.