Page 90 of Nowhere Good

Trevor ignored him. He had a glazed look on his face. “I—I wanted to tell him he had to confess… I drove past the farm… so many times… I was too scared… but when I found the drugs—I remembered. He gets away with everything.”

“Not this. Not if you let her go and tell me what Ron did. You can stop him, but not like this.”

A flicker of something. Hope, maybe, in Trevor’s shattered gaze.

“Come on, man, you have to trust me. Detective Haylock threw out your map, but I didn’t. I followed it. Because I care, Trevor. I can help you. You just have to let me.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. Movement from the cornfield around them, the perimeter closing in too close.

Trevor tensed again—every bit of progress gone in an instant. “Th—there’s more of you. They’ve probably already tipped him off. He’ll hide everything.”

Damn it. Seth unholstered his radio from his belt, keeping his focus on Trevor as he said, “All units, hold position, I repeat, hold position.”

A voice crackled through the radio. “Copy, holding.”

Seth held his hands up again, his radio in one, his gun in the other. “See, Trevor? It’s okay. They’re not coming. It’s just you and me, man.”

But Trevor still had the look of a wild animal, ready to bolt. His eyes jumped between Seth, Claire, and the cornfields.

“Trevor, don’t,” Seth warned.

A cornstalk crunched somewhere across the field.

Trevor’s arm jerked as he spun around, and Clementine dropped.

The moment the knife was away from her throat, Seth aimed his gun at Trevor’s right shoulder as he retreated. He almost took the shot—his finger millimeters from the trigger—but stopped himself, a split-second decision, because if the hostage was out of danger, he didn’t need to shoot.

Part of him regretted it as Trevor dashed through the cornfield and disappeared.

“Shit,” Seth hissed. He grabbed his radio and shouted, “Suspect is fleeing on foot, heading eastbound. Foot pursuit in progress.”

He went to dart after Trevor.

Claire’s choked, warbled voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Seth.”

He turned back. Clementine was flat on the ground while Claire pressed her frantic hands over her throat. Blood seeped between Claire’s fingers, coating her skin in pigmented red.

No.

He’d been sucked into a vacuum; he hadn’t even realized Trevor cut Clementine’s throat as he’d dropped her. Seth ran back, holstering his weapon as he fell to his knees and ripped the sleeve off his shirt. He turned it into a ball, then tilted Clementine’s head toward him and gently pressed his shirt into the wound. He wasn’t a damn paramedic, but this could buy them some time.

“Oh, God,” Claire sputtered.

He kept holding the wound. Blood absorbed into the shirt. He took out his radio and harshly spoke into it. “Dispatch, Detective Winslow—I need EMS at my location right now—one victim, female, late twenties, with a serious throat wound. Applying pressure.”

Officer Jacobson appeared in the clearing with Pereira right behind him. They stared down at Clementine, blanching, but Seth pointed toward where Trevor had disappeared.

“That way! Go!”

They took off without a word. Seth kept applying gentle pressure, but the color had drained from Clementine’s face. Spluttering sounds bubbled up from her lips.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Sirens wailed in the distance, closing in. He pressed slightly harder, then looked at Claire. A streak of her sister’s blood ran over her chin like paint.

“She’s okay,” he said, trying to convince himself too. “She’s gonna be okay.”