Knife Edge

Knife Edge - chapter 7

Startz’s breath rasped in his lungs and he cursed his lack of fitness. He made a mental note to do something about it. Then he screamed aloud at the absurdity of the idea. But his mind was operating in distress mode, insinuating quite random but rational thoughts into his consciousness.

As he hugged Holly to him like a bridegroom and as he struggled up the slippery incline, occasionally falling to his knees as the muddy screed slithered underneath his feet, he was planning her rehabilitation programme. He would not accept, even for one second, that she might not pull through. The wind that had swirled in the wake of the storm had eased a little, enough to lessen the strain. What breeze there was thankfully blew from behind, urging him to climb as though his life depended on it.

Thomas Startz had been a reclusive, uncommunicative boy until his sister appeared. She had brought him out of his shell. Now, years later, he would have to employ all his considerable professional skill to release her from hers.

The blaze from the car was dying down fast. Flickers of light were now reflecting through the trees helping Startz find his way back up to the road. He thought about the bikers and his mind hardened. Somehow, somewhere he would find them. Their paths would cross. And when they did, they would suffer. Startz fuelled his aching limbs with thoughts of the agonies he would inflict on Rainbow. He would have to get him alone, preferably on the operating table. Then he would be made to live up to his name. He would suffer before he died.

With Holly almost slipping from his sweating, rain soaked arms, Startz suddenly burst through the overhanging branches of a desert willow and there it was. The highway stretched away in both directions, empty and desolate. To the west the lights of the city provided some semblance of hope but they may as well have been on another planet. To the east there was nothing.

Startz tottered around the vapour shrouded road surface and wept. He laid Holly gently at the side of the road. She was shivering. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? It meant she was alive at least. He held her to him to try and generate some warmth and grimly wished that a part of the blazing wreck below was up here with them to steam the aching cold from their bones.

In the distance, specks of light appeared, in both directions. Startz thought quickly, with the crystal clear reasoning of a man on the edge.

An accident. It had to be. The drivers had to see Holly. Then they might stop. With luck they would see the glow of the incinerated Lincoln some way off and put two and two together. With even more luck they wouldn’t think there had been any kind of foul play. That would just cause them to accelerate away.

Holly was now moaning quietly. Startz tried to encase her body in his. He knew she might not survive a night in the desert.

He could only pray that someone would stop and soon.

****

A slow blues softly told a story of heartbreak. Someone was playing an harmonica very quietly somewhere in the back of the bus. No one objected or told the unseen musician to pipe down, to can the noise. The music seemed to catch the winsome mood inside the bus as it cruised across the flat dust plain.

The evening sun was being swept behind fast moving clouds as they raced in the wake of the storm up ahead. Stars were pinned to the darkening sky and as Ella stared out of the window in a kind of trance, she could see occasional slivers of lightning bursting over the land. It looked like they were catching up with the storm.

Up ahead she could just make out the glow of a fire. It was some way off but it was shifting in and out of focus. What could it be? Maybe a plane had crashed, or a truck. Whatever it was, it must be a pretty big blaze.